#MeToo and #HimToo: Addiction and #NHCorruption

Jonathan Grover died from opiate addiction before his 49th birthday. His role in the case against Fr Gordon MacRae left unanswered questions, but now gains clarity.

April 18, 2018, Updated June 26, 2026 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Editor’s Note:‍ ‍

The image atop this post is a composite featuring the high school graduation photograph of Jonathan Grover at age 18. To the right is an artist’s rendering of a photo of Father Gordon MacRae circa 1983. The photo was composed for The Wall Street Journal and depicts Father MacRae in the time period in which the story told here was alleged to have taken place. This post by Ryan A. MacDonald is a necessary Part 2 of last week’s post, “Justice and Due Process Support the Rights of Priests — But Not This One.”

When I read Father Gordon MacRae’s Holy Week post in 2018, I was struck by a revelation that he offered Mass in his prison cell for the soul of a man who helped put him there by falsely accusing him. I do not know that I could have done the same in his shoes, and even if I could, I am not so certain that I would. His post took a high road that most only strive for.

The unnamed subject of that post about Judas Iscariot was Jonathan Grover, who died in Arizona from opiate addiction two weeks before his 49th birthday. An obituary indicated that he died “peacefully,” and cited ‘a “long career in the financial industry.” Police determined the cause of death to be an accidental overdose of self-injected opiates weeks after leaving his most recent attempt at rehab. In Arizona, he had charges for theft, criminal trespass, and multiple arrests for driving under the influence of drugs. A police report described him as “homeless.”

In the early 1990s, Jonathan Grover was one of Father MacRae’s accusers. MacRae first learned of Mr. Grover’s death from a letter written by a woman who had been a young adult friend of Grover at the time of MacRae’s trial in 1994. She wrote that she is now a social worker with “expertise in PTSD” (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The letter accused MacRae of having “murdered” 48-year-old Grover. This requires a rational and factual response.

Of interest, Mr. Grover’s obituary — despite his being 48 years old at the time of death — featured his 1987 Keene High School (NH) graduation photograph when Grover was 18 years old. I had seen this photo before. The photograph was among the discovery materials in MacRae’s defense files in preparation for his 1994 trial. Because Jonathan was the first of his brothers to falsely accuse MacRae, it was presumed that the case he brought would be the first to go to trial. Perhaps because it was full of obvious holes and factual discrepancies, prosecutors opted to postpone it and prosecute the case brought by his older brother, Thomas Grover, first.

The photograph of Jonathan raised the first of many doubts about the truth of his claims. At age 18 in 1987, Grover gave Father Gordon MacRae, his parish priest and friend at the time, a nicely framed copy of that photo with a letter written on the back. It thanked MacRae for his “friendship and support,” and “for always being there for me.” It was a typically touching letter from a young man to someone he obviously admired. It was written before addiction and the inevitable justification of enablers took hold in his life.

Five years later, apparently forgetting that he ever wrote that letter, Jonathan Grover became the first of four adult brothers to accuse MacRae of a series of sexual assaults alleged to have occurred more than a decade earlier. So what happened between writing that letter in 1987 and accusing MacRae five years later in 1992? It is one of the burning questions left behind in this story.

The framed high school photograph and its accompanying letter never found their way into MacRae’s 1994 trial, or into the public record, because the trial dealt only with the claims of Jonathan’s brother, Thomas Grover. Jonathan was the first to accuse MacRae, but a trial on his claims was deferred. His story had many holes that did not reconcile with the facts. Investigators have since uncovered a different story from the one Grover and his brothers first told.

Bombshells and Black Ops

The two common denominators in the case against Father Gordon MacRae were expectations of money and James F. McLaughlin. In the 1980s, the city of Keene, New Hampshire, with a population then of about 26,000, employed a full-time sex crimes detective on its small police force. In 1988, McLaughlin launched investigations of at least three, and possibly more, Catholic priests in the area including Father Gordon MacRae.

His targeting of MacRae seems to have begun with a bizarre and explosive letter. In September 1988, Detective McLaughlin received a letter from Sylvia Gale, a social worker with the Division of Children, Youth and Families, the New Hampshire agency tasked with investigating child abuse. Ms. Gale’s letter to McLaughlin revealed that she had uncovered information about “a Catholic priest in your area, named Gordon MacRae.”

The letter described explosive information from an unnamed employee of Catholic Social Services in the Diocese of Manchester, who developed a slanderous tale that MacRae had been “a priest in Florida where he molested two boys, one of whom was murdered and his body mutilated.” The letter went on to claim that the case was still unsolved, and that MacRae was moved from Florida by Catholic Church officials to avoid that investigation.

The libelous letter also named a Church official, Monsignor John Quinn, as the source of this information reportedly told by him to an unnamed Catholic Charities employee on the condition that she would be fired if she ever divulged it. The 1988 letter generated a secret 70-page report developed by Detective James McLaughlin. He launched a dogged pursuit of MacRae, who was unaware at the time that any of this was taking place.

This all began to unfold one year after Jonathan Grover graduated from Keene High School and presented Father MacRae with that framed photograph and letter of thanks. Armed with Sylvia Gale’s letter, Detective McLaughlin proceeded to question 26 Keene area adolescents and their parents who had known MacRae including members of the Grover family. Up to that point, not one person had ever actually contacted McLaughlin with a complaint against MacRae, but rather it was McLaughlin who initiated these contacts. As reported below, some of them today claim to have been solicited by McLaughlin to accuse MacRae, some with the enticement of money.

I had to read up to page 54 of McLaughlin’s 1988 report before I came across any effort to corroborate the Florida “murder and mutilation” story with Florida law enforcement officials. By the time McLaughlin learned that MacRae had never served as a priest in Florida and that no such crime had been committed there, the damage to MacRae’s reputation was already done, and the seeds were sown for the Grover brothers to ponder claims yet to come.

Among those approached by McLaughlin armed with Sylvia Gale’s slanderous letter was Mrs. Patricia Grover, Jonathan’s adoptive mother. A parishioner of Saint Bernard Parish in Keene where MacRae had served from 1983 to 1987, Mrs. Grover was also a DCYF social worker who was supervised by Sylvia Gale. She had previously worked with McLaughlin in the handling of other cases.

Mrs. Grover also knew Father MacRae. According to McLaughlin’s 1988 report, she was alarmed by the Sylvia Gale letter but doubted that MacRae had ever served as a priest in Florida. She nonetheless vowed to talk with her young adult sons about their relationship with MacRae. Four more years passed before the first of them, Jonathan Grover, accused him.

After graduating from high school at age 18, Jonathan joined the U.S. Navy and was sent to submarine school in San Diego. It did not go well. There were early signs that Grover was experimenting with drugs. He slowly developed an opioid addiction. After an arrest for driving under the influence, Grover was discharged from the Navy while refusing its intervention program for alcohol and drug abuse. Jonathan returned to Keene, New Hampshire with an opiate addiction.

Grover had been approaching Father MacRae with increasingly anxious requests for financial loans, none of which were ever paid back or explained. MacRae was at first resistant to the idea that Grover may be abusing drugs, but eventually the signs became clear and the priest refused to continue the loans.

The “fake news” in the 1988 Sylvia Gale Florida letter set this community abuzz with anxiety and gossip about the potentially lecherous and murderous priest in its midst. Later, Monsignor John Quinn and other Diocese of Manchester officials denied having any involvement in the untrue information about MacRae. They also denied that there was ever any priest who relocated from Florida to New Hampshire under the circumstances described in the libelous letter.

Four years later in late 1992, Jonathan Grover became the first of four members of the Grover family to accuse Father Gordon MacRae of sexual abuse dating back to approximately the early 1980s. I use the word “approximately” because Grover and his brothers each presented highly conflicting and multiple versions of their stories and the relevant time frames. Detective James F. McLaughlin was acting more as a coach than as an investigator. According to his own police reports, he gave the Grover brothers copies of MacRae’s resume “to help them with their dates.”

As is clearer below, Jonathan Grover’s claims became problematic for the prosecution of MacRae, but instead of questioning Grover’s veracity, the police detective engaged a contingency lawyer on Grover’s behalf. In a September 30, 1992 letter from McLaughlin to Jonathan Grover, the detective detailed his conversations with Keene attorney William Cleary, who ultimately obtained a nearly $200,000 settlement for Grover from the Diocese of Manchester. From McLaughlin’s letter to Grover:

“As agreed, I contacted William Cleary about your case. Bill believes the statute of limitations has lapsed for a civil action, but this does not rule out the church being financially responsible. Bill [Cleary] states he would like to meet with you for a conference. You would not be charged for this. Your options could then be outlined and discussed.”

There is reason to question Detective McLaughlin’s police reports in this case. In most of McLaughlin’s prior cases, he practiced a protocol of audio-recording every interview with complainants. In many of his other reports that I have read, he made a point of explaining that he records interviews to protect the integrity of the investigation.

Two years prior to the Grover claims, for example, McLaughlin investigated a complaint against another former Keene area priest, Father Stephen Scruton. From the outset, his reports took pains to document his practice of securing both video and audio recordings of his interviews. He even administered a polygraph test on the accuser. All were standard protocol, but McLaughlin did not create a single recording of any type with any accuser in the case of Father Gordon MacRae. This is suspect, at best, and it has never been explained.

It is made more suspicious by the emergence of other information that has been developed by former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, who spent three years investigating the MacRae case. One of MacRae’s accusers, a high school classmate of Jonathan Grover, recanted his own developing story of abuse by MacRae when questioned by Mr. Abbott in 2008. An excerpt of Steven Wollschlager’s statement may shed light on why Detective McLaughlin chose not to record these interviews.

“In 1994 I was contacted by Keene Police Detective McLaughlin … I was aware at the time of Father MacRae’s trial knowing full well that it was bogus and having heard of the lawsuits and money involved and also the reputations of those who were making accusations … The lawsuits and money were of greatest discussion, and I was left feeling that if I would go along with the story I could reap the rewards as well. McLaughlin had me believing that all I had to do was make up a story about this priest and I could receive a large sum of money as others already had.

“McLaughlin reminded me of the young child and girlfriend I had and referenced that life could go easier for us with a large amount of money … I was at the time using drugs and could have been influenced to say anything they wanted for money.”

In “The Trials of Father MacRae,” a 2013 article by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal, Detective McLaughlin described the above account simply as “a fabrication.” What struck me about Mr. Wollschlager’s statement, besides the fact that he had nothing whatsoever to gain by lying, is that he never went to Detective McLaughlin with an accusation. Instead, he alleges that it was McLaughlin who approached him, and the approach alleges the enticement of money.

Steven Wollschlager was not the first person to report such an overture. Given the nature of his account and others, it is unclear today whether Jonathan Grover and his brothers initiated their first contacts with this detective. This suspicion was a contentious issue in MacRae’s 1994 trial. Thomas Grover, the brother of Jonathan Grover, was asked under oath to reveal to whom he went first with his claims, the police or a personal injury lawyer, but he refused to answer. To this very day, that question has never been answered.

What became clear, however, is hard evidence that placed Detective James McLaughlin investigating at least some of this case, not from his office in the Keene Police Department, but from the Concord, NH office of Thomas Grover’s contingency lawyer, Robert Upton, before MacRae was even charged in the case.

A Conspiracy of Fraud

In a Police Report labeled Case No. 93010850, Detective McLaughlin produced the first of several conflicting accounts of untaped interviews with Jonathan Grover. Note that the first two digits of McLaughlin’s report, “93,” seem to indicate the year it was typed, but the date on the report is August 27, 1992. The content of this report is sexually explicit so I will paraphrase. The report has Grover claiming that when he was 12 or 13 years old he “would spend nights in the St. Bernard rectory in Keene.” During those nights, he alleged, he was sexually assaulted by both Father Gordon MacRae and Father Stephen Scruton.

But there was an immediate problem. MacRae was never at St. Bernard’s Parish in Keene until being assigned there on June 15, 1983, when Grover was 14 years old. Father Stephen Scruton was never there before June of 1985 when Grover was 16 years old. These dates were easily determined from diocesan files, but McLaughlin never investigated this. The report continued with claims alleged to have taken place in the Keene YMCA hot tub:

“It was during these times that Grover would be seated in the whirlpool and both Father MacRae and Father Scruton would be joined in conversation and they would alternate in rubbing their foot against his genitals. Grover was unsure if the priests were acting in concert or if they were unaware of each other’s actions.”

