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Vatican moved quickly to punish Gumbleton

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a retired auxiliary bishop of Detroit, revealed for the first time yesterday details about his removal as a parish pastor in 2007. NCR published a report of the talk Gumbleton delivered at pre-conference meeting of Call to Action in Milwaukee.

Gumbleton had followed the sex abuse crisis in the press, especially the church’s response. “I thought they were starting to move along.”
The bishops had developed the Dallas Charter in 2002, outlining policies for dealing with sexual abuse cases.

“I can remember actually being at the press conference when they announced the charter and they said ‘and now the whole problem is behind us,'” Gumbleton said. “They really talked like they had settled this whole thing.”
“It’s not over and it won’t be over until we within the church deal with it in a very open, honest and thorough way,” he said. “And that’s going to take much change within the church.”

After being lied to in the past by a fellow bishop who said he had taken care of an abusive priest when in fact he hadn’t, Gumbleton “was totally upset, disillusioned even when I discovered how easily he could put me off, tell me ‘I’ll take care of it’ and then do nothing.”

Barbara Blaine of SNAP, a longtime friend of Gumbleton, asked him if he would testify on behalf of SNAP for a statute of limitations case. A date in January 2006 worked for Gumbleton. The hearing would be in Ohio.

“My testimony made the points on why we need to make this change,” he said at the Call to Action conference session Nov. 4. “I also, I thought about this, and thought maybe the most persuasive thing I can tell you people is that I’m a victim.”

He couldn’t talk about that for more than 50 years, he said. “There was one time [after 2002] and I almost got up at the bishop’s meeting to tell my own story and to try to convince the bishops that we had to approach this whole thing differently. But I had my hand up but I didn’t get recognized right away and pretty soon that session was over. So I never did it at the bishops’ meeting. But this time I wrote it into my testimony.”

After giving his testimony in Ohio, the bishops in Ohio reacted so quickly, Gumbleton said, that they must have called the papal nuncio that night.
“And here’s the thing that’s strange: By that time, I’m a bishop already — 30 years at least — and I know all these people. And I’ve met with them many times — you know, the regional meetings, the national meetings. Not one of them called me up to talk to me about it. Now if they were angry they could call me up and holler at me, scream at me if they wanted. Or [ask] ‘why did you do it?’ Not one. And not one bishop across the whole country ever said a word to me about it in any kind of personal way.

Within a matter of days Maida called him about a letter from the papal nuncio that he was to share with Gumbleton.

The bishops had contacted the Papal Nuncio, Gumbleton said, and the Nuncio had contacted Cardinal Giovanni Re from the Congregation for Bishops in Rome. A letter for Gumbleton came from the Nuncio to Maida and then was shared with Gumbleton.

He corresponded with the congregation in Rome before over various issues when he was a bishop, he said, and the correspondence always takes a long time. But in this case, everything happened within 10 days. Cardinal Giovanni Re of the Congregation for Bishops wrote a two and a half page letter outlining the canons of canon law Gumbleton had violated.

“I don’t remember what all they were because I wouldn’t even read the letter,” Gumbleton said. “In fact, Maida didn’t even give it to me at first. The main thing was I had broken a canon which they said I violated what in the canon is called the “communio episcaporum”: the communion of bishops.

“We’re all supposed to be together, think together, talk together, you know, one voice. You know, how can that be? You’re a church of human beings; you can’t be.” But because he had left the Detroit archdiocese and gone to another diocese to give testimony in support of something the bishops in that region were against, he had been in violation, he said.

“And so this was, from their point of view, a major crime that I had committed,” he said. “So they demanded that I resign immediately as bishop and also resign my parish where I had been a pastor.”

He didn’t have to be a pastor, but he wanted to be a pastor and “really loved being” at St. Leo, he said.

“I couldn’t understand why I had to resign as pastor,” he said. He had no problem resigning as bishop, he said (“Because this was 2006 and by canon law I should have already retired a whole year ago, but when my date came up to retire, I decided — I knew there was no chance, but I just thought ‘I’ll test this and see what happens'”).

