In July 2021, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill resigned from his post as the general secretary of the USCCB ahead of a report by The Pillar alleging that he had engaged in inappropriate behaviour and frequent use of Grindr.

The app advertises itself as "the largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people." Its geolocation feature is popularly known to facilitate sex hookups between gay men.

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But some experts say the level of detail included in the story suggests that whoever provided the information has access to large datasets and methods of analysis that could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars—or more.

"When I first heard that this was happening, my mouth hit the floor," Zach Edwards, the founder of the boutique analytics firm Victory Medium, told America.

A data expert, Mr Edwards previously helped a Norwegian consumer rights group bring a complaint against Grindr in 2020 that alleged that the gay hookup app violated European privacy laws by leaking users' personal data.

The company was eventually fined more than $11 millionearlier this year by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.

Mr Edwards described the level of detail revealed in the data points included in The Pillar article as "alarming."

Zach Edwards the founder of the boutique analytics firm Victory Medium, described the level of detail revealed in the data points included in The Pillar article as "alarming."

The Pillar has not said where it obtained the data about Msgr Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned shortly before the story about his use of the app was published.

The editors of The Pillar, J. D Flynn and Ed Condon, did not reply to an email from America asking who provided the data.

Mr Edwards said that acquiring data that appears to have been collected over at least three years could be costly and may have required a team of researchers to sort through it to identify specific individuals tied to the data.

He estimated that the "database and deanonymization efforts" used to obtain details about Monsignor Burrill could have "run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars."

The article in The Pillar contained allegations that a phone associated with Monsignor Burrill regularly logged onto Grindr, a dating app used by gay men, during periods of several months in 2018, 2019 and 2020 from his home and office in Washington, D.C., as well as from a family lake house in Wisconsin and from other cities, including Las Vegas.

"The inclusion of [Monsignor Burrill's vacation destinations] speaks to a level of tracking obsession," Mr Edwards said.

"Every Catholic should hope that's the case because that is the only scenario that's not a dystopian nightmare."

It is possible, he said, that a person or organization held a grudge against Monsignor Burrill and tracked only his data.

But he worries that the data appears to have been shopped around since 2018 and that whoever has access to it now probably has more information to release.

Mr Edwards estimated that the "database and deanonymization efforts" used to obtain details about Monsignor Burrill could have "run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars."

"It either is a larger organization tracking multiple priests and we have more shoes that are going to be dropping" or it was focused only on Monsignor Burrill, he said. He can imagine a situation in which the data could be used to blackmail or extort church leaders.

The specificity of geography included in The Pillar story suggests that whoever provided the information to the publication had access to an unusually comprehensive dataset that would have gone beyond what is normally available to advertising firms.

"That's a really expensive, dangerous data sale," he said.

Large, "deidentified" data sets like this—information that does not contain names or phone numbers—are often sold in aggregate for advertising purposes or even to track mass travel during epidemics.

The data used as the basis for The Pillar story appears to have tracked Monsignor Burill through a process known as re-identification, which some experts said may have violated contracts from third-party vendors, who routinely prohibit the practice.

Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, an applied mathematics professor at Imperial College, London, who has studied the ease with which individuals can be identified through supposedly pseudonymized data, told America the report in The Pillar was "quite vague on the technical details."

But he said that, in general, a researcher or team of analysts can identify an individual with access to just a few data points.

He gave as an example a fictional person living in Boston: That person's mobile device may send a signal from an M.I.T. classroom in the morning, from a Harvard Square cafe in the afternoon, then in the evening from a bar in the Back Bay followed by a signal from a home in South Boston.

The specificity of geography included in The Pillar story suggests that whoever provided the information to the publication had access to an unusually comprehensive dataset that would have gone beyond what is normally available to advertising firms.

"A few of these places and times are going to be sufficient" to match other information a researcher might know about an individual that taken together makes it possible to identify the user of the mobile device, Mr Montjoye said.

That other information could include real estate records, social media posts or even published agendas.