This report is highly suspicious. Just months earlier, Detective McLaughlin had previously investigated Father Stephen Scruton for an identical claim brought by another person alleged to have occurred in 1985 after Scruton’s arrival at this parish. Tod F. X. Biltcliffe, the person who brought that claim against Scruton, was also a high school classmate of Jonathan Grover.

After McLaughlin’s investigation, Mr. Biltcliffe obtained an undisclosed sum of money in settlement from the Diocese of Manchester. That interview with Biltcliffe was labeled Case No. 90035705 dated just 18 months before Jonathan Grover’s identical claims emerged. Unlike the Grover interviews, the interview with Tod Biltcliffe was tape-recorded by McLaughlin. Here is an excerpt from the report:

“Father Scruton was a regular at the YMCA. Tod went to the YMCA with Father Scruton. They decided to use the hot tub … At one point, Father Scruton took one of his feet and placed it between Tod’s legs and rubbed his genitals … The touching was intentional and not a mistake. A rubbing motion was used by Father Scruton … I asked Tod where he stood on civil lawsuits.”

It defies belief that a small town police detective could write a report about a Catholic priest (Scruton) fondling a teenager’s genitals in a YMCA hot tub, then 18 months later write virtually the same report with the same claims of doing the same things in the same place, only this time adding a second priest (MacRae), but nothing in the second report seemed to even vaguely remind the detective of the first report.

After Tod F. X. Biltcliffe’s YMCA hot tub complaint in 1990 — 18 months before Jon Grover’s own YMCA hot tub story — Father Stephen Scruton was charged by McLaughlin with misdemeanor sexual assault. He pled guilty and received a suspended sentence and probation. One year later, McLaughlin has someone else repeat the same story, only now involving both Scruton and MacRae, but two to four years before either of them was present in Keene.

What is most suspect about this claim of Jonathan Grover involving both priests is that in 1994, one year after writing the report, McLaughlin responded to a question under oath:

“On occasion, I have had conversations with Reverend Stephen Scruton, however I have no recollection of ever discussing any actions of Gordon MacRae with the Reverend Scruton.”

(Cited in USDC-NM 1504-JB)

The above was also cited in an AI analysis entitled “The Grok Chronicle Chapter 2: The Perjury of Detective James F. McLaughlin.”

But this all becomes more suspicious still. In the investigation file on these claims was found a transcript of a November 1988 Geraldo Rivera Show entitled “The Church’s Sexual Watergate.” It was faxed by the Geraldo Show in New York to Detective McLaughlin at the Keene Police Department two months after his 1988 receipt of the Sylvia Gale “Florida letter.” It was two years before Tod F. X. Biltcliffe’s YMCA hot tub claim about Father Scruton and four years before Jonathan Grover’s identical claims involving both priests. Here is an excerpt:

Geraldo Rivera:What did the priest do to you Greg?

Greg Ridel: Around the age of 12 or so, he and I went to a YMCA. And I was an altar boy at the time. And the first time I was ever touched … he began stroking my penis in a hot tub, I believe it was, at a YMCA. From there it went to what you might call role playing in the rectory where the priests stay.

— “The Church’s Sexual Watergate,” Geraldo Show, Nov. 14, 1988

Detective McLaughlin’s 1993 police report also had Jonathan Grover claiming that Father MacRae paid him money in the form of checks from his own and parish checking accounts in even amounts of $50 to $100 in order to maintain his silence about the abuse. McLaughlin never investigated this, but Father MacRae’s lawyer did investigate. MacRae’s personal checking account was researched from between 1979 to 1988. It revealed no checks issued to Jonathan or Thomas Grover.

However, the attorney uncovered several checks written from parish accounts to both Jonathan Grover and Thomas Grover. All were in even amounts between $40 and $100 and dated between 1985 and 1987 when these two brothers were 16 to 20 years of age respectively. The checks were filled out and signed by Rev. Stephen Scruton.

Days before Father Gordon MacRae’s 1994 trial commenced, his attorney sought Father Scruton for questioning. He declined to respond. When the lawyer sought a subpoena to force his deposition, Scruton fled the state. During trial, the jury heard none of this. Because the trial involved the shady claims of Thomas Grover alone, the defense could not introduce anything involving his brother, Jonathan.

In April, 2005, The Wall Street Journal published an extensive two-part investigation report of the Father MacRae case (“A Priest’s Story”), but it omitted Father Stephen Scruton’s role in the story — perhaps because he could not be located. Diocese of Manchester officials reported for years that they had no awareness of Scruton’s whereabouts.

In November 2008, former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott was retained to investigate this case. He located Father Scruton at an address in Newburyport, Massachusetts, just over the New Hampshire state line. First reached by telephone, Scruton was reportedly agitated and nervous when he learned the reason for the call. The investigator heard a clear male voice in the background saying, “Steve, if this is something that might help Gordon I think you should do it.” Scruton reluctantly agreed to meet.

The former FBI agent drove from his New York office to Newburyport, MA, on the agreed-upon date and time, but Scruton refused to open the door. He said only that he had “consulted with someone” and now declines to answer any questions. The investigator then sent Scruton a summary of his involvement in this case and requested his cooperation by telling the simple truth. Days after receiving it, Father Stephen Scruton suffered a mysterious fall down a flight of stairs and never regained consciousness. Scruton died a month later in January of 2009. He took the truth with him, and now Jonathan Grover has done the same. But facts speak a truth of their own. Readers can today form their own conclusions about this story.

I have formed mine, and I remain more than ever convinced that an innocent man is in prison in New Hampshire, a blight on the American justice system. Having thus far served 32 years of wrongful imprisonment for crimes that never took place, Father Gordon MacRae still prays for the dead.

“After three years of investigation of this case, I have found no evidence that Father MacRae committed these crimes, or any crimes.”

— Affidavit of former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott

ADDENDUM: IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE GROVER FAMILY GRIFT

Thomas Grover’s former wife, Trina Ghedoni, in an interview with investigator James Abbott, told the former FBI official that around 1988 Thomas Grover was interviewed by Detective McLaughlin, but Grover made no allegation that resulted in a charge. She stated that Grover was 22 or 23 years old then and living in the City of Manchester. She said that he met a man named Dominic Martin and they became close friends and “drinking buddies.” Dominic Martin had a girlfriend, whose name Ghedoni could not recall. It was then that Dominic Martin began to introduce Grover to the idea of setting up priests for money.

Investigator Abbott noted in his report that Dominic Martin was later arrested and convicted for extortion against a priest in neighboring Massachusetts in 2003. This was reported in a January 25, 2003 Boston Globe article, “Couple Facing Extortion Charges” by Matt Carroll. Dominic Martin and his wife, Brianna Martin were arrested in early January, 2003. They were charged and convicted of extortion after they falsified claims of sexual misconduct and then demanded $1,500 from an elderly Lowell, Massachusetts, priest who never had a prior accusation against him.

Using a threat of publicity, the Martins convinced the priest that he would be ruined if Martin’s claimed information ever became public. Compounding his poor judgment, the elderly priest borrowed $1,500 and paid a courier to deliver it to a newspaper kiosk at a local restaurant. Father MacRae first wrote of this account in “Ten Years After The Boston Globe Spotlight Prostituted Journalism.”

Predictably, with the $1,500 in hand, Dominic Martin then made a second demand after which the frightened priest called the police, who set up a sting of their own. They staked out the restaurant and arrested the Martins as they drove away. Oddly, the Globe article reported that Dominic Martin is a self-described bishop in The Traditional Western Rite Archdiocese, an “independent” Christian denomination.

A final bombshell for our purposes exploded in the last line of the Globe article reporting, that Dominic Martin had legally changed his name about two years earlier in 2000 or 2001. He identified his birth name as Tod F. X. Biltcliffe, the same person who previously sued the Diocese of Manchester alleging that Father Stephen Scruton molested him in a hot tub at the Keene YMCA. His financial settlement was obtained at about the same time Jonathan Grover, his former high school classmate, concocted an identical account. I previously wrote of this story in “Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest.”

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COUPLE FACING EXTORTION CHARGES
By Matt Carroll, Globe Staff, 1/25/2003

Dominic Martin is listed on a website of independent churches as a bishop in the Traditional Western Rite Archdiocese, an independent Christian denomination, and pastor of Holy Family Old Catholic Mission in Springfield. He also lists his birth name as Tod F.X. Biltcliffe, but legally changed it about two years ago, said his attorney, Lynda Dantas.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: For the second week in a row, I am indebted to Ryan A. MacDonald for his clear writing and equally clear sense of justice. You may also like these related links from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Justice and Due Process Support the Rights of Priests — But Not This One

Ten Years After The Boston Globe Spotlight Prostituted Journalism

Oprah, Geraldo, and a Psycho-Therapist: A Perfect Storm

Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest

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Justice and Due Process Support the Rights of Priests — But Not This One

A right of defense for accused priests is supported on paper in the Diocese of Manchester, but in this case it has been suppressed and obstructed at every turn.

October 21, 2013 by Ryan A. MacDonald [updated August 19, 2026]

I became quite familiar with the scene above during a short trip one summer. A nice 4-hour drive from New York took me along Interstate 91 and the Connecticut River.  From Brattleboro, Vermont (locals call it “Brat”) I drove east on Route 9 for 18 miles to the picturesque City of Keene, New Hampshire and its much admired downtown Main Street.

Keene is a small city with a population of about 23,500 — not counting the 5,000 students enrolled in Keene State College.  The social and economic hub of southwest New Hampshire, Keene boasts the widest Main Street in the United States. Its bustling downtown collection of quaint and busy shops, restaurants, a theatre, offices, and concerts on the Keene Commons is the envy of many cities its size.  Keene’s downtown begins at the doors of St. Bernard Church, today part of a three-parish community known as the Parish of the Holy Spirit.

Saint Bernard Church and Rectory are depicted above. The building in the background is Saint Joseph Regional Catholic School (grades K to 8). The entire complex is bordered on the left by the bustling campus of Keene State College, and on the right by busy downtown Keene. Directly across the wide, heavily traveled Main Street from the rectory is the region’s largest and busiest U.S. Post Office, a pizza take-out, and a convenience store conducting a brisk college town business 24/7.

THE ROOM WHERE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN

Just above is a closer view of the Main Street driveway between Saint Bernard Church and Rectory. It’s a scene I wanted to see for myself, and was the reason for my summer drive to Keene. Note the flat roofed adjunct just to the left of the building.  It was added on at some point to the large old mansion that became St. Bernard Rectory.

The rounded doorway on the building’s left side was in 1983 the rectory’s main business entrance. Just to its left is a large window. In 1980, a closed circuit television camera was installed just above that door because the rectory had been the scene of a number of urban burglaries and an armed robbery or two.  In the late 1970s, two priests and the pastor’s elderly mother were tied up in the rectory basement while the house was ransacked and robbed in the middle of the night.

On the other side of that door, when Father Gordon MacRae was assigned there in 1983, was the desk of a receptionist and secretary staffed in two shifts from 9:00 AM until 9:00 PM.  There was also a waiting area for parishioners wanting to see one of the four priests assigned there in the early 1980s, and for daily clients of the region’s busy St. Vincent DePaul Society seeking assistance with food, clothing, and emergency shelter.

On the right of the church building just across the narrow driveway from the rectory was the most heavily used entrance and exit for parish activities. These doorways to the church and rectory were the busiest places in or around that parish church.  The photos above and below was taken early in the morning.  At virtually any other time, this scene was a hubbub of activity.

Note the large window just to the left of the rectory’s main entrance with its monitoring TV camera.  It was just behind this highly visible office window — in full view of the daily hustle and bustle of Main Street traffic and the steady stream of visitors into and out of this busy rectory and church — that 27-year-old Thomas Grover claimed that he was four times sexually assaulted by Father Gordon MacRae at age 15 between April and November of 1983.

It was here behind this highly visible window where Grover claimed that in the months just prior to his 16th birthday he sought MacRae out for counseling for his drug addiction, but instead was threatened, berated, made to cry, and then raped.  It was here that 200-pound Thomas Grover claimed to have returned four times from week to week unable to remember the sexual assaults he claimed to have occurred during previous visits. 

Like so many who have looked at this case, I was aghast when I first became familiar with the details of the trial of Father MacRae.  I wrote of this trial in an article entitled “Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison.” As The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” (May 13, 2013):

"Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents."