He sent in his resignation letter, and “immediately, my resignation was accepted,” he said. But he didn’t want to resign as pastor.
“In the archdiocese of Detroit, we have a policy at age 70, every pastor will write a letter resigning from his parish but if he’s in good health and wants to continue to work” he can be appointed as a year-by-year administrator, he said.

Other priests and classmates Gumbleton knew had done this, he said.
“And that makes sense, because when you’re pastor, as I said before, it’s hard to remove a person even if the person has become senile and is not functioning well at all,” he said. “You can’t remove him. Rome will defend the pastor.”
But an administrator can be moved anytime. “So I wrote a letter in which I said I’m requesting to resign from St. Leo Parish but with the understanding that I would be appointed administrator on a year-by-year basis for as long as it’s feasible for me to be the pastor.”

Within a few days, Maida sent him a letter, he said, telling him that request was unacceptable and that he had to resign. Gumbleton went to talk with Maida, and Maida repeated what Re had written in the letter, that Gumbleton had to resign as bishop and from the parish.

“That astounded me, partly because what does Cardinal Re know what’s good for a parish in Detroit, who should or should not be pastor?” Gumbleton said. “And why would the archbishop accept Cardinal Re’s demands? I mean, after all, he’s the archbishop. ”

The archbishop (or the pope) is the only one who can assign or remove a pastor in his diocese. “A cardinal who’s the head of a congregation doesn’t have any kind of jurisdiction or authority like that at all,” Gumbleton said. “So why would Maida — well, it’s part of the whole club system with the cardinals: you’re not going to stand up against another cardinal. And so he would not appoint me as administrator, so I had to leave the parish.”

Within a few days, one of the auxiliary bishops went to Gumbleton’s home and told him he had to leave. He asked if he had a couple of weeks to make arrangements but was told no: he had to leave. When he talked to Cardinal Maida, he asked for time to prepare the people of the parish for the change.
Gumbleton said he saw a letter that stated he was resigning the day before it was to be handed to parishioners. “So Sunday morning I have to pass this out at church, that says I’m gone right now. Well that was a terrible shock to the people and to me.”

“As I looked at it, though, it was all so irrational, because I’m removed from the parish, I not allowed to say Mass there … I could say Mass any other place in the diocese. So it was really against the people.” He continued to say Mass in the diocese, do confirmations, and be engaged in the other activities he did, such as Pax Christi.

“Yet the one thing that seemed to me that I should have been allowed to do is continue be the pastor of the parish for the benefit of the people, because we have a shortage of priests and nobody’s ever been appointed there as pastor since,” he said. “That’s really hurtful especially to a small parish. So it seemed like it was just vindictive. It wasn’t helping anything and wasn’t appropriate for the people of the parish to be punished for what I had done.”
He apologized to the parishioners at St. Leo and they were understanding, he said. He has been back to St. Leo since to celebrate Mass.

Gumbleton was also told not to go into another diocese without getting explicit permission from the bishop of that diocese, he said. “And that was an attempt, I guess, to prohibit my public speaking.”

Once, he was to speak in a diocese for a major Catholic organization but had to cancel at the last minute, but his name was still on the flyer. He got a voicemail from the bishop of that diocese, saying “I don’t want you to ever come to this diocese for any reason ever” and Gumbleton was surprised at how angry he was, because he was not a bishop to which he had violated “communio episcaporum.”

“I really have a sense that they [the Vatican] weren’t trying to silence me giving presentations on other topics which I do quite frequently,” he said. “I think they really were all upset about this one issue and that’s because it really does” put the focus, in a sense, on “a very important part of the church, and that’s the ordained priests, bishops and popes. ”

With that restriction, Gumbleton said, “It doesn’t feel very pleasant to go into a diocese to speak and know the bishop of the diocese would rather you not be there. And yet I don’t let that inhibit me, so I find ways to speak throughout the country,” he said.

