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

A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers

A global pandemic, a world in chaos, divisive politics, sheepish shepherds, misguiding lights, Catholic confusion. Even in a year from hell, there was hope.

I offered Midnight Mass in my prison cell this Christmas. It was for the intentions of our readers beyond these stone walls. I much appreciate your presence here at this new site, and I hope you will subscribe. It makes things a lot easier for me.

The First Reading at Midnight Mass this year was from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was both familiar and comforting: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone” (Isaiah 9:2). Without a doubt it seemed as though Isaiah had walked through this year with me. He went on to bring some perspective to the present darkness: “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed ... For a child is born to us, a son is given us. Upon his shoulder dominion rests” (Isaiah 9:4,6).

I thought the Prophet had really nailed my experience of dwelling in the land of gloom that was 2020. Of course, if you have been a regular reader, then you know that I cannot let a cool word like “gloom” pass by without a little digging. It’s a fascinating word with origins both obscure and mysterious. It first came into use in English around the Twelfth Century in the period that we now call Middle English. Unlike about half the vocabulary of that era, gloom has no Latin root, however.

My digging took me to a much older term, “the gloaming,” which arose from Anglo-Saxon tribes in the Fifth Century in the period we call Olde English. The gloaming referred to the dark of night just before the dawn when the first glow of twilight could be seen on the eastern horizon. We in the 21st Century cannot fathom the darkness of the Fifth. The gloaming was a time of both dark and the promise of light. The words, “gloom” and “glow” both arose from it even though they are functionally opposites.

That Midnight Mass excerpt from the Prophet Isaiah was packed with hidden meaning. “Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shown.” The word “dwelt” (or dwelled) also comes from an Olde English term, “dwellan,” which originally meant “to be misled.” How and when it came to refer to a place in which you live is uncertain. It could thus be fair to reinterpret Isaiah’s Christmas prophecy in light of that original meaning: “Upon those misled in the land of gloom, a light has shown.”

Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo and the Bishop of the Diocese of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas J. Lucia

Misled by Earthly Powers

It is likely, however, that many or even most of you never got to hear that Midnight Mass proclamation from Isaiah because many civil authorities placed severe limits on the practice of your faith in 2020. The contradictions were staggering, but never explained. The coronavirus was extremely contagious in Catholic and other Christian churches, but only minimally during anti-police urban riots this year. Liquor stores (which in my State are all owned by the State) were deemed essential, along with abortion clinics, casinos, etc. Churches were deemed nonessential and saddled with draconian limits.

I believe that many have been misled in the current darkness of 2020, and fear has drawn some of us away from the light. The governors of New York and California, for example, imposed limits on Catholic Masses and other congregations that made no sense. In New York, a church that can accommodate 1,000 people was forced to limit Mass participation to ten, or 25 if the church was in a less infectious zone. Most of the news media has been complicit in furthering such propaganda. The pastor on one small Evangelical congregation began his Sunday service with strip club music while he loosened his tie and threw it into the pews. He explained that strip clubs are open in his state while churches were ordered closed.

I was encouraged recently when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an edict from New York Governor Cuomo declaring his limits on church attendance to be an unconstitutional infringement on the free exercise of religion as defined in the First Amendment. The Governor dismissed the SCOTUS ruling as “irrelevant and political.”

But then a bigger bomb dropped. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Bishop of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas Lucia, reinstated the very restrictions that the Court said the Governor could not impose. So Masses in churches that could hold 1,000 remained limited to 25. As in many areas, government imposed registration is also required. Even when some civil authorities did not demand this, some bishops imposed it anyway. This memo from the bishop of a large archdiocese was sent to his priests:

“Contact Tracing: Especially during the Christmas season, it is mandatory that each parish maintain a list of all persons attending services in the church including their contact information (i.e. phone number). Such lists shall be placed with parish financial records and maintained for a period of not less than six years.”

