Free Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir by Scott Pomfret

this kookiness reminded me of the Native American craftsmen who deliberately engineer errors into pottery. The flaw is the point where the spirit enters the work and gives it life. So, too, for Saint Anthony’s: the Shrine was a veritable Swiss cheese through which the Spirit flowed at a steady clip.
    Of course, kookiness is all fine and good until someone burns at the stake. Local Saint Anthony’s kookiness was endearing, but high-level Vatican kookiness was too much to bear. Like the Hale Marys and Ye Olde Piety Show, like Fathers Abraham, Justin, and Francis, like so many Catholics, I just wanted a church of which I could be proud. This yearning was another form of learned helplessness: I was passively looking for a savior to restore my pride, as if the Savior we had wasn’t enough.

IV
    Love, J2P2
    Join us in a diplomatically intricate, ethically ambiguous, and sometimes publicly humiliating tightrope walk toward Jesus .
    — Jim Naughton, Anglican Diocese of Washington, D.C., referring to the controversy over the ordination of gay bishop Gene Robinson
    Happy Birthday
    HRISTOPHER HITCHENS BE DAMNED . If you want proof of the existence of God, you have a couple alternatives. First — and I think this evidence is irrefutable— Dick Cheney and Alan Keyes each have a lesbian daughter, and Lynn Cheney in turn has a child. These facts bear witness: Not only is there a God, but He’s a funny son of a bitch.
    If you need additional proof, you can pray to the Lord and see if He answers. I, for example, had prayed for a new savior to restore my pride in the Church. On my thirty-fifth birthday, God delivered. The pope appointed Sean Patrick O’Malley to be the new archbishop of Boston.”
    Given the timing, I concluded that O’Malley was a gift-wrapped, sealed-with-a-kiss love offering from the Almighty Himself.
    The friars at the Shrine shared my optimism, in part because Archbishop Sean, as he preferred to be known, was one of them — a brown robe! He was a Capuchin, a kissing-cousin branch of the Franciscans from whom cappuccino takes its name. One friar announced, “We are called to be peacemakers, to heal wounds, unite what has fallen apart, and bring home those who have lost their way, … That’s what the [Vatican] had in mind when they appointed [O’Malley].”
    Personally, I couldn’t help but ascribe tremendous virtue to a man who was said to speak six languages, and who, like me, loathes cats and had been caught red-handed in the decidedly un-Pranciscan act of shooting them with a squirt gun. At first glance, O’Malley came across as a likable wizard.
    Not everyone in the archdiocese shared my enthusiasm. Archbishop Sean’s habit of wearing his habit inflamed the sartorial jealousy of diocesan priests, who suffered in basic black and a dog collar. Never permitted to wear a sash and dress, they cattily referred to O’Malley as the Brown Bag.
    At the Shrine, he also had his skeptics. A few weeks after the Brown Bag became archbishop, a stranger waited after Friday mass. She had a broad Irish face, a fire-hydrant body, and an aluminum walker. I had never seen her before. Flooded with guilt, I racked my brains for the sin with which she was preparing to confront me.
    I dodged around the holy water font, feinted for the shrine of the Holy Virgin, and made a beeline for the side door. But she had good foot speed for a lady with a walker and cut me off at the statue of Saint Anthony.
    “I want to let you know,” she said sweetly, “you read beautifully. I really enjoy coming to this Mass.”
    “Th-thank you,” I stuttered.
    I discreetly knocked on the wooden platform supporting Saint Anthony. If there’s anything a Catholic boy likes less than being confronted with his sins, it’s being confronted with praise. Praise makes you proud, and pride goeth before a fall, and no doubt this woman’s good wishes would boomerang back and knock down my immortal soul.
    To reduce the karmic backlash, I put on my best