Bill Consiglio LCSW MDiv DMin
A Brief Testimony
My Family of Origin
If you liked the movie Moonstruck you would like my familyof origin. I grew up in the warm security of a gregarious, emotionally unpredictable, culturally rich, first generation Italian family with four sisters and one brother. My father and his five brothers emmigrated to America around the turn of the century. Since all of them had been fishermen from a lovely southern Italian mountainside seaport called Amalfi, they settled on the southern shore of Connecticut where they could continue to sink lobster pots, throw half-circle nets, and cruise their boats into Long Island sound for flatfish, white fish, cod, bluefish, oysters and shell crabs.
Going out on my father's forty foot trawler to fish with him was an adventure I avoided if I could. It was messy, backbreaking work. To top it off, I didn't know how to swim, so the ocean was always a potential enemy. This threat became reality during one unforgettable wild squall, when I discovered that my father couldn't swim either and the boat was rapidly filling with water. We survived, but all of this seafaring business convinced me that I didn't want to be a fisherman. But it was the very vaguely understood beginning of a call that the Lord was placing upon my heart to be a fisherman of a different sort; a fisherman of men. Little did I understand this to mean the literal meaning of a call to work with and heal men who are broken in one way or another.
This period of time was also the dawning of the realization that La familia had a significant influence on my development. We never really know ourselves or accept ourselves until we know the ways that our families have shaped our needs, our thinking, our self-identity and self-esteem. For one thing it meant that I inherited the Italian version of Roman Catholicism, with statues and saints, novenas, votive candles, high masses, incense, crucifixes, hysterial funerals, and outrageously expensive weddings. Religion was so overlaid with cultural tradition that they were inseparable. And of course there was La Festa , the annual pseudo-religious feast of the patron saint of Amalfi - St. Andrew - carried aloft with $5, $l0, and $50 bills afixed to every inch of his plaster-painted body. For five nights every July, you could eat all the fried pizza, cannolli, strufoli, and Italian ice you desired, as you listened to the aspiring opera stars sing O Sole Mio, La Donna Mobile, and Torna a Sorrento all night long. Those gustatory garlic, tomato and sausage tastes and smells; those gusty Neapolitan songs became deeply buried in my psyche. And even now, they descend over me on some sunny Sunday afternoons when I'm alone, and you might catch me uncontrollably sing out the same songs unashamedly.
There is something wonderfully rich about a cultural heritage like this, though at the time I took it all for granted. That kind of Roman Catholicism, which I will always cherish, enveloped and wove into me an awe, respect and fear of priests, the Pope, and God; in that order. It also opened the door to a wonder and mystery and devotion about the miracle-making and compassionate Jesus. For Italians, scenes from the gospels in which Jesus healed people, calmed the storm or fed the five thousand, were enacted with great emotion in my imagination long before Franco Zeffarelli put them on the screen.
Seminary
And so, like a number of restless young men in the 50's, religion with this kind of intensity drew me into Catholic seminary; a good place to go and hide. A good place to hide because one didn't have to mature, or enter the competitive world of male career rivalry, or relate to the opposite sex if you were not prepared for these. There, I didn t have to worry about living up to the prevailing norms for maturity. Many seminarians, undoubtedly were immature, as I was.
I stayed in the seminary just long enough to work up to a good bordeline nervous breakdown and the loss of my faith. The confinement, routine, and struggle to achieve such high spiritual standards, all became a heavy weight after a while, though seminary gave me a wonderful classical education in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, German, philosophy and theology.
In the Fall of my fourth year when I simply could not resist the need to grow any longer, on Halloween night, I boarded a prop plane for a one-way return trip home through a severe thunderstorm. The rain pelting on the windows offered the correct atmosphere for the sadness and bewilderment I felt inside that night. I felt like a failure. I was disappointed, depressed and down right discouraged. My life felt like a disaster. I was 23. I had no marketable skills, a developing ulcer, no job, and I didn't know what to do with my life.
Personal and Professional Growth
I had to do some personal growing. This led me to work with others, and soon a career in the human services began to emerge as a clear direction for my life. I worked with emotionally distrubed children, with dilenquent adolescents, in an adult psychiatric facility and in private counseling services and later began my teaching career as associate professor of clinical social work. But my biggest personal growth came on that very special night when I first met Jesus in a very personal way.
Of course, that revolutionized my whole life and my way of working with others. And so as a therapist and counselor in private practice, when the first Christian man came to seek help for his struggle with homosexuality, I was ready to help him in the way in which the Lord wanted him to helped.
And though for me homosexuality was not a life-dominating issue, nor did I know much about it at the time, my personal background, and now my spiritual birth, gave me a sensitivity and a deep interest in this man's struggle with gender-related issues.
My work with this first man was so interesting and, with the Lord's help, so successful, that I realized that the Lord was calling me to this work. I still don't fully understand His call to this work. But I did realize that I was able to be a sort of bridge between myself as a straight person who had the sensitivity to work with those who are sexually broken in this way. My own early struggle with searching out an identity and my own former insecurity helped me to understand the dynamics of those who struggle with the underlying emotional causes of sexual brokenness, gender identity insecurities and confusions. I believe the Lord knew this, and so He called me to this sensitive and challenging work because of my ability to understand these underlying dynamics. I believe that many of my clients find it very helpful to relate to and trust a "straight" man who has a sensitive understanding of their homosexual experience, and yet who is not rejecting, squeamish, uncomfortable or phobic about them.
I'm also a person with a lot of optimism and I can create hope in others. HOPE has become a strong word in my calling. H.O.P.E. became the acronym of the ministry I founded in CT, NY and MA. It stands for Honesty, Openness, Prayer, and Encouragement. The Lord showed me how important these are for Overcomers.
Once I started working with "overcomers" it became a strong professional desire to understand the underlying dynamics of the development and reversal of something as complex as homosexuality. I felt like an explorer in new territory, discovering the deep and hidden dynamics of what it means to be an emotional, psychological, spiritual and sexual person. The search to understand the complexity of human sexuality in its various manifestations and disorientations is very challenging and intriquing to me professionally.
When I saw the positive changes that were taking place in the lives of those I began working with, I became more and more certain that the Lord did have a way to enable Christians to resolve homosexuality and that I was called to assist the Lord in this "missionary" work.
Whenever we serve the Lord's family it is always mutual. The Lord always calls a person to a ministry that will bless and heal and grow him as well as those he works with. I have experienced much growth through doing this work, and I praise God for it with all my heart. God continues to choose the foolish things and the weak things to do His work. He continues to select those who are only vessels of clay to show that the power for healing is from Him and not ourselves.
ALL THINGS 8:28
In l980 I founded and directed HOPE Ministries of CT and for many years conducted a weekly support program of education, information and fellowship. I began to specialize in the work of Reparative therapy -or what I prefer to call S.O.R.T (Sexual Orientation Resolution Therapy)- with Christians who are managing, resolving, recovering from and overcoming homosexuality. I wrote the book Homosexual No More in l991 which came out in Spanish as NO MAS HOMOSEXUAL (CLC l998)and have contributed several articles to Christian journals.
I am a former Board Member and Northeast regional representative for Exodus International. I received my MSW from University of Pittsburgh and a MA. Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees in pastoral counseling from Trinity Theological Seminary, Newburgh, IN. For 27 years I was Associate Professor of Clinical Social Work, at Southern Ct State University (now retired); and I am now a part--time Christian psychotherapist working almost exclusively with overcomers.
I am married to my wife Linda for 30 years. We have two fine and beautiful daughters (Kris and Jen) and son-in-laws (Randy and Mario) and we live in Hamden, CT. where I have my psychotherapy practice and where I also serve as part-time assistant to the pastor at an Evangelical Lutheran Church, where I have teaching and preaching responsibilities. I have served as a professional consultant and educator to many conferences, churches and denominations on the issue of homosexuality and other sexual disorders and addictions. The Lord gave me a personal verse of Scripture which I have come to value as most precious.
" And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."