“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
The Unspoken Racist Arena of Roe v. Wade
Catholic priests and politicians who are silent about abortion often cite racism as a higher moral priority. Are they blind to the racist oppression of Roe v. Wade?
Catholic priests and politicians who are silent about abortion often cite racism as a higher moral priority. Are they blind to the racist oppression of Roe v. Wade?
July 6, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Shortly after a U.S. Supreme Court draft was mysteriously leaked with an impression that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned, this reactionary nation descended once again into chaos. At the time, I wrote a post making a case for why overturning a precedent like Roe v. Wade was not the legal earthquake some in the partisan news media described it to be. Catholic League President Bill Donohue sent an email to the civil rights group’s thousands of members asking them to read my post entitled, “After Roe v. Wade, Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul.”
It became our most-read post for the month of May, 2022, but I had long before been marked as a “prolife priest.” I had never even imagined that there are Catholic priests out there who might not champion the cause for life. I have since learned from lots of readers that they rarely if ever hear support for prolife causes in their parishes. So I set out in this post to make an argument for why Catholics — including priests — can and should be challenged to take up a well-informed defense of life.
I was a late arrival on the side of life. When I was a newly ordained priest forty years ago in 1982, I learned that my one and only niece (two others arrived later) longed for a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas. They were all the rage then, but my sister in the Boston area told me that the demand was so great it was simply impossible to find one. So I went on a mission and implored the help of a friend who managed a large department store just over the border in New Hampshire. She laughed saying that I should have listened to my sister, but I was an uncle determined not to disappoint my only niece.
A few days later, the friend called me and said that one of the chain’s stores had one that remained unclaimed so I quickly asked her to hold it for me. She wanted me to come late at night when the store was closing because she feared I might be mugged by desperate parents while carrying the semi-precious doll from the store. I felt like a thief in the night as I arrived to discover that the remaining doll was modeled after an African American infant. A flood of implications raced through my mind, but I dismissed them all and purchased the doll.
It was two weeks before Christmas, 1982. Back at my parish, I carefully opened the box, intrigued by the enormous social pressure on parents to find and buy this pseudo-human infant for their young daughters that Christmas. Inside the box, I was surprised to see what looked like an official birth certificate with the doll’s name and date of “birth” printed in nice calligraphy.
So the following Sunday at Mass, I brought the doll with me, box and all. It was the Fourth Sunday of Advent. During my homily, I opened the box and produced both the doll and the birth certificate. The parish was instantly riveted, not by the point I was making but by the fact that I had somehow actually obtained a Cabbage Patch doll. My homily called out the irony that the creators of this doll went to such great lengths to fabricate authenticity — including a birth certificate — and promote such enormous demand that mothers and fathers could not find one. Meanwhile, real human babies are quietly aborted by the millions every year across the land. The reaction to my homily was both strained and strange.
Project Rachel
As I held up the birth certificate, there were audible gasps. Some looked alarmed and uncomfortable, others mesmerized, some quite pleased, and others downright hostile. No priest likes hostility, and I was no exception. At the door after Mass, some people thanked me for bringing up a subject never before heard in their parish. Others whisked by me without eye contact. A few looked really ticked and muttered something about “politics from the pulpit.” One man who clearly did not get the point said, “a hundred bucks for the doll, Father.”
One week later at Christmas, my niece was overjoyed at her new “little sister.” Within a few years she would have two real ones, and would learn that little sisters are a mixed blessing when you are accustomed to being the only one at center stage. Today, they remain very close and each is now also a mother.
It was because of this experience — the simple act of buying a doll for my niece at Christmas — that I thought Roe v. Wade all the way through and knew that I could not be silent about what I had learned. My first lesson was how easy it was to dupe myself into comfortable moral complicity by not thinking it through. I know this is an uncomfortable subject for some, but it is not possible to fully profess the Gospel without discomfort.
Two years later, I became one of four priests in my diocese to join Project Rachel, a Catholic ministry approved by the U.S. bishops to assist women who have had an abortion with the process of repentance and reconciled Communion with their faith. It is one of the most important ministries in the Catholic community, second only to the cause of life itself.
Our culture has romanticized the Christmas story, but in the Gospel of St. Matthew it concludes with terrible tragedy. Enraged at being tricked by the Magi, Herod ordered the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem. The story ends with a prophecy of Jeremiah which is the source for Project Rachel’s name:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they are no more.”
— Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:16-18
A reader of Beyond These Stone Walls recently told me of a discussion with her parish priest about abortion and Roe v. Wade, and the fact that the priest had never addressed either in a homily. She is a retired obstetrics nurse who obviously had a lifetime of thinking this through. I have heard the same critique of many priests in many states. Some respond that other social justice issues such as racism and inequality are higher moral priorities for them. They miss the crux of the matter.