It is troubling, at best, that some bishops would confuse the care of souls with the exercise of their own Earthly powers as sheepish deputies of civil authority. I am by no means the first to recognize this troubling trend. I felt a glow of hope when Matthew Hennessey, the Deputy Editorial Features Editor for The Wall Street Journal, addressed this head-on in this OpEd, "No More Bishop Nice Guy" (December 9, 2020):

“We are told that lives have been saved by keeping churches half empty. Do we know how many souls have been lost? As a Catholic raising five children in the faith, I’m particularly concerned wit the future of my church ... It’s inspiring to see ordinary people stand up to bullies like (Governors) Cuomo an Newsom. But what are America’s bishops doing to inspire their flocks? What will they do? We are tired of watching our leaders kneel before junior varsity Caesars ... Show some backbone. Open the churches. Get rid of the sign-up sheets. No more roped off pews. No more 25% capacity ... Be the heroes we need you to be. The alternative is subservience. The alternative is empty pews forever. The pandemic generation may never return.”

— Matthew Hennessey

AMEN!

With prophetic witness early in the pandemic, Father James Altman courageously preached his now famous homily, “Memo to the Bishops of the World.” It came as Catholic Masses across the nation were shutting down and, for many, the Eucharist became inaccessible. It alarmed Father Altman, just as it alarms me, that many of the shutdown orders came, not from governors, but from our bishops. I wrote of this in what I think is the most urgent post of 2020, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.”

From Fr. James Altman, “Memo to the Bishops of the World: The Faithful do not need you to look after their bodies. They need you to follow the supreme law of the Church and look after their souls.”

A Year of Pandemic in Prison

I just realized that I began this post with a description of my Christmas Eve Mass this year. Dorothy Rabinowitz did the same in a series in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Trials of Father MacRae.” Here is her first paragraph from seven years ago:

“Last Christmas Eve, his 19th behind bars, Catholic priest Gordon MacRae offered Mass in his cell at the New Hampshire state penitentiary. A quarter-ounce of unfermented wine and the host had been provided for the occasion, celebrated with the priest’s cellmate in attendance.”

— Dorothy Rabinowitz, "The Trials of Father MacRae," WSJ

The “cellmate in attendance” then was, of course, Pornchai Moontri. This year is the first time in 15 years that he has not been here with me at Christmas. It is during Mass that his absence is most deeply felt. It is a wound upon my heart that, despite all our valiant efforts, Pornchai remains in ICE detention soon to begin a fifth month beyond his sentence, which had been fully served. It is not too late to join me and Catholic League President Bill Donohue in our petition to the White House to “Help Pornchai Moontri.”

I know I am working backward in my description of the year spent in pandemic mode behind prison walls, but the last four months since Pornchai was taken away have been too busy to grieve.

Besides, I do not want to grieve. I want to rejoice, but I have had to postpone it until he arrives safely in Bangkok. You know from reading these pages all that happened to Pornchai in life. You also know that in the fifteen years in which we lived in the same prison cell, Saint Maximilian Kolbe insinuated himself into our lives in profound and mysterious ways. Together, with the help of Mary, Undoer of Knots, St. Maximilian and I set course to reverse the damage life had inflicted upon my friend who wrote of our lives here in “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”

By the time Pornchai wrote those parting words to us, he and I had been through many trials together. Some have been recounted in these pages, but many others were not. One of them was our ordeal early in 2020 during which — we now both believe — we both contracted Covid 19.

It was late in January 2020. Everyone around us here had come down with a flu virus that moved among us like a wildfire. I went to work every day — even when I contracted it myself — because there seemed no cause to fear any contagion. Everyone with whom I had contact already had it. For some it seemed just a head cold. For others it was a more serious flu. For me and several others, it was devastating. I was fatigued to the point of collapse, chronically short of breath, and had frequent troubling episodes of cardiac arrhythmias — all what we later learned to be classic symptoms of Covid-19. I had this for all of February and well into March.

