Catholic · Emmaus course
The Irreplaceable Human: Catholic Psychology in the Age of AI
Your clients don't need a better algorithm. They need you.
Can a chatbot really heal you? Through Catholic psychology and the Meta-Model of the Person, this DMU course examines AI and psychedelic therapies and shows why suffering, the body-soul unity, and human presence make real healing something no algorithm can replace.
NBCC CE · 2 clock hours · Helping Relationships (HR)
With Dr. Gregory Bottaro and Deacon Charlie Echeverry
- Length
- 2 hrs
- Lessons
- 1
- Level
- Beginner
- Version
- Catholic
- Price
- Free
The job this course is hired to do is to give them that answer and the language to defend it with clients, colleagues, and themselves.
About this course
For counselors and pastoral workers unsettled by AI, this course gives a rigorous Catholic account of why embodied, relational, suffering-aware presence is the irreplaceable core of healing, and how to use new tools without losing it.
A rigorous Catholic look at AI and psychedelic therapy, and why healing still runs through suffering, the body, and real human presence.
Who this course is for
Graduate counselors (NBCC CE seekers)
This segment responds to authority and specificity.
2.0 NBCC clock hours in Helping Relationships, grounded in DMU's Meta-Model of the Person, with a clear framework for judging AI and psychedelic tools in practice.
Pastoral workers, chaplains, spiritual directors
This segment responds to depth and mission.
the cross that no shortcut avoids, the restless heart that no simulation satisfies.
Formation leaders and serious lay Catholics
This segment responds to clarity and timeliness.
everyone feels the ground shifting under therapy and technology, and few have a coherent Catholic answer.
Common questions
- Is this anti-technology?
- No. The course treats AI and psychedelics as real, powerful tools and teaches responsible use. Say so early; it disarms the reflexive worry.
- Is it rigorous or just devotional?
- Both. Name the scholarship (the Meta-Model, DMU faculty research) and the NBCC credit to signal academic weight.
- Two hours for one lesson?
- Frame it as a focused, high-depth session rather than a thin survey. Depth is the selling point, not a liability.
From the course syllabus
Artificial intelligence can now talk a person through their pain and reach outcomes that rival trained clinicians, and psychedelic-assisted therapy is moving quickly from the fringe toward the clinic. Both arrive carrying the same promise: healing without its cost. This course takes that promise seriously and then tests it against a fuller picture of the human person.
Built around a Being Human Podcast conversation between clinical psychologist Dr. Greg Bottaro and Deacon Charlie Echeverry, the course draws on Divine Mercy University’s Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person and on the Christian spiritual tradition to make one claim precise: the person is a body-soul unity, made for communion, whose growth passes through suffering, so technology can assist healing but cannot replace the embodied, relational presence at its heart. Counselors and pastoral workers leave with a clear way to judge what these tools can rightly do and where the deeper work of the person begins.
Curriculum
-
Module 1
The Irreplaceable Human — Catholic Psychology in the Age of AI
- 1.Flourishing Without Suffering? AI, Psychedelics, and the Soul of Healing
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