Why the Catholic Church Should Ban Conversion Therapy

Commonweal magazine has published an essay presenting expert Catholic opinion urging “Get Conversion Therapy Out of the Church,” after a recent U.S. Supreme Court case which left open the possibility of counselors being able to practice it, in spite of state bans against it. 

Heidi Schlumpf, a Commonweal senior correspondent, examined the issue of conversion therapy because of the Supreme Court’s 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazar which found that Colorado’s ban on the debunked practice represented what the court called an assault on free speech protections under the First Amendment. The decision returns the law to lower courts for review and is expected to affect more than twenty states with similar legislation.

The plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor who trained at the Evangelical Denver Seminary, had challenged the law on religious liberty grounds. While prevalent in the Evangelical Church, critics say the case carries significant implications for the Catholic Church as well where conversion therapy — often operating under rebranded names like “reparative therapy” or “reintegrative therapy” — remains active..

Chris Damian, a Catholic attorney and writer says the ideology underpinning the practice is deeply embedded in Catholic formation spaces. “Conversion therapists do have an outsized influence in the Catholic Church, including in the formation of priests and other leaders,” 

Damian said. He identifies the belief that homosexuality stems from childhood wounding — and can therefore be spiritually or therapeutically healed — as a framework that circulates widely in seminaries, college campus ministries, and the confessional.

Major medical and mental health organizations have discredited conversion therapy, citing not only its ineffectiveness but its documented links to anxiety, depression, and suicide among those who undergo it.

The Chiles v. Salazar case drew attention to the story of Alana Chen, a twenty-four-year-old Colorado Catholic woman who died by suicide in 2019 following counseling from priests and Catholic program leaders as she was questioning her sexual orientation. Her mother, Joyce Calvo, submitted a brief to the court on behalf of parents of conversion therapy participants. Chen’s story has been documented in an eight-episode podcast called Dear Alana, produced by Simon Fung, himself a conversion therapy survivor who consulted with the Colorado attorney general’s office during the case.

“The people most vulnerable to these practices are religious kids and well-intentioned families with parents trying to do good by God and their child,” Fung said following the ruling, adding that he hopes families know alternatives exist that allow them to remain within their faith.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Colorado Catholic Conference, and the Catholic University of America submitted a joint amicus brief in the case, stating they had not reached a firm conclusion on whether same-sex attraction could be changed through therapeutic intervention.

Schlumpf identified a variety of Catholic or Catholic-related groups and institutions which support or have supported conversion therapy:

“Fr. John Harvey, the founder of Courage, a Catholic apostolate for “men and women who experience same-sex attraction,” coauthored a pamphlet in 1999 that urged therapy to prevent and treat homosexuality. Harvey, who died in 2010, was a supporter of Elizabeth Moberley, an early Christian theorist who believed homosexuality was a result of woundedness that could be healed and changed, and of the late Joseph Nicolosi, a Catholic who promoted what he called “reparative therapy” for male homosexuality at his Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Southern California and through regular appearances on EWTN. Nicolosi also founded the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in 1992. Joseph’s son, Joseph Jr., renamed NARTH as the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity and today promotes what he called ‘reintegrative therapy,’ which he claims is distinct from conversion therapy. Courage International, as an organization, no longer officially promotes conversion therapy.

Not all Catholic mental health professionals share a positive opinion of conversion therapy, Dr. Julia Sadusky, a Catholic psychologist in Colorado specializing in sexuality and gender identity, joined a brief in support of the ban. She said she had no difficulty practicing under the law and argued it did not prevent value-based counseling. “Conversion therapy doesn’t help; it hurts,” Sadusky said. “People are no longer alive because of the ripple effect of conversion therapy.”

—Matthew Gorczykz, New Ways Ministry, April 22, 2026