Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress

In Cebu, Philippines Pornchai Max Moontri was flag bearer for the Kingdom of Thailand at the 5th Asian Apostolic Congress Pilgrimage of Hope in Divine Mercy.

November 13, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Many readers know that I earn $2.00 per day as the legal clerk in a prison law library. Among other tasks, I assist prisoners, many of whom are my friends, who faced deportation from the United States. Their destinations have so far included Brazil, Cambodia, China, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam. Despite the advice of Saint Padre Pio to “Pray, Hope, and Don’t Worry,” I have worried the most about my friend, Pornchai Max Moontri. He faced a nearly impossible assimilation to a country and culture he had neither seen nor been exposed to since he was taken from Thailand at age 11 in 1985.

Pornchai faced assimilation to Thailand after an absence of 36 years, 30 of them in a U.S. prison. I worried about his language barrier, about the absence of any family or material support, about the mountains of crushing discouragement that awaited him along this path. Readers of this blog may have seen a recent “Voices from Beyond” feature describing a project from an Arizona State University student who chose Beyond These Stone Walls as her thesis project in Ethnology, also known as Cultural Anthropology. Her project was motivated in part by interest, not so much in my story, but in Pornchai’s. It included an interview with Dilia E. Rodriguez, Ph.D., our editor who submitted her own perspective on Pornchai’s presence at this blog:

“Initially, I was struck by how many posts are about or mention Pornchai Moontri. After a while I came to think that their profound bond was like that of friends who endure the horrors of war together and survive. But now I think it is much more profound than that.

“God has inspired many truth seekers to investigate the case of Father MacRae, … but God wanted to reveal this with more than facts. He would reveal it with the powerful transformation of lives and souls. Pornchai had been viciously sexually and physically abused for years by a man who trafficked him from Thailand at the age of eleven and murdered his mother. Pornchai escaped and lived on the streets for all of his teen years. Then at age 18 he killed a man who tackled him and pinned him to the ground. After years of enduring violent sexual abuse this sent Pornchai into a rage.

“Having learned that Father Gordon MacRae had been convicted of sexual abuse, Pornchai should have wanted to stay as far away from him as possible. But Pornchai’s instinct told him otherwise. They became friends and Pornchai asked Father Gordon to be his cellmate for the next fifteen years until the time of his deportation to his native Thailand in 2020. In “Pornchai’s Story,” an article published by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, Pornchai described that Father Gordon ‘is my best friend and the person I trust most in this world.’

“While living with Father Gordon, Pornchai earned his high school diploma with honors and also pursued studies at Stratford Career Institute and in theology at Catholic Distance University. He was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, taking the name, ‘Maximilian’ as his Christian name in honor of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, a Patron Saint of Prisoners, Writers, Refugees, and Beyond These Stone Walls.” Back to Father Gordon ...

The 5th Asian Apostolic Congress on Mercy

From October 10 to 19, 2024, I was inspired to receive a steady stream of photos and videos sent to the tablet in the prison cell I once shared with Pornchai Max Moontri. From the far side of the world in Cagayan de Oro and Cebu City, Philippines the photos were sent to me by Max (he mostly goes by Max now) who was among the delegates from Divine Mercy Thailand at the 5th Asian Apostolic Congress on Mercy: Pilgrimage of Hope. The event drew some 5,000 pilgrims from ten Southeast Asian nations and others from around the world. As the photos came in, I was stunned at the sheer magnitude of this international event.

The first photos I received now form the collage above this section. They were taken when Max was chosen to present the flag of Thailand in procession at the opening ceremony of the Congress. Khun Yela Smit, Outreach Director of Divine Mercy Thailand, and Nithat Nawachartkosit its President asked Max to carry and present the flag of his homeland. The honor spoke volumes to my heart about how Divine Mercy can enter even the most wounded souls to connect with the mercy of God in hope for redemption and restorative justice.

The sight of Max standing before that immense crowd proudly holding the flag of his country brought tears to my eyes. In a photo from the AACOM website at the end of this post, you can see the face of Pornchai Max among delegates from other nations as he prepares for the procession to present his country’s flag.

Longtime readers of these pages already know the back story of Max’s life that our editor, Dilia E. Rodriguez summarized above. You can deduce from her words how steep a climb Pornchai’s path to Divine Mercy had been. Max says he was on this path because of me. I see signs that it was always the other way around. I have been on this path because God saw our lives long before we were even born. That is a difficult concept, but one magnified and embraced by Saint Maximilian Kolbe himself.

Just weeks before writing this, Jim Reilly, a reader from the Chicago area, sent me a series of newsletters from the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Among them was a profound message from our Patron Saint whose name Pornchai-Max chose as his own. St. Maximilian’s message quelled any lingering doubt I might have had about the Divine Mercy that binds us even from a world apart:

“For every human being on Earth, God has destined the fulfillment of a determined mission. Even from when He created the Universe, He directed causes so that the chain of effects would be unbroken, and conditions and circumstances for fulfillment of this mission would be most appropriate and fitting. Every individual is born with particular gifts and talents that are applicable to, and in keeping with, the assigned task. Throughout life the environment and circumstances so arrange themselves as to make possible the achievement of the goal and to facilitate its unfolding.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe, “Prophet of the Civilization of Love”

I had to several times read that profound description of Actual Grace at work in our lives, across generations and even across millennia, before I could settle on the absolute truth of it. What Saint Maximilian wrote is mind-boggling, but now I live by it. Like Maximilian himself, I may even die by it.

I have been a priest for over 42 years, thirty of them in a Purgatory of unjust exile like Saint Maximilian himself. I call it “unjust” because, well, from every human standard it is. And yet I can see that it has not been without purpose — without God’s purpose, and I submit to it now with no further doubts. A few years ago, I was present at one of several Divine Mercy retreat programs offered in this prison by the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception from the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I wrote several posts about these spiritual experiences, but one that stands out was in memory of the late Fr. Seraphim Michalenko. That post was “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare.” What follows is an excerpt:

“In the 1970s, Fr. Seraphim Michalenko smuggled the Diary of St. Faustina out of Communist-occupied Poland. Over forty years later he smuggled Divine Mercy into a prison. Divine Mercy would one day become for me the framework of my very existence as a man, as a priest, as a prisoner.

