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I’m
impressed with your website, a true gem in today’s perverted world.
My question is what do you think of [changing sexual orientation with
psychotherapy]. I suffer from a male identity problem and have homosexual
tendencies and have been tormented with this secret condition all my life
and want to seek help but don’t know how? Can you please advise
me?
 he organization
(NARTH)
to which you refer does not represent any particular treatment modality;
it’s simply an association of psychotherapists who assert that, through
psychotherapy, sexual “orientation” can be changed; that is, homosexual
desires can be altered to heterosexual desires. As far as that goes, I agree
with them.
I see two issues in all this
that are critical to the Catholic Faith, however.
Beware the Techniques
of Change
First, it is important to understand
what sort of techniques will be used in the treatment and if those techniques
are faithful to the Magisterium of the Church. For example, forcing a person
to look at heterosexual pornography to increase heterosexual desires is a
grave mistake, because pornography is
a mortal sin. Christ himself said that whoever
looks with lust at another person commits adultery. Telling a person to
masturbate to heterosexual fantasies rather
than homosexual fantasies is also a grave mistake, because
masturbation is a mortal sin: it focuses
purely on bodily pleasure, thereby defiling the sacred, reproductive purpose
for which God created sexuality.
So be careful here, because calling
something a “scientific” treatment does not shield it from being
a sin. If, however, you can get to the deep,
unconscious conflicts
that have led to your developing your particular erotic desires as a
psychological defense, and by rigorous treatment
resolve those conflicts, your sexual “orientation” can change,
and the work can be
fruitful.[1]
Your Reasons
for Wanting Change
Second, it is important to consider
your reasons for wanting to change your
“identity.” If you want to be able to get married
and have children so as to live a
devout Catholic family life and
raise your children as
sincere Catholics, then fine. But if, in acquiring
heterosexual attractions you merely start committing heterosexual sins, rather
than homosexual ones, then what have you accomplished?
Bringing About
the Change
Below are some fundamental concepts
necessary to bring about a change from a homosexual identity to a true Christian
identity.
Chastity
Chastity is a fundamental component
to a Christian lifestyle, and anyone who is
committed to a lifestyle that defiles
chastity has no place in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yes, gay and lesbian lifestyles, by definition, are committed to offending
chastity; but heterosexual sins (such as sexual activity outside Holy Matrimony,
and lustful sexual activity within Holy Matrimony) also offend
chastity.
The real issue here, then, is
to live a life of pure chastity, regardless of the nature and origin of
underlying “attractions” for anyone or
anything.
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For all its research
and theoretical speculation, psychology finds itself in the place of having
to admit that the origin of homosexuality in any person is a complex matter;
that is, there are so many factors (family dynamics, social conditioning,
and genetics) so intertwined, that no single explanation can fit all
cases.
For the most
part, homosexual feelings, like all feelings, are not something an individual
necessarily chooses consciously. Such feelings often derive from subtle
unconscious conflicts in childhood resulting from parental empathic
failures.[2]
Moreover, especially
in the modern world, we can be
“brainwashed” by the prevailing
culture—through entertainment, advertising, and political advocacy in
education—to accept homosexual
desires as “perfectly
natural.”
In addition,
homosexual feelings are frequently planted directly in a person through an
experience of childhood abuse or by homosexual
seduction as an adult. |
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Therefore, it doesn’t really
matter how homosexuality begins. We are all called to chastity no matter
who we are or what has happened to us. A person with homosexual desires is
no less capable of living in chastity than a person with heterosexual
desires.
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Christ did not
tell us that we have to grow to seven feet tall in order to enter the Kingdom
of Heaven. No. He does not ask us something impossible. All He asks
of us is that we come to Him with chaste bodies
and with pure hearts: hearts filled with love, purged
of pride and
self-interest, sorrowful for our
sins, and trusting in His infinite
mercy. Anyone can do this who
sincerely wants to do this. |
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The Psychological
Work
In your psychological work, endeavor
to bring to consciousness and take command of the underlying basis for your
outward behavior.
