Kansas City Priest Charged With Child Pornography

Kansas City Priest Shawn Francis Ratigan was arrested Wednesday on child pornography charges. Ratigan was charged with three counts of possessing child porn and is being held on $200,000 bond. Authorities allege that Father Ratigan took photos of young girls in and around the churches and schools that he worked. He was at St Patrick's in Kansas City North for about a year, and at St Mary's in St Joseph, MO before that.

Back in December, a computer repair technician discovered suspect images on his laptop and alerted church officials. At that time Bishop Robert Finn contacted a Kansas City Police officer and described "a single image of a young naked girl...nothing of a sexual nature" and asked if it was pornography. The officer replied that is was not, but never saw the image or was told that there were others. This information is according to Kansas City Police Captain Steve Young.

The day after the discovery of the images, Father Ratigan attempted suicide and was hospitalized for psychiatric care. Finn also restricted Ratigan's actions, including ordering him to stay away from children and events where children might be present. In March, Bishop Finn discovered that Ratigan had attended a child's birthday party and a St Patrick's Day parade. Soon after, a higher church official had contacted police to provide them with the images that were originally found on Ratigan's computer. KCPD conducted an investigation and uncovered more pictures.

As Parishiners learned of Father Ratigan's arrest, their concern spread. Some wanted to know why it took so long to turn over eveidence to the Police. Poor judgement on the behalf of church officials once again causes embarrassment for a Catholic church that continues to not learn from it's past mistakes. What is it about the priesthood that attracts men who like to engage in deviant sexual behavior and those who will cover up the acts?

Father Ratigan will likely get his punishment at the hands of other convicts in prison. Even cold blooded killers don't like child abusers, especially hypocritical ones. It's no wonder religion is on the decline in this country with stories like Father Ratigan's and this nut.

Decline of The Catholic Church - Catholicism On The Way Out

Decline of The Catholic Church - Catholicism on the Way Out

CNN announced today that they will be airing a new investigative news report on the Catholic Religion as a whole and the fact that it is rapidly declining in popularity.  Included in the show will be an investigation on "What The Pope Knew", an intense look into just how much the Pope and the Vatican actually knew about the priests that repeatedly raped young boys for over a century right under their noses.  CNN believes that the Pope and the Vatican knew about these heinous acts of rape and sodomy and ignored them.

This is old news and I'm sure that those who continue to practice Catholicism try to block that out - as they do many facts of truth that are right in front of them.  The Catholic Church is a vast land of wild imagination as they make up anything they want as they go along and pass it on as pure fact to their parishioners.  It's hard to picture a clear thinking business man or woman sitting in a Catholic Mass, listening to the fairy tails flowing from the priest and actually believing it as fact.  Perhaps it's like a watching a movie and you have to "suspend your disbelief" to get the benefit from it.  Try to picture the president of your company sitting in church, listening to stories about serpents, magical gardens and a woman giving birth without having sex and taking all of that seriously - seems pretty far fetched.  But the Catholic brain-washing techniques are very attractive to those who need answers to questions that no one technically has the answers to.  That is, as you know, how religion was invented in the first place; to explain the unexplainable.

The Catholic Church takes the whole story book a little too far, however, and many are starting to realize that most of what the religion is based on is a huge, yet entertaining, fantasy story.  This is the information age, and the common person is not simply going to take anything that is told to them as an absolute fact.  For example:

In the old days (before Google)Two or more people are in a disagreement about what year Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.  If the disagreement wasn't taking place in a library, the true answer could not be verified.  What would usually happen back then was the person who could argue with the most conviction, almost selling the answer like a car salesman, could convince everyone present that he/she was correct and would, for the moment, win the argument.  Kind of like most political and religious leaders (starting to get the picture?)

Today (with Google)
Two or more people are in the same disagreement as above, one person gets online and performs a Google search and in seconds has the answer;  1950.  We are not easily fooled into believing anything that we hear anymore because the facts are within easy reach.

The point of that example is that the days of orators, political leaders and religious leaders just making up things as they go along are over.  We can all do a quick fact check on anything, any time, anywhere.  The reason that the Catholic Religion has survived verbatim for so many years is that no one ever challenged the story book or fact checked anything.  There was no technology to do any fact checking, and religious leaders just made things up as they went along to satisfy questions that the common people were asking about life after death, the source of their creation and other questions that really, no one knows the answer to, even to this day.  And furthermore, anyone who claims to know the answers to those questions is wrong, and if they try to push their unproven beliefs on others, they are also ignorantly arrogant.

Let's all come to one conclusion on religion, NO ONE REALLY KNOWS.  And that's ok!  It's ok to have a little mystery in life.

Sorry Catholics, but your time has come to an end.