And about the Finn Situation in Kansas City . . .

And some important statements about what keeps coming to light re: Mr. Finn, the Catholic bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph: 

Michael Hunter at SNAP blasts Finn for picking that bizarre Opus Bono Sacerdotii-connected therapist to help him cover up advise him about Father Shawn Ratigan about which I blogged yesterday.  Hunter asks,  

What kind of therapist diagnoses an adult as “lonely” because he takes hundreds of pictures of little girls’ crotches? What kind of therapist blames a parochial school principal for that child predator’s problems? And what kind of bishop seeks out this therapist?

The obvious answer to these rhetorical questions is clearly this: a bishop who is no kind of viable leader--of any organization that wants credibility--takes such steps and listens to such advice.  And the fact that any number of U.S. Catholic bishops continue to take such steps and listen to such advice, as we learn anytime a new abuse story breaks wide open, ought to give anyone who continues to heed the counsel of the U.S. Catholic bishops pause to think.  Long and hard.  About precisely who they're deferring to.

And Mr. Donohue, whom the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops Mr. Dolan has stoutly defended (and see also here), has taken his dog-and-pony show to Kansas City to inform the American public that Mr. Finn is innocent as charged.  At the Commonweal blog site, Grant Gallicho dissects Bully Bill's arguments in the Finn case and finds them conspicuously wanting.

And as I read these and many other articles about the Finn case, I ask myself again: the U.S. Catholic bishops met in conference this week to say what again?  And to do what?  And Michael Sean Winters and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good want me to understand what as all about addressing socioeconomic oppression?!