Can you make your story more consistent?
First you deride Bishop Finn with the statement:
>>Finn’s diocese lost 20,000 Catholics during his tenure. They didn’t die. They didn’t move to another diocese. They just disappeared. They essentially ceased being practicing Catholics.<<
Yet later you state:
>> The one thing no one can take away from Bishop Robert Finn is that he dramatically increased the ranks of seminarians and new priests in his diocese.<<
I’d much rather have good, orthodox priests than weak “catholics” who “just disappear”. Once again, your “logic”, or lack thereof, eludes me.
“Can you make your story more consistent?”
There are no inconsistencies. The problem is yours.
“First you deride Bishop Finn with the statement:”
Nope. I stated a fact. The diocese has lost 20,000 Catholics in just a decade. Where did they go? Who was bishop then? What plan did he come up with to stop this? Finn did nothing. He was advised to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING. He did nothing.
“Yet later you state:”
Yet I state? Are you honestly saying I made an inconsistent statement by pointing out that the number of Catholics dropped over his tenure while the number of seminarians increased? The two are in themselves UNRELATED.
“I’d much rather have good, orthodox priests than weak “catholics” who “just disappear”. Once again, your “logic”, or lack thereof, eludes me.”
You’re the one who is not being logical. 1) you’re accusing me of inconsistency when I said nothing that was inconsistent. 2) you’re assuming that all of the new priests are orthodox. Don’t. Look up what happened to Fr. Jorge Ramirez. People assumed Ratigan was orthodox. In what he taught, he might have been, but not in how he lived. I know one of the new priests ordained by Finn to be a relative liberal compared to others. I had discussions with him before and after he was ordained. He was smart enough to never cross a certain line, but he’s still more liberal than others. 3) you’re making the mistake of assuming that all those who left were “weak ‘catholics’” when I know that not all were by any means. Did you know, for instance, that some of those most upset at Finn were real orthodox, conservative Catholics who felt betrayed by Finn’s stupid handling of the Ratigan case? That by the way included priests. Some of the most outspoken priests against Finn were some of those who were thought to be very orthodox. People openly discussed the fact that it was a handful of liberals among his clergy who came to his defense against some of the more orthodox conservative priests. I know a family that wrote a letter to Bishop Finn over how they were being treated by their parish priest. They preferred the Latin Mass, but were forced by circumstances to move to a different town and attend the local parish. The pastor there refused to allow them to kneel to receive the Eucharist and mocked the girls for wearing veils at Mass. When the family appealed to Finn for support, he ripped them to shreds in his response letter. A family member in another state informed me about the contents of the letter after their relatives were able to pull up stakes and move to another state. I know all the family members involved. Another good Catholic family lost to that diocese.