“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

— Deacon David Jones

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/23/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/23/25

Divine Mercy for Doubting Thomas and Other Spiritually Wounded

The Gospel on Divine Mercy Sunday is St John’s account of the spiritually wounded Thomas who would not know peace until surrendering his wounds to the Risen Christ.

The Gospel on Divine Mercy Sunday is St John’s account of the spiritually wounded Thomas who would not know peace until surrendering his wounds to the Risen Christ.

April 23, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

There is a scene in the great World War II prisoner of war film, Stalag 17, in which an American Air Force officer (played by actor William Holden) negotiates with the German Commandant over the treatment of a fellow prisoner. I was dragged into a similar role here several years ago when I protested an injustice aimed at a friend.

For a long time I had managed to avoid efforts to recruit me for an Inmate Communications Committee (ICC), a group of eight chosen from 1,500 prisoners here. The ICC advocated for better prison conditions and due process. After protesting over another prisoner, I no longer had a valid excuse, so I reluctantly accepted.

From the start, I was saddled with doing all the writing, which included detailed minutes of every meeting for distribution to prison officials, a monthly summary of progress, and a quarterly newsletter.

The job — which payed nothing — was in addition to my Law Library job which payed next to nothing. It also meant writing endless memos, proposals, clarifications, and requests that I fielded each week. We succeeded in only about ten percent of the concessions we set out to obtain, and that is more or less on par with William Holden’s success rate in Stalag 17.

About the only high point is that I was also required to be present at a Jobs and Education Fair in the prison gymnasium twice a year. It was an effort to get the other 1,500 prisoners here into jobs, educational classes and programs, and typically about 500 showed up. Among the dozens of display tables set up, the Law Library and ICC were side by side, so I manned both.

The Veterans Affairs table was set up next to the ICC table. It was a nice display with information on veteran groups here, an annual POW/MIA Remembrance, and other programs. The table was staffed by my friend, John, whom I did not get to see as often as I would like. John was a Navy veteran in his mid to later thirties. He lost his leg during active duty in the Middle East before coming to prison. John told me that when he arrived here, his prosthetic leg was taken from him because of an infection at the amputation site with the result of consigning him to a wheelchair. John was very anxious to get the prosthetic leg back and get back on his feet again, but because of the fear of infection, the prison medical officials were withholding it. It was John, by the way, who told me of the release of my friend Martin, the U.S. Marine veteran I wrote about in “A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent.”

I told John that I would do some research to see if there was a precedent here that John might use to restore his prosthetic leg. Then, without thinking, I thanked him for “stepping up” to take charge of the Veteran’s table. I quickly apologized for my faux pas, but John had a good laugh.

Then he told me that he spent half his day thanking people for all sorts of small things: an assist out of the chair, a push up a steep ramp, picking up a dropped item. He said that my thanks was the first time in a long time anyone had thanked him for his service to others. That small, awkward gesture had a profound effect on John. As I left, he was beaming. I made a decision that I would find a way to help restore what he lost and get him out of that dreaded wheelchair.

I can sometimes become so aware of the spiritual warfare that engulfs me here that it diminishes my awareness of the wounds of others. We are all, in one way or another, wounded by life physically, emotionally, spiritually, and it dulls our senses.

It drives us onto self-centered islands of emotional distance and spiritual isolation. The wounds we carry foster pessimism and doubt, erode faith, and turn the joy of living into a crucible of mere existence. Peace evades wounded warriors, even in spiritual warfare.

Doubting Thomas

This is the great plague of our age. I receive lots of mail from readers asking me to pray for a husband or wife, a son or daughter, who has lost their faith in response to the wounds of life and the sheer weight of living. In a war with one’s self, faith is often the first to go and the last to come back. If this describes you or someone in your life, then pay special attention to the Apostle Thomas in the Gospel from Saint John on Divine Mercy Sunday.

There are some remarkable elements in Saint John’s account of the death of Jesus and all that came after the Cross. The first witness to the “Seventh Sign,” the Resurrection of Jesus, was a woman whose own demons Jesus had once cast out. I wrote of her and the evidence for her first-hand witness in “Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb.” I would like to reproduce a scene from that post that never took place, but it is one that I have long imagined.

“Mary came to the disciples, Peter and the others, hidden by fear behind locked doors, and said, ‘I have good news and not-so-good news.’ Peter asked, ‘What’s the good news?’ Mary replied, ‘The Lord has risen and I have seen him.’ Peter then asked, ‘What’s the not-so-good news?’ Mary said, ‘He’s on his way here, and He wants a word with you about last Friday.”

The focus is so intensely on Jesus in the Resurrection accounts that it is easy to forget the wounds of everyone else in this story. They are all living with the deeply felt trauma of loss, and not only loss, but with an overwhelming sense of utter discouragement. They are devastated and stripped of hope.

John, the Beloved Disciple, stood with the mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross and watched Him die a most gruesome death at the hands of the Roman Empire, but at the behest of his own people, the Chief Priests who answered Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Mary Magdalene stood there as well, and watched. The others fled. Peter, their leader, denied three times that he even knew Jesus. All that had been promised and hoped for had been misunderstood, and now gone forever. The Chief Priests — emboldened when Pilate caved to their “We Have No King but Caesar” — sought only to round up the rest.

It was in this state of fear that Mary Magdalene showed up in the Upper Room where the Apostles were in hiding for fear of the mobs. She had news that defied belief. And when Jesus first appeared to them behind that locked door, His demeanor was the opposite of what I imagined above to be a human response to their abandonment of Him. “Peace be with you,” He said. It is not a reference to a state of peace between disputing parties or someone subject to Earthly powers. The word the Gospel used in Greek – Eiréné – has more to do with spiritual welfare than spiritual warfare.

