Justice Clarence Thomas: When a News Story Becomes the News

Despite known threats against Supreme Court justices, an April CNN report revealed the home address of the elderly mother of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

May 10, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Hours after I began this post, I was forced to abandon it and start over. Just as I sat before my typewriter, popular FOX News host Tucker Carlson was fired from the network for reasons that I am certain will be clearer but no less controversial by the time this is posted. On the same day, CNN Morning News host Don Lemon was also fired, but entirely unrelated to the FOX News story. Both events shook the world of cable television news media.

Whatever the reasons behind them, however, they could not possibly rise to the clear and present danger posed from a violation of journalistic standards that stayed mostly off the rest of the media radar in recent weeks. The only reference I have seen to its seriousness was in an April 21, 2023 column by James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Justice Thomas and the Plague of Bad Reporting.”

James Taranto is the WSJ Editorial Features Editor. His column that day was a very good report about some very bad journalism. It took a complex development and systematically presented it in clear prose. If you cannot see it due to the WSJ pay wall, I want to present some of its highlights. Its subject was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a short list of supposed “ethics violations” touted in some news venues with lots of partisan spin. Mr. Taranto, especially critical of coverage in two Washington DC media venues, wrote: “The Washington Post and ProPublica commit comically incompetent journalism. But by stirring up animus, they increase the risk of a tragic ending.”

The “risk of a tragic ending” refers to some related coverage at CNN. Among the published claims from ProPublica was a charge that the 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas has been living rent free in a property formerly owned in part by Thomas but sold in 2016 to longtime friend, Harlan Crow. When Justice Thomas sold his one-third interest in the property, at a substantial loss, he was required to report the sale, but did not. It was an oversight. A source said that Thomas erroneously believed he did not have to report the sale because he sold it at a loss and none of the entities involved had a case before his Court.

Mr. Taranto went on to explain that the oversight is a rather common one. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Ketanji Brown Jackson had all committed the same oversight which in each case was corrected by simply filing an amendment to the respective year’s report. That same simple correction should have been afforded to Justice Thomas as well, but instead ProPublica pounced on the story in April, presenting it as a gross violation of judicial ethics. It was an oversight that could have been easily corrected within the rules, but that did not stop The Washington Post from also hyping the story for partisan reasons.

The story, as later reported by CNN, was that, as part of a negotiated $133,363 sale price of the home and property in 2016, then 85-year-old Leola Williams, the mother of Justice Thomas, was given an occupancy agreement by the buyer to be able to remain in her home rent free for the rest of her life. She remained responsible for property taxes and insurance. The occupancy agreement was with her and not with Justice Thomas who sold the modest home at a loss to a company owned by longtime friend, Harlan Crow. Ms. Williams is now 92 years of age.

Ethics and Common Sense at CNN

It is perhaps providential that Harlan Crow’s first name is not “Jim.” It did not take long for the political left to turn this story into a scandal, though with some difficulty. Something terribly nefarious was imagined lurking beneath the fact that a white billionaire might offer such a gesture of mercy to an elderly black woman. Former ProPublica president Richard Tofel wrote of this on Twitter: “Can’t imagine how any reasonable person could distinguish this from Crow giving Thomas cash every month.”

In publishing this story on Monday, April 17,2023, CNN followed this “incompetent reporting” by “increasing the risk of a tragic ending.” The potential tragic ending was this: The CNN report also published the home address of the now 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas. That was the only real scandal in this story. With help from a friend, I published the following comment on James Taranto’s Wall Street Journal column:

“In 2022, I was invited by the Pew Research Center to participate in its Survey of Journalists about the state of journalism and news reporting in America, both broadcast and print. One result was a widely expressed dismay by journalists that journalistic ethics are routinely compromised in favor of partisan politics. Apparently, the participating journalists have not done enough to counter this concern.

“The most disturbing part of Mr.Taranto’s column is a revelation that CNN reported the address of the elderly mother of Justice Clarence Thomas. There can be no acceptable explanation for this dangerous and irresponsible setting aside of journalistic ethics in favor of one-sided political gain. The news department at CNN is under new management. Viewers were assured that there would be changes in the way news is presented there. We were promised news with less opinionated partisan influence.