Once I became aware of the facts of this case, I had to see for myself exactly where this was all claimed to have taken place. What I saw in the scenes depicted above is a compelling visual to accompany something Attorney Robert Rosenthal included in his failed appeal briefs to the New Hampshire courts:

“In what the petitioner asserts has been revealed as a scam to obtain a cash settlement from the Catholic church, Tom Grover, a drug addict alcoholic and criminal, accused Father Gordon MacRae of molesting him years before.  Grover’s civil suit — featuring MacRae’s conviction — earned him nearly $200,000.  No witnesses to the alleged acts could be found, despite that they were to have occurred in busy places. Grover’s claims were contradicted by objective facts (e.g. inoperable locks that he claimed worked, acts in an office to which MacRae did not have access, claims about a chess set that had not [yet] been purchased).”

Thomas Grover claimed that these assaults occurred in this office commencing in April 1983 and ending just as he turned 16 years old in mid-November 1983.  Father Gordon MacRae did not arrive at St. Bernard Church until mid-June 1983, and did not have access to this particular office because it was occupied by another priest until the end of July 1983.  Upon learning this pre-trial, Grover then vaguely moved one of his claimed assaults to an adjacent busy office to which MacRae also had no access that summer.

In the summer of 1983, St. Bernard Rectory employed a full and part-time staff of twelve, including the four priests who lived in this house, and a total staff of 25 parish and school employees all coming and going throughout the day and evening.  And yet, the prosecution produced not a single witness to these acts. No one ever testified to seeing Thomas Grover there. No one ever opened the door to admit him, or saw him leave. No one ever claimed to have heard anything. 

A lock Grover claimed that MacRae used to secure the office door had been dismantled and painted over years before the priest arrived.  An ornate marble chess set Grover claimed was inside that office during the assaults was not purchased by the priest until three years later in 1986.  Today, Grover’s former wife, Trina Ghedoni says that Grover admitted to her that he perjured himself throughout the MacRae trial, and said he offered perjured testimony about the chess set because “it was what he was told to say.”

The one person who could have helped to inform this appellate defense — Father Robert Biron, a prominent pastor in the Diocese of Manchester — refused to help. The above scene was his office several years before MacRae arrived, and again for several more years after MacRae left St. Bernard’s.  Father Biron might have spoken to the improbability of much of what had been claimed. He might have described the painted over office door lock that didn’t work, the shade on the office window that wasn’t there in 1983, the absence of air conditioning requiring that this office window remain wide open to the scene overlooking the main entrance and busy Main Street throughout summer months.

Father Robert Biron might have attested to the traffic; to the noise of people coming and going, noise that easily penetrated that office door in both directions. He might have attested to the waiting area just outside that office door, and its steady stream of people.  But he refused.  In his answer to Father MacRae’s plea as the investigation for this appeal began, Father Biron wrote on his official Our Lady of Fatima Parish stationery,

“I can’t be of any help to you, and don’t see the necessity of entertaining any further correspondence from you.”

— Letter of Father Robert Biron, January 19, 2009

Father Biron’s cold letter was received by the imprisoned priest just after the Bishop of Manchester at the time, now deceased Bishop John McCormack, insisted to Vatican officials and others that he and the Diocese of Manchester fully support Father MacRae’s right of defense.

Earlier, Bishop McCormack offered Father MacRae $40,000 toward an appellate defense, but with conditions: he wanted the diocese to choose MacRae’s lawyers and wanted the priest to sever all contact with Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal. The Bishop also wanted MacRae to agree not to review the history and merits of this case, appealing only his sentence and not the convictions.  Bishop McCormack then reneged on his offer in a grueling and cruel “stringing along” of this imprisoned priest that another prominent writer described in detail in “A Code of Silence in the U.S. Catholic Church: Affidavits.”

When Father Gordon MacRae was on trial in 1994, and the prosecution finished presenting its case, which consisted of nothing more than Thomas Grover’s hysteria and evasiveness, Judge Arthur Brennan instructed Fr. MacRae not to take the stand in his own defense or else the judge would open the door for Thomas Grover’s brothers to testify to their own false claims brought in civil suits.  Gordon MacRae was the only person never heard from in this trial.

When Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced Father MacRae to more than 30 times what had been offered in a plea deal, the judge never permitted the priest to speak.  Now, today, both New Hampshire courts receiving this appeal have dismissed it without a hearing, without hearing from new witnesses, and without Fr. MacRae being allowed to utter a word. Even in the Diocese of Manchester, the Bishop presented Father MacRae’s case for dismissal to the Holy See without his ever even knowing what was put forward or having any opportunity to defend himself. This came after a sworn affidavit from a PBS official quoting Bishop McCormack as stating, “This must never leave this office, but I believe Father MacRae is not guilty and should not be in prison, but my hands are tied.”  

Fortunately, to date, the Holy See has not seen fit to act solely on such unilateral information. The silence forced upon Father Gordon MacRae has been deeply unjust. This case must move forward and be fully heard.  

What were they all afraid of?

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison

Bombshells and Black Ops Defeated Justice in New Hampshire

To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

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Saint Maximilian Kolbe is the Man in the Mirror

At the canonization of St Maximilian Kolbe, Pope John Paul II was gifted with a portrait of the new saint by Fr James McCurry, a friend of Beyond These Stone Walls.

August 12, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

As many of our readers know, this blog began early in the month of August in 2009. It came into being as a result of a phone call to Australia. The person I called in Sydney had read an article I wrote for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It was her daunting suggestion that I write a blog that would be published weekly from prison. I had no idea then how that could happen. I had already been in prison for 15 years then, and Pornchai Moontri had already been my roommate for two years.

So after my phone call to Australia, I returned to our cell and told Pornchai what had been suggested to me. Neither of us knew what a blog was. They did not exist when we first went to prison. But I told Pornchai of what had been described to me: that this could be our voice to the world from behind these prison walls. Neither of us were taking this seriously, but I asked Pornchai that if I went ahead with this project, what should I call it? He immediately suggested “These Stone Walls.”

I wrote a weekly post from 2009 to 2020 when somehow this blog ran into a wall of resistance. It had to be taken down and started anew. Both Pornchai and I thought it was the end of our voice in the wilderness, but just weeks later in September 2020 it was restored with a new name: Beyond These Stone Walls. It also had a new editor, and in the same week that all of this happened, Pornchai was taken away on September 8, 2020, at 5 AM. He was taken for ICE detention (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) where he prepared for his deportation to Thailand after 36 years in the U.S., 30 of them in prison. I wrote at the time of all that we had been facing in a widely acclaimed post, “Life Goes On Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls.”

Since then another six years have passed. Pornchai has been back in Thailand for six years at this writing, and I have now been writing these weekly posts for 17 years. At this time each year Pornchai and I both honor our patron saint, Maximilian Kolbe, who surrendered his life at Auschwitz to save the life of another prisoner.

What follows are the first three posts ever written for this blog. I think you will see why we combined them to publish anew here this month.

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St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror

First published August 2009.

For someone on the outside looking in, it must seem an odd place to begin. Virtually every prison cell has one: a small stainless steel sink with a matching toilet welded to its side. Bolted to the cinderblock wall just above it is a small stainless steel mirror, dinged, dented, and scraped so badly that the image it reflects is unrecognizable.

I began each day in prison at the break of dawn by shaving in front of that mirror. That morning ritual had been repeated 5,412 times [when I first wrote of it in 2009. At this writing, I have been here for 11,750 days, but I no longer shave in front of that mirror. Rules for shaving changed sometime back. I now keep a close-cropped white beard, somewhat like the one Sean Connery wore, but without his cool Scottish accent.] Back then, I seldom cut myself shaving — a minor miracle as I could see very little of my self in that mirror. I often think of St. Paul’s cryptic image in his first letter to the Church in Corinth (13:12): “For now I see dimly, as in a mirror, but then I shall see face to face.” It is a hopeful image.

I sometimes find that my mind calculates dates and their meanings on a sort of autopilot. There came a day when I stood at the mirror to shave and realized that on that day — it was December 23, 2006 — I had been a priest in prison for the exact amount of time that I was a priest “on the streets” as prisoners like to describe their lives before prison.

From that day until now, I wonder which I see more of in that flawed mirror. Do I see the man who is a priest of 27 years? [Now 44 years] Or do I see only Prisoner 67546, the identity imposed upon me behind prison walls?

A strange thing happened on the day after I first reflected — as best I could in that mirror — on who I see. It was Christmas Eve, December 24, 2006, the day that the equation changed. It was the day that I was a priest in prison longer than anywhere else. That night at prison mail call, I had a few Christmas cards. One of them was from Father James McCurry, a Conventual Franciscan priest who once visited me in prison.

Inside Father McCurry’s Christmas card was a prayer card that is now one of my enduring treasures. It is taped to the stone wall just above the mirror in my cell and has been there ever since. In later years I was moved to other places, but the card always came with me. The holy card has an image of St. Maximilian Kolbe who offered himself for execution by starvation in place of another prisoner in Auschwitz in 1941. The card depicts Father Kolbe in his Conventual Franciscan habit. He has one sleeve in the striped jacket of his prison uniform with the number 16670 emblazoned across it. There is a scarlet “P” above the number indicating his Polish nationality. He was also a priest and a falsely accused prisoner. Does either designation extinguish the other? Father Kolbe is at once both, though only one identity was chosen by him.

The image is a haunting image for it captures fully that struggle I have so keenly felt. Father Maximilian appeared in my cell just a day after I asked the question of myself. Who am I? I thought at the time, that it was a rhetorical question, but it was a prayer. As such, it begged a reply — and got one.

Saint Maximilian and This Man’s Search for Meaning

Not long after that card first arrived, so did my friend Pornchai Moontri. He had just spent 13 years in solitary confinement in the Maine State Prison since he was age 18. When they could no longer hold him in the cruelty of such a place, they sent him here where he ended up with me. On the day he arrived in my cell, he dropped his trash bag of belongings, stared at the image above the mirror and asked, “Is this you?” That, too, was not a rhetorical question.

How I came to be in this prison is a story told elsewhere, by me and by others. How I “met” Father Maximilian Kolbe 60 years after he surrendered his life at Auschwitz is a story about actual grace. In his Catholic Catechism, Jesuit Father John Hardon defined actual grace as God’s gift of “the special assistance we need to guide the mind and inspire the will” on our path to God. Sometimes, it is very special.

My first years in prison are a blur in my memory. There is no point trying to find words to express the sense of loss, of alienation, of being cast into a dark abyss that was not of my own making — a loss that could not be grounded in any reality of my own. Thousands of days and nights had passed in the abyss before what Father Hardon described as “special assistance” crossed my path.

Someone, somewhere — I don’t know who — sent the prison’s Catholic chaplain (a layman then) a book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, M.D. Somewhere in my studies, I heard of this book, but only a prisoner can read it in the same light in which it is written. The chaplain called me to his office.  He wanted to know whether he should recommend this book, but didn’t have time to read it.  He wanted my opinion.

It had been years since anyone had asked my opinion on anything.  I didn’t read Dr. Frankl’s book so much as devour it.  I read it through three times in seven days.  As a priest, I often counseled others that grace is a process and not an event. It is not always so.  I was meant to read Man’s Search for Meaning at the precise moment that it landed upon my path. A week earlier, I would not have been ready.  A week later may have been too late.

I was drowning in a solitary sea of hopelessness.  I was not going to make it across.  My priesthood and my soul were dying.  The Book, as I have come to call it, is Viktor Frankl’s vivid account of how he alone among his family survived imprisonment in Auschwitz.  This was an imprisonment imposed on him for who he was: a Jew.

There is a central message in this small book.  A profound message, so clear in meaning, that it has within it the hallmark of inspired truth.   Like Saul thrown from his mount, I remember sinking to the floor when I read it.

“There is a freedom that no one can ever take from you: The freedom to choose the person you are going to be in any set of circumstances.”

This changed everything. Everything! You will see how later.  At the very end of his book, Dr. Frankl revealed the name of his inspiration for surviving Auschwitz. He wrote of Sigmund Freud’s cynical view that man is self-serving. And a man’s instinctual need to survive will trump “quaint notions” such as grace and sacrifice every time.  For Dr. Frankl, Auschwitz provided the proof that Freud was wrong.

That proof was Father Maximilian Kolbe.

The Sacrifice of Saint Maximilian

“Greater love has no man than this: that a man lay down his life for another.”

— John 15:13

As a young priest in 1982, I was only vaguely familiar with the name Maximilian Kolbe. I remember reading of his canonization by Pope John Paul II, but Father Kolbe’s world was far removed from my modern suburban priesthood. I was far too busy to step into it.