“Fr Seraphim was appointed by the Vatican to be Vice-Postulator for the cause of canonization of Saint Faustina. Internationally known as an expert on her life and famous Diary, Father Seraphim was a catalyst for publishing it and documenting the miracles that became a basis for Faustina’s place among the Communion of Saints.

“Three years before his death in 2021, Father Seraphim was brought to this prison for a Mass. After Mass in the prison chapel, Max Moontri and I were both asked to remain because Father Seraphim wanted to speak with us. We both knew about him but had no idea that he knew about us. Max was nervous! ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he whispered to me. When Father Seraphim approached, he asked to speak with Max first. Fifteen minutes later, Max emerged smiling from a chapel office to tell me that I am next.

“As Father Seraphim and I spoke, he asked about our connection with St. Maximilian Kolbe, how he entered our lives, and how we came to Divine Mercy. In the telling, I mentioned my lifelong regard for a famous passage from St. John Henry Newman about how we are ‘links in a chain, bonds of connection between persons.’ I spoke of how this has guided me. I remember asking Father Seraphim how I could ever be certain of the 'definite service' God has committed to me that He has not committed to another. Father Seraphim leaned a little closer to me and whispered with quiet certainty as he pointed, ‘He is standing right over there.’ He was pointing to Pornchai-Max.”

— from “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare”

In Cebu City : The Pilgrimage of Hope

On an Autumn evening back in 2014, my roommate, Max and I were summoned to the office of this prison’s chaplain, Catholic Deacon Jim Daly. He presented each of us with a book signed by its author, Felix Carroll from the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy. The book was a now well known Marian Press title, Loved , Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions. In Chapter 11, it contains the story of Max’s conversion. It being “Chapter 11” is itself highly symbolic.

Max suffered much in life, and he had to eventually come to terms with a hard truth. He had to accept his past life as bankrupt in order to start over on a path to seek and find God. Both our faces lit up as we turned that night to Chapter 11 in the book to see Max smiling while standing in the prison Chapel with Bishop John McCormack after having just been received into the Church. Bishop McCormack later told me that he had never before appeared in a photograph in any published book and was proud to now be so immortalized next to Max Moontri “whose sacred quest to learn trust stands as a monument to hope.” As we walked in the dark through the prison complex that night, Max turned to me holding up his book and asked, “How did this happen?”

When invited by Divine Mercy Thailand to the Philippines in October, Max arrived two days before the Asian Apostolic Congress on Mercy was scheduled to begin. The delegates from Divine Mercy Thailand who traveled together went first to the Diocese of Cagayan de Oro. There, in the city of El Salvador, Max was surprised to see in the sanctuary of the Basilica a mosaic of famous Divine Mercy saints. Some in the group asked Max to stand before the mosaic of Saint Maximilian Kolbe while others snapped his picture. If a picture speaks a thousand words, the one above speaks entire volumes.

Father Seraphim Michalenko once confirmed for me what I had already begun to suspect. Shortly after, the truth of it appeared in a 2014 issue of Marian Helper magazine in an article by Felix Carroll, “Mary Is at Work Here.” This is an excerpt:

“The Marians believe Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first [for Marian Consecration]. The reason eventually was revealed. It turns out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri who was featured in last year’s Marian Press title, “Loved, Lost, Found:17 Divine Mercy Conversions.” Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion in no small part due to a friendship he formed with fellow inmate — and now cellmate — Fr. Gordon MacRae who chronicles their lives in a celebrated website, BeyondTheseStoneWalls.com.”

That was when I began to pray. I do not just mean the recitation of the words of prayers. I mean “to pray,” from a heart opening to God its shades of darkness as well as its light. And it was for the first time in my life and priesthood. When (then) Blessed Faustina was to be beatified in 1993, one of the Marian priests who worked toward her canonization was Father Richard Drabik who was also my spiritual director in a spiritual renewal center for priests in which I worked in ministry. Fr. Richard’s Introduction to the Diary of Saint Faustina now graces its opening pages.

In my office one night, Father Drabik told me that he was leaving for Rome the next day for the Beatification of Saint Faustina. He asked me to write a personal petition that he would place on the altar at the Beatification Mass. I hastily wrote something spontaneous. I am told that the most efficacious prayer is that which wells up spontaneously from the heart and soul without forethought or rehearsal. My prayer, which I scribbled before sealing it in an envelope was, “I ask for the intercession of Saint Faustina that I may have the courage to be the priest God calls me to be.”

Be careful what you ask for! St. Faustina is now on the left of the Divine Mercy mosaic where Max Moontri stood, pictured above. Two weeks after writing that petition, I was arrested by the Gestapo and charged with the false claims that sent me to prison. Lawfare is outrageous, and it is also contagious. Wrongful imprisonment is the most arduous path I have ever been on. Over the next fifteen years, having been moved from one Purgatory to another, Pornchai Moontri showed up, a story we captured in “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”

Four years before I began writing this, Pornchai-Max was deported to his native Thailand. In October 2024, he was invited by the group, Divine Mercy Thailand, to join them at the 5th Asian Apostolic Congress: Pilgrimage of Hope held in Cebu City, Philippines. Upon return from the Pilgrimage, Pornchai was also asked to take an active role in the group’s Thai apostolate beginning with the telling of his own powerful life story and conversion.

When I received the Pilgrimage brochure, I was surprised to see that among the presenters would be Father Joel de los Reyes from Barrigada in the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam, the very place where Pornchai’s mother was murdered, the most painful chapter in his life. Father Reyes’ address was entitled, “Mercy Shines in the Darkness of Our Life.” It was time for the healing of these memories. Other presenters from our more immediate past included Very Reverend Chris Alar, MIC, Provincial Superior of the Marians, and Fr Patrice Chocholski. Both are from the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy which played a major role in my priesthood, in Max’s conversion. Divine Mercy also became our summons to Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary which beats in our lives still.

