Opinion: I Liked It Better When The Only Bad Smell From The Riding Club Was Horse Manure.

Father Schuster has a silver tongue. And, to his credit, he's willing to accept gay couples as "best friends", which, for an organization with a history of dealing with folks they disagreed that involved burning at the stake, that's a good baby step in the right direction.

His sophistry needs a bit of work. To attempt to marginalize gay relationships, he reduces marriage to a "social unit of baby making" - removing all married couples without children, those of us whose children have grown up, and ignoring the fact that, in today's world, many gay couples have and raise children (and do every bit as good (or bad) a job as we straight folk do).

In an overpopulated world, there the ability of the planet to support life is being severely threatened by some 7 billion human beings, this obsession with Genesis 1:28 (Be fruitful and multiply) shows a stunning ability to simply ignore reality.

Marriage can be about having and raising children. But it's so much more - it's about love, passion, commitment, making a life together, having a partner to travel with on the great and mysterious journey that is life. If Father Schuster understands this, and, as the shepherd of his flock, I sincerely hope that he does, he's decided to ignore it for the sake of his "best friend vs. babymaker silliness".

It is my great hope that the parishioners of Blessed Teresa, like so many of their Catholic brothers and sisters, are years ahead of the hierarchy of Holy Mother Church in understanding that it really is about love, compassion, tolerance. 

As a very wise man once said "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."