[caption id="attachment_77980" align="aligncenter" width="607"] Santa Claus, is that you?[/caption]

Reverend Richard T. Lawrence recently broke away from the Catholic Church by giving a sermon supporting marriage equality.

In his sermon, Lawrence brought out a letter from the archbishop, urging parishioners to vote against the marriage equality bill in Maryland on Nov 6. He dutifully read the letter, then proceeded to talk about why he doesn't support it. "Even if we do not believe that gay marriage ever could or should be allowed in the church," he said, "we could live with a provision that allows civil marriage of gay and lesbian couples."

The priest received a standing ovation from his congregation. Lawrence's homily was originally posted online but it was taken down from the website after a Baltimore archbishop said it ran counter to what Catholics want today.

It sounds like there's a congregation worth of standing ovations that say different.