Thomas P. Doyle: Bishop Robert Finn - the rest of the story
23. maj 2015
Thomas P. Doyle, National Catholic Reporter, skriver 5.maj bl.a.:
Raymond Leo Burke
Another sad chapter in the Kansas City leadership vacuum was Finn's unsuccessful campaign to close down the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the world's oldest and largest survivor support organization. He did this in cahoots with Cardinal Raymond Burke of St. Louis and Burke's successor, Archbishop Robert Carlson. They had their lawyers try to force SNAP to disclose confidential communications with victims. SNAP had to defend itself in the legal arena, and this was costly.
The lawyers' game plan was to accomplish what the bishops hoped for; namely, the hastening of SNAP's demise by draining its resources through useless litigation. SNAP was not a party to either of the cases used as launchpads for this legal maneuver, but that didn't matter: SNAP is a threat to the bishops, so it had to be snuffed out. The outcome: Finn and Burke have both been sidelined by the pope, and SNAP is still standing. So who was on solid ground in that dispute?
The real hero in that nightmare was SNAP's national director, David Clohessy. He withstood the withering attacks of the lawyers; he protected the victims' privacy; and he survived the vicious and dishonest attacks on him personally and on SNAP by Donohue.
While a few have suggested that Finn was ousted for ideological reasons, nothing could be further from the truth. Finn had to go, not because he is an ecclesiastical conservative who tried to take the diocese backward in time and re-gild the monarchy, but because he either forgot or never fully realized that when Christ referred to "the least of my brothers," he was referring to those most debased and rejected. In the church of Kansas City, the "least" were those who needed Christ's love the most: the people violated by the church's own priests.
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Indhold på Katidialog.dk om Robert Finn <her>
Wikipedia: Robert Finn (bishop)
Wikipedia: SNAP
Wikipedia: Raymond Leo Burke
Wikipedia: Robert James Carlson
Wikipedia: David Clohessy