Bishop Gumbleton Not Ready to Step Down

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton is supposed to write a letter to Pope John Paul II next Wednesday. Trouble is, he doesn't want to do it.

Why should he be willing to do what he is supposed to do? Promoting dissent requires disobedience.

"Traditionally, you are supposed to write to the Pope on your 75th birthday and offer to resign," Michigan's most politically controversial bishop said, chuckling softly over breakfast. "But it's so arbitrary - some of them they ignore, but if you are the least bit progressive, they accept it immediately."

"Progressive"??? Of course, today that is a code word for disobedient and dissenting...

He is a true child of Vatican II who was studying in Rome while the famous council was going on, and who was changed forever by it.

Ah yes...A true child of that Second Vatican Council which only occurred in some people's imaginations...Apparently, some failed to actually read the documents or failed to understand the documents as the Church does.

He laughed a few years ago when I asked if he thought he would have been made a bishop today. "Oh no!" he said, laughing.

It's a shame that he seems to show no remorse for being out of step with the Church...

What if he somehow just forgets to send the letter in?

"I suspect I'll get a call saying that the Pope is looking for my letter." He thinks forcing him into retirement would be a waste. He says he knows another round of church closings is coming.

Actually the waste has been the years spent sowing the seeds of dissent, disobedience, and questionable teaching among the faithful.

"They say it isn't arbitrary, but it is, and they never address the real reason, which is that there aren't enough priests."

I suppose we'll have to wait and see if a letter of resignation is forthcoming next Wednesday from His Excellency???

Source.