As a Catholic, I thought it might be important to raise one point here (since it seems everyone immediately jumps to "the Church is firing someone for who he wants to have sex with").
A Roman Catholic[1] priest is obligated (takes a vow when ordained) to not have sex with anyone, and it would be scandalous to find a priest—especially one with so much power and connections—to be hooking up with multiple partners in any situation. The app and sexual orientation are immaterial.
The other takeaway is that all the HN preaching about the importance of data privacy and how advertisers are grifting us, and how 'free' services are never free—this is probably the most lucid illustration of those facts yet.
Even those who try to aggregate anonymous data in a safe way are never going to be perfect at making sure nobody could associate the data back to an individual. The best thing is to not use the free (or cheap/ad-heavy) apps and services that do collect location information or other identifiable metrics.
[1] There are other parts of the Catholic church where priests are allowed to marry, and there actually are some Roman Catholic priests who converted from other faiths that allowed marriage, who are still married.
Practicing Catholic here. To add a reference about vows of celibacy: the minor (but notable!) exception are priests in Anglican Ordinariate who were validly married before their Catholic ordination. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... this is a temporary exception, though, and does not signify any change in the Church's discipline of clerical celibacy.
> the minor (but notable!) exception are priests in Anglican Ordinariate who were validly married before their Catholic ordination.
The major exception is the priesthood of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches; priestly celibacy is a discipline of the Latin Rite, not a universal discipline or doctrine of the Catholic Church.
> this is a temporary exception, though, and does not signify any change in the Church's discipline of clerical celibacy.
Sure, the most recent change was the reestablishment of the permanent diaconate within the Latin Rite, since before that the diaconate (and, before it was suppressed, also the subdiaconate) were within the scope of clerical celibacy.
They aren't treated as immaterial in the attacks made on him by The Pillar based on the data, the attacks that led to the resignation; in them, the app and its use by some child predators (despite the explicit absence of any interactions by the official in question with minors) is specifically used to suggest he had a conflict of interest dealing with sex abuse issues.
> "the Church is firing someone for who he wants to have sex with"
Are they tho? The headline says he quit.
Also: Off-topic; You the same "geerlingguy" that does all the open source stuff? Drupal and Ansible and all that stuff? If that's you, I just wanna throw out my "so very much thanks for all you've done for open source" at you. I've learned a ton of great stuff from you over the years. People like you genuinely contribute to a "more-better" world. ;)
If it were only about celibacy then they wouldn't have bothered to mention his trips to gay bars. Priests can go to a bar. They can drink alcohol. They can exist near and around gay people and straight people go to gay bars, too.
He knows that and is alluded to the fact that the article mentions the gay bar to taint his character and create a narrative that he is lurking on the down low.
Many people go to gay bars not to hook up, but to be around other gay people. Gay bars are not a hookup app.
There are. Bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and more all offer community to LGBT people , as they do many other minorities (and special interest groups, for that matter).
Straight people tend to get offended when a gay person hits on them, and drunk offended people can sometimes get violent. On the flip side of the coin, heteronormative bars present an added challenge for gay people looking for a hookup as they can't always tell who will be receptive. There was a need and the market filled it.
And for the record, straight people are allowed in too, it's not like they scan you with a gaydar at the door. You just have to be ok with people hitting on you who you're probably not interested in. So it's like being a woman in a normal bar.
A. Using extensive app logs to stalk & doxx someone is shitty. Alas this is the world we have built. Way back in 2003 this country still had some leftovers of a moral backbone and could pass CAN-SPAM act. These days anything goes.
B. This guy was using a hookup app 'almost daily', and following up with visits to hookup bars and private residences. His activities strongly corroborate that he was a sex addict. Which is in direct contradiction with his Catholic priesthood vows of chastity and celibacy.
C. Hookup apps like Grindr do not validate the user's age. They are a de-facto funnel feeding under age kids into the hookup sex scene. 'In an NWU study of of 14 to 17 year old males who identify as gay or bisexual [...] more than a quarter of the study’s adolescent participants said they had had sex with a partner met through an app.' The next stage of the funnel is prostitution and trafficking.
I do not disagree with you one bit, and appreciate the thoughtful response. Though tinder and other dating apps do not have age verification either. We probably need photo id verifications
It is unnatural to forcibly suppress desires for life, one way or another it will come out - no wonder there are so many sex scandals of priests abusing children.
