A little more than 100,000 people recently signed a petition demanding that Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn resign. It was a phony exercise.
The petition was found on the website of change.org, home to mostly left-wing activists. Anyone was able sign it—you didn’t have to be Catholic or from Finn’s diocese. For example, almost 7,400 signatures were sent to the diocese, and all but approximately 150 were from outside the area. Of the signatories online, activists from foreign countries signed. In short, there is no grassroots rebellion against Bishop Finn.
We know who Bishop Finn’s enemies are: the Kansas City Star and the National Catholic Reporter (both are located in Kansas City, Missouri). They are the real source behind this phony drive: Both have been beating the drum calling for Finn to resign. It is not child sex abuse that angers them, it is where it takes place and under whose purview it is.
There has been an ongoing story in the Orthodox Jewish community of rampant child sexual abuse, intimidation of victims, and a refusal to cooperate with the authorities, yet the Star has never covered this issue and the Reporter has largely ignored it (both publications carry national stories, not just local ones).
Similarly, at the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota, child rapists abound and kids have been killed, yet neither the Star nor the Reporter have ever said anything about it. That’s because they are too busy focusing on twisted clergy who take crotch-shot pictures of children fully clothed.
For the past decade, the most important goal of anti-Catholics has been to bring down a bishop. That’s what was behind this petition drive.