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I invite you to visit a photo album from Pornchai’s pilgrimage by scrolling through the short videos and images below:

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.”

In the Rearview Mirror: Tom Clancy and The Hunt for Red October

Tom Clancy passed from this life on October 1, 2013. A devout Catholic, he was a master of the military techno-thriller and a prophet of the World War III end times.

October 16, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae

Hurricane season has prevented a new post at Beyond These Stone Walls in mid-October this year. I have heard from both helpers and readers in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and other states greatly impacted by a hurricane season like no other in recent memory. The meteorological storms seems almost to reflect the winds of political discord as we face an uncertain future in the slowly unraveling United States. No matter the election outcome, or the winds of change it brings, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

To write and publish a post each week, I am entirely dependent on a small number of kind and generous people who assist me with their time and talent. We have all learned to roll with the punches in these times, but in this stormy October one essential helper lost her phone, and another lost his home. Both are safe, thank God, but the combined impact for us this week is a rerun.

But it is no ordinary rerun. I wrote it eleven years ago this week to honor the life of an author and prophetic figure who taught me much of what I know about the political winds of this world. His first book, The Hunt for Red October, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984. I mentioned it in a recent post that a multitude of readers have since urged me to link to again. That post was “September 11, 2001, Freedom, Terrorism and Kamala Harris.” It serves as a diagram about threats posed by the Middle East, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and our current state of global unrest.

Over the course of two decades, Tom Clancy has educated me about how we got to where we are in global politics. In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, I learned of the seedbed of terrorism that was and now is again Afghanistan under Taliban control. Red Storm Rising, gave me a terrifying preview of World War III led by Russia and China, a war that must be prevented at all cost. In Patriot Games Northern Irish terrorism carried out atrocities agains the United Kingdom on both British and American soil.

In The Sum of all Fears, the middle East pursuit of nuclear weapons and nuclear war kept me up at night. In Red Rabbit, the Russian KGB link to an assassination attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II was exposed. Clear and Present Danger took me to the U.S. southern border and its infiltration by drug cartels and other criminal enterprises.

Then Debt of Honor and Executive Orders in a combined 1,600 pages, told the gripping story of Middle East Islamic jihad as a highjacked passenger jet was flying at high speed into the U.S. Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress. That account now hauntingly familiar, was told by Tom Clancy three years before the events of September 11, 2001 were conceived in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden.

Finally, in 1,028 pages, The Bear and the Dragon in 2000, Clancy told another prescient story about the brink of World Wall III as China faced an economic crisis, while Russia struggled to regain the power and the glory of the former Soviet Empire. I read them all — some of them twice . Clancy wrote these stories with wide acclaim for the accuracy of his research. He wrote them to inform us about the risks and hazards of our engagement in geopolitics.

But the story I want to stand in for my post this week is none of the above. Another personal hero of mine, the late President Ronald Reagan, called this story “unputdownable!” The sun should not set on the month of October without paying respects to “Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and the Hunt for Red October.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.

You may also like these related posts

Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and The Hunt for Red October

September 11, 2001, Freedom, Terrorism and Kamala Harris

One Nation under God: The Future of the U.S. Supreme Court

The State of Our Freedom, The Content of Our Character

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.”

Kamala Harris Has a Catholic Problem

Kamala Harris is the first Democrat presidential nominee in 40 years to refuse an invitation to the traditional Al Smith dinner hosted by the Archbishop of New York.

October 9, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae and Bill Donohue, PhD

[In the image above, the 2016 Al Smith Dinner featuring nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump making peace with Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP]

Pope Francis recently described the looming 2024 Presidential Election in the United States as a choice between two morally objectionable major candidates. He has urged U.S. Catholics to vote with a well-informed conscience for the candidate and party that represents “the lesser of evils.” The Holy Father did not indicate which of the major candidates he considers to be the least morally compromised and that is as it should be.

However, he did address the matter with news reporters on a flight to Singapore, and he did give a hint. He said that one nominee has an un-Christian position on illegal immigration. Pope Francis added that “not welcoming the migrant is a sin.” Pope Francis thenbadded bluntly that the other nominee “kills children,” which he characterized as an “assassination.” The Catholic Church regards the latter position to be “intrinsically evil.” He then reiterated his advice that Catholics should use their own conscience as their guide when voting.

I am also informed in this matter by a fellow priest, writer and highly respected theologian, The Reverend Peter M.J. Stravinskas of the Priestly Society of St. John Henry Newman. Fr Stravinskas is also Publisher of the fine Catholic theological and pastoral quarterly, The Catholic Response which I highly recommend. In the September/October 2024 edition, he addresses the subject of clergy having a voice in political matters. I cite him here:

“A cleric is never to engage in partisan politics. He is, however, to assist his people in bringing Gospel values to bear on the formation of public policy. In fact, failure to do so would be a gross abdication of his priestly office... . For the moment, I shall deal with only the most pressings issues. Although the GOP platform no longer calls for a constitutional ban on abortion, it does proclaim, ‘We proudly stand for families and life. We believe that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without due process, and that the States are free to pass laws protecting those rights.’ ”

The GOP Pro-Life platform continues: “After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose late term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to birth control, and IVF.”

Father Stravinskas states that those last two examples are what he earlier referred to as unfortunate, unnecessary compromises by the GOP, but ... “On the other hand, the [2024] Democrat platform is the most radical in history at every level. Most distressing is its commitment to press for a constitutional amendment to revive Roe v. Wade and enshrine it in perpetuity.” [And] “On a matter promoted by the Church for over a century, the Republican program supports parental freedom of choice in education, as well as religious freedom rights, while the Democrat goal calls for the suppression of both, as has been their consistent policy for decades.”

Father Stravinskas defers to St. John Paul II and his encyclical Evangelium Vitae in which he noted that when neither political party is ideal, one can vote for the one which inflicts the lesser harm. That position is echoed in the U.S. bishops’ 1998 document, Living the Gospel of Life. While no Catholic can support in good conscience the Democrat proposal for abortion on demand at any stage, one could, in good conscience, support the Republican platform which at least opposes late-term abortion and supports the right of a State to legislate in this matter.

The bishops of the United States have been unwavering in their support of the sanctity of life, the dignity of the family, parental rights in education, and the centrality of religious freedom. These are topics we also championed here at Beyond These Stone Walls, most especially in “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul.”

Kamala’s Catholic Conundrum

A few of my recent postings have raised questions about past anti-Catholic remarks and public positions of one of the two nominees for president representing the two major parties. Given that nearly thirty-percent of the U.S. voting public identifies as Catholic, a significant number of voters are potentially disenfranchised from their democracy in such a situation, forced to set aside their morally informed conscience to adhere to the demands of a secular platform. The post in which I raised this matter was “Kamala Harris, Knights of Columbus and Anti-Catholicism.”

There is much more to be said on the subject, but the latest manifestation of Kamala’s Catholic problem is a traditional political event hosted by the Archbishop of New York called, simply, the Al Smith Dinner. Al Smith was a native New Yorker and statesman who was prominent in both New York and national politics as a Democrat in the l920’s.

He served four terms as Governor of New York State from 1919 to 1929, and was noted for his strong advocacy for social reform, for equal pay for men and women in public school positions, and for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which provided for women’s suffrage.

Al Smith was highly influential in the U.S. Democratic Party when he ran unsuccessfully for President in 1920 and again in 1928, but won the electoral vote in only eight states. Analysts attributed his poor showing in the voting polls to the fact that he was openly committed to both Democratic ideals and his Roman Catholic Faith. It would be another four decades before the United States would elect its first Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy in 1960.

To honor Al Smith’s steadfast dedication to his country, his party, and his faith, the Archdiocese of New York established and hosts an annual event in his honor. The Al Smith Dinner, as it came to be called, has been for decades one of the most prominent and popular political events in this nation. It is a “roast” in the sense that other speakers get to present the two major party nominees in a more positive light than the usual political fare. All enmity is set aside for this one black-tie event hosted by the Archbishop of New York in deference to Al Smith’s faith. Its entire proceeds go to support social welfare programs for women and children under the auspices of Catholic Charities.

The Al Smith dinner has been recently described as the most important and sought out political event of the presidential election cycle. The last nominee to decline its invitation was former Vice President Walter Mondale who became the Democrat nominee in 1984, losing in a landslide vote to Ronald Reagan. The 2024 event is slated to be held in New York City on October 17, and will be the 39th event in this tradition, a tradition that began in 1960 when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon called for unity as Americans despite their political differences.

But without explanation or discussion, Kamala Harris is now the first nominee in forty years to decline to attend the Al Smith Dinner. This has been described by other politicians as a near terminal political mistake. It was described by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, as “a slap in the face of American Catholics.”

In 2020, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump were present for this event and both observed the tradition of unity of purpose. Despite the intensity of their respective campaigns, neither spoke a negative word about the other. The last Presidential nominee to address the Al Smith Dinner alone was Ronald Reagan in 1984. This year, as it now stands, GOP Nominee Donald Trump will do the same.

Others have made “off the record” remarks connecting Ms. Harris’s refusal to participate in this Al Smith event with her apparent disdain for “on the record” interviews to explain her policy positions. At worst, it was suggested “off the record” that she simply does not want to appear “before a room full of prolife Catholics.”

Credit: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Bill Donohue: Harris Is Blowing It with Catholics

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to be president, but her utter lack of engagement with the media has led even her biggest supporters to criticize her public invisibility. This explains why she went on “60 Minutes.” That was a mistake — she could not answer pointed questions. She is better suited to attending what are really TV parties, which is why she is scheduled to go on “The View” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Today she will do an interview with Howard Stern on his radio show.  This is another mistake.  In doing so, she is granting legitimacy to a foul-mouthed anti-Catholic bigot.

We have been tracking Stern for decades.  He has a long history of mocking Jesus, bashing popes, slandering priests and attacking nuns.  Make no mistake, if the object of Stern’s “comedy” were blacks or Asians (Harris’ ancestry), it’s a sure bet she wouldn’t do his show.

A recent Pew Research Center survey has Harris losing to Trump among Catholics by a margin of 52-47.  Moreover, she blew off an invitation to the Al Smith Dinner, the big Catholic event held weeks before the election.  Now she is going on with the obscene Catholic basher, Howard Stern.

What is really strange about this is that Catholics and Independents are the two swing demographics who will decide the election.

Makes us wonder — does Harris realize what she is doing?  We know her boss has checked out, but now it seems she is doing the same, if only for different reasons.

Catholic League Press Release, October 8, 2024

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Here Kamala Harris single-handedly carved the Right to Life out of the Declaration of Independence.

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Note From Father Gordon MacRae: Beyond These Stone Walls has had an ever-increasing presence in the work of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. In the July/August, 2024, issue of Catalyst the “In the News” feature included two commendations for Bill Donohue and the Catholic League “for standing by Father Gordon MacRae when many others in the Church abandoned him.” In the September 2024 issue of Catalyst, Catholic League President Bill Donohue and the organization itself are cited by numerous media venues. Two of these citations were, surprisingly, for “the Catholic League’s role in helping Pornchai Moontri be released from ICE custody and returned to his home country of Thailand.” Our readers were deeply moved by these citations.

Also in the September issue of Catalyst Bill Donohue published an editorial which I have invited him to repeat here and he was very much in agreement. It is part two of this week’s post and is published at our Voices from Beyond entitled

“Catholic Assessment of Kamala Harris.”

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.”

Unjustly in Prison for 30 Years: A Collision of Fury and Faith

From opposite ends of the world Pornchai Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae share thoughts on a dark milestone: Thirty years wrongly in prison on the Day of Padre Pio.

