Father Paul Sullins, PhD, is a senior research associate at the Ruth Institute and a retired professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. / Credit: The Ruth Institute
CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
A widely-cited study purporting to show a link between the controversial practice of “conversion therapy” and increased suicidal ideation is seriously flawed from a scientific perspective, according to an analysis from a Catholic priest and researcher.
Father Paul Sullins, a married priest who holds a doctorate in sociology and who previously taught at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., highlighted his findings in a press conference organized by the Ruth Institute, a Catholic organization that advocates for the freedom of counselors to engage in “client-chosen, client-directed talk therapy.”
At issue is a 2020 study often referred to as “Blosnich et al” (after the name of its lead researcher), which purports to study the effects of sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) on people who identify as LGBT. That study concluded that undergoing SOCE was associated with “twice the odds of lifetime suicidal ideation.”
This study, Sullins said, has had a “tremendous effect” on efforts around the world to ban conversion therapy. He pointed out that the American Psychological Association (APA) and other leading medical organizations have in recent years disavowed conversion therapy, many of them citing this exact study.
The APA resolution against SOCE, issued in 2021, cited the Blosnich et al article “most prominently” as evidence for its position, as did a similar conclusion released in December 2020 by the British Government Equalities Office.
Sullins’ analysis showed, he says, that the Blosnich study failed to control for suicidal ideation that existed before the subjects had ever gone to SOCE.
In a paper on the subject in 2022, Sullins performed a reanalysis of the same “very good” data used in the Blosnich study but controlled for preexisting distress — in other words, looking at whether the subjects involved already had suicidal thoughts and actions before being exposed to SOCE.
After controlling for preexisting suicidality, the negative conclusions of Blosnich disappear, Sullins emphasized.
“They made the fundamental error of associating a cause that took place after the effect,” Sullins explained.
Sullins also found that in the Blosnich data, for those subjects who expressed suicidal ideation, 36% went on to attempt suicide — unless they had been to SOCE, in which case that likelihood was only 10%.
At least four other studies had analyzed their data the same incorrect way, Sullins said, leading to the appearance of suicidal ideation caused by SOCE that actually already manifested before SOCE.
The Catholic Church does not explicitly endorse or oppose the use of SOCE. Paragraph 2359 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “homosexual persons are called to chastity.”
“By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection,” the Catechism says.
In his press conference, Sullins said the data show that people who want to try SOCE ought to be given the opportunity to do so. “If you oppose a ban, you’re advocating for the freedom of persons to engage in SOCE if they choose to do so,” he told CNA during the press conference.
In a separate statement to CNA, Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, echoed Sullins, emphasizing that “the claim that sexual orientation change therapy is always harmful is not supported by the available evidence.”
“I personally am acquainted with and have interviewed people who have journeyed away from an LGBT identity … For some of these individuals, therapy played an important role in their journey,” Roback Morse recently wrote in an article for the National Catholic Register.
“These therapy bans are serious violations of fundamental human rights of clients as well as counselors. Yet the activists promoting these bans will not be satisfied until every last counselor, therapist, priest, or pastor on planet Earth has been silenced, shamed, or scared into submission.”
“All of us should be troubled by this,” she concluded.
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The exterior of the new St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center at Kansas State University. / Credit: Jacob Bentzinger
CNA Staff, Oct 2, 2023 / 17:15 pm (CNA).
There’s a quote from Jerome Tang, head coach of the Kansas State University (KSU) basketball team, that Father Gale Hammerschmidt likes.
“I didn’t come to rebuild. I came to elevate,” Tang said after taking the team’s helm last year. (His team bowed out of the NCAA Tournament last spring after making it to the Elite Eight.)
Hammerschmidt, chaplain at St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center at Kansas State, said he thinks “elevation” is an appropriate word for what the Catholic community he leads is doing right now. On Jan. 28, the local bishop dedicated the Catholic center’s brand-new, $20 million church — a project more than two decades in the making.
