Soul farce

A lawyer, a Catholic lector and a porn writer walk into a bar... That's not the set-up for a joke, that's the life of South End resident Scott Pomfret. An attorney by day, Pomfret also writes gay erotica and publishes male romance novels, the Romentics line, with his partner Scott Whittier. Besides being a button-downed lawyer and an unbuttoning expert in his second career, Pomfret is heavily involved with St. Anthony's Shrine, the Catholic Church at Downtown Crossing.

How does Pomfret reconcile being Catholic with being gay and writing porn?

"This book is the answer to that question," laughs Pomfret. His just-published book, Since My Last Confession, chronicles his spiritual evolution since becoming a lector at the Shrine, frankly and humorously detailing both his internal struggle with a faith that says homosexual behavior is sinful, and his attempts to effect change in the Church through unusual methods like "stalking" Cardinal Sean O'Malley. (No restraining orders were contemplated; the stalking largely entailed a long string of letters.)

The obvious audience for Pomfret's story is Catholics - straight or gay, practicing or lapsed - but the appeal doesn't stop there. Last Confession deals with issues that many Christians of all denominations have wrestled with: the conflict, or perceived conflict, between church doctrine and queer identity. All of this plays out against the backdrop of the fight for marriage equality in Massachusetts, making the book an interesting historical document as well as religious inquiry.

Last but not least, Pomfret's funny and irreverent style should make the book interesting to anyone just looking for a laugh,. "Think of the church as a cloth-napkin restaurant," he helpfully explains to non-Catholic readers. "The priest is the chef. The acolyte is the holy busboy." And for the confused readers who are struggling with heterosexuality, Pomfret offers tongue-in-cheek guides to the gay world and helpful checklists like How To Spot A Gay Priest.

Because Pomfret makes fun of himself repeatedly in the book for having "gay voice," I almost thought I had dialed the wrong number when I phoned him for an interview. "Is this your work voice?" I teased, frightened out of my "interview voice." He laughed and settled into a voice that wasn't particularly gay, but was thankfully much less prosecutorial.

Explaining the book's genesis, Pomfret revealed he originally had a more serious work in mind. "I had this notion," he said, "to take the weekly reading and sort of riff on it from a modern, gay Catholic perspective. It was going to be a lot heavier and more theological. I quickly realized it was going to be boring, and that I didn't have the theological background to pull it off.

"Humor is what gets people into a topic, especially people who had bad experiences with the Church," he continued. "So I mined the vast amount of humor to be found in the Catholic Church. The only way I can stay in the Church at all is to be able to laugh."

Asked why he stays, Pomfret quickly gets serious. "To me," he explained, "being ex-Catholic is like being ex-gay. I just can't do it. Other faiths and traditions don't resonate with me. And at [St. Anthony's] my church experience is a 'small c' church experience. ... I've seen deep pastoral work from these people, and I get to participate in that work.

"I'm just not willing to surrender that to the bastards who happen to be in the chancery or in Rome. I'm not willing to give that up to them any more than I'd be willing to get drummed out of my job for being gay."

Pomfret hopes to share that gay pride with other gay Christians. At the very LGBT-friendly Shrine, Pomfet has encountered many gay Catholics "who are literally dying with shame over being gay." He hopes his book will help heal some of the "spiritual destruction" wrought on gay people by the Church.

"One of the reasons to stay in the Church," he said, "is to speak to these people whose families really disapprove and tell them their lives do not have to be filled with shame. It kills me that often the reaction for gay people who might otherwise be spiritual is that the Church has turned them off so much that they cut spirituality out of their lives entirely."

Underneath the jokes, this is a mission that Pomfret takes very seriously, and wonders if he's capable of carrying out. "I'm not really the right gay Catholic to write this book," he laughed. "I don't lead a varnished life. But no one else is doing it."

Hearing Pomfret's take on God and spirituality, it's hard not to wonder if he wasn't actually raised Quaker or Unitarian. Despite disagreeing with Church doctrines about sex and papal infallibility, there is devoutness in him. Though some disenfranchised Catholics criticize the Church as distant and mired in ritual, Pomfret spoke of the immanence of the Divine.

"Papal finery and Popemobiles are about as far from God as you can get," he said. "I have a rich experience of God in the small things. He's in the small experiences of life."

Wondering if the Church had changed a lot since my own last confession - a long, long time ago - I asked Pomfret if he believed it would change its position that active homosexuality is sinful within our lifetimes. Pomfret sighed, then quoted Charles Martel of the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry: "We have the Catholic Church on a 500-year plan."

"Sometime I fear the Church is just spinning off into irrelevance," Pomfret confessed. "Obviously society is changing, but when I look at who's coming in as new priests, they are a much more rule-bound, Rome-centric type than these Vatican II priests who are retiring. That is not a very hopeful sign."

If there's a bright side to that prospect, it's that Pomfret will have more opportunities to change anger into humor - and perhaps very soon, as word of Since My Last Confession gets around. The initial feedback has been positive, but so far only friends and family have read the book; Pomfret is braced for some angry e-mails. Nevertheless, he's eager to get a copy into the hands of O'Malley.

"I promised him a signed copy," he laughed.

Scott Pomfret reads from Since My Last Confession on Friday, June 20 at Calamus Books in Boston; on Saturday, June 21 at Book on the Square in Providence; and on Thursday, June 26 at Caf? Emmanuel in Boston. For more information visit www.sincemylastconfession.com.