I didn’t know that nearly two decades later, Father Kolbe’s life, death, and sainthood would be proclaimed triumphantly on the wall of my prison cell, and not only by me. I also didn’t know this would help define the person I choose to be in prison.

Being a Jew and not a Catholic, Dr. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, said nothing about Maximilian’s sainthood or any miracles attributed to his intercession. Instead, Dr. Frankl was moved by the profound sacrifice of Maximilian, which defies the narcissism of our times.

For those unfamiliar with him, the story is simple.

The prisoners of Auschwitz were packed into bunkers like cattle. To encourage informants, the camp had a policy that if any prisoner escaped, 10 others would be randomly chosen for summary execution.

At the morning roll call one day, a prisoner from Maximilian’s bunker was missing. Guards chose 10 men to be executed. The 10th fell to the ground and cried for the wife and children he would never see again. Father Kolbe spontaneously stepped forward and said,

“I am a Catholic priest, and I would like to take the place of this man.”

Two weeks later, he alone was still alive among the 10 prisoners chained and condemned to starvation. Maximilian was injected with carbolic acid on August 14, 1941, and his remains unceremoniously incinerated.

For the unbeliever, all that Maximilian was went up in smoke and ash in the bleak sky above Auschwitz. Viktor Frankl shared some other corner of that horrific prison. The story of the person Father Kolbe chose to be rippled through the camp. This story offered proof to Viktor Frankl that we can be as much inspired by grace as doomed by despair. We get to choose which will define us.

Within days of reading Man’s Search for Meaning  and learning of Father Kolbe’s sacrifice, I received a letter from out of the blue. Conventual Franciscan Father James McCurry had been in an airport in Ireland when he heard an Irish priest nearby mention that he corresponds with a priest in a Concord, New Hampshire prison. Father McCurry said he was on his way to visit his order’s house in Granby, Massachusetts and would arrange to visit the Concord prison.

Weeks later, Father McCurry and I met in the prison visiting room. When I asked him what his “assignment” is, he said,

“Well I just finished a biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Have you heard of him?”

Father McCurry went on to say that he was involved in Father Maximilian’s Cause for Sainthood, and was officially appointed by the Vatican to be Vice-Postulator for Maximilian’s Cause. He had met the man whose life was saved by Father Kolbe.

A few years later, Father McCurry arranged a Father Maximilian Kolbe exhibit at the National Holocaust Museum. It was then that he sent me the card depicting Father Maximilian clothed in his Franciscan habit with one sleeve in his prison uniform. I keep the card above my mirror in my cell.

I can never embrace these stone walls. I can’t claim ownership of them. Passively acceding to injustice anywhere contributes to injustice everywhere. Father Maximilian never approved of Auschwitz.

One cannot understand how I now respond to these stone walls, however, without hearing of Father Maximilian’s presence here.

Above my mirror, he refocused my hope in the light of Christ. The darkness can never overcome it.

What hope and freedom there is in that fact! The darkness can never, ever, ever overcome it!

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I will be offering Mass late at night on August 14, the Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, which is also the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, his Immaculata and ours. Regarding the letter from Father James McCurry at the end of this post, I only just now realized that it had not come to me from our editor; rather, Father McCurry sent it by U.S. mail to Pornchai Maximilian in Thailand, where it arrived after weeks with all its wrinkles still intact. Pornchai was so proud of it that he quickly took a photo and mailed it to me in prison.

You may also like these related posts in honor of our Patron Saint:

Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s Gift of Noble Defiance

The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell

Dr Anthony Fauci Took Refuge Under the Fifth Amendment 111 Times

WSJ: “Senator Rand Paul deserves credit for digging into the truth about the destructive Covid response and the effort by Dr Fauci to stifle dissent and hide the record.”

August 5, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

The above excerpt from The Wall Street Journal is from a July 30, 2026 lead editorial, “Dr. Fauci Takes the Fifth, Alas.”

On May 6, 2020, I published a post at Beyond These Stone Walls entitled, “The Chinese Communist Party and the True Origin of Covid-19.” I became interested in the subject matter because for the previous month I had been gravely ill in prison and self-isolated in an effort to halt the spread of a virus that had devastated my immune response. There was no treatment whatsoever beyond my resolve not to pass it on to others. My friend Pornchai Moontri was here with me then and he had Covid as well. So did most of the prisoners who shared the space in which we lived. I was in my later 60s then, and at one point I thought I may not survive it, but obviously I did.

What I wrote at the time about evidence for a source connection for the virus with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China was widely dismissed in the U.S. as a conspiracy theory, but it was dismissed mostly for political reasons rather than scientific ones. The Wuhan wildlife market connection curiously proffered (and oddly preferred) by Democrats was also in lockstep with the level of surety professed by the Chinese Communist Government. The agreed-upon doctrine was that the virus was contracted and innocently spread by Chinese citizens, and/or tourists who purchased, and consumed wild animals at a Wuhan market. That assertion, without compelling scientific evidence, would have been widely dismissed by Democrats as racist if President Trump had asserted it.

Four months before I wrote the above-linked post — but unknown to me at the time — Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in a January 2020 diary entry that the Wuhan market was not the source of the viral spread, but rather an “amplifier” of it.

In 2026, a video played by Homeland Security Committee Chair, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) showed Dr. Fauci stating with dogmatic certainty in TV interviews that wild animals being sold in Asian ‘wet markets’ were the “likely” source of the virus. More recently, Dr. Fauci and his team of lawyers tried to suppress the journal evidence as “personal views” but a court ordered that they may be made public. Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told Fox News that his staff “dug the diaries” out of Health Department servers and gave them to the Homeland Security Committee.

The Left of the U.S. Democratic Party and the Chinese Communist Party Are Becoming Dangerously Aligned

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stated that there has been a cover-up of the true origin of Covid-19. If so, the cover-up has been the work of some of our highly partisan American news media as much as that of the Chinese Communist Party.

I survived, but the above-linked post I wrote did not fare quite as well. It addressed with much doubt the origin of Covid-19 that had been settled upon in the official account of the Chinese Communist Party. Since then, the World Health Organization (WHO) has conducted its own investigation with conclusions that conveniently matched those of China’s communist regime and the U.S. Democratic Party, all without evidence.

However, the cooperation of the Chinese government was sorely lacking, and some WHO investigators were not satisfied that the whole truth had been uncovered and told to the world. I am certainly no wild conspiracy theorist, but the science part of me had doubts about the reigning dogma: that a Wuhan wildlife market was the source of the virus despite evidence that the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology had been handling that same virus since its initial quiet discovery in an abandoned mine in Southwest China in 2012.

It was discovered then when six Chinese citizens entered a mine in Yunnan Province to gather samples of bat droppings. All six became quite ill within days. Three of them died. Now new evidence has emerged from a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that in November 2019, a month before the world even heard of Covid-19, three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers became critically ill and were hospitalized. The Biden administration, which had earlier shut down any inquiry into a possible laboratory source for the virus, had then and only reluctanly called for further review. There is a lot more to this story.

I have written that there was zero evidence to support the conspiracy theory that this is a weaponized virus intentionally unleashed on the world. Emails released at the time by Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that he was warned in early 2020 by immunology expert Kristian Andersen that “the virus had some unusual features hinting at manipulation in a lab setting.” Dr. Andersen stated that the virus was not compatible with evolutionary theory leading him to believe that it was manipulated in a lab. Four other experts in his team agreed with that assessment. Then suddenly it was withdrawn without explanation. From 2014 to 2019 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sent $3.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology culminating with a note of thanks for sticking by the “natural origin" theory.

Evidence that something is amiss here continued to mount. In following weeks, Kristian Andersen deleted thousands of tweets with information related to his initial assessment of the virus. In early June of that year Dr. Andersen deleted his Twitter account and has since reportedly declined to respond to questions, as we have recently seen, so has Dr. Fauci himself.

According to a June 4, 2021 Wall Street Journal report, the NIH money was spent on researching bat coronaviruses, “and it is likely that the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted gain-of-function research to make them more deadly or infectious.” In a February 2020 email, Dr. Fauci sent his deputy a paper about this gain-of-function research. The email instructed the deputy, “Read this paper. You will have tasks today that must be done.” His deputy replied that he would “try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.” Dr. Fauci has said to date that his organization did not fund gain-of-function research, but “I can’t guarantee everything that’s going on in the Wuhan lab.”

Dr. Steven Quay and physics professor Richard Muller published their findings in The Wall Street Journal (June 7, 2021) revealing that the gene sequence of a virus that has been subjected to gain-of-function adaptations is not typically naturally occurring. And yet it does appear in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. “The scientific evidence,” they say, “points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory.” If true, the world is left to determine whether the leak was indeed an accident.

There have always been many reasons to question China’s official explanation — for which there is also zero evidence — that humans visiting a Wuhan market contracted the virus from an animal that had been bitten by a bat, and then it spread from Wuhan across the globe. Again, the science part of me concludes that there would be many other examples of a similar natural transmission of deadly viruses if this scenario were so. Given the stakes for humanity and for the future, the truth must be uncovered. However, in both China and the United States this inquiry has been suppressed for political bias having nothing to do with scientific truth.

After I and others wrote about the origin of Covid-19 in 2020, the concept of a possible laboratory leak as the source of the virus was widely and quickly dismissed. A New York Times reporter admitted that the Times dismissed the theory only because it was the Trump administration that first raised it. CNN dismissed it as an unhelpful conspiracy theory in 2020, but now reluctantly calls for further investigation. Also early in 2020, 27 leading scientists signed an open letter condemning conspiracy theories that suggest Covid-19 did not have a natural origin like the one officially proffered by the Chinese government. Now several of the signatories have withdrawn that position. That fiasco was on a par with the 51 intelligence operatives in the United States who lent their names to a document denouncing the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation.”

The People’s Republic but Not the People’s Pandemic

In early January 2020, international news media began reporting on a viral outbreak of unknown origin in Wuhan, China. On January 30, 2020, Senator Tom Cotton warned that “Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens.” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) immediately dismissed this suspicion of a laboratory involvement as “absolutely crazy.”

Much of the mainstream U.S. news media immediately took up representation of the CCP denouncement, not because Senator Cotton’s idea was not worthy of scientific inquiry, but because of an unspoken media mandate to disparage the people who proposed it: Senator Tom Cotton and President Donald Trump. The Washington Post declared, “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was absolutely debunked.” The New York Times followed with the headline, “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origin.”

We should never again have a global pandemic during a U.S. presidential election year. The July 30 lead editorial cited above, “Dr. Fauci Takes the Fifth, Alas,” concludes, “The conformist media idolatry of Dr. Fauci was a way of shutting off debate over Covid policy. It also became a way for the press to attack President Trump in an election year.” From that point on, anyone who published any evidence for why the possibility of a laboratory connection should be considered was labeled on CNN and MSNBC and most major news networks as “fringe” or “a conspiracy theorist.” I was hit with those same labels after my May 2020 post linked above.

On February 6, 2020, Botao Xiao, a molecular biologist and researcher at South China University of Technology, published a paper in which he concluded that the novel coronavirus “probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” Under pressure from the CCP, he quickly withdrew that publication.

A year later, a group of 18 scientists from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford universities signed an open letter in the journal Science calling for a more serious consideration of the theory that the virus could have been of natural origin that, after discovery in a cave, was brought back to a laboratory intentionally or by accident and then escaped.

Now the CCP has obstructed any further investigation. The mine in Yunnan Province set up a checkpoint that bars journalists and investigators from entering.

The body of evidence gathered by the World Health Organization investigation is not at all compelling and is not supported by emerging evidence. It is important to get to the bottom of this to prevent an outbreak like Covid-19, or something worse, from ever occurring again.

But what is most important here is a point I have made before and must make again: The Chinese Communist Party and government are not a reflection of the will, minds, or hearts of the Chinese people. Anti-Asian bigotry was not an acceptable response to the pandemic. The good people of China exist under an oppressive Communist regime. China is called the People’s Republic, but Covid-19 was not the people’s pandemic.

On that note, and perhaps only loosely related, everything written in this post should raise the inner alarm of every thinking person about the newest, most dangerous development in our politics: the emergence of the Democratic Socialists of America. What sane, thinking person would ever want to go down that road again? We need our news media and we need it to be free of Socialist control.

