The National Catholic Register (May 4, 2026) reports that “Catholic” mental health professionals have largely welcomed President Trump’s executive order accelerating research into and potential approval of psychedelic drugs — including ibogaine, psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and mescaline — for the treatment of serious mental illness, depression, PTSD, and opioid addiction. The article quotes psychologist Greg Bottaro, psychiatrist Justin Hendricks, and Catholic Psychotherapy Association president-elect Terry Braciszewski, all of whom express cautious or enthusiastic support for these substances, framing them within the language of “Catholic anthropology,” “stewardship of the temple of the body,” and “neurochemical healing.” The executive order itself acknowledges that over 14 million American adults now suffer from serious mental illness and that existing therapies have failed. What the article systematically omits — and what the quoted “Catholic” professionals cannot or will not articulate — is that the Church’s moral theology, her teaching on the integrity of the human person, her warnings against the occult, and her understanding of suffering and mental illness render this entire project not merely dangerous but intrinsically evil, a pharmacological recapitulation of the ancient serpent’s promise: “Eritis sicut dii” — “You shall be as gods.”
The Ontological Fraud: Confusing the Soul with Neurochemistry
The foundational error saturating this article — and the conciliar “Catholic” intellectual class it represents — is the reduction of the human person to neurochemistry. Terry Braciszewski declares: “When we think of being created in the image and likeness of God, it is remarkable that everything is produced by neurochemistry.” This statement, dressed in the language of wonder, is in fact a materialist capitulation. It is the heresy of naturalism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “All the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure” (Proposition 58), and its corollary that “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter” (Proposition 58).
The Church has always taught that man is a composite of body and soul, the latter being a spiritual substance, created directly by God, endowed with intellect and will, and ordered toward eternal beatitude. Mental illness, while it may have physiological components, is never merely neurochemical. The conciliar obsession with reducing every human reality to the material plane — whether through the sexual revolution, gender ideology, or now psychedelic pharmacology — is the direct fruit of the Modernist dissolution of the supernatural. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili sane exitu, the Modernists treat the sacraments, the Church, and now the human person himself as products of “evolution” and “consciousness” rather than divine institutions. That Braciszewski can invoke the “image and likeness of God” while simultaneously reducing all human experience to neurochemistry reveals the depth of the theological bankruptcy of the post-conciliar sect: the words of faith remain, but their content has been evacuated and replaced with materialist scientism.
The “stewardship of the temple of the body” argument is particularly grotesque when applied to substances that deliberately disrupt the normal functioning of the human mind. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the body is to be cared for as an instrument of the soul’s virtue, not as an end in itself. Pope Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei, insisted that the ordering of human society — and by extension, the care of the human person — must be subordinated to the supernatural end. To invoke stewardship while endorsing substances that produce “ego dissolution,” “chaotic brain activity,” and “dreamlike visions” is to turn the temple of the Holy Spirit into a laboratory for pharmacological occultism.
The Occult Dimension: Ego Dissolution and the Opening of the Psyche to Demonic Influence
The article describes the mechanism of psychedelic action in clinical language: psilocybin and LSD “activate certain serotonin receptors in the brain’s cortex, which can create chaotic, highly connected brain activity — producing vivid altered states, emotional breakthroughs, and ego dissolution.” Ibogaine “produces long dreamlike visions and a profound neurological ‘reset.'” The article presents these effects as neutral or beneficial, merely “rewiring” neural pathways.
What the article refuses to name — and what the quoted “Catholic” professionals are either ignorant of or unwilling to confront — is that these are the exact phenomenological descriptors of occult and diabolical influence recognized by Catholic spiritual theology for centuries. The “ego dissolution” produced by psychedelics is not a therapeutic breakthrough; it is the dissolution of the rational soul’s proper governance over its faculties, a state that Catholic moral theology has always recognized as opening the person to demonic manipulation.
The Church’s teaching is unambiguous. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned naturalism and rationalism precisely because they deny the reality of the supernatural order — including the reality of demonic activity. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that per se, the human intellect is the governing faculty of the soul, and that any substance which clouds or overwhelms the intellect acts against the natural law (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94). The deliberate ingestion of substances designed to produce “altered states,” “ego dissolution,” and “chaotic brain activity” is a direct violation of the virtue of temperance and the natural law precept of caring for the integrity of one’s rational faculties.
Greg Bottaro himself admits — with remarkable naïveté — that “Psychedelic drugs can activate neural pathways that give unqualified ‘certainty’ about a spiritual insight that isn’t measured against a person’s actual worldview” and offers the example: “You don’t want someone being treated to realize ‘love is all that matters’ and then leave his wife.” This is a staggering admission. Bottaro acknowledges that psychedelics can produce false certainties about spiritual matters that override a person’s moral commitments — and yet he endorses their use. In the language of Catholic spiritual theology, this is precisely how diabolical temptation operates: the presentation of a partial truth (“love is all that matters”) divorced from the fullness of divine law (the indissolubility of marriage), leading the person into sin. That a self-described Catholic psychologist can recognize this mechanism and still advocate for the drugs reveals the utter collapse of moral discernment in the post-conciliar intellectual class.
The Church has consistently condemned the use of substances to induce altered states for “spiritual” purposes. The Catechism of the Council of Trent warns against superstition and the use of means not ordained by God to attain supernatural ends. The condemnation of divination, sorcery, and enchantment in the Roman Catechism extends to any practice that seeks spiritual knowledge or power through natural means that bypass the order established by God. Psychedelic “therapy” that produces “spiritual insights,” “emotional breakthroughs,” and “ego dissolution” is pharmacologically induced divination — the attempt to access the interior life and “spiritual” realities through chemical manipulation rather than through prayer, grace, and the sacraments.
The False Compassion: Abandoning the Cross for Chemical Comfort
The executive order’s justification is compassion: 14 million Americans suffer from serious mental illness, existing treatments have failed, and veterans are dying by suicide at alarming rates. This is a real crisis, and the Church’s heart must ache for those who suffer. But the Church’s response to suffering has never been the elimination of pain through any available means — it is the sanctification of suffering through union with Christ on the Cross.
The entire thrust of the psychedelic project is the elimination of suffering through pharmacological intervention that bypasses the moral and spiritual dimensions of the person. This is the antithesis of the Gospel. Our Lord did not promise the elimination of suffering but its redemption: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). The conciliar Church’s embrace of psychedelic “healing” is a recapitulation of the Modernist error condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis: the reduction of Christianity to a system of “living experience” divorced from dogma, sacrifice, and the Cross.
The article’s framing — that psychedelics offer “real healing” for “deep suffering” — implicitly denies the sufficiency of grace. It says, in effect, that the sacraments, prayer, mortification, and the Cross are insufficient, and that the Church must turn to the laboratories of the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmacopoeia of pagan shamanism. This is the sin of despair disguised as compassion — the belief that God’s means of salvation are inadequate and that man must find his own chemical salvation.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that Christ’s reign extends over every aspect of human life, including the ordering of science and medicine: “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The attempt to find healing outside the order established by God — through substances that mimic the mechanisms of occult practices — is a denial of Christ’s kingship over the sciences and over the human person.
The Dangers Acknowledged and Immediately Dismissed
The article does acknowledge dangers: ibogaine can cause cardiac arrhythmias and has led to fatalities; psychedelics can produce false spiritual certainties; Hendricks warns that rushing approvals is “playing with fire.” But these acknowledges are immediately neutralized by the overall framework of approval. The structure is always: “There are dangers, but the potential benefits justify proceeding with caution.” This is the moral calculus of consequentialism, condemned by the Church, not the moral calculus of natural law, which holds that certain acts are intrinsically evil regardless of their consequences.
The Church does not evaluate medical treatments by weighing potential benefits against potential harms in a utilitarian calculus. She asks first whether the means employed are morally licit. If a treatment requires the deliberate disruption of the rational faculties, the induction of altered states of consciousness, or the opening of the psyche to forces beyond the person’s rational control, it is intrinsically illicit regardless of any therapeutic benefit. No amount of “careful use” or “appropriate safety measures” can render licit a means that is inherently contrary to the natural law and the supernatural order.
The comparison to opioids, alcohol, and stimulants in the article is revealing: the article notes that psychedelics are “not known to produce physical dependence” as though this were the only relevant moral criterion. The Church’s concern is not merely with physical addiction but with moral and spiritual harm. A substance that does not produce physical dependence but does produce false spiritual certainties, disrupts the rational faculties, and opens the person to demonic influence is far more dangerous than one that merely produces physical dependence. The obsession with physical addiction as the sole criterion of harm is yet another manifestation of the materialist reductionism that pervades the post-conciliar intellectual class.
The Conciliar Context: Where This Embrace of the Occult Originates
This article cannot be understood apart from the broader apostasy of the conciliar sect. The same Church structures that embraced the sexual revolution, promoted false ecumenism with pagan religions, and replaced the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with a Protestant memorial meal are now embracing pharmacologically induced occult experiences as “therapy.” The thread connecting these apostasies is the denial of the supernatural order and the reduction of the human person to a material being whose problems can be solved by material means.
The conciliar sect’s embrace of psychedelic therapy is the logical culmination of its embrace of the world. Pope Pius IX warned in the Syllabus: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80) — and condemned this proposition as an error. The “Catholic” mental health professionals quoted in this article have done precisely what Pius IX condemned: they have reconciled themselves with the progress of pharmacological science, liberalism’s demand for the elimination of suffering, and modern civilization’s worship of technology — and they have done so without any reference to the moral law, the supernatural order, or the teaching authority of the Church.
The invocation of “Catholic anthropology” by Bottaro is particularly offensive. There is no “Catholic anthropology” that accommodates psychedelic ego dissolution. The Catholic anthropology is that of St. Thomas Aquinas: man is a rational creature, made in the image of God, whose intellect is the light of the soul, whose will is ordered to the good, and whose body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Any “anthropology” that endorses the chemical disruption of this order is not Catholic — it is the anthropology of the serpent, promising godlike knowledge through forbidden means.
Conclusion: The Church’s True Response to Mental Illness
The true Catholic response to the mental health crisis is not psychedelic pharmacology but the restoration of the supernatural order in the lives of the faithful. This means the sacramental life — frequent Confession, the Most Holy Eucharist received in the state of grace, the Anointing of the Sick for those who suffer. It means prayer, mortification, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It means the restoration of a Catholic culture that supports the family, the fundamental unit of society, and that provides the natural conditions for mental health: stable families, meaningful work, participation in a worshipping community, and a worldview that gives suffering meaning through the Cross.
It also means, where genuinely necessary, the use of morally licit medical treatments — including psychiatric medications that do not deliberately disrupt the rational faculties or induce altered states of consciousness. The Church has never condemned the use of medicine as such. She has condemned the use of means that are contrary to the natural law or that open the person to spiritual danger. The line is not between “medication” and “no medication” but between licit medical treatment and pharmacologically induced occultism.
The “Catholic” mental health professionals quoted in this article have failed in their most basic duty: to form their judgment not by the standards of the world but by the teaching of the Church. In doing so, they have revealed themselves not as Catholic professionals but as agents of the conciliar revolution — men who have exchanged the truth of God for the lie of the world and who now lead the faithful into the same spiritual ruin that has consumed the post-conciliar sect itself. “If the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Matt. 5:13).
Source:
Catholic Mental Health Professionals React to Executive Order Removing Barriers to Psychedelic Drugs (ncregister.com)
Date: 04.05.2026