The College Fix

Counseling center ‘seeks to actively affirm’ every sexual orientation including with ‘queer affirming therapists’

University of Notre Dame’s counseling center is facing criticism from Catholic leaders for its emphasis on promoting LGBT ideology.

The counseling center “seeks to actively affirm and advocate for Two-Spirit, nonbinary, lesbian, gay, bisexual/bi+, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual/ace+ (2SNLGBTQIA+) students by providing a safe and welcoming space” according to its website.

The center also offers an “LGBTQIA+ therapy group,” “queer affirming therapists,” and help “with off-campus referrals for gender affirming care.” Nearly all of its listed staff members include their pronouns in their bios.

“Gender affirming care” refers to drugs and surgeries that permanently alter a person’s body to look like the opposite sex, thereby “affirming” their confusion over their true sex. These surgeries may include removing healthy breasts for girls and testicles for boys.

The Catholic Church has traditionally held that such identities are “intrinsically disordered” and not to be acted on. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has consistently taught that someone’s sex is immutable and criticized “gender ideology.”

Media representatives Erin Blasko and Carrie Gates did not respond to calls or emails in the past month asking for the counseling center’s promotion of LGBT ideology and possible conflict with the Catholic Church.

However, the president of the Catholic Action League criticized Notre Dame’s promotion of LGBT ideology, calling it “inconsistent with what remains of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame.”

“Affirming students in mortal sin — in this case, the mortal sin of impurity against nature, the second of four sins which ‘crieth to heaven for vengeance,’” C.J. Doyle told The College Fix via email.

The Catholic Church teaches a mortal sin is one that severs the person’s relationship with God. People who die with a mortal sin on their soul that they have not confessed to a priest are generally assumed to go to Hell.

He called it “uncharitable, unethical, unpastoral, un-Christian, spiritually malfeasant” as well as “demonic.”

Doyle pointed toward Pope St. John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution on Catholic universities, Ex Corde Ecclesia, to criticize Notre Dame. One criterion John Paul describes is “fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church.”

University administrators have sold out Catholic teaching for positions of societal power, Doyle said.

“What this apparat seeks is money from affluent elites, favorable publicity from the legacy media, and access to power from the political class,” he said. “Institutional fundraising, radical autonomy and unrestricted academic freedom are their highest values.”

Doyle also called for universities like Notre Dame to be stripped of their Catholic title. “The only thing that the bishops can do is declare that they are no longer Catholic, which would be like giving the title and the deed to the burglars,” he said.

The president of the Sycamore Trust, an alumni group that promotes fidelity to the Catholic Church, also criticized the counseling center in an email to its supporters.

“If you take a look at the materials available to Notre Dame students on the University Counseling Center (UCC) website, you won’t find anything Catholic,” President Bill Dempsey wrote.

“It serves as a stark example of the anti-Catholic influences that increasingly surround students on Our Lady’s campus,” he said.

The Catholic university has previously allowed pro-abortion events to occur on campus, despite the Catholic Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life. An “abortion doula” event on campus received criticism from local Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who called it “intellectually unserious.”

The university also hosted a drag show on campus, as previously reported by The Fix.

The school also posted a series of videos appearing to endorse homosexual relationships, as reported in 2022 by The Fix.

Vice President of Student Affairs Gerry Olinger, who is also a Catholic priest, told students to practice “inclusion” toward people no matter their “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

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