Reviewing Introduction to the Science of Mental Health by Father Chad Ripperger

In authoring a book that covers vast areas of psychology from the Catholic perspective, Fr. Ripperger’s content deserves a review for all to see!

My name is Grant. I am a Catholic writer about to turn twenty years old. I converted to the Holy Catholic religion during the fall of 2021. I was baptized, confirmed, and received my First Communion at the subsequent Easter Vigil on April 16, 2022. I’ve always been interested in the nature of the human mind- how people behave and why, how different relationships work and why, and how our society has evolved due to the nature of man, salvation history, and changing cultural attitudes in recent generations. Following a breakup in the spring of 2023, I decided to read more about human psychology, and came across the saying of by Saint Thomas Aquinas which is: “To love is to will the good of another,” and watched talks by Father Ripperger on the importance of detachment, of forgiving others, and how to better show love to others in daily interactions and develop a mindset in ourselves grounded in the virtue of charity. Around the same time, I discovered a devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, and have been blessed with the grace of being able to engulf myself with like-minded Traditional Catholic individuals and families of far greater holiness than myself. These persons have driven me to strive for greater holiness and to keep the faith- and to do so with joy and gratitude in my day-to-day life. Thank you, Jesus!

A few weeks prior to reading Introduction to the Science of Mental Health by Father Chad Ripperger, an American Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, exorcist, and intellect well-versed in psychology, I was incredibly distressed and uncertain about the career path that God wanted me to pursue; I’ve worked in different political outlets and am more knowledgeable about the subject than almost any other area, and I want to- and believe that I uniquely can- help make a real difference for the America First movement; I’ve also dabbled in the notion of becoming a possible history and theology teacher following my college education. For greater guidance and clarity from God, I have spent many recent weeks asking for His grace at Adoration in front of the Most Blessed Sacrament, during the Rosary, and after Mass. Our Lady of Sorrows is the devotional title of The Blessed Mother known for teaching the faithful that suffering is an integral part of the human experience; just as she accepted her sorrows, we must accept our own suffering with faith and trust in God’s Plan. Moreover, Our Lady of Sorrows vows to help those devoted to her have consolation in our sufferings. Additionally, with major relevance to my prior confusion about my career path, Our Lady of Sorrows pledges to those devoted to her that she will intercede for us so that God may give us the grace necessary to obtain clear understanding about our weaknesses and flaws which are causing us to sin, the path that He wants to lead us on, and beyond. After reading this book by Father Ripperger and taking those steps mentioned above: I am increasingly confident that God is calling me to become a mental health counselor to young adolescents (and perhaps others) in some capacity. Please pray for me in this journey and above all: to become a more holy man for the sake of eternal life!

FAVORITE QUOTES FROM HIS BOOK:

“The ultimate end of man, i.e. his happiness, consists in God.”¹

“The essence of perfect happiness or beatitude consists in the vision of the divine essence.”²

“A proper relation with God is an integral part of a mentally healthy individual. It is also a part of the science of mental health. Psychological counseling depends heavily on the self-knowledge of the individual and self-knowledge will never be complete without a proper understanding of one’s relationship to God.”³

“Self-esteem is true self-esteem only when the person sees himself in reference to God. Reflections on self-knowledge, if done rightly, can adjust our self-esteem to be in accord with reality. When all attributes, virtues, and traits of the person are referred to God, then and only then is one’s self-esteem rightly ordered. In effect, the only thing we ought to esteem is God and we esteem ourselves, not for our own sakes, but insofar as we are like God.”⁴