Pornchai also had it, but for only three weeks and not as severe. We just toughed it out, rested as much as we could, and looked after some others even worse off. By March, I had to seek medical intervention. I have a lifelong autoimmune disorder called sarcoidosis. It develops painful but otherwise benign tumors on the lymphnodes. The Covid — presumably Covid anyway — caused my immune system to go into overdrive. So I spent several weeks on prednizone to quiet the immune system. I was miserable, and I hope my posts at the time didn’t show it.

Pornchai and I both fully recovered, but I would not want to repeat the experience. To date, 231 prisoners here and 81 staff have tested positive with symptoms. Most went into quarantine, which in prison is quarantine from quarantine and it’s miserable. As the first and biggest wave traveled through the country, it had dire consequences for prisoners and equally so for you in the real world. For a time, my Sunday Mass in my cell was the only Mass offered in the entire state.

Beyond These Stone Walls

In the midst of all this misery, just as Covid was again rampaging, just as Pornchai was leaving, while separation loomed and life in prison became solitary for me, and filled with gloom, someone chose that moment to attack These Stone Walls and bring it down. There were some weeks of unclarity as we pondered what to do. It was also just as the elections in America were elevating to a state of frenzy.

At the end of October this year, we had serious decisions to make. I told Pornchai by telephone in ICE detention that These Stone Walls had come to an end. “It can’t end!” he said forcefully. He asked me, “What would Maximilian do?”

A proposal had been floated by a friend who announced that she had an inkling from some unknown grace to copy all the content from These Stone Walls and preserve it. I had no idea that she had done this. Then she proposed starting anew with a new name and blog format. Connecting with Father George David Byers and me, she chooses to remain in the background while rebuilding this Voice from the Wilderness. I have not yet seen it, but then again, I never saw These Stone Walls either.

Beyond TSW is a work in progress now, and is slowly being built. One feature of this new site format that I especially like is our “BTSW Library.” Instead of just chronologically listing posts by date, the Library displays them in multiple categories such as “Father Gordon MacRae Case,” “Mysteries of History,” “Science & Faith,” etc. like a real library’s card catalog where posts are sorted by subject. We have only a few categories up right now as the site is being rebuilt, but we expect to have at least twenty five. Our volunteer webmaster said that I “have written on so many topics that we could fill a library.” I think that is a polite way of saying that I have never had an unpublished thought!

Pornchai Moontri was thrilled and encouraged when I told him that he will have a category of his own. There was a time when he could not imagine a life beyond these stone walls. Now he cannot imagine life without it.

We have a new “ABOUT” page too, and bigger print! I still have a few things to write about so I hope you will stay, subscribe, and continue to walk in this land of gloom with us. Thank you for being here with us in this year of trials. You have been the glow that we see from beyond at twilight.

May the Lord Bless you and keep you in this New Year.

Father G.

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Editor's Note: Please share this post with others. You may also like to visit the related posts mentioned in this one:

The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass

The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ

Help Pornchai Moontri by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind

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The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests

Sixteen years after the Dallas Charter set a ‘credible’ standard to suspend hundreds of accused priests, bishops are only now trying to define what ‘credible’ means.

“Credibly accused’ is being worked out in terms of our lawyers even now as we speak.”

— Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President, U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I chose the image atop this post because it presents such a startling contrast. The untitled and uncredited image was sent to me and I was so moved by it I asked to have it posted on Christmas Eve on LinkedIn, an entirely secular social network. If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one speaks volumes. Within days, it garnered 3,000 views and a multitude of comments. Readers found it to be remarkably inspiring.

I wanted to include it here because it reflects the reality in which I live. It also reflects the true mission of priesthood, “a heroic vocation” as described by Matthew Hennessey, an editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote in 2017 that, despite all the bad press...

“One thing hasn’t changed. Young men still want lives of heroic virtue and the priesthood offers that in abundance.”