It refers to a state of mind, heart and soul, the equivalent of the Hebrew “Shalom”, and its usage means harmony with God within one’s self. It is the same sense that the Prophet Isaiah used in his Messianic expectation of the Prince of Peace:

“For us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called ‘Wonder Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’”

— Isaiah 9:6

It is what Saint Paul refers to in his letter to the Colossians, “Let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts” (Col. 3:15). Once you have it, it is far more contagious than any pandemic. This peace is the foundation and gift of Divine Mercy.

But Thomas missed the whole thing. When he arrived and found them stunned and exuberant, he retreated into his own deep wounds. Thomas did not stay to see Jesus crucified. Like the others, he could not bear it. He and they fled when Jesus appeared before Pilate mocked, beaten, broken, as the accusing mob grew beyond control to threaten even Pilate himself, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” But Thomas saw enough to know that it was over, that all was lost, and all hope had gone out of the world. So when faced with the great risk of trusting and hoping again, he said,

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the nail marks, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

— John 20:25

Trusting Divine Mercy

For this, the Apostle is forever called, “Doubting Thomas,” but I see something more painful than his doubt. I see him also as hurting, defeated, robbed of hope. He had to touch the wounds of the Risen Christ because the wounds of the Crucified Christ had already touched him, had broken his heart, and devastated his faith, and destroyed all hope. As so many of you know only all too well, coming to trust again after such hurt is a very risky business.

I find it fascinating that the story of Thomas and his struggle with trust and hope after the events of Holy Week is the Gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday. When Jesus presented Himself to Thomas, and invited him to probe the wounds in his living hands and side, Thomas did not oblige. Instead, he surrendered his own wounds, and responded in a leap of faith, “My Lord and my God.” Pope Benedict XVI wrote of this in his magisterial book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week:

“In His two appearances to the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room, Jesus repeats several times the greeting, ‘Peace be with you’… It becomes the gift of peace that Jesus alone can give because it is the fruit of his radical victory over evil… For this reason Saint John Paul II chose to call this Sunday after Easter ‘Divine Mercy,’ with a very specific image: that of Jesus’ pierced side from which blood and water flowed.”

This image, revealed to Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska as the image of Divine Mercy, is that of the same wounds transfigured:

“I saw the Lord Jesus dying on the Cross amidst great suffering, and out of the Heart of Jesus came the two rays as are in the image.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 414

“The two rays denote blood and water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls… Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter…”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 299

I recently wrote a post entitled “Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress.” Most of our readers know the story of what led to Pornchai Maximilian Moontri’s Divine Mercy conversion. Starting at the age of two in rural Thailand, he knew only abandonment by the very people who should have taught him trust. Forced to forage in the streets for food, he was hospitalized for malnutrition. Then at age eleven he was taken from Thailand and forced into a life marked by violence, exploitation and abuse. At age 18, after several years of adolescent homelessness, he killed a man after being pinned to the ground in a struggle. Pornchai was sent to prison for life. While there, his mother, his only contact in the free world was murdered by the man who exploited him. After many years of solitary confinement, Pornchai was moved to another prison and spent the next 15 years as my roommate.

How does anyone emerge from such wounds? How does anyone ever trust again when all prior trust was broken? On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, Pornchai took on a new name, “Maximilian,” after Saint Maximilian Kolbe who walked this path with him and led him to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In the course of this remarkable journey, Pornchai’s wounds never healed. They are with him for life, but they have been transformed. He is a powerful figure today in the realm of Divine Mercy because he has placed his wounds in the service of the Risen Lord. Back in October of 2024, Pornchai was invited to carry the flag of the Kingdom of Thailand in procession at the Fifth Asian Apostolic Congress on Divine Mercy held in the Philippines. In the scene atop this section, Pornchai Max proudly carries the flag of Thailand before a crowd of 5,000 pilgrims in honor of Divine Mercy.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one below speaks volumes. This is the Face of Divine Mercy.

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Father MacRae and Pornchai Moontri: An Interview on the Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio (15 minutes)

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And to honor our late Holy Father: “Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother.”

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 11/13/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 11/13/24

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.

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:

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD 9/4/24 Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD 9/4/24

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor

Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.

Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.

September 4, 2024 by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD, Editor

Prelude from the Student:

“Truth in its simplicity, revealed by suffering, carries a quality in writing. I believe this is what has drawn me to Beyond These Stone Walls and retained my readership over the years when there is not a single other blog or newspaper that I read consistently. I believe it is also a mercy of God that I have been able to read authentic Catholic voices here regarding the tumultuous current events in our world because it has helped keep my Faith alive despite much darkness. I chose this topic because I love God and wish to glorify him.”

— an Arizona State University student

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How did you discover Beyond These Stone Walls, and how did you become the Editor?

I had never heard of Father Gordon MacRae or this blog. On the Feast of Saint Joseph in 2019, I searched “Pope Benedict XVI on St. Joseph,” and the fourth or fifth result was one of Father MacRae’s articles. I read several others, and I read his story at the About Page. Deeply saddened, I wanted to help with my prayers and in any other way I could. On the Feast of the Annunciation, I sent him a letter introducing myself and offering to be a Simon of Cyrene to him.

A priest friend of Father MacRae in North Carolina had been volunteering as acting editor for the previous few years while also having been given additional parish assignments. I was close to the end of my career as a civilian scientist for the United States Air Force. I had been pondering retirement for some time and this volunteer work for Beyond These Stone Walls seemed a perfect fit for me as I now manage all the nuts and bolts of a widely-read popular Catholic blog written under the most unusual conditions.

What is the process for you to receive posts from Father MacRae, post them, and then send the comments to him?

