The case against Bishop Finn
Reuters has a thorough — and chilling — tick-tock on the case of Father Shawn Ratigan, the Kansas City-St. Joseph priest accused of possessing child pornography, and on what Bishop Robert Finn and other officials knew, and when they knew it.
Bishop Finn is facing charges that he did not report suspicions to the police, and his case does not seem strong — hundreds of lurid shots on Ratigan’s laptop computer, a history of complaints about Ratigan, Ratigan’s refusal to abide by restrictions placed on him, and his suicide attempt — and still no report to police:
As Ratigan regained his health, Bishop Finn, Monsignor Murphy and others in the diocese continued to agonize over what to do. More diocese officials and staffers were brought into the discussion, including consultations with legal counsel. Diocese officials ultimately concluded that the pictures did not appear to be pornographic because they did not depict sexual conduct, sexual contact, a sexual performance, or meet other criteria they believed would constitute child pornography, according to the Graves report and interviews with other sources.
Some inside the diocese believed that Murphy had fully explained the situation to police and had been told the pictures were not pornographic.
For his part, Bishop Finn maintains that he never viewed the photos himself but only had them described to him. In comments following Ratigan’s arrest, he called the pictures “inappropriate photographs or images.”
Following Ratigan’s recovery from his suicide attempt, the bishop sent him for psychiatric evaluation in Pennsylvania. After getting an opinion that Ratigan was not a pedophile from a Pennsylvania doctor who specializes in treating priests for mental health issues, Bishop Finn assigned Ratigan to live in a mission house with aging priests in Independence, Missouri, and warned him to stay away from his computer and not to use his camera.
As the time stretched on, diocese officials began to debate whether or not they should try to identify the children in the photos. They did not in the end make such an effort, and though diocese officials discussed calling the Missouri Department of Family Services, no such contact was made. The diocese also decided not to refer the matter to its own Independent Review Board based on the rationale that no victims had complained.
And in a move the diocese ultimately grew to regret, it continued to keep the matter a secret from the families attending its churches and schools.
Reading the whole piece, the criminal culpability seems pretty clear. A jury will have the final word, of course. But what if Finn is convicted? What happens? What if he is acquitted? The account shows he clearly violated the bishops’ own charter. What kind of accountability would there be or can there be?
NOTE: I initially wrote that Bp. Finn was facing trial early next year but I confused that with Msgr. Lynn’s trial in Philadelphia on charges of covering up for abusers. Josh McElwee at NCR reminds me that Finn’s pre-trial hearing is set for Dec. 15. Quite an Advent for KC Catholics.
Photo: Shutterstock
Tags: Bishop Robert Finn
Why is he still bishop of Kansas City-St Joseph? Because he might believe that he has a better chance to save his skin by keeping the role of a bishop.
Why does the Pope not order him to step down? The Vatican has no qualms about acting quickly in issues of doctrine or church discipline, so why don’t they do something? Because they agree with Bp. Finn that he has better chances during the trial if he is still bishop then. Victory for the bishops’ clan will come if Bp Finn escapes unscathed.
The only accountability built into the current governance structure of the Church is the accountability of a bishop to the pope.
Accountability is is the taking of responsibility, the willingness to bear the consequences for failure, and the obligation to be called on to render an account. In corporations, for example, management is accountable to the corporate board and ultimately to the shareholders; boards and shareholders have the power to approve or reject major management initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions and can remove poor performers. There is no such accountability built into the current governance structure of the Church. Priests, bishops and the Pope are responsible for governance and yet are not accountable to the faithful for the results of their governance; the faithful have no means to rectify incompetence or malfeasance. A pastor is only accountable to his bishop, not to his fellow priests or his parishioners. A bishop is accountable to the Pope, but not to his fellow bishops or to the priests or the faithful in his diocese. If the men in these positions misstep, the people who suffer as a result have no structural recourse.
It sounds to me as though the bishop’s principal mistake was to resist taking the easy path of rushing to obey an inhumane law.
David Gibson has sketched the future before Catholics through the frame of Kansas City.
Robert Finn as a bishop has access to nearly unlimited funds to support the phalanx of attorneys and public relations consultants that will be needed to just keep him from serving any jail time. Remember, here in America, rich white men almost never go to jail for their crimes.
DEMOCRACY is the only viable check and balance on the out-of-control all-male feudal oligarchy: LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE!
In this century, I believe that the very survival of the Catholic Church is at stake. Until Catholics separate the MONEY from the MINISTRY, no meaningful reform or renewal of the Catholic priesthood will ever occur.
No bishop or pope will ever do anything (i.e., reform) to upset their steel political hegemony over the church until their rapacious little fingers are pried off of their capital investment portfolios which insulate the hierarchs from any accountability for their fraudulent and criminal cabal.
