Friday, October 14, 2011
Bishop Finn indicted
Kansas City bishop Robert Finn has been indicted for failing to report suspected child abuse:
The indictment is the first ever of a Catholic bishop in the 25 years since the scandal over sexual abuse by priests first became public in the United States.
Bishop Finn is accused of covering up abuse that occurred as recently as last year — almost 10 years since the nation’s Catholic bishops passed a charter pledging to report suspected abusers to law enforcement authorities.
Not sure why the concluding paragraph was necessary to include:
Bishop Finn, who was appointed in 2005, alienated many of his priests and parishioners, and won praise from others, when he remade the diocese to conform with his traditionalist theological views. He is one of few bishops affiliated with the conservative movement Opus Dei.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/10/bishop-finn-indicted.html
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When was the last time anyone heard of an indictment for a misdemeanor?
To quote that legendary Secretary of Health and Human Services (addressing a NARAL audience), "This is a war."
Before she and her boss take this whole crusade right over the top, they might want to stop to consider the implications of this fact: Catholics constitute a majority of all members of the armed forces. Who are they planning to send on the invasion of Iran?
Posted by: Joel Clarke Gibbons | Oct 15, 2011 7:48:53 AM
Bishop Finn set the bar high for a transitioning bishop. He cleared the aging pomos out of the chancery, brought back things like (shock, gasp!) Eucharistic adoration and (O tempora! O mores!) established a Latin mass parish. It is no wonder the left hates him.
Whether or not Finn has broken the law, I haven't a clue. But the kind of people over at the National Catholic Reporter have been out to get him from day one.
I remember reading this hit piece from NCR when Finn took over and thinking to myself, "This guy sounds awesome." http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006b/051206/051206a.php
The piece is almost comical for its retrograde progressive polemics. Some people still think we're living in the 70s. But really, I think NCR was simply disappointed that another Catholic was made bishop of KC.
Posted by: AML | Oct 15, 2011 11:55:44 AM
Bishop Finn set the bar high for a transitioning bishop. He cleared the aging pomos out of the chancery, brought back things like (shock, gasp!) Eucharistic adoration and (O tempora! O mores!) established a Latin mass parish. It is no wonder the left hates him.
Whether or not Finn has broken the law, I haven't a clue. But the kind of people over at the National Catholic Reporter have been out to get him from day one.
I remember reading this hit piece from NCR when Finn took over and thinking to myself, "This guy sounds awesome." http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006b/051206/051206a.php
The piece is almost comical for its retrograde progressive polemics. Some people still think we're living in the 70s. But really, I think NCR was simply disappointed that another Catholic was made bishop of KC.
Posted by: AML | Oct 15, 2011 11:55:44 AM
AML: I don't quite understand what your views of NCR has to do with the indictment of Bishop Finn. Rob's initial post quoted the NYT report of the indictment. I can't imagine that the NCR's views of Finn, whatever they are, had any effect on the NYT report.
Posted by: Susan | Oct 15, 2011 8:32:32 PM
What I've been wondering is whether he has a defense on the ground that he did in fact report the priest to the police, albeit five months after learning of the situation. Does the reporting statute have a time deadline?
I don't know anything about what happened but no doubt Bishop Finn should have reported this priest more promptly. Still, the indictment reek of a politically-motivated selective prosecution. How many times have Planned Parenthood personnel failed to report statutory rape known to have occurred when a underage girls shows up and reveals the father is an adult? If any such cases have ever prompted an indictment, it sure hasn't made the front page of the New York Times
Posted by: Dan | Oct 15, 2011 11:59:03 PM
Dan says: "How many times have Planned Parenthood personnel failed to report statutory rape known to have occurred when a underage girls shows up and reveals the father is an adult?"
I don't know. How many?
Is the argument that it is religious bigotry to expect a bishop to report a priest who goes around taking up-skirt photos of little girls?
Posted by: David Nickol | Oct 16, 2011 2:11:59 AM
Regarding the concluding paragraph, most likely it was written to make it appear as if there exists more than one Magisterium in The Catholic Church, and that the line in the sand was drawn to separate the liberal magisterium from the conservative magisterium.
Posted by: Nancy D. | Oct 16, 2011 7:47:45 AM
I agree the last paragraph of the NYT piece was unnecessary, but let's keep the focus on the act and the prosecution and not on how the press reported it.
I don't attribute the indictment to religious bigotry. Assuming the DA believed there was a violation of law here prosecution is not improper. And given the Church's history on this issue, which is impossible for anyone to defend, it doesn't surprise me that the reaction of the government is the same as the reaction I'm guessing a lot of people (including me) have when we hear about such incidents: "Still? After all this, we still have bishops not reporting?"
I don't know enough about the facts here to make a judgment, but if there was a violation of the law here, I don't think it is anti-Catholic for a prosecutor to say - we've got to send a message that this has to stop.
Posted by: Susan Stabile | Oct 16, 2011 8:04:00 AM
The Times must have changed the story, because if you follow the link Rob Visher provided, you now don't arrive at a story containing this paragraph: "Bishop Finn, who was appointed in 2005, alienated many of his priests and parishioners, and won praise from others, when he remade the diocese to conform with his traditionalist theological views. He is one of few bishops affiliated with the conservative movement Opus Dei."
