“Creative Conservative” is a term coined in the United States.
They are a new generation of bishops, termed conservative because they are loyal to the doctrine of the Church, but at the same time creative and capable of inserting this doctrine in modernity without treachery, without backing down.
It is the teaching that the theologian Pope and pastor wants his bishops to put into practice: not to close up full of excuses when faced with the challenges of modernity, but to open up courageously and with faith to two thousand years of teaching of the Church itself.
“A conservative bishop for Los Angeles”, was the headline in U.S. newspapers in April 2010 when Mgr. José H. Gomez was designated as successor to the "liberal" Cardinal Roger Mahony.
In the identikit "creative conservative" it is possible to recognize leading figures of the Church throughout the world. such as the Vatican Minister for Bishops Ouellet, the Archbishop of Milan, Angelo Scola, the Cardinal of Budapest Erdo, Scoenborn, the first Belgian Leonard, the head of the English Catholic Church Nichols, Dolan, Di Nardo, the neo-archbishop of Philadelphia Chaput, Wuerl, George, the next patriarch of Venice, Moraglia, the Bishop of Bolzano and Bressanone, Ivo Muser, the Polish Archbishop Budzik.
Mgr. Gomez is the leader of those "creative conservative" prelates with which Benedict XVI is filling the dioceses of the five continents.
A choice of discontinuity that of the Mexican Gomez, who is part of the Opus Dei and in 2005 was included by Time magazine among the 25 most influential Hispanics in the United States, winner of the "Good Shepherd" award in 2003 when he was Archbishop of San Antonio.
Among the "creative conservatives" the "Ratzinger of L.A." is certainly not the best known outside of the Sacred Palaces, but his ascent is constant.
Mgr. Gomez was born in Monterrey, Mexico, on December 26, 1951 and discovered his calling to the priesthood when he was very young, as told to H2onews.
"It was for family reasons that I began to think about it more seriously; I had just finished secondary school. Then I felt God was calling me to the priesthood, but decided to wait until I finished college. I think that the key point of my priestly vocation was that once I finished secondary school I decided to go to Mass every day, thinking that if I was Catholic I had to take my faith seriously."
Despite the family obstacles and personal fears that preceded his ordination, Archbishop Jose Gomez remembers that day with great joy and satisfaction, for himself and for his family: "So in the end, despite minor skirmishes between us because they were not very convinced, God granted them the greatest joy they could ever expect and to me the greatest blessing." Since then, Mgr. Gomez is one of the most active priests in the United States and has played a key role in working with Hispanic communities in the country.
In 2007, CNN pointed him out as one of the most prominent Hispanics during the "Month of Hispanic Tradition," and among other roles, he is a founding member of the Catholic Latin American Leaders (C.A.L.L). Mgr. Gomez is a name that will be much talked about in the future. Leader of Hispanic American Catholics he owes much to the period when he worked as assistant to the Archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, who worked as his "sponsor" in Rome.
But a lot was also done for him by Cardinal Justin Francis Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, one of the most influential American cardinals. Gomez will become a Cardinal and his weight in the Hispanic world will not be secondary in the event of a conclave. Gomez believes that it is necessary not to underestimate the drive and impetus that immigrants can give to the country and to his Catholicism.
More than two-thirds of Latinos in the United States (68%) are Catholic. As Gomez himself says, Hispanics are a "blessing" for the United States, for the Church and for the Bishops.
"Hispanics and Latin Americans - he says - are people of faith with deep cultural traditions based on the fundamentals of the faith, which is new in the Church of the United States."
On bioethical issues the U.S. Church’s leader of the "crusade" is, on the field, the new Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, a fierce opponent of the Obama administration's decision to force all U.S. hospitals, including Catholic ones, to include (starting next year) contraceptives and abortive products in their health programs. Monsignor Gomez has publicly called for a general outcry against the new regulations with which the White House, according to U.S. episcopate, "violates non-negotiable principles."
According to the Archbishop José H. Gomez, America is losing the sense of religious freedom.
In the magazine "First Things" Archbishop Gomez noted that both courts and government agencies are increasingly neglecting the rights of conscience, in favour of other rights and liberties considered more important.
In this regard, Mgr. Gomez quoted the recent case of a request for funding advanced by the U.S. Conference of Bishops in charge of services to migrants and refugees that was rejected. For several years the organization had received funding for its activities to assist victims of human trafficking.
Gomez leads one of the U.S. dioceses that has paid more dearly than others, even in a literal sense, the scandal of paedophile priests: his predecessor Mahony paid more than six hundred million dollars to compensate victims.
To do so, he has sold properties owned by the diocese, creating resentment in many local clergy and faithful.
So much so that many contest that he was too soft in managing the scandals: because one thing is to compensate the victims, another is to blow a fortune without properly assessing whether the allegations relate to abuse actually occurred.
On the one hand Mahony paid for each complaint.
In the Vatican, there are quite a few concerns for the way in which Mahony handled the scandals.
The response of the archdiocese has been exaggerated and all it did was cause a snowball effect.
Like Los Angeles, many other dioceses have been inundated with complaints about events that occurred more than fifty years ago.
The appointment of Gomez is a clear signal that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to give.