There have been bold exceptions, priests who have inspired me and others in the cause of life. Among them are Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, and Father Stephen Imbarrato, also known as the “Protest Priest.” He is the moderator of Catholic Prolife and a leader in Red Rose Rescue.
When San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone recently imposed a canonical discipline barring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion, Mrs. Pelosi accused him of hypocrisy. She stated that she is in fact prolife, but her prolife activism centers on limiting the death penalty. It is spiritual blindness, and a common progressive position. But it is also one that I have shared. I was dubbed “the priest who kicked the hornets nest” when I wrote of this a decade ago. To protest the death penalty while promoting abortion is to become comfortable with spiritual blindness.
Catholic politicians like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden have compartmentalized and dulled their Catholic consciences. Like many progressive politicians, they have not thought this all the way through. The arenas of both the death penalty and abortion rights are mired in racism.
The Real Social Injustice of Racial Inequality
The list of racial disparities in America is extensive. African Americans represent only 12.5 percent of the U.S. population but 40 percent of the U.S. prison population. Many studies have shown that African American defendants often received longer prison sentences than White defendants for the same offense. They have been more likely than White defendants to be sentenced to death for capital crimes, and have been many times more likely to actually be executed in states that retain a death penalty.
This is of grave concern, but all of our concern is moot if we cannot even get the subjects of our concern born in the first place. At his shocking and eye-opening site, Blackgenocide.org, Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr. reveals that “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” When it comes to racial disparities in abortion the political left and too many of our priests and bishops remain silent in a state of ignorant bliss. There is no more racist agenda than the one behind the abortion industry in America.
In 1992, President Bill Clinton presented what was then the accepted liberal Democratic view: that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Since then, the overall abortion rate has declined to about half of what it was in the 1980s — except among African Americans. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, Black women are today eight times more likely than White women to seek an abortion. Abortion’s impact on the size of the African American population is critical, but conveniently overlooked by the news media and the progressive political left.
I had no idea when I gave my three-year-old niece that African American-looking Cabbage Patch doll in 1982 that infants who look like that particular doll are especially in peril. In a 2019 abortion case, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas observed that in New York City that year, for the first time in history, more African American infants were aborted than born.
It is also true that Planned Parenthood of America places its origin in the work of Margaret Sanger, an activist American nurse who worked tirelessly to provide access to abortion. From her own writings, one of her motivations was an interest in eugenics, the science of selective breeding. By controlling the growth of the African American population, Margaret Sanger and others believed that the purity of American genetic heritage could be maintained.
Jason L. Riley, an African American writer and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal authored a recent op-ed entitled “Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?” (WSJ, May 11, 2022). He wrote that the political left in America is quick to set off alarms anywhere racial disparities are known to exist — except for this one.
Race-based differences in SAT test scores, for example, brought calls to eliminate the SAT as a college admission test. A racial gap in arrest and incarceration rates has long vexed this nation, resulting on the left with socially destructive reactions like the “defund police” movement. In terms of sheer numbers and their impact on the African American population, abortion far exceeds other social justice concerns. The number of babies aborted by Black women each year in America far exceeds the combined numbers of Black youths who drop out of school, are sent to prison, and who are murdered on the streets of our cities.
The WSJ’s Jason Reilly cited a Pennsylvania case study about death rates. Examining premature deaths from all causes in 2018, it was discovered that abortions constituted 23.9 percent of premature deaths among the White population and 62.7 percent among the Black population. Abortion rights activists often cite these facts as a function of poverty, but even among other groups with higher poverty levels, Black women still have abortions at much higher rates than any other demographic.
The notion that not growing up at all is better than growing up in poverty is a notion only of the elite. Think of the arrogance behind such statements. If activists believe that lower incomes impact Black abortions, then the social justice issue and goal should be equality in income not controlling the population Planned-Parenthood-style through abortion.
Black lives matter. Indeed they do. Black infant lives matter too. There is no more racist agenda in America than the one keeping an entire people down through abortion.
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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.
You may also like these related posts:
After Roe v. Wade: Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul
Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul
Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life
Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life
Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost
On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marks forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?
On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marked forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?
June 1, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
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“When you were young, you fastened your belt and walked where you would; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten them and take you where you do not wish to go.”
The Resurrected Christ to Peter (John 21:18)
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The few lines just below the top image on many blog posts are sometimes called a “meta-description.” Its purpose is to provide search engines like Google a summary of a post’s content in 164 characters or less (including spaces). Our meta-descriptions are not very useful in that regard because they are written with actual readers in mind and not search engines.