With the advent of the child rape scandal, Kansas City is only one example, we have been witnessing the slow implosion of the hierarchy’s corporate hegemony over the church. In a sense, I suppose Catholics should be thankful for this. But, it is very painful to watch.
As B16 leads the discredited hierarchy into a historic emotional and intellectual retreat behind Vatican walls, probably for a century or two until their fat investment portfolios run out and when there are no more boy priest vocations offered up to fill the clerical ranks, what emerges from the rest of us left to wander in the religious and spiritual desert remains to be seen.
In any “oasis” church, it will be up to Catholic women and men to ensure the survival of the Gospel – don’t look for any help from the soon-to-be extinct hierarchs.
Catholics must TEACH. Pass on the traditions. Celebrate the BEATITUDES and CORPORAL WORKS of MERCY with new generations. Take matters into our own hands. Hope for the day when new ideas can be spoken aloud again in our own church.
@David Smith (12/6, 12:33 pm) I’m sorry, but what’s the “inhumane law” at issue here?
Thanks, Mr. Gibson….here is a recent address by Msgr. Scicluna, expert on both canon law and chief investigator for the Roman dicastery:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/04/sicluna-catholic-parents-abuse_n_1074868.html
Key: “….Sacred power rightly generates sacred trust,” he said. “Unfortunately and wrongly, it may generate fear to disclose crimes by religious leaders. The empowerment of the community in this context means the ability to denounce abuse of sacred power for what it is: a betrayal of trust.”
The church also has “the duty to undertake an honest analysis of what went wrong in tragic cases where stewardship was lacking and the response to child abuse was inadequate because of misplaced concerns for the good name of the institutions we represent.”
He noted the problem of deciding what role, if any, perpetrators of abuse should be allowed to have in the church, adding that the welfare of children and the community must be the deciding factors.
He also noted the church understands that “if the perpetrator of abuse is left to his or her own devices the risk of reoffending is very high.”
This was at a conference on November 3rd. Keep in mind that the next day, November 4th, Rome with the USCCB forced Bishop Thomas Gumbleton into retirement and out of his parish based upon Gumbleton’s presentation to the state legislature on extending SOLs – his removal was justified because he acted against the other bishops. Speaking of inconsistency and hypocrisy?
Later in November, Scicluna gave a presentation about the gaps and limitations in canon law. Two obvious examples that connect directly to Finn’s case:
- there is no canon law that makes bishops accountable in terms of sexual abuse; so, the pope can not easily use canon law to remove an incompetent bishop – it does not exist
- OTOH, canon law does not support “natural rights” and has no provisions if a bishop is removed – he has no way of appealing the decision (example – Australian bishop Wm. Morris)
Thus, it basically comes down to the civil and criminal laws of society – it might be helpful if there is no settlement or deferred sentence and Finn actually serves time in a prison. Eventually, some type of justice for bishops must prevail – was always taught that forgiveness requires penance and restitution. Finn and Scicluna seem to differ on how this situation can best be resolved – at a minimum, Finn should resign and let the criminal process proceed.
Of course, you also have the Bully Bill and Catholic League spending tens of thousands to smear the local newspaper with imagined collusion with the state attorney general last year on a different matter; painting the Finn event as totally anti-catholic and calling Finn an admirable man??
Finn’s mistake was signing on to the Dallas Charter. He should have been like Bruskewitz, Vasa and all of the US Eastern Rite bishops, or whatever they are called.
They didn’t sign on and have suffered no consequences whatsoever. You don’t pay if you don’t play – right?
It sounds to me as though the bishop’s principal mistake was to resist taking the easy path of rushing to obey an inhumane law.
I think David Smith is right. If priests want to carry around digital cameras and take pictures up little girl’s skirts, why should the law have anything to say about it? The bishop should have done something reasonable and humane. Perhaps parents could have been sent a form along the lines of the following:
We, the parents of _______________ , give our permission for Father Ratigan to take pictures up our daughter’s skirt: _______Yes _______ No
______________________________________________________
(Signatures)
Or perhaps to avoid embarrassing the good father, a bulletin could have been issued saying, “There will be a photographer in the neighborhood taking pictures up little girls’ skirts. If you prefer that your daughter not be a model, have her wear slacks.” Those who live in New York City occasionally see signs saying there is filming going on in the area, and that passing through into the area constitutes consent to be filmed. Why couldn’t something like that have been arranged?
And while we’re at it, Joe Paterno informed his superiors. What’s all the fuss about?
David Smith: “It sounds to me as though the bishop’s principal mistake was to resist taking the easy path of rushing to obey an inhumane law.”
Well, this is problematic on so many levels, but I guess it needs parsing.
For one thing, it’s a bit cheeky to start complaining about a law (on reporting, not child porn per se) after you’ve been charged under its statutes.
Second, if he took his time obeying an “inhumane law” he would still be obeying an inhumane law. What’s the difference? He is still cooperating with evil when he should be resisting, in Smith’s reading.
Third, why is a reporting law “inhumane”? That’s not an objection we’ve heard before.
Fourth, the US Bishops (including Finn) and the Vatican have said the bishops must comply with reporting laws in their respective states. So if you have a problem with the law, complain to Finn and the USCCB and Rome.
Thank you, David Nickol, for your response to David Smith’s repulsive comment about the mandatory reporting law.
Let me preface this comment by noting that I don’t know whether clergy such as Deacon Lewis and Monsignor Murphy are included in the State of Missouri’s definition of mandated reporter – although, if Bishop Finn is, they almost certainly are, too – nor, if they are included, what specific reporting steps are mandated. If this were Illinois, then based on the information presented in the Reuters story, both Lewis and Murphy would have violated mandatory reporting laws.
Based on the information presented here, Lewis and Murphy both seem a lot more culpable than Finn – I say that, not to exonerate Finn, but to note that, if we consider degrees of culpability, Lewis’s and Murphy’s seem higher.
I’d like to think that, were I in their shoes, DCFS would be my first call.
That the laptop was given away and then destroyed is mind-boggling. I find it difficult to resist assigning the worst possible construction to all parties involved in that development.
As the story is reported, Finn doesn’t seem to have had much, or any, first-hand knowledge of the abuse. That is not to say that he didn’t violate the law, though. Worse, to my way of thinking, is his failure to enforce his own repeated ultimatums to Ratigan. Again, given what has transpired in the diocese and in the American church in the past, it boggles the mind.
Jim P, good points — it’s interesting that not just Bp Fin but the “diocese” itself was also charged, which unusual, I believe. I think that has some interesting potential repercussions, or is a way for the DA to cover all his bases, or pressure diocesan officials, or ll of the above.
Jim P., I don’t believe that he did not see the photos, but if it’s true, it’s also mind-boggling and it reveals that he is not fit to govern a diocese by reasons of incompetence.
David G: re: the diocese being charged: that seems unsatisfying. The diocese is much, much bigger/wider than the handful of officials mentioned in the Reuters story, and presumably nearly all of the diocesan employees and Catholics, at all levels, are not tainted by the Ratigan affair. And then, from the other perspective, charging the diocese allows individuals who may have done or failed to do the right thing to say, in effect, ‘hey, it wasn’t me, because I wasn’t charged. It was the diocese. I’m not the diocese.’
I’d much rather see specific culpable individuals charged appropriately.
David Smith, your reaction highlights something that many people fail to understand about child abuse and child abuse reporting in the abstract: they think, “I would never have waited to report that sicko!” as if the non-reporting person must really be an outlier. In reality, what happens, as is evident from the PSU and this episode is that you are never reporting someone in the abstract. You are reporting a friend, a colleague, maybe a person you know to have a myriad of mental health and personal issues that engender sympathy or pity or even empathy. But in reality, that’s why it’s as bright line of a requirement as exists in the law: because unless it is mandatory, too many self-serving (and sometimes, class and race based) judgments are made that protect true abusers from being held accountable. The law will often seem inhumane when you have the real person in front of you — in this case, an obviously tortured and troubled human being, but individuals can’t rely on their own sense of justice as a defense. That’s what used to happen routinely when people failed to report and that’s why the law was changed to be the way it is.
Barbara – that was the comment of the year!
The diocese is much, much bigger/wider than the handful of officials mentioned in the Reuters story, and presumably nearly all of the diocesan employees and Catholics, at all levels, are not tainted by the Ratigan affair.
———-
Obviously not all Catholics in Kansas City / St. Joe are guilty of the various disgusting events that are making the news, but I wouldn’t be so quick to exonerate the diocesan employees. When Finn arrived in the once-great diocese (of Bishop O’Hara, Bishop Lillis, et al.), he made a clean sweep, getting rid of old-timers and replacing them with those he trusted.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, here is an old article from NCR about it:
http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006b/051206/051206a.php
Gerelyn – you are correct but allow me to add some information:
Per published reports:
- the IT tech immediately reported this to his bosses, communications and Murphy and turned over both the computer hard drive and the flashdrive he made copies on (but not all the photos or the various links, etc. to websites that Ratigan had been accessing)
- subsequent meetings with diocesan communications, deacon who runs chancery and Murphy – clearly those folks advised and encouraged Murphy and by extension, Finn, to immediately report to police (which, of course, did not happen)
- diocesan lawyer……this is still unclear given lack of published information
- also, there are now reputable interviews and reports from Ratigan’s family (sisters and brother-in-laws) who are distressed and angry because Finn/Murphy did not tell them the extent of Ratigan’s behaviors, potential dangers, risks, etc. but allowed them to interact with their children without any knowledge of Ratigan’s behaviors. Per these interviews, the family is not supportive of the decisins made by Finn and seen as less than supportive of their brother (in law). One family member was much later given Ratigan’s computer/hard drive which was destroyed – but, this happened because Finn provided little full disclosure to the family.
