The Pillar; Msgr Jeffrey Burrill; Blackmail of the Vatican
A story of one U.S. priest and his moral fall from grace has spun into accusations of a witch hunt and international suspicions of Chinese blackmail of the Vatican.
August 18, 2021
After just weeks ago posting “Our Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests,” I have been highly resistant to stepping into this one. In a matter of weeks, this story has grown so many tentacles that I am not even certain of where to begin. My goal is not to join the frenzy, but rather to perhaps bring a little perspective to it. So I will begin where no one else has begun.
For the last year, Msgr Jeffrey Burrill had been in the high profile and highly prestigious position of General Secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For the preceding four years he served in the position of Associate General Secretary. He has been referred to as the highest ranking member of the U.S. Catholic clergy who is not a bishop. I do not have a defense of Msgr Burrill except to say that his life and priesthood have been shredded in recent weeks. Perhaps this is even right and just, but a Church should not settle for leaving the story there. I hope and pray for an avenue of repentance and restoration.
But first, the tabloid frenzy: The story is complicated. A new Catholic media venue called The Pillar published an investigative report on July 20, 2021 that resulted in the abrupt resignation of Msgr Burrill from his position in the leadership of the USCCB. It also ignited a firestorm of debate about journalistic ethics, priestly celibacy and homosexuality, and the difference between private behavior and public crimes. To date, Msgr Burrill stands accused of no crimes, but The Pillar report alleging promiscuous homosexual behavior left his career in ruins.
The Pillar, founded just eight months ago, is staffed by former Catholic News Agency editor J. D. Flynn and former CNA reporter, Ed Condon. Using and doggedly cross-referencing easily accessible data from a homosexual “hook-up” app called Grindr, the two journalists were able to pinpoint “emitted app data signals” from Grindr to a specific device “on a near daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020” according to The Pillar report. The device belongs to Msgr Jeffrey Burrill and was allegedly used for the purpose of anonymous sexual encounters from his USCCB office and residence as well as in other cities, sometimes while handling USCCB affairs.
The journalists sought comment from Msgr Burrill and the USCCB leadership before breaking this story. A meeting was scheduled, then cancelled. Msgr Burrill resigned from his position as USCCB General Secretary on July 19, a day before the 3,000 word story was published by The Pillar under the title: “Pillar Investigates: USCCB Gen Sec Burrill Resigns After Sexual Misconduct Allegations.”
Almost immediately, apologists for the gay agenda went into action. The National Catholic Reporter (please be clear that we are not talking about the NC Register) accused The Pillar of operating on “a shaky journalistic foundation.” (Coming from NCR, I found that to be most ironic.) Jesuit Father James Martin accused The Pillar of using “immoral tactics” to “out” Msgr Burrill. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Editorial Features Editor Matthew Hennessey wrote an outstanding defense of The Pillar's journalism in “Catholic Journalists Expose a Scandal, and Liberals Scoff” (August 2, 2021). Mr. Hennessey reported,
“Vox.com described Grindr in 2018 as ‘an underground digital bathhouse’ whose purpose is to ‘help gay men solicit sex, often anonymously, online.’ At the very least most Catholics, liberal or conservative, would say this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a priest should have on his phone. Is it news? Without a doubt ... If the priest who leads the USCCB is living a life antithetical to Church teaching on matters of human sexuality, It’s a story.”
Is This Really about Human Sexuality?
Complicating this story further, Msgr Jeffrey Burrill is a priest of the Diocese of Lacrosse, Wisconsin whose Ordinary, Bishop William P. Callahan, recently suspended the priestly faculties of another high profile priest, Father James Altman for the stated reason of being “divisive and ineffective.”
The criticism of Jesuit Father James Martin, that The Pillar journalists used “immoral tactics” to “out” Msgr Burrill, is curious at best. It is true that they went after this story with an unexplained laser focus and determination, but their methods were not at all unique in the digital age. Father Martin’s use of the term “out” leaves the impression that he protests exposing Msgr Burrill’s sexual orientation. Father Martin has invested a lot of energy and ink to present and lobby for same-sex unions to be perceived as both normative and acceptable in and outside of the Church.
His rhetoric on this only further harms Msgr Burrill, however. Grindr bills itself as “the largest social network for gay, bisexual, transgender and ‘queer’ people” for the singular purpose of locating and exploiting opportunities for anonymous sexual encounters, often between complete strangers. There is not even the remotest opportunity for relationship, mutuality, love, or companionship in such encounters. This is not a reflection of human sexuality. It is about narcissistic exploitation of oneself and other human beings. It is about sexual compulsion.
If all that has been suggested about Msgr Jeffrey Burrill’s use of the Grindr app is true, he does not need Father Martin’s affirmation or defense, nor does he need our revulsion or contempt. He needs our help. The great tragedy of all this is that the person most in place to help him — his own bishop — is rendered unable or unwilling to do so because of the tabloid frenzy of the media and the bishops’ collective fear of it.