September 18, 2024 by Pornchai ‘Max’ Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae

HERE’S MAX

On September 8, 2020, I left my best friend, Father-G, inside the walls of New Hampshire State Prison where we spent the previous 15 years as cell mates. The term, “cell mates” might seem foreign to you. Having to share a space of about 60 square feet around the clock with another human being can be like torture. The daily drama of cell mates thrown together but never able to live together was the all-day every-day prime time drama of our prison.

I was an angry young man with a very short fuse which caused me to spend most of my prior years in prison in solitary confinement beginning at age 18. I was not very sociable. I trusted no one, and least of all could I trust a priest convicted of the very crimes that tormented my life and set me on a road to destruction. We went through a lot in those years, and over time I came to know with total certainty that this priest was a victim of false witness and a Catholic witch hunt. He became my best friend and the person I trust most in this world. We became each other’s family.

I know in my heart that I would not be free today — physically, mentally, or spiritually — if Father-G had not been present in my life. I wake up each day now on the other side of those stone walls of prison and on the other side of the world from where Father-G lives in captivity still. I now live in Thailand, a land I was taken from at age 11 for someone else’s dark agenda. It is a land I thought I would never see again. I am here today, and free, only because of God and His servant, Father-G.

The day this little introduction appears with Father-G’s post is September 18. It anticipates the September 23rd date on which he was sent to prison thirty years ago in 1994. There was no truth or justice in it. None at all! That is also the date that one of our Patron Saints was freed from another kind of bondage — a bondage that has been a grace for millions of souls. Father-G once described the heroic virtue of the life Padre Pio lived ...

“A half century bearing the wounds of Jesus — all of them, including false witness, rejection, ridicule, public shaming, and the crucifixion of his body and his priesthood, sometimes even by the very Church he served.”

With some help from Dilia, our Editor, I wrote a whole post about this day, about Father-G, and about the sacrifices he made that restored my life and freedom, and saved my soul. I would trade them back to restore his freedom, but he will have none of that. He said that sacrifice is sacred and it is not refundable. I hope you will read my post for it is very important to me. It is my tribute to hope from a time when all mine was stolen from me so Father-G sacrificed his. It is “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Now here, from our prison cell thousands of miles away from where I wake up each day in freedom, is Father-G:

Parallax Views and Inflection Points

On the night before starting my part of this post, I called my friend, Pornchai-Max in Thailand. He asked me how I feel about approaching a 30th year in prison for crimes that never took place. I spent much of that night rehearsing in my mind a long angry rant. How could intense anger not be part of the equation of how I face the injustice, corruption, a cover-up by police and prosecutors and lawyers and judges who heard and ruled on their corruption in secret? How could I feel anything but fury for the people who profited from it all? In the fictitious case against me alone, a million dollars changed hands.

If you have been following publications by Dorothy Rabinowitz, Claire Best, Ryan MacDonald, and a few others over recent years then you are already familiar with all this and there is no need for me to waste your time ranting about it. It would indeed be a waste of my time and yours.

I thank my friend, Max, for his part in this post, and in this story. He and our editor, Dilia E. Rodríguez, have conspired to point me toward a parallax view. That’s a scientific term for what happens when an event or series of events is observed from a new position or angle with insights that were limited or unavailable before. In his introduction, Max mentioned a post he wrote with Dilia’s help just after his return to Thailand in 2020. It is linked at the very end of his Introduction and again at the end of this post. It is very important, and it is my parallax view.

And in recent weeks in these pages, Dilia E. Rodríguez wrote “From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor.” It, too, presents a parallax view, a summary of these 30 painful years in this abomination of unjust imprisonment. Dilia’s conclusion was in part about the mystical connections between me and Max now living on opposite sides of the planet, and the introductions of two Patron Saints into our world. Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe are inflection points in both our lives in and beyond these stone walls.

In science and history, an inflection point is a point at which, usually only in hindsight, an event becomes pivotal, and, once experienced, all perceptions about it change. When I could bring myself, through grace, to look beyond my fury over wrongful imprisonment, our Patron Saints became inflection points and the powers that bind us. Even my language describing this needs a background explanation. To “look beyond my fury over wrongful imprisonment” recalls vividly another “inflection point” that occurred in a dream.

I know I risk sounding a little pretentious here, but in that dream I was instructed by a nighttime visitor on October 2, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, to “look beyond the prison lights,” and when I did, my eyes were opened. I hope to return to this in a week or so in these pages when I write about the Great Patron of Justice, Saint Michael the Archangel.

Prison is not a good place. Let me put that differently. Prison is not a place where much good happens. But what good DOES happen in prison is often spectacular and it accomplishes spectacular things. One could easily dismiss those things as mere coincidence. I did just that for a long time. But a steady stream of graceful events in a place where grace seems otherwise to be entirely absent brings us back to seeing the ordinary as extraordinary. Saint Paul described such a place permeated by the light of faith: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

Convergence : St Maximilian Kolbe Lets Himself In

In my twelfth year of priesthood, I was convicted in a sham trial after refusing multiple plea deals to serve only a year or two in prison. My refusals were met with fury by Judge Arthur Brennan who ridiculed and mocked me before imposing on me a sentence that would live longer than I would live.

The numbers are important. In my twelfth year of priesthood I went to prison, and in my twelfth year in prison, I came as close as I ever had or ever will to despair. The year was 2006. The series of “accidents” leading up to this point are, in hindsight, astonishing. From seemingly out of nowhere, I was contacted by a priest who arranged with this prison’s Catholic chaplain, a deacon, to visit me, though I never understood why. In the previous 12 years, not a single priest had ventured behind these prison walls. Father James McCurry is a Conventual Franciscan priest who said only vaguely that he heard or read about me somewhere and felt compelled to reach out (or in) to me.

In the prison visiting room, his first words after shaking my hand were, “Have you ever heard of St. Maximilian Kolbe?” Fr McCurry told me that he had been the Vice Postulator for the cause of sainthood leading up to St. Maximilian’s canonization in Rome in 1982, the year I was ordained. On the twelfth anniversary of that canonization, and my ordination, Father McCurry felt compelled to visit me. The visit had to be brief.

