UNITED STATES
The Savannah Reporter
By Guy Speckman
Published: Thursday, September 13, 2012
A Ponder The Thought favorite topic was forefront in national news of late with the trial of Bishop Finn in Kansas City. Finn was the first American bishop criminally charged and convicted in a clergy sex abuse scandal for failing to report suspected child abuse. He was found guilty in a non-jury trial and given two years of probation that was suspended and will be wiped from his record if he adheres to a set of conditions that include abuse reporting training and other miniscule tasks.
That last paragraph makes me laugh a little. Can you believe that he is the first ever to be charged? Seems almost incredulous to me.
The important part of this story is that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph was also originally charged but those charges were dropped as part of Finn’s conviction. My initial reaction is what a joke! The tough talking prosecutors in Kansas City got weak kneed as they approached the finish line and the Catholic Church swept in with their money and bought one more fall guy in Bishop Finn.
I have a good Catholic friend who has devoted his life to teaching kids, much of it in Catholic schools. I respect him and his life’s work. Whenever I write about this he says that there are just as many pedophile newspaper publishers percentage wise in the country as there are priests by percentage. I don’t know if I agree with that, but assuming that to be true, it furthers my point in this case. The Catholic Church has spent over a hundred years moving priests from one community to another when these activities were discovered. Their only corrective action was to take a priest that had molested kids in one area of the country and move him to another area (sometimes only a few miles away), only to repeat the crime. I doubt the Missouri Press Association would cover up a pedophile publisher and ship some guy from St. Joseph to Montana.
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