When the story of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick first surfaced in the arena of public contempt, I wrote a controversial post entitled, “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.” It explained my own vicarious experience of the world and influence of Cardinal McCarrick in the seminary I attended in the 1970s. Its central point cautioned against a witch hunt to root out from the priesthood the existence of same-sex attraction because those who experience it are just as capable of living celibate lives committed to Christ as any other priest or religious. The real impediment to Holy Orders, that post suggests, is not same-sex attraction but rather narcissistic personality disorder, a condition that defies treatment and objectifies others, but is far more detectable in screening a candidate for priesthood or religious life.
I have known many priests who have struggled with same-sex attraction who are exemplary priests. I strongly believe that there is a direct correlation between the health of their lives as men and as priests and their ability to resist narcissism by leading selfless lives. The compulsion for anonymous sexual encounters and the objectification of others exploited by sites like Grindr have a lot more to do with the plague of narcissism than anything resembling human sexuality.
I have also known priests, though in a far smaller number, who gradually descended into the darkness of sexual narcissism and the world of anonymous “hook-ups” that Grindr exploits. Some of these men were sent to a residential treatment center for priests where I served as Director of Admissions. Many were helped, but only to the extent that they could do the hard work of exposing and understanding their narcissistic personalities and commit themselves to selfless and transparent lives and a priesthood centered on Christ.
In nearly every case, their long, slow descent into darkness was known to other priests who did nothing and said nothing to stop or challenge them. In the case of Cardinal McCarrick, it is a fact that many bishops knew of his behavior, but today lie about this. Today he is dismissed, scapegoated and ostracized, but his sins were not just his own. It will merely compound this tragedy, and the Church’s shame, if Msgr Jeffrey Burrill now is left with only one option: to disappear into the night.
Was the Holy See a Victim of Blackmail?
A side story has developed over use of the Grindr app that has led some to draw a possible connection with the Vatican’s troubling agreement with the Chinese Communist Party over the selection of bishops for the state-controlled church. The evidence is enticing, but entirely circumstantial. This aspect of the Grindr app story was first exposed in a Breitbart News article by Thomas Williams, Ph.D. entitled, “‘Extensive’ Gay Hookup App Usage Compromises Vatican Security,” (July 28, 2021). The article draws on the previous article in The Pillar to explore a possible exposure to blackmail for use of the app within Vatican walls.
The Pillar revealed that at least sixteen different mobile devices emitted signals from Grindr within areas of Vatican City not generally open to the public. That’s sixteen cellphones over four days within an eight-month period between March and October 2018. To date, the owners of those phones are unknown. With this information, and a lot of conjecture, some Vatican watchers now suggest that the 2018 Concordat, the contents of which to date remain private, may have been a result of blackmail over use of the app within the Vatican. From my perspective, this is possibly a huge leap of the imagination.
According to the Breitbart article, a Chinese entity was the original owner of the Grindr app. It is surmised that the CCP could have accessed the same data investigated by The Pillar. I have written more than once questioning the secret agreement of 2018 between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party. The Holy See appears to have conceded to allowing the CCP to select candidates for bishop in the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association which was first established by the late Chairman Mao Zedong. I wrote of this just weeks ago in “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”
Added to the circumstantial evidence is a June 2019 change in the Vatican’s longstanding China policy which previously forbade priests from joining that association. After the ban was lifted, Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen went on record to say that the lifting of that ban was even more destructive than the 2018 agreement itself.
Added to the above evidence has been the relative silence of the Holy See about Chinese atrocities toward the Uyghur people in the XinJiang Autonomous Region, and the increased persecution of priests and other Catholics who remain in the “underground” Church that is loyal to Rome even if Rome is not loyal to them. All of this is indeed cause for grave concern.
However, none of it is evidence of blackmail. Our friend and Canon Law adviser, Father Stuart MacDonald, sees this evidence as being similar in tone and substance to that used by bishops to expel accused priests in cases with no hard evidence. It all seems “credible,” but only in the sense that it “might” be true. It is, however, no measure of justice when it is the only evidence.
Earlier this month, I posted an important addition to our Library category, “Our Patron Saints.” The post is “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.” In 1937, Pope Pius XI published a courageous document entitled, in German, “Mit Brennender Sorge” (With Deep Anxiety). It was a bold confrontation with the Nazi regime over the forced deportation of Jews from Europe. In retaliation, many people were imprisoned. Some were put to death. Among them was Edith Stein, a woman who was born a Jew, became a Catholic, a celebrated university doctor of philosophy, and a Carmelite nun. She was dragged in full Carmelite habit from her convent in Holland, stuffed onto a cattle train, and transported to Auschwitz where she was immediately put to death.
When Pope Pius XII ascended the Chair of Peter shortly thereafter, he was, in a sense, blackmailed by this and other atrocities into silence about Hitler and the Third Reich. Speaking out would have jeopardized many lives, and many underground efforts at diplomacy to save people who were imperiled. To conclude today without evidence that the Pope is silenced by someone holding over his head a story of someone in the Vatican calling a gay hookup app is shameful in comparison. That part of the story might better belong in Soap Opera Digest.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this important post. Please also visit our Subscribe Page and Special Events. You may also like these relevant posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix
The McCarrick Report & the Silence of the Sacrificial Lambs
Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful
Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz
Photo courtesy of CNS/L'Osservatore Romano