Straight to Jesus

Оглавление

Tanya Erzen. Straight to Jesus

Отрывок из книги

Straight to Jesus

Tanya Erzen

.....

After he had read it and offered criticism and suggestions, Hank told me frankly that he felt I had downplayed why it was people wanted to change. He was adamant that I did not underscore what it is like for the men at New Hope to have their deepest moral beliefs clash with their sexuality. “The misery and pain…that motivated me to want to change,” Hank sighed wearily on the phone. “I worry that people will come away from reading this asking, ‘Why would people want to do that?' They don't realize the conflict we deal with.” I told him that many of the people who had read the book expressed feeling unexpectedly moved by the individual stories of pain and misery, despite their hostility toward the idea of changing one's sexuality. If anything, when I presented this work at conferences, I received some criticism that the project was too sympathetic to the plight of men and women at New Hope.

Courage is a Catholic organization, with chapters throughout the United States, which was founded and is run by Father John Harvey, a Catholic priest. I met with Father Harvey several times at the headquarters on 46th Street in Manhattan, a run-down church with frayed carpet on the stairs, an office overflowing with piles of paper, and one good-natured but harried assistant named Tracey. As we sat knee to knee in a cramped prayer room, Father Harvey, who is eighty-five and stooped but still lively, explained that while teaching theology in the 1950s, he began reading Freud and found that the priests in his class knew nothing about homosexuality. After publishing several articles, he began informally counseling priests, and in 1978 Cardinal Terrence Cook of New York invited him to establish a spiritual support system for men and women with homosexual inclinations in the New York archdiocese. Father Harvey began the first Courage meeting in 1980, and the archdiocese of New York continues to sponsor him. Initially, he organized five-day retreats in northern Virginia for priests, which he called Retreat, Renewal, and Recreation, to help them address their own homosexuality, and he recalled that from 1978 to 1990 he counseled over 250 priests who struggled with homosexuality. After 1990 he devoted himself to working solely with laity, although priests still lead Courage support groups all over the country. Father Harvey makes use of NARTH, which will refer people to a therapist and a priest, and the relationship is strong because Joseph Nicolosi, the director of NARTH, is Catholic and attends many Courage events.

.....