The English poet reputedly opened the contest by uttering as many different imprecations as he could in the languages he had studied.

Byron recalled later that he swore "in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, posthouses, post, everything."

Realizing that he was running out of words, the nobleman switched to English slang. He eventually exhausted his reserves and fell silent.

At that moment, the gently spoken cardinal is said to have uttered these crushing words: "And is that all?"

The prince of the Church then unleashed a seemingly unending stream of London slang, much of it unknown to the poet.

Lord Byron described the cardinal later as "a monster of languages … a walking polyglot … who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter."

The cursing contest story is told by Charles William Russell in his monumental 1858 biography "The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti."

Russell, an Irish Catholic priest, added a note of scepticism, saying that while the anecdote was "still current in Rome," it was "doubtless a mere exaggeration of the real story."

Cardinal Mezzofanti is regarded as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — language learners of all time.

He was not merely a polyglot, or speaker of multiple languages, but a "hyperpolyglot," a person fluent in six or more languages.

Mezzofanti's nephew claimed that the cardinal was acquainted with 114 languages.

Russell himself estimated that Mezzofanti spoke 30 languages with "rare excellence," including Armenian and Maltese, a further nine fluently (including Algonquin), and 11 "less perfectly."

Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti was born on Bologna's Via Malcontenti on Sept. 17, 1774.

A precocious learner, he was ordained a priest in 1797 and named a professor at the venerable University of Bologna.

Briefly removed from the post after refusing to swear loyalty to Napoleon Bonaparte's Cisalpine Republic, he ministered to foreigners wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, expanding his knowledge of European languages.

Mezzofanti claimed that he could familiarize himself with a new language in two weeks by asking the recuperating soldiers to recite well-known prayers in their native languages, which he would then use to build up his mastery.

He credited God, not just his native skills, with helping him to pick up foreign tongues.

"Through the grace of God," he said, "assisted by my private studies, and by a retentive memory, I came to know not merely the generic languages of the nations to which the several invalids belonged but even the peculiar dialects of their various provinces."

Mezzofanti moved to Rome in 1831, serving as a member of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Continue reading

The article was premised on an analysis of app data signals that the authors allege were "correlated to Burrill's mobile device."

The signals, they write, "suggest he was at the same time engaged in serial and illicit sexual activity."

Missing in the story by The Pillar and in a subsequent response to questions about the ethics of the piece is the name of the vendor that provided the data, details about who paid to purchase the data and how it was obtained by the outlet, as well as any information on how the investigation was conducted to determine the signals were transmitted from Burrill's mobile phone.

The story also lacked any confirmation of Burill's conduct beyond the location data.

The outlet has since published two subsequent articles alleging use of hookup apps within clerical residences in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, and in the Vatican.

Experts in journalistic ethics who spoke to NCR raised multiple concerns about The Pillar article.

"Ethically this is a softball. The article is scummy," Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University's Journalism School, told NCR via email.

"The hack using data tracking is illicit, indefensible, and all-around contrary to journalistic ethics."

"It's redolent of the depredations of [Rupert] Murdoch's News of the World busting into private phones," he added, referencing the enterprise's 2011 hacking scandal that led to the closure of the storied tabloid and millions of dollars of litigation after it was revealed that the publication hacked into the phones of politicians and celebrities.

Although The Pillar article said there was "no evidence" to imply the priest had contact with minors, it went on to suggest that his possible consensual sexual behaviour risked the possibility of clouding his judgment on the church's handling of the clergy sexual abuse crisis — another problematic leap, according to experts in journalistic ethics.

"The story casually links this case to others involving pedophile priests, but in fact, there is no evidence of that here," observed Bill Grueskin, a professor of professional practice at Columbia Journalism School.

"A good editor would have sussed out these issues, and likely eliminated the many references to unrelated cases that give the patina of criminal behaviour to a situation that lacks evidence of such conduct," Grueskin told NCR via email.

Gitlin agreed: "The sneering references to paedophilia are nothing short of vile and McCarthyite," he concluded. "Roy Cohn would be proud."

Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization, told NCR, "The article raises a number of questions about cyber security and personal privacy and presents an alarming question of whether you can be tracked wherever you go."

Edmonds described the methods used by The Pillar as "unusual" and without any known journalistic precedent.

Flynn and Condon did not respond to NCR's requests for comment for this story.

(Editors of The Pillar have sought to compare their story to work by journalists at The New York Times to locate individuals for the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, although one of The New York Times reporters has noted that their reporting, on a criminal incident, only quoted the one individual who consented to being quoted.)

The outing of Burrill through questionable journalistic practices has sparked a contentious debate among many Catholics and for some, represents a stark departure from the "serious, responsible sober journalism about the Church, from the Church, and for the Church," that The Pillar pledged to provide when it launched on Jan. 4.

Yet while The Pillar's controversial reporting on Burrill has forced the new startup website into the national spotlight, a review of their past operations, connections of its top editors, along with undisclosed conflicts of interest and improper use of anonymous sources, reveals a history of questionable journalistic ethics.

Canon lawyers or journalists?

The Pillar was founded by its editor-in-chief J.D. Flynn and editor Ed Condon after the two resigned from EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency (CNA) in December.

At CNA, Flynn and Condon were at the helm of an agency that bills itself as being "one of the fastest-growing Catholic news providers in the world." During their tenure, the two would frequently boast of their independence from church hierarchy, their ability to uncover and report stories without fear or favor, and their accuracy and fair-mindedness in the process.

The two have also vowed to bring those same standards to their new operations. Yet while The Pillar has recently spilled considerable ink outlining allegations of sexual misconduct against one priest, including inferences of how his alleged behavior may have affected his judgment on matters related to sexual abuse of minors, their publications have not always disclosed their own professional involvement in clergy sexual abuse cases — not as journalists, but as legal advocates.

The left and right Catholic commentariat is lining up to say that @canonlawyered and I are "canon lawyers not journalists."

Meanwhile the two of us are breaking stories that make change while the chattering classes are pimping their increasingly irrelevant and partisan opinions.

— JD Flynn (@jdflynn) January 6, 2021

Both Flynn and Condon are canon lawyers. Continue reading

There are reasons to think it heralds a new and even uglier era in American Catholicism.

As Catholics were still reeling from Pope Francis' abrogation Friday (July 16) of his predecessor's guidance on the traditional Latin Mass, "Summorum Pontificum".

Indeed, while this author was struggling to finish an article about that event, The Pillar, a Catholic publication, released what it called "an investigation" in which data identifying Burrill's phone seemed to indicate he had frequently used Grindr, a popular dating app in the gay community, and that he had left geolocation tracks to and from gay clubs.

That is all we really learned from The Pillar's "investigation."

And, here is an important place to pause.

I am a sinner. So are you. So is Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill.

Not one of us has a personal life that would withstand the sort of scrutiny The Pillar has applied to Burrill.

Every single one of us has had a shameful moment we regret, and I suspect most of us must be caught up in cycles of sinfulness that we repeat less because we want to than because we are sinners and cannot help being sinners.

Like anyone else, Burrill's sins are between him and God.

Like any other priest, we can say his bishop belongs in that conversation too.

But unless there is some reason to think he has harmed someone else, I feel sure his sins are none of my business, as much as my sins are none of yours.

As a Catholic, I am bound to believe all of that.

I am not sure what the investigators at The Pillar believe.

I feel comfortably sure that before they embarked on their "investigation," they must not have thought about the Code of Canon Law, which states, "No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses nor to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy." (Canon 220)

They must also not have thought about the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, "everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbour's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favourable way" (Catechism 2478) because "detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity." (Catechism 2479).

I can see plainly they did not heed St. Paul, who pointed the finger at himself as a sinner (1 Timothy 1:15) before pointing to others.

Whatever we may say of their practice of Catholicism, The Pillar's investigators paid little heed also to the canons of ethics for journalists.

How did they get their story?

The Society for Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics encourages journalists to "avoid using undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information" and admonishes that "Pursuit of the news is not a license for … undue intrusiveness."

What story did they get here?

That Burrill might have broken his vow of chastity and (consensually) used other people for impersonal sex?

The Code of Ethics also tells journalists to "avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do." And perhaps more importantly, it says, "avoid stereotyping."

There we also need to pay some attention.

The Pillar has less gotten hold of a story than it has published an innuendo.

And, the innuendo should worry us.

The Pillar writes that the data it has from Burrill's phone "suggests that he was … engaged in serial and illicit sexual activity," at the same time he was coordinating responses to the sex abuse crisis for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although Pillar acknowledges "there is no evidence to suggest that Burrill was in contact with minors through his use of Grindr," the article goes on in the same paragraph to say his use of the app presents a conflict of interest in his role responding to sex abuse because such apps are sometimes used to solicit or traffic minors.

A few paragraphs earlier the article quotes another priest seeming to make a similar leap regarding Burrill's behaviour: that "regularly and glaringly failing to live continence" can become "only a step away from sexual predation."

That equivalence is the ugliest part — conflating consensual sexual behaviour (if Burrill even was part of any, which we do not know) with sexual abuse.

This is the hook on which the "story" hangs, a long-discredited link between sexual abuse and homosexuality. It is hard to call that something other than a slur and a sin against the LGBTQ+ community.

Not to mention, the article's allegations, if true, "out" Burrill's sexuality without his consent — a widely condemned practice.

And, all of that is a bit much to take.

But I fear in fact there is something worse.

I agree with what Monsignor Kevin Irwin wrote today in the National Catholic Reporter, that Pope Francis last week unmasked "the silent schism that has taken place and continues in the American Catholic Church."

We Catholics have been at each other's throats for decades, mostly quietly and with some veneer of restraint.

The façade has been falling, and those days might be over.

Now, The Pillar has opened the way further with this no-holds-barred exposé.

I do not say this idly.

After mere hours, the comments on The Pillar's tweet of the story already see people enthused about going after "bishops … engaged in questionable activity," and asking "what the laity should be doing (to) shine a light into all these dark corners."

We saw centuries ago what Christians — unburdened by their Christianity — in their conflicts with other Christians can look like. I fear we are seeing it again.

That is what schism brings.

That is where the spirit of division leads.

Pope Francis was not wrong to unmask what already is underway, but The Pillar is wrong to push this spirit of division even further along with what I only can call the worst sort of tittle-tattle tabloid journalism.

And, I fear we have not yet seen the worst.

A long ugly season awaits American Catholics.

No one is safe and — it seems — all is permitted.

• Steven P. Millies is associate professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center, at Catholic Theological Union.
• First published by RNS.
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.