The Pillar

The Pillar is an American news website focusing on the Catholic Church. The site's stated mission is to "do serious, responsible, sober journalism about the Church, from the Church, and for the Church."[1]

The Pillar
TypeOnline news magazine
Founder(s)
  • J.D. Flynn
  • Ed Condon
Founded2021 (2021)
LanguageEnglish
Websitepillarcatholic.com

The site was founded in 2021 by two journalist canon lawyers: J.D. Flynn, former editor-in-chief of Catholic News Agency and former chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver, and Ed Condon, former Washington, D.C., bureau editor of the Catholic News Agency.[2]

Publication history

Notable pieces published by the site include a March 2021 story on the financial impact to parishes around the country due to COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns,[3] and a July 2021 story which reported on cell phone location data which showed Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, the top administrator of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, had frequented gay bars and the Grindr app.[4]

Burrill resigned from the USCCB after The Pillar notified the USCCB that it was going to publish the story. The site's methods of obtaining Burrill's location history were legal, but raised privacy concerns.[4] In a Religion News Service column appearing in the Washington Post, theology professor Steven P. Millies wrote that The Pillar "must not have thought about the Code of Canon Law" and "The Pillar's investigators paid little heed also to the canons of ethics for journalists".[5] Others, including Matthew Hennessey of The Wall Street Journal, dismissed allegations of homophobic intent while applauding the reporting with a favorable comparison it to similar phone data-based reporting by The New York Times.[6]

References
  1. Former Catholic News Agency Editors Launch New Journalism Venture, The Pillar
  2. Welcome to The Pillar.
  3. Catholic news site proving to be a 'Pillar' when it comes to religion journalism
  4. "Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after cellphone data used to track him on Grindr and to gay bars". The Washington Post. 20 July 2021.
  5. Millies, Steven P. "The Pillar investigation of Monsignor Burrill is unethical, homophobic innuendo". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 2021-07-21. Retrieved 2021-07-23.
  6. Hennessey, Matthew (2 August 2021). "Catholic Journalists Expose a Scandal, and Liberals Scoff". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
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