The Priesthood is a Heroic Vocation,” August 17, 2017

Both the photo above and Matthew Hennessey’s WSJ op-ed stand in stark contrast to how most in the news media — often predators in their own right — are portraying Catholic priests. A typical example was analyzed in these pages in a post about the one-sided hysteria masked as journalism that has dogged Catholic leaders in the sexual abuse moral panic of the last two decades. That post is “USA Today’s Tim Roemer on How to Save the Catholic Church.”

I owe some thanks to USA Today and former Democratic Congressman Tim Roemer for at least being transparent in their real agenda for Catholics in America. Their moral outrage has goals: abandon civil rights for priests, allow priests to marry, ordain women, and appoint lay leaders to replace bishops in supervising clergy and screening seminarians. In other words, make bishops obsolete.

But nothing Tim Roemer has said or written alarms me as much as the quote atop this post from Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Gospel could be the measure of how the bishops respond to the crisis. Church law could provide a framework for formulating policy. Bypassing all of that for the U.S. bishops, “Credibly accused is being worked out in terms of our lawyers even now as we speak.”

“Even now as we speak.” Sixteen years after adopting “credible” as the standard by which accused priests — “from however long ago” — are measured and discarded, the bishops are only now discerning what “credible” should mean, and only because there is a movement afoot to apply the same standard to bishops. A little history is in order.

In 2002, the bishops meeting in Dallas under the harsh glare of the news media adopted a policy in a time of crisis. Having invited David Clohessy, Barbara Blane and others from SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) to address the conference, the bishops adopted the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

Known simply as the “Dallas Charter,” its main promoter was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Cardinal Avery Dulles lobbied against it, and published a stinging rebuke in “The Rights of Accused Priests.” The bishops, however, sided with Cardinal McCarrick.

Zero Tolerance Is Not a Gift of the Holy Spirit

In 2000, the U. S. bishops published a pastoral document entitled “Responsibility and Rehabilitation.” It criticized the American criminal justice system for adopting one-size-fits-all concepts of justice and mantra-based policies such as “zero tolerance” and “three strikes and you’re out” that enhanced penalties while discounting paths to rehabilitation. The bishops urged that justice should be restorative, and not only punitive.

Just two years later, those same bishops signed the Dallas Charter inflicting upon their own priests what they condemned in the criminal justice system. The bishops’ draconian new policy for priests negated restorative justice.

“One strike and you’re out — forever!” Among those paying attention, even hardcore law and order types scratched their heads at the abolition of due process by which this would be implemented.

An accusation — whether from this year or fifty years ago — need not be proven or even true. It need only be ‘‘credible.” The accepted interpretation of “credible” was that it could have happened. In other words, the priest and the accuser were both present in the same general locale 30, 40, or 50 years ago. This new zero-tolerance policy held that any priest so accused, from however long ago, is to be removed and barred from any ministry unless and until proven to be innocent.The cases, many of which skipped the preliminary investigations required by canon law, were then submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican for finality. The CDF had every reason to conclude that canon law was being followed and legitimate investigations were carried out. Writing in First Things (Aug.-Sept. 2002) Father Richard John Neuhaus described the scene in which the “Dallas Charter” was created:

“Almost 300 bishops sat in mandatory docility as they were sternly reproached by knowing psychologists, angry spokespersons for millions of presumably angrier laypeople, and above all, by those whom the bishops learned to call, with almost cringing deference, the ‘victim/survivors’... Tears earned a gold star and welling eyes an honorable mention from the media... Like schoolboys, the bishops anxiously awaited the evening news to find out their grades.”

“Scandal Time III”

The resultant process was described in these pages in a courageous post by priest and canon lawyer, Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.” It was a timely and soul-searching post for the whole Church about the rights of accused priests and the real-world failure of the hierarchy to secure and respect those rights.

