American website The Pillar’s infamous scoop, which last week “outed” the priest who administers the US Bishops’ Conference, using data it purchased from the dating app Grindr, may well have been journalism – but it didn’t look Catholic to me.
The team behind The Pillar – J D Flynn and Ed Condon – used Grindr data, which is legal, if ethically questionable, that was cross-referenced with information about Mgr Jeffrey Burrill’s addresses to allege that his phone – and by inference, he – had been visiting gay clubs. The Pillar has not disclosed who supplied and paid for the information that led to Mgr Burrill’s downfall.

Secular media reaction focused on the ethics of using a data vendor to reveal an individual’s non-criminal behaviour. Two Catholic journalists appear to have leapt across a line that others in the media have hesitated to cross. The criticism has been thrown around that neither Flynn nor Condon are real journalists. Actually, they behaved exactly like journalists: all reporters know the thrill of a “Gotcha”. I expect commentators are right, and the investigation was funded by someone with an agenda.