BishopAccountability.org
	Sexual Abuse Isn't What Shaped Detroit Bishop's Life By Laura Berman The Detroit News January 17, 2006 http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060117/OPINION03/601170353/1007 B ishop Thomas Gumbleton, who stepped forward last week to describe being molested by a priest when he was a teenager, was shaped by the passions and shames of a long-ago era. But not as you might expect. When the Detroit auxiliary bishop testified in support of Ohio legislation that would allow abuse victims a longer statute of limitations, he revealed a secret he had held for decades, even while the issue of pedophilia in the church raged. The story -- of a young seminary student preyed upon by a priest and teacher -- might seem to explain, at least in part, Gumbleton's compassion for the downtrodden over the course of his adult life. He's the bishop speaking at the Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War congress (1989). The one participating in the "Global Exchange Delegation with Families for Peaceful Tomorrows" in Afghanistan. For decades, he has allied himself with liberal causes, traveling to the world's most forsaken places: Kazakhstan, Hiroshima, Haiti, Guatemala, Peru. Moment of conversion His has been an uncommon life, and his preoccupations -- with the struggle for peace, justice and international human rights -- dovetail with this window he has offered into his personal experience. That story line, of the traumatic and shameful childhood incident providing a frame for preoccupations, would be classic. It would help explain how someone who had risen to the rank of auxiliary bishop in the Catholic Church hierarchy would choose, at age 75, to openly criticize and oppose the hierarchy. But Gumbleton, who spoke to me by telephone Friday, said the incidents, while painful and confusing to him at the time, weren't life-shaping. "What really changed me," he said, "the true conversion I underwent came about because of two things. One was a trip to Cairo, Egypt, in the early 1960s. And the other was the Vatican Council." In Cairo, he witnessed firsthand devastating poverty, masses of people living in conditions so bad he could not have imagined them. And as a young priest in Rome during the years of the Vatican Council, he was part of a seismic change in the church -- one that rededicated the institution in 1965. "There was a sense of the responsibility of the church to transform the world," he recalls. That in turn fueled his own sense of mission as an activist. "That was the moment of my own conversion," he says. Different perspectives The sexual shame he knew at 14 didn't transform him, he said. "Perhaps it enabled me to have compassion for victims." Until now, he did not speak out because he felt embarrassed, because it was difficult. But since Wednesday, Gumbleton has been "amazed" by the response he's had -- most of all, people writing to say he'd given them hope for the church. A man who hadn't been in a church in decades wrote to say he felt he could again return. Gumbleton is aware that Cardinal Adam Maida is displeased with his decision. "I'm sure he wishes that I had his perspective," he said thoughtfully. "And I wish he had mine." You can reach Laura Berman at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.