The Pillar Plot Thickens UPDATED AGAIN!

UPDATE Michael Sean Winters weights in 

Pillar: Shoot for the stars and land in the gutter 

It takes a special kind of sinister skill for men trained as lawyers but acting as journalists to violate journalistic ethics and act in total disregard for the values that inform our legal system – all at the same time.

Among the values upon which our Western legal systems, both civil and ecclesiastic, are built is an abhorrence of unjust searches and seizures. The government needs a warrant to invade the privacy of your home or your phone. Issuing a warrant requires the government to demonstrate probable cause to believe evidence of a crime will be found. We allow criminals we are quite sure committed heinous acts to go free if the evidence against them was tainted by an improper search. What probable cause did Flynn and Condon have to ruin the career of a priest who committed no crime?

Location-based apps pose security risk for Holy See

The use of location-based hookup apps by officials or employees of Church institutions could present serious security problems for the Church, even at the level of the Holy See’s diplomatic and international relations.

The use of such apps within the Vatican City State could be a point of vulnerability in the Holy See’s efforts to defend itself from cyberattacks and other intelligence-gathering exercises in recent years.

 Analysis of commercially available signal data obtained by The Pillar, which was legally obtained and whose authenticity The Pillar has confirmed, shows that during a period of 26 weeks in 2018, at least 32 mobile devices emitted serially occurring hookup or dating app data signals from secured areas and buildings of the Vatican ordinarily inaccessible to tourists and pilgrims. 

At least 16 mobile devices emitted signals from the hookup app Grindr on at least four days between March to October 2018 within the non-public areas of the Vatican City State, while 16 other devices showed use of other location-based hookup or dating apps, both heterosexual and homosexual, on four or more days in the same time period.

 The Pillar met for more than 90 minutes with both Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, along with Dr. Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican’s dicastery for communications, to present its findings July 17. The meeting’s discussion was agreed by all parties to be mutually confidential, but the fact of the meeting was not itself off-the-record. 

After the meeting’s conclusion, Ruffini requested questions from The Pillar, which he said he would submit to Parolin for a response, and asked for a week for the formulation of a response, to which The Pillar agreed. 

On July 18, the day after its meeting with Parolin and Ruffini, The Pillar was informed that a meeting with senior USCCB officials scheduled for Monday, July 19, had been cancelled. The Pillar was asked to submit written questions instead. Overnight between Sunday and Monday, one Catholic media outlet reported the possibility of forthcoming media reports on the issue of app signal data. 

Late Sunday night, The Pillar submitted written questions to the USCCB at the conference’s request, and was then asked to extend an initial Monday deadline for response until the following day, which it did. On Tuesday, USCCB officials offered to schedule a meeting with The Pillar in the afternoon, to which The Pillar agreed. En route to that meeting, The Pillar learned from media reports that USCCB General Secretary Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill had resigned in response to “impending media reports alleging possible improper behavior.”

On July 23, Ruffini told The Pillar that “we have examined the questions you have posed to His Eminence the Secretary of State following on your meeting of 17 July. At this point, also in the light of what happened in recent days, I can say that no statement will be provided.”

My Opinion

Looks to me like The Pillar is part of an international plot (they were simultaneously meeting with Vatican and USCCB officials).  Some  years back  a conference was held by right wing people somewhere in Europe in which they said they were going to collect information on all the Cardinals so that they could target all the people they wanted to discredit before the next conclave.

So someone then began collecting data on the sexual behavior of cardinals and prominent bishops around the world by the use of these apps.  

I suspect right now they want to create as much fear as possible among church officials. These meetings with Roman and USCCB while telling them what other people could do with the data, are intended to keep everybody guessing as to exactly how much data they have.  It is really like group blackmail since I suspect neither Rome nor USCCB really know how many people are involved. 

Of course if a conclave is announced because of Francis death or resignation, they will try to discredit as many people as possible, and make gay cardinals and bishops the big issue before the conclave starts.  In the meantime they play the intimidation game. 

UPDATE

This report from three  years ago was from a group meeting much closer to home.

Wealthy Catholics to target Cardinals with ‘Red Hat Report’

As U.S. bishops work to formulate an official response to clerical sexual abuse and cover-up, a new watchdog group backed by wealthy Catholics is seeking to take matters into their own hands.

A new organization, which held an RSVP-only event on Sunday evening, plans to spend more than $1 million in the next year investigating every member of the College of Cardinals “to name those credibly accused in scandal, abuse, or cover-ups.”

“The Better Church Governance Group” held its launch on the campus of the Catholic University of America (CUA) with the stated intention of producing its “Red Hat Report” by April 2020.

The U.S. bishops founded the Catholic University of America, and all six residential U.S. cardinals are members of its Board of Trustees.

The Red Hat Report, dubbed as the group’s “flagship project,” is designed to audit all 124 current papal electors. Organizers say it will be conducted by a team of, to date, nearly 100 researchers, academics, investigators, and journalists, with the aim “to hold the hierarchy of the Catholic Church accountable for abuse and corruption, and to develop and support honesty, clarity, and fidelity in Church governance.”

Imam said that, in time, they hope to expand to provide a full audit of bishops as well. He told those in attendance on Sunday that the organization did not seek to further an ideological agenda but will seek to answer how each cardinal is in “agreement” with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog.

Imam, the executive director of the group is currently a Marshall Scholar of the University of Oxford and converted to Catholicism from Islam three years ago,  I think he may have held a similar meeting in Europe which is why I failed to remember this meeting at CUA.  I wonder if he really converted. While we are thinking of plots, this initiative to disrupt Catholicism seems worthy of a Ben Laden disciple. 

Lots of conspiracy in this article with the NAPA institute and the usual right wing suspects.