Published: January 30, 2007 11:01 pm         

Stephanie Salter: Remembering the greats of my Catholic Church

TERRE HAUTE — The Catholic Church lost the regular service of a couple of great priests this past week. One died. The other was forced from his longtime pastorship into retirement.

When I say “the Catholic Church,” I mean, of course my Catholic Church, the religious entity that called to me more than 20 years ago and said, “Surprise! This is where you belong.”

As letters to the editor in previous months have sternly admonished, my Catholic Church is not the church of many of the men who currently lead it. It is not the church of people who see its millennia of rules and regulations (hundreds of which have changed over the centuries) as a kind of razor-wire fence to keep out the undesirables.

It is not the church of The One And Only Litmus Test For Disciples Of Christ: a person’s stance on legalized abortion.

Catholics who are inclined toward the razor-wire and single-issue witnessing of the Gospel had little good to say at the passing Sunday of the Rev. Robert Drinan, the first priest to serve as a voting member of Congress.

As for the news that auxiliary bishop Thomas Gumbleton had been ordered to leave his pastorship at St. Leo parish in Detroit, one could almost hear the champagne corks popping among certain segments of the faithful.

Drinan was 86, a Jesuit priest from young manhood to the grave. Gumbleton is 77, another lifer for Jesus who entered seminary as a high school boy. While neither man ever marched in a pro-abortion rights parade or argued that the Vatican is irrelevant, both got on the wrong side of church authority fairly early and stayed there by openly and enthusiastically ministering to the undesirables.

Drinan actually celebrated Mass at Trinity University on Jan. 3 in honor of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He didn’t even stop her from taking Communion.

Pelosi was born and raised Catholic, she is the mother of five children, has been married to the same man for 43 years and, throughout her political career, has been an advocate for social and economic justice for the poor and marginalized.

But Pelosi cannot pass The One And Only Litmus Test For Disciples Of Christ. As a lawmaker for people of all and no faiths, she sees nuance and private decision making in birth control and abortion. She does not believe in abortion, but she does believe that women who choose to end unwanted pregnancies, and the physicians who help them do that, should not be classified by their government as criminals.

Drinan, who served five terms in Congress until Pope John Paul II put an end to clergy in elected office, shared many of Pelosi’s priorities. He was a tireless foe of racism, social and economic discrimination and the mindless assembly line of death that is war.

As a representative from Massachusetts, Drinan was the first person in Congress to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. It wasn’t about the third-rate burglary at Watergate or even the coverup. It was Nixon’s unilateral decision to bomb Cambodia that inspired the priest to outrage.

“Can we be silent about this flagrant violation of the Constitution? Can we impeach a president for concealing a burglary but not for concealing a massive bombing?” he asked on the floor of the House in 1973.

A year later, in a speech to the American Academy of Religion, Father/Congressman Drinan turned his criticism toward his fellow Christians. Appalled at the lack of public protest over myriad threats to humankind— from mass starvation to the nuclear arms race — Drinan demanded: “Where are the voices of the churches on the principles and policies that the United States is following and not following?”

As for Gumbleton, he has compounded his error of including pro-choice Catholics among his diverse flock by also ministering to gay and lesbian Catholics. A committed pacifist, he helped found the international peace movement, Pax Christi, and has put his body where his principles are in anti-war and anti-nuke demonstrations around the globe.

Gumbleton has further riled the hierarchy by refusing to obey a John Paul II dictum that prohibited even the discussion of the ordination of women. In the past few years, he also has become a vocal supporter for adults who allege they were sexually abused as children or adolescents by Catholic priests. In testimony before Ohio legislators last year, the bishop confided that he, too, had been sexually abused as a seminarian by a priest.

Since 1983, Gumbleton has served the racially mixed, inner-Detroit parish of St. Leo’s. Earlier this month, he was presented with the Martin Luther King Spirit of Detroit Award for his public service.

Church officials say Gumbleton’s ouster was merely a personnel move: Every bishop must submit a letter of resignation to the pope when he turns 75; Gumbleton was overdue. He still will be allowed to return to St. Leo’s to visit and say Mass, a spokesman for Detroit’s Cardinal Adam Maida said.

Gumbleton believes he was removed from pastoral duties because of his public criticism of the sex abuse scandal and his support for alleged victims who are suing the church or seeking prosecution of decades-old crimes. In his last homily to his parishioners, however, he implored them to remember “that you are the body of Christ and that you are carrying out his work and that you will commit yourselves to continue this.”

Several years ago, I interviewed Bishop Gumbleton at a liberal Catholic convention in Los Angeles. We talked about a wide range of subjects, including the changes he had seen over the years at the U.S. Bishops Conferences.

The co-author more than 20 years before of a powerful pastoral letter on peace and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, Gumbleton said priorities had changed since the 1980s. Only a handful of men at bishops conferences bothered to attend sessions devoted to the discussion of peace anymore.

“There aren’t too many of us in the room these days,” he said with a soft smile. “It can get pretty lonely.”