Waiting for Godot to Leave

From Rod Dreher's report on the indictment of Bishop Finn in Kansas City ... *** When news broke, local Catholics were outraged. The diocese organized “listening sessions” to manage the public reaction, and had participants engage in an asinine Stuart Smalley-ish exercise in which they were instructed to write down a “hurt” and then write down a “hope.” Among the “hurts” written down by angry parents: “The images of my daughter’s private areas that the FBI showed me, they are forever burned into my brain. … Shawn Ratigan was in my house, around my children in February, and I thought my children were completely SAFE!!” *** One of the earliest and most difficult lessons I learned in covering the abuse scandal is that you can never, ever tell the bad guys from the good guys based on whether or not they are faithful to the Magisterium — that is, whether or not they are orthodox Catholics. Would that you could! A very conservative priest told me early on not ...

" Let's step outside and settle this thing like men ," she said, and she was a lady. " You're spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric !" he insisted. "How can you criticize a bishop when you're an actor and everyone knows actors are perverts and nitwits ," she screamed. (That last gal had a point). These are all reactions to my post last week about Rod Dreher's article on Bishop Finn's Indictment. And above all, people are charging me with believing the biased media coverage of the scandal. This, at least, is not true. In fact, everything I say in this post will be taken not from a media account of the scandal , but from the independent report on it as commissioned by the diocese , the Graves Report, which you can read on your own here . So let's shove the media aside and see for ourselves what's contained in this internal diocesan report conducted by an independent firm. *** Fr. Shawn Ratigan was a priest of the diocese of Kansas Cit...

How did the question move from "Why are we going to war?" to "Who is that man's wife". I asked the first question. Someone else asked the second. It worked. It's still working . - Sean Penn as Joe Wilson in Fair Game . *** I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers vowing to assault me physically. I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers saying that I'm a pervert. I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers (clergy even) telling me that my writing amounts to "bullying" and "uniformed public rants" (see my post on Bishop Finn and some of the more recent of the 100 comments ). But I am bothered by the Lie. I am bothered by the Spin. And I am bothered by innocent people being blamed and not protected. I wrote last week's piece because Bishop Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, in his defence of Bishop Finn , played right into the hands of the Tribalism that is fast seeking to become the sixth wound in the Body of Christ. The m...

Reuters publishes a thorough summary of the Bishop Finn / Fr. Ratigan case here . My own summary of the case is here . The destruction of evidence, abetted by Bishop Finn, is acknowledged by the police in this article to have been "a significant blow" to the criminal investigation.

Above: Fr. Shawn Ratigan, with children. I have learned, both from private correspondence and from Donohue's rants at the Catholic League, that the defenders of Bishop Finn have come up with a game plan and talking points. Their case amounts to this: THERE WAS NO SEXUAL ABUSE . Bishop Finn can not be guilty of failure to report sexual abuse. When Fr. Ratigan took pictures of the crotches of little girls at his parish and at least one set of photos of a naked two-year old, he was NOT ABUSING CHILDREN . So, my fellow conservative Catholics, we can indeed spare ourselves embarrassment and our hero, Bishop Finn, from a tarnished reputation, but to do so we have to pay a very hefty price. The price is our own kids. Just be prepared, if you make this sacrifice, for what it entails. It entails the normilization of perverse behavior, and it also means that if one of your children is victimized in this way, you can say nothing, for your naked two-year old, fodder for the fantasies of a ...

This was my first post on Bishop Finn.  It's from October 23, 2011.  Since this post, Fr. Ratigan was convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison.  Bishop Finn spent $1.4 million of diocesan money to defend himself, but was also convicted in criminal court of failure to report child abuse; he was placed on probation and fined.  He has been serving as bishop of Kansas City ever since his conviction, though such a conviction would have prevented him from even being a crossing guard at a public school.   He finally resigned today, under pressure from the Vatican. The Catholic Defense League and Opus Dei and some of Finn's fellow bishops shamed themselves by vigorously defending Bishop Finn, and in the case of the Catholic Defense League, spinning the story to a point where the facts of the case were utterly distorted. My original post garnered 99 comments, some of them very angry at me for daring to attack a doctrinally orthodox bishop.  It remains t...

This was a long time coming and is a welcome relief - The Pope has accepted the resignation of Bishop Finn of Kansas City. I've decided to turn comments off on this post.  I really don't want to read indignant Catholics who think this was the result of a liberal conspiracy against poor, persecuted, "conservative" Finn.   Read my two dozen or so posts about the situation , or go straight to the source and read the Graves Report , the independent investigation into how Finn covered up for and enabled the sexual abuse of children in his diocese.  Step away from the right / left factional split for a while and simply look at the facts.  Finn should have been removed long ago. I suspect Bishop Barros in Chile will be asked to resign as well if the situation there continues to fester. It is perhaps naive to hope that our bishops can be good, holy Christians.  It is, however, incumbent upon us to demand that they be decent, trustworthy human beings. Sadly, ...

MO--First Catholic official calls for Bishop Finn’s removal For immediate release: Thursday, March 19 Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 566 9790,  SNAPclohessy@aol.com A member of Pope Francis’ new child sex abuse panel is calling for the removal of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn. It’s the first time a Catholic official is publicly and explicitly pushing for Finn’s ouster. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/pope-francis-sexual-abuse-allegations-chile-bishop-barros     Peter Saunders of London was tapped by Pope Francis to be on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors . He founded and heads a charity for abuse victims called NAPAC (The National Association for People Abused in Childhood). “If we don’t see real change, if we don’t see the likes of Bishop Finn removed immediately . . .then the committee will be a pointless exercise,” Saunders told The Guar...

