The good, the bad and the clerical.

Father Joseph Krupp's response to the Burrill scandal is a great one because it points out the most important aspect, which the Pillar's critics do so grudgingly, if they bother at all.

Here's another great and necessary observation by Father Krupp. 

Followed by another great take on the harm done to good priests by the misconduct of the bad. 

Followed, alas and expectedly, in the comments section of the first, by a lot of garbage takes from laity and the clerical caste alike.

Not a one of whom here can muster up even a pro-forma "priests should not use hook-up apps."

No, the witness of priestly immorality is entirely irrelevant to them.

Lord in heaven. 

Anyway, on to the takes:

First, it's "the ends don't justify the means!!!!"

A very popular, very question-begging, and very incorrect take. 

The ends do not justify every means. Cleaning a cat box with a scoop is fine. Cleaning it with a 10 gauge in your front yard while kids ride by on bikes is not. But if ends never justified means, you'd be up to your waist in cat crap.

Or it would get to the point where it crawls into your ears and takes up residence.

As an aside, this particular bad take is from Henry Karlson, who (1) has spent decades letting everyone know how smart he thinks he is, and (2) is what happens when you get your pseudo-intellectuals from a thrift store.

Second: Burrill used his own money. 

Which is a fascinating angle. And guaranteed to be wrong, at least as far as his office travel to get his rocks off involved reimbursed expenses from the USCCB. Rental cars, hotels, etc--are not out of pocket expenses.

Third: did you have to point out he used gay apps? 

The apps he used facilitate abuse of underage boys. The objection should be to G----r and similar profit-raking techs. But it never is, because Eros is never so powerful as when he allies with Mammon. The blessings of liberty.

Fourth, BUT FATHER ALTMAN IS BEING TEH PERSECUTED. 

Leave it to a conservative to play the whataboutism card in such a cringeworthy fashion. And yet it reminds us how priestly misbehavior is readily excused when the cult of personality is at full power.

Five: this is dystopian and unethical and if you're silent when they come for the compulsive priestly users of unverified age gay sex apps they'll come for you, too!  

How it is dystopian and unethical is not spelled out, but ipse dixit is sufficient for the cult of Eros Mammon. Points for a new spin on Bonhoeffer, too, I guess?

The same twitterer also argues that McCarrick was simply a pedophile who did not prey on adults. Which is so factually wrong that I am forced to invoke the Star Fleet Regulation: he seems to be emotionally compromised by the mission.

Six: Teh jurrnlism iz suspect! Also, boinking like a meth-addled rabbit while on the clock is not morally black and white, it's gray. 

Quite probably 50 shades, in fact. 

Neither of these criticisms are spelled out, but he doesn't have to--he uses a Latin handle which reminds us that brains die, too.

Seven: it's a politically-motivated hit job on the USCCB and the pontiff and Burrill is just like the woman caught in adultery!

Wait: I thought the USCCB was in opposition to the Holy See. 

Oh, that was last month. As to the rest...yikes yikes yikes yikes.

Eight: WHAT ABOUT PRIVACY WHO CARES WHO HE SCREWS AND WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE BISHOPS WHO HAVE BOYFRIENDS?

Candor forces me to concede partial credit for this one.

Which brings me around to the real reason for the reactions to this story, which in some cases can only be described as worried panic:

The moral rot is coterminous with its institutional structures. And far too many in the institution know this to be the case, but choose omerta. Otherwise decent institutional people have moral certitude that corruption sloshes around them. Not simply that there is a lack of celibacy or misuse of the funds of the faithful or similar problems, but that such are endemic. 

But silence is the order of the day. And one justification for it seems to make sense from the inside: revelation that the Church is wormed with the foulest of hypocrites of all kinds would be faith-destroying.

Yet, in the end, all the silence does is demonstrate that the church that has made a separate peace with corruption, preferring that to the conflict which comes from genuine moral reform. The corruption will still come to light, either via stories like the Pillar's or less spectacularly via the bad witness of the corrupt to individuals here or there.

Big bombshells or distant reports in the night, there's only so long you can pay lip service to moral standards while endlessly excusing your supposedly God-ordained leadership's flouting of them. 

And so the parishes continue to empty, and the spiral reinforces itself.

Enjoy the exile in Babylon, Church. You richly deserve it.