But now that the new church is open, the real work of bringing the Catholic faith to students on campus can continue. The grand new church presents an opportunity to “elevate everything we do here at St. Isidore’s,” Hammerschmidt told CNA.
“We know that the work is just now beginning. And if we’re going to create a beautiful space, we want to be able to do beautiful things in the space. And nothing is more beautiful than a soul encountering the living God,” the priest told CNA.
Hammerschmidt, a Kansas native and 1995 Kansas State alum, was ordained to the priesthood in 2012 and was assigned to St. Isidore’s in 2017. The Catholic center sits just across the street from the Kansas State campus, which is itself the lifeblood of the small city of Manhattan. There had been discussions about the need for a new church building for several years before he arrived.
“I already knew that there was a need to build a new church. This is something that had been talked about for probably 20 years, honestly, even since right around the time that I was graduating from college,” Hammerschmidt told CNA.
Father Gale Hammerschmidt. Credit: Jacob Bentzinger
Part of the reason was that the population served by St. Isidore’s had outgrown the old space, which sat about 400 and was regularly filled to bursting on Sundays with overflow seating in the student center library.
Grace Gorges, a K-State student studying graphic design, got involved with the Catholic community at the college as soon as she arrived at KSU. From the get-go, “the Masses were always crowded, always overflowing,” she said, adding that the fallout from COVID made things even worse when parts of the sanctuary had to be roped off for distancing purposes.
The campaign to raise money for a new church was dubbed “Home Away from Home.” About $5 million had already been raised before Hammerschmidt’s arrival, and the campaign ultimately raised nearly $20 million for the project, he said. Some 1,500 individual donors contributed to the campaign.
Nebraska-based lead architect Kevin Clark came to Manhattan in 2017 and began asking the community what they wanted their new church to look like. Countless students requested a beautiful interior, “traditional-looking in nature,” the priest said.
“We want this to look like a church that has been standing forever and will stand forever,” he recalled students telling him.
“We wanted to make sure that it was an epic-looking building” with an interior that would raise hearts and minds “to the beauties of heaven,” he said.
The congregation kneels during the dedication Mass for the new St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center at Kansas State University. Credit: Jacob Bentzinger
Given her involvement in the community and her interest in beauty and design, Hammerschmidt asked Gorges to serve on the building committee, which meant she would have a say in the church’s aesthetic. Gorges said she was invited to help design the church’s tile flooring. She researched churches online for inspiration and also drew from her personal experience of visiting numerous beautiful sacred spaces on a trip to Italy.
Ridge Pinkston, a fifth-year senior when CNA spoke with him, studying medieval history, was also chosen to be on the building committee. He told CNA that the committee — which included Hammerschmidt, diocesan board member Doug Hinkin, and others — was given almost complete control over the look of the new church.
He said the committee had numerous meetings with the architect to figure out the look of everything in the new church — they spent an entire two-hour meeting designing the look of the altar, for example. He said the building committee “represented the body of owners” to the architect and designers, similar to how when a family builds a house, the architects and contractors consult them on how they want it to look. He said it was a “huge privilege” and a great learning process to be a part of the committee as a student.
Despite his interest in medieval architecture, the churches that Pinkston primarily drew inspiration from were mainly stateside; most are located in the Archdiocese of Denver. They included the medieval revival-style chapel at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary and the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and Holy Ghost Catholic Church, both in downtown Denver.
Ultimately, the architects and designers of St. Isidore’s produced a neo-Gothic interior with pointed arches that dropped many a jaw when it was unveiled. The interior also features numerous instances of vine imagery — an image of Jesus himself, but also a subtle nod to the college’s agricultural heritage. Evergreene Architectural Arts, a renowned design studio in New York, provided the decoration, Hammerschmidt said.
Not everything in the interior is entirely new, however. Hammerschmidt said at the request of students, stained-glass windows depicting the seven patron saints of the seven original colleges at Kansas State (the university was originally Methodist-founded) were saved and incorporated into the new church. Among those saints are the church’s namesake, St. Isidore — an 11th-century Spaniard and patron saint of agricultural workers — as well as the namesake of the student center, St. Robert Bellarmine. A much-loved crucifix that hung over the tabernacle in the old church was also used again in the new church.
