In a bleak, black comedy sort of way:
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.
Burrill was elected general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference in November 2020. In that role, Burrill was effectively the highest-ranking American cleric who is not a bishop.
A priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, he first began to work at the bishops’ conference in February 2016, when he began serving as associate general secretary. In that capacity, the priest was charged with helping to coordinate the U.S. bishops’ response to the Church’s 2018 sexual abuse and coercion scandals.
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.
Go here to read the rest. How many members of the Lavender Mafia in the USCCB knew precisely what was going on? I assume they found the irony funny, and Burrill highly useful in running cover for them. But there is nothing to worry about and our Bishops have everything under control. When Christ comes back I bet He brings a lot of whips with Him.
So much cancer to remove from the body of Christ. This malignant tumor is just one of many.
How pathetic.
Steve Skojec’s quote at the top of this page is poignant.
What gets you is that this man is nearly 60 and he’s carrying on like this.
Another ouch is that Cdl. Burke was the Bishop of LaCrosse at the time this man was ordained and for six years afterward. Since he appears to be a compulsive offender, I do wonder when this misconduct began.
Does anyone wonder how this third party got hold of this information?
Really, how likely is it he suddenly woke up one day and decide to visit gay bars? One of his gay encounters probably outed him. An example of where the priesthood is being used as cover/access to an easy gay lifestyle whilst the fraudster is housed and fed at the Church’s expense. Surely that’s categorised as a calculated crime and should be punishable under the law. What stops future fraudsters from doing the same thing. The Church should not accept this and there needs to be some accountability by this imposter.
Really, how likely is it he suddenly woke up one day and decide to visit gay bars?
Very likely. There comes such a point in the life of all such men. The question in my mind is just when.
One of his gay encounters probably outed him.
How would some hook up have his cell phone data?
An example of where the priesthood is being used as cover/access to an easy gay lifestyle whilst the fraudster is housed and fed at the Church’s expense.
Spending 6 years in formation programs seems a rather rococo way of entering the gay subculture. Fr. Mankowski offered that most of those he entered formation with in 1974 were homosexuals hiding in the tall grass, but that was the better part of a generation ‘ere this man entered seminary.
I think most of the clergy is homo-erotic and communist-sympathetic.
As for how many whips Christ will bring when He returns, just one, and He will flail the very flesh off these heretical sex perverts.
It’s one thing to be an ordinary person with a sex problem (as the Big Book of AA says on pp 69-70, we all got them) or other issues. Everyone of us has made mistakes (sexual and otherwise: I’m guilty along with the rest of mankind – my 12 step sponsor said I’m no one special, just a garden variety drunk & dope fiend). It’s another thing entirely to be doing what these clerics do while parading around in pseudo-holiness. I know I’m screwed up and have to go to Confession regularly. These fools – nothing seems to scare them, not even the fires of hell. The Novus Ordo OT reading of Jeremiah 23:1-6 on Sunday was so appropriate.
Art raises a good question. How did this information become available to third parties? The allegations against him are quite serious. Invasion of privacy concerns are extremely serious as well.
Good that he is no longer at the USCCB. But what does this portend to everyone else that uses social media? One doesn’t have to be engaged in nefarious activities to fall prey to those who simply don’t like your opinions.
Of all such men? Come off it. All such men don’t create a profile on Grindr using a smart phone which has an inbuilt location tracker. It’s brazen of him if he was getting away with it for years. My daughter can tell where her friends are through social media apps. It’s pins their location- it’s not rocket science. The fact is that apps are a recent phenomena- easier to get caught using an app. And yes, a lowlife like him would spend 6 years in formation so he can enter a gay subculture. Provided it meant he was looked after for the rest of his life and he played along. Very feasible. Which begs the question- why doesn’t the Church prosecute frauds like him. That way it sends a message to others with the same idea.
However IF he decided he was gay one day at the age of 40 or 50 or 60 he should have left the priesthood, not brought further scandal to it. But instead he happily lived, ate and slept at the expense of the Church who he vowed to serve. Throw him in jail where the gay subculture rife.
Of all such men? Come off it.