With any information (journalism, scientific method, etc.) always check the reliability of sources, refer back to the original, don't just listen to the interpretation of one person (preacher) to avoid bias.
> there are so many sex scandals of priests abusing children.
says who?
If anything priesthood is statistically protective against pedophilia, even without accounting for "professions with access".
If I remember, last time I read the literature on the topic, it was quoted as something like 0.2%? As opposed to, say, teachers, which came at a scary 8%, and against a background population level of about 1-2%.
The scandal was about the "handling" of these cases, not about their presumed overwhelming propensity compared to "normal people". So your theory about repressed urges and the like is effectively Bulverism.
Obviously you'd be forgiven for having that impression though. This kind of stuff os golddust for the media. All they have to do is match pedophilia articles with articles about catholics on the front page, and boom -- fact by association.
> So your theory about repressed urges and the like is effectively Bulverism
On the contrary, the 1st statement was a theological argument, which led to a later hypothesis.
Please provide sources:
38% of clergy accused total, 0.1% actually convicted
“Cartor, Cimbolic & Tallon (2008) found that 6 percent of the cleric offenders in the John Jay Report are pedophiles; 32 percent ephebophiles, 15 percent 11 & 12 year olds only (both male and female)...” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report
If you're so quick to uncritically believe that 38% of ordained priests are pedophiles, then you should at least consider the possibility that you have been successfully brainwashed by your choice of media/ideology. That kind of number is verging on conspiracy theory, up there with illuminati and chemtrails.
I'm not quite sure how you hoped the links you placed would help with your rebuttal, since they basically agree with what I said, but, in any case, thank you for the links; since you trust those sources, feel free to treat these as the sources you requested.
For comparable prevalence figures in the general population and in high risk professions (like teachers), just google that phrase, top links seem good enough references.
Isn't the defining trait of Catholics as opposed to Protestants that they don't just straight up follow the bible? That the church is the authority and the bible is just a jumping off point. If you're reading the bible yourself and using it to argue with the church then you've already left Catholic territory.
It's so interesting. There's a huge amount of privacy-related online REEEing about irrelevant issues, such as anonymized error telemetry in open source software.
Yet when mobile phone carriers sell your real-time location data to random entities, it seems nobody gives a damn.
They might eventually. Seems like Congress is gettin' more'n more annoyed at various aspects of the tech industry as more of these crazy things keep makin' it into the news.
Pretty sure these days they can triangulate you down to within something like 10-30 meters (with nothing but cell or wifi) with a pretty high degree of certainty, can't they?
With ambient WiFi signals one can get the error down to 10 meters or even less depending on coverage. This actually powers some of the location signals which Google and Apple provide in their location API’s, as it costs less battery life than GPS.
Online reeing is irrelevant, people in their hacker bubble don't realize the public at large doesn't give a shit. Google and Facebook still post increasing profits and anecdotally I still see computers without ad blockers.
Focusing on the data privacy angle here, I can see how location data from the telcos would allow the publication to identify the priest’s device ID from the location data, knowing where he lives, works, etc. But how did they correlate that with his use of the Grindr app? Do the telcos provide data on app usage by location and time, or did they somehow get data from Grindr directly?
Including frameworks that collect and sell customer data is one of the ways that developers can monetize a free app.
Selling that data to third party data brokers allows the data brokers to build up a detailed user profile for pretty much everyone.
>The data broker business model involves accumulating information about internet users (and non-users) and then selling it. As such, data brokers have highly detailed profiles on billions of individuals, comprising age, race, sex, weight, height, marital status, education level, politics, shopping habits, health issues, holiday plans, and more.
These profiles come not just from data you’ve shared, but from data shared by others, and from data that’s been inferred. In its 2014 report into the industry, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) showed how a single data broker had 3,000 “data segments” for nearly every US consumer.
Poor guy. Meanwhile a bunch of others get protected when they touch kids.
Things like these make me want to drop out of anything software related and live a life of physical stuff only. Move to a village and be the local mechanic or baker without a website and just an analog phone line, at most
“ makes me wonder if I should feel bad for him. I don't, because my gut reaction is that he…”
You don’t know him and you can’t claim to know what he thinks or believes. No one follows the catholic theology to absolutely strict adherence. Just some are more strict about some aspects. You accusing him of having no faith or belief in the religion he has dedicated his life to is offensive. Your quick judgement is probably because he’s gay… and religious, thus a hypocrite, in some peoples eyes. Just remember it’s the Church that turned away from gays not the other way around.
