Pope Francis and the Gays

I read in the Times  this morning that Pope Francis in one of his informal off the cuff interviews on board a plane, clearly not speaking from the papal throne, said that the Catholic Church should apologize to gays.  This astounding statement merited no more than page four or five below the centerfold; granted the world is still weaving in shock from the effects of the Brexit vote, and last Sunday was Gay Pride Day and its parade in Manhattan, so the compositors of the front section had their work cut out for  them.  I have been thinking about an apology from the Catholic Church.  No,  I don't expect a priest to appear at my front door.  I wonder if I were to read local papers I would read a report of a sermon given in a local Catholic Church announcing come kind of apology.  I will sort of keep tuned, but I am not expecting too much.  It's a little late in the day for me, having been vigorously demonized by that institution for the past seventy years ever since I reached puberty and acted on my homosexual instincts.  I was not a Catholic communicant, but used to be an Episcopalian, a  church with similar pretensions.  It produces an interesting warp of the mind and soul to have adult authority figures unanimously telling you consistently that you are fundamentally evil, that your acts are evil, that the emotions residing in your libidinal psyche are deranged evil, evil, evil.  That's a lot for a teen aged kid to take in year in and year out, and then to go on into adulthood, shedding the childhood fears and certainties but knowing that somehow you are flawed, at fault, unwholesome, to be shunned.  Oh, not ever day, not every person, and indeed one can fashion a pretty good life, in my case, improbably marry, father children, become a reasonably successful academician with a career of creative authority, and in the course of this life in academe meet up with a lot of other gay males performing more or less like normal human beings.  But you knew and they knew: yup, damaged goods.  There's always the hint, the shadow, the taint, the moral weakness, the dirt of your desire.  Maybe you finally become strong and positive, and walk out the front door, proud and tall, but then sad to say you're a little too shrill, you know how to camp it up a little too much, to hide your rage, your fear, your social confusion.  Thank god, for strong martinis.  And then it really didn't matter anymore, too late for my generation.  I once remembered interviewing a newly arrived graduate student and in my capacity of chair of the department asked him how he was getting along, new to the department, new to Manhattan, and he enthusiastically described his courses, and then added: "And I've met a wonderful guy and we've started dating."  Just like that.  I wanted to start crying, crying for all the hate, the anger, the fear that this kid was not going to experience or allow himself to experience.  I want to believe that the massacre of Orlando is just that--a night of murder by a madman.  Once upon a time I would have said it is the whole world and maybe it is among some religions, maybe in Uganda and other exotic places.  The hate will not end because Pope Francis suggests an institutional apology from a major historical gay hater, but it's a step, thank the Lord, it is a step.