“Whoever at CNN published the address should be fired. Whoever provided oversight to allow this to happen should also be fired, especially in light of other attempted attacks and harassment at the homes of other Supreme Court justices. After this serious breach of ethics, I am deleting CNN from my television channel list until CNN can live up to its promise. This is the only way consumers of the news can speak truth to power. Actions like this at CNN tell me that power takes precedence over truth.”

— Gordon J. Mac Rae, The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2023

A Jarring 2020 Flashback

This was really all about Roe v. Wade and it could easily be interpreted as a reminder to those off the rails that reprisals are now called for. Addressing a crowd of angry pro-abortion supporters in March 2020, then Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) leveled threats against two Supreme Court Justices:

“We know what’s at stake. Over the last three years, women’s reproductive rights have come under attack in a way we haven’t seen in modern history. Republican legislatures are waging a war on women, and they’re taking away fundamental rights. I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”

— Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

We all saw the jeering protesters lobbing threats at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices. Early in the morning of June 8, 2022, two weeks before the leaked decision on Roe v. Wade was formally published, U.S. marshals arrested an armed man trying to break into the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He told police that he had begun “thinking about how to give his life purpose” so he decided to kill Justice Kavanaugh after finding his address on the internet. All of this was known to CNN before publishing the address of the 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas.

I know that CNN is not the only news venue that packages news along partisan lines. According to media expert, Alex S. Jones in his 2010 book, Losing the News (Oxford Press). “CNN and MSNBC have shifted their focus from news to opinion in pursuit of FOX News’s highly successful mix of news and advocacy.” In the month before this breach of ethics at CNN, its ratings had soared 35-percent since the New York indictment of former president Donald Trump. Its audience base was already highly charged. And it goes without saying that if Donald Trump had said in public what Senator Chuck Schummer said on the steps of the Supreme Court, that story would have eclipsed all other news.

A March 26, 2023 You Gov poll of trust in broadcast news services asked respondents to address two questions: 1) which of the following TV networks do you watch to keep up with the news? And 2) Which TV networks do you most trust for news? The combined results were definitive: Fox News 41%; ABC News 24%; CNN 22%; CBS 22%; NBC 21%; MSNBC 18%.

Whether our readers agree with the partisan spin of any of these news networks is beside the point. There is clearly a ratings war going on, and networks that have trailed in ratings have also suffered a decline in advertising dollars, the networks’ sole source of income. Most viewers who consistently choose one network over another tend to do so not just because they want the news, but also because they want their own belief system to be affirmed. This was the number two complaint among journalists in the recent Pew Research Center Survey of Journalists in which I and this blog were invited to participate.

Taking part in that survey is not a bragging point. If anything, it made me realize how much I am also a slave to a news service and its fundamental frame of mind. The blending of news and opinion is a toxic but alluring mix. Once I became conscious of this, I have tried to view news networks with opposing views, but it hasn’t been easy. Two years after the election of 2020, one of these networks remains dedicated to 24-hour coverage of “get Trump at any cost.” Another seems wedded to the idea that we are all unrepentant racists. When I leave a news program feeling angry and riled, just imagine how an already fired-up mob is responding.

At least one cooler head has prevailed. After reading the above column and two recent sequels by The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, I am convinced that the ethics claims against Justice Clarence Thomas are entirely contrived and reported along partisan lines to support a strictly partisan bias.

Along those same lines, the Gallup Poll now reports that 70% of Democrats, 27% of Independents, and only 14% of Republicans say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust and confidence in the current state of journalism.

Have an opinion? I would love to hear it, but please don’t shoot the messenger!

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Two final notes from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Forty-four years ago on May 11, 1979, my friend Father Joseph Sands was murdered in the rectory of St. Rose of Lima parish in the town of Littleton, New Hampshire. The years to follow revealed that this troubling story had many mysterious tentacles into the case that sent me to wrongful imprisonment. Ryan A. MacDonald untangled those tentacles in “The Story Buried Under the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

On a very different note, Sunday May 14 is Mothers Day in the United States. It is a day to honor our mothers, both living and deceased. I would like to think that after all these years of injustice, I managed to bring some poetic justice to my mother in “Mothers Day Promises to Keep, and Miles to Go Before I Sleep.”

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

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.”

— WSJ.com, August 2, 2021

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