There is another confusing piece of information – the psychiatrist/psychologist used by Finn. Supposedly an expert in abuse and perps via one set of advocates; others allege that he is an Opus Dei member who has biases. Whatever the story, his final diagnosis was wrong. We also don’t know exactly what his treatment and follow up recommendations were to Finn. We know what Finn did with Ratigan (basically put him under little to no supervision) but don’t know if this psychologist clearly recommended something else.
Jim P – most US dioceses are Corporate Sole (the diocese is owned and operated by the bishop solely). Wonder if naming the diocese is an attempt by the county DA to get at information; conversations; etc. between department heads and Murphy/Finn. From current public information, it is pretty clear that most folks in the chancery were dismayed by the lack of reporting; the delays; and the obfuscations of Murphy and Finn.
Keep in mind also, Jim P, that Finn was part of the 2008 diocesan settlement of 47 cases and he had published a diocesan policy about internet pornography and how to handle it. So, for him to not even look at a computer image back in December, 2010 is inexcusable and then to allow Murphy to basically deceive the police captain by verbally describing one image???
I’m late to joining the chorus of those who find david Smith’s coment -repulsive is a good word for it.
Geryln makes a good point about KC, but, even more, I think Bill D. noting how Gumbleton was ousted summarily for not foloing “communio episcopi” for urging extending SOL laws while Finn and others go.
There is no accountability in the Church by clergy except up the line.
Canon Law and its Roman beaurocrats and the hierachy and their chancery men are the dynamic that settles pastoral”: see today’s NYT about Phillipino catholics, their traditions and feelings and the good old NY Chancery guys.
The governance sytem reeks!But the governnace systenm demands on point -and, if you’re seen ln point as a bishop like Finn, or law and his Boston buddies of a few years ago, you wil be taken care of if possible.
“most US dioceses are Corporate Sole”
That’s a legal point that it would be good to get some clarification on. My understanding is that the *office of the bishop* in most dioceses has the (secular) legal status of a Corporation Sole, a legal construct that allows the assets controlled by the bishop to be owned, not by the bishop as an individual (because then he could will the assets to his heirs when he died) but by the corporation, which changes hands when one bishop steps down or dies and is replaced by another bishop.
The question would be whether or not the diocese is a separate legal entity, or is encompassed within the corporation sole.
Bill, I agree that it’s all very confusing, and that some people who seemed to be part of the problem in earlier stories now seem to have been duped — the family, e.g.
Hard to know what’s true. I wonder also how Ratigan made it through the seminary at his advanced age, etc. (Maybe the screening needs to be tightened.)
Maybe the thing that seems strangest of all is the LONG letter written by the school principal to the bishop but never read by him. Is there any CEO of any company who would ignore a LONG letter from the boss of a district office? How can a bishop be so disinterested?
The whole thing is sickening. (As is the three-part article that the KCStar ran this week about the Mons. O’Brien victims.)
“subsequent meetings with diocesan communications, deacon who runs chancery and Murphy – clearly those folks advised and encouraged Murphy and by extension, Finn, to immediately report to police (which, of course, did not happen)”
I agree that promptly reporting the discovery to the police should have happened, but even that wouldn’t (at least in the State of Illinois) fulfill a mandatory reporter’s responsibility. Reporting to the Department of Children and Family Services is what would be required.
I’m pressing this point because it’s difficult to believe that Murphy, and hopefully Lewis, wouldn’t have been aware of this.
Again, I’ll add the caveat that I’m not familiar with the requirements in Missouri, so perhaps it’s not as bad as I’m painting it here.
Inasmuch as retired Bishop Gumbleton’s removal from St. Leo parish has been broached here, I just want to note that the Detroit Archdiocese disputes Gumbleton’s account. http://ncronline.org/node/4863
REgarding “Corporation Sole”, here is the way it is described in the financial statements of teh Archdiocese of Boston:
“The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, A Corporation Sole (the “Corporation Sole”), is a legal entity created under Massachusetts civil law in 1897 to provide the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston with a means to operate within the public statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Corporation Sole, as an entity, is distinguishable from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston whose powers and responsibilities are established by Canon Law.
The financial statements of the Corporation Sole are grouped into four reporting units: the activities of all parishes located within the Archdiocese (“Parishes”), the central administrative activities and programs of the Archdiocese (“Central Operations”), central endowments (“Endowments”) and the Archdiocese self-insurance programs (“Self-Insurance”). The Parishes grouping includes the 291 parishes of the Archdiocese and the 73 schools and 42 cemeteries operated by these parishes. Included within the Central Operations grouping are the assets and activities of the 2004 parish reconfiguration process.