“Through charity and faith we realize that in comparison to God we are nothing. Very often the use of the term self-esteem is another name for the vice of pride. Humility is the virtue by which one does not judge oneself greater than one is, whereas pride is the vice by which one excessively judges one’s own good. Many people have low self-esteem because they ought to have low self-esteem. If one is a grave sinner and if one’s psychological problems are caused by these grave sins, one ought to have low self-esteem because it is rightly ordered, i.e. one is in truth lowly. To try to view oneself as worthy of that which one is not does not help one's self-esteem but makes oneself disordered and prideful. Rather, the order of charity helps us to love and esteem ourselves because we are creatures of God. Hence, we learn that our real value is not in self but in God. There is a natural inclination in man to seek his good outside of himself and as long as one has false self-love, one will never seek the good outside of oneself, but within oneself. The problem is that we come up against our own nothingness, if we are truthful. If we think our real value is in self, then we are already deluded and disordered. True charity, on the other hand, helps one to love oneself for the sake of God, to will for oneself those things that are truly good for the interior man, and to help one to seek one's fulfillment in something greater than himself. For this reason, since charity rightly orders our self-love, it will have an inherently good psychological effect on us. Our psychological health is heavily affected by our view of self and so through faith and charity, that view will be properly ordered. Therefore, true self-esteem consists in loving oneself in relation to God.”⁵

“Morality and psychology are intimately connected. To ignore morality leaves one open to serious misdirection in one’s own life and in the lives of others.”⁶

“The object or finality of psychological counseling is mental health. Mental health consists in the virtues in the various faculties, particularly the possible intellect. Therefore, the nature of true psychological counseling is virtue counseling…. The ultimate goal of the psychologist is to provide the means for the directee to be self-sufficient without depending or relying on the psychologist…. Self-sufficiency comes through knowledge and virtue on the side of the directee. Virtue gives him the strength to depend on himself or on God and knowledge gives him the ability to know what to do.”⁷

Saint Augustine said: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Sadly, this has been taken by some to mean that any form of religious outlook, philosophy, or worldview- so long as it is “bigger than ourselves,” suffices for a fulfilling life and positive mental health. Clearly, this is not the case, as not only does faith in something other than Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic Church lead one away from eternal happiness with the Creator and Savior of the Universe in Heaven, but such implications permit a path which will lead to a profound violation of the natural law in numerous areas which will lead to our own spiritual, psychological, social, and behavioral downfall, and promote a sense of indifference and confusion which lacks the fullness of truth- the good of the intellect- in minds; this is no good for one’s mental health! Therefore, our souls will never be at true peace in this life or the next without union with Jesus Christ and the Church by which He founded and saves through. If we want to truly have proper mental health, we must strive to live a life more holy and in a State of Grace with God.

“Man cannot fulfill the natural law without grace…. Through grace, man is elevated to a new dignity according to which the supernatural end of eternal life, which is perfect beatitude, suits him. From sanctifying grace flows the theological virtue of charity since grace is given to him who has charity in order to incline him to the end which suits the sanctifying grace. In other words, since grace makes us participate in divine nature, to reach God- which is the divine nature itself- suits the grace. There is a certain suitability between participating in divine nature and reaching divine nature itself, i.e. God through perfect beatitude…. Sanctifying grace merits and is necessary to reach eternal life, and it gives man a claim to the inheritance of heaven.”⁸

“One of the objections of Protestants is that we do not need a priest. While the aforesaid should make it clear that God was wise in requiring confession of grave sins to a priest, nevertheless we can see that going straight to God does not give one the same assurance that his sins are forgiven and this is for two reasons. The first is that he does not have certitude whether God has granted the request of his prayer or not. But also, if one has committed mortal sin, he cannot merit grace and therefore the forgiveness of his sins by going directly to God, unless he has perfect contrition for his sins. But because of the complexity of human motives arising from the objects of volition and the object of appetites as well as attachments to the pleasures in sin, etc. it is normally very difficult for one to have perfect contrition insofar as he is sorry because he loves God and and sorrows at offending Him alone. More often than not, contrition is mixed, since we have other motives for seeking God’s forgiveness, such as freedom from sin, freedom from the punishment of sin, the desire to be freed of the effects of sin, as in the case of directees and things of this sort. Therefore, by the sacrament of Penance, the penitent has greater assurance that his sin is forgiven since only attrition is necessary- even though contrition is preferred- to have his sins absolved.”⁹