“I don’t have any great anger against the bishops, Gumbleton said. “I feel bad for our church basically. I just feel we’re missing an opportunity to be healed because we don’t want to look at the deep problems that exist. And sooner or later we’re going to be forced to do that.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic columnist resigns over “devil-makes people-gay” commentary

The author of a column in the official publication of the Boston archdiocese, who also served as an advisor to the U. S. Catholic bishops, resigned on Friday.

Daniel Avila wrote an opinion piece published in The Pilot, a weekly newspaper. Published on Oct. 28, just in time for Halloween, the article suggested that homosexuality is the work of the devil.

Gay rights groups and many among the Catholic laity were upset by the author’s views, which they considered to be bad science, theology, and spirituality.

Indeed Avila’s piece, “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction,” caused a disturbance in Greater Boston and beyond, especially in the LGBT and allies’ blogosphere.

Accordingly, Avila resigned on Nov. 4 from his position as an advisor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. His resignation was accepted, to be effective immediately, according to the Associated Press.

Locally, for more than a decade, Avila advised the Massachusetts Catholic Conference (MCC).

The USCCB and the MCC are official lobbying arms of the nation’s bishops and the state’s bishops, respectively.

Reactions of gratitude and relief were swift from advocacy organizations.

“Mr. Avila’s dangerous view that Satan causes people to become gay has no place in any credible news publication, whether it be mainstream or religious press,” said Sharon Groves, director of The Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program.

“He ignored not only the widely accepted science that [homosexuality] is normal, but also the modern thinking of many religions. I am pleased the Conference of Catholic Bishops accepted his resignation and I ask them to speak up and denounce his dangerous rhetoric.”

Two days before Avila left his position, the Pilot, which is the nation’s oldest Roman Catholic publication, retracted the column. At the same time, Avila apologized for any pain his piece caused and said his views are not those of the bishops.

“Statements made in my column, ‘Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction’ . . . do not represent the position of the [USCCB] and the column was not authorized for publication as is required policy for staff of the [USCCB]. The teaching of Sacred Scripture and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church make it clear that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God and have inviolable dignity,” said Avila in a written statement.

“ Likewise, the Church proclaims the sanctity of marriage as the permanent, faithful, fruitful union of one man and one woman. The Church opposes, as I do too, all unjust discrimination and the violence against persons that unjust discrimination inspires. I deeply apologize for the hurt and confusion that this column has caused,” Avila said.

Terrence C. Donilon, communication’s secretary for the Boston archdiocese and Cardinal Sean O’Malley, said via e-mail correspondence, “The Avila piece was pulled because Dan retracted it and apologized and because it simply should not have been printed/published in The Pilot.”

“It is not the position of the archdiocese or the church and is simply wrong,” Donilon added.

“Daniel Avila’s column was hurtful and deeply offensive so we are grateful he quickly resigned,” said Wayne Besen, executive director for Truth Wins Out. “Demonizing never creates a healthy dialogue and Avila represented a major obstacle to the church’s claim to respect all people.”

“The [USCCB was] correct to accept Avila’s resignation,” said John Becker, director of communications and development for advocacy organization based in Burlington, Vt. “There is no place for such extremism and Avila’s poisonous remarks served to further alienate LGBT Americans from the Catholic Church.”

Marianne Duddy-Burke of Medford, Mass., said she, too, was pleased with bishops’ decision but called for further action.

“Avila’s resignation is a good first step for the bishops,” said Duddy-Burke, executive director of Dignity USA, the nation’s oldest LGBT Catholic advocacy organization.

“But they need to demonstrate they understand the ramifications of the violent language against the gay Catholic community and our families,” Duddy-Burke said over the telephone.

“Dignity USA is calling for a policy advisory committee consisting of LGBT Catholics and family members to be appointed by the bishops and to be consulted by them on decisions that effect to our community.”

The Pilot’s Oct. 28 commentary is not the first time that editor Antonio Enrique published an apology and now a retraction.

