Since the story broke in the new Catholic online journal The Pillar regarding the outing of Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, I have listened to many friends comment about what this means for the stance of the council of Catholic bishops. In some ways, it seems like has he “had it coming,” as one friend told me. Make no mistake about it: The monsignor’s work to continue bending the church further right and to use it to preach intolerance certainly is harmful to everyone, not just Catholics.
I can believe all of those things, and at the same time, I can struggle with the fact that some of us are so eagerly celebrating the outing of an individual against their wishes, a discovery made through technology that is troubling, and that the way we talk about the outcome should be worthy of a discussion.
In order to understand my concern, I want to give The Pillar’s view a voice:
Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, former general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference, announced his resignation Tuesday, after The Pillar found evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct, while he held a critical oversight role in the Catholic Church’s response to the recent spate of sexual abuse and misconduct scandals
The memo came after the USCCB and Burrill were contacted by The Pillar regarding evidence of a pattern of sexual misconduct on Burrill’s part. Burrill did not respond to questions from The Pillar before his resignation was announced to bishops.
But an analysis of app data signals correlated to Burrill’s mobile device shows the priest also visited gay bars and private residences while using a location-based hookup app in numerous cities from 2018 to 2020, even while traveling on assignment for the U.S. bishops’ conference.
According to commercially available records of app signal data obtained by The Pillar, a mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020 — at both his USCCB office and his USCCB-owned residence, as well as during USCCB meetings and events in other cities.
This to me is deeply, seriously troubling. The first problem is that they are outing someone. The second problem is that too many are celebrating what, in the end, comes down to attacking someone for their sexual identity. This occurs when The Pillar refers to Burrill being a gay man who engaged in, as far as we know, consensual activity as being “sexual misconduct.” They do not offer qualifiers. The fact he was a gay man is the attack. Finally, The Pillar announced they had received this data without telling anyone how, a source that provided them this information through location tracking and mobile device monitoring.
This is a serious privacy concern for anyone to consider. Someone hacked his phone, monitored it, had it send back information to them, and then that same group sent it off to an online site to publish. Would you like that same standard applied to you, your friends, or your family? Thinking that some random person was seeing your app usage, your messages, and your location, and you do not know about it? These tools and the ability to track you are ideal for stalkers. In fact, would you want this applied to political figures?
Before we start saying that James Martin is making these statements because of his status as a Jesuit Catholic priest, I’d point out he has always been of the more progressive followers:
James Martin and I are certainly not going to agree on everything, but the key points being made are serious. The monsignor was a hypocrite. And he will be judged by those actions. Do I want to reward a system that celebrates hacking phones, outing people, and portraying their sexual identity as wrong? I don’t think I want that as a standard, either.
As much as it pains me, I have for too long believed that as a progressive, I don’t attack someone for who they are at their core as a part of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I’ve always believed that our nation should provide privacy as a right.
The heart of this story boils down to that element. It is proven he broke his vows of chastity, and he is a sinner. Since I tend to believe we should change the vows of chastity, I have problems holding that out there as a reason to run a story to attack someone. The monsignor was wrong and he deserves every bit of ridicule I can give him for his urging of the Catholic bishops to attack our society. Does he deserve criticism or attacks for being a gay man? I don’t think so. Was outing him and hacking phones to prove he was a gay man the solution? I have a very hard time cheering that on.
And yes, I’m prepared for those who dislike this opinion. I’ll be in the comments!