Since the Dallas Charter was enacted by the bishops in 2002, that “real-world failure” has resulted in scenes far more reminiscent of the American McCarthy era than the American Catholic church. In the months to follow that Dallas meeting, thousands of files were scoured and hundreds of priests were rounded up. Priests merely accused, many of whom had ministered without incident for years or decades, were summarily expelled from Church ministry and property. Again, Father Neuhaus:

“The bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, unCatholic approach to sin and grace... They ended up adopting a policy that was sans repentance, sans conversion, sans forbearance, sans prudential judgment, sans forgiveness, sans almost everything one might have hoped for from the bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, “Scandal Time III,” 2002

Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault and Bishop John McCormack released to the news media the names of “credibly accused” priests of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H.

When the Church Defames Her Priests

Back in July of 2011 I wrote with exasperation about the result of all this by profiling the case of Boston priest, Father F. Dominic Menna. “Father Dom” ministered as a senior priest well into his late seventies in a parish where he was beloved and respected. Then the 2002 moral panic came. An easy target, Father Menna found himself among dozens to face a vague claim from the distant past, an incident alleged to have occurred over forty years earlier.

It was unsubstantiated and could never be substantiated. By what magic could a 40-year-old claim of fondling be substantiated? But it “could” have happened, and that rendered it “credible.” Father Dom was dragged before the Archdiocesan Sanhedrin, stripped of his faculties as a priest, and put out into the street. The next day, The Boston Globe ran his name and photo and identified the vague details of his “offense” forgetting to mention that it was both unproven and up to a half-century old.

Of course the purpose of all that is to invite new accusers to cash in. This claim came through the usual contingency lawyers who became quick millionaires by holding press conferences to shame bishops into quick settlements. I wrote about the sad Father Dom story in 2011 in, “If Night Befalls Your Father, You Don’t Discard Him. You Just Don’t!”

Ah, but we do discard them! Or at least most of us keep silent while someone else does. This is the “zero tolerance” that our bishops have embraced and that even Pope Francis now touts as a centerpiece of the Church’s response. So why am I protesting all this anew? In a December 19 issue of CRUX, Correspondent Christopher White published “Two Decades into Crisis, No Consensus on What ‘Credibly Accused’ Means.”

After sixteen years of compiling scarlet letter lists of the accused — some living, but most dead, some guilty but many not — the question has arisen anew about whether names of accused priests — merely accused, mind you — should be published by their bishops. The demand to do so comes from lawyers, the news media, and SNAP, but as Father Richard John Neuhaus warned in 2002, the “victim advocates are not satisfied and, sadly, may never be satisfied.”

It is not enough that the bishops release these lists of names. The newest wave of SNAP leaders (the previous wave disappeared after being implicated in an alleged lawyer kickback scheme) want the bishops to also include in these lists descriptions of the alleged abuse so that others who want to contact the same contingency lawyers can concoct consistent stories. If you balk at the plausibility of such a concern, it is only because you have not yet read the evidence for it in “A Weapon of Mass Destruction: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.”

But there are other concerns, the most important of which is fundamental civil liberty and due process. After fallout from the now infamous Pennsylvania grand jury report on accused priests, bishops in multiple states have conceded on the issue of publishing the names of the “credibly” accused, living or dead, guilty or not. This has been going on for years, but now, the sound of screeching voices has risen to a scarlet letter crescendo.

Taking Rights from Some Descends a Slippery Slope

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo told CRUX that among the next steps in the bishops’ collective response to the crisis would be “studying national guidelines for the publication of lists of names of those clerics facing substantiated claims of abuse.”

It did not go without notice among the lawyers, the news media, and SNAP that the parameter has suddenly been altered. After two decades with “credible” as the standard for dismissing priests and releasing their names, “substantiated” is now the operative word and it is a far different standard. Why it took the bishops nearly two decades to ask themselves what “credible” means — not to mention whether it ever reflected justice or the Gospel — is unclear. A lot is unclear.