“Cardinal O’Malley, as publisher of The Pilot, should strongly consider requesting that Mr. Enrique submit his resignation,” said Charles Martel, a local social worker in private practice and co-founder of Catholics for Marriage Equality. “Ultimately, this will be the only way that the cardinal shows he is serious about the meaning of accountability in the Archdiocese.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Boston Catholic journal withdraws gay devil column

The oldest Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States has retracted an opinion column suggesting the devil may be responsible for gay attraction.

The column, which appeared Friday in the Archdiocese of Boston’s official newspaper, The Pilot, was titled “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction.” It was written by Daniel Avila, an associate director for policy and research for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In the column, Avila says “the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.”

It also says “disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart.” It says that when “natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.”

The 182-year-old newspaper withdrew the column from its website on Wednesday, saying it had failed to recognize the “theological error” before publication. It posted an apology from Avila saying the column didn’t represent the position of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose stated purpose is to “promote the greater good which the Church offers humankind,” and wasn’t authorized for publication.

Avila said he deeply apologized for the “hurt and confusion” the column caused.

Archdiocesan officials said Avila’s apology would appear in the issue of The Pilot to be published this week, The Boston Globe reported.

The Boston archdiocese, the bishops’ group and Avila were involved in communications leading to the decision to retract the column, said archdiocese spokesman Terrence Donilon, who called Avila “passionate about his faith and passionate about his church.”

“This one,” Donilon said, “clearly just got away from him.”

Several gay rights organizations, including DignityUSA, an association of gay Catholics, and MassEquality, a Massachusetts group organized to support same-sex marriage, didn’t immediately return telephone or email messages seeking comment Wednesday night.

Complete Article HERE!

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“Idolizer of the Market”: Paul Ryan Can’t Quite Hear Catholic Church’s Call for Economic Justice

Paul Ryan accuses President Obama of engaging in “sowing social unrest and class resentment.” The House Budget Committee chairman says the president is “preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment.”

Paul Ryan accuses Elizabeth Warren of engaging in class warfare. The House Budget Committee chairman the Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate is guilty of engaging in the “fatal conceit of liberalism.”

But what about the Catholic Church, which has taken a far more radical position on economic issues than Obama or Warren? What does the House Budget Committee chairman, a self-described “good Catholic,” do then?

If you’re Paul Ryan, you don’t decry the church for engaging in class warfare. Instead, you spin an interpretation of the church’s latest pronouncements that bears scant resemblance to what’s been written — but that just happens to favor your political interests.

Ryan’s certainly not the only Catholic politician in Washington to break with the church.

For years, Catholic Democrats from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to former House Appropriations Committee David Obey have taken their hits for adopting positions that are at odds with the church’s teachings with regard to reproductive rights and same-sex marriage.

But many of the same politicians who align with the church on social issues are at odds with the social-justice commitment it brings to economic debates.

Ryan’s rigidly right-wing approach to issues of taxation and spending, as well as his deep loyalty to Wall Street (he led the fight to get conservatives to back the 2008 bank bailout), has frequently put him at odds with the church’s social-justice teaching.

But never has the distinction been more clear than in recent days, as Ryan’s statements have reemphasized his status as the leading congressional spokesman for policy positions that are dramatically at odds with those expressed in a major new statement by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace?

That puts the congressman in a difficult spot.

Ryan has always identified as a Catholic politician, and he has frequently suggested that he is guided by the teachings of the church, going so far as to write in a July, 2011, column for a Catholic publication that: “Catholic social teaching is indispensable for officeholders.”

So what, Ryan was asked after the release of the Pontifical Council’s statement, did the House Budget Committee chairman think of proposals that the Rev. Thomas Reese of Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center suggests are “closer to the views of Occupy Wall Street than anyone in the U.S. Congress”

Time magazine observes that: “Those politicians who think the Dodd-Frank law went too far in attempting to reform Wall Street will likely need smelling salts after taking a look at a proposal for reforming the global financial system that was released by the Vatican… Calling into question the entire foundation of neo-liberal economics and proposing one world financial order? You never know what those radicals over at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace will come up with next.”

