LGBT Book & Video Blog

Since My Last Confession is Pomfret's witty and probing account of his struggle with his faith in the context of the same-sex marriage fight in Massachusetts. He attempts to confront Cardinal Seán O'Malley over anti-gay dogma that includes a declaration that Rome's opposition to adoptions by gay couples cannot be disputed.

Along the way he encounters the organization Roman Catholic Womanpriests; O'Malley's motto, ''Quodcumque Dixerit Facite'' (Do Whatever He Tells You); the macabre reverence within the Church for relics of the saints; and a politically correct Dignity service in an Episcopal church basement. ''Before approaching the sacred sawhorse for our consecrated pitas,'' Pomfret writes of the service, ''the Marist reminded us that there was a gluten-free 'host alternative' as well as consecrated grape juice for those with 'special needs.'''

Pomfret provides sidebars explaining everything from Catholic vocabulary to clerical garb to excommunication to Butler's Lives of the Saints. He also lists clues as to whether Cardinal O'Malley is or is not gay (he calls it a draw), and gives a short history refuting the claim by the Massachusetts Catholic Conference that marriage has remained unchanged for millennia as a union between one man and one woman.

Mentioning that he and his partner commit what the 1878 Baltimore Catechism calls one of ''the Four Sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance,'' Pomfret notes that putting consensual sodomy on a par with willful murder is ''a tad extreme.'' He points out that the Vatican's chief exorcist in 2002 called the Harry Potter books ''satanic,'' and observes dryly, ''Nice to know the Vatican was holding high-level consultations about protecting children from fictional characters while subjecting the same children to predatory priests.'' Irreverence here is not just a way of dealing with pain, but a tool for eliciting the truth.

The book is filled with vivid observations, as when describing a spirituality group member whose ''legs trailed away from his upper body like a nasturtium spilling over an iron railing.'' Pomfret can be unexpectedly moving: ''An old woman in the second row skipped a whole decade of her rosary, raised her face to the altar, and revealed that she had once been very beautiful.'' See Have Faith