By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
In a stellar example of pastoral leadership, one of the nation’s youngest bishops, 49 year-old Marquette Bishop Alexander K. Sample, has banned 79 year-old Bishop Thomas Gumbleton from speaking in his diocese because of his positions in support of homosexuality, contraception and women’s ordination.
The public controversy erupted when Marquette Citizens for Peace and Justice invited Bishop Gumbleton, a retired auxiliary bishop of Detroit, to address their group. Although bishops normally extend a common courtesy to one another to inform each other in advance when one bishop wishes to make a speech or appear in another’s diocese, Bishop Gumbleton neglected to do so. Bishop Sample said he received a communication from Bishop Gumbleton only after the situation had already been made public.
“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,” Bishop Sample said in a public statement. “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.”
The matters at issue are Bishop Gumbleton’s very public support of homosexuality and his long time association with both New Ways Ministry and Call to Action, groups that have been censured by the Vatican for moral and doctrinal reasons, especially concerning the promotion of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle and the ordination of women.
“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,” Bishop Sample said.
“I realize that these were not the topics upon which Bishop Gumbleton was planning to speak,” he continued. “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. In order that no one becomes confused, everyone under my pastoral care must receive clear teaching on these important doctrines.”
Supporters of Bishop Gumbleton expressed shock and surprise by the move.
“We’re really confused about it,” Darlene Dreisbach, a member of the Marquette peace organization, told The Mining Journal. “Doesn’t that seem like the Middle Ages?”
Dreisbach claimed that Bishop Gumbleton told her organization that he was forbidden to speak publicly, but that Bishop Sample did not tell him why. She went on to praise Bishop Gumbleton’s work in the peace movement and mentioned nothing about his more controversial associations.
“He was the founder (member) of Pax Christi USA,” she said. “He was one of the first bishops to speak out against the Vietnam War.”
Gumbleton, whose homilies can be read in The National Catholic Reporter, has been arrested several times for anti-war protesting and performing acts of civil disobedience outside of The White House.
“I don’t know how one bishop can deny civil rights,” Dreisbach said, adding that she now has to cancel every event planned for the Bishop’s visit.
Others see this public rebuke of a liberal bishop as an encouraging sign of the times to come, when a younger breed of prelates raised under the faithful tutelage of Pope John Paul II will gradually replace an aging group of bishops who entered ministry during the turbulent 60’s and 70’s.
“The bishops aren’t sworn to each other, they are sworn to obey the gospels,” veteran pro-life leader Joe Scheidler of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League told LifeSiteNews.com.
“But if a bishop is so bad” like Gumbleton, Scheidler said, “If they are doing something that is causing scandal, it takes a strong bishop to call them on the carpet.”
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