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Note to readers from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these posts of related interest:

America Turns 250, but This Is Not the Twilight’s Last Gleaming

The Chinese Communist Party and the True Origin of Covid-19

From Dorothy Rabinowitz: ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth’

Fifty Years after Watergate Came the January 6 Committee

The marriage of media and left-leaning politics has brought us Pandemonium.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s Gift of Noble Defiance

At the end of July, 85 years ago in 1941, Father Maximilian Kolbe stepped out of line at Auschwitz. His gift of noble defiance has spread throughout the known world.

July 30, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Auschwitz 1941:

After the so-called dinner, I was invited between Blocks 18 and 19 where some prisoners had gathered among whom were several priests … Our colleague, Kolbe, spoke of the Feast of Corpus Christi, of the great omnipresent God, and of our sufferings by which He was trying to make us ready for a better life.

— A priest at Auschwitz, from Depositions of Fellow Prisoners, 1970, p. 34

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Pornchai Moontri once looked at the death chamber of Maximilian Kolbe and saw devouring jaws of evil. I saw that evil too, but choking on a brave soul’s noble defiance.

The photograph in this post has deep meaning and significance for us.  BTSW  reader Lupe Gwiazdowski, on a tour of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, stood with her camera before the gaping maw of a prison window. She photographed the window of the death chamber that consumed the life of our Patron Saint but could not extinguish the light of his sacrificial priesthood.

When Lupe’s letter with the photograph arrived in early July, 2017, when Pornchai “Max” Moontri was still here with me, he and I were standing with 100 other prisoners for Mail Call. The mail handlers here reversed the pages before stuffing the letter back in its envelope so the page with this photo was on top when I unfolded the letter.

I did not know what the photo was, but right off Pornchai pointed to it. “It’s a face!” he said. “An evil face!” Study the photograph above for a moment. Once I saw what Pornchai saw, I could not look at the photo again without instantly seeing that same demonic face. You will see it too.

But what Pornchai saw as the gaping jaws of evil ready to devour, I saw those same jaws choking on whatever was inside. When I suggested this to Pornchai, he saw it too. Stare at the photo for another moment, and you may see what I mean.

Then I read the letter that accompanied Lupe’s photo, and realized with a jolt that it was behind these gaping jaws that our Patron Saint, Maximilian Kolbe, surrendered his life in defiance of the great evil that manifested itself at Auschwitz.

Over two weeks of forced starvation followed his choice to die in place of an innocent young man. When Father Kolbe did not die in a timely manner that suited his captors, his life was taken by lethal injection on August 14, 1941. After a lifetime of devotion to “The Immaculata,” death came on the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Assumption. Lupe tells the story of the photo in her letter of June 29, 2017 that touched our hearts deeply:

“Hi Father G: I wanted to send you this photo and I hope you get it. I went to Poland this month, and I made a mental note to pray for you and Pornchai “Max” Moontri at the Auschwitz cell of St Maximilian Kolbe.

“As is often the case with my mental notes, when I got to the cell I was so overwhelmed that I forgot it. As soon as we exited the block of cells I remembered. I left the group and tried to push my way back to the cell, but Polish tour guides are not to be pushed against! I didn’t make it.

“I was downcast as I caught up with the group, and then realized that the guide was pointing to the bars of the Saint’s cell window from the outside. I didn’t even hear what she was saying as I looked upon this sacred spot. I thought of how this priest and his companion prisoners died giving such powerful witness through those same bars to so many whose hope was perishing. I lifted you and Pornchai up right there, and then snapped this photo for you. Father, I do not know what else to say.

“When I got back to a computer, I saw your post, “Thoughts Upon My 35th Anniversary of Priesthood Ordination,” and realized that your anniversary was on the same day I prayed for you and Pornchai-Max at Auschwitz. Father, thank you for your priesthood.”

In Noble Defiance of Evil

Today, virtually everyone knows the story of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. His Earthly remains were reduced to smoke and ash in the ovens of Hitler to drift in the skies above Auschwitz. But what he wrote and said and did, the glow of his soul, still moves mountains and the hearts of millions.

In Father Maximilian Kolbe, evil did not destroy what it set out to destroy. It imprisoned and killed the body of a man, but the priest lived on in noble sacrifice and love. The jaws of that window choked on the goodness of the soul contained therein.

Of all the thousands of accounts about the witness and strength of Father Maximilian Kolbe, for me the most powerful account comes from Herrmann Langbein, who was a prisoner at Dachau and then at Auschwitz. He is best known for his book, Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938-1945. He singles out one man’s defiance that I have cited in other posts about our Patron Saint:

“The best-known act of resistance was that of Maximilian Rajmund Kolbe, who deprived the camp administration of the power to make arbitrary decisions about life and death.”

— People in Auschwitz, p. 241

Langbein went on to write powerfully of the witness, not only of Father Kolbe’s sacrifice by volunteering to take upon himself the death sentence of a fellow prisoner, but of his demeanor in prison:

“Kolbe and his companions in misfortune had to spend almost three weeks [in starvation] in an unlit cell. On August 14 (1941) a lethal injection ended the suffering of the man whose bearing elicited the respect of the supervising SS men to the very end.”

— People in Auschwitz, p. 241

I pray for the gift of this brave priest’s noble defiance of evil. It is easier to just succumb to it, enduring it for as long as we can until it starts to bring about subtle changes in our resolve. My favorite passage in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (Harper, 1942) is Letter 12. You have seen this passage before in these pages. The demonic “Uncle Screwtape” describes perfectly the slippery slope that suffering and sin conspire to spread the contagion of evil. Their cumulative effect …

“… is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing … . Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

— The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Letter 12

In no place is a man or woman without defiance “edged away from the Light out into the Nothing” more than in prison. Like all prisons — whether they be prisons of iron, or fear, or trauma, or loneliness, or sickness, or pain — year upon year of it can set us upon the subtle turnings C. S. Lewis describes. For some, no doubt, resistance to the evils of our prisons seems futile.

Something happened recently — something profoundly humbling — that I thought about when I read the short passage at the top of this post from a priest-prisoner in Auschwitz with Maximilian Kolbe. The passage is from a published collection, Depositions of Fellow Prisoners, in the investigation of Maximilian Kolbe’s cause for sainthood.

More than 12,000 priests died in Auschwitz and the other camps of Germany and Poland, but the priest who wrote the passage atop this post survived. I wonder about those who perished there, those whose hope was siphoned off by the evil in their midst.

But for Maximilian Kolbe, resistance to evil was the one charism of a sacrificial priesthood available to him in a place where priesthood and sacrifice were deemed meaningless by worldly powers. Prison can quickly descend into “every man for himself,” but Maximilian lived and died on life’s road less traveled.

Priesthood Lost in Translation

Over the many years that I have been in this prison unjustly, there was another priest here. He was a priest of my Diocese, but I never knew him outside of prison. In fact, I barely knew him here. He was convicted of a sexual abuse charge in 1997, one alleged to have taken place long before then, and had been here ever since.

I know that in 2001, this priest acquiesced to a demand that he be voluntarily laicized (dismissed from the clerical state). Over the ensuing years, after 25 years of priesthood, he never again heard from our Bishop or Diocese. He was discarded. The prisoner-priest lost his faith. He became unable to be present at Mass for the next sixteen years. He was in a different prison unit than I, and I saw him only in rare passing.

However, when printed copies of some BTSW posts were mailed to me, the sender would often send two. So, with the clandestine help of friends here, I started to send the other copy to this priest. I did not send him every post, just the ones about priesthood. One post reached an untapped well of faith and hope.

It was “Saint Maximilian Kolbe: A Knight at My Own Armageddon.” It was the middle of an important three-part post, and was the only post for which the priest sent back — via the same circuitous prison channels — a request to see more. These posts were the limits of our contact.

The same week that Lupe’s letter and photo arrived, Pornchai Max and I were climbing the multiple tiers of stairs on a Sunday morning for Mass in the prison chapel. As we passed the second floor landing, the priest mentioned above was just then emerging from the prison medical unit. I greeted him and shook his hand (another act of resistance as shaking someone’s hand is forbidden here) and then something strange happened.

Pornchai did not even know who he was and I did not want to put the priest on the spot so we parted company and proceeded up the next flight of stairs. Then Pornchai turned and said, “Do you want to come with us?” The priest paused for a moment looking puzzled, and then quietly followed us up the stairs. Before we entered the chapel, I asked Pornchai to go find us some seats while the prisoner-priest told me that this was his first time at Mass in 16 years. He became reconciled, and we sat with him.

The next week — being an idiot sometimes — I took our usual seats and Pornchai stood glaring at me. “What are you doing?” he asked, and then pointed to that other priest still standing outside the door. “Go get him and bring him in to sit with us,” said Pornchai. God bless Pornchai!

In early July back in 2017, I spotted that prisoner-priest on the local news. He was appearing before the New Hampshire Parole Board with a request for medical parole because he was dying of cancer.

A physician who spoke at the hearing reported that he had no more than six months to live, and his care would be a burdensome expense for the state. After some callous remarks from a victim advocate on the State’s payroll about whether he “looks sick enough,” and whether twenty years in prison exacts sufficient reckoning, the Parole Board granted his medical parole.

On the Move

A week later, Max and I were suddenly moved — he to one place and I to another. Apart for the first time in over ten years, this had been a great hardship for us both. We were trying to reunite, but once anything like this is done here, it resists being undone. Max was trying to be moved to the same place I was in. We saw each other only once in the prison law library where I work. I invited Max to pray with me the Memorare:

“Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, we flee unto you, O Virgin of virgins, our Mother; to you do we come, before you we stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of Word Incarnate, despise not our petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer us. Amen.”

The place I was sent to is the unit the other priest had been living in for the previous twenty years. My first week there was his last week there, and we were able to walk each morning and talk. He was restored to faith and hope that our sufferings will make us ready for a better life.

I was with him early on the morning he left prison, and went home to his sister to die. I like to think that we managed to fill in some of the cold abyss in which our Church let him wander alone in exile for twenty years. I cannot imagine, even in my most vengeful thoughts, that such alienation and abandonment are what Christ summons forth from the Apostolic witness of His Church.

Most of all, I like to think we helped to prepare my brother-priest for something essential imparted to us by a Patron Saint who guides us on a right path through prison: the gift of a noble defiance of evil with the living witness of sacrificial priesthood.

On the day after that priest left prison, one week after Max and I prayed the Memorare, I returned from work to see him living once again in the bunk above me. He remained there until he entered ICE detention to prepare for his return to Thailand in 2020.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Optimism: When Hope Springs Eternal

A decade after the priesthood scandal broke the hearts of many Catholics and the optimism of many priests, Fr. James Valladares reminded us all of the gift of Hope.

July 29, 2026 by Father Michael P. Orsi with an Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae

Introduction

As most of the readers of this blog know, I was sent to prison with a life sentence in 1994 after refusing multiple plea deal offers to plead guilty in exchange for a one-to-two-year prison sentence. I would have been released from prison over 30 years ago had I actually been guilty, or at least willing to pretend so. It is the way more than 90 percent of trials in the United States are resolved in court. Those who gain their sense of Law and Order from the popular TV show of the same name are oblivious to the reality of this. I used to also be oblivious to what is today called “The Trial Penalty,” the implied threat that if you do not plead guilty you will spend the rest of your life in prison.

The first decade of my life in prison was the most painful, but not the only one that was painful. All hope had gone out of my world. The Church had gone out of my world, and took the priesthood with it. By some unknown mercy, I was spared the loss of my priesthood. I was never dismissed from the clerical state, a factor that I clung to as I grasped for any semblance of hope. Toward the end of that first decade, around 2003-2004, it got even worse. What had been a crisis in Boston and New Hampshire exploded onto the national stage and became a cause célèbre for contingency lawyers by the hundreds and scam artists by the thousands to bilk the Church out of more than $4 billion dollars in settlement of claims that never even saw the inside of a court room or heard the gavel of a judge. I wrote of this trend most recently in “Ten Years After The Boston Globe Spotlight Prostituted Journalism.”

As the news footage and newsprint dominated the scandal, I heard from some brother priests of my Diocese, but what I heard was merely condemnation. My Bishop’s office spokesperson, a monsignor who years later would serve his own prison sentence for financial crimes, filled in all the blanks in the public narrative with content about me and the case against me, which was entirely contrived and untrue, and for which he thought with surety that I would never actually see. Further down that deep well of hopelessness, I was alone in my grief.