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 "r...

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 s...

Bishop Finn has agreed to pay $600,000 of diocesan funds to the parents of a girl abused by a priest under his care in the diocese of Kansas City.  (I've written about this case at length ).  What struck me from this article about the settlement is this quote ... The second count, which Fenner allowed to remain, accused the bishop and diocese of receiving, possessing or distributing pornographic images of the girl. Fenner is the judge in the case, who dismissed one count in the lawsuit and let another stand - the count that the diocese was liable not only for a coverup but was COMPLICIT IN THE CRIME ITSELF. Let that sink in.  The diocese of Kansas City was not only wrong in covering up what the abuser did, but was  INVOLVED IN THE CRIME ITSELF - by "receiving and possessing" pornographic images of the two-year-old in question, by not turning the photos over to police, and eventually letting the evidence be destroyed so that the priest had a...

There is a pattern and it's a sick and strange one. Over the months, I have written at length about Kansas City Bishop Finn's dreadful handling of a sex abuse case in his diocese, and have taken quite a bit of heat from the True Believers, who swallow uncritically the cult-like notion that criticizing a bishop who endangers children is the equivalent of hating Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.  (If you really want to have fun, read the whole series here ). Archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers Now we have Archbishop Myers in New Jersey and sex abuser Fr. Michael Fugee.  The case is so much like the Finn case that it's weird.  Frank Weathers and Mark Shea  have articles on the case, in which they link to local New Jersey reports, which themselves link to the original source documents at the heart of the matter, including this one , which apparently nobody wants to read. I won't go into details, since if you're interested you can find the details at this l...

Today, I spent lunch with my friend and Theater of the Word actor Dave Treadway of Steward Media  and I was on a tear, complaining about many things, especially this.  "Dave," I said, "I used to think the liberals in the Church caused all the trouble, until I met the conservatives in the Church.  Now I'm getting used to rampant hypocrisy on both sides of the spectrum, from left to right - Catholics who are as bad as I am and worse, regardless of the number of devotions or novenas they pray.  I am hurt by, but used to, leftist Catholics who ignore Church teaching and right-wing Catholics who despise the Catechism.  I am used to, but hurt by, bad liberal bishops and bad conservative bishops.  I am used to, but hurt by, my own infernal sinfulness, which keeps rearing its ugly head again and again. "But what really bothers me at a fundamental level is how many conservative Catholics there are who are making excuses for rape and child abuse...

From the combox at my post Making Room for Evil  ... Anonymous said... [Quoting me] "pederasty is a sub-set of pedophilia" No, it's not. And I notice in your example of "comparing" child abuse, you couldn't actually bring yourself to present a true comparison between pederasty and pedophilia. Were you afraid they'd agree one was worse than the other? September 12, 2012 8:43 PM Kevin O'Brien said... ... of course pederasty is a subset of pedophilia. They are equally evil. What the hell is the matter with you? September 13, 2012 4:43 AM Anonymous said... Statutory rape isn't necessarily the same thing [as " legitimate rape "], even if it's bad. Put it this way: A guy in his 20s wants to have sex with a 16-year-old girl who is physically an adult in every possible way. A guy in his 20s wants to have sex with a 7-year-old boy. Those are both the same thing to you? Surely not. September 13, 2012 12:...

Father Z. has written a rather lame post in defense of Kansas City Bishop Finn , (more accurately, a post attacking Finn's critics).  Bishop Finn, for those who haven't been following, enabled a child pornographer priest to continue to victimize children by taking pornographic pictures of them, refused to call police, helped destroy evidence in the case, and spent $1.4 million of money from Catholic Schools and Parishes to defend himself from related misdemeanor charges that carried no serious chance of jail time and no real financial fines.   Read my many posts in which I go into detail on this .  Or read the facts of the case, unfiltered by the "liberal anti-Catholic media" (which, apparently, includes orthodox pro-life anti-contraception anti-Obama Catholics like me) - read the documented facts of the case  here or here . Mistaken as Fr. Z's post is, it gets worse: Father Z. is censoring out commenters who disagree with him...

OK, I'm going to get this out of my system. Members of my immediate family have been victimized by sexual abuse.  I can tell you personally of the pain it causes.  I can tell you that when an otherwise good Catholic that I will not identify writes a blog post in which she argues that if an adult has sex with, say, a fourteen year old it's not CHILD ABUSE because teens are sexual creatures and when priests have sex with them (she argues in so many words) it's because the kids want it - I want to scream. When one of the best men I know is thrown into a dark night of the soul, into drinking and weeping over Bishop Finn enabling CHILD ABUSE and members of Finn's Opus Dei prelature covering up, lying, and making excuses for him and belittling the severity of this abuse - I want to get drunk and weep a bit myself. When commenters here and elsewhere on the blogosphere are defending Fr. Groeschel's indefensible defense of abusers, which consisted of blaming the v...

Bill Donohue and others are claiming the pictures Fr. Ratigan took were not pornographic.  If they were not pornographic, why was Fr. Ratigan convicted of child pornography?  Are pictures of the naked vagina of a two-year old girl not pornographic?  Are pictures taken with a spy camera up the skirt of a sixth grader at her birthday party not pornographic?  Donohue should be ashamed of himself. Bishop Finn clearly did not serve the people of his diocese; he let a dangerous priest have access to children without warning any of the children or their families.  But one of the people poorly served by Bishop Finn was the priest himself.   Fr. Ratigan is discovered to have taken hundreds of pornographic pictures of little girls at his parish, claims that he hugs them "to help them get to heaven", tries to kill himself, and is sent not to regular counseling with a professional therapist - but to a hand-picked fellow member of Opus Dei, a marriage counse...