On Thursday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan gave the closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention, offering a divisive sermon that touched on abortion and marriage equality.

“We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.”
“Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.”

While he prayed against my family and for the unborn, a Catholic leader in Kansas City, Bishop Robert W. Finn, was convicted of covering up the crimes of a pedophile priest, Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who liked to take nude pictures of the barely born.  According to a detailed article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times:

In December 2010, Bishop Finn got some disturbing news: Father Ratigan had just tried to commit suicide by running his motorcycle in a closed garage. The day before, a computer technician had discovered sexually explicit photographs of young girls on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including one of a toddler with her diaper pulled away to expose her genitals.

There was a mountain of evidence that was ignored by Finn:

The bishop had advance warning about Father Ratigan, well before pornography was discovered on the priest’s laptop. Julie Hess, the principal of the parochial school, next door to St. Patrick Parish where Father Ratigan served, had sent a memorandum in May of 2010 to the diocese, which said:

“Parents, staff members, and parishioners are discussing his actions and whether or not he may be a child molester. They have researched pedophilia on the Internet and took in sample articles with examples of how Father Shawn’s actions fit the profile of a child predator.”

…other adults were alarmed about specific events: Father Ratigan had put a girl on his lap on a bus trip, attempted to “friend” an eighth grader on Facebook, and had an inappropriate “peer to peer” relationship with a fifth-grade girl. On a children’s group excursion to Father Ratigan’s house, parents spotted hand towels shaped to look like dolls’ clothes, and a pair of girls’ panties in a planter in his yard.

Unfortunately, Finn reduced these concerns to “boundary issues,” and even failed to contact authorities when a stash of kiddie porn was found on Ratigan’s laptop:
“…hundreds of photographs,” according to the testimony, many taken on playgrounds, under tables or in one case, while a girl was sleeping. Many pictures did not show faces — only close-ups of crotches. Ms. Creech wrote a report for her superiors noting that only four or five of the hundreds of pictures appeared to have been downloaded from the Internet: “the rest appeared to have been taken with a personal camera.”
Amazingly, the bishop assigned Father Ratigan to serve as an unsupervised chaplain to the Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Eucharist, in Independence, MO.

Over the next five months, Father Ratigan, who is now 46 attended a sixth-grader’s birthday party, co-celebrated a child’s confirmation, communicated with children on his Facebook page, hosted an Easter egg hunt and attended a parade, the testimony recounts. Invited to dinner at the home of parishioners, he was caught taking photographs, under the table, up their daughter’s skirt, according to a federal indictment of Father Ratigan.

Neither the bishop nor any church official told church members or Father Ratigan’s large extended family — which includes many children — that the priest had been ordered to stay away from children, Darron Blankenship, a brother-in-law of Father Ratigan and a police officer who has handled child abuse cases, said in an interview on Friday.

“For somebody that was under restrictions, he had free rein,” Officer Blankenship said. “He just went and did what he wanted.”

Instead of praying to end the depravity in his own church, resulting in billions of dollars in settlements, Dolan took his opportunity at the Democratic and Republican conventions to bash our healthy, happy families and promote a bogus storyline of Catholics losing religious liberty.

Want to talk about religious liberty Dolan? I think a toddler should have the freedom to attend a Catholic Church without having nude pictures taken of her — and the molester who took the photos shouldn’t freely walk away without paying the consequences. Of course, what else can we expect from Dolan, a man who paid off suspected pedophile priests when he served in Milwaukee, so they would step down?

When it comes to talking about sexual morality, Timothy Dolan is the last person on the planet I’d listen to.