Pope Francis Wednesday accepted the resignation of Bishop Patrick J. McGrath of San Jose, who will be automatically succeeded by his coadjutor Bishop Oscar Cantú.
McGrath, 73, was bishop of San Jose for nearly 20 years, and before that was coadjutor bishop of the diocese for an additional one year.
Citing the wish to let a younger man become bishop, McGrath last year asked the Holy See permission to retire before turning 75, which is when bishops are required by canon law to submit letters of resignation for consideration by the pope.
McGrath was hospitalized last November after a serious fall, which caused a “slight fracture of a disc in his back,” according to a diocesan spokesperson.
The bishop became the object of criticism in August 2018 for a decision to purchase a five-bedroom, 3,300 square-foot home, for $2.3 million to live in after retirement.
McGrath later changed his plans, stating that the purchase made economic sense as a good investment, but that he had “erred in judgment” in purchasing the house.
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
Would Bishop McGrath have had a change of heart about his original retirement residence if the $2.3 million purchase price had not been publicized?
I guess we will never know.
Let me tell you, San Jose is not in good shape at all as a Catholic diocese. McGrath has been at the helm, overseeing the decline of Catholic identity and faithfulness in nearly every respect. I had complaints about the diocesan high school, Mitty, and they never got even a response from the bishop. Bishop Cantu: what will you do now that you’re in charge? I hope you’ll immediately begin to correct all that needs fixing.
I hope you didn’t expect a reply. Because the non-reply isn’t about negligence or somebody failing to do their job. If people are expecting a diocese like this to have any objective of upholding Catholic identity or the catechism or to even care about the Creed, they need to do themselves a favor and disabuse themselves of their fantasies. These bureaucrats adhere to a shadow religion and are doing everything they can to advance it both in theory and practice. This is the state religion of political correctness (a term coined in the Leninist Soviet Union) and liberalism, a hodgepodge of feminism, homosexualism, Marxism and Freemasonry where there is no evil except the sin of nonconformity to a utopia of nothingness.
I think the reason you chose that name for your post is probably more interesting than conspiracy theories and generalized namecalling. Care to share?
Sorry to hear the Bishop has health issues. I hope the Bishop has found more financially appropriate retirement quarters. Given the shortage of priests, I suspect many rectories have available space.
Bishop McGrath has been a miserable bishop, at least by literature describing the growing ignorance of his flock about the Catholic True Faith, including the vitality of its Tradition. He has been hostile, in fact, to much in the way of expression of Catholic Tradition, including widespread us of the TLM. He has also been strongly supportive of lawless immigration (much loved by Pope Francis). Hopefully, there will some positive changes in the San Jose Diocese now, although don’t count on it.
Whole lot of trouble in that diocese! God bless Bishop Cantu— he has a hot potato in his hands.
The original article states that Bishop Cantu is 52 years old. He will have many years, before retirement! Hope he will do much good— and lead the Diocese back to the true Church! Go make lots of good Catholic converts, in godless Silicon Valley!
Yes, and I believe that the seminarians that were being sent to St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park, so very close to the diocese of San Jose, under McGrath are/were going to Chicago to the seminary under the direction of Cardinal Cupich!!!!! Oh my goodness, not good! I guess because of the cleaning up of St. Patrick’s by AB Cordileone and Father George Schultze and has become more traditional (PRAISE BE TO GOD) that tells the whole story.
It has cost the diocese a whole lot of money to send them to Chicago too. Many Catholics are not “happy campers” about that either. Believe it or not, there are still faithful Catholics in the Valley.
I will miss the weekly scandals.
My name is Anthony Gonzales, I am the president of the St. Joseph’s Men Society and we have protested this pseudo-Catholic Bishop for over a decade.
1. McGrath (pronounced McGraw) was constantly promoting the homosexual agenda throughout the diocese.
2. When the Passion of the Christ was about to open nationwide, McGrath published an Op-Ed in the local secular newspaper where is publicly denied the historical truth of the Gospels.
3. Under McGrath the Catholic…
Your Society sounds great, Anthony! Hope you will write more about it! Hope you can be of help to Bishop Cantu!! Hope he loves and respects
the True Faith!
Archbishop Cantu, Make the Diocese Great Again!
I hope Cal Catholic does a follow up story and let’s us know what rectory Bishop McGrath moves into. Some cynics thought that might have been only a PR statement at the time of the McMansion scandal.
Bishop Cantu should bring the seminarians back to St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park, Archdiocese of San Francisco. No reason for San Jose to send seminarians to Chicago at great expense when they could more conveniently be formed just an hour’s drive north from San Jose’s chancery.
One church employee reportedly said that McGrath will not be living in a rectory, as the diocese told the press. Is it too much to ask that the diocese be honest?
With this diocese, yes. THey said what they needed to say to make the scandal go away. Now that people have forgotten or don’t care, they’ll do what they want and be more careful about it this time.