“It was a fishing, crabbing, shrimping, trash-collecting, draining the pond expedition. "

There is absolutely no way the real powers that be in the USCCB want this man testifying in a criminal trial.  They can't take the chance Bishop Finn would feel compelled by his personal conscience to tell the truth and expose the utter lack of institutional conscience..

I am getting real angry.  Angry enough to throw money changers out of temples, or sick and twisted Roman Catholic Bishops metaphorically out of their cathedrals.  The following excerpt is from the NY Times.  It deals with the current attempt by lawyers from two dioceses to pry records from SNAP. These are records which have nothing to do with the cases being litigated, and everything to do with destroying SNAP.  Hence the title of this post which is a quote from SNAP Director, David Clohessy.

What makes this article important, is that the unofficial spokesman for the USCCB, Bill Donohue, comes right out and states this.  Of course the official USCCB spokesperson, Sr Mary Ann Walsh says it ain't so.  For once I believe Bill Donohue knows what he is talking about.

.......The network and its allies say the legal action is part of a campaign by the church to cripple an organization that has been the most visible defender of victims, and a relentless adversary, for more than two decades. “If there is one group that the higher-ups, the bishops, would like to see silenced,” said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University and an advocate for victims of clergy sex crimes, “it definitely would be SNAP. And that’s what they’re going after. They’re trying to find a way to silence SNAP.”

Lawyers for the church and priests say they cannot comment because of a judge’s order. But William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a church advocacy group in New York, said targeting the network was justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Mr. Donohue said leading bishops he knew had resolved to fight back more aggressively against the group: “The bishops have come together collectively. I can’t give you the names, but there’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.” (Like they haven't already been doing this.)

He said bishops were also rethinking their approach of paying large settlements to groups of victims. “The church has been too quick to write a check, and I think they’ve realized it would be a lot less expensive in the long run if we fought them one by one,” Mr. Donohue said. (Not to mention a whole lot more lucrative for their 'non altar boy' attorneys.)

However, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said Mr. Donohue was incorrect.

“There is no national strategy,” she said, and there was no meeting where legal counsel for the bishops decided to get more aggressive.(Who needs a meeting when it can all done by email and then deleted.)

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Here we have the USCCB using their clout in an attempt to destroy SNAP. We also have them using that same clout in a trumped up battle about birth control being an issue of their religious freedom, and all this while they are still spending oodles of money 'defending marriage', fighting statues of limitation on sexual abuse, and tossing honest out gays from their church related jobs.  Their credibility is in the toilet. Their teaching authority in shreds. They are losing on everyone of these issues, and yet they won't stop and re evaluate, much less retreat. Why are they doing all of this?

Well, I think a person needs to look at some other moves in order to draw conclusions.  One of those moves I looked at is where the loudest voices are situated.  Archbishop Neinstedt is leading the 'defense of marriage' crusade, but he also is sitting on one of the seminaries, St Johns, which has been thoroughly documented as a breeding ground for pedophilia and active gay clergy.  Archbishop Chaput has been moved to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has another major nest of seminaries and groomers whose names pop up all over the abuse scene.  Plus it's been targeted by two Grand Jury investigations and the Archdiocesan official in charge of abuse investigations through two Cardinals is also facing criminal charges.  Cardinal Dolan has been moved to New York from Milwaukee, where there are currently some 500+ abuse victims in the process of litigation.  Milwaukee was also home to Rembert Weakland and one of the worst serial abusers in US Catholicism, Lawrence Murphy. Dolan has so far avoided testifying in Milwaukee cases and putting him in New York certainly helps that. The two law suits targeting SNAP from Kansas City/St Joseph and the Archdiocese of St Louis hold their own terrors for the American clerical system.  In the first a sitting bishop, Finn,  is facing criminal charges, and in the second, testimony could implicate a whole host of our current leadership including Cardinals Dolan, Rigali, and Burke.  Then there is California with another well documented grooming seminary and hundreds of millions in payouts to survivors, which has helped Cardinal Mahony avoid testifying. And then there are those other well documented nests of abusive cronyism on the East Coast involving dioceses whose sitting bishops were proteges of Cardinals Law and Egan.  Finally it should not be forgotten that two of our worst clerical protectors, Cardinals Levada and Burke now head the CDF and Apostolic Signatura respectively, two Vatican dicasteries which deal with clerical abusers and have access to tons of information.

I think the Vatican is desperate to maintain the American clerical system and keep it's obvious flaws secret.  Consequently it has authorized American bishops to do what ever is necessary to see to it that this system stays in tact and in control of the vast wealth of the American Church.  If that means taking out SNAP and bashing gays, and fomenting trumped up religious freedom crusades, so be it.  One of the secrets the Vatican  is desperate to keep the lid on is the fact the upper levels of the American clerical family is very gay in a very personality disordered and closeted way, very incestuous,  very compromised,  and willing and able to engage in criminal or any other activity to keep the truth from American laity.  They will do almost anything to protect their personal status and power-----and keep their sexual truth from their mothers.

As I see it, the really big threat to the American hierarchy is the criminal trial of Bishop Finn.  The USCCB will do anything to keep him from having to testify because I truly believe Bishop Finn will actually tell the truth under oath and he has a great deal of truth to tell.  Truth about men like like his mentor Cardinal Rigali who happened to be the Archbishop of St Louis when Finn was serving in the Archdiocese, and whose influence with John Paul II got Finn his title of monsignor.  When Rigali moved to Philadelphia late in 2003 Finn was then under Cardinal Raymond Burke who had just come from his own clerical sexual abuse mess in La Crosse Wisconsin where he seemingly never had an abuse accusation that was credible. In 2004 Finn signed on with Opus Dei and miraculously,  two months later found himself the coadjutor bishop of Kansas City/St Joseph to which he was elevated as bishop a year later.  So Finn is connected to a number of people who really don't need him taking the stand, and lest I forget, that includes a fellow priest with him in St Louis, another one of Rigali's St Louis proteges, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.  Did I mention yet the US hierarchy is incestuous?

In my analysis, Bishop Finn is potentially a very serious weak link for the entire clerical chain.  It is paramount he not testify or at the very least the damage minimized.  Ergo target SNAP.  All the rest of the machinations are a smoke screen to keep Catholic laity from understanding and dealing with the truth of our hierarchy.  Men like Richard Sipe and Tom Doyle and Eugene Kennedy know how sick this clerical system is, but for some reason their knowledge goes no where.  Is it because the laity are just to enmeshed with the system to deal with it, or because we can't emotionally afford to believe it?  If anyone thinks all this is over, they would be wrong because the next generation of priests fits the Finn profile to a T and that's a guarantee the system stays functioning exactly as it does now, or more likely, it gets even more abusive.  Here's a link to a Richard Sipe article which may shed some light on what our bishops are actually protecting.