The crucifix in the new St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center. Credit: Jacob Bentzinger
Gorges said she loves the triumphal arch over the altar in the finished church, which draws one’s eyes toward the focal point of the crucifix, and onward to heaven. A beautiful church, she said, is “not the end-all-be-all by any means. But if it’s at all possible, beauty matters. And we should be trying to live that in our daily lives.”
Pinkston said his favorite design element in the new church, apart from the ceiling of the apse, is the new altar itself, which he said really strikes him as being designed in a way that calls to mind a place where sacrifices are made.
“Rightfully, that should be one of the most beautiful features,” he said of the altar.
The designers also took care to design the exterior of the church to match the native limestone buildings of Kansas State, in an effort to make the church an integral part of the campus it serves.
Bishop Gerald Vincke of Salina, Kansas, dedicated the diocese’s newest church on Jan. 28. The 14,000-square-foot structure can accommodate about 700 for Sunday Masses.
Bishop Gerald Vincke of Salina, Kansas, sprinkles holy water during the dedication of the new St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center on Jan. 28, 2023. Credit: Jacob Bentzinger
Hammerschmidt said daily Masses at St. Isidore’s were already attracting nearly 200 students on a regular basis. A key part of the Catholic center’s success, he said, is the presence of missionaries from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). FOCUS maintains a presence on college campuses with the goal of winning people to the Catholic faith through authentic friendships and forming others to go out and do the same through Bible studies, small groups, and retreats.
“We also work closely with the high schools in the state of Kansas, especially the Catholic high schools. And we have many strong Catholic high schools in our area. And so we just have students who, the first day they show up in Manhattan, they already know about us,” Hammerschmidt said.
In addition, he said, the Catholic center is in cooperation with the local Diocese of Salina and the nearby Diocese of Wichita, whereby Wichita — which has been blessed in recent years with large vocation numbers — sends a priest to serve as Hammerschmidt’s associate. Large numbers of students come to KSU from Wichita — Gorges among them — who get involved with the Catholic center thanks to strong word of mouth.
“It’s good for them to have one of their own priests looking after them … I think it’s working phenomenally well.”
Stained-glass windows in the new St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center. Credit: Jacob Bentzinger
Working at St. Isidore’s, Pinkston said he has gotten to know “the regulars” that came to the church before the rebuild, but now with the new church, he said he sees many more people coming in to pray whom he has never seen before. He also said it was inspirational for him to see a friend — a man who is joining the Catholic Church this Easter — weeping openly when he first saw the new church’s interior.
“That was really the first time I’d ever seen him express emotion … That’s definitely a huge blessing to be able to see that happening,” he said.
Hammerschmidt was almost overwhelmed by the support of the many students, alumni, and others who made the new church possible. Months on from the chapel’s opening, the 9:09 p.m. daily Mass is always well attended, with about 300 students attending regularly. As of September, St. Isidore’s has 40 student-led Bible studies with around 400 Bible study participants.
“The outpouring of joy and gratitude has been incredible. The number of people who we will just see walking through the church from out of town is unbelievable,” Hammerschmidt said.
“And then beyond that, we had so many more hundreds of people praying for the project, and we just have been supported unbelievably well.”
Hammerschmidt said he wants the students and community of Kansas State to take ownership of the magnificent new church and to use it for their spiritual benefit.
“We want to let everybody in Manhattan and on K-State’s campus know that we built this church for them,” he said.
“If they just need a place of encounter with God to just come in to be seated, to be immersed in the beauty and the silence and to just let God speak. That’s our hope. For the Catholics, for the non-Catholics, for the students, for nonstudents, just for anyone who needs a place to encounter the living God, this would be the place for them.”
Light from the stained glass in the new St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center. Jacob Bentzinger
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