Our Editor’s meta-description atop this post ends with a question: What would I have done forty years ago on June 5, 1982 if I had before me then a vision of my future life as a priest? When I was unjustly sent to prison in 1994, I was asked that question often. I never had an easy answer.
After I began writing from prison at the invitation of Cardinal Avery Dulles fourteen years later in 2008, most people had stopped asking me that question. I think most just assumed that my life as a priest was over, or that whatever was left would just collapse and vanish under the weight of prison. Some thought the Vatican would throw me overboard without evidence simply because I am in prison. After 40 years as a priest, and 28 of them as a prisoner, none of those things has happened. I am now asked a different question: What sustains an identity of priesthood in such a place?
Also atop this post is a haunting quote from the Gospel of John (21:18). It’s from an appearance of the Risen Christ to Simon Peter and the disciples at the Sea of Tiberius. Jesus sought restitution from Peter whose courage gave way to a lie days earlier at Calvary. Peter had an opportunity to live up to his own words declared on the day before the Crucifixion, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:23). At Calvary, as the accusing mob pressed in, Peter’s courage failed. To appease the mob, he three times denied knowing Jesus.
I wrote in a post just weeks ago, “Shaming Benedict XVI, Catholic Schism, Cardinal Zen Arrested,” that we saw faith falter when only 92 of the world’s Catholic bishops signed a letter confronting a threat of Catholic schism in Germany while most others remained silent. We saw this again as prelates in the largest Christian denomination on Earth remained strangely silent after the Chinese Communist government’s unjust arrest of Hong Kong’s 90-year-old Joseph Cardinal Zen.
And we saw it yet again when only 15 U.S. bishops spoke out in support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who courageously barred U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Communion until she repents for decades of abject promotion of abortion. He acted as he must in pastoral care for her soul.
But I have no legitimate judgment of Peter at Calvary. It is not easy to stand up to a mob. In the verse that immediately follows the one I quote from Saint John atop this post, the Lord told Peter what would happen when he finds his faith and it informs his strength. He did find it, and Tradition tells us that he was crucified for it in A.D. 67. The flaws of bishops, which only the spiritually blind deny sharing with them in abundance, need not preclude the courage that Christ summons forth.
An Anniversary of Priesthood
A good friend, Fr. Stuart MacDonald, just celebrated his 25th anniversary of priesthood ordination. This is usually a joyful event for a priest, for his family, and for his parish. Father Stuart sent me a wonderful photograph of the Mass of Thanksgiving at his diocesan cathedral. The recently renovated church is beautiful, and the hundreds of Father Stuart’s family, friends and parishioners could not have been prouder, or happier.
Behind the main altar in the photo above is a glorious stained glass window depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is difficult to look at that sanctuary and see anything else. And yet Father Stuart stands out incensing the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, his appearance one of faithful witness inspired by the salvific scene of divine restitution enacted in glory just behind him.
I pondered the scene for a long time, taking in the beauty of the restored sanctuary’s art and architecture. It is all focused on that one place where priestly hands would soon raise in sacrifice the very Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world — even the sins of a three times denial of Him by Peter who would then become the First Bishop of Rome.
I tend not to look at such scenes and think about myself. I was so proud of Father Stuart because he, too, has endured the suffering of the Cross in his years as a priest. Like so many, he suffered bouts of depression and anxiety during the long bludgeoning of the priesthood over the last twenty-five years. It has come from all sides, even lately from some of our bishops. Father Stuart is fortunate to have one who supports him. In an age of cancelled priests, it is not always so.
It was some time before I contrasted the photograph sent by Father Stuart with the scene in my prison cell late at night on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost, as I offer my own Mass of Thanksgiving for 40 years of priesthood. Able to obtain elements for Mass only once per week, I join in that sacrificial offering in a 60-square-foot prison cell in the dark. The chair upon which I offer Mass is a 5-gallon plastic trash bucket emptied and turned upside down for the occasion.
There is something vaguely prophetic in that. Like the bucket, I, too, have to be emptied before Mass of all the harmful refuse of prison. At 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, after the last of the chaos and noise that fills this place subsides, I remove my hard-earned Mass kit from a hidden shelf in a corner. The plastic storage box relinquishes a small stole, a corporal and purificator, a sturdy plastic coffee cup. It is all I have for this purpose, but never used for any other.
Lastly comes a host and a quarter-ounce vial of sacramental wine. From a shelf at the foot of my concrete bunk comes a Sacramentary and a small battery powered book light. A concrete slab protrudes from the cinder block wall at the base of the sole, heavily barred cell window. The otherwise torturous prison lights beyond provide just enough light for Mass.
