What on Earth is Wrong with Our Bishops?

What on earth is wrong with our bishops?  

As bad as I thought Bishop Finn handled the Fr. Ratigan case, I had no idea that he ignored the red flags described in this letter alone.  The letter was written in 2010 by Julie Hess, the principal of the Catholic school at the parish where Fr. Ratigan was pastor, and delivered to Finn's Vicar General, his second-in-command.

All you need to keep in mind while reading it is that Fr. Ratigan was later discovered to have been busy taking pornographic photographs of the little girls of his parish (one as young as age two), was molesting them, and has since been sentenced to 50 years in Federal prison without the possibility of parole.

How did Fr. Ratigan's ordinary react to this letter and to the unfolding of this horrific case?

• Bishop Finn utterly and totally ignored this letter.  As far as I know, he never even acknowledged receiving it until more than a year later, after the story broke, when he claimed he finally "read it for the first time."  Even if this is true (and I doubt it), how can the Vicar General receive a letter like this and not insist that the bishop read it immediately and act on it?

• Bishop Finn failed to report the abuse of these children to the police once it became known to him.

• Bishop Finn refused to let the parishioners know their children were victimized by Fr. Ratigan.

• Bishop Finn placed Ratigan in an unsupervised setting where he continued to have access to the children of the parish, and continued to abuse them.

• Bishop Finn allowed the computer containing the evidence of pornography to be destroyed.  And though a copy of the hard drive had been made, police were certain that other evidence could have been uncovered from the computer by experts, had Finn not given the computer back to one of Ratigan's relatives, who promptly trashed it.

• Bishop Finn spent $1.4 million dollars of diocesan funds defending himself against two misdemeanor charges relating to this case that he was nonetheless convicted of - a conviction that imposed only a few thousand dollars in penalties.

• Bishop Finn's supporters made light of the child abuse.

• Bishop Finn's supporters - including his brother bishops - blamed not Bishop Finn, but the local news media for all of this.

Catholics of Kansas City / St. Jo: after reading this letter, if you give one dime to the diocese, you are enabling a situation where this kind of thing is encouraged.  

And we know that Archbishop Nienstadt of St. Paul and Bishop O'Connell of Trenton recently behaved exactly as Bishop Finn did in Kansas City - with contempt for the innocent victims and with flagrant disregard for the red flags that their own disturbed priests were waving.  And all this ten years after the sex scandal broke - a decade after the bishops have been telling us they've fixed things!

I'm beginning to think most of these men really don't believe a word they preach.  I suspect a level of corruption and degradation has grown up in the episcopacy that we cannot imagine, and that the bishops are deliberately shielding and enabling men like this, not out of incompetence, but with careful planning and for the worst of reasons.

Well, read the letter and see what you think.

Personally, I think after ignoring a letter like this and letting children continue to get harmed, Finn should be ashamed to call himself a man much less a priest of Christ.

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By the way, if you don't read the letter, don't comment.  If you choose to comment, you must read the letter or your comment will be deleted.

Sexting, Blabbing, or Bullying - Which Would You Choose?

Let me begin by saying that "sexting" (sending lewd comments and naked photos of yourself via text), though sinful, is far from the worst thing one adult can do to another.  Sexting someone you think is a 16-year-old boy ... well, that's another story

But which is worse?  A priest sexting someone he thinks is a 16-year-old boy, but isn't - or a pastor refusing to tell parishioners about this and bullying them into not asking questions when the priest is removed from their parish for this very reason?

The priest intended to abuse a minor, but didn't.  The pastor intended to bully his parishioners, and did.

From The Star Ledger (emphasis mine) ...

The text messages read as if they’ve been ripped from a pornographic novel.

Matthew Riedlinger quizzed his texting partner about sex videos, pressed for details about intimate liaisons, described sexual acts and encouraged mutual masturbation.

He also repeatedly asked to meet.

"Promise me you will never breath (sic) a word of this to anyone — ok?" he wrote.

Riedlinger had good reason for discretion.

He is a priest of the Diocese of Trenton, and while exchanging more than 1,200 text messages over four weeks last year, he thought was he talking to a 16-year-old boy.

Riedlinger, at the time an assistant pastor at St. Aloysius Church in Jackson and a sex-education teacher at the parish school, was the target of an elaborate sting by a Catholic University of America graduate who says the priest sexually harassed him for years.