The Archbishop of Boston, by virtue of his office, serves as chairman of the board or president of numerous separately incorporated Catholic organizations that operate within the Archdiocese of Boston. While these organizations are considered to be related organizations of the Corporation Sole, they are not under the control of the Corporation Sole and, accordingly, their financial activities are not presented as part of the Corporation Sole’s financial statements. The listing of the related organizations that operate within the Archdiocese of Boston are included in Item 7 of this financial report.
http://www.bostoncatholic.org/uploadedFiles/BostonCatholicorg/Offices_And_Services/Offices/Sub_Pages/Finance_and_Technology/FY10/rcab_financial_report_063010published4-14-11.pdf
I’ve now read the HuffPo article that Bill deHaas linked. I throw up my hands at the last paragraph:
“Last May, the Vatican gave the world’s bishops one year to prepare “guidelines” on preventing abuse, caring for victims, disciplining abusive priests, and reporting suspected abuse to local police. The national guidelines may vary significantly by country, and will not be binding on individual bishops.”
Sounds like a repeat of Dallas -the USCCB will prepare “guidelines” but each bishop can decide whether to follow them.
Jim P – just for you; I’m no legal beagle but remember back to the days of Cardinal Cody – as seminarians and deacons we would have to pick him up at the Lake Shore mansion and drive him ….reason stated: he was corporate sole and, if he caused an accident, the archdiocese (him) could be sued and held financially liable.
BTW – you drove him in silence; he rarely spoke and usually munched on his cigar and muttered every so often.
Jim P – what do you really think about the diocesan “line” in response to Gumbleton’s story? Looks like boilerplate, defensive manuevering.
JIm P – regarding Deacon Lewis: A few weeks ago I spent some time reading the Independent Investigator’s Report. My sense is that Lewis handled the situation appropriately. An outside computer repairman brought the laptop to the parish office, showed Deacon Lewis one nude photo of a young girl and left the computer with him. Lewis called Msgr. Murphy and they agreed he should bring the computer to the chancery. Lewis knew that Fr. Ratigan was due back in a few minutes so he left quickly, receiving a cellphone call from Fr. Ratigan while enroute to the chancery. Once there, he delivered the computer to Msgr. Murphy who turned it over to the diocesan IT department to be searched).
I congratulate Bp. Finn on hiring the Independent Investigator and posting his report on the diocesan website for all to read. It gives me the impression of being objective (based on John Meier’s “criterion of embarassment”)
If you would like to read it, it is at:
http://www.diocese-kcsj.org/_docs/8-31-11_Report_of_Independent_Investigation.pdf
The part about Fr. Ratigan begins on page 71
Bill – what I think about the way Gumbleton was removed probably isn’t very important. What particularly interested me was his claim that he had violated a rule of episcopal collegiality that is (he claims) *enshrined in canon law*. I took the Detroit Archdiocesan response as a statement that there is no such law. If there were such a law, that would be an extremely interesting development, no?
Bill – that is a great anecdote about Cardinal Cody. I didn’t move into the archdiocese until 1979, when I was a freshman at Loyola, so I missed the bulk of his reign. I didn’t realize that you had attended seminary at Mundelein.
I’m sure it was a great comfort to you that you were taking on all of the liability (at least according to his legal theory) in order to protect him from a lawsuit :-).
Hi, John H – I agree that Deacon Lewis did a lot of things right. I’m questioning one specific legal obligation. It may be that he did what he was supposed to but Reuters didn’t know about it or didn’t include it in the story.
“Sounds like a repeat of Dallas -the USCCB will prepare “guidelines” but each bishop can decide whether to follow them.”
Hi, John H – I agree that it sounds very much like the Dallas Charter in the respect you’re highlighting.
As I understand it, the only way that could change would be if the Holy Father changed it.
Unless/until that happens, the need for a vigilant watchdog function in the larger church persists.
You missed some critical, critical details. Some facts, according to Todd Graves Catholic report:
- Bishop Finn got a memo about Ratigan’s pedophilia behavior from a school principal a year before he did anything about it (and now claims he never read it)
- FInn, or his assistant Msgr Murphy lied to the police. They told the police, by phone, that Fr Ratigan’s computer had a single picture of a 2 year old relative, naked, and asked if it was child porn. The policeman (a friend) said no.
The truth, from pg 90 of the Todd Graves report, paid for by the Catholic church, shows:
- the picture was the last in a staged series of a 2 year old girl doing a “strip tease” out of a diaper
- the last picture was the one of her naked, private parts exposed, with the diaper completely off
- the computer was riddled with “up skirt” pictures Ratigan took of girls under 10 years old
- it was not the picture of anyone’s relative
Two year old doing a strip tease out of a diaper. No big deal in the Bishop Finn diocese. Memo from a school principal. No big deal.
