Bishop Thomas Gumbleton on Abuse Crisis: "The Real Way and the Only Way" to Healing Is the Gospel Path of Reconciliation

I have a dream this morning: that Pope Francis might choose to listen to Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and not whatever dreadful  handlers (Carl Anderson?) he's now listening to about how he should respond to the abuse crisis. In his recent homily for the third Sunday in ordinary time, Bishop Gumbleton states, 

Bishop Gumbleton on the Gospel Message: "This Is a Community Where Everybody Is Welcome"

For those seeking spiritual sustenance at a time when it's sometimes difficult to cling to churches because so much that emanates from the pastoral leaders and some members of churches is eminently unwelcoming, I highly recommend Bishop Tom Gumbleton's homily on John 21:1-19 at National Catholic Reporter right now. This is the gospel for the third Sunday of Easter, and has the risen Lord asking his disciples if they've caught any fish.

Finding the Face of God in Church and World Today

The Vatican's boy Silvio appears about to go up in flames in Italy--though he has taken to Facebook (!) in a campaign to bolster his popularity.  You can, if you wish, click to "like" him there.

Tom Gumbleton Reveals Vatican Punishment of Him, While Bernie Law Throws a Big Party in Rome

So on 4 November Tom Gumbleton was in Milwaukeee revealing that Rome removed him from pastoring his inner-city African-American parish four years ago because he testified in support of extending the statute of limitations for survivors of clerical sexual abuse.  

Through My Most Grievous Fault: Correction to Previous Posting about Bishop Gumbleton

I'm posting this as a separate note to complement what I posted earlier today about Bishop Gumbleton and his disciplining by the Vatican.  I wanted to post this addendum as a free-standing posting rather than a footnote to my previous one, so that any reader who read the first posting and mistakenly thought (as I myself did) that Gumbleton had just been re-disciplined by the Vatican after he was removed from his parish in 2007 would have correct information.

More Catholic News: Ireland Closes Vatican Embassy, Gumbleton Reveals Why He Was Disciplined, and Politics of Religious Freedom

A big Catholic news story that may (but shouldn't) be overshadowed, in the American context, by the Avila story and other intra-U.S. ones: Ireland has chosen to close its Vatican embassy.  This is a history-making move for a country with the deep Catholic ties of Ireland.  As many news sources are pointing out, Ireland will now be the only major nation with a largely Catholic population to lack a Vatican embassy.  For those seeking a summary of what led up to this decision, Patsy McGarry's article in Thursday's Irish Times is outstanding.

Bishop Sample of Marquette on Bishops' Teaching Role: Locking Down Discussion

I wrote yesterday that as the Catholic church crafted its institutional strategy of response to abortion in the period following Roe v. Wade, it moved away from the traditional Catholic insistence that moral insights need to be accessible to reason and thus grounded in open discussion, to a top-down, coercive, lockdown approach that brooks no opposition to magisterial positions and permits no discussion.

I stated,

And then all careful, reasoned discussion of the topic of abortion got shut down in Catholic circles, and anyone working in Catholic institutions and asking for further discussion of this topic (as well as of sexual ethics and women’s ordination) was likely to find himself or herself out of a job and/or silenced. After what happened to Charles Curran, Catholic theologians have trodden very gingerly around these questions.

And, in my view, the result has been disastrous, not just for the church, but for the pro-life movement in general, insofar as it seeks to engage the general public and not merely true believers on the political and religious right. That movement has moved more and more away from reasoned discussion as its primary approach to shifting cultural views of life-oriented issues, and more and more towards what I called shouting and shoving in my weekend postings.

If anyone doubts that this lockdown approach still dominates the Catholic church’s official response to discussions of abortion, sexual ethics, and women’s ordination, I’d like to recommend the recent statement of Marquette bishop Alexander K. Sample about why he is refusing to permit Bishop Thomas Gumbleton to speak in the Marquette diocese.

Bishop Gumbleton had been invited by Marquette Citizens for Peace and Justice to deliver a public lecture. Bishop Sample will not permit Bishop Gumbleton to deliver the lecture.

Bishop Sample states:

As the Bishop of the Diocese of Marquette, I am the chief shepherd and teacher of the Catholic faithful of the Upper Peninsula entrusted to my pastoral care. As such I am charged with the grave responsibility to keep clearly before my people the teachings of the Catholic Church on matters of faith and morals. Given Bishop Gumbleton’s very public position on certain important matters of Catholic teaching, specifically with regard to homosexuality and the ordination of women to the priesthood, it was my judgment that his presence in Marquette would not be helpful to me in fulfilling my responsibility.