Even in large cities with millions of people, it is not difficult to use just a few data points to identify an individual as "very few people will be at the same places at roughly the same time as you."

The co-founders of The Pillar defended their story against criticism that called the story journalistically unethical, saying in a statement that they "discovered an obvious correlation between hookup app usage and a high-ranking public figure who was responsible in a direct way for the development and oversight of policies addressing clerical accountability with regard to the Church's approach to sexual morality."

Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, the director of ministerial formation at St. John's University School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minn., said more and more surveillance and tracking technology will not produce righteous men fit for ministry.

Instead, she said, it will contribute to a culture of suspicion and perpetuate the lack of trust in the Catholic Church.

"Why not invest instead in formation processes that insist on a culture of honesty, transparency and integrity of character?" she said, adding that if and when religious leaders are found to have moral failings, there is a need to create space for conversation among the faithful.

"Sadly, many of us have had the experience of finding out scandalous information about a priest or pastoral leader. This is a shocking experience, often coupled with a sense of betrayal, sadness, grief, anger, disgust and even despair," she said.

"Communities experiencing this need spaces for turning together for conversation, honest sharing, and gathering to lament and grieve the loss of trust that occurred."

Hours before The Pillar published its report, the Catholic News Agency published a story stating that the organization had been approached by a person in 2018 who "claimed to have access to technology capable of identifying clergy and others who download popular ‘hook-up' apps, such as Grindr and Tinder, and to pinpoint their locations using the internet addresses of their computers or mobile devices."

The story said that C.N.A. declined to accept information from this person.

In a statement, Grindr called The Pillar's report an "unethical, homophobic witch hunt" and said it does "not believe" it was the source of the data used. The company said it has policies and systems in place to protect personal data, although it didn't say when those were implemented.

Mr Edwards, who has been critical of Grindr's privacy protections, said, "This is about the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to their business." Continue reading

There are reasons to think it heralds a new and even uglier era in American Catholicism.

As Catholics were still reeling from Pope Francis' abrogation Friday (July 16) of his predecessor's guidance on the traditional Latin Mass, "Summorum Pontificum".

Indeed, while this author was struggling to finish an article about that event, The Pillar, a Catholic publication, released what it called "an investigation" in which data identifying Burrill's phone seemed to indicate he had frequently used Grindr, a popular dating app in the gay community, and that he had left geolocation tracks to and from gay clubs.

That is all we really learned from The Pillar's "investigation."

And, here is an important place to pause.

I am a sinner. So are you. So is Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill.

Not one of us has a personal life that would withstand the sort of scrutiny The Pillar has applied to Burrill.

Every single one of us has had a shameful moment we regret, and I suspect most of us must be caught up in cycles of sinfulness that we repeat less because we want to than because we are sinners and cannot help being sinners.

Like anyone else, Burrill's sins are between him and God.

Like any other priest, we can say his bishop belongs in that conversation too.

But unless there is some reason to think he has harmed someone else, I feel sure his sins are none of my business, as much as my sins are none of yours.

As a Catholic, I am bound to believe all of that.

I am not sure what the investigators at The Pillar believe.

I feel comfortably sure that before they embarked on their "investigation," they must not have thought about the Code of Canon Law, which states, "No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses nor to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy." (Canon 220)

They must also not have thought about the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, "everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbour's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favourable way" (Catechism 2478) because "detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity." (Catechism 2479).

I can see plainly they did not heed St. Paul, who pointed the finger at himself as a sinner (1 Timothy 1:15) before pointing to others.

Whatever we may say of their practice of Catholicism, The Pillar's investigators paid little heed also to the canons of ethics for journalists.

How did they get their story?

The Society for Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics encourages journalists to "avoid using undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information" and admonishes that "Pursuit of the news is not a license for … undue intrusiveness."

What story did they get here?

That Burrill might have broken his vow of chastity and (consensually) used other people for impersonal sex?

The Code of Ethics also tells journalists to "avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do." And perhaps more importantly, it says, "avoid stereotyping."