From inside a small prison cell, Father MacRae types each post on his old typewriter and mails it to me. I scan it using optical character recognition software. With the typewritten post he includes a description of the suggested images he would like to include above each section of the post, as well as at the top. Beyond These Stone Walls was built using Squarespace, which also hosts it. Using its services I compose text, images and links to create the post on the blog. We publish every Wednesday morning, and send out an email alert to our 2,000 or so direct subscribers. But the readership of this blog is much larger. Many people go directly to the posts without subscribing. We also publish the posts on some social media such as Gloria.TV where Father MacRae has been given a page. His Christmas post about shepherds had about 50 thousand readers, many in some of the poorest parts of the world such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Father Gordon has never actually seen his published posts. As a prisoner he has no access to the online world and has never seen any social media where his posts are published.

Prisoners cannot receive calls. So when Father Gordon calls me I read him the comments that have been posted on BTSW and some of the ones that have been posted on social media.

Do you believe your Faith life has changed since taking on this position? Why or Why not?

Beyond These Stone Walls shines a light on how Father Gordon MacRae is sharing in the Cross of Jesus. It nourishes me with his example and meditations. It reports on what is happening in society and in the Church, which corporate media and many Catholic media do not. Without Beyond These Stone Walls and the witness of Father MacRae I would miss much of what is going on in the world and in the Church, in which Jesus wants me to be His instrument. I pray that I may hear His voice and do whatever He tells me.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” In my youth I had an agnostic period in which I agonized in search of Truth. Jesus, Truth, attracted me to Him. Father Gordon MacRae has most beautifully and faithfully answered Jesus’ ardent prayer to the Father, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) When the corrupt and perverse “justice” system wanted him to lie about having committed crimes that never happened, he did not lie. As punishment Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced him to life in prison. Almost everyone abandoned him. But he clung to Truth, to Jesus. He is a model and a challenge to me and many, a light in the darkness.

This is a time in which astoundingly many are “those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). I ask myself what does Jesus want me to do. He says, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10: 16)

In the midst of so much evil in our time, the Catholic sexual abuse scandal is most significant. Many outside and within the Church seek to confuse what is evil and what is good concerning this scandal. There are two wrongs: the abuse of young people by priests, and the false accusations of abuse of young people by priests. The latter wrong remains hidden from most, deceptively presented as the first wrong by an industry of lawyers, “victims’ advocates,” attorneys general, and anti-Catholic bigots; and very sadly and scandalously, by a bishops’ policy that encourages and promotes this evil industry. Father MacRae wrote of how this has evolved in his own diocese in To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.”

Had I not crossed paths with Beyond These Stone Walls and Father Gordon MacRae, I would not know about the false-accusation industry. I have come to believe that as ugly and depraved as the secular world has become, and as the Church is beset by multiple problems, it is the explosion of false accusations of priests that is the worst ever attack on the Church, the most diabolical attack on the Body of Christ, and therefore the world.

The immediate victims are the falsely accused priests. Their reputations are destroyed. The search for the truth of the accusation is nonexistent. The reputation of all priests is tarnished. The laity are also victims of this attack on the Church. Billions of dollars have been handed out to those who claimed to have been abused. No billionaire donated these funds. Dioceses have been bankrupted. Parish life has been affected.

And incredibly the worst members of this false-accusation industry are (most of) the bishops. In 2002, the Dallas Charter was adopted over the objections of Cardinal Avery Dulles, Father Richard John Neuhaus and a few others. The bishops adopted the “credible” standard, a fig-leaf term to convey a sense that accusations are investigated. They are not. I remember a couple of readers commenting that in their dioceses their bishops investigated the accusations, proved they were false, and the false accusations ceased.

Knowing that it is Jesus Who calls a man to be a priest, it is unimaginable that a bishop would discard a priest without a most thorough investigation. But it is a policy that has been enforced for over two decades. It masquerades as compassionate. It is an evil being called a good. The cruelty and the attack on priesthood it represents is astounding.

Shamelessly, quite a few years after the Dallas Charter was adopted, when there was talk of extending the “credible” standard to accusations against bishops, the USCCB got lawyers to begin defining the term [The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests]. This year the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire dropped altogether the fig-leaf term. Any priest accused of sexual abuse of a young person will be added to the list that publicly shames, and discards priests. The “credible” standard, as weak as it is, has been discarded. The accuser will be monetarily rewarded. Apparently, it should cross no one’s mind that handing out large sums of money would ever entice false accusations. Again, evil gets presented as good. Twenty-two years after the Dallas Charter was adopted a new generation of bishops upholds it.

How can this be anything but a diabolical, concerted effort to destroy priesthood, to destroy the Church?

How does this affect my Faith? This is not a superficial, little problem that for the most part I can forget while I go on with my life. With “fear and trembling” I ask, “What do You want me to do? Open my ears that I may hear. Without You I can do nothing,”

Certainly, it is a privilege for me to use my time and talent to help project the voice of Father Gordon MacRae outside that prison in New Hampshire as he tries to open minds and hearts to the truth of what is happening in the world and in the Church, to Truth Himself.

As to my treasure, I micromanage my donations. I have stopped donating to the lukewarm and to those who wittingly or unwittingly collaborate with the Father of Lies in trying to destroy priesthood, and I support some of the courageous people and entities that unceasingly defend and proclaim truth.

I pray that my righteousness may surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. I am sickened when I hear priests, bishops or the Pope consider every accusation of a priest to be true, as well as the media and lay people. May Jesus teach me to love them as He loves them.

What are your favorite things about editing BTSW? What are your least favorite?

It is a privilege and a joy to work with Father Gordon and watch his creativity as he directs me to edit an article on the fly. I want what we post to be beautiful and enjoy creating images to make it so. I want as beautiful images as I can get, and that usually takes me quite a bit of time. What I like least is not finding good images, or finding them but not being able to use them because they are copyrighted.

One of my other least favorite things, though it has come to some good, is the ocassional post that gets lost or delayed in the U.S. mail. Our choices in those weeks are to either skip a post entirely or for Father MacRae to slowly dictate a 2,000-word article to me by telephone.

What articles do you remember most? Why?

It is amazing the breadth of topics that Father MacRae tackles, from Scripture to history, to science, to current events. And he writes about his life. Pure evil placed him where he is, and he is sharing in the Cross of Jesus, but he shows how in magnificent ways God is ever present to him.

His Scripture articles are full of facts and striking insights. The collection of Holy Week posts is a gift. Another example is, “Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?” Father MacRae brings out in fascinating detail the interplay between the law of Moses and the Roman law, and how Jesus’ response is a trap of the Pharisees. It seems to me that this and other Scripture articles need a second or third reading to fully grasp and appreciate the depth of what he is presenting.

Father Gordon loves science, especially cosmology. Many think or accuse the Church of being anti-science, but that has never been true. Not only have there been scientists in the Church, but some of the most significant advances in science were introduced by priests. For example, the father of modern genetics was a monk, Gregor Mendel. And a hero of Father Gordon discovered the Big Bang, Father Georges Lemaitre. He had known about Lemaitre for years, and was most flattered when in response to a letter he sent to Carl Sagan about his novel Contact, Sagan replied to Father MacRae, “You write in the spirit of Georges Lemaitre!” But God was not pleased to leave it just at that, He decided to make the most extraordinary connections between Father MacRae and Father Lemaitre.

Though Father Gordon has written several times about Father Lemaitre, maybe the most significant post on this subject is “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.” It is an article about the great scientist Father Georges Lemaitre, co-written with noted physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, a research scientist at the University of Oxford. The article had two postscripts by Father Gordon MacRae. In the article Father Pinsent writes, “Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae through his widely-read blog has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaître.” For his part, Father Gordon recounts that after reading one of his posts on Belgian priest-scientist Lemaitre, Belgian BTSW reader Pierre Matthews, who is Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, wrote to tell him that Fr. Lemaitre was his Godfather.

What makes the breadth of articles so surprising is that in prison, Father MacRae has no online access at all and no resources for research.

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. Now I think that it is much more profound than that.

God has inspired many truth seekers to investigate the case of Father MacRae: Dorothy Rabinowitz, Harvey A. Silverglate, Ryan A. MacDonald, Dr. William Donohue, David F. Pierre, Jr., Father James Valladares, former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, and investigative reporter Claire Best. Any fair-minded person who studies their work is convinced that a corrupt system put him in prison and Father Gordon MacRae is innocent.

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 11 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. He spent the next 13 years in solitary confinement. He was then sent to the prison that houses Father Gordon. Having learned that he had been convicted of sexual abuse, Pornchai should have wanted to stay as far away as possible from Father Gordon. Yet, they became friends and then Pornchai asked Father Gordon if he could be his cellmate.

On the other hand, the corrupt and evil people who railroaded Father Gordon derailed his priesthood, took his freedom and viciously defamed him. It should be noted here that to their great credit, Vatican officials have not dismissed Father MacRae from the clerical state.

Most in the Church who should have stood by him instead abandoned him, or even worse denounced him. If this is how people in the Church treated Father Gordon, how much more understandable it would have been had Pornchai looked at him with suspicion and distrust. Yet, Pornchai has said that Father Gordon is the person in the whole world whom he most trusts. That must be a precious balm that heals Father Gordon’s heart. Many posts describe this most extraordinary friendship. Most important among them is Pornchai’s own words in, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Though the suffering of Father Gordon MacRae’s cross has not abated in 30 years, God has not abandoned him. He has sent Father Gordon two special friends who let him know that he is not alone: the prisoner-priest Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and the stigmatist and mystic, who was accused of sexual abuse and attacked from within the Church, Saint (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina. Two of my favorite posts describing their presence in Father Gordon’s life are “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror,” his first encounter with Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial,” a very interesting post, which among other things describes a most special blessing that connected Father Gordon, Pornchai Moontri and Saint Padre Pio through time and space.

Have any comments left an impression on you? Why?

One of the early comments on BTSW was that of Deacon David Jones:

“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

I think Father Gordon deserves such a testimonial.

In 2010 Father MacRae’s blog was selected by readers of Our Sunday Visitor as The Best of the Catholic Web in the area of Catholic spirituality. About.com selected it as the second-place finalist for the Best Catholic Blog Award. Readers at the Fishers Net Award selected it as The Best Catholic Social Justice Site.

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Beyond These Stone Walls is a prison journal. Evil people did much to destroy the lives of Father Gordon J. MacRae and Pornchai Maximilian Moontri. But as this blog documents, their story is one of priesthood, sacrifice and conversion writ large. They met in the New Hampshire Prison for Men in Concord, New Hampshire, but as we have seen in some posts God had much earlier connected their lives in some intriguing ways. Into these lives weighed by deep suffering Divine Mercy entered at first in hidden ways, and then it overwhelmed them.

Shortly before the nightmare of arrest, trial and wrongful imprisonment, Father MacRae was invited to write an intention to be placed on the altar for the Mass of Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. He wrote:

“I ask Blessed Faustina’s intercession that I may have the strength and courage to be the priest God wants me to be.”

His strength and courage would be sorely tested. After six long years in prison he celebrated his first Mass on April 30, 2000, which unbeknownst to him was the day Pope John Paul II canonized Saint Faustina and the first official Divine Mercy Sunday.

Six years later at a most dark period in Father MacRae’s life and priesthood, Franciscan Father James McCurry, who had been a vice-postulator for the cause of sainthood of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, visited him and asked him, “What do you know about Saint Maximilian Kolbe?” Thereupon began a most special friendship between these prisoner-priests.

