Frances Kissling steps down

and is, of course, lauded by the NYT: (emphases mine)

Backing Abortion Rights While Keeping the Faith
By NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Frances Kissling has been called the “philosopher of the pro-choice movement” by her friends and an “abortion queen” by her critics.

But the name Ms. Kissling wears most defiantly, to the consternation of many religious believers, is Roman Catholic. For 25 years, as president of Catholics for a Free Choice, she has angered the church hierarchy and conservative Catholics by criticizing fundamental teachings on sex.

“I’m so Catholic, I can’t get away from it,” said Ms. Kissling, who was once in a convent. “How I construct concepts of life, of justice, it all comes out of being Catholic.”

Though unknown to most lay Catholics, she has inspired and worked with politicians and activists, many Catholic, to speak out in favor of giving women access to abortions and to artificial contraception.

On Wednesday, Ms. Kissling, 63, will step down from her post, relinquishing her role as one of the most vocal of the so-called bad Catholics, those who manage to accommodate the opposing sentiments of love for the church and anger at much of its doctrine.

“The constant refrain in this office is, ‘Are we really Catholic?’ ” Ms. Kissling said here in a recent interview. “I know with every ounce of my being that you don’t have to agree with the positions of the church on issues of abortion and contraception to be Catholic.”

Many Catholics passionately disagree. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued statements challenging the right of Catholics for a Free Choice to call itself Catholic. Critics dismiss Ms. Kissling’s organization as a mouthpiece for bigger, secular abortion rights groups and a front for anti-Catholic bigotry.

“They could get special attention and get special digs at the church because of their name,” said Helen M. Alvaré, an associate professor of law at the Catholic University of America and a former planning director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the Catholic Bishops conference. “They had no grass-roots base among Catholics. There was nothing very different about them from other pro-choice groups in the arguments they made.”

Catholics for a Free Choice says it gives voice to the large percentage of Roman Catholics who disagree with the church’s position on reproductive issues. Its $3 million budget is largely financed by well-known secular foundations, including the Ford Foundation.

Ms. Kissling agrees with her detractors that her organization has not affected church doctrine. Instead, it has focused on working with lay Catholics and others to build momentum for its causes.

With other groups, it successfully lobbied against the naming of John Klink, a former representative of the Holy See at the United Nations, to lead the State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in 2001. Most recently, it worked with staff members for Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, and Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, to draft legislation intended to decrease abortions, partly by increasing financing for family planning.

Sitting in her Washington office, Ms. Kissling was unequivocal in her distaste for the church hierarchy. “I think that in many ways, the church has become an unjust institution,” she said. On one wall of her office was a cherub, on another a Che Guevara calendar . In a corner stood a candle that looked like a bishop’s miter, yet to be lit.

Ms. Kissling continued: “It abuses nuns, anyone who thinks, homosexuals, women who have abortions. It sexually abuses children. It treats people badly, and something has to be done to change its abusive nature.”

Ms. Kissling was born Frances Romanski into a working-class Polish family in New York, the oldest of four children. When she was a child, her mother divorced and later married a man named Kissling, which in the eyes of the church made her an adulteress, Ms. Kissling said.

Despite her frustration with such beliefs, Ms. Kissling said, she was inspired by the nuns at her Catholic school. In the early 1960s, she joined a convent, at age 19.

Convent life demanded that she look deep inside herself, she said, and she discovered that she did not agree with the church’s teachings on divorce and birth control. She left after six months to attend the New School.

Avowedly heterosexual, she said she never had a desire to marry or have children. She became active in the women’s movement in the 1960s. Then in 1970, when abortion was legalized in New York, she was asked to direct an abortion clinic in Pelham. She had no experience, she said, but neither did anyone else, so she took the position.

In 1978, she joined the board of Catholics for a Free Choice, and in 1982, she took over as president.

Critics and supporters say Ms. Kissling has a more nuanced view of abortion than many in the abortion rights movement. She said her experience working at an abortion clinic and her upbringing in the church made her believe “there was a certain void in the pro-choice movement around the questions of morality and ethics.”