The Mass is always Ad Orientam, facing East, because that is the direction toward which my window faces. I am grateful for this despite it being of no design of my own. My little booklight illuminates the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which affords an opportunity to name the living and the dead who accompany me in this Mass. You are always remembered there.
There is no one else physically in attendance except my non-Catholic roommate who begins snoring up a storm in his upper bunk about an hour before my Mass begins. It is not exactly the hymn of a Heavenly choir, but, like most of the harsh sounds of prison, I have learned to tune it out.
So there, sitting on my bucket — ummm, I mean the big upside-down plastic one — Heaven reaches into a place where God often seems absent, but it only seems that way. When I elevate the host for the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, it is in equal measure just as glorious as the Cathedral altar scene where Father Stuart made that same offering. After 40 years, this may seem to some to be all that remains of the visible manifestation of my priesthood. It is a miracle in its own right, one that I described on an earlier anniversary of ordination in “Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence.”
In the Mighty Wind of Pentecost
But there is another manifestation of priesthood less visible than my weekly offer of Mass, but just as mysterious and powerful. It has to do with the day on which my 40th anniversary of priesthood falls. It has to do with Pentecost, a Greek term meaning “fiftieth.” In Jewish tradition, it is called “Shavuot,” the Feast of Weeks. It falls on the sixth day of the Hebrew month, Savon, the concluding day of the Omer, the 49 days (seven weeks) from the Passover commanded in Leviticus (23:15-16).
In the Book of Exodus (23:16), it became the Harvest Feast. In Rabbinic legend, it was also the day Yahweh gave the Law — the Torah — to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. It is the second of three annual feasts requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was the reason that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Peter, and the disciples were in Jerusalem with so many others. A seminary professor once told me that “salvation comes from the Jews. They are our spiritual ancestors, and we must honor them.” I do.
It is because they were Jews that they were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, it is celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter and closes the Easter season. Technically, it is the day after 49 days (or seven weeks) following the final Passover meal of Jesus and the Apostles, the point through which the Jewish and Christian traditions are intimately connected. It was also the day that Jesus was betrayed, the point at which Salvation History begins its fulfillment. For a deeper understanding of this, see my post, “Satan at the Last Supper, Hours of Darkness and Light.”
In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 2), the disciples of Jesus are gathered in Jerusalem in one house: then suddenly ...
“A sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, coming to rest upon each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
— Acts 2: 1-4”
The scene recalls the fiery descent of the Spirit of God at Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 19:16-19).
As that driving wind filled the room where the Apostles were gathered, “men of every race and tongue, of every people and nation” emptied into the street at the strange and powerful sound. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began to address the bewildered crowd, each person hearing them speak in his own native tongue. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit filled not only the Apostles, but some of the crowd as well, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
That day in Catholic understanding is the birth of the Church, and by the time it was only an hour old, its first scandal broke out. Those in the crowd who did not inherit the wind immediately accused the Apostles of being drunk at 9:00 AM on a major holy day that required a fast. Their pharisaical claim caused Peter, now the leader of the Twelve, into the first papal defense of the Church:
“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day.”
Acts 2:14-15
Inspired by the Spirit, Peter went on to preach the Church’s first homily, relying on the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) to explain that God has poured out His Spirit because the Messianic Age had begun. The meaning of the Passion of the Christ was unveiled.
It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is “ruah,” and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is “ruah ha-Qodesh.” It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2):
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.”
— Genesis 1:1-2
And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and yet again in a Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)
The Wind of God did just as Jesus predicted it would do to Peter in the Gospel quote that began this post. It bound my hands and took me to a place where I did not wish to go. What am I to make of this? What should I have done while laying face down on the floor before an altar a the Litany of Saints offered me up in priestly sacrifice forty years ago? What would I have done then had a vision of my future life as a priest been before me?
When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.
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Editor’s Note: Please share this post and please also visit our updated Special Events page. You may also like these related posts.
The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner
Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence
Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times
Catholics to Fr James Altman: ‘We Are Starving Out Here!’
Fr James Altman was removed from his assignment sparking appeals from the faithful in unprecedented numbers. Does this signal a growing distrust of our bishops?
Fr James Altman was removed from his assignment sparking protests from the faithful in unprecedented numbers. Does this signal a growing distrust of some bishops?
I was recently informed by a reader that her parish priest launched into a tirade against her and other parishioners for their dedicated pro-life activity. He reportedly stooped pointing to the ground shouting, “Of all the issues facing the Church and country right now, abortion is way down here!” In another incident, the same priest launched a tirade at a college-student parishioner in the confessional insisting that her involvement in pro-life causes is badly misguided.
Both incidents, and others like them, resulted in letters of concern to the diocesan bishop. Weeks later, the bishop replied that he has instructed the priest to cease allowing his political views to invade his pastoral ministry. Political views?
