I wrote this yesterday:

American Catholic bishops attack gay couples all the time. They don’t attack them physically, of course; bishops aren’t beating up gay couples in the streets. But Catholic bishops do real violence and real harm to gay couples whenever and wherever they can: economic violence, social violence, spiritual violence.

And these attacks on gay couples aren’t just hurting gay people, as Brian Cahill wrote in the National Catholic Reporter last week, they’re hurting the church itself. And today brings news of another self-inflicted wound for the Catholic Church:

Lewistown residents Paul Huff, 73, and Tom Wojtowick, 66, had yet to attend a Mass conducted by the newly assigned priest of St. Leo the Great Catholic Church when they were told they would no longer be allowed to receive Communion. Huff and Wojtowick are both lifelong Catholics and have been active participants at St. Leo’s since moving to Lewistown in 2003. They are also a couple who have been together in a dedicated relationship for more than 30 years. On May 31, 2013, Huff and Wojtowick were married in a civil ceremony in Seattle.

According to Huff, four days after the Rev. Samuel Spiering was installed as the new administrator of St. Leo’s, the priest left a phone message at their home asking that either Huff or Wojtowick return his call. “He said, ‘I heard a rumor that you two got married,'” Huff recalled. When Huff confirmed that he and Wojtowick had indeed been joined in a civil ceremony 15 months earlier, Spiering asked for both men to meet him at his office the next day. It was at that point that Spiering informed both men that because of their marriage, they could no longer receive the sacraments in the church or be part of any ministry. Huff and Wojtowick were also told that to regain full privileges within St. Leo’s, they must first obtain a divorce, cease living together and write a statement renouncing their prior marriage. The issue is now dividing the congregation.

Gay marriage is a sin, according to the church, but so is divorce. You know what else is sin? Cruelty.

The community—the community of Lewiston, Montana, population 6,000—is rallying around Huff and Wojtowick. That probably came as a shock to the priest who ordered the men to divorce, separate, and say sorry. But the days when assholes could do spiritual violence—or actual violence—to gay people with complete impunity are gone, at least in the West, as Father Spiering and his bishop are learning.

John Shore wonders where the hell Francis is:

In July of last year, Pope Francis famously said, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

It seems to me that a reasonable answer to that question is, “You are the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the servants of God, direct successor of St. Peter, who was appointed by Jesus to be the head of His church. You are the Pope, Francis. That’s who you are to judge.”

If the Pope, after all, is incapable of judging the difference between right and wrong, then what is the purpose of his position?

Shore is calling on the pope to speak up against—to finally speak up against—attacks on same-sex couples by bishops and priests who theoretically answer to him. I’m not holding my breath.