Ten Years After The Boston Globe Spotlight Prostituted Journalism

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

July 15, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

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

— From Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Spotlight Oscar Hangover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— JoAnn Wypijewski, CounterPunch

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

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

— Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, p. 80

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

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

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights

Former Boston Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law was vilified by The Boston Globe and SNAP, but before that he was a champion of justice in the Civil Rights Movement.

June 19, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Note from Fr MacRae: I first wrote this post in November 2015. I wrote it in the midst of a viral character assassination of a man who had become a convenient scapegoat for what was then the latest New England witch hunt. That man was Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston. I have to really tug hard to free this good man’s good name from the media-fueled availability bias that so mercilessly tarnished it back then. A good deal more has come to light, and I get to have the last word.

By coincidence, and it was not planned this way, but the date of this revised reposting is June 19, 2024, the day that the United States commemorates the emancipation of African American slaves on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas. As you will read herein, Cardinal Bernard Law was a national champion in the cause for Civil Rights and racial equality.

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Four years after The Boston Globe set out to sensationalize the sins of some few members of the Church and priesthood, another news story — one subtly submerged beneath the fold — drifted quietly through a few New England newspapers. After a very short life, the story faded from view. In 2006, Matt McGonagle resigned from his post as assistant principal of Rundlett Middle School in Concord, New Hampshire. Charged with multiple counts of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old high school student six years before, McGonagle ended his criminal case by striking a plea deal with prosecutors. McGonagle pleaded guilty to the charges on July 28, 2006.

He was sentenced to a term of sixteen months in a local county jail. An additional sentence of two-and-a-half to five years in the New Hampshire State Prison was suspended by the presiding judge in Merrimack County Superior Court — the same court that declined to hear evidence or testimony in my habeas corpus appeal in 2013 after having served 20 years in prison for crimes that never took place.

In a statement, Matt McGonagle described the ordeal of being prosecuted. He said it was “extraordinarily difficult,” and thanked his “many advocates” who spoke on his behalf. In the local press, defense attorney James Rosenberg defended the plea deal for a sixteen month county jail sentence:

“The sentence is fair, and accurately reflects contributions that Matt has made to his community as an educator.”

— Melanie Asmar, “Ex-educator pleads guilty in sex assault,” Concord Monitor, July 29, 2006

Four years earlier, attorney James Rosenberg was a prosecutor in the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office from where he worked to prosecute the Diocese of Manchester for its handling of similar, but far older claims against Catholic priests.

The accommodation called for in the case of teacher/principal Matt McGonagle — an insistence that he is not to be forever defined by the current charges against him — was never even a passing thought in the prosecutions of Catholic priests. Those cases sprang from the pages of The Boston Globe, swept New England, and then went viral across America. The story marked The Boston Globe’s descent into “trophy justice.”

Cardinal Sins

I have always been aware of this inconsistency in the news media and among prosecutors and some judges, but never considered writing specifically about how it applied to Cardinal Bernard Law until I read Sins of the Press, a book by David F. Pierre, Jr. On page after page it cast a floodlight on The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer-endorsed lynching of Cardinal Law, offered up as a scapegoat for The Scandal and driven from Boston by the news media despite having never been accused, tried, or convicted of any real crime.

Does the “lynching of Cardinal Law” seem too strong a term? Historically, the word “lynching” came into the English lexicon from the name of Captain William Lynch of Virginia who acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner. He became notorious for his judgment-sans-trial while leading a band to hunt down Loyalists, Colonists suspected of loyalty to the British Crown in the War for Independence in 1776.

The term applies well to what started in Boston, then swept the country. Most of those suspected or accused in the pages of The Boston Globe, including Cardinal Bernard Law, were never given any trial of facts. As I recently wrote in, “To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants,” many of the priests were deceased when accused, and many others faced accusations decades after any supportive evidence could be found, or even looked for. The Massachusetts Attorney General issued an astonishing statement given short shrift in the pages of The Boston Globe:

“The evidence gathered during the course of the Attorney General’s sixteen-month investigation does not provide a basis for bringing criminal charges against the Archdiocese and its senior managers.”

— Commonwealth of Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, “Executive Summary and Scope of the Investigation,” July 23, 2003

So I decided to explore the story of Cardinal Bernard Law for Beyond These Stone Walls. When I first endeavored to write about him, he had been virtually chased from the United States by some in the news media and so-called victim advocates deep into lawsuits to fleece the Church. Though not intended originally, my post was to be published on November 4, 2015, which also happened to be Cardinal Law’s 84th birthday.

When I wrote of my intention to revisit the story of Cardinal Bernard Law from a less condemning perspective, it sparked very mixed feelings among some readers. A few wrote to me that they looked forward to reading my take on the once good name of this good priest. A few taunted me that this was yet another “David v Goliath” task. Others wrote more ominously, “Don’t do it, Father! Don’t step on that minefield! What if they target you next?” That reaction is a monument to the power of the news media to spin a phenomenon called “availability bias.”

A while back, I was invited by Catholic League President Bill Donohue to contribute some articles for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. My second of two articles appeared in the July/August 2009 issue just as Beyond These Stone Walls began. It was entitled “Due Process for Accused Priests” and it opened with an important paragraph about the hidden power of the press to shape what we think:

“Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on a phenomenon in psychology and marketing called ‘availability bias.’ Kahneman demonstrated the human tendency to give a proposition validity just by how easily it comes to mind. An uncorroborated statement can be widely seen as true merely because the media has repeated it. Also in 2002, the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal swept out of Boston to dominate news headlines across the country….”

This is exactly what happened to Cardinal Law. There was a narrative about him, an impression of his nature and character that unfolded over the course of his life. I spent several months studying that narrative and it is most impressive.

Then that narrative was replaced by something else. With a target on his back, the story of Cardinal Law was entirely and unjustly rewritten by The Boston Globe. Then the rewrite was repeated again and again until it took hold, went viral, and replaced in public view the account of who this man really was.

Even some in the Church settled upon this sacrificial offering of a reputation. Perhaps only someone who has known firsthand such media-fueled bias can instinctively recognize it happening. Suffice it to say that I instinctively recognized it. I offer no other defense of my decision to visit anew the first narrative in the story of who Bernard Law was. If you can set aside for a time the availability bias created around the name of Cardinal Bernard Law, then you may find this account to be fascinating, just as I did.

From Harvard to Mississippi

As this account of a courageous life and heroic priesthood unfolded before me, I was eerily reminded of another story, one I came across many years ago. It was the year I began to seek something more than the Easter and Christmas Catholicism I inherited. It was 1968, and I was fifteen years old in my junior year at Lynn English High School just north of Boston. Two champions of the Civil Rights Movement I had come to admire and respect in my youth — Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy — had just been assassinated. And just as my mind and spirit were being shaped by that awful time, I stumbled upon something that would refine for me that era: the great 1963 film, The Cardinal.

Based on a book of the same name by Henry Morton Robinson (Simon & Schuster 1950), actor Tom Tryon portrayed the title role of Boston priest, Father Stephen Fermoyle who rose to become a member of the College of Cardinals after a heroic life as an exemplary priest. It was the first time I encountered the notion that priesthood might require courage, and I wondered whether I had any. I was fifteen, sitting alone at Mass for the first time in my life when this movie sparked a scary thought.

Father Fermoyle was asked by the Apostolic Nuncio to tour the southern United States “between the Great Smokies and the Mississippi River” — an area known for anti-Catholic prejudice. He was tasked with writing a report on the state of the Catholic Church there during a time of great racial unrest.

In the script (and in the book which I read later) Mississippi Chancery official, Monsignor Whittle (played in the film by actor, Chill Wills) was fearful of the racist, anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan. He tried to dissuade Father Fermoyle from making any waves, but his mere presence there would set off a tidal wave of suspicion. In a horrific scene, Father Fermoyle was kidnapped in the night, blindfolded, and driven to the middle of a remote field — a field where many young black men had disappeared.

His blindfold removed, he found himself surrounded by men in sheets and white hoods, illuminated by the light of a burning cross. Father Fermoyle was given a crucifix and ordered to spit on it or face the scourging of Christ. Henry Morton Robinson’s book conveys the scene:

“He held the crucifix between thumb and forefinger, lofting it like a lantern in darkness…. Ancient strength of martyrs flowed into Stephen’s limbs. Eyes on the gilt cross, he neither flinched nor spoke. [The music played] ‘In Dixieland I’ll take my stand.’ Stephen prayed silently that no drop of spittle, no whimpering plea for mercy, would fall from his lips before the end… The sheeted men climbed into their cars. Not until the last taillight had disappeared had Stephen lowered the crucifix.”

— The Cardinal, pp 412-413

This could easily have been a scene from the life of Father Bernard Law. Born on 4 November 1931 in Torreon, Mexico, Bernard Francis Law spent his bilingual childhood between the United States, Latin America, and the Virgin Islands. His father was a U.S. Army Captain in World War II and Bernard was an only child. Very early in life, he learned that acceptance does not depend on race, or color, or creed, and once admonished his classmates in the Virgin Islands that “Never must we let bigotry creep into our beings.”

At age 15, Bernard read Mystici Corporis, a 1943 Encyclical of Pope Pius XII that Bernard later described as “the dominant teaching of my life.” He was especially touched by the language of inclusion of a heroic Pope in a time of great oppression. The encyclical was banned in German-occupied Belgium for “subversive” lines connecting the Mystical Body of Christ with the unity of all Christians, transcending barriers such as race or politics.

As a weird aside, I was in shock and awe as I sat typing this post when I asked out loud, “How could I find a copy of Mystici Corporis while stuck in a New Hampshire prison cell?” Then our convert friend, Pornchai Moontri jumped from his bunk, pulled out his footlocker containing the sum total of his life, and handed me a heavily highlighted copy of the 1943 Encyclical. I haven’t yet wrapped my brain around that, but it’s another post for another time.

While attending Harvard University, Bernard Law found a vocation to the priesthood during his visits to Saint Paul’s Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard in 1953, the year I was born, a local bishop advised him that Boston had lots of priests and he should give his talents to a part of the Church in need. At age 29, Father Bernard Law was ordained for what was the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson, Mississippi.

Standing before the Mask of Tyranny

The year was 1961. The Second Vatican Council would soon open in Rome, and the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam (and I do mean steam!) in the United States, Father Law immersed himself in both. A Vicksburg lawyer once remarked that Father Law “went into homes as priests [there] had never done before.” With a growing reputation for erudition and bridge building on issues many others simply avoided, Bernard was summoned by his bishop to the State Capital to become editor of the diocesan weekly newspaper, then called The Mississippi Register.

It was there that the courage to proclaim the Gospel took shape in him, and became, along with his brilliant mind, his most visible gift of the Holy Spirit. Another young priest of that diocese noted that Father Law’s racial attitudes — shaped by his childhood in the Virgin Islands — were different from those of most white Mississipians. “He felt passionately about racial justice from the first moment I knew him,” the priest wrote. “It wasn’t a mere following of teaching, it came from his heart.”

I know many Mississippi Catholics today — including many who read Beyond These Stone Walls — but in the tumultuous 1960s, Catholics were a small minority in Mississippi. They were also a target for persecution by the Ku Klux Klan which was growing in both power and terror as the nation struggled with a burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

An 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in “Plessy v. Ferguson” had defined the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a Constitutional nod to racial segregation, but in 1954 in “Brown v. Board of Education,” the Supreme Court based a landmark desegregation ruling on solid evidence that “separate” was seldom “equal.” Opposition to the ruling grew throughout the South, and so did terrorist Klan activities. In 1955, the murder of a black Mississippi boy, 14-year-old Emmett Till, rocked the state and the nation, as did the acquittal of his accused white killers.

This was the world of Father Bernard Law’s priesthood. Up to that time, the diocesan newspaper, The Mississippi Register, had been visibly timid on racial issues, but this changed with this priest at the helm. In June of 1963 he wrote a lead story on the evils of racial segregation citing the U.S. Bishops’ 1958 “Statement on Racial Discrimination and the Christian Conscience.”

One week later, the respected NAACP leader Medgar Evers was gunned down outside his Jackson, Mississippi home. Both Father Law and (then) Natchez-Jackson Bishop Richard Gerow boldly attended the wake for Medgar Evers under the watchful eyes of the Klan. Father Law’s next issue of The Mississippi Register bore the headline, “Everyone is Guilty,” citing a statement by his Bishop that many believe was written by Bernard Law:

“We need frankly to admit that the guilt for the murder of Mr. Evers and the other instances of violence in our community tragically must be shared by all of us… Rights which have been given to all men by the Creator cannot be the subject of conferral or refusal by men.”

Father Law and Bishop Gerow were thus invited to the White House along with other religious leaders to discuss the growing crisis in Mississippi with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Later that summer, Father Law challenged local politicians in The Mississipi Register for their lack of moral leadership on racial desegregation, stating “Freedom in Mississippi is now at an alarmingly low ebb.” Massachusetts District Judge Gordon Martin, who was a Justice Department attorney in Mississippi at that time, once wrote for The Boston Globe that Father Law…

“…did not pull his punches, and the Register’s editorials and columns were in sharp contrast with the racist diatribes of virtually all of the state’s daily and weekly press.”

Later that year, Father Law won the Catholic Press Association Award for his editorials. In “Freedom Summer” 1964, when three civil rights workers were missing and suspected to have been murdered, Father Bernard Law openly accepted an invitation to join other religious leaders to advise President Lyndon Johnson on the racial issues in Mississippi. When the bodies of the three slain young men were found buried at a remote farm, the priest boldly issued a challenge to stand up to the crisis:

“In Mississippi, the next move is up to the white moderate. If he is in the house, let him now come forward.”

Later that year Father Law founded and became Chairman of the Mississippi Council on Human Relations. Then the home of a member, a rabbi, was bombed. Then another member, a Unitarian minister, was shot and severely wounded. The FBI asked Father Law to keep them apprised of his whereabouts, and Bishop Gerow, fearing for his priest’s safety, ordered him from the outskirts of Jackson to the Cathedral rectory, but Bernard Law feared not.

Cardinal Law’s life and mine crossed paths a few times over the course of my life as a priest. I mentioned above that while attending Harvard University, Bernard Law found his vocation to the priesthood during visits to Saint Paul’s Church in Cambridge. Many years later, in 1985, my uncle, Father George W. MacRae, SJ, the first Roman Catholic Dean of Harvard Divinity School and a renowned scholar of Sacred Scripture, passed away suddenly at the age of 57. I was a concelebrant at his Mass of Christian Burial at Saint Paul’s Church in Cambridge. Concelebrating with me was Cardinal Bernard Law where his life as a priest first took shape.

In 2013, The New York Times sold The Boston Globe for pennies on the dollar.

On December 20, 2017, Cardinal Bernard Law passed from this life in Rome.

Oh, that such priestly courage as his were contagious, for many in our Church could use some now. Thank you, Your Eminence, for the gift of a courageous priesthood. Let us not go gentle into The Boston Globe’s good night.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I am indebted for this post to the book, Boston’s Cardinal : Bernard Law, the Man and His Witness, edited by Romanus Cessario, O.P. with a Foreword by Mary Ann Glendon (Lexington Books, 2002).

You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Saint John Paul the Great: A Light in a World in Crisis

Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truths about the Synod

Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

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.”