Bishop Robert Finn
Posted on 06/23/2011 10:01:18 AM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Priest sex abuse victims are urging prosecutors in Jackson, Buchanan and Clay Counties to convene grand juries to investigate whether Catholic church hierarchy concealed crimes in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.
In a letter dated Friday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests also asked for the cancellation of a weekend march in support of Bishop Robert Finn.
Finn has apologized repeatedly for not taking action earlier in the case of a Kansas City-area priest charged with possessing child pornography.
A federal lawsuit claims the diocese and Finn tried to cover up the priest's crimes to save the church's reputation...
(Excerpt) Read more at therepublic.com ...
When will these crimes boil over into some real change? Until then, Rome just pays off victims and stonewalls Grand Juries.
And somehow Rome gets away with it.
"Oh, for Christ's sake! Isn't anybody in charge around here?" -- Goldie Hawn in "Deceived."
For Christ's sake, indeed.
It is a strange priority, there seems to be a desire to protect “the church,” which is a good instinct -
and yet these children are “the church,” and that seems to be lost on some.
Furthermore, protecting “the church” as an institution should involve purging it of this evil.
It is like an idolatry of the heirarchy or something.
Perfectly stated.
I can only give supposition.
This mes didn’t occur in the Church overnight.
It has been going on for years.
The Bishops and cardinals who are the Prince’s of the Church were picked from the ranks of the Priests.
How do we know that they themselves are as clean as the driven snow. Why else would they hide these people?
Certainly not to protect the Parisioners as they turned the ones they hid right back on the parisioners.
Now they cry when they cannot reach their goal in the Archbishop’s appeal. How much of that money went to pay off the victims. The victims of course deserve to be compensated,but not with money that I am told is going to provide charitable money for the Church’s works. I also do not want my money going to help bring illegals into this country to fill the pews or to provide Acorn with funds.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29441
Yet another diocese.
Fancy that.
Great post....
They need to clean out the infiltration of Satan....it has always been a problem with the big bureaucracy and, of course, Satan is trying to destroy the Church.
The Church has to have zero tolerance of crimes against children.....and let the abusing priests go and fend for themselves in the courts of US.....eliminate these people from their ranks....they are evil and destroy children and the future of the Church. There is no reason to keep them and every reason to kick them out immediately.
It would help to name the problem....homosexuality....and pederasty, instead of pretending that sex with 12-16 year old boys is not pedophilia...it is a ruse...to separate the ages so that homosexuals can get away with more molestations and it will skew the statistics.
Elephant in the closet....homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder which goes to the core of their worldview and is defined by the great number of victims that that lifestyle entails. Promiscuity is rampant in homosexuality because it is all about the selfish lustful act and never about selfless life-giving relationship.
I wish the victims themselves would speak out. SNAP’s motives are not pro victim despite the view popularized in the media. They are quite frankly pro law suit.
I would rather compensation dollars go to the victims and not lawyers. I do think victims have the right to sue and would encourage it. But SNAP fishes for victims and invites quite a bit of fraud knowing most Dioceses will settle instead of facing long drawn out lawsuits.
I really do wish that a more trustworthy group would begin advocating for the real victims.
The fact that SNAP wants to stop the march for the diocese and Finn as well as stop the big June 29th Mass shows what they are really up to. And it has nothing to do with supporting the victims.
Bishop Robert Finn
Even if that means the perpetrator of the crime is never brought to justice.
Rev. Shawn Ratigan, above, charged with three counts of possessing child pornography taken around churches and schools where he had worked in Kansas City...
Bishop Robert Finn said that he regretted not responding to warnings about Rev. Ratigan, now charged with possessing child pornography.
“Bishop again says he regrets response to priest in child porn case”
“This week it came to light that Julie Hess, principal of St. Patrick School in Kansas City, North, wrote a memo a year ago warning diocesan officials that parents and teachers were concerned about Ratigan’s behavior, including hundreds of pictures that the priest took.
In her memo, Hess described a number of occasions where staff members said Ratigan behaved inappropriately around children. For example, during a field trip in May 2010, Ratigan allegedly allowed a fourth-grade girl to sit on his lap and lean her body against him.
Another time, a parent said she found “a pair of girl’s panties inside one of the planters in Ratigan’s back yard,” the memo said.
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/27/2909498/bishop-again-says-he-regrets-response.html
Here is an interesting article about the case.
http://www.patheos.com/community/theanchoress/2011/06/07/bishop-finn-epic-fail-and-fallout/
Please note:
“”[Finn] sat on a summary given him by Msgr. Robert Murphy, his Vicar General, until several months later, when he learned that Ratigan possessed pornographic images of children. Even then, he declined to inform police for several more months until Ratigan violated his orders by consorting with minors.”
‘Diocesan Vicar General Monsignor Robert Murphy then called a ranking Kansas City police officer and described this photo.* In addition, the photos were provided to diocesan legal counsel. Both the police officer and legal counsel opined that the photos did not constitute child pornography as they did not contain sexual conduct or contact as defined by Missouri law. . .On the same day, Fr. Ratigan was called [by the Bishop’s office and] told to appear the next day at the chancery. Fr. Ratigan did not arrive at the chancery. Instead, the next morning he was found unconscious in his garage with his motorcycle running.
When Fr. Ratigan regained consciousness several days after this suicide attempt, he was placed in a psychiatric unit to minimize the chances of a further suicide attempt. According to a May 20 statement by Bishop Finn, Ratigan was then sent for further psychiatric evaluation out of state.
Although physically recovered, Fr. Ratigan was not allowed to return to St. Patrick and he was removed from pastoral duties there. After various evaluations and a stay at his mother’s house, in mid-February Fr. Ratigan was allowed live and pay rent at a Vincentian priest residence. According to Bishop Finn, Fr. Ratigan was allowed to say Mass at the adjacent Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist community, but was otherwise restricted in his activities. He was not allowed a camera or computer and he was not allowed to attend events where children were present.
On May 12, after repeated reports that Fr. Ratigan had violated these restrictions, Msgr. Murphy again contacted the police officer he had originally contacted in December. When Msgr. Murphy relayed ongoing concerns about Fr. Ratigan’s violation of the restrictions placed upon him, the officer facilitated a report to the Cyber Crimes Against Children Unit.
According to a “Probable Cause Statement” prepared by Detective Maggie McGuire of the Cyber Crimes unit, Fr. Ratigan was taken into custody on May 18 and kept on an investigative hold.
The next day, detectives obtained a search warrant for items belonging to Fr. Ratigan which had been held at his family’s home following Ratigan’s suicide attempt. In those items, detectives found an optical disk with 14 different images of child pornography and a Rocketfish hard drive with four images of child pornography. That same day, Ratigan was charged with three counts of possession of child pornography in Clay County.
On May 20, at a forum with St. Patrick parishioners and in a public statement, Bishop Finn said, “I deeply regret that we didn’t ask the police earlier to conduct a full investigation.’
I agree with the Anchoress that:
“Bishop Finn certainly has his defenders; he may indeed be a very good man, but any bishop who is not exquisitely sensitive to this issue, at this point, is betraying an astounding lack of understanding. If he doesn’t get it by now, when will he?
The church needs to do a great deal of penance for its sins, but all of it will prove meaningless if our bishops can’t pull themselves together. No one wants to see an innocent priest falsely accused, but if there is a whiff — and in Ratigan’s case there was more than a whiff — of suspicion, you don’t rely on summaries; you say, ‘show me the whole report.’”
I don’t see any basis to claim a coverup. Misjudgment yes, appalling lack of understanding yes. Did Finn honestly not question if Ratigan might not have more graphic images in his possesion? After all child porn is addictive to pedophiles. They are not gonna stop with just one.
This is the report that the principal of St. Patrick’s sent to the Dioceses last may.
http://ncrnews.org/documents/ratigan_letter.pdf
* if you go to page 3 of 5 you can read a description of the photo. I can not get it to copy over here.
Now taken by themselves and if they were each just one time incidents Father’s behavior might be regarded as benign. But taken all together alarm bells should be ringing off the wall to anyone who has any idea of how Pedophiles behave. With the attention Bishops are suppose to be paying to these warning signs Bp Flinn’s response or I would say non response is inexcusable. But that does not mean it rises to the level of cover up. The police too had the opportunity to request a more detailed investigation. They certainly can not be accused of coverup.
In my post I gave a link to the whole report. Please read it. I am gonna go out on a non expert limb but to me it reads like a text book description of the behavior of a pedophile.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I am alarmed at the lack of common sense in many bishops’ responses. We are talking about good, seemingly holy men (Belacquva (sp?) and Finn and others) who are down right clueless at best. Even before I had children, I knew, to some degree at least, how evil child molesters and pornagraphers were, and that they should face the full force of the law asap.
I am stunned by the lack of judgment bishops are exhibiting. I don’t know if they’ve adopted an “us versus them” mentality, or what, but while there is a tiny amount of perverted priests, theres a significant chunk of braindead bishops.
Thank you for the link.
I read it, and I agree with you.
Corruption abounds. They’re all sick. They believe themselves to be “another Christ,” and they deny the natural, God-given life of a wife and children.
Why should we be surprised they turn out to be perverts?
Ugh. Red. It’s always red.
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