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Can "Reparation Therapy" Work?

Posted by Rebecca Teti in Marriage on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 4:00 PM

My intent was to publish something about the Triumph of the Cross, today’s feast.

I decided this reflection on same-sex attraction provides an exemplar of how a cross can lead to triumph.

Responding to homosexual scoffing at so-called “reparation therapy,” a chaplain for the Courage apostolate wrote this in his local paper.

The plain truth is that people with same-sex attractions experience them differently.
For some, those desires are deeply rooted and long-lasting, while others experience them as symptoms of something else: loneliness, lack of confidence or frustrated childhood bonding with same-sex parents or peers, just to begin the list.
In other words, some people really do find developmental and environmental roots to their same-sex attractions. And yes, some find release from them through therapy or through the mysterious grace of a spiritual awakening.
Bates [quoted in an earlier piece] was not able to pray away his same-sex attraction, but some people actually do. And others, while unable to avoid homosexual temptations, still live lives of chastity and virtue by the grace of God and with the help of good friends.

Such an important point! I cringe when reparation therapy shows up in the press, because some of the apostolates dedicated to it strike me as dubious—insufficiently grounded in the truth of the human person and sound psychological principles (yes, there are such!). Since grace builds on nature, I don’t trust what amounts to faith healing that isn’t done in concert with the human effort to address underlying emotions and thought patterns.

But I also know people who have successfully come out of a homosexual lifestyle after therapy (and remain so after long years), so I hate to see the entire notion mocked as it often is, because it’s a profound injustice to people who could be helped by it.

I’m happy to see his defense of reparation therapy, but maybe what Fr. James Livingston says about incurable same-sex attraction is even more hopeful.

He begins by acknowledging the legitimacy of the question homosexuals pose. Living in silent shame is not the answer Christ or the Church wants for anyone, and a morality that offers no more hope or sympathy than people without a problem shouting “Don’t!” at those who do is insufficient.

What do you do when the “gay” just will not go away and your religious standards and traditions just seem to accuse, to point out what you can never do or be? Are the choices limited to either living in shame or just pitching the moral code out the window?

He then reminds us that this isn’t solely a “gay” problem.

Many of us can relate in our own way. You were unfaithful and your spouse will not allow you to forget; you have a prison record that shows up every time you try to get a job; you have a weakness for alcohol or spending or food and your life is unmanageable.
Add your own weakness to the list. Regardless of how it got there, you want to move beyond it, but you can’t. Who among us is righteous and qualified to cast the first stone?

What is the Christian answer to any weakness of this kind: moral, physical, spiritual?

St. Paul confided in a letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 12:7-10) that he had a “thorn in his flesh” that wouldn’t go away. What God said to him was not “you’re going to hell” or “you are disordered.”
He said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” In the midst of his weakness, Paul found both steady direction and contentment in his friendship with Christ.
My point is this: Whoever you are and whatever insurmountable problem you have, don’t jettison your moral compass. Find friends who will support you in truth and virtue.

Father ends on a note of both truth and charity:

Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “Does anyone here condemn you? Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more” (John 8:10-11). Minnesota citizens, you can support traditional marriage and be a friend to persons with same-sex attractions. It’s not an “either/or” issue.

What is the message believing Catholics send to those struggling to believe or unable—yet—to accept the Church’s moral teaching? The message of Christ’s sufficiency is so much more hopeful and helpful than a message of personal deficiency.

With a polite nod to Fr. Z.

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