Tuesday, March 13, 2012

“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.


16 comments:

  1. I'd be all for letting the law take its course with Bishop Finn. It would be like 2002 all over again when all the secrets Bernie Above the Law had been keeping came out.

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    1. I'm praying Bishop Finn is allowed to testify for that exact reason. I just have this feeling that unlike Mahony and some others, Finn is not going to be to lie. He may have a psychotic break though.

      Love Bernie AbovetheLaw.

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    2. He'd be on a plain white Gulfstream V nonstop to Rome before that ever happens. Whether he wanted to be, or not.

      Bronxirishcatholic

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    3. That thing did kind of happen for Cardinal abovetheLaw, but he hadn't been indicted yet. Bishop Finn would be another story entirely, one with national ramifications between Washington and Rome.

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  2. Thank you for this Colleen. Extremely cogent. Lately my brain has felt scattered about on these events. Your piece has brought some coherance to my mental gym. Thinking clearly on this can be a challenge given the furious anger that can twine itself around thoughts and formulations of thoughts. This situation is just plain gross and the main player is a so-called religion and I'm really sick about it today.

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    1. John the main player is not the religion, it's the so called leaders of the religion. But then, this abuse thing has been going on for 1900 years. in 177 AD Bishop Athenagoras was writing about this very problem in the clergy and advocated excommunication, by 305 it was a serious topic at the Council of Alvira, in certain cases they advocated execution, and even back then they knew it wasn't curable.

      By 1200 or so, the current policy of covering up and transferring pedophiles was already in effect at the instigation of the Pope and curia. This is an old old energy with in the Church, but for the first time the laity collectively know what's going on. The People of God will finally bring this sick energy to an end. We must support SNAP for all kinds of reasons, but the big one is they are shock troops, the real Michael the Archangel archetype and they have been through fire and rain to earn their swords.

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  3. Another USCCB post, before publicly retracting your earlier slander?

    Cheeky! ;-)

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    1. Well, I suppose the trend is set.

      It's unfortunate; I really thought you might be more open-minded.

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  4. This vicious attack on SNAP/victims tells us only one thing.

    To all victims who have been sexually abused by clerics, your voices are strong, powerful, and being heard...!..
    The church officials can't shut us up. They can't shove all the victims back under their control of silence.

    The can of worms has been opened, and that is only because very brave victims of clergy sex abuse are speaking up, coming forward, contacting the police, exposing the truth, and trying their hardest to not allow another child to be given the life sentence of harm which they were dealt.

    For those who wish to help ...On our website - SNAPnetwork.org - are simple suggestions for helping victims beat back this assault against them by top Catholic officials. Please check it out. Thanks.

    Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Associate Director, USA, 636-433-2511
    "Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests" and all clergy.

    (SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world's oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims.
    SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 12,000 members. Despite the word "priest" in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers and increasingly, victims who were assaulted in a wide range of institutional settings like summer camps, athletic programs, Boy Scouts, etc. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

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    1. This is pretty wild. Judy, as you posted this, I was writing this in response to another comment:

      "We must support SNAP for all kinds of reasons, but the big one is they are shock troops, the real Michael the Archangel archetype and they have been through fire and rain to earn their swords."

      I work with sexual abuse victims. I know how devastating this is for so many people. I also know when the abuser is a priest and the victim a Catholic child raised in the faith, it's qualitatively different. It's soul murder.

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  5. Colkock (Colleen), I too thank you for your detailed and insightful organization of the issues and the threat posed by this recent legal over-reach by the church attorneys. I was one of the volunteers that help sort through the stacks of boxes from David Clohessy's basement looking for any pieces of paper that met the criteria of the defense attorneys' subpoena: 23 years of SNAP materials with only 200 pages at best making any reference to repressed memory, any priest EVER (not just the ones accused of abuse) who served in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, or correspondences with the plaintiff's attorney (who is accused by the defense lawyers of violating the judge's gag order. NOTE: the defense attorneys did not and have not asked for subpoenas of her records). Over 300 person hours (thank goodness for devoted volunteers; snap only employs three executives and two office staff) searching through the paper and electronic records and documents of SNAP and over 80% of the retrieved documents and records were in the public domain already (press releases and SNAP statements). This "... fishing, crabbing, shrimping, trash-collecting, draining the pond expedition." was what our legal system refers to as a frivolous litigation action, but when you have boundless resources and a president setting indictment (charging a bishop with endangerment of children) distraction and counter-attack is the name of the game. SNAP is not, I repeat NOT a party to this legal action yet it has been targeted and brought into the discovery phase. If this tactic prevails there will be no victims advocacy group that won't find itself bankrupted by a well funded and backed perpetrator. Stay vigilant and help SNAP if you can [ www.snapnetwork.org ] Steven Spaner, SNAP Australia Coordinator, www.snapaustralia.org .

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    1. Steve, I saw this right away. This attack could set a monstrous precedent for any group dealing with victim advocacy or crisis intervention. I think that's one reason I'm so irritated about this twisted assault on SNAP. Part of my job also involves answering a suicide crisis line. I can't imagine what our callers would do if the even thought for one minute our records weren't confidential.

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  6. We in the Kansas City Diocese are appalled at what is happening in regard to Finn. I am a retired teacher in the diocese; anyone who had any contact with a child had to be trained in "Protecting God's Children". Several students were recruited from my junior high classroom to serve Mass for the bishop at an evening event. I remember trying to help them secure white gloves required for this activity. Now, the bishop says that he wasn't involved in this required training to protect. He says it didn't apply to him. The bishop was given a slap on the wrist in the neighboring county - required to meet once a month with the prosecutor's office for 5 years. We do not want a deal made for this criminal.

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  7. Beliefs have consequences, and one consequence of cultish belief is that decent people end up doing ugly things in order to recruit converts and save souls. It is because they care about being good that they do harm. In the much quoted words of Steven Weinberg, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” The mechanism by which this happens is that religion creates a narrative in which the evil serves a higher good.

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  8. In my above note, I meant to quote Valerie Tarico, AlterNet | News Analysis, but I forgot to leave her as a reference and wish to do it now. dennis

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