Catholic priest quits after “anonymized” data revealed alleged use of Grindr
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
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.
Many people go to gay bars not to hook up, but to be around other gay people. Gay bars are not a hookup app.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pillar-investigates-usccb-g...
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.
And, its worth pointing out that there are Catholics calling foul on The Pillar in strong terms: https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/pillar-investigation-...
"Priests not allowed to marry" is contradictory to theology (the very book Catholics are supposed to believe in):
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%204...
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.
Please provide proof of the contrary
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.
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
Critic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026966/
Critic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026966/
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.
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. ;)
Yet when mobile phone carriers sell your real-time location data to random entities, it seems nobody gives a damn.
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.
https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-third-party-data-br...
The data brokers buy the data from disparate sources and de-anonymize it.
Another example of Grindr profiting off of user data that should be kept private:
>Grindr is revealing its users’ HIV status to third-party companies
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17189078/grindr-hiv-status-data...
I feel it could be really useful if I ever need to blackmail someone.
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
Is there a discrepancy on the Catholic church's teachings on celibacy?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%204...
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
Critic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026966/\\\\*
> 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.
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.
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.
Yes yes before the mob gets upset at the faulty logic, I get it. There is several reasons that I'm irreligious now.
Vatican bars gay union blessing, says God ‘can’t bless sin’ https://apnews.com/article/vatican-decree-same-sex-unions-ca... This is from March 2021…
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
How is this thing even legal?