Archbishop Denis Hart believes the confession is sacred. Credit:Darrian Traynor Consistent the archbishops may be, but they are entirely out of touch with society generally, and with their own staff and people. Hart and Costelloe should not be surprised at the cries of hypocrisy that have echoed in mainstream and social media when they have appeared to threaten people's livelihoods like this while those in leadership positions like theirs have previously proved inept or craven in ridding the very same institutions of child predators. It was never the church's place in Australia to be arbiters of policy or morality: church leaders and members get a voice in the debate like everyone else. But, if the archbishops do not understand why their words ring more hollow today, I know many Australians will tell them. In this context, such blatant attempts to suborn democratic processes by threat to some LGBTI people (whatever those processes end up being) may well achieve a result opposite to that intended. It is not likely to be only those who oppose the funding of religious schools generally who will see such ill-considered threats as clericalist overreach, beyond the proper bounds of the separation of church and state.

Terry Laidler is a psychologist and former Catholic priest, But perhaps as importantly, the archbishops are out of step with their own Church. This is hardly surprising: many Catholic leaders today hold positions they were appointed to under the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, popes who stacked the decks with bishops who supported their ideological orthodoxies. They, like many others, are probably uncomfortable with the new pastoral direction of Pope Francis, who consistently applies the teaching of his encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium that "realities are more important than ideas", whether speaking to Filipino street children forced into work or saying that Christians owe gay people they have offended an apology. One of the touchstone issues for this group of bishops is unquestioning loyalty to the Pope: it is hard to see how they can have it both ways. The "reality" here is that opinion polls show consistently that 60 to 70 per cent of Australian Catholics support marriage equality. They see it as no threat to their families or to the sacramental ideal of marriage to which many of them aspire. They are the ones with a grounded, implicit understanding of the role marriage plays in the reality of people's lives, not just in societies where their church has some influence, but worldwide.

Indeed, for 1500 years of its history, Catholic marriage operated in exactly this way, according to societal norms and laws, not church ones. The great scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas argued explicitly that "[as to marriage's] other [non-theological] advantages…such as the friendship and mutual services which husband and wife render one another, its institution belongs to the civil law". This respected view reflects the common sense that puts the archbishops out of step with the majority of Australian Catholics. Archbishops Hart and Costelloe are, in my own knowledge and experience, good-hearted and well-intentioned men. What distresses me most about the positions they have taken is that they appear so lacking in insight into how their words would affect a young LGBTI man or woman considering contributing to our nation as a teacher. Loading Building discrimination into the structures and systems of our society, like Catholic education, is the very genesis of the sort of homophobia that does so much physical and psychological damage to LGBTI people. Hart and Costelloe purport to oppose it while naively fuelling it. Terry Laidler is a former Catholic priest and is a psychologist.