The church, like Jesus, should say 'yes' to new things

Yeah,
A bishop I actually like!

God bless Bishop G. No, the bishops are not listening, or at least none of their public statements indicate they are paying attention to the voices of the faithful, the signs of the times, or the reaction to their recent fixation on religious liberty. "Hey, are there any other bishops out there who agree with Bishop Gumbleton that 'new things' are due? If so, would you kindly raise your voice with courage and conviction."

And to all the faithful: "You have a voice too. You can write letters, but they may not get read. You can picket the cathedral, but only a few will honk. Or you could fast during Lent, and stay away from church until Easter. By then the bishops will be 'all ears'. They will remind you that your immortal soul is in jeopardy and that the poor are suffering because Sunday offerings are way down. If they are willing to talk by then, you can tell them that you have sent your offerings to local food pantries and other nonprofits because they tell you where your money goes. If they still want to listen, tell them we need to make some serious, obvious changes in the way things are done."

Lent is a great time to get down to the hard work of change. Before the dirt is completely gone from our foreheads, perhaps we could give some thought to hearing the cry from our preaching Bishop and get our hands dirty too with the hard work of change.

Thank you Bishop Gumbleton for your encouraging words! Our own parish is in great turmoil due to an autocratic pastor whose behavior has caused many people to flee the parish. He has also forced two much-beloved bilingual priests to leave, one of whom has been very active for many years in the large ethnic community which forms the greater portion of our community. He has dissolved many longstanding committees and banned ministers from parish service who object to his leadership. A sizable group of longtime, active parishoners have implored the bishop for a new pastor. The bishop, responding to great public pressure, met with the chosen representatives of the group only once. He appeared to listen to those longtime, active parishioners who presented the case for the larger group. That was several months ago. The bishop sent a letter asking the concerned group to try to work with the pastor. However the bishop has not made time to meet with the parishioners' group again. The pastor agreed to meet with the group only once, refusing the services of a moderator and leaving before the meeting was concluded. Needless to say the representatives of the parishioners did not feel that they had had a hearing. In recent months, both the bishop and the pastor have avoided meeting with the persevering, concerned group of parishioners, which continues a weekly vigil in front of the church. Last night I was reading an interview with a former much-beloved pastor, may he rest in peace, in which he said, "The sin of the Church is clericalism." To my mind this seems to fit our situation. Hopefully, the Holy Spirit will guide us through this great turmoil. Please keep us in your prayers!

Thank-you and God bless you for your message.

I miss your honesty, Bishop Gumbleton. Excellent homily.

As always, Bishop G. is well worth reading and discussing.

Please, editors, if a future writer refers to a century and you are not sure that it is correct, remember that John XXIII was Pope in the mid 20th century, when the years began with 19. The "early 19th century" would be between 1800 and about 1840. (This is not the first time I have noticed a confusion of the century with the years in NCR.)

I pray that this can happen within my lifetime. Until it does, I recommend Monasteries of the Heart, a new movement started by Sr. Joan Chittister. The focus is on spiritual development, and it consists of members from all over the world.

"We have to try to be faithful like Jesus and to say "yes" as God is speaking to us in our church today, and follow the new ways where God is leading us. It can make our church a renewed, vibrant, living church in small communities all over this archdiocese and throughout other parts of the world like Guatemala, to have communities that are alive and vibrant because we will listen to God's new ways leading us to an ever deeper renewal of our community of disciples of Jesus."

yet on Valentine's Day Bishop Braxton in Illinois fired a 72 year old priest for departing from the new missal's written word. A colleague resigned in solidarity. This just before the major season of Lent and Holy Week?

Well said, Bishop.

Not well said Bishop! Unless I'm mis-reading your text, it sounds like you believe Isaiah was leading them away from the old Mosaic laws and traditions of the past and moving toward a new reality with God. Just the opposite is true. Isaiah was teaching them to repent and to return to God's instructions. Isaiah was attempting to re-establish the Covenant relationship between God and Israel. The Jewish people were in rebellion with God again, which was beginning to become a pattern.
Leadint your flock into "new age" & "progressive" ideas and thinking this will resolve our most urgent issues is very irresponsible to my way of thinking.

Andrew K.

Well said, Bishop Gumbleton! Oh, that there were more like you. Thanks!

The place where God is making things new will be in places like Guatamala with 250,000 and only a few priests. The changes in part emerge from the lack of priests. The last place will be places, parishes and diocese, those who are the source of most of the financial donations. The hierarchy will always make certain that they will enough priests. Years ago, when I was quite active in my own parish, we had a new pastor assigned to us who was very much like the pastor described in a previous post who made sure that the "old way" would survive. How I wish more priests/bishops have the courage to speak like Bishop Gumbleton and that the hierarchy in particular would be open to God making things new.

Dearest Bishop Gumbleton:

Thank you for your insightful homily. I really needed to hear your words today. I am one of the individuals in our church that the institution does not listen too: I am a woman. Upon much reflection, in my life, it has been the institutional church that has not been there for me. Persons, like yourself, inspire me, enabling to move forward in a faith journey seeking God's kin-dom or justice in the world. I will pray for God's spirit to move specifically tomorrow as I will be part of a panel discussion on the ordination of women in our church. As you said, it is time for the people of God to "be faithful[,] like Jesus and to say 'yes' as God is speaking to us in our church today."

