[Rod Dreher] Msgr. Burrill & The ‘Droit Du Monseigneur’

It looks like many Catholics, from the progressives to the integralists, are mad at The Pillar for outing a top USCCB cleric over his alleged use of the gay hook-up app Grindr, which is used to arrange impromptu gay sexual encounters. The Washington Postsurveys the reaction. Excerpts:

Is Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill a victim of both the surveillance and morality police? Or a hypocrite who had it coming? The case of the high-ranking Catholic cleric who resigned after allegedly being tracked on the gay dating app Grindr quickly became a Rorschach test Wednesday for Catholics already mired in tension over politics, theology and culture.

Burrill until Tuesday was the top administrator for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He stepped down after a Catholic newsletter presented conference officials with allegations that cellphone data indicated he had repeatedly used Grindr and visited gay bars.

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If Burrill is guilty of what the data indicate, then it’s important to know if he used his position at the NAC to groom others, or in some other way participated in, or turned a blind eye to, predation. It cannot be said enough: these things happen in networks! The late Richard Sipe, a sociologist who knew more about the sociology of sexually active priests that anybody, repeatedly said that the culture of sexual abuse depends on a broader culture of sexual misconduct, which is itself sustained by networks of sympathetic corrupt priests. This is one of the reasons why Janet Smith points out that Catholic seminaries routinely screen the online connections of their seminarians, looking for pornography and other signs of online sexual misconduct. By what rationalization does a senior Catholic cleric have the right to seek out gay sexual encounters on his phone without anyone else knowing about it, but Catholic seminarians do not? Is this what you call the “droit du monseigneur”?

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I honestly cannot understand why anybody who believes that priests having sex is immoral would object to what The Pillar has done. It wasn’t, by the way, like Burrill was (allegedly) having sexual relations with a regular partner. The data published by The Pillar suggest that he was having quick, anonymous sexual encounters with men. Though I suppose it could be said that he only used Grindr to entice gay men into meeting with him so he could share the Gospel with them, and call them to repentance. This is within the realm of possibility, as we have no hard evidence that the monsignor actually had sex with the men he allegedly met via the app.