The year was 2006. One week later, I received in the mail a letter from Father McCurry along with something that I should not have received. It was a laminated holy card depicting Maximilian in both his prison garb from Auschwitz and his Franciscan habit. I should not have received it because laminated cards had been strictly banned for security reasons then. This one, however, mysteriously made its way from the prison mail room to my cell. I was mesmerized by the image on the card. On the backside was “A Prisoner’s Prayer to St. Maximilian Kolbe.” It was about despair.

I taped the card to the top of the battered steel mirror in my cell. It was December 23, 2006. Then I realized with near despair that on that very day, I was a priest in prison one day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. I was losing myself. There is nothing here that supports in any way an identity of priesthood. The image on the mirror impacted me greatly, and painfully. It was three years before Beyond These Stone Walls would begin with my first post, “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror.”

Months earlier, unknown to me at that time, another prisoner was dragged in chains out of years in solitary confinement in a Maine prison and shipped against his will to New Hampshire. After several weeks in “the hole” in high security housing, he arrived on the pod where I live. Walking around the pod to stake out his new turf, a very tough-looking Thai fighter stuck his head in my cell door. Upon seeing the image of Maximilian on my mirror, he stared at it for a time, and then he stared at me asking, “Is this you?”

This man had been through a lot, and was a little rough around the edges. The only part of that he might disagree with today is “a little.” He wore the wounds life had inflicted on him like a shield of armor to keep everyone else away. Everything about him spoke “dangerous,” and indeed he was at times. He had a short fuse, and that kept everyone else at a safe distance — except me.

We somehow became friends. He paid rapturous attention to the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s life and especially how his earthly life ended as he gave it over to the Nazis, his false accusers, to spare the life of a despairing young man. My inflection point with Saint Maximilian was this: The image on my mirror was not about all that I had lost. It was about all that I was called to become. Like Maximilian, I could not change my prison. Not one bit. I could only place it in service to my priesthood.

Saint Maximilian, in turn, led both Max and me to the Immaculata. Through his Divine Mercy Sunday conversion and his consecration to the Lord through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pornchai Moontri took the name Maximilian. Like many in Sacred Scripture, a new name also came with a new life.

Over at our Voices from Beyond section this week, we are featuring “Mary is at Work Here” by Felix Carroll first published in Marian Helper magazine (Spring 2014). It tells the story of Mary, Maximilian, Pornchai-Max, and me, and the wonder of Divine Mercy we embraced as it also embraced us.

Out of Time and Space, Padre Pio

Our second inflection point — the point at which our spiritual fortunes changed — was Saint Padre Pio who is venerated in the Church calendar on the same date on which I was wrongly convicted and sent to prison. It is also the date Padre Pio died. This was briefly alluded to by Max in his part of this post, but I would like to expand on it a bit because I know that Max will be reading this from half a world away.

Because of the connection between Padre Pio and the date of my imprisonment, I decided to write a post about this mysterious saint. Padre Pio died in 1968 when I was fifteen years old and had just begun my return to a long neglected Catholic identity. I today cannot articulate what exactly called me to that change in such a tumultuous time as 1968. I wrote a story about the calumny and false witness Padre Pio suffered in his priesthood. It was that which I could initially most connect with. The post was titled, “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial.” It was published in the early days of this blog.

After I wrote it, I received a rather frantic letter from the late Pierre Matthews in Belgium. Pierre learned about me from a lengthy 2005 article by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal. He and I exchanged several letters back in the few years after those articles first appeared in 2005. Pierre was alarmed about my Padre Pio post. He urgently wanted me to know that he had a personal encounter with Padre Pio when he was 15 years old.

Like many in Europe at that time, Pierre’s father had sent him to a boarding school. The school was sponsoring a train trip to a few points in Italy. When Pierre’s father learned of this, he sent Pierre a letter instructing him to take a train to a place called San Giovanni Rotondo, and go to a Capuchin Friary. Pierre was instructed to ask for a blessing from Padre Pio.

Pierre was skeptical, but did as his father asked. He took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo, and rang the bell. A friar answered the door and led young, nervous Pierre to a foyer. Pierre asked to see Padre Pio. “Impossibile!” the friar snapped back. He gave Pierre a prayer card and started to usher him back toward the door.

Just then, from a wide staircase leading to the foyer, a bearded Capuchin with bandaged hands came slowly down the stairs with eyes focused on Pierre. Padre Pio approached him while the astonished friar at the door whispered in Italian, “Do not touch his hands.” Padre Pio then placed his bandaged hands on Pierre’s head and spoke a blessing, making the Sign of the Cross.

Sixty years later, when Pierre read at Beyond These Stone Walls that Pornchai Moontri had decided to become Catholic and would enter the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, Pierre pleaded with me to ask Pornchai to allow him to act as Godfather to sponsor his reception into the Church. Then, again, things that should not have happened did happen. Pierre could not attend a Baptism in the prison chapel so I acted as proxy. But he could arrange to visit either me or Max in the prison visiting room a few days before. Under the rules, he could be on the visiting list of only one of us. That rule was impenetrable, firmly embedded in stone.

“The worst they can say is no,” Pornchai said. So I wrote to the prison warden and explained the details. The request came back miraculously just in time. It was approved that Mr. Matthews could visit with both of us on the same day, but separately. This was, and still is, unheard of. Pierre told us both the story I told above — the story of his strange encounter with Padre Pio many years earlier.

In his visit with me, Pierre bowed his head and asked for my blessing. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I placed my hand upon Pierre knowing that the spiritual imprint of Padre Pio’s blessing was still in and upon this man, and I was overwhelmed to share in it.

I do not fully understand the mystery of what happened to the angry priest who pondered prison and the fate of his priesthood, or the angry young man who pondered the deep wounds life had inflicted upon his body, mind and spirit. We are both still here, and on opposite sides of the planet now, but we are both also changed. As I am typing this, a friend sent me a letter with a brief prayer at the top. It is a parody of the Serenity Prayer, and it could now be the prayer of my priesthood:

“God, grant me
Serenity to accept the people
I cannot change,
Courage to change
the only one I can, and the
Wisdom to know
that it’s me!”

Thank you for reading these stories of our lives. May the Lord Bless you always, and keep you.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We hope you will subscribe if you haven’t already. It’s free, and we will usually haunt your Inbox only once per week. You might also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

‘Mary Is at Work Here’ — a Marian Helper presentation

On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized

The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor

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A Special Note to our Readers: Thank you for your readership and support of this blog. As annual fees become due, Father Gordon could use your help if willing and able. Additionally, we have been notified that the National Center for Reason and Justice is ceasing operations after two decades of advocacy and sponsorship of the defense of Father MacRae and other wrongfully convicted.

For any future defense of Father MacRae it is imperative that the National Center for Reason and Justice website at ncrj.org remain active and in place. It contains volumes of crucial legal information on the Father MacRae case and must be preserved or all will be lost. We have been granted permission from the NCRJ to take over management of its site and preserve its contents. This will add to our annual operating expenses. If readers are able to help, it would be greatly appreciated.

Please see Contact and How to Help

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.”

God, Grant Me Serenity. I’ll be Waiting

The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr is much more than a few verses on the walls of a Twelve Step program. It’s a vital petition to recover from spiritual wounds.

“Forgiveness is to give up all hope for a better past.”

For the last several years where I live, greeting cards of any sort have been banned. It was somehow determined that some people on the “outside” found a way to separate the card stock on which greeting cards are made, and then insert narcotics between the layers of the card. I hear that there were machines that could detect all this, but the cheaper and more expedient way of dealing with it was to simply ban all cards from friends and families of prisoners. This was a morale bombshell especially around Christmas which is already sanitized to be virtually unrecognizable in prison. The draconian measure has been resolved a bit, but not for the better. We now get no mail at all. We receive only a photocopy of any mail that you send while the original is shredded. Bah, humbug!

The word “draconian” is an interesting word. Some people spell it with a capital “D” because it’s one of those words that came into English from the name of an actual historical person. Though technically the capital isn’t necessary, the word refers to the application of harsh laws such as those codified by Draco, a legislator in the city-state of Athens, Greece in the Seventh Century, B.C. Draco was notorious for imposing the death penalty for both serious and trivial crimes, thus giving rise to “draconian,” a rather uncomplimentary word named after him. When I explained all this some years ago to my friend, Pornchai-Max, he said, “maybe in a thousand years, going off on long, boring explanations about history will be called ‘gordonian.’” HMMPH! He lives in Thailand now and out of my reach, except by telephone.

Anyway, back to mail call. Of course, every prisoner loves mail, but when it comes to replying to it all, I get a D+ at best. A part of my excuse is that I can purchase only six Smith Corona typewriter ribbons per year, so that means having to handwrite most mail. So I find myself writing much of the same things over and over. It’s especially difficult to respond to overseas mail because the prison commissary sells only U.S. First Class 73¢ stamps, and has a purchase limit of twenty per week. Writing overseas takes three of them which costs much more than a day’s pay here. So some of my mail tends to pile up until I am able to respond.

I am so very sorry for this, but prison is one reality I wish I could change, but can’t. I hope it doesn’t discourage you from writing. Sometimes I try to incorporate responses to letters in some of my posts, and hope that readers can detect some of their letters between the lines. As an example, this excerpt is from a letter received just before Christmas last year from an Ohio reader (but still in a pile in my cell):

“Dear Fr MacRae: I first learned about you when I read the book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions [by Felix Carroll]. I am always so inspired by other people’s conversions! When I read the chapter about Pornchai Moontri I was very touched by his story and remarkable conversion and, frankly, I was shocked by your story. I became very concerned when I looked you up online and found your blog and read some of your articles… It did not take me long to have your blogs come right to my inbox and I gobble up everything you write. You inspire me to want to be a better follower of Christ and to accept the things I cannot change in my life.”

The writer added, in a paragraph later, “You are doing so much good despite what was done to you. Your light is still shining.” On the same day, I received another letter from a reader in the U.K. in which he wrote that my posts remind him of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous Letters and Papers from Prison. Talk about pressure! This resulted in a post by me on my birthday, “Resistance: A Birthday in the Shadow of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

I had long been aware of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous Lutheran pastor condemned to prison in Hitler’s Germany because of his writing. Both of the letters described above made me think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer although the first one never mentioned him. He never knew in life the profound impact that his writings from prison would have on others for generations to come.

I once read a superb interview with Eric Metaxas by Kate Bachelder in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The Death of God Is Greatly Exaggerated”. In it, Eric Metaxas

“recalls how in 1939 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was sitting safely in New York at Union Theological Seminary. He elected to return to Germany, what Mr. Metaxas calls ‘the great decision.’ What would animate someone to leave comfort and security for the depraved Nazi Germany, where he would surely be arrested for supporting the Jews?”

The Serenity Prayer

There is an answer to that question, but first let’s get back to the pre-Christmas letter cited above from an Ohio reader. She mentioned that my posts inspire her “to want to be a better follower of Christ and to accept the things I cannot change in my life.” You might instantly recognize the latter half of that sentence as a reference to what is now commonly known as “The Serenity Prayer.”

It’s one of the most iconic prayers in common use in Western culture, and a portion of it adorns the walls and literature, of every meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the world, as well as most other self-help endeavors based on the Twelve Steps of A.A. The prayer was written in 1926 by Lutheran pastor and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, but most people know it only by the few verses adopted by A.A. Here is its original form:

God, grant me
Serenity to accept the things
I cannot change;
Courage to change the things
I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enduring one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship
as a pathway to peace.
Taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
and not as I would have it.

Trusting that You
will make all things right
if I but surrender to Your will;
That I may be
reasonably happy in this life, and
supremely happy with You in the next.

— Reinhold Niebuhr, 1926

Courage to Change the Things I Can

The famous prayer begins with a request for the grace of serenity, but in my current location, as it was in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison, there is little of it to be found on the outside. I received a letter from a reader recently who told me of the imprisonment of his wife of some fifty years. It is not a physical prison, but it is no less of a prison than the one I am in. Having lost and buried their own son from cancer, she finds herself in a prison of distrust and resentment over the losses of the past. It’s the sort of prison that has so many of us under lock and key.

“Forgiveness is to give up all hope for a better past.” I began this post with that quote, but I do not know its origin. A fellow prisoner whose mother died while he was in prison, stood in my doorway one morning to tell me that someone sent him that quote. It made me realize how much serenity requires the grace of surrender for the events of the past. It’s a real challenge where I am, but it’s a real challenge wherever any of you are too. Dare we hope? Dare we believe? Both take serenity, courage, and wisdom in the present moment. Our crosses of the present cannot be an excuse for retreating into the past.

The prisoner whose mother died spoke with me at length about the death of his mother, and about the painful letting go that it required of him with no opportunity for goodbye other than from within his own heart. I gave him a copy of “A Corner of the Veil,” about the death of my own mother during my imprisonment. But it’s really about more than that. It’s about my own letting go of the things I cannot change. The prisoner kept that post and read it several times. He said that he was profoundly affected by my challenge not to reduce the present to a litany of losses in the past.

Through this discernment, he made a decision to reconsider one part of his past: his Catholic faith that he long ago had abandoned. Through the loss of his mother, he opened himself to the one thing he has left to share with her, a faith that spans a bridge between his life and hers. He later attended Father Michael Gaitley’s “33 Days to Morning Glory” retreat when it was offered in this prison.

The wounds of the past surface in times of loss. Like the wife of the reader mentioned above, the struggles and wounds of life accumulate into a litany of loss until it is life itself that we now distrust. Sometimes it is life itself that requires our forgiveness. To do so, then, is to surrender all hope for a better past because such a hope is futile. No matter how you spin it in your heart and mind, no matter who you blame for it, no matter how long you have lived with it, you will never have a different past. Eric Metaxas alluded to this in his WSJ interview:

“One of my favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:6” ‘Be anxious about nothing.’ Nothing. Now what does that mean, ‘nothing’? It means ‘NOTHING.’ [So] ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’ That’s a command.”

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Both Maximilian Kolbe and Dietrich Bonhoeffer died in prison. And yet the entire world today is shaken up by the wisdom that emanated from their prison writing.

Over the decades here in my own imprisonment, I have been tempted by the prospect of simply giving up on the present and retreating into the past. On the night before writing this post I had a long talk by telephone with my friend Pornchai Maximilian Moontri in Thailand. He also spent 30 years in prison for a crime set in motion by someone else. When I told him about this post he reminded me of something said in a homily by the late Father Bernie Campbell, a Capuchin priest who offered Sunday Mass in this prison for decades. Pornchai told me that Father Bernie once said in a homily that “life is like toilet paper. It goes by a lot faster toward the end of the roll.” We both laughed at the truth of that.

I was so very struck by the reader at the beginning of this post who wrote that this blog reminds him of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. The letter caused me to return to Bonhoeffer’s writings. Reinhold Niebuhr, who composed “The Serenity Prayer” was on the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York where he had a profound influence on Bonhoeffer at the time he arrived at “the great decision” that Eric Metaxas described. The great decision was to return to Germany because “He who believes does not flee,” no matter the cost.

Both men also had a very great influence on my late friend and mentor, Father Richard John Neuhaus. Along with Cardinal Avery Dulles, Father Neuhaus urged me to write and was instrumental in my starting this blog in 2009. His own great decision to pave a path from Lutheranism to Rome by becoming a Catholic and a priest — took great courage and wisdom.

You do not have to read very far into Bonhoeffer’s words and actions to see Reinhold Niebuhr’s “the courage to change the things that I can” reflected there. I think serenity itself was more of a challenge. Bonhoeffer freely chose to return to Nazi Germany from the comfort of Reinhold Niebuhr’s New York seminary knowing — very much like Father Maximilian Kolbe — that his own moral compass would not permit him to cease writing the truth.

And like Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Bonhoeffer wrote knowing, and fearing, that the truth would land him in a Nazi prison, but he wrote that truth anyway. Finding serenity along such a path is an immense spiritual challenge, and its only source is grace — and the conditions in which such grace is found are often surprising.

True courage does not mean the absence of fear. It means to do the right thing, to act morally, in spite of fear. There are some things which have terrified me — decades in prison being one of them— but terror alone was not sufficient cause to take up an easier cross. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and for Maximilian Kolbe, prison was no obstacle to grace.

The powerfully riveting book by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2011) presents Bonhoeffer’s very life as a profile in courage. His writings and actions led inexorably to the sacrifice of his life on April 9, 1945, eight years to the day before I was born. Just imagine then the irony of my own introduction to prison. Standing in court facing prison on September 23, 1994, I was forced to be silent while prosecutor Bruce Elliot Reynolds asked Judge Arthur Brennan and my jury to disregard any good I have ever done, because “for some people, even Hitler was a nice guy.”

Over the years between his imprisonment and his execution by hanging upon the orders of Hitler himself, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his Letters and Papers from Prison. When what he wrote was posthumously published, those who knew him found some of it shocking. One of his most pointed criticisms of his own church during those years in prison was its tendency to limit faith and the requirements of faith to the “otherworldly,” focusing on the next life at the expense of this one. Though that is a part of all faith — certainly Catholic faith — we are now in this life, “taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, and not as I would have it.”

It was in the unjust imprisonment imposed upon him through the corruption of others that Dietrich Bonhoeffer found the core of his Christology. It could be summed up in three words: “life for others.” And it was in that same circumstance that Maximilian Kolbe discerned that “Love alone creates,” the center of his life in Christ that drew him toward surrendering his life that another may live.

In both men, in the struggles between courage and wisdom, in the midst of great suffering, trial, and loss can be found inspiration for the greatest challenge and adventure of our lives, that most essential part of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer: “God, grant me Serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post as an example of “the courage to change the things that I can.” You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Resistance: A Birthday in the Shadow of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Eternal Life Matters: Spiritual Survival in Trying Times

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.”