“It is natural to man to depend on, love and learn from one’s parents since they are the most proximate relation children have, for there is no one naturally closer to a child than his parents. This means that parents have a profound psychological effect on children and this is a necessary part of man’s nature. It is necessary because children are basically a tabula rasa when they are born and therefore they need a great deal of intellectual and moral formation.” In a footnote, he adds that: “provided the parents can give the child an adequate formation”, then: “... home schooling is actually more in congruity with the nature of man that public or private schools. The reason is that parents carry a natural authority in the mind of the child. This was placed by God to ensure that the child would submit himself to the intellectual and moral formation by the parents; otherwise it would not be possible for the child to get a sound formation. Since home schooling keeps the authority structure more in congruity with man’s nature, it allows the child to appropriate material more.”¹⁰

Following a breakup in the spring of 2023, I began to realize how much damage that a lack of a proper formation can cause in human persons. Without proper formation, one’s development will be skewed towards the negative. Look around our dying and broken mess of a once-great country: a lack of father figures actually disciplining their children (our youth) is leading to perpetual crime waves in our major cities for decades; it is only worsening! While race is real and there are cases of mentally-ill, lone mass-shooters in White men: the vast majority of violent crime (according to FBI Crime Statistics) with handguns and other means is perpetrated by African-American men, and we all know that fatherless homes are a major plague in their culture throughout our country.

Through the course of my then-romantic relationship, I was able to see that 1) even with a father present in the home, the damage that one not affectionate or close with his daughter can cause is profound. If fathers are not affectionate, supportive, or safeguarding of their daughters: then these women tend to be either more promiscuous or prone to sexual immorality, have lower self-esteem, and emotional instability that results in their own mental health issues and/or relationship problems with men; namely the inability to make commitments, open-up emotionally, or feel secure and comfortable in such dynamics. And 2) Both through only a handful of ill-believing women in their formation process and an abundance of propaganda in the culture, young women will be almost irreparably tainted by the lies and evils of the feminist movement- which has been incredibly successful in convincing several generations of women to act against their natural inclinations (to seek motherhood over a worldly career) even when increasing numbers of scientific studies are showing that such women suffer from poorer mental health than their “traditional” or “trad-wife” counterparts.

As Catholics, we simply must pray for such persons, show kindness and compassion, and when prudence dictates: give gentle but firm guidance according to our position in said situations. Just like a psychologist must know his limits in helping a directee, ordinary persons must know their limits and boundaries, and mustn’t be afraid to walk away from a relationship (romantic or platonic) if it harms their faith life, vocational or career path, or mental health. That is not a decision contradictory to the virtue of charity, nor does it mean that you don’t “love” the person you felt necessary to walk away from relationally. Again, to love means to “will the good of another” so that includes their spiritual good and their social and emotional good; sometimes charity dictates social separation.

You can click the following footnote to view one of my favorite talks by Father Ripperger on his Youtube Channel- one about formation. Highly suggest!¹¹

“Children... tend to act according to the implicitly learned mannerisms of the parents. The actions of parents, whether virtuous or vicious, will have a formative effect on the passive intellect of the child and since the possible intellect depends on the passive intellect, it will affect the child’s judgment, mental habits and even his choices.... once the use of reason is obtained, the person becomes responsible (of course by degrees as one ages) for his own problems. Throughout this series, we have established that many mental illnesses fall within the domain of the voluntary. While children may not be as voluntary, once a person becomes an adult, it is up to him whether he will continue with the training of his parents, for good or ill. Therefore, a twenty year old cannot blame his parents for everything. Eventually he has to take responsibility for himself. There are certain defects which we may have, caused either by original or actual sin or the training of our parents, which we are responsible for cleaning up. Even if someone else is to blame for some defect that we may have, it is our responsibility to clean it up, since the kind of person that we are is ultimately determined by our choices. We can choose to allow the defects of the parents to affect us or not. We can choose to accept the good training of our parents or not. At a certain point in a persons life, he becomes responsible for himself, whether or not he is a psychological mess. If he becomes aware of the defects his parents have bequeathed to him and he chooses to blame his parents and thereby do nothing about his own problems, he becomes responsible for the problems because he has allowed them to continue in himself under the ruse of blaming his parents. While overcoming the illness may not be easy, in the end, what he becomes is his own making. Likewise, if a child accepts the good training of his parents and builds virtue upon it, it is to his merit more so than the parents.”¹²

