Posted on 04/06/2024 7:39:52 AM PDT by Ennis85
One of the Catholic Church’s most infamously dissident prelates, Archbishop Thomas Gumbleton, died April 4 at age 94.
In many ways, Gumbleton’s life was emblematic of the direction the Catholic Church took after Vatican II. He was born in 1930 and was one of nine children – a Catholic family size now rare outside of Traditional Latin Mass circles. Gumbleton and several of his siblings pursued religious vocations. He was ordained a priest in 1956, shortly before the Second Vatican Council and its use as justification to radically change Catholic worship. In 1968, Pope Paul VI appointed Gumbleton an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Gumbleton went on to spend much of his episcopal career advocating for left-wing causes, most notably the undermining and changing of Catholic moral teaching.
“The vast majority of his public life was spent scandalizing souls and attacking the immutable teachings of the Catholic faith,” Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute, told LifeSiteNews. Gumbleton “openly advocated for homosexuality, even to the point of telling supporters of same-sex ‘marriage’ to continue receiving Holy Communion, which is a sacrilege. He encouraged Catholics to ‘make their own decisions‘ about the use of contraception, despite the Church’s firm teaching that the deliberate use of contraception (is) intrinsically evil. He asserted that there are valid arguments for the ordination of women to the priesthood. He argued for the ordination of actively homosexual men. And he was a regular participant in the annual assemblies of the heretical Association of U.S. Catholic Priests.”
“St. Paul warned about such men as Bishop Gumbleton, ‘that they are enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things.’ Such wolves in sheep’s clothing are the cause of the destruction of countless souls, and at news of his death, the best thing I can say is, ‘May God have mercy on him,'” Hichborn said.
Gumbleton refused to follow canon law and submit his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI when he reached age 75 in 2005, the year after he had been involved with “seamless garment” efforts to conflate Catholic teaching on intrinsic evils with social ills. Benedict XVI accepted Gumbleton’s resignation in 2006.
Gumbleton supported pro-LGBT efforts way before the cause became vogue in the Church or society.
LifeSiteNews reported in November 1997 that Bishop Gumbleton signed a petition in support of the Catholic-bashing show “Nothing Sacred.” The Catholic League described the show as having the goal of putting “a positive spin on Catholic priests who prefer Hollywood’s libertine vision of sexuality to the moral teachings of the Church. This propaganda is fodder for dissenting Catholics and anti-Catholic bigots alike.”
He was affiliated with numerous gay activist organizations such as the Triangle Foundation, the Rainbow Sash Movement, New Ways Ministry, SHARE, and Call to Action. In 1995, he received the Call to Action leadership award.
In 2000, he supported a city “non-discrimination” ordinance that critics said would have forced the Catholic Church to hire those living lifestyles in open contradiction of Catholic teaching. (Over the past two decades, critics of such measures have been repeatedly proven right.)
In 2006, Gumbleton revealed that he’d been abused by a Catholic priest as a teenager.
In 2009, then-Marquette, Michigan Bishop Alexander Sample banned Gumbleton from entering or speaking in his diocese, citing his pastoral duty to defend the “faith and morals” of the Catholic Church.
“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,” Sample explained at the time. “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.”
Gumbleton was also barred from speaking in the Diocese of Tuscon, Arizona in 2007.
In 2013, Gumbleton was one of 10 bishops who teamed up with a pro-Planned Parenthood group to release a report urging Catholic organizations to fund groups linked to the promotion of abortion and other acts opposed by the Church.
Current Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, who has led the archdiocese since 2009, has urged Catholics to vote pro-life and in 2014 banned New Ways Ministry from speaking at a Detroit parish. He said in 2013 that Catholics who support same-sex “marriage” should not receive Communion. Gumbleton publicly rebuked Vigneron – his own archbishop and one of his successors – at the time, telling Catholics who dissent from Church teaching, “Don’t stop going to Communion. You’re OK.”
Nevertheless, Vigneron issued a statement this week praising Gumbleton as “a faithful son of the Archdiocese of Detroit.”
“Bishop Gumbleton was a faithful son of the Archdiocese of Detroit, loved and respected by his brother priests and the laity for his integrity and devotion to the people he served,” Vigneron said. “We in the Archdiocese join his family and friends in praying for the repose of his soul and asking God to grant him the reward of his labors.”
An obituary published in Detroit Catholic, the news service of the Archdiocese of Detroit, offered the following gloss: “Known equally for his frequent trips to nations suffering from economic fallout and wars, his stances against Church teaching on topics such as homosexuality and women’s ordination, and his advocacy of peace and anti-racism efforts, Bishop Gumbleton was at times a controversial figure in Catholic circles.”
If there was ever a time for the Church hierarchy to apologize for the spiritual terror inflicted upon so many Catholics over the past 50 years, and reflect on what the novelties, heresies, and dissent championed by Gumbleton and his confreres have done for the Church – that would be mass apostasy, parish closures, the end of Christian culture, widespread despair, wretched art, blasphemous liturgies – this would be it. But Catholics paying attention likely aren’t holding their breath.
Where’s Powers Boothe when you need him?
More fuel for the hell fire
May God have mercy on his soul.
When sexual weirdos take over, the Church dies.
When sexual weirdos take over, the Church dies.
Because godd is pro perverts?
Love the sinner does not mean you endorse or a attend a mock marriage between 2 men or 2 women
Nor does it mean you pretend someone is the opposite sex they were born.
I hope he repented before he passed away, but if not, oh well.
its quite clear to me that Gumbleton himself was an active homosexual.
These hypocrites enrage me. In modern Western society, they can do any profession and live as a homosexual as they please. Yet they purposely choose instead to live as hypocrites and destroyers of the one faith and profession that requires them to be chaste.
Very true. He probably was active in the lifestyle, given how enthusiastically and unreservedly he cheered it.
That tells me all I need to know about those men.
Maybe an altar boy or two....or two hundred.
Only the good die young.
If blasphemous, Christ-hating queers like Gumbleton and satanist tools like Helder Camara (hero figure to Klaus Schwab!) were never punished, why Lefebvre?
Sounds like he is more homodox than hetrodox!
Ducking and running!
May God have mercy on his soul.
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