KANSAS CITY (MO)
Crisis Magazine
FRANK KESSLER
Two weeks ago, Bishop Robert Finn, the embattled bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph in Missouri, had his resignation accepted by appropriate authorities in the Vatican. Canon law accepts “graves reasons” other than things like age, infimity and so on as sufficient reason for the Church to accept a bishop’s resignation because of incapacity to continue as shepherd of a particular diocesan flock. Several commentators from the Catholic News Service, the National Catholic Reporter (based in Kansas City) and secular media like the Huffington Post said that Bishop Finn was ‘low hanging fruit” after his conviction of a misdemeanor failure to make a timely report of accusations of child endangerment against one of his priests to civil authorities in 2010. The term “low hanging fruit” is typically used to convey someone who is vulnerable in the lower branches of the vine. It implies you need to get the “low hanging fruit” so that you get to the higher ups. He was the most senior Catholic Church authority to be “convicted” in a matter involving sex and a Catholic priest.
Finn’s Early Days
When Finn was assigned as coadjutor bishop in 2004 I called my relatives in St. Louis County to ask if they knew anything about him. Since I had lived and worked as a full-time political science professor and advisor to the Missouri Western State University Catholic Newman Club, for over thirty years after coming to the St. Joseph, Mo. college as a newly minted Notre Dame Ph.D., I had seen the prevailing diocesan politico-religious culture and wondered how he would be received in Kansas City. Several of my extended family in St. Louis had been in parishes Fr. Finn served in Webster Groves and Florissant. They described a Fr. Finn as a “holy man” who was sought out as a confessor and spent countless hours regularly serving long lines of penitents. My spirits were raised by the news.
When it became clear he intended to emphasize youth ministry, evangelization and vocations, my hope for Newman Centers and the end of a vocation drought in the diocese were buoyed. It took very little time for me to realize, if there had been a welcome mat extended for him in Kansas City, it was pulled out from under him almost immediately. His views on the priorities of the church for the future in the diocese, like those of Pope St. John Paul II, who selected him, seemed almost diametrically opposed to a highly vocal segment of the laity and clergy in the diocese. Entrenched bureaucracies and long-standing cultural values do not lend themselves to a change in emphasis and priorities.
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