But some clarity on this came forth from another source “When the Church Defames Her Priests” was published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review in 2017 by Opus Bono founder and president, Joe Maher, and David A. Shaneyfelt, an attorney in private practice in California and an Opus Bono adviser. The article addresses the destructive and ill-advised practice adopted to date by some two dozen dioceses in the United States to create and publish lists of priests who have been merely accused. The Opus Bono authors wrote:

“We take special issue with those dioceses who think that publishing a list of names of clerics who have been ‘credibly’ accused of sexual misconduct is warranted. We disagree for many reasons — canonical, theological, pastoral, and legal. It is this latter reason we wish to address here.”

The article goes on to present a transparent but chilling explanation of what “credible” means in this context, and a compelling case for protecting the due process rights of priests who are merely accused. After reading, I could not help but agree with its urgency. The article captured the flagrant injustice in this practice:

“How ironic that a bishop, who aims to demonstrate his concern for one victim of abuse, will thereby create another victim of abuse — and end up paying large amounts of damages to each in the process. How doubly ironic that a bishop who initiates such a policy may someday find himself on the list.”

Lest any bishop thought that suggestion implausible, it has now come to pass. In “Giving Due Process Its Due,” an excellent article at The Catholic Thing, Stephen P. White (no relation to CRUX writer, Christopher White) wrote that at the November meeting of bishops, Bishop Donald Trautman (Emeritus of Erie, PA), spoke against plans to have a similar reporting system for allegations against bishops.

In response to the idea that allegations against bishops be reported to the Nuncio, and thus to Rome, Bishop Trautman objected: “I think this proposal is very dangerous and unjust. It calls for the reporting to the Apostolic Nunciature accusations not investigated, not substantiated, not proven. That’s unjust.” I agree with Bishop Trautman, however, as Stephen White reported, it raised a few eyebrows among bishops for it is precisely what US bishops have been doing to hundreds of priests since the Dallas Charter was enacted in 2002.

The growing demand — to which the bishops of some seventy U.S. dioceses have already capitulated — is to bypass the legal system standard of a criminal conviction as the impetus for requiring registration of sexual offenders. Some bishops have created their own private version of “Megan’s Law,” but without the law’s built-in respect for basic civil rights. In American courts, only those convicted in a court of law can end up on such a published list.

Dozens of U.S. bishops and dioceses have already published these lists with no legal entity requiring them, and with little recourse on the part of the priests, many of whom are innocent. These lists replace justice with capitulation to a lynch mob.

The November-December issue of Annals Australasia: Journal of Catholic Culture reprinted the following excerpt, an eye-opener from Peter Hitchens in the (UK) Daily Mail, 17 December 2017, entitled “We have forgotten what justice means”:

“Accusations of long-ago sexual crime have become a sort of industry in this country. People are so horrified by them that they almost always believe them. Because the crime is so foul, we stop thinking.... Police and prosecutors use our horror to get easy convictions when they must know that their cases are weak. The less actual evidence that they have, the more they stress the disgusting nature of the alleged crime. And they forget to remind us that it is alleged, not proved.

“Equally shamefully, judges do not stop these trials, and juries leave their brains at the door. They convict not because they are sure the case has been proved beyond reasonable doubt, but because they are angry and revolted. I am miserably sure there are disturbing numbers of people in prisons now, prosecuted on such charges, who are innocent of the accusations against them. It is our fault, because we have forgotten what justice is supposed to be like, and that, if we do not guard it in our hearts, it will perish in our country.”

If Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro’s one-sided, untested grand jury report is to be the standard by which we execute justice and formulate policy — without evidence, without trials, without a defense — then justice has already perished in our country. If our bishops publish lists of names of priests merely accused, but without substantiation, their credibility will perish with it.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this important post and visit these related posts from These Stone Walls:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

That Grand Jury Report on Abusive Catholic Priests

Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked