- Feb 5, 2002
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(OSV News) — A private, lay-led effort to root out clergy sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church by exposing their use of dating apps has raised concerns such methods may actually make it more difficult for the church to help clergy struggling with chaste celibacy and prevent them from damaging others through their sexual misconduct.
The nonprofit Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal recently claimed it has been legally purchasing publicly available data to assess the use of “hookup apps” by seminarians and clergy, then sharing its findings with several rectors and bishops.
Jayd Henricks, identifying himself as CLCR’s president, confirmed the initiative in a March 8 essay in the journal First Things, ahead of a March 9 Washington Post article bringing the project to light.
Henricks — who initially said he “might consider” an interview with OSV News but then declined — wrote in his essay that CLCR had bought the data “in the ordinary way,” analyzed it and found that “heterosexual and homosexual hookup apps were used by some seminarians and some priests in some places, and with volumes and patterns suggesting those were not isolated moral lapses by individuals.”
He stressed that CLCR — which Henricks said was formed by “a group of Catholics” in response to the sex abuse scandals involving former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick — operated “within the boundaries of the law” and had “hoped to keep this work private, so as to be able to have honest and frank conversations with Church leaders” while protecting “the privacy of those affected.”
Henricks wrote that “trafficking in obscene content, and even criminal content, is a risk to the Church and her children, as it is to the rest of society,” and that “as repeated scandals have shown, the danger is more acute because of the Church’s privileged position as the guardian of souls and the door of salvation.”
Continued below.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
The nonprofit Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal recently claimed it has been legally purchasing publicly available data to assess the use of “hookup apps” by seminarians and clergy, then sharing its findings with several rectors and bishops.
Jayd Henricks, identifying himself as CLCR’s president, confirmed the initiative in a March 8 essay in the journal First Things, ahead of a March 9 Washington Post article bringing the project to light.
Henricks — who initially said he “might consider” an interview with OSV News but then declined — wrote in his essay that CLCR had bought the data “in the ordinary way,” analyzed it and found that “heterosexual and homosexual hookup apps were used by some seminarians and some priests in some places, and with volumes and patterns suggesting those were not isolated moral lapses by individuals.”
He stressed that CLCR — which Henricks said was formed by “a group of Catholics” in response to the sex abuse scandals involving former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick — operated “within the boundaries of the law” and had “hoped to keep this work private, so as to be able to have honest and frank conversations with Church leaders” while protecting “the privacy of those affected.”
Henricks wrote that “trafficking in obscene content, and even criminal content, is a risk to the Church and her children, as it is to the rest of society,” and that “as repeated scandals have shown, the danger is more acute because of the Church’s privileged position as the guardian of souls and the door of salvation.”
Continued below.
Lay group's use of data to root out clergy sexual misconduct draws concern
A private, lay-led effort to root out clergy sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church by exposing their use of dating apps has raised concerns
www.oursundayvisitor.com