Having to abstain from physical contact with another adult human is a deeply unnatural and inhuman protocol. I don’t judge any one for wanting to touched and loved.
As for your quick and abrasive judgement: A group of men preparing to stone an adulterous woman to death were addressed by Jesus with the words: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’ (John 8:7).
This is just absurdity. They can't have relations, and relations with men is an even further crime. I don't care that he's gay at all, I'm neither catholic or a Christian. But to say he can believe in what he's preaching while he's in the upper echelons of the church while using grindr at the same time is just lunacy. I mean he doesn't even just have a secret boyfriend or something, he's using a hook up app. Jesus also destroyed a temple when he found it full of merchants,I wonder how he would react to the catholics.
A linked article says that he "held a critical oversight role in the Catholic Church’s response to the recent spate of sexual abuse and misconduct scandals."
And hopefully you don’t have sex with children. Though we don’t have any evidence to indicate that you don’t… so you are suspect. Hopefully you only engage in sex acts with consenting adults
You really seem to be popping up all over this thread with personal attacks on strangers.
This priest is paid through donations from believers, yet actively engaged in behaviors that are abhorrent to the church. If nothing else, it's immoral, and he should have removed himself from that role long ago
> actively engaged in behaviors that are abhorrent to the church
This is bigotry plain and simple. It’s the ‘gayness’ the church has a problem with.
Saying 'If he had sex, he's immoral and should resign as priest and the religious order' is consciously or unconsciously issuing a homophobic attack because it was Grindr for gay sex with a man. If it was a man that had sex with an adult woman, no one would care, The Pillar wouldn't have publicized the data findings, this wouldn't be an article on arstechnica, and you wouldn't care either. Also Priesthood isn't a job you leave. It isn't a job, it's for life. There nothing to go to after.
It would be like saying ‘if you smoke pot, you are “actively engaged in behaviors that are abhorrent to the“… country because it’s listed as a Schedule I substance, federally banned, so you should leave and go to another country. No I won’t. Will stay here smoke my pot, thumb my nose at you and change the laws. And we did, we’ll change the church too.
Well you won't find that my direct peers and companions have a recent history of shuffling pedophiles around when they're caught so I suspect the situation is a little different.
I'm really curious about this. I understand you disagree, but I really can't see how.It really was the case that the catholic church at all levels was aiding and abetting pedophilia. How can you still see the clergy as good? What, in your eyes, would they have to do to stop being good? Is there anything?
You go back & forth defending then attacking the church then the priest. I really don't understand your issue. I'm clear, I have issue with the churches 1: priest obstinance policy and 2: gay policy; it's unrealistic with a catastrophically negative outcome.
I have a problem with people attacking gays or straights for wanting love. I don't care what your religion or organization is.
Saying 'If he had sex, he's immoral and should resign as priest and the religious order' is consciously or unconsciously issuing a homophobic attack because it was Grindr for gay sex with a man. If it was a man that had sex with an adult woman, no one would care, The Pillar wouldn't have publicized the data findings, this wouldn't be an article on arstechnica, and you wouldn't care either. Also Priesthood isn't a job you leave. It isn't a job, it's for life.
I grew up in the church. I have friends in the church. I know a lot of priests and I knew a lot of gay priests. There are a lot of good people there.
If none of that was good enough to change your tack, you will N E V E R defeat the church, and people need/want it. The're the single biggest land real-estate owners in the world with 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2019. Money is power and this scandal will blow over, they are on a long-term plan. You can help the church evolve to a kinder organization; kinder to its priests and its parishioners.
Personally, I don't like church, it's not for me. Deep down everyone knows right and wrong, and existence a god doesn't help answer any questions I have. The idea of heaven allows people to think there is something better after. There isn't.
> Well, at least he himself was just using grindr with consenting adults.
Its worth noting that central to the attack on him was that despite their being no indication of any kind that his use of grindr was anything but with consenting adults, it nevertheless (because apps like Grindr are sometimes uses by predators) raised the issue that he might be soft on predators.
Anyone who is still a Catholic after long running high level pedophile coverups and relocations should expect the clergy to be a little less than holy, probably.
glad you have it all figured out—may I ask how you achieved this enlightenment? did the sense of superiority over others come with it or was that the result of something else?