At just this time Pornchai Moontri was transferred from solitary confinement in Maine to the New Hampshire prison. When he first entered Father MacRae’s cell and saw Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s image on a card, half in the garb of a prisoner and half in the garb of a priest, he asked, “Is this you?” Father MacRae writes, “From that moment on, we were caught up in the light of Divine Mercy.” Pornchai’s conversion was set in motion by Father Gordon’s example and writings. Pornchai Maximilian Moontri was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010.

When they both learned that at the end of Pornchai’s prison term he would be deported to Thailand, the prospect seemed dismal. He had been taken from there decades earlier, he did not speak the language, and no one would be waiting for him. But Father Gordon said, “We will just have to build a bridge to Thailand.” And so it happened. Today Pornchai Maximilian Moontri lives in Pak Chong, Thailand and continues to be active in this blog.

Pornchai has recently been selected to represent Father Gordon MacRae and the group, Divine Mercy Thailand, at the Fifth Asian Conference on Divine Mercy in the Philippines this year. For Father Gordon, this is the best evidence that Mary is still at work here.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We are simultaneously publishing the article by the Arizona State University student at the Voices from Beyond page:

A Voice for the Voiceless: Beyond These Stone Walls

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/12/23 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/12/23

Divine Mercy Reunites Pornchai Moontri and His Brother

Midway on life’s arduous path, Divine Mercy entered the lives of Pornchai Moontri and Fr. Gordon MacRae. When the road led to Thailand, Divine Mercy was there too.

Midway on life’s arduous path, Divine Mercy entered the lives of Pornchai Moontri and Fr. Gordon MacRae. When the road led to Thailand, Divine Mercy was there too.

April 12 , 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Pornchai Moontri entered the Catholic faith on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. To some who knew him, it was a most unlikely conversion story but it was a transformation in his very core. This story is my story as well. The Lord asked me to be an instrument in restoring life and hope to this prisoner even while in prison myself. Though Pornchai now lives on the far side of the world from me, he is still very much a part of my life and the life of this blog. His most recent post for these pages was the very moving “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.”

As most readers of this blog know, Pornchai (which in Thai means “Blessing”) was my roommate for 16 years in the draconian confines of this prison. Out of both necessity and deprivation, we became each other’s family. Pornchai was not just a transient along the twists and turns of my life. I learned over time that our paths crossed for a divinely inspired reason.

With new information, I won a reprieve for Pornchai who was released after 29 years in prison. I did my best to accompany and support him through a gruesome five-month ordeal in ICE detention at the height of a global pandemic. He finally emerged free in Bangkok, Thailand on February 24, 2021 with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. The life he vaguely remembered before he was taken as a child of eleven was gone. Because of the posts I wrote about us, a small group of devout Catholics who formed Divine Mercy Thailand recruited Father John Hung Le and Khun Chalathip, a benefactor of Father John’s refugee work, to give Pornchai shelter. Mary herself chose them for this task just as she chose me.

That is not an exaggeration. It might seem strange to someone not versed in Catholic spiritual life, but at some point I became aware that through the intercession of Saint Maximilian Kolbe in both our lives, The Immaculata involved herself in a special way in Pornchai’s life and well being. Then she involved me through intricately woven threads of actual grace over time.

In 2022, in “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare,” I wrote of the compelling signs of Mary’s interventions in our lives. After Pornchai’s conversion to the Catholic faith, we took part in the “33 Days to Morning Glory” retreat written by Marian Fr. Michael Gaitley who would become a friend to us. Depicted atop this post, our Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary took place in 2013 on the Solemnity of Christ the King.

I once mistakenly believed that this path was all about me and my priesthood in exile, but the truth was confirmed for me when Marian Helper magazine published “Mary Is at Work Here” in 2014. The article by Felix Carroll includes these startling paragraphs:

“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group to be the first [invited to Marian Consecration]. The reason eventually was revealed. It turned 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. (See the Chapter entitled “Pornchai Moontri”) .

“Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion in no small part due to a friendship formed with fellow inmate and cellmate Fr. Gordon MacRae who chronicles their lives in his celebrated website, Beyond These Stone Walls. Fr. Gordon joined Pornchai in the Consecration and called it 'a great spiritual gift.' It opened a door to the rebirth of trust during a dark time for both men. Great suffering requires great trust.”

— Marian Helper, Spring 2014

From Dante’s Inferno to Purgatorio

Many readers already know the most painful parts of this story. Pornchai and his brother, Priwan, were two and four years old respectively when they were abandoned in rural Thailand by a young mother desperate to find work to provide for them. She traveled to Bangkok where she fell under the control of an evil man. She was but a teenager. Nine years later, when her sons were ages 11 and 13 with no memory of her, they were taken from Thailand to the United States where they both became victims of sexual and physical violence.

Pornchai and Priwan became homeless adolescents fending for themselves in a foreign land in the mid-1980s, and they became separated. I and others investigated this story, wrote about it, and ultimately, with God’s grace, brought their abuser to justice. In September 2018, thirty years after his ruinous offenses, Richard Alan Bailey was convicted in Maine of 40 felony counts of child rape.

I discovered that at some point their mother learned the truth, but when she vowed to seek justice for her sons, she was murdered. This account is told in an article that may shake your faith in the justice system but strengthen your faith in Divine Providence. It is, “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

In the sixteen years in which Pornchai lived in a bunk just above me in the Concord, New Hampshire prison, the first few years were a bit rough. Looking back, Pornchai today says that the rough part was all him. He never set out to harm anyone, but in a Maine prison at age 18, facing a dark future alone, Pornchai vowed to never again become someone’s victim. He kept people away with a constant state of anger. As a result, he spent the next seven years alone with his raging thoughts in the cruel madness of solitary confinement.