In late 2004, she published an article in her group’s magazine, Conscience, titled “How to Think About the Fetus.” She said that while the fetus might not be a person, it was part of the continuum of humanity. She wrote that the fetus “is not nothing,” and that women who consider abortion know that.

Ms. Kissling said that abortion rights leaders feared acknowledging the value of a fetus because they did not want to further stigmatize abortion. But, she contends, that reticence has cast the abortion rights movement as casual about the emotional realities of abortion.

“Women know that something is inside them, and they know that something will become a baby if they don’t act in some way,” she said. “I don’t think we could say anything to them about the value of fetal life that they haven’t thought of already.”

Many abortion rights leaders said the article was damaging, especially because it came out while politicians were considering bans on so-called partial-birth abortions. But others, including some in the anti-abortion camp, commended Ms. Kissling.

“With her approach, she has found the real-life stuff,” said Representative Ryan, a Catholic who opposes abortion. “Those of us in the debate get hooked on philosophy and theory and dogma, and what Frances brings is reality: that abortion is a difficult decision for a woman.”

Ms. Kissling said she had decided to step down because she believed that her efficacy might soon wane, that she was on the “verge of becoming boring or predictable.” Jon O’Brien, 41, executive vice president of Catholics for a Free Choice, is to take over as president.

Ms. Kissling hopes to write a book about the value of the fetus, or teach, or finish the house she is building on the coast of Uruguay, she said. She has no plans to leave the Catholic Church.

“There are days when I think I can’t be a Catholic and that I want to go join a community where I am welcomed, honored, where I can join a parish,” she said. “But in the end, I don’t want to be a Methodist. I’m a member of the greatest religion in the world.”

There is so much in this that is just disgusting, I don't even know if I can go into it.

She wants to be "welcomed and honored"? Well, I'm sure that's what all the saints wanted, too, to be "honored." Humility, much? Welcomed? Well, maybe if you were actually, I don't know, Catholic . That might help.

And we're the "greatest religion in the world" (well, duh :)), but yet we “It abuses nuns, anyone who thinks, homosexuals, women who have abortions. It sexually abuses children. It treats people badly, and something has to be done to change its abusive nature.”
--abuse nuns: Haven't heard this one yet. What, they can't be priests? Hence the reason they are nuns
--anyone who thinks: I'm sure that Saints Thomas, Augustine, Terese of Avila, St. John of the Cross, JPII, and multiple others would be interested to hear that.
--homosexuals: We abuse them because we tell them to be actively homosexual is sinful? So are we "abusing" the rest of us heterosexuals by telling us we can't have unfettered sex? Hun?
--Women who have had abortions: Yup, because, you know, they can't received forgiveness via the Confessional. There's not Project Rachel or anything like that. We just tie them to the pillar. Right.
--Sexually abuses children: Well, OK. The Church is made up of imperfect people. They do bad things. We are not perfect, it's not an excuse, but this is not a solely Catholic problem. Kissling acts as if pedophila was some sort of church doctrine. Let's get real.
--Treats people badly: Yup, that's why there's a billion of us. That's why so many people will voluntarily join the Church this Easter. Because we treat people badly.

Detroit Bishop no longer a pastor...

and I can't say I'm surprised.
This is from the NY Times , and the general argument is that Bishop Gumbelton is being stripped of his duties b/c of his involvement with SNAP and SB 17 here in Ohio (which I have written about previously). As many of you know, the church sex scandal didn't really affect me all that much. I wasn't outraged, I didn't lose my faith, etc. I have always known that the Church is made up of imperfect men--that's just the way it is. Yes, they do horrible things. I am not excusing them, and they should be punished for what they did. But I also take some of these sex abuse stories with a bug grain of salt, and I think that the 20-30 year gap that SB 17 here in Ohio considered was far too long. I know a lot of people have beefs with the church and these are "he said, she said" things. The church here has even set up a coounseling network and set aside money so people can get the help they need. But SNAP members write to papers and say that that's not enough. No matter what the church here does, it's not enough. And, to be honest, that makes me mad.

I found this part of the article to be particularly interesting (emphasis mine)

Bishop Gumbleton, though he never led a diocese, is known nationally in church circles as a liberal maverick. He co-founded the peace ministry Pax Christi and accompanied antiwar delegations to Haiti and Iraq. He broke ranks with church teaching by preaching in favor of acceptance of gay men and lesbians and the ordination of women.