The last time I looked, the Church’s pro-life position and activity reflect a moral mandate of grave concern and utmost importance. The pro-life centricity of Catholic moral teaching has been clearly articulated by Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.
I dread writing any criticism of Catholic bishops. In over 600 posts of the last twelve years, only a few have had such content. Pope Francis has recently spoken against clericalism in the form of careerism in the Church, and he has also spoken recently of a concern for the morale of priests. The concern is well placed, but the former very much impacts the latter. Bishops have nearly ultimate authority in their own dioceses, but bishops who aspire to more prestigious positions sometimes find themselves bending to the will of some other bishops with more clout.
Pro-Catholic, Pro-life, Pushed Out
On Friday, May 21, 2021, Father James Altman was instructed by La Crosse, Wisconsin Bishop William Patrick Callahan to resign from his parish over the Bishop’s concern that the volume and tone of his “political” rhetoric has rendered him divisive and ineffective. Father Altman — who until weeks ago had been pastor of Saint James the Lesser Catholic Church in La Crosse — has said some very challenging things in his preaching on the Gospel but nothing he has said to date contradicts Church teaching.
In his now notorious “Memo to the Bishops of the World,” Father Altman called on the U.S. Bishops to stop issuing guidance for the care of our physical health at the expense of care for our souls. He called for the bishops to present faithful and unapologetic adherence to and promotion of Church teaching.
But volume and tone may not have really been at the heart of Bishop Callahan’s expressed concerns. Though unstated, it seems that a small minority of Catholics dismissing Father Altman’s rhetoric as “dabbling in the political” clearly wanted him silenced, and it seems that his bishop obliged. It is also now widely suspected that pressure came from other bishops who were uncomfortable with Father Altman’s growing fame in his homiletic broadsides against abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology, and, most recently, the shuttering of churches, first by politicians and then by some bishops, during the Covid pandemic.
I admit that I have sometimes grimaced at Father Altman’s tone in his fiery homilies, and thought he could be more effective if he lowered the volume just a bit. Nonetheless, in recent posts, I have said some of the very same things he has said. (See, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass” and “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” )
I have written about all of these things, but a small voice from the wilderness of prison is a lot easier to ignore than a YouTube video homily gone viral. Some of Father Altman’s more fiery prophetic witness has drawn the attention of faithful Catholics across the continent and around the world. When he announced his imminent removal during a Pentecost homily this year, there were audible gasps from his congregation. Father Altman explained to them,
“For the record, through my efforts at preaching the truth ... somehow the truth has gone viral over the past eleven months and people all over the globe — as far away as Borneo — have written over 4,000 letters and cards — even more than that in emails — all saying the same thing: ‘We are starving out here!’”
However, something far more interesting than Father Altman’s reaction to his removal has occurred. A crowd funding page was established online to assist in retaining a canon lawyer to appeal his removal to higher ecclesiastical authorities. A funding goal of $20,000 was set. In less than a week, the fund grew to $250,000. A week later, it rose to $650,000. On the day this is posted, the fund is approaching $700,000 while an online petition garnered nearly 100,000 signatures.
The Church, the Bishops, the Eucharist
Instead of silencing Father Altman, the bishops might ask themselves why so many are listening to him so intently. This is a different sort of Sensus Fidelium — the sense of the faithful — than the Church is accustomed to. The bishops would be wise to listen. The setting aside of this one priest over what has been dismissed as “political” activism may signal a far greater concern about the bishops’ collective ability to discern between moral and political issues.
It seems no mere coincidence that Father James Altman was removed from ministry just in time to accommodate those who want the rhetoric on another development lowered to a mere whisper. You likely already know what has transpired regarding a simultaneous embarrassment among our bishops, but here is the short version.
On the day this is posted, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is scheduled to meet to discuss what is turning out to be a heavily manipulated agenda. The meeting “may” include “the drafting of a formal statement on the meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the Church” and its application to pro-abortion Catholic politicians who receive the Eucharist. That any of our bishops may actually need such clarity on this is alarming in its own right.
That clarity has recently come from two sources, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco and Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix. I recently wrote of Archbishop Cordileone and his defense of religious liberty. Since then he has published, Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You: A Pastoral Letter on the Human Dignity of the Unborn, Holy Communion, and Catholics in Public Life.
In my post, some readers challenged me in comments stating that I overlooked the fact that this concern should have been raised by the Bishops “when it really mattered” before the 2020 presidential election. I will get back to that in a future post after the results of the USCCB meeting become public. Suffice it to say that it also really matters now.
