VaticanNews portal reports on June 23, 2026, about the expansion of “Rachel’s Vineyard” retreats in Russia and Kazakhstan, describing collaborative efforts between laity and “clergy” to address post-abortion trauma through psychological counseling, group therapy, and spiritual exercises. The article presents abortion as a cultural wound requiring healing through emotional processing, prayer vigils, and community support, while celebrating declining abortion statistics as evidence of progress. What the article systematically conceals is that no amount of psychological comfort or communal grieving can substitute for the sacramental order established by Christ — that the true remedy for the sin of abortion lies not in therapeutic retreats but in the Sacrament of Penance, the propitiatory sacrifice of the Most Holy Mass, and the uncompromising preaching of mortal sin, eternal damnation, and the absolute necessity of conversion.
The Psychological Reduction of Mortal Sin
The article’s framing of abortion as “post-abortion trauma” requiring “spiritual healing” through “deeply personal grieving” and “the experience of God’s mercy in a supportive environment” represents a fundamental category error that reduces the gravest of crimes — the deliberate murder of an innocent soul created in the image and likeness of God — to a psychological wound amenable to therapeutic intervention. The language is revealing: Irina Maltseva speaks of abortion’s “destructive impact on the entire family, leading to psychological issues, emotional detachment, and even violence,” while Viktoria Ilyinskaya describes her journey through “pain” and “tears” alongside others in a group setting.
This is not the language of the Catholic Church. This is the language of secular psychology baptized with Christian vocabulary — a synthesis that Pius XI explicitly condemned in Quas Primas when he warned against those who “conceived that the divine religion should be replaced by a natural religion, a natural inner impulse.” The article never once mentions that abortion is a mortal sin punishable by eternal damnation, that it incurs automatic excommunication under canon law (Codex Iuris Canonici 1917, Canon 2350 §1), or that the unbaptized child, murdered before receiving the sacrament of regeneration, is deprived of the beatific vision — the supernatural end for which it was created.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the proposition that “the dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Proposition 26). Rachel’s Vineyard, as presented in this article, operates precisely on this modernist principle: the “healing” is practical, emotional, and communal, while the dogmatic reality — that every abortion is an act of murder that cries to heaven for vengeance (Genesis 4:10), that the perpetrators risk the eternal fires of hell unless they repent and confess — is entirely absent.
The Absence of the Sacramental Order
The most damning omission in this entire article is the near-total absence of the sacraments as the true means of healing from sin. The word “Confession” appears nowhere. The word “Penance” appears nowhere. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is never mentioned as the propitiatory sacrifice that alone can atone for sin. Instead, we are offered “retreats,” “spiritual exercises,” “prayer vigils,” “Lenten Way of the Cross prayers,” and “all-night vigils held on the anniversary of abortion legalization.”
Sr. Anna Zakharova, FMM, notes that what is expected from the sisters is “first and foremost, prayer.” Sr. M. Ida Khan, OCD, describes Rachel’s Vineyard as “not simply spiritual exercises, but a time of true battle for souls.” But what kind of battle? A battle fought with what weapons? The article is silent on the only weapons that matter in the spiritual combat for souls: the Sacrament of Penance, in which the priest, acting in persona Christi, absolves the penitent of mortal sin; the Holy Mass, in which the eternal Sacrifice of Calvary is re-presented for the living and the dead; and the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist, in which the faithful receive the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and the strengthening of the soul against temptation.
The Council of Trent, in Session XIV, Chapter 2, taught: “The Lord, moreover, principally instituted the Sacrament of Penance when, after His Resurrection, He breathed upon His disciples and said: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained’ (John 20:22-23).” This sacrament is not mentioned once in an article ostensibly about healing from the sin of abortion. The omission is not accidental — it is symptomatic of a conciliar sect that has systematically replaced the sacramental order with psychological and communal substitutes.
The Laicization of Spiritual Ministry
The article celebrates the collaboration between “laypeople and clergy” as a sign of ecclesial vitality: “Lay people and clergy, together” reads one subheading. “Each of us is a professional in some way,” notes Sr. Anna Zakharova, adding that laywoman Natalya Proskurina serves as the “counseling psychologist.” This is precisely the democratization of the Church’s mission that the pre-conciliar Magisterium condemned as a manifestation of Modernism.
Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907), identified the Modernist error of democratizing the Church: “The rule of faith is to be sought only in that collective conscience of the Church, and every individual must submit to it.” The article’s celebration of lay professionals — psychologists, counselors, volunteers — as equal partners in spiritual ministry reflects the conciliar ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium, which elevated the “universal priesthood of the laity” to a status functionally indistinguishable from the ordained ministry. The result is that a “counseling psychologist” becomes the primary agent of healing, while the priest’s role is reduced to that of a group facilitator.
The true Catholic position is expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (III, Q. 64, A. 1): “The sacraments of the New Law are principally ordained for the purpose of conferring grace, and this is proper to God alone.” Only the ordained priest, by virtue of the sacramental character imprinted at Holy Orders, can absolve sins and offer the Holy Mass. The laity’s role is to assist the priest, to pray for sinners, and to provide material support — not to assume the functions of spiritual direction and psychological counseling as substitutes for the sacraments.
