Judgment Call

I can't before recall a Catholic church official being indicted before over the ongoing child abuse scandal in the priesthood, but in Kansas City an indictment has just been handed down.

The Roman Catholic bishop of Kansas City, Robert Finn, and the diocese he leads have been indicted by a county grand jury on a charge of failure to report suspected child abuse in the case of a priest who had been accused of taking lewd photographs of young girls.


The indictment is the first ever of a Catholic bishop in the 25 years since the scandal over sexual abuse by priests first became public in the United States.

Bishop Finn is accused of covering up abuse that occurred as recently as last year — almost 10 years since the nation’s Catholic bishops passed a charter pledging to report suspected abusers to law enforcement authorities.

The bishop has acknowledged that he knew of the existence of the photos last December but did not turn them over to the police until May.

During that period Bishop Finn and the diocese had reason to suspect that the priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, might subject a child to abuse, the indictment said, citing “previous knowledge of concerns regarding Father Ratigan and children; the discovery of hundreds of photographs of children on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including a child’s naked vagina, upskirt images and other images focused on the crotch; and violations of restrictions placed on Father Ratigan.”

The indictment was announced on Friday by the Jackson County prosecutor, Jean Peters-Baker. It had been under seal since Oct. 6 because the bishop was out of the country. He returned on Thursday. 

Coming from a long line of Catholics myself and raised as one, it fills me with anger that the church would not only let this happen, but work so diligently and in a non-Christian way to cover it up all these years.  I admit I've grown apart from the church and my current religious beliefs are agnostic at best, considering all the problems I've had with the church's views and actions over the last decade, especially.  On one hand, I fully support the Vatican's anti-death penalty stance and the church's call for a global social and moral imperative for assisting the world's poor.  On the other hand, I have major disagreements with the church on just about everything else from a social perspective: gay rights and same-sex marriage, contraception to prevent the spread of AIDS and other STDs, and of course a woman's right to control her own uterus.

The news that a sitting bishop is facing indictment for failure to report abuse of children is a major development.  I'm not a lawyer like ABL, but even I have to think that this is pretty unprecedented legally, and could possibly open the gates for much more legal action against various dioceses around the country.  What will become of the Bishop Finn case I don't know, but it's going to be uncharted waters here, legal waters that should have been plied a long time ago.