“Since it pertains to man to act according to his nature in order to be happy, he is only truly happy when he is completely free and this comes not from leading a life according to passion but the absence of antecedent appetite affecting judgment and volition, so that the person is completely free. The lack of proper understanding of the faculties and their mutual relations has led some modern psychologists to cause considerable damage and it has resulted in directees spending long periods of their life with little relief from the psychological difficulties.”¹³

“We know something about ourselves by our acts of conscience. Since the conscience tells us whether what we have done in the past is good or bad, it says something about our moral character. Conscience is essentially an act of self-knowledge…. The discussion of the examination of conscience brings us to the discussion of Confession and the supernatural means by which we can come to knowledge of ourselves. Frequent Confession provides self-knowledge for several reasons. The first is that one must appropriate one’s sin and so one knows the truth about oneself. Second, one must examine one’s conscience which provides self-knowledge and, if done frequently, our knowledge of ourselves deepens and grows. Third, Confession tells us something about our virtue, since how we confess and with what virtues indicates the virtues themselves. For example, if someone confesses sincerely, truthfully, honestly, and humbly, he has some insight into the state of his soul. Confession also provides grace which helps us to avoid sins in the future and so the grace will, at times, give us knowledge of our weaknesses in the areas pertaining to the sins confessed. Confession also provides an avenue of developing humility, which is a necessary virtue for self-knowledge. If one judges oneself greater than he is (pride) one will not know the truth about oneself since his judgment about himself will be false (excessive). If one is unwilling to live in accordance with the truth (pride again), one will not be able to know the truth about oneself because to accept the truth is often painful and arduous. Those unwilling to live according to the truth rarely are willing to suffer pain and the arduous to come to self-knowledge. Rather, they are normally people whose lives are governed more by appetite than truth. Actual grace, since it enlightens the mind and strengthens the will, can enlighten the person about himself. Through grace, God is able to teach us or tell us about ourselves. This knowledge is often accompanied by a kind of certitude about the judgment of ourselves. In this regard, one of the most efficacious means of coming to knowledge of self is to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal one to oneself. Since God knows us perfectly, He is able to tell us the details of ourselves beyond any natural means of coming to knowledge of them. God also looks kindly on the soul who wishes to come to self-knowledge in order to eradicate any imperfection which might offend Him.”¹⁴

On the Sacrament of Confession, our author says: “The Council of Trent observes that this reconciliation with God sometimes has the effect of begetting peace and serenity of conscience with a vehement spiritual consolation. We see one of the first and most beneficial aspects of Confession, viz. That through the process of reconciliation, the person is able to gain a certain peace of soul. Peace is the tranquility of order and here the order is the relation between God our superior and us His subjects. When we are rightly subject to Him, there is a certain peace that arises from it. Through sin, one rejects this order and so, through the sacrament of penance, this order is restored. For those with a sensitive conscience, this restoration to grace and reconciliation to God can bring great tranquility.”¹⁵

“Prayer is an act of the virtue of religion, which is a part of justice. Since prayer falls under a virtue, it is required by the natural law, i.e. man has a natural inclination to prayer.”¹⁶

“The sacramental life of a Catholic provides supernatural support in all areas of a person’s life. Psychologically, the sacramental graces help the person to deal with life’s changes, stages, and states. While the primary end of the sacraments is the sanctification and salvation of the soul of the one who receives them, undoubtedly, the sacraments have a tremendous effect on mental health.”¹⁷