At some point in his past he elected to join the gay demimonde. We do not know when. Understanding that is not that difficult.
Same diocese as the true priest, Fr. Altman. This pervert will likely be treated a lot different then Fr. Altman. Will all the filth ever be removed from the priesthood? Not likely under Jorge since he’s certainly very proud and promotes that other pervert, little Jimmy Martin.
We’ll disagree on “when”. He needs punishment. And to back-pay his boarding costs.
And should one wonder why their solemn public prayers and invocations have absolutely no effect..
There’s a piece at the Washington Post and RNS about how unethical the investigation was and how wrong it is to reveal someone’s private life. He refers to the “discredited” link between homosexuality and abuse of minors. Some people have worked hard to learn nothing from McCarrick.
It would also seem that other Lavenders might be looking at how he was identified and getting nervous…
RNS used to be a respectable outfit.
Now it’s just a narrative factory like the rest of them.
Such solicitude for the Monsignor from MSM. None of which could be found when the execrable Duggar perv was first outed in the Ashley Madison hack.
The Pillar said the material is commercially available. And given how many children access such sites as Burrill frequented, I am not sympathetic to the privacy argument. If you avail yourself of a digital gay bordello that lets boys in, you deserve to be exposed.
How many more like him with similar digital data trails are there?
RNS used to be a respectable outfit.
I kind of wondered when I still read it why the story selection had gotten so skewed you might have renamed it ‘Kevin Eckstrom’s Gay News’. Then I discovered they were getting 55% of their funding from the Arcus Foundation. The Arcus Foundation was at that time run by a man named Kevin Jennings, who had previously worked in BO’s Education Department and whose public reminiscences about his time as a high school teacher / counselor made it plain he was a pederast enabler.
The Pillar said the material is commercially available.
That’s puzzling. Why would it be commercially available?
He refers to the “discredited” link between homosexuality and abuse of minors.
Reporters aren’t very bright and don’t have much integrity.
I am not aware of any evidence to suggest there were any fewer practicing “gays” admitted to the seminaries in the past 40 years than there were in the 1960s and 1970’s. There probably is no reliable data in any event. I do know there remain a seemingly large number of anecdotal accounts by recently ordained priests of the dominant lavender subculture in many seminaries in the West today. FWIW.
“Why would it be commercially available?”
Good question–I am not clear on that myself.
Lucius – I was thinking about that first reading at Mass on Sunday. It couldn’t have been any other week in the three-year cycle? It had to be evil shepherds week?
It’s hard to understand the moral state this priest must have been in. If you even kind of believe, how do you act like that? So maybe there’s no belief at all. But then, I wouldn’t understand the priest’s professional life. If you don’t believe in any Catholic teaching, why become a priest? Is it just for the predatory opportunity? Why stay a priest in the age of Grindr? How do you do something every day – every moment, your entire life, other than when you’re not partaking in these acts – that you don’t believe in?
I remember being shocked when I heard that Father Maciel had committed plagiarism. I could understand struggling with passions, but to be sinning hot and cold, it’s hard to believe there was any struggle going on at all.
Ah, my comment went into moderation, probably because I used the name of the app in the article. Good. I want to live in a world where that gets flagged. Unfortunately it probably got flagged because it’s a product. I’m really bummed out it passed spell-check.
They must sleep through their J School classes on begging the question and facts not in evidence. Even as propaganda what most journalists produce these days is thin gruel indeed.
I remember being shocked when I heard that Father Maciel had committed plagiarism.
You need to learn to set priorities.
Art, you missed my point. It’s not the severity I was surprised by, it was the coldness.
Apparently this info was offered in 2018 but turned down. Expect more revelations.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248412/concerns-raised-about-using-surveillance-technology-to-track-clergy
Art, you missed my point. It’s not the severity I was surprised by, it was the coldness.
I got your point. I didn’t think much of it.
Are you trying to pick a fight, or joking?
Art you didn’t need to say that.
”
Art: “I got your point. I didn’t think much of it.”
This comment and other comments of his is the reason I do not frequent this site much anymore. It’s too bad. It’s a great Catholic blog.
Play nice folks. Debate issues not personalities. Less snark more substance please.