Courage International, a Catholic apostolate serving people with same-sex attraction struggles, is pushing back against a Vatican report that cited one member's negative experience with the group, calling the portrayal "calumny and detraction" and denying the allegation that the group promotes “reparation therapy.”
The Vatican office overseeing Pope Francis’ synod process released the report May 5. The report criticized “reparative therapies aimed at recovering heterosexuality” and warned against advice that would encourage a same-sex-attracted Catholic to enter a traditional marriage with a member of the opposite sex in order to “find peace.” It also included an anonymous account from an American man who described “problematic membership in a Catholic group (Courage) which, by pushing for ‘reparative therapy,’ had the effect of separating faith and sexuality.”
The testimony was written by a same-sex-attracted Catholic who identified himself as a PhD theologian now in a so-called “gay marriage.”.
He said he first encountered Courage when he was a closeted graduate student at the University of Notre Dame and joined the group "at the suggestion of a conversion therapist I met to deal with my 'condition.'"
"Attending Courage meetings did little to help my spiritual and psychosexual development," he wrote.
He described the experience as isolating and emotionally difficult.
"The gathering was secretive and hidden,” he remarked. “The people I met were lonely, hopeless, and often depressed."
He said his life was "disintegrating as I resisted reconciling my faith and sexuality."
He said his perspective changed after beginning doctoral studies in theology at Fordham University.
"What a breath of fresh air!" he wrote, describing how academic theology helped him "accept myself as a gay man created in God's image" and how "reading the Bible in context made me realize that traditionalist interpretations have little to say about contemporary, life-giving same-sex relationships."
He described eventually finding welcoming Catholic parishes, becoming a public advocate for LGBTQ Catholics, and writing a book on the subject. He said he is now happily in a so-called “gay marriage.”
"My sexuality isn't a perversion, disorder, or cross; it's a gift from God," he wrote. "I have a happy, healthy marriage and am flourishing as an openly gay Catholic."
He said he continues to attend Catholic Mass while also participating in an Episcopal parish with his “husband,” and acknowledged ongoing tensions with the institutional Church.
"Whenever I am discouraged by homophobia or transphobia in the church," he wrote, "I return to my local parish. It's easy to be angry at an institutional church that doesn't seem to know me. It's much harder to be angry at the fellow Catholics I love and who love me."
Rome-based journalist Diana Montaga pointed out that the testimony appears similar to the story of a man featured in a December 2023 New York Times article who received a blessing alongside his same-sex partner the day after the publication of Fiducia Supplicans, Pope Francis’ declaration on the Pastoral meaning of blessings.
Courage responds
Courage denied the reparative therapy allegation outright. "Courage is not nor ever has been involved in 'reparative therapy,' as alleged," the organization said in a news release May 8.
"The working group could have clarified this point by simply contacting Courage leadership,” the organization said. “Rather than do so, however, the report presents one person's experience and opinion as part of an official ecclesiastical document."
Courage said its meetings are deliberately confidential so participants “can speak candidly and vulnerably without fear of someone reporting about them. Which is what this individual does when he describes people at the meeting as 'lonely, hopeless, and often depressed.'"
Courage said it has faced outside criticism before, but described this instance as uniquely painful because it appeared in a Church document.
"Courage has suffered calumny and detraction before, but usually from secular outlets," it said. "It is a great sadness and an additional wound to our members to have this false and unjust depiction in a Vatican document."
The group invited synod officials to meet with its chaplains and members.