Fascinating accounts of U.S. Catholic priests who are softening the hardline message from Rome, applying church rules creatively “for the sake of the people.”

And revealing

. . . how American priests tailor their advice and pastoral care to 53 million Catholics.

and showing “in priests’ own words,”

how Catholic pastoral practice departs from Vatican severity on issues such as birth control, divorce and re-marriage, women’s rights, abortion, liturgy, spirit versus law, and much more. . . .

Having done that, I decided to write another about gay priests, in the course of which I asked around clergy sources and was encouraged by one especially, a Chicago-based brother who seemed willing to help me, until he stopped doing so.

As a one-time daily newspaper reporter, I was grinding no ax, just looking for the story. I made some contacts in addition to the failed one and was moving ahead, when financial needs stopped me and I had to let it go, hoping to pick it up later.

Never was able. But decades later I began to read someone far more competent in the matter and mean to pursue this source now.

He is far more the heavy hitter than I and rides high in volume and credibility. Gene Thomas Gomulka is his name, and pursuit of gay clergy in this case is his game.

As for my book mentioned above, you can see that at the time I was a reporter and not quite a proponent of the traditional, right? (Not quite so now, as some may have noticed.)

So it is with my coveridge of the remarkable work by the remarkable Gene Thomas Gomulka, about which more later . . .