When Pornchai could be held in solitary no longer, the State of Maine decided to just get rid of him. He was chained up in a van and taken to another prison in another state. He could have been taken anywhere, and he had no idea where he was going, but he landed just one state away in New Hampshire. He ended up in a familiar place solitary confinement.

When he emerged months later, Pornchai could have been sent to any of three New Hampshire prisons each with multiple housing units reflecting varying levels of security. By some mysterious grace, he was moved in with me. It was providential that just before his arrival in New Hampshire,The Wall Street Journal published its first articles about my plight. Somehow, Pornchai read them.

The context for this story is essential. Understandably, Pornchai trusted no one. Just imagine his inner struggle when he learned that he was now to live in a prison cell with a Catholic priest convicted of sexual abuse. Others told me to sleep with one eye open, but it did not take long for Pornchai to learn that I was not at all like the man who destroyed his life.

When I offered Mass in my cell late at night, it was Pornchai who was sleeping with one eye open. He watched me, and later he questioned me. When I told him about the Mass he asked if he could stay awake for it. I taught him to read the Mass readings and I explained the Eucharist along with a restriction that he cannot receive the Body of Christ unless he came to believe. Did he dare to believe in anything good in this world?

Pornchai and I lived in the same cell for two years before I began writing from prison. When we spoke about an invitation I received to write for this blog, I told Pornchai that it might somehow find its way around the world to Thailand. I did not actually believe that myself, but that is exactly what happened.

Here is Pornchai’s perspective on the first year of this blog given to me in a recent phone call to Thailand:

“When I was living in the bunk above Father G he would sometimes hand some typed pages up to me. Sometimes I thought they were interesting. Sometimes they kept me awake, and sometimes they just put me to sleep. But one time — I don’t remember the post — Father G included some paragraphs from the book, Dante’s Inferno. [It’s the first part of a three-part book, The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri in 1307]. When I read the passage, I thought, “This is the story of my life!” Father G found it and here it is:

“Midway on my life’s journey, I went astray from the straight path and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was? I never saw so drear, so rank, so horrible a wilderness! Its very memory gives shape to fear. Death could scarce be more bitter. But since it came somehow to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God’s grace. How I came to it I cannot rightly say, so drugged and loose with sleep had I become when I first wandered from the True Way. But at the far end of that valley of evil, whose maze had sapped my heart with fear, I found myself upon a little hill, and there I lifted up my eyes...”

— Dante, The DivineComedy: Inferno, 1307

“Living with Father G., I thought I had finally left hell and now I was in Purgatory with him. I came to trust him. He was the only person in my life who always looked out for my best interest and never put his own first. So now I turn this story back over to Father G.”

From Dante’s Purgatorio to Paradiso

Learning from this blog about what we both faced in this prison without support or family, some readers came to our aid. Thanks to their modest gifts of support, we were suddenly eating a little better and were able to purchase things that made life here a little easier. The slow and tedious passage of time in prison sped up. I made a promise to Pornchai that he would never again be abandoned and stranded in life. I can only say that I am filled with gratitude, not only to our readers, but to God and our Mother Mary, the Immaculata, under whose mantle Saint Maximilian Kolbe led us both. He ratified a covenant with us when Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. There was now meaning in all the injustice I had endured.

I began to write posts that would reach around the world to navigate a path home for Pornchai. There were small miracles of connection, one after another, and the lights of Divine Mercy began to illuminate both of our exiled souls. This story was not without setbacks and challenges, however.

In 2017, Pornchai and I became separated. It came at a most stressful time just as we learned that Pornchai must be deported to Thailand immediately upon leaving prison. I knew that the few years we had left together were crucial for his well being. What happened next was a miracle. There is no other explanation for it.

On July 17, 2017, I was summoned from my work in the prison law library. I was handed a few plastic bags and was told that I have one hour to unravel my life from the 23 years I had spent in that punitive and confining building and move to another place. I asked that Pornchai also be called from his work to help me. I was shaken, and did not want him to return that day just to find me inexplicably gone. As Pornchai helped me pack, our despondence was like a dark cloud. Prison has no knowledge of Divine Mercy and places no value on human relationships.

An hour later, we wheeled a small cart out of that building, across the long walled prison yard, up a series of ramps, and then in between some other buildings to a housing unit called Medium South. I knew about it, but I had never before seen it. A gate in the high wall opened up, and in we went.

I felt like Dorothy Gale having just crashed in the Land of Oz after a tornado uprooted our lives. After 23 years locked in with no outside at all — 13 of them with Pornchai — this new place was built around a park-like setting with outside access nearly around the clock. And there were flowers! People I knew came running down to carry my things. I was led to the top floor from where I could see over the walls into forests and hills beyond.

Then came this wonderful scene’s collision with a broken heart. From there, I watched as Pornchai passed all alone back through that gate down below, possibly never to be seen again by me again. Friendship means nothing in prison bureaucracies. We were powerless to change this and I was powerless to decline this move. On the next day after a sleepless night, I learned that Pornchai was also moved — but somewhere else. Our faith was shaken and it began to crumble.

Pornchai was moved to another unit. We both knew that no one ever returns from there. Not ever! Over the next two weeks I prayed daily asking Saint Maximilian, our Patron Saint ,to bring this before the Heart of Mary for a word to her Son. Surely, she could undo this knot. After all, it was upon her word that He changed water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-10).

On the following Sunday, Pornchai was able to attend a Catholic Mass in the prison chapel. We had only a minute to speak after Mass. I asked him to trust, and to hand this over to our Mother. Pornchai just nodded in silence. Then I picked up a Missalette and saw a prayer, the Memorare. I asked Pornchai to pray with me:

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

Each day to follow was under a dark cloud. Three days later, on a Wednesday afternoon, I returned from my work in the prison law library. As the gate to Medium South slid open, another prisoner was waiting for me. I usually sit on a bench there for a few minutes before climbing up the 52 stairs to my cell, but the person standing there told me I was needed up there right away.

