Allow me to put my biases out in the open…
Bishop Robert Finn is quite possibly the saintliest man I have ever met. He is everything a good bishop should be: kind, wise, prudent, and faithful. The kind, wise, and prudent part local progressives could tolerate.
The faithful part set their teeth on edge.
Many of these progressives, Catholic and otherwise, subscribe to what the great Whittaker Chambers called man’s “second oldest faith,” the one Adam first signed on for when he bought the line, “Ye shall be as gods.”
To Chambers, a recovering Communist and atheist, these “miscellaneous socialists, liberals, fellow travelers, unclassified progressives and men of good will” were all of a type. Like communists, they believed that man should call his own shots.
Bishop Finn through otherwise.
To understand his resignation, it is helpful to know a little about the world he walked into when he came to Kansas City in 2004. From the beginning, he was not particularly welcome.
In May 2006, the liberal National Catholic Reporter tallied up the numerous changes Bishop Finn had implemented in the Diocese as though they were counts in an indictment.
The liberal Talk to Action blog meanwhile described the Bishop’s establishment of a “Respect Life Office” as a giant step in his presumed “march backwards” and a clear sign that “biological issues now take precedence over long-standing concerns such as distributive justice.”
“Distributive justice” is code for socialism. “Biological issues” is code for life.
Socialism is the whim of a few progressive churchmen. Life is enshrined in the encyclical, Humanae Vitae. This makes it official.
Judy Thomas:
A pose every true journalist should avoid unless it’s their parents taking the photo
From the beginning, the real battleground in Kansas City was the life issue.
Depriving an innocent human being of life, and life undeniably begins at conception, is “always morally evil,” said Pope John Paul II. He added, “This tradition is unchanged and unchangeable.”
Weeks after Time Magazine named Pope Francis “Man of the Year,” he denounced abortion as “horrific.”
Don’t expect to see him on next year’s cover.
In the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese, elected Democrats and church leaders have long had an easy rapport, despite the Democrats’ often fevered support for abortion rights.
Finn’s new emphasis on life prompted Catholics to rethink their political allegiances. This realignment, actual or feared, agitated any number of forces – the Kansas City Star most notably.
In 2006, the same year Finn helped lead the battle against the increasingly dubious science of embryonic stem cell research in Missouri, the Star waged an unholy war against Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline’s re-election in Kansas.
So combative was the Star in its successful effort to defeat “the anti-choice extremist” Kline that the national office of Planned Parenthood awarded the paper its top editorial honor, the “Maggie,” named after the organization’s eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger.
For the Star’s editors and reporters, the Shawn Ratigan child-photo scandal was manna from heaven. Unlike most accused priests, Ratigan’s pathology was heterosexual. Its reporters would not have to dance around the touchy issue of same-sex attraction.
Better still, Ratigan’s ultimate supervisor was a theological conservative not afraid to challenge the Star’s agenda.
Not surprisingly, the Star assigned ace project reporter, Judy Thomas, to the Ratigan story. This is the same Judy Thomas whose preposterous 2011 story, “The Altar Boy’s Secret,” was exposed for the anti-Catholic lie it was during a civil trial last November.
At the first whiff of the Ratigan scandal, the Star started to run above-the-fold headlines and soon called for the Bishop’s resignation. “It’s painful to believe the most vulnerable in his flock weren’t protected,” lamented a Star editorialist.
These are the same editorialists, by the way, who sat in silence while Missouri public schools indulged in a phenomenon sometimes known as “pass the trash.”
Woody Cozad, a prominent local attorney and lobbyist, spent years working with state legislators to change a law that, says Cozad, “encouraged school administrators not to report sexual abuse.”
As Cozad explained, public schools had been uniquely allowed to handle their own cases internally. Typically, the accused teachers would be allowed to resign with some severance pay and a letter that did not specify the reason for the departure.
So common have these deals been nationwide that the teachers earned the nickname “mobile molesters.” After much struggle, the Missouri legislature finally ended this practice just a few years ago.
The Star sat largely silent throughout the struggle. With all the public school teacher scandals, I cannot recall the Star ever naming the principal or superintendent, let alone criticizing them or demanding prosecution. Finn’s handling of the Ratigan case was imperfect but hugely better than those of his public school peers.
But now he is gone, and the folks at 18th and Grand can now add notch onto their belt alongside Phill Kline’s.
And local Catholics can pull their mini-vans into church parking lots festooned with Obama bumper stickers and feel a little less queasy.
Rich Steele is a citizen journalist and head of the NSAAS (Non-Smokers Against Anti-Smoking).
Amazing how a newspaper that nobody reads wields so much influence.
Rich, I’m not a member of the Catholic Church and have no first hand knowledge its’ inner workings. I believe you when you say Bishop Finn was quite possibly the saintliest man you have ever met. However with great power and position within the Church certainly must come great responsibility. Instead of serving the youngest and most vulnerable within his flock, he chose to protect the pedophile. As one of the progressives you look down on, I get no pleasure from his fall from grace. I pray for him just as I pray for the young people who suffered the abuse. Bishop Finn had to go, but not for the reasons you list here. For you to try to paint him as the victim in this sad series of events just really seems misguided to me.
I could not agree more. He sat on his hands for six months and did nothing! That’s just unforgivable. I heard a man interviewed on the radio, standing up for Finn saying that when he came in to the role he was uncertain about the legalities of the situation. As if to say, he was breaking new ground, lots of iffy areas. I’ll tell you what, you open a Priests computer and it’s loaded with little girl porn, what else do you need OTHER THAN the brain and common sense God gave you?
Stevie Wonder could see that one a mile away.
