Jeffrey Miller

I saw of rumor of the following in one of Matt C. Abbotts’ columns and now VOTF has confirmed it.

At the VOTF Holy Trinity affiliate meeting in Washington DC on February 24th, VOTF will be awarding Bishop Thomas Gumbleton with a National VOTF Priest of Integrity Award. Bishop Gumbleton will be acknowledged as a priest of integrity whose prophetic voice of support for victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse continues to change for the better the landscape of silence that enabled decades of abuse.

I couldn’t say that VOTF has jumped the shark since they were already on the far side of the shark to begin with. This just proves that their whole alignment with the priest abuse scandal was just a show and that all along their real agenda was right along with the Call to Action agenda (who they also favorably quote in their press release). This also is no news to anybody who has followed VOTF since their beginning.

Bishop Gumbleton does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to reporting of priest abuse. Last year he said that he was abused when he was younger, though refused to name the abuser. If this was true then why didn’t he come out with this much earlier? Those who do abuse rarely have single victims. So while it is true that victims are often traumatized and are hesitant to reveal abuse, you can’t exactly call someone a "priest of integrity" who was quite late in revealing this. Even if the abuser has already passed on, other victims of the same would find some healing if the persons name was pointed out by a prominent victim.

Catholic journalist Jay McNally recently posted over on Dom’s blog and picked up in a column. (slightly edited).

Back in the early 1990s, when I was editor of The Michigan Catholic in the Archdiocese of Detroit, I got to see the face of the clerical abuse scandal up close, and believe me, by no stretch was Gumbleton any more a friend of abuse victims than any other generic bishop. I was repulsed by the chancery’s coddling of pedophiles and actively gay priests, some of whom held positions of great responsibility under Cardinal Adam Maida. There were no big secrets on this point.

Indeed, Gumbleton did not follow archdiocesan protocol when he was informed by a [male] victim that a priest, then in good standing in the archdiocese, had abused him as a teenager. The public policy at the time was that the archdiocese was supposed to refer such allegations immediately to a very secret review board. But Gumbleton did not do this.

It was nearly a decade later that the priest was finally brought to trial and put in prison. So, in my book, when he had the chance to call the police and report the sex abuse by the priest, Gumbleton sat on his hands, actually obstructing justice.

Since I first saw the recent preposterous claim that Gumbleton is an ‘outspoken advocate’ for sex abuse victims, I have been trying to figure out how to detail Gumbleton’s deplorable obstruction of justice in this particular case, but I have to maintain the anonymity the victim and his family have requested. So, I’m working on that now, and have been in contact with the family.

In any case, I want to say that on the sex abuse scandals 10 and 15 years ago, Gumbleton was nowhere to be found among those agitating for action to put the pedophiles in prison, or out of ministry.

Gumbleton has also been a major promoter of the group Dignity. It did not surprise me that when the county prosecutor in Wayne County (which covers part of the archdiocese) finally started investigating local priests, the public learned that one of pedophile priests was in Washington, D.C., saying Mass for Dignity, even though he had been laicized. This priest pleaded no contest to sex abuse and spent a year in prison.

I don’t believe Dignity when they claim they did not know this priest saying their Masses was a pedophile who was laicized for his misdeeds. Nor do I believe that Gumbleton would have remained silent about this priest — he was not reported to police until 2002 — if Gumbleton were genuinely concerned about victims of abuse.

When he had administrative authority to prevent abuse by priests, Gumbleton did nothing, as far as I can tell, to intervene.

It was nearly a decade later that the priest was finally brought to trial and put in prison. So, in my book, when he had the chance to call the police and report the sex abuse by the priest, Gumbleton sat on his hands, actually obstructing justice.

Regardless of the accuracy of the charge it is certainly evident that Bishop Gumbleton has not been any kind of positive player when it comes to abuse and in fact might have been involved in covering it up. Of course VOTF does not care about any of this. They are not going to aware a bishop from a diocese where it is quite apparent that scandals of this sort ever spiraled out of control. Especially since those same bishops are antithetical to VOTF not very well hidden agenda.

Bishop Gumbleton is also a promoter of homosexual acts. In working with Dignity and New Ways Ministry he said "Homosex is healthy sex." So obviously by VOTF’s standards integrity has nothing to do with being faithful to Church teaching.