Very well said! I agree almost entirely with your article, and allow me to strengthen your point a bit before I diverge just a little.

In quoting the Catechism, you left out the strong language about "acts of grave depravity." Yes, official Catholic teaching actually labels gay people as depraved. You don't get much more horrifying than that. With that sort of language, it's really hard to believe how any gay person, or anyone who loves a gay person, could be part of the Roman Catholic Church. I mean, if anyone calls a family member of mine depraved, I'm certainly not going to be their friend.

However ...

Things are slightly more complicated than that, because Catholic theology is full of loopholes. One of those is the "individual conscience" exception in the confessional. People who genuinely do not (or lack the ability to) recognize an act as being "sinful" are not culpable and do not require penance or forgiveness. The theory goes that "sin" has to be willful or knowing to count as sin.

And this is the loophole that an entire movement of LGBT (and allied) Catholics has built itself around.

In the United States, obviously, most priests bishops disagree strenuously with the idea that anyone could be truly sinless while knowingly engaging in same-gender sex. But things are very different in other parts of the Catholic world. Last summer in Europe, pretty much every diocese and parish in German-speaking countries offered public blessing services to same-sex couples. A prominent cardinal has even called for changing the toxic language of the catechism and reforming core theology itself.

While theological reform might seem unlikely, practices on the ground are changing fast. In parts of Europe, those changes are almost universal, while in the United States we find only islands of acceptance. But those islands can be accepting indeed, and they're growing.

I'm not a Catholic, though I was born into a large Irish-American Catholic clan, and I write about Catholic issues a lot, so I sort of have my nose to the ground.

I agree with the point of your article, that living in integrity is important, and that we must not excuse hostile Catholic homophobia.

But I recognize that change can come and will come faster when lay Catholics push for change. Ordinary Catholics, after all, contribute every penny of the money the Church needs to continue to operate.

And this is good news in many ways, especially since lay Catholics in the United States are slightly more likely than the average American to support LGBTQ equality.

The question is, will they begin exercising more muscle to force priests and bishops to change?

That's what happened in Germany. Lay people have far more control of the Church there. And they're not hesitant to tell bishops to shut the hell up. To tell bishops that it's their church and they'll run it.

This is a bit heretical for the average Catholic but it's not impossible. It's actually happening in parts of the world, and it can happen in the United States too.

So let's keep the pressure up, let's keep calling the Church out for its obnoxiously judgmental catechism, while recognizing that positive change can and already is happening.