I wrote above that clarity on the meaning of the Eucharist “may” be on the agenda because a group of 67 U.S. bishops — representing only 15-percent of the USCCB’s voting members — has lobbied USCCB President Archbishop José Luis Gomez to remove this topic from the agenda. All the bishops are careful not to say it, but this entire discussion is about the controversy of a pro-abortion activist who has presented himself as a devout Catholic and now occupies the White House.
Two of the signatories have since asked to have their names redacted from the letter saying they had not fully been informed of its purpose and were manipulated into signing it. Others have since stated that they never agreed to sign this letter and do not even know how or why their names were added.
The protest letter seems to have been spearheaded by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, DC, who reportedly composed the letter on his letterhead. He has gone on record to insist that he would not deny the Eucharist to pro-abortion Catholic President Joe Biden. The letter was also signed by Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston, and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago. Cardinals Cupich and Tobin met in Rome with Cardinal Luis F. Ladaria, SJ, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, just prior to the letter being sent to the USCCB President.
As this post was being written, it was just announced that Pope Francis planned to meet or otherwise confer with President Joe Biden on the day before the U.S. Bishops’ meeting. This had raised some alarm among many faithful Catholics who support the bishops’ effort to develop a uniform policy on Communion for Catholic politicians who openly promote abortion, legislate to restrict religious freedom, and support same-sex marriage and transgender ideology. President Biden, who professes to be Catholic, has promoted all of these. He has also stated his intent to repeal the Hyde Amendment which since 1974 has protected taxpayers from forced violations of their consciences by using taxpayer funds to promote and provide abortions.
However, in the eleventh hour, there has been a new development. On June 15, the day before we publish this post, Catholic News Agency issued the following statement: “The President’s entourage had originally requested for Biden to attend Mass with the Pope early in the morning, but the proposal was nixed by the Vatican after considering the impact that Biden receiving Holy Communion from the Pope would have on the discussions the USCCB is planning to have during their meeting starting Wednesday, June 16.”
I suggest reading the rest of the brief CNA article. However, it requires a little reading between the lines. It seems that it was President Biden's Administration that requested the meeting with the Holy Father to take place after the G7 Summit while the President is still in Europe. Once the Vatican agreed to the meeting, it seems that President Biden's entourage made a subsequent request for Biden to attend Mass with the Holy Father. The timing of this leads me and many others to believe that the real objective here was for a photo-op of Biden receiving the Eucharist from the Pope on the eve of the U.S. Bishops' meeting on that very subject.
Vatican officials saw through this and declined to allow the Mass to take place. It seems that the Biden Administration then cancelled the meeting because its real objective had been negated.
The Two Father Jameses
Father Dwight Longenecker has written an intriguing post entitled, “The Tale of Two Fr. Jameses.” He contrasts the activism and public statements of Father James Altman and Father James Martin, SJ, two priests on polar ends of the Catholic theological and political spectrum. He contrasts the two priests thusly:
“Both priests have somewhat of a prophetic voice in the Church — Fr. Altman from the conservative side and Fr. Martin from the liberal. Fr. Altman castigates Catholics who voted for Joe Biden. Fr. Martin openly supports Biden. As such, the two Fr. Jameses are poster boys for the two Catholic Churches in America today. Fr. Altman for the traditional, orthodox, strict version of Catholicism. Fr. Martin for the accommodating, relativistic, and subjective version of Catholicism. Fr. Altman: doctrinal. Fr. Martin: pastoral. Fr. Altman: Rational. Fr. Martin: Sentimental.”
The article is brief, but I have a fundamental disagreement with a part of it. Father Longenecker went on to characterize Father Altman as one who “campaigns against a Catholic hierarchy that is in bed with the Democratic Party” while Father Martin, “in manipulative and disingenuous ways has used his media platform to promote the blessing of same-sex unions and to encourage homosexuality.” Father Longenecker asks an important question:
“Fr. Altman ... has fearlessly upheld the traditional Catholic faith and has never come close to preaching anything contrary to the Gospel. His sin? To be ‘divisive.’ Why, may I ask, has no one suggested that New Ways Ministry and Fr. Martin (who have scandalized thousands of Catholics) are divisive?”
Father Longenecker went on to suggest that the clash between the two churches (left and right) in America today recalls the Jansenist-Jesuit conflict in 18th Century France. As the faith came under attack by Protestantism and the Enlightenment, French Catholics lapsed into Jansenism, a kind of “Catholic Calvinism.” He suggests that Fr. Altman’s style is an example of this Catholic Calvinism. I disagree.
The reason I disagree is laid out in a post of mine entitled, “The Once and Future Catholic Church.” It makes a case for why the traditional stress on Catholic orthodoxy and fidelity is the most pastoral approach a priest can take in a society drifting rapidly toward “Cancel Culture” socialism. Father James Martin seems to not want to rest until American Catholicism breaks from Rome and becomes indistinguishable from the Episcopal church and its determination to tear the Worldwide Anglican Communion asunder.