I realize that these were not the topics upon which Bishop Gumbleton was planning to speak. However, I was concerned about his well-known and public stature and position on these issues and my inability to keep these matters from coming up in discussion.

However, I was concerned about his well-known and public stature and position on these issues and my inability to keep these matters from coming up in discussion. Translation: The Catholic faithful are forbidden to discuss women’s ordination or homosexuality. Ever. Anywhere. Anytime and any place that “the” teacher can prevent such discussion.

My job as bishop is “to keep these matters from coming up in discussion.” I am the teacher. Your job is to listen and obey—not to discuss.

Bishop Sample is being frank about the policy that guides the institutional Catholic approach to controversial moral issues including matters of sexual ethics, women’s ordination, and abortion at this point in church history. The approach is, simply and brutally, to outlaw discussion altogether—since only bishops are teachers. Lay Catholics are passive receptacles for official teaching.

As my statement yesterday notes, this policy has had disastrous consequences in the life of the church and for its credibility as a moral teacher. People internalize ethical teachings only when they understand those teachings. And understanding comes through conversation, dialogue, reflection. It cannot be commanded by a top-down authority system in which all power resides in the hands of a solitary “teacher” whose teaching role consists of uttering apodictic statements that are to be received, memorized, parroted, but never discussed.

The lockdown approach emanating from Rome in the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict has reduced the faithful to a moral infantilism that has yielded a generation of moral imbeciles, to the extent that people have bought into and acceded to this approach to moral “teaching.” It has fostered a grotesquely inadequate ecclesiology that turns the church into an overgrown head supporting itself on a tiny appendage of a body—at least, in the ecclesial imagination of the hierarchy.

And meanwhile, as Terry Weldon notes in an inspiring statement at Queering the Church today, people, the people of God, do and will continue to talk among themselves, out of earshot of “the” teacher. We have no choice except to do so. We have no choice because the Spirit moves among the people of God every bit as much as it moves through “the” teacher.

We have no choice because the Spirit teaches all of us. Our connection to God would not be vital or intimate—and therefore it would not be meaningful—if that were not the case. Moral teachings handed down to us like museum artifacts to store away for safe-keeping have no meaning for us, until we teach ourselves and each other to understand and value those teachings—so that we can internalize them and enflesh their meaning in our own particular lives of faith.

As Thomas Moore notes in Care of the Soul (NY: HarperCollins, 1992):

It [the soul] likes persuasion, subtle analysis, an inner logic, and elegance. It enjoys the kind of discussion that is never complete, that ends with a desire for further talk or reading. It is content with uncertainty and wonder. Especially in ethical matters, it probes and questions and continues to reflect even after decisions have been made (p. 246).

What a pity that those chief shepherds and unilateral teachers—whose primary task as good shepherds and faithful teachers is to cultivate soul—don’t understand this fundamental insight of spiritual life. Especially in ethical matters, it [soul] probes and questions and continues to reflect even after decisions have been made. And it has to do so, if behaving ethically is to mean behaving ethically as a human being, as something and someone more than an automaton doing what it is programmed to do.

Meanwhile, let the bishops continue to try “to keep these matters from coming up in discussion.” Let them continue to insult their flocks and the public at large by imagining that they can lock “private matters” like disagreements between two bishops or discussions of key ethical issues behind closed doors. They’ll be as successful in these attempts as they might be if they tried to keep water from running downhill.

The Place of Gay Human Beings as a Church-Dividing Issue: Again

I’m thinking these days about a theme I discussed briefly back on 22 April in my posting entitled “The Church’s One Foundation” (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/04/churchs-one-foundation-homosexuality.html). This is the claim of some church groups that homosexuality should be placed on the back burner of church discussion, since the gay issue is not truly a church-dividing issue.

The Florida United Methodist Conference has just held a “Conference Table” to which anyone in the conference is invited. The headline announcing this conference table noted that this was a table at which everyone was welcome.

The topic of this roundtable public discussion was “In Defense of Creation.” A description of the conference table topic on the website of the Florida UMC Conference notes, “IDOC2, as it is called, is the church's attempt to engage public policy on issues that most affect the human race, according to Florida Conference Bishop Timothy Whitaker, task force chairman. The document addresses three areas: nuclear proliferation, global poverty, and environmental issues” (see http://flsite.brickriver.com/event_detail.asp?PKValue=1845).

