McNally has more to say on the subject:
- Gumbleton is being hailed as some sort of hero for his supposed outspokenness regarding priestly sex scandals. I disagree. He has little credibility on this issue because, I believe, he was a participant in the obstruction of justice regarding pedophile priests about whom he surely had personal knowledge of their criminal behavior, and has yet to acknowledge any of it.
A few questions:
1) Can Bishop Gumbleton list any instances in which he went to the police to report this abuse? Let's see it.
2) Has Bishop Gumbleton acknowledged his personal involvement in the cover-up of many priests we now know were sexual predators? Surely he had some dealings with the notorious pedophile Father Shirilla in the 1970s, when complaints were made to the chancery from victims. Gumbleton was running the archdiocese under Cardinal Dearden at that time. What was Gumbleton's role in the Shirilla episodes? How many times did he personally approve Shirilla being sent back into parishes and to teach at the seminary?
3) Has Bishop Gumbleton ever provided testimony about his role in the cover-up? Has he ever explained exactly what the archdiocese did to prevent offending priests from being removed from ministry, and to keep them out of jail? Has he told us which of his peers are untrustworthy? I'd like to see it, if he did.
Bishop Gumbleton has hardly come clean on his involvement.
Back in 1993, I was told by the investigative reporter from the Detroit News who broke the story of Shirilla's misdeeds that one of his victims committed suicide. I often think of that young man when I see bishops pretend they were ever-so-innocent about what they were involved in, as they dodge and weave when asked simple questions about their own involvement in the situation.
I spent virtually my whole life in the Archdiocese of Detroit and have often wondered why Gumbleton has taken contradictory positions.
Back in the 1960s and '70s, for example, he was a major leader in trying to shut down all Catholic schools, especially in the City of Detroit. Cardinal Dearden called them 'bastions of racism,' and Gumbleton actually said there should not be Catholic schools because they create a ghetto mentality. Yet, only a few months ago, Gumbleton was protesting the closing of Catholic schools in Detroit and urging people to picket and write letters to the chancery.
I don't think he has ever explained why he changed his mind. Such an explanation would, at least to me, require some kind of intellectual honesty in admitting he was dead wrong when he was in power, and offer an apology to the hundreds or even thousands of Catholic families he damaged by forcing the closing of the schools.
Nowadays, he joins groups like Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful and adds his name to those protesting the way chanceries are run. He claims to want 'collaboration' and 'dialogue,' but back in the 1970s and '80s (which often seems like yesterday to me), he wielded his authority ruthlessly. I have spoken to many priests who bitterly complained that he was the worst kind of ideologue as an administrator, and 'punished' conservatives by assigning them to undesirable parishes.
How does one change his stripes so easily?
- In March 1992, New Ways Ministry held its 'Third National Symposium on Lesbian and Gay People and Catholicism: The State of the Question' in Chicago. Five hundred people attended the event, including three mem
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