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

vaulted into place in the pew reserved for lay ministers.
    Give or take a few broken hips, some mental disease, and a handful of people who go spiritually adrift, Saint Anthony Shrine has a roster of approximately one hundred fifty lay ministers at any one time. Three are typically assigned to each mass — two to distribute the hosts, one to read, and maybe a spare to change the lightbulb over the tabernacle. Recognizing my rookie status, Father Francis had kindly assigned me to a group of experienced ministers, every one named Mary.
    Mary Flanagan’s hair was white, but her face was young; tall and thin, she looked much younger than her eighty-seven years. The passage of time had given her a question-mark silhouette. Each week, she dressed in crisp blouses and sensible shoes, and she liberally administered hugs to anyone with a pulse.
    Mary Fleming was more reserved. She was shorter, rounder, and thirty years younger. Her eyes sparkled with shy playfulness in the sacristy, but on the altar she always wore her game face.
    Mary Flaherty hailed from the Pleistocene age. She had whiskers and walked with a cramped, bent, wide-legged stance, as if she were perennially headed into a stiff wind. In the fall, she wore a Red Sox jacket and tennis shoes. At first it seemed like a victory just to avoid her condemnation, let alone win a word of kindness. Then she’d smile, and the dour puss she wore from a combination of habit and pessimism disappeared. The world surprised Mary Flaherty from time to time.
    Ding! The brass bell sounded, and the three Hale Marys stood as one. Francis the Franciscan Friar stepped out onto the altar. He was wearing a simple white cassock pulled over his brown robes, a green surplice, and a stole on his shoulders depicting the five wounds of Christ. (That’s hands, feet, and the centurion’s spear in the side, for those of you who are counting.)
    “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” said Father Francis, launching into the introductory rite. My mind instantly shot to the moon. While Father Francis droned, “blah … blah … God … blah … Jesus … blah,” my inner litany sounded more like this: Geez! What’s with the statue of the Virgin? Somebody ought to rethink the gaudy paint. It makes her look like a harlot . … Did Scott rent a car so we could go fetch that pew from Albany? … Maybe the fraudster didn't do it. Maybe he really was visiting his elderly mother in the hospital at the time? Maybe the five eyewitnesses were lying .
    I realized Father Francis was staring me down. Uh-oh! The nearest Mary nudged me into the aisle. I dashed up to the ambo, remembering the evil microphone would transform the slightest breathlessness into the sounds of a dirty phone prankster. Fifty parishioners looked up expectantly. Three or four of the loony ones swayed and rocked. The guilty in the back row examined their feet, which in turn made me feel as guilty as any fraudster that had walked through my office door.
    In contemplating lectorhood, I hadn’t given a moment’s consideration to the possibility that regularly uttering the word God with a straight face would prove a challenge. It was one thing to mentally run His Name through my head in a moment of extremis (God, please don’t let Whole Foods be out of arugula) , to punctuate someone’s sneeze (“God bless!”), or to express the Hibernian morbidity Mary Flaherty loved (“See you tomorrow, God willing”).
    All that was fine. On occasion, certain members of the Holy Family were useful for moments of surprise and shock: “Mother of God!” “Jesus H. Christ,” or “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” My mother, a far better person than I, had a novel fix for this sin. She simply converted blasphemy to geography. Instead of “Jesus Christ!” she spouted “Je-RU-salem!” Or, for truly dire occasions, “Pu-DAY-ga.” I still don’t know where this latter city is, but her tone told me it was nowhere I wanted to be.
    In contrast to