Regarding Bp Gumbleton: it’s been a long time but my recollection is that he violated “communio episcoporum” by going into Ohio and testifying before the state legislature in favor of changing the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse – opposing the position of the Ohio bishops. Since he was over 75, he had submitted his resignation as bishop and there probably wouldn’t have been much of an uproar if the Pope had quietly accepted the resignation he had in hand..
Apparently NCR understood that the Detroit Archdiocese claimed that canon law prohibited a retired bishop from continuing as pastor of a parish. I took the article as Detroit saying they had never claimed that canon law prevented that and that the reason he had to resign as pastor because Rome had ordered him to do that.
It was that twisting of the knife in requiring him to give up his parish that some people saw as retribution for opposing the Ohio bishops or, in any case, unfair.
A most likely scene at the KC-St Joe Chancery office in Dec. 2010—
Omg, “Houston we may have a problem”…
–Computer technician… ouch, this is too hot for me … I need to let someone know.
–Chancery office, Bishop, Vicar, Secretary, several priests, …. “hummmmm is this child pornography and is it illegal..?
–Are these little girls important..?
–Oh, do we HAVE to report this to police..? Is it illegal to keep this from the police..? Let’s ask our expensive diocese lawyers,…
–Oh well, they are just kids, they are not really people, so it doesn’t matter.
–Maybe we should make a copy of these photos, just in case we need it …. for some darn reason..
–Nah… It may be illegal to copy and possess child porn, but we won’t get caught, we are infallible.
–We just need to keep constant control of this issue, so it does not go public.
–Nah, we don’t have to turn over Ratigan to police, we are infallible, and we won’t get caught.
–Hey, we will make Ratigan do what we say, keeping him away from kids and cameras and computers.. it will all be ok..
–So what if the parents and parishioners are not alerted… it is only their children… and they are not really people..!!
Ouch, now what, we have been caught…….!
–We do what bishops are supposed to do, “lie, and use all of our parishioners money to keep us out of jail, and to keep our control so that we can continue to do what I do best…
“Protect our image, the institution, and our power.’ forget about the darn kids, they are not really people”…
How do they sleep at night…???
Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Associate Director, USA 636-433-2511
snapjudy@gmail.com
“Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests” and all clergy.
http://www.snapnetwork.org/
At least in NH, the Diocese was to be charged by the AG as opposed to individual bishops because there was no proof that Bishop A saw Bishop B’s memo over many years. But there were only a few individuals involved in making personnel decisions about accused priests, so they were all liable as part of the Diocese. There is little reason to think they in fact were not aware of what transpired.
In KC, I assume it is possible to discern who saw what.
Finn’s negligence in not reading the principal’s memo, in not looking at all the photos, in accepting the idea that no child was abused, in not responding vigorously and thoroughly, in looking for reasons not to report to authorities — these show the lack of priority he assigned to child safety measures. What an incompetent!
I fear another sweet deal is in the offing for Finn and everyone involved, when it is past time for him and others to spend time locked up. Maybe just a nominal fine or another diversion of some kind — again. Like Pilarczyk in Cincinnati, Walsh in Santa Rosa, Finn in Clay County, George in Chicago who escaped liability due to statutes of limitation.
Deference is alive and well. Bishops and cardinals in the Catholic Church are in fact above any meaningful, substantive administration of justice anywhere.
Yes, Barbara, thanks. Well said.
The bottom line propblem on the inside is that canon law is the only “accountability” for Bishops and members of the clergy are bound in loyalty to uphold it.
It’s all about them in the final analysis.
If you’re in the club abd speak out against the old dboys club, you’ll be bitten.
Carolyn Disco, as usual, is dead-on right about impediments to the having effecting reporting mechanism which promote child safety.
Of course, having the commitment and cooperation of church officials is bottom-line essential for these safeguards to have any effect. Sadly, this was not the case with Finn in Kansas City.
However, since I was involved in the Santa Rosa, CA case of predator priest Xavier Ochoa, it was NOT the statute of limitations that block prosecution of Bishop Daniel Walsh for aiding and abetting child rape and endangerment, and obstruction of justice.
The local district attorney “declined” to prosecute Walsh because it would not “serve the public interest” because Walsh would have been too difficult to prosecute for the same reasons in Kansas City: Walsh, like Finn, has unfettered access to unlimited financial resources to fight prosecution.
[District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua, prominent Catholic, also was facing a stiff reelection challenge. Go figure?!?!]
Sad, but true, in the USA “RICH PEOPLE DON’T DO JAILTIME” for their crimes.
Barbara 12/6, 4:17PM: “but individuals can’t rely on their own sense of justice as a defense. That’s what used to happen routinely when people failed to report and that’s why the law was changed to be the way it is.”
But isn’t that what David Smith was excusing on Finn’s part? What is inhumane is letting victims be victimized further when you can do something about it.
Psychologists and psychiatrists at Harvard and Boston Univ medical schools stressed to Law and McCormack way back in 1993 that mandatory reporting is necessary. “We told them the overwhelming evidence is that people drawn to children as sexual objects cannot turn that behavior off…We all told them the evidence is that they can’t…The mandated reporting of child abuse to civil authorities needed to be the policy.”
It was not, and look what happened.
Sure, it’s not easy, but the alternative is to enable more abuse. The victims you don’t know somehow get lost, have gotten lost for decades, as bishops failed to protect them. That is not the answer.
Help the perpetrator in whatever ways you can if he is a relative or friend, but do not abandon the innocent victim. Such indifference to the victim’s fate is indeed repulsive.
Carolyn, that was the point I was making. One reason why the law is mandatory is because people simply can’t be trusted to make the right call from the perspective of what conduct needs legal intervention. My point is that in the abstract it’s a lot easier to say, as many have with respect to the Penn State incident, “how could that guy NOT have intervened and called the police?” The answer is, you don’t usually witness or hear of abuse from a distance, involving people you don’t know. Reporting is harder than you think it is and that is one of the reasons why it is mandatory so that you don’t have to second guess or over think things like, “was that really abuse?” In other words, Finn did what a lot of people wish they could do if they weren’t subject to mandatory reporting laws. Imagine how hard it is for a psychiatrist to report a patient or for a teacher to report a colleague. It’s not an excuse for not doing it, but it’s an explanation for why the stick has to be as hard as it is if someone fails to carry out a legal reporting duty.
I understand, Barbara.
Wasn’t the computer technician who first found the pictures under any obligation to report?
Charlotte – Missouri law designates certain positions, jobs, careers that were required to mandatorily report. IT support was not one of these. He actually did exactly what the current church safety program calls for.
Another interesting question might be – what would he do now in restrospect?
Barbara, what’s the difference between saying that in this case and saying it in, say, Nazi Germany or East Germany? If a person’s conscience tells him the law or the action that would follow from obeying it is immoral, doesn’t he have an obligation – to himself – to disobey it?
@David Smith (12/8, 3:13 am) Barbara can speak for herself, but my reading of what she’s written above is that when discovering a friend, colleague or family member is a child abuser, one’s relationship with that person often *deters* one from following one’s conscience and reporting the crime—and thereby protecting the child (and other children) from future assault. By creating a category of “mandatory reporters”, the law helps to strengthen and reinforce one’s conscience.
By contrast, in a totalitarian state, one’s conscience and one’s relationship with the “guilty” person (e.g., a Jew, a homosexual, an “enemy of the state”) would be allies, as it were, against the law and the power of the state.
David Smith, this isn’t Nazi or East Germany. With the exception of Joseph O’Leary I have yet to hear anyone actually try to articulate why reporting a priest under this circumstance might have gone against Finn’s conscience. In addition, Finn had AGREED and had ADVERTISED that he would comply with mandatory reporting obligations — meaning that if he was going to apply a standard of “I’ll report when my conscience alone tells me to” he should have at least had the courtesy to let parents (not to mention the principal of the school) know that.
I don’t think Finn’s conscience was telling him not to report. I think he dragged his feet trying to find excuses not to report because, as I said, reporting isn’t so easy when you are the one who actually has to do it. In other professions people lose their jobs and indeed, their entire careers, when they fail to report. Finn did the wrong thing here, whether or not that makes him guilty of a crime I cannot and will not say.
Bill deHaas, according to the report, the computer technician sought advice from two of his bothers and the pastor of his (Baptist) church. They all advised him to turn the computer over to the local police department. His wife talked him out of it because their contract wih the parish required them to return all computers to the parish.
He was an independent computer technician, not an employee of the diocesan IT department which later examined he computer and made a copy of the image files.
I think you are right that he was not a mandated reporter. Also, since he wasn’t a diocesan employee, he wasn’t subject to their internal policies.
It’s not just Finn but the “communio episcopi” with little accountability – ready to fight SOL changes and protect the institution where canon law is the only law -which takes care of them.
Glad to see the Fine case creating a new stir on SOL in NY -wonder what the bishops there will say?
If you think Rattigan was a creepy pervert, I think any defense you make of Fin nand his staff is conditioned by institutiona;l protection thought.
Barbara and Luke, one doesn’t have to be a prisoner in a totalitarian state to have a conscience. Injustice, unfairness, immorality abound, everywhere. You have to pick and choose, of course. Luke, you might risk going to jail for a cause for which Finn would not. He risked jail for a cause that’s not on your list. Conscience is personal.
Barbara, I know you think Finn didn’t choose to risk anything, but your thought is colored by your bias, no? Bad cause, bad man, end of case?
Thanks, Mr Hayes, for the added clarification (my mistake). In re-reading, it does appear that, after calling his family members, he did tell the church deacon who called the diocese before Ratigan returned to the parish office. Then, both that deacon and the IT consultant delivered and reviewed the computer at diocesan office and diocesan personnel. This happened quickly because they knew that Ratigan would be returning and would discover his missing computer.