Issues that most affect the human race: nuclear proliferation, global poverty, and the environment. From one standpoint, it’s hard to argue with the claim that this configuration of issues covers the terrain admirably well—these are, indeed, among the issues most affecting the human race, the ones churches most need to address in their preaching and ministry today.

From another standpoint, however, there’s something wrong with this picture. In the first place, search as one will through the entire Florida UMC Conference website for any mention at all of homosexuality, and one draws a complete blank. Scrutinize the program for the recent Florida UMC Annual Conference meeting for any mention of the term “gay” or “homosexual/ity,” and you’ll come away with the impression that any issues revolving around those terms must have been resolved.

Because the church is totally silent about them. The church is totally silent about issues relating to homosexuality as issues most affecting the human race today.

The implication of the church’s claim that nuclear proliferation, global poverty, and the environment are the key issues affecting the human race today is that the issue of homosexuality—the place of gay human beings within the human race and the churches—is a non-issue, a side issue, one beneath notice.

But if this is the case, why did the most recent General Conference of the United Methodist Church spend an inordinate amount of time discussing that very issue? Why have state conferences such as the Florida Conference almost come to blows about that issue, such that there are fears the church may split?

If the issue of where LGBT human beings fit into the human race and the churches is a non-issue, why has every UMC General Conference for almost a decade now battled through this issue? Why is the worldwide Anglican Communion in anguish over this issue? Why are almost all the churches in the world groaning through this critically important moment of human history in which, for the first time in history, LGBT human beings are claiming the right to a place at the table, as openly gay people affirming their own God-given identities and refusing to apologize for these identities as they approach the Lord’s table?

If the question of where gay human beings are to be “placed” within the human community and the churches is a non-issue, one about which churches can justifiably be silent while discussing issues of key importance to the human race today, why have some Anglican churches in the United States chosen to break communion with gay-affirming bishops, placing themselves under the episcopal jurisdiction of bishops far from their own dioceses? Why have bishops such as Peter Akinola in Nigeria bitterly resisted inclusion of LGBT people in the churches, while bishops such as Desmond Tutu have spoken out courageously about homophobia as the new apartheid of the human race and the churches?

If the issue of where gay human beings fit is a non-issue, one about which churches may justifiably be silent when discussing the important issues facing the human community today, what is one to make of the recent announcement of the president of Gambia that he wished to see all gay persons in his country sought out and beheaded?

If the question of how to fit LGBT human beings into human society and into churches is not a premier issue causing conflict within the human community today, why did the Human Rights watch send a letter to the president of Gambia—only days before the Florida United Methodist Conference held its discussion of “the” issues that most affect the human race—noting that the president’s violent rhetoric and actions towards gay human beings violates human rights covenants and “abdicates one of the most important responsibilities of political leadership: to respect, protect, and promote the human rights of all” (see http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/06/10/gambia19088.htm)?

If the question of how our gay brothers and sisters are to be included in our human and church families is a non-issue, why did the Pope announce immediately before new year’s day that he considers the issue of protecting the family (read: of resisting gay marriage) to be one of the premier issues confronting the churches today, one to which he intended to devote primary attention in 2008?

I sense more than a bit of flim-flammery in the claim of many church folks today that the question of how to place our gay brothers and sisters is not a significant, crucial, noteworthy issue for discussion—not truly a church-dividing issue. What is really going on with this claim is a dishonorable attempt to keep gay people in the shadows—and to keep in the shadows, as well, the shameful way the churches continue to treat gay human beings.

It goes without saying that nuclear proliferation, poverty, and the environment are among the most significant issues facing the human community today. It goes without saying that churches which wish to be faithful to the example of Jesus and to the gospels should be discussing and trying to deal proactively with these issues.

But these issues do not exist in isolation from issues of gender, from issues of patriarchy. The militarism that is at the root of nuclear proliferation is rooted in male domination and exploitation of women, of anything regarded as feminine. Exploitation and destruction of the environment is intrinsically linked to patriarchal systems of social order that give men unmerited dominance over women.

As feminist theologians have long noted, the social issues demanding the critical attention of churches are all interconnected in a web, all interwoven. One cannot understand and deal with militarism, economic exploitation of minorities, or destruction of the environment without understanding and dealing with patriarchy, misogyny, and homophobia. As feminist theologians have long noted, societies that are racist are also not coincidentally almost always societies that are misogynistic and homophobic.

Nor can one understand and deal with the key issues confronting society today without confronting the unjust domination of the churches by white males who profess to be heterosexual.

Part of the silence—a big part of the self-censorship of bishops and other church leaders today, when it comes to gay issues—is a tactic of keeping at bay critique of the ways in which white males who profess to be heterosexual still control most everything in the world, including in the churches. Or perhaps particularly in the churches.

The issue of how to fit our LGBT brothers and sisters into the churches is neuralgic because it casts a spotlight on church leaders themselves—an unwanted spotlight. It casts a spotlight (an unwanted one) on how the churches treat LGBT people.

The discussion unmasks the claim that everyone is invited to the table as a false claim—a shamefully false, starkly false claim. A lie.

Churches must find ways to keep at bay the discussion of the place of their LGBT brothers and sisters at the table, because that discussion will open too many doors to questions about how the church pursues its ministries, how it deals with money, what kind of alliances with powerful people drive the churches and their rhetoric and actions.

The question of how or whether to provide a place at the table for gay human beings should, of course, never have become a church-dividing issue. No church can justifiably claim to be church, when it excludes any group from the table. Every sinner has a place at the table of the Lord. Period. No questions asked.

That is, every sinner has a place at the Lord’s table if the church setting that table wants to claim to be following in the footsteps of Jesus.

No, the question of the place of LGBT human beings at the table should never have been made a church-dividing issue. We who are gay did not choose to make this an issue. Other forces in church and society have done so, and have done so with a vengeance.

That being the case, no church today can flim-flam around the gay issue, claiming it is not and should not be a church-dividing issue, or an issue of key importance to the human community. Indeed, it might well be argued that this question of how to set a place for gay brothers and sisters is the premier issue facing all churches today—the one with the most potential to test the fidelity of churches to the gospel, the one with the strongest ability to test whether churches intend to be church at the most fundamental level possible, the only level that counts: whether churches intend to set the Lord’s table for all sinners.

The church and its bishops don’t pay any price at all, do they—really now—when they take a stand on nuclear proliferation, poverty, and the environment? But the church and its bishops do pay a price, and a steep one, when they resolutely and without qualification announce that their table is open to all, including their gay brothers and sisters, and that their institutions will demonstrate this praxis of discipleship by resolutely and without qualification discarding all forms of discrimination within church institutions against LGBT human beings.

Perhaps Bishop Whitaker and other church leaders who are flim-flamming around discussion of the place of gay brothers and sisters at the table will make the topic of their next roundtable discussion of key issues confronting the churches the following excerpt from a sermon that retired Catholic Bishop of Detroit, Thomas Gumbleton preached recently on what the Catholic liturgical calendar calls the 10^th Sunday in ordinary time. The gospel for the day was Matthew 9:9-13 (see http://ncrcafe.org/node/1907):

There are so many other ways in which we must become a welcoming community, a community that is like Jesus, that is ready to welcome sinners, to be with sinners, to be with those who others would think as not worthy. We have to become a church of great diversity, where we welcome everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation, poverty, wealth. We have to be a church of diversity. We have to share our Eucharist, we have to share our banquet, with all who are out there in the world with us.

When we can reach out as Jesus did and welcome tax collectors and sinners into our midst without making judgment, simply welcoming everyone as God does, God says, "I want mercy more than sacrifice; love more than ritual," this is what is very important and this is what we must try to make happen in our communities, in our church, and in our civil society, so that we really become one beloved community, one family of God where everyone is welcome and everyone gives thanks and gratitude for the God who shows them such love through those who follow his son, Jesus.

This is what is very important and this is what we must try to make happen in our communities, in our church, and in our civil society: to welcome everyone regardless, to share our banquet with all who are out there in the world with us.

The Week in Review: A Candle in Your Heart

Another Friday, and as I look back on the week, once again, I've compiled a small compendium of online articles that have lit candles in my heart. It's often a struggle to keep hope alive in a world that conspires to convince us change is not possible.

It's a struggle to find and speak truth in a world in which the truth is systemically distorted by media, by powers and principalities, by those whose self-interest is served by manipulating the truth.

In such a world, the voices of witnesses such as these help keep the flame lit, when turbulent winds and dark days threaten to extinguish it:

First, I’m grateful for Rev. Andy Burnette’s 20 Feb. posting at Bilerico project entitled “Thanks for Your Concern about My Children” (www.bilerico.com/2008/02/thanks_for_your_concern_about_my_childre.php). Rev. Burnette addresses those who express concern about his daughter, given his decision to speak out courageously on behalf of LGBT rights as a minister in Indiana. He is grateful for those who are concerned about his daughter’s safety. He notes, though, that it is his very concern about his children and their future that compels him to speak out about prejudice wherever it is found:

“I can’t imagine having to admit that, while I believe prejudice is wrong, I didn’t say anything because I was afraid. That admission would teach her that self-preservation is more important than truth and justice, that it’s OK to be quiet about discrimination when speaking up could be uncomfortable. . . .May we have the courage to do what is right, for ourselves, and for the next generation.”

Rev. Burnette’s article includes the quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr., about shallow understanding and lukewarm acceptance that I highlight my own 20 Feb. blog entry.

And today, when a memorial service for Lawrence King is to be held in Westminster Presbyterian Church in Port Hueneme, CA, I want to highlight Sara Whitman’s comments in that same 20 Feb. blog entry. Whitman notes that the national media “has done a complete pass on the [Lawrence King] story.” She decries the silence of the major presidential candidates about Lawrence King’s murder. Sara Whitman’s Huffington Post article was picked up this week on the Towleroad blog at www.towleroad.com/2008/02/lawrence-king.html.

Given that silence, I was heartened to read in Pam’s House Blend blog this week an article entitled “Parents Confront Officials about Lawrence King Shooting” (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=4A0DDC165E766AC3D00D71957B29D080?diaryId=4558). Pam notes that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is keeping track of local vigils organized to remember Lawrence King, and has issued a list of four concrete steps schools can take to confront school bullying of LGBT children.

I’m delighted to hear that GLSEN is calling on schools to address the issue of school bullying of LGBT youth, in light of Lawrence King’s murder. Yet, as I explain in my blog entry of 15 February, the mention of GLSEN reminds me of the role the churches and their institutions play in suppressing open discussion of homophobia and homophobic violence.

As that blog entry explains, in my last position leading faculty at a church-based institution noted for its commitment to civic engagement, I was severely punished by my supervisor for even mentioning GLSEN as a resource for faculty. This supervisor, who is the mother of a gay son and has worked in a leadership position in the United Methodist church, found the mere mention of GLSEN in a church-based school a way of “putting my lifestyle in the face of colleagues.”

The church has a long, long way to go. It is time to break silence.

Since I have chided the presidential candidates this week for their silence about Lawrence King’s shooting, I would like to give credit to Barack Obama for speaking out in Houston against the scapegoating of gay people. Mr. Obama stated, "I know how easy it is for politicians to turn us on each other, to use immigrants or gay people or folks who aren't like us as scapegoats for what they do." A link to a video of this speech is at www.towleroad.com/2008/02/obama-slams-pol.html.

And finally, I would like to give credit to one courageous church leader—in a church not known for its welcome of LGBT people—for daring to remind us that the rejection of LGBT folks by churches undermines the churches’ claim to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

In a homily he gave last Sunday on the second Sunday of Lent, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton stated:

"When I think of how our church acts sometimes, and maybe without our knowing it, any one of us as an individual within the church, when we look at the way of Jesus and look at the way we act, we fall short. I think that within the church, Jesus was always the compassionate, welcoming, loving, forgiving messenger of God. In our church, we still reject people because of who they are. I've said this before and I repeat it today; we fail people who are of homosexual orientation. Most of them have not felt, and still do not feel, truly welcome, truly accepted as who they are and the person that God has made them."

Bishop Gumbleton’s sermon may be found at the blog café of National Catholic Reporter (http://ncrcafe.org/node/1619). Courageous advocates like Bishop Gumbleton deserve to be supported and celebrated by the LGBT community. All too often, they suffer reprisal at the hands of their own church when they speak out—and this has happened to Bishop Gumbleton.

Those whose words I’m citing in this post have been candles to my heart this week, as I continue to ponder the senseless murder of LGBT youth in our land, along with the silence of the churches (and media) about this national social cancer. As the Persian mystic poet Rumi reminds us in his poem “Candle in the Heart,” there is a candle in our hearts ready to be kindled. And it is love that kindles that candle—love that comes to us of its own accord, love that should be accepted and celebrated as it is, not excused or explained away, when it kindles candles in our heart. The love that fills human hearts, changes lives, and pours forth into the lives of others in endless creativity is a precious resource for all of society. Those who love should never be chastised for their loving. They should certainly not be maimed or killed because they love. As Rumi urges:

“Remind those who tell you otherwise that

Love

comes to you of its own accord,

and the yearning for it

cannot be learned in any school.”

In memoriam, Lawrence King (1993-2008). Love never fails . . . .