Around 2000 or so, a celebrated Pulitzer Prize-wining journalist stepped on to the national media stage after quietly performing a forensic analysis of the case against me and its motives and aftermath. Suddenly there was an explosion of hope within me that no matter the outcome, the truth would finally be told on the most potent national stage, The Wall Street Journal.

But then, on September 11, 2001 — in the least of the tragedies of that day — came news that the offices of The Wall Street Journal were destroyed as the Twin Towers in the World Trade Center fell in New York City. Any optimism I had left fell along with them. All the research and content, electronic and otherwise, that had been amassed by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, was demolished. In January of 2002 came word that we would have to start over. I was not certain that I could.

What was supposed to have been written around 2001 became postponed indefinitely. The corrupt monsignor in my Diocese, who wore a second hat as the head of an organization representing insurance companies that moderated settlements, continued his campaign of misinformation, inflating the file of record with falsehood. Then, finally, in 2005 the hammer fell. The Wall Street Journal published its first of several articles under the broad heading, “The Trials of Father MacRae.” Other publications, such as The Media Report, picked up that story and ran with it. Our “Monsignor” fell into silence. A few years later Cardinal Avery Dulles and Father Richard John Neuhaus, along with the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, urged me to write giving birth to Beyond These Stone Walls. My stifled optimism was undergoing a breakout appearance in my heart and soul.

Then the unthinkable happened. A priest and psychologist, a celebrated author in Australia, also took up this story in a magnificent book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast. Father James Valladares, PhD is one of the most courageous and honorable priests I know.

While I was busy writing in prison for a blog the audience of which I could not see, Father Valladares was in Australia reading every word. When his book was published in 2012, I learned with a shock that he had been taking copious notes about my sacrificial priesthood, and he filled a significant number of his pages and chapters with the thoughts of my heart which he revealed. I was stunned, and I knew instantly that all those years of hopelessness were dedicated to the exposition of truth that will long outlive both Father Valladares and me. He gave his book a most hopeful title:

Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: This book is very special. It was not a gift to me, but to the priesthood. I recently wrote to Father Valladares about the status of his research and his book. He very generously gave me the entire book in electronic format so that we could publish his chapters one by one as an occasional post at Beyond These Stone Walls. And so we begin this week with the Foreword to Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast. The Foreword is brilliant. It was written by Father Michael P. Orsi, then of Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida. It contains the most hope I have seen or heard in a very long time.

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Foreword by Reverend Michael P. Orsi, Ave Maria School of Law

The clergy abuse scandal has posed the greatest threat to the traditional understanding of the Catholic priesthood since the Protestant Reformation. Now, as then, the deadliest attacks are coming from within the Church. In an attempt to ameliorate a system that allowed a small minority of the clergy to violate children and the gross negligence of some bishops who recycled these predators, the American bishops instituted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. It is, unfortunately, doing the Church more harm than good.

By adhering to the Charter’s provisions, the American hierarchy has unwittingly undermined the Church’s sacramental theology regarding Holy Orders and her ecclesiology, which depends on a priest’s relationship with his bishop. This breakdown has encouraged present-day Modernists, who believe the truth is culturally conditioned and that the Faith is based merely on sentimentality, to try to remake the Church according to their own lights. Intra-ecclesial groups like Future Church, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have subsequently formed, challenging the hierarchical nature of the Church, her infallible teaching on the male-only priesthood, and the Western tradition of priestly celibacy.

A major factor responsible for a large number of the sex abuse cases, according to the 2011 John Jay College of Criminology Report to the bishops, is attributed to the sexual confusion which reigned in society and the Church in the 1960s and 1970s. The teaching of moral relativism and the acceptance of popular psychological theories over traditional theological principles led to the excess of bad behavior during this period. No doubt bad thinking led to bad actions. The lesson is that orthodoxy is necessary for orthopraxis.

The Dallas Charter was a response to the deep regret felt by the bishops for the perverse crimes that had occurred against minors and a recognition that strong safeguards must be in place to protect them. But the remedies that they enacted were influenced by the secular solutions of lawyers and public relations experts, which compromised the Gospel. They do not reflect justice, charity, and forgiveness toward priests. Dangerous procedural measures, such as administrative leave, zero tolerance, and one-size-fits-all policy for accused priests and for punishing malefactors have lent themselves to violations of canonical due process and a mockery of time-tested principles of jurisprudence. This is especially evident when dioceses publish the names of defenseless deceased priests as sex abusers on their websites. But most egregious is the forced laicization imposed on those deemed to be guilty. This action clouds in the popular mind the permanency of the indelible character of Holy Orders conferred at ordination.

The present state of affairs has caused mistrust and fear in priest-bishop relationship. The collaboration of a priest with his bishop is vital since he participates in the bishop’s priesthood. Bishops, who are supposed to be fathers, brothers, and friends to their priests, have instead become mere managers with institutional damage control as their top priority. Many priests have dubbed this the Caiaphas Principle. A recent survey in an unpublished dissertation found that most priests do not believe that they can count on the support of their fellow priests in the event of a false accusation, presumably out of fear of retribution from their bishop or from victims’ advocacy groups. This too is extremely dangerous because priests of the diocese form a presbyterate in union with their bishop. It has devastating pastoral consequences.

“Credible evidence,” the nebulous standard used by diocesan review boards, has effectively made priests guilty until proven innocent. This has forced priests to shy away from human interactions, especially expressions of pastoral warmth and concern, which were the hallmarks of Jesus’s public ministry. Now a fatherly touch may be interpreted as a sexual advance or an act of kindness toward a young person misconstrued as “grooming.” As one priest so poignantly stated, “If I meet a woman, I’m having an affair; if I meet a man, I’m gay; and, God forbid, if I’m with a child, I’m an abuser.” In the current climate, any human action of a priest is suspect. Naturally, this has had a devastating toll on the effectiveness of the ordained ministry.

In Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast, Fr. James Valladares shows how justice and charity have been violated by some bishops in dealing with accused priests. He examines the pertinent canons that guide the Church’s justice system and finds that these are often ignored or wrongly applied. He provides true cases that highlight the injustice of the process and the agony of priests who have been subjected to the Charter’s draconian mandates.

The Church has incurred tremendous financial losses because of settlements rising from both legitimate and false claims. Her image has been marred by the secular media, which has taken advantage of the crisis. However, we often fail to understand how trivial these are in comparison to the damage done to the priesthood by the enactment of the Charter’s policies. This is the pressing issue that the bishops need to address.

The present scenario reported by Fr. Valladares is dark. Yet, he has surprisingly chosen a title for his book that speaks of hope. For sure, it is a hope based on Jesus’ words to his disciples, “I will be with you always.” Therefore, far from being pessimistic, Fr. Valladares presents the facts with confidence that “the truth will set us free.”

For his hard work, born out of a love for the priesthood and his brother-priests, Fr. James Valladares is to be commended.

Reverend Michael P. Orsi
Ave Maria School of Law
Naples, Florida
Fall 2011

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Related Links

Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound by Rev. Michael P. Orsi for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme

Ten Years After The Boston Globe Spotlight Prostituted Journalism Years

Due Process for Accused Priests by Father Gordon MacRae for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

A Modern Orthodox Jew on Preserving Hebrew and the Latin Mass

A conversation between Father Gordon MacRae and his friend, a Modern Orthodox Jewish scholar, has something to add to the debate about preserving Latin in the Mass.

July 22, 2026 by Seth Bader, J.D. with an Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae

Introduction

In the image above this post, Melchizedek, the Priest-King of Genesis 14, blesses Abraham with a sacrificial offering of bread and wine (The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek painted by Juan Antonio de Frias y Escalante in 1668, housed at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain).

The affairs of Rome have not been the only source of heat throughout the world in recent weeks. The winds of war have reached hurricane force, and the rule of law and authority in both Church and State clashes against public sentiment. And the weather has not cooperated at all. It is about 105 degrees inside this place on the day I write. None of this has been comfortable.

Back in 2021, I wrote a post entitled, “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass.” This appears to be at or near the center of the SSPX revolt in the Church. You may have seen news recently that Pope Leo XIV is reported to have excommunicated the Society of Saint Pius X, a conservative sect of Catholicism. Adherents to the sect have also reportedly been excommunicated.

Most importantly, I have just been corrected in my perception of this by a well-known and prominent canonist who read my post with some alarm. The situation is not at all what is commonly understood. Pope Leo did not excommunicate the SSPX. Please read carefully these words from my canonist friend:

“Six men, the four new bishops and the two conservators, were excommunicated by the law itself, and the penalty was later “declared” by the Prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF).  A note issued by the DDF stated that the clergy of the SSPX were excommunicated because their adherence to the Society was an act of schism for which there is a latae sententiae excommunication.  That excommunication has NOT been declared, which means it is a matter of conscience for those affected. It has not entered the external forum and may be lifted through a confessor or directly through the Apostolic Penitentiary. The declared excommunication of the bishops is now public fact and is in the external forum.  As for the laity, they are excommunicated only if they adhere to the schismatic mentality.  It, too, is only in the internal forum. Mere attendance at the SSPX’s valid, but illicit, masses does not excommunicate them.”

The trigger for this action was that SSPX had elevated four bishops ordained without the approval of the Pope and outside the Laws of the Church.

I wrote a post a while back during the papacy of Pope Francis entitled, “Will Pope Francis Stand Against Catholic Schism?” Many of us are now left to wonder whether the nuclear option, excommunication, was the only step left. It raises many questions on both sides of the Liberal-Traditional divide in the Church. Now, here we are.

The title of a related post, “My Father’s House Has Many Rooms,” comes from the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 2. It is seen by scholars as a reference to the Jerusalem Temple, hinting of its heavenly sanctuary, the dwelling place of angels and saints who worship in eternal liturgy. The Letter to the Hebrews describes it:

“You have come to Mount Zion, to the City of the Living God in the heavenly Jerusalem, to choirs of angels in festal gathering and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.”

— Hebrews 12:22-24

After I wrote that post, I asked a friend here to read it. He is an attorney, a prisoner, and a scholarly Modern Orthodox Jew. He responded by telling me that the Catholic controversy over Latin Mass is very similar to a controversy over the use of Hebrew in liturgy and prayers. I asked if he would develop a comment about that, and it turned into this post. What follows is from Seth Bader, J.D.

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In September of 2025, I happened to read an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal about the late Pope Francis and his effort to stamp out the Traditional Latin Mass, and the sadness and bitterness thereby engendered amongst Roman Catholics of conservative inclinations. That opinion piece got me to thinking about the over-a-century-old, and now largely forgotten, disputes within the Jewish community about the liturgical and conversational use of Hebrew.

By way of introduction, I am a lawyer and an amateur historian now in my middle sixties and incarcerated. I was raised as a Modern Orthodox Jew; my observance thereof as an adult leaves something to be desired. But I am working on it.

To start with, brief descriptions of Latin and Hebrew are in order. They are both ancient languages. Latin ceased to be a national language in the centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 400’s AD. Its offsprings, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, are all national languages to this day. The Latin alphabet is used in all western European languages. Latin is known today to scholars and to Roman Catholic priests, but I was shocked to learn that in seminaries it is barely taught at all today, but there are signs that this is changing. A recent resurgence of interest in the Traditional Latin Mass has had the effect of reviving interest in liturgical Latin among faithful Catholics and Tradition-minded priests.

Hebrew is a descendant of an extinct language, Phoenician, and is related to two other extinct languages, Aramaic and Syriac. It has some resemblance to Arabic. Its alphabet is unique. Hebrew ceased to be a national language after Israel lost its independence and became part of the Roman Empire. Hebrew remained in use among observant Jews for prayer and for reading the Scriptures.

In the middle to late 1800s, first in Europe and then in the United States, a movement known as the “Haskalah,” or Jewish Enlightenment, arose. That movement consisted of efforts by Jews to better fit into the surrounding non-Jewish communities while retaining core Jewish beliefs and customs. Such efforts included abandoning distinctively Jewish clothing, attending college, and conducting synagogue services in a modern language such as English, rather than Hebrew, among other things.

Three Jews who were products of the Haskalah changed the world, for better or for worse. They were Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. The Modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed branches of Judaism all have their roots in the Haskalah. (Incidentally, Hasidic, or Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, originated in Eastern Europe only about a century and a half before the Haskalah.)