Timothy Schmalz, now 23 and a resident of Washington, D.C., said he was moved to action after his first complaint about Riedlinger in 2011 resulted in what he characterized as a slap on the wrist by Trenton Bishop David M. O’Connell.

RELATED DOCUMENTS
• Read the diocese statement on the Rev. Matthew Riedlinger

• Read Bishop O'Connell's letter to Timothy Schmalz

Schmalz is one of five young men who provided The Star-Ledger with similar accounts of harassment and sexual obsession by the priest. Four of the five were in their late teens or early 20s when Riedlinger began inappropriate and persistent sexual dialogues with them, they said. The fifth was in his late 20s.

The sting, initiated on Facebook and carried out through the use of a Google Voice account, partially served its purpose.

After Schmalz forwarded transcripts of the text messages and other materials to O’Connell in August 2012, the bishop removed Riedlinger from the parish, placed him in an in-patient treatment program and later assigned him to restricted ministry away from children, the diocese confirmed.

But for more than a year, O’Connell refused to tell parishioners at St. Aloysius why the priest had been pulled, an omission that advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse call a flagrant violation of the church’s pledge of transparency.

Moreover, the former pastor, the Rev. Kevin Keelan, chastised parishioners for asking questions about Riedlinger’s removal, saying in the church bulletin that "blabbing" was a sin and that they were not entitled to more information.

O’Connell informed parishioners of the complaints in a statement only last weekend, a day after The Star-Ledger questioned the diocese about Riedlinger and the decision to withhold information about the allegations.

Even then, the statement makes no mention of the fact that Riedlinger believed he was corresponding with a 16-year-old boy during sexually explicit conversations.

"Father Riedlinger has been the subject of two complaints to the diocese over the past few years regarding his participation in inappropriate cell phone text communication over a period of some years with adults," according to the statement, which was read aloud at weekend Masses. "There was no sexual contact, assault or abuse referenced in the complaints."

Read more here.

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Now doesn't that make you feel good, readers?

Clearly, Bill Donohue is having an impact.  When embarrassed, fall back not on the great Law that is written in our hearts, not on Jesus Christ, not on the Holy Spirit, not on contrition or penance ... when caught doing wrong, evade, bully, shift the blame, spin, and parse your words with legalistic finesse.  

In the same way that Donohue is defending Archbishop Nienstedt of St. Paul for allowing a priest to park a camper on the lot of his parish and invite little boys inside of it, while knowing for ten years that this man is a disturbed individual personally and sexually, simply because there were no official "complaints" made through official channels; in the same way that Donohue defended Bishop Finn for covering up for a priest who molested girls by claiming that the "crotch shots" this priest took of girls with spy cameras and the naked pictures he took of a two-year old's genitalia were not technically child pornography, after all; so the anonymous spokesman for the diocese of Trenton assures us that  "There was no sexual contact, assault or abuse referenced in the complaints" against Fr. Riedlinger.  And that he was sexting an adult - which is technically true.

Glad our bishops and pastors are learning their lessons, aren't you?

Maybe one day they'll be as good at PR as Bill Donohue!

The Bathtub and Infinity

While in the bathtub tonight I finally understood what Stanley Jaki meant when he said (more than once) that the universe can not be infinite, for an infinite quantity can never be realized.

That never really sank in until I saw it ... right there in the tub as the water was sinking down the drain.  It is the nature of infinity that it has no limit.  Its very definition means it is indefinite - in-de-finite; it can not be real, composed of things.  It can only be conceptual.  There is no such thing as "an infinite number of things" for infinity is, in one sense, not a "number" (you can never count "up to" infinity), and "things" are always "realized".  By its nature infinity can not be "realized", composed of actual things.

Jaki saw this and saw that this was the fundamental philosophical and mathematic reason that the universe was finite; there were empirical reasons as well.  And if the universe is finite, then materialistic atheists who deify Chance have a big big problem.

Anyway, if you don't get it, maybe some day you will.  It took me several years and a nice hot bath.

Stanley Jaki, OSB (1924-2009)

A Response to Bill Donohue

The other day, I referenced an article by Minnesota Public Radio in my post What Would You Do? regarding one of the most mishandled cases of abusing clergy since Bishop Finn and Father Ratigan.

And Bill Donohue has stepped into the fray, going so far as to giving "Kudos to Archbishop Nienstedt", the man who must take the administrative blame for the sexual abuse of two boys by Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer.  Kudos indeed.

Donohue's legalistic defense of the indefensible can be read here.

The best thing to be said for it is that it's short.  And he ends with a pointed challenge, which I will be so bold as to answer.  Or attempt to answer.

