Remember Ronee Blakley in her Oscar-nominated performance as singer Barbara Jean in Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville? (If you haven’t seen the film, Netflix it!) Blakley played a frail, home-sweet-home girl with the blues, and she sang several songs (which she wrote) in the film, filled with sweet lyrics and a heartfelt twang. New Yorker [...]
As we’ve been reporting on the Ms. Blog, Kansas City was rocked last fall by the indictment of Bishop Robert Finn for failing to report that a priest in his parish had pornographic pictures of children on his computer. Finn managed to avoid any serious punishment; he simply has to regularly report to a prosecutor [...]
Ms. Blog readers will recall the recent indictment of Bishop Robert Finn of the Kansas City (Mo.)-St. Joseph’s Catholic diocese, making him the most superior member of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. to be charged with a crime related to abuse by priests. The misdemeanor charge against Finn is that he failed to [...]
In a precedent-setting decision yesterday, the London High Court ruled that the U.K.’s Roman Catholic Church can be held liable for the sexual misconduct of its priests. The ruling came in the case of a 47-year-old woman who alleged that she was raped by the now-deceased Father Wilfred Baldwin at a children’s home during the [...]
After becoming the highest-ranking official of the Roman Catholic Church to be charged in the priest abuse scandals, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph Catholic diocese has no intentions of standing down. As the Ms. Blog has reported, Finn allegedly had knowledge that one of his priests, Fr. Shawn Ratigan had indecent photographs of [...]
Father Roy Bourgeois, a beloved Catholic priest who has supported women’s ordination, was briefly detained in Rome yesterday after he and about a dozen women marched on the Vatican. The marchers held a banner reading “Ordain Catholic Women” and chanted: “What do we want? Women priests! When do we want them? Now.” Bourgeois and two [...]
The world waits with bated breath to see if the International Criminal Court will take up a case filed by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against the Pope and three other high-ranking Vatican officials over sexual abuse cover-ups. Meanwhile, more allegations of both priest abuse and [...]
As SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) anxiously await news from the International Criminal Court (ICC) on whether they will try Pope Benedict XVI and several top Vatican officials for crimes against humanity for the epidemic of clergy sexual abuse and coverups, new allegations concerning sexual abuse [...]
Pope Benedict XVI is in his native Germany for a long weekend, but it’s not going to be a party. Many German Catholics have turned their backs on the ancient institution and parted ways–180,000 in 2010 alone–as allegations of sexual abuse by priests continue to surface. The Pope is coming home to a Germany that [...]
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