One week ago, many conservative ideologues and others started falling into the Bishop Pilla Trap of Confusion again, thinking that Bishop Thomas Gumbleton's announcement that he was retiring as auxiliary bishop of Detroit in accord with the canonical age limit was enough to stick a fork in him and call him "done."
As is usually the case, the gun-jumping had nothing to do with what was actually the case -- until this morning, when the Holy See accepted Gumbleton's resignation, giving it legal force.
(For our Southern Hemisphere viewers, Gumbleton is the global north's version of Auxiliary Bishop Pat Power of Canberra and Golburn. He has long been a target of activists on the church's rightward fringe, even as many of them simultaneously defend the rights of bishops ordained in obstinate, schismatic defiance of papal authority.)
-30-