We are seeing all of the abilities displayed on screen as potion effects and really want a way to disable this. Is this being done by this mod and how do we disable it. I don't see anything in the config for this.

Here's what it looks like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6a5hjf5vhr22c90/2017-07-17_13.57.00.png?dl=0

This is just vanilla behaviour, but I guess I can add an option to make all potion effects passive which will make them hidden.

I finally looked into this a bit, and it looks like it is not possible to add a config option for this, without changing behaviour for all potion effects.
So I won't be doing that for this mod.

If you want to remove all potion status effects, I suggest you use a mod like this: https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/potion-icon-remover

Minecraft CurseForge

Potion Icon Remover

Disable Potion Icons in the top right of screen.