Donohue says ...

The burden is on those who disagree to say exactly what should be done in instances where there are no complainants.

Well, there were complaints in the Wehmeyer case, as anyone reading the MPR article will see, but Donohue plays fast and loose with the facts.  This is his M.O.

But he has pointed out that we should say "exactly what should be done" in cases like this.

Well, that may be a hard question, but let me try to answer it.

In this specific case, here are the facts ...

• The molesting priest had a camper parked permanently on the lot of his parish
• Little boys were being invited into that camper alone with the priest
• The priest had been known to cruise gay hangouts looking for anonymous sex
• The priest had been hitting on teen-aged boys in public places such as bookstores
• Police had contacted the "Delegate for a Safe Environment" of the archdiocese about the priest, but the delegate had neglected to return their phone calls
• The archdiocese had a large file on this priest and his troubled sexual behavior
• The archdiocese knew that the mandated counseling the priest had undergone had been ineffective
• The "Delegate for a Safe Environment" called a mother in the parish and told her it was HER responsibility to make sure her pastor observed "safe boundaries" with her boys; it was her fault people were complaining about how this man behaved toward her boys in public
• The Chancellor of Canonical Affairs of the archdiocese insisted that this man not be made pastor of a parish because of his sexual acting out; the archbishop ignored this and appointed him pastor anyway
• A memo shows that the archdiocese deliberately decided to keep these issues hidden from parishioners and potential victims and their parents

So, Bill Donohue, "exactly what should be done" in this case?

Hmmm.  That's a tough one.

Any suggestions from my readers?  Mr. Donohue needs some help.

Fr. Wehmeyer's camper, where he molested at least two boys.  He parked it permanently in his parish parking lot and would invite boys in, where he would give them alcohol and show them porn.  But Bill Donohue says justice was served when the archdiocese did nothing about this.  "Kudos to Archbishop Niendstedt for handling these matters with justice for all!" - Bill Donohue, a direct quote.  

Getting It Backwards

Most of us, I imagine, read our emails backwards.  That is to say that when a bunch of emails pile up in our inboxes, they are usually arranged from most recent to least recent.  This is like reading Chapter Ten of a novel, then reading Chapter Nine, and so forth.

The Riverfront Times has an article on Archbishop Carlson and his history of handling claims of abuse.  One of the very helpful things the RFT does is to embed on their website the original documents related to the issues they are reporting.  And so you can bypass any possible lax reporting or media spin by going to the source.  This was particularly helpful in the Bishop Finn case.  I still have readers, for example, who are quite rightly concerned about how the media tarnishes the Catholic Church by reporting half-truths, but who don't realize that in this internet age, and especially in the Bishop Finn case, original source documents are available (i.e., the Graves Report and the Stipulation of Testimony).  And apparently the Pope has recently stirred up concern with an interview that few people are bothering to read, relying instead on media reports.  But its full English translation can be read at America Magazine.

So it's more possible now to go to the source than it ever has been.

And the source the RFT provides (which I've embedded below) is really rather stunning.  For the effect of reading them from page one to page five - which is chronologically backwards - is jaw dropping.

These documents aren't really a reflection on Robert Carlson personally as much as they are on the unbelievably stupid and careless way the Church in the U.S. has been handling abuse.  Yes, there's the really awful fact that Carlson focuses on the potential bad publicity this case might bring the archdiocese, while exhibiting a more tepid concern over the suffering of the victim.  Still, Carlson's most recent memo is written in an attempt to remove the perpetrator (Fr. Tom Adamson) from ministry - which is indeed what ended up happening.  But there's something worse than that revealed in these three documents.

What is revealed is that the bishop of Winona, Minnesota knew of the perpetrator's character and of his pattern of abuse NINE YEARS before Carlson's memo suggested he be removed from ministry and sent to treatment.  And in Bishop Watters memo, written in 1975, it is clear that the priest in question was actively abusing victims for FIFTEEN YEARS prior to that.  Watters writes (in 1975) that there are ...

... numbers of people in at least five different communities across the entire diocese who have finally pieced together incidents occuring over a fifteen year span and who now openly raise questions about the credibility of all priests.

And, if we are to believe bishopaccountability.org, this same Bishop Watters

stated under oath in 1986 that he never knew what Adamson's specific problems were until 1984.

 ... which was simply and obviously perjury ... or Clintonesque doublespeak.

