On madness

In some more remote corners of our glorious Empire, a belief persists among doctors and medical professionals that false religious ideas can cause such strong emotional responses that they damage the body, and that the physical injuries inflicted on the body and the brain in turn result in madness. These false ideas make it very difficult to treat the disease, once the afflicted is convinced that to doubt them is blasphemy.

I have never been an adherent to this particular theory of madness, and in better medical circles it has been discarded and treated as outdated and wrong. 

But sometimes, a particular case might seem to fit the bill. The false idea of Sedevacantism is so harmful that it seems to have affected a regular on "The Good Word" channel to a degree that seems to border on insanity. Indeed, it looks as if poor Quirinus has started to think that he might be the promised emperor that the arch-heretic is clamoring for.

There are delicate threads of reason still keeping his soul from damnation. He speaks of building a church, and of pilgrimage. I do not think he has yet reached out to a priest for spiritual counseling, or to a medical center of the Ministry for physical treatment (even though these are free of cost!) 

I am feeling a pang of compassion. A pilgrimage could indeed help to cleanse the mind of heresy, but if he walks that path alone his troubled thoughts will bounce back and forth in self-reflection on the mind's mirrors, amplifying only themselves in the absence of outside input. This may end up reinforcing his madness. But if I were to join him, even for a bit of the way, I may have a chance at bringing back this lost wanderer on the right path through prayer and by administering the rite of confession...