To give this doctrinal quadrilateral a concrete normative translation in the practice of medicine and psychology, Dr. Verdier Mazzara leads us to a bibliographical and magisterial treasure that his research work rescued from oblivion: the luminous teaching of Pope Pius XII. With overwhelming historical justice, the speaker grants the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII the undisputed title of Father of Catholic Psychiatric and Psychological Ethics. During the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when psychoanalysis and nascent somatic therapies were bursting forth with uncontrollable force, Pope Pacelli delivered a series of masterful speeches before the highest scientific authorities in the world, articulating a moral corpus that remains absolutely valid today.

Among these pontifical documents, the address to the Fifth International Congress of Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology in the year 1953 stands out for its doctrinal density, and the memorable dissertation addressed to the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology on September 9, 1958, just a month before his transition to eternity. In said magisterium, Pius XII established with crystal clarity the golden rule for the moral legitimacy of the use of psychotropic drugs and therapeutic techniques. The Holy Father taught that the use of neurological drugs is morally licit and worthy of praise when their chemical action is aimed at removing organic impediments and calming somatic hyper-excitation, allowing the spiritual soul to recover lucid mastery of its superior faculties: understanding and will.

However—and herein lies the severe papal warning that Dr. Verdier highlights to his auditors—neuropharmacological intervention becomes a seriously illicit and unnatural act when it is used as an instrument to dull moral conscience, induce an artificial passivity of the spirit or facilitate the evasion of existential responsibilities before God. In my scientific practice as an analyst of psychoactive compounds, I notice how prophetic the words of Pius

This magisterial reflection introduces us to the most implacable denunciation formulated by Dr. Verdier in his dissertation: the formal condemnation of the false consolation of the office and the perverse license for sin granted by worldly therapists. The speaker warns that one of the most frequent and deleterious temptations in contemporary psychological practice consists of trying to alleviate the patient's neurotic anxiety or feeling of guilt by abolishing moral judgment. How many psychologists and psychiatrists, lacking the four ontological pillars that we have described, attempt to heal the sufferer by convincing him that there is no moral order, that his guilt is a mere regressive trauma caused by Christian education and that authentic psychic liberation requires consenting to material sin, disinhibiting disordered impulses and subverting natural law.

Dr. Verdier Mazzara exposes with unwavering firmness that such a therapeutic methodology constitutes a clinical scam and a betrayal of the patient's soul. There can never be a contradiction between the true psychological health of the person and the unrestricted compliance with the moral law of God. The peace of the human soul can never be bought at the price of divine transgression. Granting the patient a false clinical authorization to remain in adultery, in promiscuity, in resentment or in rebellion against his primordial duties under the pretext of avoiding intra-psychic conflicts, is not a cure, but rather precipitating the subject into an ontological abyss that will end up fracturing his personality even more. The peace of the risen Christ is not the empty anesthesia of the hedonist who has silenced his conscience, but the hierarchical harmony of human powers submitted to truth and grace.