Last January, he lobbied in favor of a bill in Ohio to extend the statute of limitations and allow victims of sexual abuse to sue the church many years after they were abused. He said he was speaking out because he had been abused by a priest as a teenage seminarian and knew how hard it was to speak publicly even decades later. Bishops in Ohio opposed the bill, which failed.

So Bishop Gumbleton doesn't exactly seem to be following the playbook, so to speak, when it comes to Church doctrine. Is it possible, just possible, that may that that something to do with it? That the higher-ups finally got wind of this stuff and decided, "uh huh, we're not having this?" Just a thought.

Here's the article:

Outspoken Catholic Pastor Replaced; He Says It’s Retaliation
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: January 26, 2007
In his last Mass as pastor at the inner-city parish in Detroit where he had served for 23 years, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton told his parishioners that he was forced to step down as pastor because of his lobbying efforts on behalf of the victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, a stance that put him in opposition to his fellow bishops.

Enlarge This Image

Matt Sullivan/Reuters
Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton at a recent news conference in Ohio.
Last weekend, the archbishop of Detroit, Cardinal Adam Maida, sent a letter to the parish, St. Leo, saying Bishop Gumbleton had to be removed because of church rules on retirement. But as Bishop Gumbleton, who turns 77 on Friday and had already retired last year as a bishop, told his parish last Sunday, there are many pastors even older than he who are allowed to continue serving.

“I’m sure it’s because of the openness with which I spoke out last January concerning victims of sex abuse in the church. So we’re all suffering the consequences of that, and yet, I don’t regret doing what I did because I still think it was the right thing to do,” he said, as the congregation rose and erupted in applause.

Bishop Gumbleton, though he never led a diocese, is known nationally in church circles as a liberal maverick. He co-founded the peace ministry Pax Christi and accompanied antiwar delegations to Haiti and Iraq. He broke ranks with church teaching by preaching in favor of acceptance of gay men and lesbians and the ordination of women.

Last January, he lobbied in favor of a bill in Ohio to extend the statute of limitations and allow victims of sexual abuse to sue the church many years after they were abused. He said he was speaking out because he had been abused by a priest as a teenage seminarian and knew how hard it was to speak publicly even decades later. Bishops in Ohio opposed the bill, which failed.

A spokesman for the archdiocese of Detroit, Ned McGrath, said Bishop Gumbleton’s removal from St. Leo Parish had nothing to do with his lobbying on sexual abuse or his political stands.

All bishops are required at age 75 to submit resignation letters to the pope, Mr. McGrath said, and the pope has the option to accept or reject the resignation. Bishop Gumbleton’s resignation was accepted last year, and, Mr. McGrath said, “it was with the understanding that he would give up any pastoral office.”

Cardinal Maida announced in his letter to parishioners that he had appointed a new pastor, the Rev. Gerard Battersby.

In his brief remarks at Mass on Sunday, Bishop Gumbleton told the parish that after he turned 75, he had sent a separate resignation letter to Cardinal Maida asking to stay on as pastor at St. Leo’s on a year-by-year basis. He said he was surprised by his sudden replacement.

“I did not choose to leave St. Leo’s,” he said. “It’s something that was forced upon me.”

Three canon lawyers interviewed on Thursday said there was nothing in canon law that would prohibit an archbishop from permitting a retired auxiliary bishop from serving as a pastor after 75.

Bishop Gumbleton, who has already moved out of his room behind the church and plans to move into an apartment in Detroit, did not respond to an interview request. A video of his remarks during Mass was taken by a parishioner and posted on the Web site of the National Catholic Reporter, an independent Catholic weekly newspaper that publishes a column by Bishop Gumbleton.

Mary M. Black, a parishioner at St. Leo’s, said: “Almost universally, everyone in the parish is hurt and angry and upset and bewildered.”

Ms. Black said: “He talks after Mass with people, and he is there ahead of Mass to say the rosary for anybody who has problems. And we all have his personal phone number. You do not have to go through a secretary. He was a pastor in the truest sense of the word.”