I do not doubt that His Lordship Bishop Gumbleton is a devout and religious man in his own way. His message however is one of novelty over Tradition and emotion over doctrine. This sort of candy-floss bubble-gum Catholicism has thankfully been out of date for decades and completely out of step with the current thinking of the Church. All this hippy nonsense about "breaking down the hierarchy", bear in mind that this is coming from a validly ordained Catholic Bishop, is offensive and childish. When we speak of the Hierarchy and the Holy Father we are speaking of the government of the Church established by Christ Himself through St. Peter and his successors. The Church is not a political party or a special interest group whose modes of operation and function can be changed on a whim of public opinion, they are beyond human authority, beyond public opinion and cannot be altered. This is not to say individual human members of the government of the Church are beyond reproach, but the Institution of the Church itself has been given to us directly by Christ and is Divine, above the fickle, changing opinions of society and culture. The Church thinks in centuries, not years. It is high time the Second Vatican Council was shown to be the thing it actually was; an ecumenical council, the most recent of many, who laid down some new pastoral directives. It didn't replace the thousand years of theology and practice that preceded it, it wasn't Year Zero of the New Catholic Church or anything else, it was a pastoral council in line with the body of Tradition, nothing more, nothing less. Liberal extremists hijacked the message of the Council and distorted it into a monstrous mockery of the Catholic Faith, ripping down altar rails without permission, removing ancient and valuable statues, destroying sanctuaries loving decorated by the hard-work and charity of generations of Faithful, all in the name of a Council who had ordered nothing of the kind. That is the tragedy of Vatican II. Under Benedict XVI it is a tragedy being put right, the damage being undone and its false message forgotten, but men like Bishop Gumbleton, well meaning as they may be, do not do Christ or His Church any service by penning such subversive material against Holy Church.

Beautiful. Full of love of God and Church and the people of the Church.

Anonymous, I pray that each parish will have a group of loving Catholics who gather to talk about married clergy, women clergy, and what is needed to make practice of our faith possible and relevant and inclusive of all who seek to know God.

Recently, in my heart I've had the words of John, Chapter 10:4 "When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice."

I think we recognize Jesus in your message, which is why our hearts are full of joy. May your seeds reap a great harvest!

As for new things, how about you think of something new? It isn't the '70's anymore. The leadership did listen and he said "no." How about we try fidelity for awhile?

Jesus could bring something new because He is God. But ever since then, we cannot introduce anything really new, because we are not God.

John XXIII wanted a renewal of the Church, but did not want to bring in anything radically new, in the sense of different from what the Church received from Jesus in the beginning. He never mentioned anything about female priests, for instance.

As Catholic Christians, we believe that the Church is the body that Jesus founded to save humankind. He founded it with its sacraments, its faith and the means necessary to conserve that faith, including its hierarchy with the Apostles, and later bishops. Following Jesus means following the successors of the Apostles, who themselves were the first followers of Jesus, for as Jesus said to His Apostles, "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me."

Thank you, Bishop. You continue to be challenging - calling us to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus. The positive comments to this homily far outweigh the negatives. If only other Bishops were as open and honest as you. You are SO aware that we in the pews are struggling.

An Ash Wednesday service by Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Community of Washington, DC in front of The White House: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE2hoRt5ApY&feature=youtu.be

God Bless you Bishop. You are a beacon of light and your thoughts and ideas keep me, however precariously, in the church. Do stay well and pray for us as we pray for you.

If there were more courageous clergy in our Church who thought, taught and preached as Bishop Gumbleton does along with living the words he writes, we would not have our sisters and brothers leaving our churches for the feel-good comfort of the mega churches. We need to let his words sink into our hearts and souls and act upon them. Let his thoughts and actions take hold in us and allow them to come "under our roofs"... for lack of a better term!

Very interesting commentary. But the good bishop assumes the 30 million fallen away Catholics all left because the Church wasn't sufficiently "liberal" or congregationalist in government or insufficiently lax in moral teaching.

Maybe. Maybe not. Does anyone know? Would it matter?

Instead of each generation trying to learn and live and keep fellowship with the deposit of faith of the former generation - always open to the spirit but not confusing it with the fad of each time.... we get the call to accept "anything new" as though ipso facto that's innocent, good, and wonderful.

Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. How would we know?

Take the claim that celibacy is a problem, that women ought to be ordained ministers. If a married clergy is the answer, if women priests are the answer that God wants to give us for our questions..... then we ought to have lots of divine signs of fruitfulness, an explosion of grace occasioned in all sects and groups that allow for a married clergy, a female clergy, within a moral code that is expansive for "new things" like contraception, abortion, extra-maritial affairs and a re-defining of marriage.

Instead we see the Anglican union collapse in the United Kingdom and indeed in Africa as well.... while the Catholic Church grows in both places despite celibacy, all-male priesthood, and continuity of sexual moral teaching.

So what is the Spirit telling us? What is the criteria for judging a 'new' idea to be good and God's will vs. just a novel idea?

The good bishop provides no such method of discernment other than the assumption that whatever pops into the mind of a self-described "progressive" must by Golly be God's will and whatever was Pre-Vatican II or Papal right now must "obviously" be old-hat.