“Christ also commanded us to love our enemies, but this is often misunderstood. We do not love our enemies insofar as they are enemies, because that is perverse and irrational. It is perverse and irrational because we should not love that which seeks our harm. Rather, St. Thomas observes, we can love our enemies in universali (in general) insofar as we have an interior disposition to love them for the sake of God and so it is because they are viewed under the notion of God that we can love them…. Some exterior signs of charity must be exhibited or extended to all, e.g. praying for them and offering up our sufferings for their salvation and this also applies to our enemies. However, as to particular persons, some signs or manifestations of love should or should not be extended to them. For example, while one ought to love our enemies propter Deum, it does not mean we must invite them into our houses where they may cause us harm. What is indicated here is that charity is not divorced from supernatural prudence, not only for our sake but also for the sake of our enemies or sinners. At times, the most charitable thing that can happen to a sinner is to be cut off from certain effects or manifestations of charity so that he comes to his senses about his sinful life. Extending certain effects of charity may confirm him in sin and thereby do him harm. From this we understand that charity is not merely being nice, rather niceness is the effect of charity which is extended to people based on prudential judgment. This avoids a spirit of falsity which we find in certain people who are always nice, even when their niceness is out of place, unsuitable or even false. This is an important lesson for modern Catholics, as they often think that charity is being nice and so public discourse is reduced to shallowness and simulation. Often the niceties are governed by sensitive appetite rather than a true love of God, which seeks what will bring the person closer to God.”¹⁸

“Faith helps us to understand certain things about creation which cannot be known through the natural light of reason, e.g. we know that God has explicit plans as part of His providential care for us as human beings. Therefore, certain phobias actually deny that God is taking care of the person who suffers the phobia. For instance, if one has a fear of the future, the tacit premise is that God will not take care of his needs in the future. Another example would be the case of the person who suffers from a desire to control excessively certain things in his life. This fixation denies that God is ultimately the author of history and so, try as we might, it is ultimately up to God to determine how and to what extent we will have control over anything.”¹⁹

The following is taken from my favorite section from the entire book of Introduction to the Science of Mental Health by Father Ripperger, so it is worth quoting at length:

Therefore, in order to pursue psychological health, directees must be told that they must perform actions which have God as their end, either proximately or remotely. In the past, psychologists have viewed religion as an enemy of psychological health. The truth is just the opposite, ic. perfect psychological health can only occur when the person strives for God. Conversely, psychologists sometimes tell directees that religion is bad and will lead them to fixations, which is not entirely true. While it is possible that a directee may not engage in religious practices properly and thereby be led to mental illness, true religious practices, if done properly, actually aid mental health. To encourage directees to reject religion is contrary to the natural law and therefore can actually lead directees to mental illness. The intellect and other faculties are ordered to God, to deviate from this order is to disorder the faculties and therefore can be a cause of mental illness. Seeking God can actually begin the process of reordering the faculties and therefore begetting mental health. 

Since St. Thomas and the Catholic Church hold that we cannot reach our ultimate end on our own, there is an ordering in man which needs God to find its fulfillment. For that reason, Christ came to earth to re-establish the order of grace which is the means to reaching our end. But having the means is not enough. In order to arrive at an end, two things are necessary, viz. the means (and knowledge of the means) and the knowledge of the end. This is why there is a revelation, so that man may know his end, know the means to that end and actually possess the means to that end. Since God has revealed these matters to man, we can use the means revealed by God to fulfill our natural ordering. Furthermore, we can use those means to re-order our faculties and so the supernatural means are very important to psychology. God Who is a supernatural cause is more efficacious than we are in our actions. While man's actions can help to overcome his psychological illnesses, God is more efficacious in restoring the order in ourselves than we are. Man was created by God and God preserves him in being. So while man comes from God, he is ordered to return to God. This means that since God preserves man in being, there is an intimate relationship between God and man. Since God has ordered man back to Himself, this indicates that God wants the intimate relationship to be mutual. The relationship God has to man reaches to the depths of his soul because God keeps man's substance and accidents in being.