| • |
Through personal scrutiny (and
psychotherapy if necessary) work
to resolve the unconscious conflicts that are residual effects of childhood
emotional wounds and that underlie homosexual behavior: hostility and
anger; resentment for
hypocritical parental authority; fear of conflict;
life dissatisfaction and depression;
fear of love; risky
self-destructive behavior; promiscuity; the
“buying” of friendship with sexual services; problems with
gender identity; and discomfort with non-sexual
same-sex emotional closeness (often called homophobia). |
| • |
In
confession, confess your past sins related to
a gay or lesbian lifestyle. But don’t just confess the surface sins
of sexual practices. Go beneath the surface to confess that, in living a
gay or lesbian lifestyle, you were expressing a hatred for God. You hated
God by rejecting the reproductive nature of sexuality. Moreover, you hated
God by rejecting the core of Christian society: the mother-father bond of
family life. |
| • |
Purge your life of homosexual
affectations: the hair styles, clothing styles, mannerisms, and linguistic
patterns that characterize homosexual psycho-social identifiers. |
Resisting
Inner Temptations
To live a Christian
lifestyle, train your will—in accord
with God’s will—to overcome all inner
temptations by dying to the world
and desiring Christ more than anything—or
anyone—else. The spiritual counsels on this
website will direct you onto this path. Especially note the
following:
| • |
Develop a devout
prayer life that draws you away from worldly
attractions. Drink of the living water Christ offers, not of the impiety
of the heathen social world around you. |
| • |
In
confession, reveal all of your current
temptations. |
| • |
Develop the practice of Eucharistic
Adoration. Remind yourself that God Himself—your most precious
yearning—is hidden within the Sacrament and that His hidden presence
is a Real Presence that more than compensates for anything lacking in your
life. |
| • |
Foster particular devotion to
the Blessed Virgin. Read Saint Louis de Montfort’s
book, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and make the consecration
described therein. Wear the Miraculous Medal around
your neck always. |
| • |
Maintain a firm loyalty to the
Magisterium of the Church. |
Resisting
Exterior Temptations
Overcome all
exterior temptations by the
following:
| • |
Avoid specific temptations by
avoiding sexually provocative neighborhoods and
entertainment (movies, television, magazines,
newspapers, pornography, etc.). |
| • |
Develop a “modesty of the
eye” that does not seek to be “seen” in the world or to
“see” others as sexual
objects. |
| • |
In so far as possible, avoid
all co-called “Christian” friends committed to
lifestyles defiant of chastity. Such persons blatantly
disobey the Magisterium of the Church, and in their
disobedience they remove themselves from a
state of grace. Now, as Saint Paul said, when you have to live in the world,
you can’t avoid associating with immoral people, but you can at least
avoid associating with “anyone named a brother, if he is immoral”
(1 Corinthians 5:11). “I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those
who create dissensions and obstacles, in opposition to the teaching that
you learned; avoid them” (Romans 16:17).
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Yes, Jesus ate with
sinners, but He did so to convert them, not to wink at their sins. Therefore,
He told His disciples that whenever someone would not receive them or listen
to their words, they should leave that house or town and shake the dust from
their feet (cf. Matthew 10:14; Luke 9:5, 10:10-11 and Acts 13:51,
18:6).
Similarly, Paul told Titus, “After a first and second warning, break
off contact with a heretic, realizing that
such a person is perverted and sinful and stands self-condemned”
(Titus 3:10-11).
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Now, if such persons are family
or religious community members you will not be able to avoid them. In such
a case, tolerate them with mercy, ceaselessly
reminding them that their behavior is sinful, and constantly enduring
the suffering of intercessory prayers for their
repentance and conversion.
Remember here
that the point of distancing yourself from another Christian who, despite
being warned, persists in sin is not to punish that person but to protect
yourself from the negative influence of his or her
evil ways. After all, someone who lives a lifestyle
of disobedience and sin is imitating the devil, not
Christ. |
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Notes
1. These conflicts often result from a love-hate
relation with a father. On the one hand the father
is desired as a source of guidance and wisdom; on the other hand, the father
is hated either for being too critical and authoritarian or for being too
weak to defend the boy against an overbearing, critical mother.
Such a conflict about his father can cause
a man—even a man of heterosexual desires—to be attracted to another
man’s attractiveness (as a symbolic yearning for what the father
failed to provide) while also secretly disliking the other man because of
some personality flaw he has.
This explains why gay men—that is, those
men who act out the male-to-male love-hate conflict sexually—adopt behavior
characterized by both vanity (the desire to be desired) and jealousy (unconscious
hatred). Moreover, the highly effeminate
behavior of some gay men can be explained as an unconscious identification
with the feared mother, a defense technically called
identification
with the aggressor. It’s as if the pretense of being a woman
provides a cloak of stealth by which the man hopes to avoid detection by
his mother’s male-hating “radar.”
Lesbian sexuality can be explained by
other unconscious conflicts.
2. Many persons fail to recognize these conflicts
for what they are because psychological conflicts are often extremely subtle
and have unconscious meanings that are discovered primarily through
psychoanalysis
and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Rather than do all this hard work,
it’s far easier to shrug your shoulders and say, “I was born this
way,” and let it go at that.
Activists, therefore, will often point to cases
of “homosexual bonds” in animals as evidence for their claim that
“homosexuality is natural.” On the
contrary, such cases only demonstrate that so-called homosexual behavior
in animals is a socially defensive reaction
to abnormal situations, such as captivity and periods of social
tension.
What the
Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
2357 Homosexuality
refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive
or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken
a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures.
Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred
Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition
has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically
disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual
act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and
sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual
tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered,
constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect,
compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust
discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called
to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to
unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may
encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues
of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of
disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should
gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
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