Hypothesis: It is unnatural to forcibly suppress desires for life, one way or another it will come out (i.e. child sex abuse).
Studies
38% accused, 0.1% convicted
“Cartor, Cimbolic & Tallon (2008) found that 6 percent of the cleric offenders in the John Jay Report are pedophiles; 32 percent ephebophiles, 15 percent 11 & 12 year olds only (both male and female)...”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report
This article wrongly conflates being gay with being “only a step away from sexual predation.”
> But any use of the app by the priest could be seen to present a conflict with his role in developing and overseeing national child protection policies, as Church leaders have called in recent months for a greater emphasis on technology accountability in Church policies.
That a priest is gay might violate Catholic teaching but it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on his ability to develop child protection policies and to suggest his sexuality "could be seen to present a conflict" is, at best, willful ignorance.
No it's not attacking gays. These policies were implemented back in the mid 2010s and sexual orientation is irrelevant. It's a huge deal where priest basically are held to an even higher standard publicly. So while in the 70s this priest could've been shifted elsewhere, now because he's publicly a sexually active person, the Church wants little to do with them.
I've been through like 3 of these types of meetings our church made us do (when I was still Catholic). They were more like "if you see something, say something" and "how to catch a priest predator" inadvertently. It's more like the Catholic church only wants virgins and people who can't be proven otherwise as priests right now.
“ It's more like the Catholic church only wants virgins and people who can't be proven otherwise as priests right now.”
But let’s be honest it’s unspoken that they prefer straight virgins right?
Actually it’s spoken. Quite verbose in fact. The church is constantly attacking gays and for them to be non-bias in this case is completely out of character and you are giving them way too much courtesy.
The church calls for people who are gay to basically suppress it and go into a vocation where they can not sin basically. They really don't care if you're gay. The church essentially considers it a fetish. Fetishes aren't a sin. Acting on them are.
Yes yes before the mob gets upset at the faulty logic, I get it. There is several reasons that I'm irreligious now.
Sorry. I did not assert that the church considers being a gay a sin. I insist that the church has consistently been against gays and it would be out of character for them to be different. You confirmed this with your comment
I mean it's kinda weird. The church conforms to social norms. I've met a lot of gay catholics and families who have a gay child and I've never seen some crazy nutjob bashing on any side. People in my state are very tolerant of it. The church has never once stated anything crazy like "gays go to hell" or "all gays are sinners." I feel like you're getting it warped that catholics publicly condemning it but not speaking for the actual church, are somehow speaking for the church. Every institution has ignorant members so you can't hold the Church accountable for it's fair share of stupid people.
You seem to be talking out of both sides your mouth. You are continuously wrong and willful in not acknowledging it.
Just to be clear I speak from experience when I talk about the church. My uncle was in the seminary, my other uncle is a catholic priest, my father was in the seminary, my best friend is a devout Catholic who’s been going to church every day for the past 60 years. I know church doctrine. I don’t think you do
I’ve met all the nice catholic people you describe. I’ve also met the not so nice people you pretend aren’t a large influential part of the Catholic Church. Maybe your state is a wonderland. Travel a bit and see the rest of the world and know what it actually looks like when you are gay
What? The Catholic Church, the institution, has repeatedly said gay people are sinners. Several Popes (just in my lifetime!) have given speeches and written essays to that effect.
If he was identified then it was not anonym data. This would be a grave break of the GDPR in Europe. Anonymizing data is a hard problem that usually requires statisticians.
A Roman Catholic[1] priest is obligated (takes a vow when ordained) to not have sex with anyone, and it would be scandalous to find a priest—especially one with so much power and connections—to be hooking up with multiple partners in any situation. The app and sexual orientation are immaterial.
The other takeaway is that all the HN preaching about the importance of data privacy and how advertisers are grifting us, and how 'free' services are never free—this is probably the most lucid illustration of those facts yet.
Even those who try to aggregate anonymous data in a safe way are never going to be perfect at making sure nobody could associate the data back to an individual. The best thing is to not use the free (or cheap/ad-heavy) apps and services that do collect location information or other identifiable metrics.
[1] There are other parts of the Catholic church where priests are allowed to marry, and there actually are some Roman Catholic priests who converted from other faiths that allowed marriage, who are still married.