Psychology cannot deny the need for man to reciprocate in this relationship. Religious practices such as prayer, ritual, etc. will have a profound psychological effect on man. So it is absolutely necessary to have the right religious actions so that we do not go contrary to the ordering placed in us by God. In addition, since our final end is God and we are ordered toward having His eternal company interior to us, it means that our happiness consists in keeping God's company. Loneliness is the absence of companionship or the presence of another. In this life, we find that, at times, we are lonely even in the company of others and this is because there is something interior to us which recognizes that we are, in a sense, not really one with the other. In other words, we can have a psychological separation from a person who is right before our senses and this indicates that man's sense of loneliness is because there is lack of interior presence. Mere physical presence is not enough. Because one's intellect and will are ordered toward having an interior presence, if something or someone does not fulfill a person interiorly, that person will sense loneliness even when the other is physically present. As a result, exterior things can only fulfill a person to the degree that they become something interior to the person, which is done through knowledge. Companionship is essentially established through knowledge, which is an interior act. As we saw above, no created thing can perfectly fulfill man and so one can always have a sense of loneliness as long as he seeks created things. In fact, we often see people who are lonely, filling their lives with exterior things or people in order to find some interior satisfaction. This is a sign to the person that his fulfillment can only take place when he possesses an object interiorly which fulfills every aspect of himself and this is God alone. Loneliness is, therefore, the product of separation from God. On a psychological level, people who are lonely are those who are not pursuing God.

If God consumes a person's every thought, the person begins to approximate the eternal company of God which consists in an interior vision of God. The person will begin to have an imperfect beatitude and loneliness will be averted. The point is that psychology must direct people toward the pursuit of God since He alone can perfect our interior natural inclinations and take away our true loneliness. While some people may not experience loneliness during this life by filling their senses and interiorizing the exterior experiences, nevertheless they always run the possibility of loneliness since created things are fleeting. Moreover, if they seck to fill themselves with creatures rather than God, they are seeking things which cannot perfectly fulfill them or make them happy, even if they think they will.

St. Thomas observed that we cannot reach God on our own power and so we need God's action to reach Him. Observance of the natural law disposes us to the action of God, for God would not order us to one thing through the natural law and then contradict that ordering in His supernatural action on man. In addition to following the natural law, we must also cooperate and do those things which God tells us to do so that He can actually bring us to Himself. Since this action of bringing us to God is something He does, we must be told by God what to do in order to cooperate with it. Only God can reveal to us the way to Him. Psychology must recognize that only God can instruct us in this way and for that reason, the Catholic Church teaches us that God has revealed to us those things necessary to reach Him. Leading life according to Catholic teaching is actually mentally healthy for man. No authentically Catholic practice is able to cause mental illness. Since God teaches the way to act according to His ordering to Himself, a disordered directee should be directed to lead a good Catholic life. This will aid the re-ordering of the intellect, which is ultimately an ordering to God.²⁰

To view a PDF of my full book review- which includes the most important parts of Father Ripperger’s book from various sections of his book- click this link or copy and paste it into your internet browser: https://t.me/Granthecatholic/16661

Follow the same steps as mentioned above to view this Google Drive PDF of my full book review: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ux0SB0RfS0_ACF-zsmEks1nDKfzzsvbQ/view?usp=drivesdk

To view some of the other amazing content of Father Chad Ripperger posted online, click this link to his Youtube Page: https://www.youtube.com/c/sensusfidelium

1. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 262.

2. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 264.

3. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 271.

4. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 531.

5. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 314.

6. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 295.

7. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 648.

8. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, pp. 373-4.

9. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, pp. 593-4.

10. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 215.

11. Sensus Fidelium, “What is Formation & What are Problems in Today’s Formation- Fr. Ripperger,” Youtube, April 27, 2024,

12. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, pp. 496-497.

13. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 153.

14. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 532.

15. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 387.

16. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 412.

17. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 411.

18. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, pp. 310-11

19. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, p. 301.

20. Ripperger, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health, pp. 269-70.