However, if you search for that paragraph, you find it in a story dated August 14 in the following context:
**********
Bishop Finn, who was appointed in 2005, alienated many of his priests and parishioners, and won praise from others, when he remade the diocese to conform with his traditionalist theological views. He is one of few bishops affiliated with the conservative movement Opus Dei.
He canceled a model program to train Catholic laypeople to be leaders and hired more staff members to recruit candidates for the priesthood. He cut the budget of the Office of Peace and Justice, which focused on poverty and human rights, and created a new Respect Life office to expand the church’s opposition to abortion and stem cell research. He set up a parish for a group of Catholics who prefer to celebrate the old Tridentine Mass in Latin.
Father Ratigan, 45, was also an outspoken conservative, according to a profile in The Kansas City Star. He and a class of Catholic school students joined Bishop Finn for the bus ride to the annual March for Life rally in Washington in 2007.
**********
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/us/15bishop.html
I think it is at best odd for Catholics to scour a story this damning trying to find "anti-Catholicism." If there is anything to be offended by when you read this story, it is that a bishop let a priest continue to take photos up little girls' skirts.
Posted by: David Nickol | Oct 16, 2011 9:49:05 AM
Where did the paragraph referred to as the "concluding paragraph" come from?
Posted by: Nancy D. | Oct 16, 2011 10:03:00 AM
This case is so disturbing. How could anyone, knowing the facts of this case, not have responded immediately by reporting this priest to the police?
Posted by: Nancy D. | Oct 16, 2011 12:24:21 PM
The initial article was very short, and the final paragraph read like it had just been pasted on there, which now appears to be the case. That's why it caught my attention. I agree that the prosecution, standing alone, does not justify a conclusion of anti-Catholic bias.
Posted by: Rob Vischer | Oct 16, 2011 6:44:36 PM
The answer to David Nickol's question of "How many times have Planned Parenthood personnel failed to report statutory rape known to have occurred when a underage girls shows up and reveals the father is an adult?" is: Lots. See, e.g., http://www.lifenews.com/2011/02/22/planned-parenthood-in-kansas-ignored-164-cases-of-child-rape/ What has formerly been investigated is likely just the tip of the ice berg. It is very common for older men who father a child with an underage girl to arrange for the girl to have an abortion so as to cover up the crime.
David then asks: "Is the argument that it is religious bigotry to expect a bishop to report a priest who goes around taking up-skirt photos of little girls?" No, that's not the argument. The argument is that it is press bias to give glaring headlines to one case of a bishop's alleged failure to report and completely ignore a massive and ongoing failure to report situation involving Planned Parenthood.
Posted by: Dan | Oct 17, 2011 12:02:07 AM
Dan,
I may be misjudging you, but it sounds like you are really implying that what the bishop did was not so bad. You have said that "the indictment reek[s] of a politically-motivated selective prosecution," and that the coverage given to the indictment is "press bias."
To what extent Planned Parenthood fails to report suspected statutory rape I don't know. But I wouldn't look to Lifenews or Jill Stanek for unbiased reporting.
Posted by: David Nickol | Oct 17, 2011 7:31:25 AM
Catholics are casual about child rape, and always have been. Bishops have been covering up, hiding, and reassigning pedophile priests for over 60 years, and the more Catholics found out about it, the more they fought for the priests.
Satan has now convinced Catholics that sex with children and lying about it is no big deal, no matter how many times their priests do it, and Catholics are cool with that. They have completely forgotten God's laws, and now worship bishops and priests, who have the lowest standard imaginable.
Bishop Finn, their most recently caught pedophile protector, protected a known pedophile for over a year. Anyone without a billion supporters would have been flogged int he streets, but the Catholics in Kansas City allowed Finn to take their donations (without asking, of course) and paid for at least FOUR lawyers to get the charges dropped and to help him tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
So help me, GOd.
Posted by: Patrick OMalley | Oct 25, 2011 2:24:18 AM
The last post (by Mr. O'Malley)hits DEAD ON ! Amazing that we can read other comments that support Bishop Finn for setting the 'bar high' ????
Exactly WHAT bar is that? Do you really need a much greater dose of reality to understand that as 'teachers and preachers' there should be nothing short of ZERO tolerance for child abusers AND an additional zealous prosecution for those who neglect and/or maliciously ignore the illegal activities of the priests they are responsible of supervising?
This is a travesty and many of us are praying this KC case is a trend to setting precident for prosecuting UP the chain-of-command and investigating those supervisory Bishops who in the past have eluded due process of the law. These overseers should not escape culpabilty prosecution for their illegal mishandeling of knowledge of Child Abuse. Sadly, the term 'pedophile-priest' is becoming a household analogy,
Bishop Finn will get his 'day in court', I hope that he is vigorously questioned and if convicted, sentanced to the maximum punishment. Too many 'good Catholics' have suffered by association while the Church leaders have continued with their complacency of these important legal matters Church for far too long.
I am extremly sorry for those good-hearted and spiritual clergy that are found guilty by association with this Catholic scandal, but for the safety of our communities there should be ZERO tolerance for ANY child abusers, especially if they hide behind a robe, crucifix and podium.
AMEN !
Posted by: TJ | Oct 26, 2011 6:02:39 AM
You read many reasons as to why Bishop Finn is innocent of the charges on www.justiceforBishopFinn.com.
Posted by: Communications | Jan 22, 2012 3:29:41 PM
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