So what was Paul Ryan’s take?

What did the chairman of the House Banking Committee think of the Pontifical Council’s highlighting of Pope John Paul II’s criticism of the “idolatry of the market”? What of the council’s call for “the reform of the international monetary system and, in particular, the commitment to create some form of global monetary management” that will end abuses and inequity and restore “the primacy of the spiritual and of ethics needs to be restored and, with them, the primacy of politics – which is responsible for the common good – over the economy and finance”?

Ryan’s initial response to a pointed question about whether the church, with urging of “the global community to steer its institutions towards achieving the common good,” might be engaging in the “class warfare” he so frequently decries, was to try and laugh the contradictions off.

“Um, I actually do read these,” Ryan joked, with regard to Pontifical pronouncements. “I’m a good Catholic, you know… get in trouble if I don’t.”

Pressed to actually answer the question, the usually direct and unequivocal Ryan suddenly embraced moral relativism.

“You could interpret these in different ways,” he said of the statements from the church’s hierarchy. “I think you could derive different lessons from it,” he added.

Amusingly, the congressman then took a shot at moral relativism, suggesting that when the Pope expresses concern regarding the global financial system he is “talking about the extreme edge of individualism predicated upon moral relativism that produces bad results in society for people and families, and I think that’s the kind of thing he is talking about.”

That’s an interesting statement coming from a congressman who frequently mentions his reverence for Ayn Rand, the novelist who set herself up as a high priestess of individualism.

It’s also wrong.

The statements from the Pope and the Pontifical Council have been focused and clear in their criticism of the greed and abuse that characterizes the current financial system, of their concerns about the economic inequity its has spawned, and especially about the damage done to the poor by the “idolatry of the market.”

The Pontifical Council is calling for dramatically more oversight and regulation of financial markets, and for the establishment of new public authorities “with universal jurisdiction” to provide “supervision and coordination” for “the economy and finance.”

“These latter (economy and finance) need to be brought back within the boundaries of their real vocation and function, including their social function, in consideration of their obvious responsibilities to society, in order to nourish markets and financial institutions which are really at the service of the person, which are capable of responding to the needs of the common good and universal brotherhood, and which transcend all forms of economist stagnation and performative mercantilism,” the council continues. “On the basis of this sort of ethical approach, it seems advisable to reflect, for example, on… taxation measures on financial transactions through fair but modulated rates with charges proportionate to the complexity of the operations, especially those made on the ‘secondary’ market. Such taxation would be very useful in promoting global development and sustainability according to the principles of social justice and solidarity. It could also contribute to the creation of a world reserve fund to support the economies of the countries hit by crisis as well as the recovery of their monetary and financial system…”

That’s a reference to a financial speculation tax, something that Ryan — a major recipient of campaign contributions from traders, hedge-fund managers and other Wall Street insiders — has historically opposed.

The Pontifical Council says that such a tax should be considered “in order to nourish markets and financial institutions which are really at the service of the person, which are capable of responding to the needs of the common good and universal brotherhood, and which transcend all forms of economist stagnation and performative mercantilism.”

There is no moral relativism in that statement, no list of options. Rather, there is a call from the Catholic Church for the development of an economy and financial systems “capable of responding to the needs of the common good and universal brotherhood.”

I happen to agree with the church on this one. My sense is that my friend Paul Ryan does not.

America is not a theocracy. Ryan certainly has a right to deviate from church doctrine as he chooses. But, hopefully, he will recognize that he is, like those members of Congress who support reproductive rights or same-sex marriage, distancing himself from the position of the church.

He is free to do so, of course. But those of us who understand that budgets are moral documents — which outline the values and priorities of a society — are equally free to wonder whether Paul Ryan, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, is perhaps engaging too ardently in the “idolatry of the market.”

Complete Article HERE!