In these pages recently, priest and canon lawyer, Father Stuart MacDonald, wrote “Bishops, Priests, and Weapons of Mass Destruction.” He wrote of the trajectory from the U.S. Bishops adoption of “zero tolerance” in 2002 to a policy emerging now in which bishops may discipline and remove priests for any vague cause whatsoever. And believe me, it will be the Father Altmans, and not the Father Martins, who are subjected to this policy. It is difficult to believe that Pope Francis has allowed this while at the same time speaking of his concern for the morale of priests.
This policy transforms the Holy Father into an Orwellian Big Brother and our bishops into enforcers of Orwell’s progressive GroupThink. Such a policy is beloved of “Cancel Culture” progressivism. It lends itself to the suppression of rights. It promotes witch hunts, and at its heart it is far more Calvinist than Catholic.
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The Once and Future Catholic Church
A Few Bold Bishops in Defense of Religious Liberty
There are hopeful signs that some Catholic bishops are speaking boldly about the erosion of religious rights even while facing criticism for it from other bishops.
There are hopeful signs that some Catholic bishops are speaking boldly about the erosion of religious rights even while facing criticism for it from other bishops.
The Catho1ic World Report is a venerable old publication of Ignatius Press that is now only available as an online magazine. The publication recently posted through its Twitter account that Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s nominee for the post of Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services, is (or was) “a biological man who [now] identifies as a transgender woman.”
That mere statement of verifiable fact by a Catholic publication resulted in a charge of “hateful conduct” by Twitter and the suspension of its account. After the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights posted this story, I was one of many thousands who emailed Twitter in protest. My protest message charged that Twitter’s response poses a significant threat not only to religious liberty but to freedom of speech and freedom of the press as well, three of the fundamental rights defined in the First Amendment.
I have no delusion that my message to Twitter made a difference, but Twitter rescinded its suspension of CWR ’s account the next day. It nonetheless struck me after this affair that the tyranny of such suppression of rights and civil liberties is the result of two forces working in tandem with each other:
the noise of a few
and the silence of many.
The suspension of the Catholic World Report ’s Twitter account was the result of a single complaint by an LGBTQ activist. The reconsideration came as a result of a multitude of protests on the side of right. I am proud to have been one of them.
We live in a time in which the measure of our self-worth is not determined by our system of values or our moral fiber in living up to them for the greater good. As a culture, we have been lulled into a quest for social media “likes” and approval from those whose mission it is to discard and replace the truths we have long lived by. Any media source that does not uphold the sensitivities of identity politics and the progressive social agenda will find itself parked far outside the public square.
The Catholic World Report simply did what the news media is supposed to do. The news media has traditionally been dubbed, “The Fourth Estate,” its public role being a much needed checks and balance on government. CWR reported no falsehood, nor did it cast any aspersion on President Biden’s appointee to Health and Human Services. The Catholic publication simply pointed out that the nominee has a lifestyle that by implication may lend itself to bias against traditional moral beliefs and practices.
Then Twitter was allowed to do what the Chinese Communist Party does on a daily basis. It eliminated from public view information, regardless of its truth, that the progressive agenda does not want us lesser folks to see or hear. I hope I am not the only one who resents this. As a Catholic, as a writer — even as a condemned prisoner — I resent it with every fiber of my being.
Les Miserables
One of the most visited posts at Beyond These Stone Walls has had an effect that I never intended. It is “Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean.” My post has been visited by countless high school students around the world who have used it as a source of “CliffNotes” when assigned a book report on the novel. I am glad to have been some service, but the novel itself is soaring. So is its musical rendition that has appeared on Broadway and in theaters across the globe. Bear with me. There is a point here and I am getting to it.
My post about Les Miserables above tells the story of Bishop Bienvenue (which means “Welcome” in the novel’s original French). Bishop Bienvenue is one of literature’s most noble characters. He seeks out the poor and downtrodden, sees himself primarily as a servant, and has no interest in amassing political clout or Earthly power in any other form. His encounter with ex-convict Jean Valjean sets the latter on a course toward his own noble future. The two are unforgettable literary characters.
Victor Hugo wrote and published Les Miserables in 1862. In the decades after the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, France entered a period of anti-clericalism. Bishops and priests were widely regarded with disdain. When Victor Hugo’s son read the manuscript for Les Miserables, he pleaded with his father to change the character of Bishop Bienvenue to someone the French might more easily see as noble. It is one of the ironies of French literature that Victor Hugo’s son wanted Bishop Bienvenue recast as a lawyer.