The use of modern languages rather than Hebrew in Reform synagogues scandalized Modern Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jews to some extent, but never came close to causing a schism — to borrow a nonJewish expression — and is now generally tolerated on both sides of the linguistic divide. In part, that is because Judaism has no central authority comparable to the Papacy. And in part, that is because rabbinic teaching has long held that, while Hebrew is preferred for prayer and study of the Scriptures, any language may be used for those purposes by a Jew who knows no Hebrew (and many Reform Jews do not know Hebrew.) That said, it is utterly unthinkable that any authority in Judaism would bar the use of Hebrew in liturgy, prayer or study.

A second Hebrew-versus-modern language dispute arose in the early 20th century and has never quite died out. But has also never posed much of a threat to Jewish unity. That dispute arose from the Zionist movement, which sought — with eventual success — to reestablish a sovereign Jewish nation in the historical territory of the Land of Israel. The early Zionists, more than a century ago, sought to create a modern form of Hebrew, suitable for daily conversational use outside of synagogues. The Zionists succeeded in doing so, and millions of Israeli citizens now speak modern Hebrew as their primary language.

I rather like Father MacRae’s treatise, “My Father’s House Has Many Rooms” and his explanation therein of the “Sensus Fidelium,” the sense of the faithful in practice and belief over many generations of the past. They constitute the vast majority, not in place of papal authority but in support of it. Such inclusion of the generations of the past is very similar to the beliefs and practice of Orthodox Judaism.

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Seth Bader earned undergraduate degrees in physics and history at the City University of New York, and his Juris Doctor degree from Hofstra University School of Law.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I thank my friend Seth Bader for this learned contribution to our discussion about the role of Latin in the Mass. There is much more to learn about the links between modern and ancient times in Salvation History. You may like these related posts:

A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass

My Father’s House Has Many Rooms. Is There a Room for Latin Mass?

Iran, by Another Name, Was Once the Savior of Israel

Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse
This post will be added to our feature presentation of “The Bible Speaks.”

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Ten Years After The Boston Globe Spotlight Prostituted Journalism

‘Spotlight’ was a heavily biased film about The Boston Globe coverage of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. The problem with a spotlight is its narrowly focused beam.

July 15, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

“prostituted — to use something valuable in a way that is not appropriate or respectable and especially in the pursuit of money.”

— From Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

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The Boston Globe’s pursuit of this story needed a floodlight and not a spotlight. I had a strange experience with the Globe’s coverage in this regard. In 2003 it carried a brief story about a Springfield, Massachusetts couple, Dominic and Briana Martin, who were arrested for a scam attempt involving an elderly local priest. The Martins engaged him in a series of emails about allegations of abuse and then threatened to make the allegations public unless the priest left a sum of money in a brown paper bag in the newspaper kiosk of a local restaurant. The frightened priest, who never had any kind of allegation against him, complied. Then came a second demand, but this time the police set up a sting of their own. They arrested the Martins and charged them with felony extortion.

The Globe seemed to be keeping this story buried and off the Front Page lest it turned some heads relative to the Globe’s ongoing coverage of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests. It was just a matter of time before the Globe and other media dropped the word “alleged” from the coverage.

As I read about the Martins extortion racket, I learned only in the last few sentences that Dominic Martin had acquired a new name in the later 1980s. The Globe reported that he was previously known as Todd F.X. Biltcliff, a name I immediately recognized as a person who had accused a priest in my diocese, then received a financial settlement. This was likely not the Martins first attempt at such extortion, but my letter to the Globe reporter and editor went unanswered. No one at the Globe had any interest in exploring this thread any further.

The Boston Globe’s own cashflow problems desperately needed a sordid story to exploit. In 1993, The New Times purchased The Boston Globe for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. It was the most expensive newspaper acquisition in U.S. history. By 2013 the Times had launched a search for a buyer for the Globe, which turned out to be a massively losing proposition. The Times finally unloaded the Globe for $70 million. It was a loss of $1.03 billion from its initial investment or, more bluntly, the Globe was sold for less than 10 cents on the dollar from what the Times initially paid for it. The newspaper industry tends not to flout its own foibles, so few people were aware of the massive loss incurred by The New York Times.

In the few years after The Boston Globe’s one-sided exposé of the Archdiocese of Boston, the newspaper’s decline became more evident. In 2016 while the Globe was covering the story of its Spotlight team, and the Best Picture Academy Award the film, “Spotlight” had won, the subscriber list was 115,000 for the daily editions and 205,000 for The Sunday Globe alone. The Alliance for Audited Media today reports a dismal drop in readership down 52 percent since 2019 to a low of 45,000 daily readers of the Globe.

The notion that the Globe was bringing Roman Catholicism to its knees was highly exaggerated. Currently, 24 percent of Greater Boston’s adult population self-reports as Roman Catholic. This is higher than the national average of 19 percent. Combining all other Christian denominations under one umbrella, the Globe claims a 45 percent readership, while 41 percent report no affiliation with any religion at all. Though the Globe’s coverage of Catholic scandal and the scandal itself did indeed cause damage, only a small minority cite the story today as a cause for leaving the Church.

The Globe’s one-sided pursuit of this story drove Cardinal Bernard Law out of Boston and into retirement, but this was greatly exaggerated as being “to evade prosecution.” He was accused of poor judgment, but not of breaking any law. There was a good deal of injustice in the coverage of this story, and I wrote about it once in “Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights.”

My Spotlight Oscar Hangover

This prison in which I am a guest of the State of New Hampshire has a weekend movie program that broadcasts DVD films (mostly donated) each week from Friday through Sunday. I was initially dismayed to see on the posted movie list that ‘Spotlight’ was slated for four prime time showings here. The details of how I came to be in this prison were told by a far greater news outlet and a far less biased news reporter, who was also awarded a Pulitzer for her series of articles. This one was titled, “The Trials of Father MacRae” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (WSJ, May 13, 2013). There were other articles as well in coverage of this story by The Wall Street Journal, but I do not want to make this about my plight.

‘Spotlight,’ you recall, is a film about The Boston Globe’s Spotlight exposé of the priesthood scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston. For political as opposed to journalistic reasons, it won “Best Picture” at the 2016 Academy Awards.

I watched “Spotlight” twice because I wanted to be fair and just, and if I were wrong in my judgments of the film and the motivations behind it, I wanted to revisit them. Having sat through the film twice in a single weekend, however, I won’t be retracting anything. To be honest, I actually liked the film. Having grown up in Boston, the landscape and politics of it were more than familiar. What was not familiar, and highly distorted, was the film’s presentation of the Catholic Church and the scandal that took place against the background of the sexual revolution in America, a scandal that had invaded every institution while media coverage was highly selective. Maybe it was just that I knew the subject matter from another perspective, and knew all the players, at least by reputation, from multiple angles, so the film was a very fast two hours for me.

But the film also contained some very troubling distortions. It glorified the journalists involved while casting doubt upon the integrity of just about everyone else. Some of its charges were accurate. For example, the film early on criticized the contingency lawyers who became millionaires by “turning sexual abuse into a cottage industry.” However, the Globe dropped the ball on this and let all the lawyers off the hook. That aspect of the story would go no further in media coverage. Today the Catholic Church in America, and only the Catholic Church, would be singled out for settlements to the tune of (so far) over $4 billion. The lawyers the Globe criticized became multimillionaires and the feeding frenzy at that trough continues unabated to this very day.

Early in the Globe’s coverage of the scandal, Church officials defended themselves by stating that the “non-disclosure” terms so criticized by the reporters were actually demanded by the contingency lawyers and accusers themselves. This was in large part true. In fact, in 2005 when The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote “A Priest’s Story” about my own case (WSJ, April 27, 2005), she got an urgent call from a lawyer for my diocese. His near panic was not over the fact that I, and perhaps some other priests, had been falsely accused, but that The Wall Street Journal had named names of accusers after the lawyers agreed to the non-disclosure demands. It was I who provided those names. I was never a party to any such agreement, and I would never publicly disclose the name of an actual victim of sexual abuse.

But the bigger scandal is that the Globe and it’s Spotlight Team did nothing to follow up on the role lawyers continued to play. That is one of the real coverups in this story and it continues. The film had clear allusions that Boston lawyer Eric MacLeish, for example, became wealthy representing claimants, filing demands, and keeping it all out of the news media before the Spotlight Team got hold of the story.

But when the story was over, and the Globe had its prize — the forced resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law — the spotlight stayed on the Church but left the lawyers alone to continue business as usual.

There was a big problem with The Boston Globe’s crusade. It made no distinction whatsoever between real crimes with real evidence and mere accusations with real fraud behind them. The ‘Spotlight’ film glossed over this, treating every claim without question as demonstrably true. In her bold article, “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ is a Terrible Film” (which also profiled my own case) journalist JoAnn Wypijewski taught the Spotlight Team a lesson in journalistic integrity:

“I am astonished that, across the past few months, ever since ‘Spotlight’ hit theatres, otherwise serious left-of-center people have peppered their conversation with effusions that the film reflects a heroic journalism, the kind we need more of… What editor Marty Baron and the Globe sparked with their 600 stories and their confidential tip line for grievances was not laudatory journalism, but a moral panic, and unfortunately for those telling the truth, truth was its casualty.”

— JoAnn Wypijewski, CounterPunch

Well after the Globe Spotlight Team criticized the lawyers for turning abuse into a “cottage industry,” David F. Pierre, Jr. of TheMediaReport.com followed up with his book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, exposing what “business as usual” looked like beyond the glare of the Globe’s Spotlight:

“A year later, in 2002, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, faced accusations from 62 individuals. Rather than spending the time and the resources looking into the merits of the accusations, ‘Diocesan officials did not even ask for specifics such as dates and specific allegations for the claims,’ New Hampshire’s Union Leader reported. ‘Some victims made claims in the past month, and because of the timing of negotiations, gained closure in just a matter of days,’ reported the Nashua Telegraph [quoting lawyer Peter Hutchins]. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’ a pleased and much richer plaintiff attorney admitted.”

— Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, p. 80

David F. Pierre, Jr.’s book has a chapter analyzing five categories of false accusations against priests: 1. The “repressed memory” accusation; 2. The “dead priest” accusation; 3. The “me too” accusation; 4. Simple criminal fraud; and 5. Psychological illness. The above scenario with plaintiff lawyers bringing claims unfiled in any court, and church lawyers offering settlements with absolutely no findings of facts while hiding the names of accusers, was all placed by David F. Pierre, Jr. in the category of “simple criminal fraud.” The Globe Spotlight Team might have noted this too had it taken a moment to focus its spotlight just a little off the real target of its crusade.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Another journalist of outstanding integrity also covered this story with truth and justice in 2016. It was published at CounterPunch then, but I am reprinting it here with permission of the author. It is more or less an autopsy of “Spotlight.” Though I never appeared in the film, I have a prominent role in its autopsy. We published it anew in our “Voices from Beyond” feature. Justice requires that we give equal time to “Oscar Hangover Special: Why “Spotlight” Is a Terrible Film.”

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Fr Richard Drabik Introduced Divine Mercy to Saints and Villains

Fr Richard Drabik, MIC, my longtime spiritual director and friend who wrote the Preface to the Diary of Saint Faustina, passed into Divine Mercy on July 4, 2026.

July 8, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

“Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy . . . To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in my unfathomable and inscrutable mercy.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 1146

In April of 1993, my friend Father Richard Drabik and I both served on the staff of the Servants of the Paraclete Spiritual and Psychological Renewal Center for priests. Father Drabik was at the time preparing to go to Rome to concelebrate with Pope John Paul II the Mass of Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, now known as Saint Faustina, the Saint of Divine Mercy. Her Beatification took place on the Sunday after Easter that year, and Pope John Paul II decreed that henceforth that Sunday would be universally known in the Roman Calendar as Divine Mercy Sunday.

Father Richard Drabik was formerly Provincial Superior of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. He wrote the Preface to the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska that has become globally famous. Just before leaving for her Beatification in Rome in 1993, Father Drabik stopped by my office to invite me to write a brief prayer, which would be placed on the altar by Pope John Paul during the Offertory in the Mass for Beatification. I did not know what to write, so on the day of my friend’s departure I handed him a small scrap of paper to place with his intentions for the Mass. I folded it and sealed it in a small envelope that would fit easily in his breast pocket.

No one ever knew what I wrote. The note with my petition was simple: “I ask for the intercession of Blessed Faustina that I may have the courage to be the priest God calls me to be.” It was an odd petition, and today I have no idea what I was thinking about when I wrote it and handed it to Father Drabik on his way out the door.