Bishop Loras Watters

And evil, like holiness, spreads out in ripples.  The primary victim mentioned in Carlson's memo victimized others, raping at least one girl.

How such sluggish, inept twiddling inertia can infect an organization that is supposed to be living and preaching the Gospel is utterly astonishing.

It's almost seems the bishops are getting everything backwards.

Bishop Carlson

50 Years for Ratigan

Fr. Shawn Ratigan

Fr. Shawn Ratigan has been sentenced to 50 years in Federal prison without the possibility of parole for molesting and taking explicit photographs of girls as young as age 2.

You can read about it here - but the Kansas City Star goes into some detail about the nature of the crimes, and it's not easy to stomach.

At the time the story broke, when it was revealed that Ratigan's bishop, Robert Finn, mishandled the case and showed a flagrant disregard for the victims and their families, Bill Donohue of the Catholic Defense League downplayed Ratigan's crimes and asserted that no child pornography was involved.  The priest was just a shutter bug who liked to take photos of young girls and their crotches, or so Donohue implied.

In the perfect world, Bill Donohue would read the Star's description of the photos Ratigan took and the physical contact he had with his helpless victims and would issue a heart-felt apology for the shameful way he spun the story with lies and half-truths, not to "defend" the Catholic Church, but merely as a knee-jerk way of running interference for Bishop Finn and his criminal priest.  In fact, Donohue didn't have to wait for the sentencing - much of what Ratigan did was described in detail in a report paid for by the diocese of Kansas City, a report Donohue ignored in order to spin his web of unrighteous indignation.

This dreadful habit of circling the wagons and of exercising what right-wing Catholics have shown to be their "anti-charism of discernment" when one of their own is criticized is one of the worst things about this whole horrible affair.  I even had people from Kansas City threatening me with physical violence because of my criticism of Bishop Finn.

Meanwhile, Fr. Ratigan was enabled and his crimes were covered up, and many innocent children suffered and will be suffering for years to come.

Men like Bishop Finn and Bill Donohue need to man up and look the families of these victims in the face and apologize.  Instead, Donohue will act as if nothing has happened and Finn will continue to assure us that all is well and the Church has the best interests of the victims at heart.  Which is clearly the biggest untruth in this whole dreadful case.

The God of the Selfish

In a seminar once, someone asked C. G. Jung about the meaning of life.  "Isn't love the meaning of life?" he was asked.

"No!" he replied emphatically.  "The meaning of life is life!"

In other words, vitality, exuberance, existence, power.  Success!  (i.e., Moloch, Priapus)

Not sacrifice, compassion, caring, surrender.  Failure!  (i.e. the Cross)

C. G. Jung

Before my conversion, I read everything Carl Jung ever wrote.  Twenty or more volumes.  This one answer sums up the gigantic mistake that was behind his philosophy and that is behind everything that is ultimately anti-Christian.  There was much good in Jung - a rejection of Freud's atheistic materialism, a regard for the whole person, an appreciation for the spiritual realm, the courage to take religion seriously - but there was a poison, a poison that was particularly bad for me, and for anyone who was using Jung's false faith as a substitute for true Faith, as I was.

And that poison is the simple but deadly error - to assert that the meaning of life is life, not love.  For if the meaning of life is "life", that simply means that those in power get more of what they find lively, while those out of power get nothing.  And of course "life" means what gives you your kicks - it doesn't literally mean more life: for more life can only come through love.  Sex is always deliberately sterile for those who want more "life"; sex produces more life only for those who follow love.

Jung believed in the lie of "conventional morality" - that all human behavior is simply based on an arbitrary social construct.  He believed, as do all those devotees of Moloch, the god of Power, that the elite could do what they wanted; the rules did not apply to us (the elites) only to them (the proles).  And if I were to love them - well, power would go out of me, wouldn't it?

The irony, of course, is that any devotion to "life as life" ultimately leads to barrenness and death, to isolation and self-parody.  Only that ridiculous thing "love" that degrades us and that wallows in the dirt with those who suffer truly brings life.

The world will never get this - but we who follow the Cross do.  The world will never understand that the only thing that matters is love.  When all is said and done, when we've had our fill of self-indulgence, of sin, of taking advantage of one another, of using one another, of eating one another up, of sex and drugs and rock and roll, of the carnival joy ride and the cheap thrills we call "life" - when all that burns away or folds up like a child's drawing on tissue paper; when He comes again and we see Him in His glory, we will simply see the simple Truth.

Only love matters.  Only love.