On a warm Saturday evening in August, Father James Martin, S.J. was driving home from a wedding in Lambertville, a small city in northwestern New Jersey, when his phone buzzed. The sprightly, 57-year-old Jesuit priest had just returned from Dublin, where he urged members of the World Meeting of Families—a multi-day celebration of Christian views on marriage, love, and the family—to “never underestimate the pain that LGBT people have faced.” Martin’s invitation to appear at the conference, which required a sign-off from the Vatican, outraged the increasingly vocal members of the Church who abhor Pope Francis’s progressive advances and see Martin, a longtime liberal commentator on Catholic issues, as Enemy No.