I gotta go with Stomper and Paul on this one Mr. Steele.
The folks who were harmed and there were many, personify one of the most egregious betrayals of trust that I can imagine. Children made catamites (Ratigan was one of many priests as I understand it.) by our confessors, suffering then and through the years while those in power transferred the pedophiles again and again to hide there transgressions.
Money just doesn’t cut it, I want to see them on Golgotha.
Read this for another perspective on the facts of the case. He did not shelter Ratigan.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/missouri-nuns-defend-finn-our-bishop-is-a-man-who-inspires-faith
And this one is even clearer that Bishop Finn acted responsibly.
http://abyssum.org/2015/04/21/chalk-one-up-for-the-national-catholic-reporter-and-the-kansas-city-star/
Once again, the ignorance of the facts is displayed with this comment, and the agreeing comments below it. Ratigan was never accused, or convicted of being a “pedophile”, but that’s the narrative the media beats – it’s a hot button, it’s exciting, it’s click-bait. It’s also a fact that NONE of the photos used to prosecute Ratigan were known BEFORE the diocese turned him over to police. The bishop didn’t “protect” anyone – the bishop didn’t have ANY prior knowledge of the photo’s that were discovered, and he never viewed any images of same…. that’s a crime, you know.
But this is the bully pulpit of the internet – it’s not reality, and facts that get in the way of the meme are to be discarded. The ignorance of the public on the facts of the Ratigan case is just stunning.
If you have ANY shred of intellectual honesty, you’ll read the Graves Report, and see the whole ugly comedy of errors the STAFF of the diocese made in dealing with Ratigan. Bishop Finn suffered the humiliation of the sins of his staff… that’s what real leader’s do. The Jackson County prosecutor “promised” immunity to all the staff who dropped the ball if they would help her take down Bishop Finn. Some said no, some said yes, but ALL were saved the shame and cost of a trial by Bishop Finn stepping in and taking responsibility for there errors.
Those are some excellent articles that make your point re Finn.
Look, here is the deal. I personally know of a girl in my grade (I went to Catholic School in the 60’s), who was abused by a priest that I know. She was part of the settlement reached not long ago. In addition, I know several teachers (Indeed, I taught for a short, short while at a Catholic High School.), who are familiar with others who were abused.
As I said, it is the most egregious of sins and the fallout, if indeed, it took a man who was, for the most part, innocent, is to be expected. It ain’t like some one got their house teepeed after prom, this is serious sh*t and sins, mistakes were made. If in the cataclysm, Bishop Finn was subject to unjust calumny and opprobrium, so be it.
He became a symbol for an obstinate Roman Catholic hierarchy who were part of the problems. It is time to move on.
Good comments, Chuck.
So, what: Finn provided saintly cover for Ratigan and should therefore be excused his responsibilities? The Star was (historically) inept at providing coverage of the KCPS and so should have given Finn a pass?
Specious nonsense.
He provided no cover.
http://abyssum.org/2015/04/21/chalk-one-up-for-the-national-catholic-reporter-and-the-kansas-city-star/
What Finn did or did not do is a matter of legal record, not really open to revisionist history by an organization far more biased than the Star.
There is no organ more biased than the Kansas City (Red) Star. The Daily Worker was more fair and balanced in its heyday than is the KC Star.
The Star is reaping the results of their far left wing agenda. They are in a death spiral.
Since they fully support abortion and suicide … why don’t the pull the plug on themselves.
Every catholic conservative I know has been saying Finn needs to resign ever since news of his sheltering the pedos broke.
That fact alone erases anything and everything good that he’s done.
http://abyssum.org/2015/04/21/chalk-one-up-for-the-national-catholic-reporter-and-the-kansas-city-star/
“every catholic conservative I know”… really. You run in strange circles.
Again, he didn’t “shelter the pedos” – such ignorance is just vile… absolutely vile.
Not everyone I know is CC, johnnyjoe.
By the way, what do YOU call shuttling Ratigan off somewhere else with out turning him in?
Thought so.
Who cares what Mark Shea has been saying?
You’re all forgetting that Finn was also friendly to traditionalist orders. He even offered the Latin Mass himself. He was going to be a martyr
I have it from an impecable source, that when Bishop Finn first took over the diocese the libs/desenters who were in charge of the diocese called him to a little pow-wow to let him know how things were going to be if he didn’t “rock the boat”. He told them he was here to save souls so he was going to have to rock the boat. In rocking the boat he had to take a few hands out of the cookie jar. They were not pleased. I know of sources who work at the chancery who hated Bishop Finn and litterly wish harm on the good Bishop. He was set up by back stabbing enemies in his own house. They were deathly afraid of the new priests that he was training and ordaining that would transform this cess pool of a diocese under the previous regime into an actual Catholic diocese.
Maybe just a touch off topic here but the exchange of opinions and the obvious intensity of some of the commenters has stoked a bit of curiousity on my part of the inner politics of the Catholic Church. I recall in younger school days learning of the questionable alliances formed centuries ago between Popes and various Emperors in the region to maintain the power of the Church. Papal States actually forming armies and conducting wars. Behavior by early Popes that would shake the foundations of the followers today. Certainly the immense ( and unknown) wealth of the Church itself. Money influences behavior as we all know . Money is power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely . Saw a piece from the Economist that stated in 2010 the Catholic Church and entities it controls spent an estimated $170 Billion. Wow!! The Church is now embroiled in the issue of sexual abuse allegations against priests and we are beginning to get a glimpse into the politics with Bishop Finn’s resignation here locally. What a great topic for a KCC writer. Maybe Rich Steele or Paul Wilson might tackle this one.