There we also need to pay some attention.

The Pillar has less gotten hold of a story than it has published an innuendo.

And, the innuendo should worry us.

The Pillar writes that the data it has from Burrill's phone "suggests that he was … engaged in serial and illicit sexual activity," at the same time he was coordinating responses to the sex abuse crisis for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although Pillar acknowledges "there is no evidence to suggest that Burrill was in contact with minors through his use of Grindr," the article goes on in the same paragraph to say his use of the app presents a conflict of interest in his role responding to sex abuse because such apps are sometimes used to solicit or traffic minors.

A few paragraphs earlier the article quotes another priest seeming to make a similar leap regarding Burrill's behaviour: that "regularly and glaringly failing to live continence" can become "only a step away from sexual predation."

That equivalence is the ugliest part — conflating consensual sexual behaviour (if Burrill even was part of any, which we do not know) with sexual abuse.

This is the hook on which the "story" hangs, a long-discredited link between sexual abuse and homosexuality. It is hard to call that something other than a slur and a sin against the LGBTQ+ community.

Not to mention, the article's allegations, if true, "out" Burrill's sexuality without his consent — a widely condemned practice.

And, all of that is a bit much to take.

But I fear in fact there is something worse.

I agree with what Monsignor Kevin Irwin wrote today in the National Catholic Reporter, that Pope Francis last week unmasked "the silent schism that has taken place and continues in the American Catholic Church."

We Catholics have been at each other's throats for decades, mostly quietly and with some veneer of restraint.

The façade has been falling, and those days might be over.

Now, The Pillar has opened the way further with this no-holds-barred exposé.

I do not say this idly.

After mere hours, the comments on The Pillar's tweet of the story already see people enthused about going after "bishops … engaged in questionable activity," and asking "what the laity should be doing (to) shine a light into all these dark corners."

We saw centuries ago what Christians — unburdened by their Christianity — in their conflicts with other Christians can look like. I fear we are seeing it again.

That is what schism brings.

That is where the spirit of division leads.

Pope Francis was not wrong to unmask what already is underway, but The Pillar is wrong to push this spirit of division even further along with what I only can call the worst sort of tittle-tattle tabloid journalism.

And, I fear we have not yet seen the worst.

A long ugly season awaits American Catholics.

No one is safe and — it seems — all is permitted.

• Steven P. Millies is associate professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center, at Catholic Theological Union.
• First published by RNS.
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a memo that Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill had resigned as its general secretary. This came after staff had learned on Monday of "impending media reports alleging possible improper behaviour."

The Pillar published an article on Wednesday that presented evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct.

The data captured by The Pillar highlights the invasive threat posed by mobile data.

Pillar said its analysis of the app data "correlated" to Burrill's cellphone. It shows he visited gay bars in several cities between 2018 and 2020 while using the app.

The article does not report that Burrill did anything illegal. However, homosexual acts are considered a sin according to Catholic teaching. Ordained priests are required to make a vow of celibacy.

It is not immediately clear how The Pillar obtained the data.

Brokered data is being used to identify the activities of cellphone users, confirming the long-voiced concerns of privacy experts.

A primary concern of privacy experts involves a concept known as "device fingerprinting". This is where a user can be identified, even when the data is supposed to be anonymous.

A tracker does this by looking for a unique and persistent way a person uses technology. The identity can be determined based on the location, time and activity, all of which can be collected through permission granted when the app is downloaded.

Security researchers have also found that apps are collecting more data than users are led to believe.

A report in 2019 found that more than 1,000 apps were taking data even after users denied them permissions, allowing them to gather precise geolocation data and phone identifiers.

In an article published Monday, the Catholic News Agency said it had received an offer in 2018 from individuals who claimed to have access to technology capable of tracking priests who download dating apps.

The news organization said it declined the proposal at the time. But it warned that "there are reports this week that information targeting allegedly active homosexual priests may become public."

Sources

• CNet
• Religion News
• The Pillar