on losing my pastor

Jesus says in the gospel of Luke that " A prophet is not welcome among his own people." I always wondered about that passage. It used to feel to me like Jesus was indulging in some uncharacteristic whining. Today, I am thinking that Jesus was giving us some pointers on how to identify the real prophets among us.

On Sunday, my parish, St. Leo's in Detroit, found out how very unwelcome our beloved pastor, Bishop Gumbleton, is among his own in the Catholic Church hierarchy. The Cardinal of our archdiocese, apparently acting on orders from the Vatican, has forced Bishop Gumbleton to leave St. Leo's against his will and against the will of his parishioners. You can read about it in the New York Times today or in the National Catholic Reporter. The bishop is apparently being punished for his advocacy for sexual abuse victims, although the official line from the Church hierarchy is that Bishop's forced removal is just the way they normally treat healthy, dedicated inner-city pastors who reach retirement age and want to keep serving their parishes.

St. Leo's is a poor, but spirit-filled parish. We operate a soup kitchen that serves nearly two-hundred people a day. (You may want to pause at this point and reflect on the fact that there are two hundred people in the neighborhood of my church who need to come to a soup kitchen.)

The decision to remove Bishop Gumbleton from St. Leo's puts the very existence of our church and the services we provide in jeopardy. St. Leo's is an unusual place. There are parishioners from the surrounding neighborhood; there are families who have a long history with St. Leo's and return from the nearby suburbs to maintain those ties, and then there are many of us who were initially drawn to St. Leo's by the strong message and example of Bishop Gumbleton, but who ended up staying for the extraordinary community and spirit-filled liturgy we found there as much as for Bishop's challenging and timely teaching.

We are a wonderful anomaly among Catholic parishes--we are economically, geographically, and racially diverse. We have chosen to be together. We learn from each other. We eat meals together. We sing loudly at Mass. At the sign of peace, we move through our beautiful sanctuary and we greet each other like the family that we are. It takes a long time. Our mutual obligation, as Bishop has given us to understand it, is to work for peace and justice in order to bring about the reality of God's kingdom on earth--the kingdom where God's children live through peace and in peace and where no one wants for the basic necessities of life.

Today is Bishop Gumbleton's birthday. He is 77 years old and in excellent health. We have known, of course, that we could not keep him forever. We are also aware of the priest shortage. (Apparently it is hard to get enough priests from that narrow pool of straight, conservative, Catholic men who are willing to take a vow of celibacy). But this wasn't the way my Bishop's relationship with St. Leo's needed to end. We wanted to get old with him, to keep learning from him for as long as we could, to care for him as he cares for us and then to find our own way to keep the parish alive. Maybe we would have found a priest from another parish who was willing to pastor us as well and to continue Bishop's work with us. Maybe the parishioners could have taken more responsibility for running the church and the liturgies. Maybe, maybe, maybe.... but for some reason that no one will tell us, there was an urgent need for Bishop to leave us, to leave the cold little room where he has lived for 23 years and to get out immediately.

Here are the two things that hurt the most: First are the official lies and half-truths from the archdiocese (the archdiocese I support with my tithes, the one that represents my Church) that suggest that this is all very normal and that every bishop is forced to retire and give up his parish, even when there is no new pastor available (we are getting a new "administrator" who apparently will not be saying Mass for us regularly.) The second is the feeling that none of us at St. Leo's are really welcome in the Catholic Church anymore, that this trauma we are experiencing is inconsequential to our leaders. They were willing to hurt us to hurt our pastor. Some of us are still reeling from that realization. What kind of Christianity is this?

My Catholic Church has impoverished herself needlessly by rejecting Bishop Gumbleton and his message. I don't know how to respond right now except for this: I will continue to make the long drive into Detroit on Sundays with my daughter to pray and to worship with my beautiful St. Leo's community, (see the love letter to my church choir below to read how gaga I am for their contribution to our celebration) and I will try harder to be the follower of Jesus that Bishop asks each one of us to be. In the absence of my Bishop, I will do more to imitate his example.

Bishop Gumbleton is still my teacher. Canon law has no jurisdiction over my heart or conscience. Happy Birthday, dear Bishop. Thank you for everything you have given me and my family. God bless you and keep you close as you continue to show us all how to live like Jesus.