But Hugo defended his choice. He argued that Bishop Bienvenue may not represent a Catholic bishop that France has in real life, but rather he represents the bishop that France wants to have. I find a sort of parallel in this time of our own cultural revolution. Many Catholics struggle to maintain and nurture an identity as Catholics on a moral course against a more vocal majority speeding toward identity politics and a culture of open disregard for the value of human life.
The United States has now elected the second Catholic president in its history. He has described himself as a devout Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket everyplace he goes. He has also also openly promoted unlimited and unrestricted access to abortion at any point in a pregnancy and has pledged to repeal the Hyde Amendment which for decades has spared taxpayers from being forced to violate their consciences by providing taxpayer funded abortions.
If such a situation existed in 1862, Victor Hugo’s Bishop Bienvenue would have as the least of his concerns the erosion of his social standing or political clout if he presented an apostate nominally Catholic leader with merciful but truthful fraternal correction. I described the problem that the current President brings to Catholics of conscience in a previous post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life."
The mainstream media has played down this conflict while playing up the President’s Catholic identity. So the media never revealed a statement published by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez at the time of the President’s inauguration. With inherent charity and true moral leadership, Archbishop Gomez commended this President for his thoughtful concern for the plight of immigrants (a concern that I share after some experience with Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Archbishop Gomez also spoke, and wrote, of this President’s unapologetic promotion of abortion, his threat against the Hyde Amendment — which he publicly supported until he ran for President — and his stated intent to codify into federal law the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade so that it cannot be readdressed by the current or any other future Court. These, according to Archbishop Gomez, are the preeminent Catholic issues of our time.
Accommodations in the Garden of Good and Evil
The Washington Post accused the Archbishop of “assailing” the President over abortion rights. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter described the statement as “churlish.” I had to look up “churlish” since I hardly ever use the word. It means “surly” or “mean spirited,” the absolute opposite of the Archbishop’s demeanor or intent. NCR ’s Winters also wrote that Archbishop Gomez “threw cold water on the most Catholic Inauguration in history.”
Archbishop Gomez went on to add in his statement his “deep concern for the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.” This latter concern is heightened by some of the nominees our devout Catholic President has put forth. Foremost among these is Xavier Becerra, current Attorney General of California. He is passionate about expanded access to abortion and embyonic stem cell research. Beccera has been awarded One-Hundred percent ratings on reproductive rights by Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
In “Becerra Is a Threat to Life and Liberty” Bill Donohue wrote in the February 2021 issue of Catalyst that “Becerra is one of the cultural warriors” threatening to haul the Little Sisters of the Poor back into court again if they do not comply with a mandate to provide insurance coverage for contraception. In a previous issue of Catalyst, Bill Donohue wrote of the current President, “It is okay for Catholics to bludgeon the Little Sisters of the Poor so long as they carry a rosary.”
Of all the responses to the courageous statement of Archbishop Jose Gomez, however, the one from Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich is the most troubling. As the elected President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Gomez carefully framed his statement in accord with Catholic teaching, inc1uding Catholic social teaching. Using his Twitter account, Cardinal Blase Cupich publicly rebuked the Archbishop describing his statement as “ill considered.” He suggested that the statement should have been vetted before the entire body of bishops for discussion and a vote. I know of no other Catholic bishop who spoke against the statement. I applaud Archbishop Gomez for his fidelity.
And he is not alone. In an equally courageous statement, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote forcefully against state and local government declarations that Catholic Mass is not an essential activity worthy of consideration.
Writing boldly for The Wall Street Journal, Archbishop Cordileone spoke truth to power in “California’s Unscientific Worship Ban.” The Governors of California and New York have been in lockstep with one another on this, a point I made recently in “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” Archbishop Cordileone described his long ordeal against civil authority at both the state and local level. He did not mince his words:
"Whether religious services are ‘essential’ isn’t a matter for government to decide ... In lifting California’s blanket ban on indoor worship (in a 6-3 decision), the high court rightly acknowledged the blatant unfairness of treating religious worship differently from secular activities such as shopping ... Such blatant disregard for the Constitution bodes ill for everyone. These next four years will be a time to coalesce around core ideals or continue to divide along ideological lines.”
Even as the pandemic lessened during the summer and many other activities opened up, the City of San Francisco doubled down on its bans for religious gatherings. All indoor worship was banned while even outdoor services were limited to no more than 12 participans. At the same time, the city government had nothing to say about street protests that were openly allowed to continue, and with some in the city’s government participating.
We who have faced this pandemic with a dismal sense of Les Miserables are empowered by the witness of Archbishops Gomez and Cordileone.
Bishop Bienvenue lives on.
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Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean
