The bishop is certainly particularly conservative. Also, CatholicVote, an ultra-conservative group I wrote about in June when they urged people to remove LGBTQ-themed books from libraries, bases many of its operations in Wisconsin. But according to DignityUSA, Catholic lay people in Wisconsin are not much more likely to be anti-LGBTQ than Catholic lay people anywhere in the US.

This is the dilemma of writing about the Catholic Church. It's so hierarchical and so authoritarian that even when you're writing about policies and actions that cover vast areas, you might really only be writing about a small handful of very powerful men.

What makes this story so sad is that some trans kids and their parents felt welcome and nurtured in some Catholic schools in Wisconsin, as they do in some Catholic schools in other parts of the United States.

That's over now in the Green Bay region, and it's really down to one powerful man doesn't care what Wisconsin Catholics think.

He epitomizes what Pope Francis calls clericalism, the tendency of priests to set themselves apart as authoritarians rather than as shepherds.

The language about expulsion in that letter to parents is a perfect and precise crystallization of clericalism.