The “Abortion Culture” Without the Culture of Death
The article speaks of overcoming the “abortion culture” and celebrates declining abortion statistics in Russia and Kazakhstan. Yet it never connects the legalization of abortion to the broader culture of death that is the inevitable fruit of secularism — the very secularism that Pius XI identified in Quas Primas as “the plague that poisons human society.” The article’s framing is purely naturalistic: abortion is a social problem requiring social solutions — legislative measures, waiting periods, psychological support, community prayer.
What is entirely absent is the supernatural diagnosis: abortion is legal and widespread because nations have rejected the kingship of Christ. Pius XI taught: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The legalization of abortion in the USSR in 1920 was not merely a political decision — it was a direct consequence of the Bolshevik Revolution’s explicit atheism, its rejection of God, and its declaration of war on the Church. The “abortion culture” is a symptom of the apostasy of nations, and no amount of retreats, vigils, or psychological counseling can cure it without the public recognition of Christ the King and the submission of civil authority to the law of God.
The Tears That Cannot Save
The article’s most emotionally powerful passage describes a man who, during a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat, approached Irina Maltseva and said: “I feel such pain. My heart is about to burst. What is happening to me?” She told him: “This is the pain for the children lost to abortion, a pain you never permitted yourself to feel.” He and his wife wept together. “Those tears transformed their lives.”
Tears of natural sorrow, however poignant, cannot absolve sin. Only contrition — supernatural sorrow motivated by the love of God and the offense committed against His infinite majesty — can merit the grace of absolution. And contrition is conferred not through group therapy or spiritual exercises but through the Sacrament of Penance, administered by a validly ordained priest with the jurisdiction to absolve. The man described in the article may have experienced emotional catharsis, but unless he confessed his sin to a priest, received absolution, and performed the penance imposed, he remains in the state of mortal sin, deprived of sanctifying grace, and in danger of eternal damnation.
The article’s silence on this point is not merely an omission — it is a lie of omission. It presents emotional healing as equivalent to spiritual healing, natural sorrow as equivalent to supernatural contrition, and communal grieving as equivalent to sacramental absolution. This is the modernist error in its purest form: the reduction of the supernatural order to the natural, the substitution of human effort for divine grace, and the replacement of the sacraments with psychological techniques.
The Conciliar Sect’s Ministry of Substitution
Rachel’s Vineyard, as presented in this article, is a product of the conciliar sect — an organization that operates within the structures of the post-conciliar church, staffed by “nuns” and “priests” whose orders and faculties are of dubious validity, and directed toward ends that, however superficially laudable, systematically bypass the sacramental order established by Christ. The article mentions “Carmelite monasteries” and “parish houses” as venues for the retreats, but these are the structures of the neo-church — the same structures that have imposed the Novus Ordo Missae, with its diminished theology of propitiatory sacrifice, its communal meal symbolism, and its systematic obscuring of the Real Presence.
The true remedy for the sin of abortion is not a retreat but a conversion — a complete turning away from sin, a sincere confession to a validly ordained priest, the faithful performance of the imposed penance, and a firm purpose of amendment. It is the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, offered by a true priest using the traditional Roman Rite, that alone can make satisfaction for sin and obtain the grace of perseverance. It is the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist, received in the state of grace, that alone can strengthen the soul against future temptation.
None of this is mentioned in the article. Instead, we are offered a program developed by “American psychologist Theresa Burke” — a laywoman whose credentials are psychological, not theological; whose methods are therapeutic, not sacramental; and whose “path of spiritual healing” leads not to the confessional but to the group circle. This is not the Church’s ministry. This is the conciliar sect’s substitution for the Church’s ministry — a substitution that, however well-intentioned, leaves souls in the state of sin and in danger of eternal perdition.
Conclusion: The Only True Remedy
The Catholic Church has always taught that the deliberate killing of an innocent human being is a mortal sin that incurs the penalty of eternal damnation unless repented of and confessed. The Church has always provided the remedy: the Sacrament of Penance, the propitiatory sacrifice of the Holy Mass, and the grace of the Holy Eucharist. These are not suggestions or options — they are the divinely instituted means of salvation, without which no soul can be reconciled to God.
The article from VaticanNews portal, in its celebration of Rachel’s Vineyard, its omission of the sacraments, its reduction of sin to trauma, and its substitution of psychological techniques for supernatural grace, reveals the spiritual bankruptcy of the conciliar sect. It is a church that weeps with those who weeps but does not lead them to the only source of true healing: the Sacred Heart of Jesus, accessible through the sacraments He instituted, administered by the priests He ordained, in the Church He founded — the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church that endures, not in the structures occupying the Vatican, but in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and receive the true sacraments according to the unchanging Tradition.
Source:
Laypeople and clergy of Russia and Kazakhstan standing for life (vaticannews.va)
Date: 23.06.2026