wondering if returning a view model or disabling exception catching on the application would be better.

The Console exception strategy seems to deal with this, I am just not sure if the error level should always be `1`: https://github.com/zendframework/zf2/blob/0ab505a646def3d7fd8e726bab7461f3d6bac98d/library/Zend/Mvc/View/Console/ExceptionStrategy.php#L259