David Smith, really now. You sound like Cardinal Castrillon:
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=6074
“Conscience is personal”? Is that what you say when a Catholic embraces an abortion rights position? When someone commits some grievous wrong because they think it is what their conscience tells them to do? Or allows them to do?
What about protecting children rather than a possible abuser? How does one weigh those two options in good conscience?
Was thinking of my high school moral theology classes – if Finn tried to appeal to that, our professor would have stated that Finn’s conscience was ill-formed or incorrect and that he had an obligation to educate himself. (He knew the law on this; in fact, had written a diocesan pastoral letter on this law and internet pornography and had participated and signed the 2008 abuse settlement which clearly indicates that his conscience supported the criminal law – in fact, the settlement he promised to uphold had additional requirements that he would immediately report all abuse to the police). Smith’s argument is built on quicksand.
He, furthermore, would have said that one can’t defend oneself by claiming that his consicence is invincibly ignorant. If that was the legal model, then there is no basis for law because every individual decides on their own.
I did have some sympathy for some of the bishops when the scandal started. They often were told by psychiatrists that the abusers could safely return, and, face it, the custom was to overlook merely suspicious behavior. But it’s far too late for such excuses now, and in the case of Bishop Finn he in particular had a great deal of knowledge of the consequences of child porn — he had even had a booklet on the subject prepared for use in his parish. Given how much he knew about the priest’s behavior, it is just unbelievable to me that he didn’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the priest should be reported. It’s possible, of course, that Bishop Finn is mentally unbalanced, but he is not pleading insanity.
@David Smith (12/8, 1:53 pm) Thanks for your response. I confess I haven’t followed this case as closely as many others, but I’m not aware of Bishop Finn stating that his actions (or inactions) were a matter of conscience for him. Do you have any evidence to support your assertion that Bishop Finn “…risked jail for a cause”?
Bill deHaas, I think the story gets confused by the complication that there were two computer/IT people involved. The first one delivered the computer to the deacon at the parish office. The second one took the computer from the deacon when he arrived at the chancery. The first one was an outside contractor to he parish. The second one was a diocesan employee.
I can’t imagine that Finn would claim that his conscience prevented him from reporting. I assume, based on what I have heard, that his defense will be that he wanted greater certainty that the offense was covered under the reporting obligation. I don’t off the top of my head know what the standard is — “credible information of abuse” or something along those lines. The real problem for Finn and those like them is that society at large has little patience for debating this kind of principle as if it were the same thing as an abstract, theological matter. The bishops are particularly ill-suited to carrying out this sort of responsibility and they ought to delegate it to someone who actually has no conflict, and has worked with children. It would save everyone a lot of agony.
My feeling is that if they believed that protecting children from the possibility of abuse was more important than preserving the reputation of the church or the individual priest they would have acted differently.
Having read the Independent Investigator’s report and the state booklet for Mandated Reporters, it’s not obvious to me whether they violated the technical requirements of the state law. I won’t make any prediction on how the trial will turn out but I’ll be interested to hear the arguments from the lawyers on both sides (if it gets to trial rather than being settled out of court).
“credible information of abuse”
Barbara -
Important concept. It isn’t as if the informer has to think that the suspect is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. All the informer has to think is that the accusation would be *believable*, that it would be possible to believe it. That’s a very different standard from saying “I KNOW that X did this”.
I fail to see how protecting an abuser is an act of conscience any more than failing to report a serial killer would be. What part does conscience play in allowing the continued destruction of lives? What good is served if an abuser is free to continue finding and using victims? I have another point as well.
I believe that the sooner an abuser is caught, the better it is for everyone–including the abuser. Abuse hurts the perpetrator as well as the victim, and the more a person is allowed to damage others, the more his own soul is damaged. Surely a Catholic knows this.
I have reason to believe the the people who abused me were re-enacting their own childhood trauma (in one case, I can reliably trace the pattern back for three generations), and that hurting me only made that pain worse for them, as well as destructive to me. If they had been caught, brought to justice, made known to the community, and yes, given whatever treatment is available–without the naive idea that a little therapy would fix them completely–their souls would be in much better shape, and fewer people would be suffering the long-term effects of their destructive behavior.
catarina, just a gentle pushback: you assume the conclusion — that the person is an abuser. The point is that a report is supposed to be made when one has evidence of abuse — in fact, as Ann says, that is not the same thing as proof. What appears to me as most striking about this incident is that even if you give Finn the benefit of the doubt, the best that can be said is that he badly misunderstood his role as a citizen in this context — his investigation was only supposed to ensure that evidence existed, not serve as a kind of jury or even judge as to whether such evidence was proof of guilt (e.g., whether a striptease photo sequence of an infant “counts” as sexual in nature). That’s what society — judges, and juries — are here for.