Exactly two weeks after the Beatification of Sister Faustina, on May 3, 1993, police showed up at my door. They carried with them a secret indictment and a warrant for my arrest for claims alleged to have occurred sometime between 1978 and 1983, ten to fifteen years earlier. They were the claims for which I faced trial and was summarily sent to prison as Ryan A. MacDonald wrote in “Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison.”

Those claims of abuse never took place at all, but I will always remember the words of a police detective as the officers took me away despite my denials: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re guilty. Your Church is!” It was a scene reminiscent of another era I wrote of in “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic.”

The detective’s words could just as easily have been heard in Sister Faustina’s own World War II-era Poland as Father Maximilian Kolbe and many other priests were led off to prison on trumped up charges.

Divine Mercy Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls

Last April 9, I turned 73 years old in prison. I was 41 years old when I was sent to prison, and was in my twenties when my fictitious crimes were alleged to have been committed. I will be age 108 when I next see freedom. The process of reopening a case alleged to have occurred over 30 years ago, and which never contained any evidence to debunk or attack, is a grueling uphill battle. If there is any hope at all for freedom and justice, it is vague hope. It is a hope that exists on the other side of an abyss.

Astute readers remember that I was given several opportunities before my trial to plead guilty and serve only one year in prison. I simply could not fathom doing this. Many years later, Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The Wall Street Journal, took up this case for investigation. She reported that she questioned the detective about the absolute lack of any corroborating evidence. The detective was reported to have said, “Why didn’t he just take the deal?” In a five-minute video interview years later, Ms. Rabinowitz summed up the true nature of this matter.

The readers of Beyond These Stone Walls have helped in so many ways to show us the face of Divine Mercy. Your reading BTSW has given me a global voice when having any voice at all is usually denied to any priest so accused. And having a voice is also often denied to prisoners, as a class of American citizens stripped of rights, including the right to vote. I do not use my access to this voice just to whine about prison conditions. That would be a waste. Instead, I try to employ this voice as an extension of my priesthood, one that is influenced and encapsulated, even defined, by Divine Mercy.

Earlier in my years in prison, my old friend and spiritual director, Father Richard Drabik, visited me. He did so until age and distance made such visits no longer possible. During one of his visits after my publishing began in 2009, I asked him if he had seen the blog that I write from prison, but have never seen. Being a prisoner, I also had no sense of its reach or impact. “It isn’t a blog,” Father Richard said. “It’s a bullhorn!”

Later, the community of Marians of the Immaculate Conception at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy took up the slack. They came with an invitation to me and other prisoners to take part in a great Divine Mercy adventure. For some, it became the most important part of our lives here. This was especially so for my friend Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, whose life story was captured by Felix Carroll in the book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions. Pornchai’s story is well known around the world now thanks to the efforts of Catholic League President Bill Donohue. Dr. Donohue invited Pornchai to write his story in his own words. The result was published by the Catholic League as “Pornchai’s Story.” In just four pages, it was powerful and phenomenal. Pornchai was oppressed by the thought that at the end of his own prison sentence he would be deported to Thailand where he no longer knew anyone or had any support at all. Pornchai had been taken from Thailand against his will at age 11, and now would be left there alone at age 47. It was a chilling thought for Pornchai, and also for me. I assured him that we would find a way to build a bridge to Thailand.

Divine Mercy, being what it is, created a roadmap for Pornchai. Father Richard, who was deeply moved by Pornchai’s Story, shared it with others who became links in a chain. One of them was the late Father Seraphim Michalenko, Vice Postulator for the cause of Sainthood for Saint Faustina. He ended up in Thailand meeting with a group called Divine Mercy Thailand. Father Seraphim went there armed with a copy of the Diary of Saint Faustina and a copy of Pornchai’s Story, which he read in English to the assembled group. Suddenly, our bridge to Thailand was built.

Felix Carroll also wrote a wonderful article for Marian Helper Magazine entitled, “Mary Is at Work Here.” The truth of that is today without question.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post about my great good friend and mentor in the priesthood, Father Richard Drabik, MIC. Don’t misunderstand the opening quote here in this post. Only God knows whether Father Richard is a saint, but he was certainly no villain. He spent a lifetime reaching out to them, however, and reeling them in to show them the Light of Divine Mercy. That was what I liked most about my friend, and what I most try to emulate. You might find his enduring presence in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Pornchai’s Story

A Priest and Prisoner in the Light of Divine Mercy

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

I greatly treasure the image atop this post. Father Richard’s smile is now engraved upon my heart.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

America Turns 250, but This Is Not the Twilight’s Last Gleaming

The United States of America was born on the Fourth of July in 1776. There is no greater tribute to this Land of the Free than the words of its National Anthem.

July 1, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

I have been pondering what to write as the nation in which I write marks 250 years in existence on the world stage. All thoughts kept bringing me back to our National Anthem and a reflection on it that I wrote in 2023. This nation and the entire free world were finally emerging then from the global Covid pandemic. Perhaps I needed more time to write of this then because our very freedom had been on the chopping block in both Church and State. We had surrendered far too much. So in this post I want to further examine the National Anthem, all four stanzas of it, three of which most of us do not even know. And then finally I want to add a reflection by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who gave us some very candid and pointed thoughts about the nature of freedom and what we stand to lose if we allow it to be set aside.

Readers in the United States may recognize the second part of my title this week as a line from the Star-Spangled Banner, our National Anthem: “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.” It was composed during a battle in the War of 1812. Thirty-six years after the American Revolution in 1776, the War of 1812 was called by some the Second War for American Independence.

In 1814, two years into the war, a British warship bombarded Fort McHenry in the Port of Baltimore. The part of the text of the famous poem that became our National Anthem was composed on the spot by American lawyer and poet, Francis Scott Key. He was aboard a British frigate under a flag of truce to negotiate the release of a prisoner. While aboard, a fierce battle broke out between British and American warships.

As the smoke of battle cleared at dawn, Francis Scott Key was so inspired by the sight of an American flag still intact aboard a battered U.S. ship that he wrote down what he saw. His “Star-Spangled Banner” appeared in a Baltimore newspaper. Then its first stanza was set to music to the tune of a popular pub drinking song, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” It became the National Anthem of the United States by an act of Congress only on March 3, 1931.

Few people seem to know that the famous poem that inspired the U.S. National Anthem had four stanzas. Only the first was set to music. Nonetheless, at age eight I was one of four fourth grade students required by our teacher, Miss McNeil, to each memorize a stanza for an Independence Day school assembly. I was fortunate enough to draw the first stanza which was the most familiar and easiest to memorize. I remember imagining at the time that Miss McNeil might actually have been present when Francis Scott Key composed the text in 1814:

“Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there .
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

“On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposed,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half concealed, half disclosed?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
’Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“Oh! Thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their beloved home and war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

— Francis Scott Key, 1814

Independence Day and the State of Our Freedom

Not to abruptly change the subject, but for this 250th Anniversary of Independence Day, I want to examine what the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has done with our cherished freedoms. When I first wrote of this in 2023, we were still frozen in place, despite it being summer, over the politics of a pandemic. Freedom was never free, so justice requires that we honor it.

In observance of our Nation’s 250th Anniversary, Catholic League President Bill Donohue published a brief but brilliant essay, “Religious Roots of American Freedoms.” It was a stark reminder of what we stood to lose, or lose sight of, during the dark days of the Covid pandemic. We went awry over those years when the threat was not so tangible a thing as bombs dropping, but rather the tiniest of things: a virus that emerged in China.

Lest someone take umbrage with that last thought, the evidence now seems much clearer that Covid originated from a laboratory, though likely by accident, in Wuhan, China. That said, I must remind myself and all of us that China is the Peoples’ Republic, but Covid was not the peoples’ pandemic. The good people of China live under the hammer of an oppressive communist regime. The people of China had nothing to do with the Covid-19 pandemic nor with their government’s response to it. I wrote of that response in “Covid: The Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. News Media.”

What I find so ironic, however, is not what China did with it, but with what America did, and by that I mean all of America. Perhaps the best commentary on the state of our post-pandemic freedom as we emerged from three-plus years of government Covid policy is a statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. It was published on May 18, 2023 in a Supreme Court Order halting a lawsuit filed to continue Title 42. If you have not heard or read this before, it is because the free press suppressed it. The statement is a bold assessment of post-pandemic truth:

“Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of the United States. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on.

“They threatened violators not just with civil penalties, but with criminal sanctions as well. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

“Federal executive officials entered the act too, and not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace safety agency to issue a vaccine mandate for working Americans. They threatened to fire non-compliant employees and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

“At the very least, one can hope that the Judiciary will not soon again allow itself to be part of the problem by permitting litigants to manipulate our docket to perpetuate a decree designed for one emergency to address another.”

— Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, May 18, 2023

Churches, Casinos and Liquor Stores

At a time of intense public anxiety, churches were deemed “non-essential” by government officials in many states. Justice Gorsuch pointed out above that state government officials “closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on.” In New Hampshire, where I am a guest of the State, churches were forced to remain closed even while all the liquor stores remained open — even on Sunday. No one pointed out that in New Hampshire, the State owns all the liquor stores.

But the saddest oppression came later. When constitutional civil rights lawsuits in various states succeeded through the courts in reopening churches with reasonable safeguards, some of our own Catholic bishops instantly replicated the heavy hand of government to keep them closed and inaccessible. On June 10, 2020, I posted “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.” My own Bishop issued a chilling decree.

“As Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester understanding my responsibility to issue liturgical norms by which all are bound (Canon 838:3), I hereby decree the public celebration of Mass remains suspended ... until such time as I deem it prudent to modify [this] decree.”

In a state that led the nation in opioid overdose deaths among young people (and still does) deaths by overdose substantially outpaced deaths by Covid ten to one. The closure of churches never took into consideration the hopelessness to which it contributed. The year of the Bishop’s decree saw 250 deaths statewide from Covid. All but 65 of its victims succumbed in nursing homes where government failed to protect the elderly. In contrast, the same period saw 2,500 fatal overdoses from street drugs.

In some areas, Masses were relocated to online only and the reception of Communion became impossible. When court challenges opened up churches, some state governments — and later even some bishops — required Catholics who chose to attend Mass to register their name, address, and signature at the church door. This was not the Nazi occupation of Poland. This was the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Some priests were removed from ministry for openly defying these edicts. One priest friend famously challenged his bishop’s edict to “Just do it in the Parking Lot,” by responding “No. And … Hell no.”

In a Wall Street Journal / NORC poll published in April, 2023, 39-percent of Americans reported that religion was “very important” to them. This was down from 48-percent just four years earlier in 2019 before the pandemic. In 1998, this figure was 62-percent. Covid had the effect of accelerating a pre-pandemic trend in which Christians, and especially Catholics were slowly becoming disenfranchised from the practice of their faith. Even after Covid this trend continued as the Catholic hierarchy barred Catholics from the observance of Latin Mass, and even from kneeling to receive the Eucharist.

In March, 2023, the Pew Research Center released a study reporting that the percentage of U.S. adult Christians who participated in worship at least once per month was 43-percent. This was down from a pre-pandemic report of 49% in 2019. However, 22-percent of the respondents in 2023 reported that their “participation” was either online or on television. Of interest, Catholic parishes that kept congregations engaged throughout the pandemic using social media and streaming parish services to their own parishioners have retained more of their communicants than Catholic parishes that just rode the wave and remained closed.

The great downside to streaming Catholic Masses online is that it habituated the practice of many faithful to take part in worship without reception of the Eucharist which is central to the Mass and to the identity of Catholics.

An interesting story developed out of China while American Christians wrangled with our post-pandemic commitment to faith. All 63 members of an Evangelical Chinese Christian congregation escaped communist China, the first parish ever to do so en masse. In response to increasing oppression by the Chinese communist government, the entire parish community fled China, first to South Korea, then to Thailand, and then to the United States.

Aided by Freedom Seekers International, a Texas nonprofit that helps people flee religious persecution, the group submitted applications to the United Nations Refugee Agency in Bangkok. Having overstayed their Thai travel visas by one year, the group had to be deported, but Thai police worked with the U.S. State Department to deport them not back to China, but to Tyler, Texas.

The Chinese communist government viewed the church as illegal and threatened to shut it and its religious school down. Rather than risk the loss of their faith community, the 63 members of this small congregation decided unanimously to preserve their faith and flee their country. Here in America, we have never faced the forced choice between God and country.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”

— Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1776

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts about freedom:

Religious Roots of American Freedoms by William A. Donohue, PhD

The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass

Covid: The Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. News Media

Latin Mass and Altar Rails Are Under Siege in North Carolina

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”