I arrived to find Pornchai unpacking and moving into the bunk above me where, just a few hours earlier, some other prisoner lived. The smile on Pornchai’s face told the story. “How did this happen?” I asked. Pornchai said, “I think you already know.” He had no explanation. He said he was suddenly called to an office and told to pack and move to Medium South, Pod 3-Bravo, Cell 4. He had no idea the address was mine until he got there and saw my possessions in the 60-square-foot cell.

We were able to spend the next three years becoming ready, and we were ready. Pornchai remained my roommate until September 8, 2020 when he was handed over to ICE for deportation to Thailand. There was another miracle yet to come, and I wrote of it in “For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.”

Epilogue : A Prodigal Son and His Older Brother

It has long been my mission in life to restore the life of another person stranded in the twists and turns of this story. After an absence of 38 years, Pornchai’s brother, Priwan has been saving and hoping to travel to Thailand. For the first time since they were taken away in 1985, he will be reunited with Pornchai in Thailand. Priwan’s flight departs Boston on Divine Mercy Sunday arriving in Bangkok on the day after.

Priwan cannot remain there, but he wants to restore his Thai citizenship and the identity that was taken from him as Pornchai had already begun to do. Priwan will spend a month with Pornchai, the first time they have been together since the tragedy of their lives separated them 38 years earlier. I have promised to help, and that is my other prayer.

Mary is still at work here, and I am still in her service.

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Left: Pornchai greets his brother Priwan in the company of Khun Chalathip, his Thai tutor, upon arrival at the Bangkok International Airport. Right: Having arrived with clothing from the state of Maine, Priwan needed to find something more suitable to Thai weather. It was 113℉ that day. (Photos by Father John Hung Le, SVD)

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this Divine Mercy story. To help me in this Corporal Work of Mercy, or to support Beyond These Stone Walls, please see our “Contact and Support” page. You may also wish to read these related posts:

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand

Loved, Lost, Found: The Chapter on “Pornchai Moontri”

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

And you must not miss...

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

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And available until Pentecost:

A Personal Holy Week Retreat from Beyond These Stone Walls

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/9/22 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/9/22

Stones for Pope Benedict and the Rusty Wheels of Justice

Following revelations about possible deliverance after 28 years of wrongful imprisonment, hope is hard to come by, but it was not so for Saint Maximilian Kolbe.

Following revelations about possible deliverance after 28 years of wrongful imprisonment, hope is hard to come by, but it was not so for Saint Maximilian Kolbe.

February 9, 2022

“This prisoner of the State remains, against all probability, staunch in spirit, strong in the faith that the wheels of justice turn, however slowly.”

— Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Trials of Father MacRae,” The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013

When this blog was but a year old back in 2010, my friend and prison roommate, Pornchai Moontri, was received into the Catholic faith. He was 36 years old and it was his 18th year in prison. Everyone who knew him, except me, thought his conversion seemed quite impossible. Pornchai does not have an evil bone in his body, but his traumatic life had a profound effect on his outlook on life and his capacity for hope. There is simply no point in embracing faith without cultivating hope. The two go hand in hand. We cannot have one without the other.

To sow the seeds of hope in Pornchai, I had to first reawaken hope from its long dormant state in my own life as a prisoner. I am not entirely sure that I have completed that task. It seems a work in progress, but Pornchai’s last words to me as he walked through the prison gates toward freedom on September 8, 2020 were, “Thank you for giving me hope.” I wrote of that day in “Padre Pio Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

A decade earlier, back in April of 2010, Pornchai entered into Communion with the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday. On the night before, he asked me a haunting question. It was what I call one of his “upside down” questions. As he pondered what was to come, his head popped down from his upper bunk so he appeared upside down as he asked it. “Is it okay for us to hope for a happy ending when Saint Maximilian didn’t have one?” Pornchai had a knack for knocking me off the rails with questions like that.

Before responding, I had to do some pondering of my own. Our Patron Saint lost his earthly life at age 41 in a Nazi concentration camp starvation bunker. His death was followed by his rapid incineration. All that Maximilian Kolbe was in his earthly existence went up in smoke and ash to drift in the skies above Auschwitz, the most hopeless place in modern human history.

Retroactive Guilt and Shame

What I am about to write may seem horribly unpopular with those harboring an agenda against Catholic priests, but popularity has never been an important goal for me. In recent weeks, the news media has trumpeted a charge launched by a commission empowered by some Catholic officials in Germany. The commission’s much-hyped conclusion was that Pope Benedict was negligent when he did not remove four priests quickly enough after suspicions of abuse forty-one years ago in 1981. Some of my friends have cautioned me to stay out of this. Perhaps I should listen.

But I won’t. At what point do we cease judging men of the past for not living up to the ideals and politically correct sensitivities of the present? Merely asking that question puts me in the crosshairs of our victim culture, but it also forces me to ask another. Go back just another forty-one years and you will find yourself amid the hopelessness of 1941 as the children of Yahweh suffered unspeakable crimes in Germany and Poland. Where do we draw the line of historic condemnation? Should the German Church stop with Joseph Ratzinger in 1981?

The condemnation of Pope Benedict called for by some media and German officials today should be seen through the lens of history. It is a part of our hope as Catholics and as human beings that neither Pope Benedict nor the German people would act today as they did — or allowed to be done — forty or eighty years ago. The real target of such pointless inquiry and blame was not Pope Benedict, but rather hope itself.

I think we have to be clear in our response which should include something about the splinters in our eyes and the planks in the eyes of those pointing misplaced fingers of blame. Perhaps the moral authority that chastises Pope Benedict today in Germany doth protesteth too much. A new book by historian Harald Jähner, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 marshals a plethora of facts and critical skills of historical writing to portray the postwar “country’s stubborn inclination toward willful delusion.”

Thank you for indulging my brief tirade. Catholic League President Bill Donohue also came to the defense of Pope Benedict by shedding some light of historical context on the matter.

Hope Is Its Own Fulfillment

But back to Father Maximilian Kolbe. On the day of Pornchai’s Baptism, I responded to his question. I told him, “YOU are Maximilian’s happy ending!” Eighty-one years after his martyrdom at Auschwitz, the world honors him while the names of those who destroyed him have simply faded into oblivion. No one honors them. No one remembers them. God remembers. Their footprint on the Earth left only sorrow.

St. Maximilian Kolbe is the reason why I was compelled to set aside my own quest for freedom — which seemed utterly hopeless the last time I looked — in order to do what Maximilian did: to save another.

In all the anguish of the last two years as deliverance and freedom slowly came to Pornchai Moontri, the clouds of the past that overshadowed him began to lift. My prayer had been constant, and of a consistently singular nature: “I ask for freedom for Pornchai; I ask for nothing for myself.”

I am no saint, but that is what St. Maximilian did, and it seemed to be my only path. But since then that 2013 quote atop this post from The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz has once again become my reality. As you know if you have been reading these pages in recent weeks, a frenzy of action and high anxiety has surrounded the recent release of the New Hampshire ‘Laurie List,’ known more formally as the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule. If you somehow missed the earthquake that struck from Beyond These Stone Walls in January, I wrote about it in Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.

I am most grateful to readers for making the extra effort to share that post. It was emailed by Dr. Bill Donohue to the entire membership of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It indeed came as a bombshell to me and to many. Just as the frenzy began to subside, Ryan MacDonald stirred it up again in his brilliant analysis with a very pointed title: “Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest.”

I am not entirely sure that “destroys” is the right term to use, but I understand where he is coming from. To survive twenty-eight years of wrongful imprisonment means relegating a lot of one’s sense of self to the ash heap of someone else’s oppression. Many of those who spend decades in prison for crimes they did not commit lose their minds. Many also lose their faith, and along with it, all hope.

I have to remind myself multiple times a day that nothing is a sure thing anymore — neither prison nor freedom. I keep asking myself how much I dare to trust hope again. To quote the late Baseball Hall of Famer, Yogi Berra, this all feels “like deja vu all over again.”

Deja vu is a French term which literally means “to have seen before.” It is the strange sensation of having been somewhere before, or having previously experienced a current situation even though you know you have not. It is a phenomenon of neuropsychology that I have experienced all my life. About 15 percent of the population has that experience on occasion.

A possible explanation of deja vu is that aspects of the current situation act as retrieval cues in the psyche that unconsciously evoke an earlier experience long since receded from conscious memory, but resulting in an eerie sense of the familiar. It feels more strange than troublesome. I have a lifelong condition called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) which makes me prone to the experience of deja vu, but no one knows exactly why.

When Disappointments of the Past Haunt the Present

This time, my deja vu is connected to real events of the past, and the origin of my caution about current hope is found there. If you have read an important post of mine entitled “Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester,” then you may recall this story. In 2003 and 2004, the New Hampshire Attorney General conducted an intense one-sided investigation of my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester. When it was over, the former Bishop of Manchester signed a blanket release disposing of the privacy rights of priests of his diocese.

In 2021, when I wrote the above post, New Hampshire Judge Richard B. McNamara ruled that the 2003 public release of one-sided documents should have been barred under New Hampshire law because it was an abuse of the grand jury system and it denied basic rights of due process to those involved.

At the time this all happened in 2003, a Tennessee lawyer and law firm cited in a press statement that what happened in this diocese was unconstitutional. I contacted the lawyer who subsequently took a strong interest in my own case. He flew to New Hampshire twice to visit me in prison. I sent him a vast amount of documentation which he found most compelling. After many months of cultivated hope, he sent me a letter indicating that he would soon send a Memorandum of Understanding that I was to sign laying out the parameters under which he would represent me pro bono because I have not had an income for decades.

I waited. I waited a long time, but the Memorandum never came. Without explanation or communication of any kind, the lawyer and the hope he brought simply faded away. Letter after letter remained unanswered. It was inexplicable. It was at this same time that Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal published a two-part exposé, A Priest’s Story, on the perversion of justice that became apparent in their independent review of this matter. Those articles were actually published a few years after they were first planned. This was because the reams of supporting documents requested and collected by the newspaper were destroyed in the collateral damage of the terrorist attacks in New York of September 11, 2001.

Then in 2012, new lawyers filed an extensive case for Habeas Corpus review of my trial and imprisonment. It is still available at the National Center for Reason and Justice which mercifully still advocates for justice for me. However that effort failed when both State and Federal judges declined to allow any hearing that would give new witnesses a chance to testify under oath.

Now, in 2022 in light of this new ray of hope, some of the people involved in Beyond These Stone Walls have expressed frustration with my caution and apparent pessimism. I have not been as enthused as they have been over the hope arising from the current situation. Hope for me has been like investing in the stock market. Having lost everything twice, I am hesitant to wade too far into the waters of hope again.

I know only too well, however, that hope at times such as these is like that which both Pornchai Moontri and I once found in our Patron Saint. I wrote about it in “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

So in spite of myself, I am now aboard this new train of hope and must go where it takes me. That, for now, is the best that I can do. My prayer has not changed. I ask for nothing for myself, but I will take whatever comes.

I thank you, as I have in the past, for your support and prayers and for being here with me again at this turning of the tide. I will keep you posted, but it won’t be quick. Real hope never is.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please visit our newest addition to the BTSW menu: The Wall Street Journal. You may also wish to visit these relevant posts cited herein:

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Padre Pio Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance