NewsBishop Gumbleton to gay marriage supporters: Keep communing
DETROIT (WJBK) -The Detroit archbishop's recent comments about communion and support for same sex marriage is still sparking debate among Catholics. Now a local priest is speaking out publicly against the archbishop's approach. "Don't stop going to communion. You're okay," said Retired Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit Thomas Gumbleton. Long a progressive voice in Detroit's Catholic community, Gumbleton is breaking with Archbishop Allen Vigneron days after Vigneron declared that supporters of same-sex marriage should refrain from receiving Holy Communion, comparing it to perjury. "If you look at it from a pastoral point of view where you're trying to reach out to people, trying to draw them in, then the last thing you want to do is impose a penalty or make them feel like they have to impose a penalty upon themselves," Gumbleton said. The bishop says the church's approach should be pastoral not punitive. Just this week, he counseled a couple with a gay son. "Husband, wife, raised seven children, Catholics all their lives, they're in their eighties now, and the mother says to me, you know I can't go to communion anymore," said Gumbleton. "They're hurt and she's crying because we can't go communion and that means so much to them." Gumbleton says it's a matter of conscience, which is deeply personal. "Not everybody's going to come to the same conclusion at the same time, so we have to keep on working with people and trusting people that they're trying to do the right thing," he remarked. Gumbleton read from a pastoral letter penned years ago at a bishop's conference called "Always Our Children." "Judging the sinfulness of any particular act is a matter ultimately between God and the individual person." He also says that an individual person must choose whether or not to receive communion.... |
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: Woe to those who make unjust laws
Destroying unions hurts the least among us from the Lansing Street Journal Dec. “We firmly oppose organized efforts, such as those regrettably now seen in this country, to break existing unions and prevent workers for organizing.” My brother bishops and I wrote that more than a quarter-century ago in our 1986 letter Economic Justice for All. Regrettably, it rings true still today. The right-to-work legislation that was passed by the House and the Senate in Michigan just this month is designed to break unions. It is designed to prevent workers from organizing. And we must oppose it as firmly as we did during the 1980s. As Catholics, we believe that if the dignity of work is to remain protected, then the basic rights of workers must be protected – fair wages, freedom from discrimination and the right to organize and join unions. We believe in justice. We believe in the common good. Right-to-work laws go against everything we believe. Economists tell us that right-to-work laws devastate economic justice. They lower wages for all workers. They lessen benefits for all workers. They increase poverty for all people.... Bishop Gumbleton Sees Peace As Gospel Imperative from The Georgia Bulletin March 31, 2011 ANDREW NELSON, Staff Writer ATLANTA--Jesus requires people to make a stand for justice. Part history lesson and part theology discussion, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit traced the Catholic Church’s stance against war during a Lenten retreat here. “War must belong to the terrible past. If there is such a thing as infallible teaching, this is it,” said Bishop Gumbleton, a founder of Pax Christi USA. The church’s just war theory, an attempt to limit war and control its devastation, is often ignored or misinterpreted, Bishop Gumbleton said. “Thou shall not kill. Yet somehow we keep doing it,” he said. Bishop Gumbleton gave a three-day presentation at Sacred Heart Basilica starting on March 14 about the church’s teaching on peace and violence. “I have to say, prayer is not enough. If we are true to our faith, Jesus compels us to make a stand,” on issues of war and peace, said Bishop Gumbleton. |