Lots of back-and-forth argument over whether it was proper to 'out' Mgr. Burrill.
CNA spoke recently with Dr. William J. Thorn regarding the recent investigation which led to the resignation of Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill as general secretary of the US bishops’ conference.
Thorn is associate professor emeritus of Journalism and Media Studies/Institute for Catholic Media at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication....
... "Traditionally, an ethical investigation builds on facts that are part of the public record or can be verified by public documents or interviews with reliable witnesses. Another ethical principle is to keep the focus on actions that can be proven by factual evidence or witnesses rather than on insinuations about the subject based on circumstantial evidence. Once the verifiable facts are known, the investigative reporter moves to confront the subject and provides an opportunity to deny, admit wrongdoing or explanation. Libel and slander laws provide boundaries and guides to investigative journalism about individuals whose reputation and good name may be at stake. Simply drawing conclusions from an online source seriously challenges verifiability and risks libeling an innocent individual."...
Prof. Thorn didn't like the 'outing.' He's short on a salient fact: the reporters DID go to the USCCB and tell them what they had. USCCB didn't respond, even knowing that it would be made public. They also went directly to Burrill and got no response.
In contrast, Dreher thinks it was the right thing to do:
... Catholics in America need to understand that this crisis will never end in their church without cleaning the sexually active priests out of the Augean stables. The abuse of children and minors happened within the context of a decadent clerical system. There is no way to rely on secretly debauched priests (homo or hetero) to govern the Church in a morally sound way. Catholics have waited for decades for the hierarchy to clean up the Church they lead. They can’t, or won’t. Flynn and Condon write for those Catholics who are fed up with the lies and deceit, and not willing to surrender their church to canoodling careerists in Roman collars, and who know that they can’t count on the mainstream media to tell the whole truth when it threatens their own ideological favorites....
Dreher has it. In another column, he advances a number of reasons, including the responsibilities held by Burrill, the fact that he was also overseeing investigations of homosexual priest-abusers in the US, Etc., Etc.
But Dreher didn't mention the BEST reason: get it out before a real enemy of the Church discovers it and blackmails Burrill.
Pew-sitters would never know why the good Monsignor did something odd, or buried a certain case, or 'took care of' a certain Bishop/Cardinal.....
Mgr. Burrill was too important a man to just let it slide.
One major point to add. In the Bible's account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah it indicates that an entire culture can become homosexual. Not just 2%. It will grow and metastasize as statistics are showing it's on the increase. If left in the priesthood, it will destroy souls of priests and lay people. It is not something that remains static.
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