Catholicism's Homosexuality Doctrine Is Stuck In 1950s Psychology

By age 25, I’d almost gone to seminary three times. But one big thing kept tripping up my conversations with vocations directors: I had to tell them I was attracted to men.

In October of my senior year of college, I’d been in conversation with a diocese for almost a year, and I thought I was all set to apply. But that fall, I received an email from the vocations director cryptically subjected to “Preparations,” where he informed me that I needed counseling to “investigate areas in my life that might need healing.”

He’d known for some time that I was attracted to men, but he also knew I hadn’t done anything with those attractions. I was a same-sex attracted Catholic par excellence, no secret boyfriends, no hookups, not even a kiss!

The email explained that given my “situation,” which is how he politely referred to my attractions, I needed to work towards “affective maturity.” He referenced a 2005 Vatican document that stated same-sex attracted men had to achieve the “maturity that will allow [them] to relate correctly to both men and women” before applying. He concluded that “If [my] situation [was] transitory, then the counseling will help [me] work through that.” Translation: if you stop being gay, then you can go to seminary.I finished that email feeling more frustrated than a Catholic who found out their parish only offers confession by appointment.

If the language this vocational director used sounds out of step with a current psychological understanding of same-sex attractions, that’s because it is. Modern psychology has well established that contrary to earlier assumptions, homosexual attractions can’t be overcome through training like a spiritual weight loss program. People don’t overcome their attractions the way people overcome their procrastination, and mountains of rigorous psychological research have established that people can’t manipulate their sexual orientation through prayer, therapy, or some clever combination of both.

But while modern psychology has come to these conclusions after decades of studying the matter, Catholicism never seemed to get the memo. The Church’s approach to homosexuality is still rooted in an outdated, disproven, early twentieth-century psychology.The Church is right to want her queer children to live holy lives within God’s law, but she actually impedes that goal when she asks her kids to do what we know is impossible.

The current tension between Psychology and the Catholic Church was solidified in the seventies. In 1973, after careful consideration of the issue, the American Psychological Association (APA) voted that homosexuality could no longer be classified as a mental illness or sickness. The Vatican DocumentPersona Humana, which sharply condemned homosexualityjust two years later,was something of a response.

But Persona Humana didn’t just condemn homosexuality; it promoted the very ideas that the APA rejected. The document asserts that homosexuality can be divided into two categories: People “whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example,” and people who experience same-sex attractions “because of some kind of…pathological constitution.”

Of course, some may argue that Catholicism’s softer approach in recent years indicates that it no longer holds these views. But the 2005 document on seminarians references Persona Humana, as does a 2006 document on pastoral care for homosexual persons from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as a 2019 document from the Vatican on gender theory. Which means that outdated psychological assumptions are still very much influencing the Church.

No wonder there are still Catholic organizations that promote conversion therapy under the guise of healing from unwanted same-sex attractions and “modifying the passions,” even though such practices have been rejected by every major medical and mental health organization for decades due to their proven link with higher rates in depression, anxiety, negative self-image, drug use, and suicide.

It’s time the Church started listening to Cardinal Ratzinger’s call for a pastoral approach that includes all the sciences and listens to experts in their fields. As a start, this would mean rejecting debunked notions about the transitory nature of homosexuality and rejecting harmful reparative therapy practices.

Some Catholics may fear that such a change means the Church will lose its moral voice. But we can’t confuse the science of psychology with the morality extrapolated from psychology. Psychology can speak to whether same-sex attractions are a mental disorder or changeable, but only Catholicism can state definitively whether acting on those attractions is moral.

So, what exactly would a Catholic approach to same-sex attraction look like in light of the knowledge gleaned from modern psychology?

The Church might begin by retiring the old standby of “intrinsically disordered” as the starting point for conversations about same-sex attractions. It could emphasize that simply experiencing same-sex attractions is morally neutral. And it could recognize that for whatever reason, God has allowed these attractions to be stubbornly part of some people’s lives.

This approach frees the Church to invest greater energy into pastoral care, offering those who experience same-sex attraction the spiritual tools they need to wrestle with deeply emotional questions, such as What am I going to do with my life given the reality of my present situation and attractions? How do I mourn the loss of the life I thought I was going to live? How do I come to terms with how I’ve been created? How am I called to love? How am I called to serve?

Only when the Catholic Church lets go of the outmoded psychology holding it back can it become the mother its queer children need. Because in the end, spirituality isn’t the pursuit of straight-hood; it’s the pursuit of sainthood.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash