In the Live Free or Die State, Justice Has a Ray of Hope

For this wrongly convicted priest, The Wall Street Journal, the Catholic League and The Media Report have shined new life into a dying pursuit of truth and justice.

March 22, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The acclaimed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in 1953, the year I was born. “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” was one of his best-known poems. The death he railed against within it was his father’s and not his own. I, for one, have never feared death. For persons of real faith, death is not the dying of the light, but rather light’s rebirth. I have much more feared the dying of the truth. It is that alone against which I rage.

I turn 70 years old on April 9th this year. Friends in the real world tell me that 70 is the new 50 but my arthritic knee and recently dislocated shoulder do not agree. Prison is a sort of twilight zone of distorted time. I was 29 and a priest for only one year when my fictitious crimes are alleged to have taken place. I was 41 when first accused and placed on trial for them. After I three times refused to plead guilty and serve one year in prison, Judge Arthur Brennan imposed a sentence of 67 years. As it stands, I will be eligible for release at age 108.

I will not, of course, outlive this sentence. That is why my friend, Father George David Byers and I had a recent phone conversation about what happens if and when I die here. It was prompted by my ambulance ride to Concord Hospital last summer with a cardiac event that turned out to be pericarditis — inflammation of the pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. I am told by one physician that it is now a suspected side effect of the mRNA Covid vaccine.

As a child, my mother often reminded me of the necessity of always having clean underwear lest I am run over by a car and my family might be embarrassed. The cardiac event was not really scary so much as inconvenient. What passed through my mind while chained up in the back of that ambulance was how much I had yet to do, how much I had yet to write, and how unprepared I am for death because the truth may die with me. I never even gave a thought to my underwear. Sorry, Mom.

A part of my concern, and that of Father Byers, is one of the other heartaches of life in this prison. I have no access to the Sacraments, and neither does anyone else here. The private Mass in my cell late on Sunday nights is the only Mass offered here for at least the last three years. A Capuchin priest who voluntarily came here for Mass for over 25 years died in 2019. A priest from the Portland, Maine diocese used to come here monthly to visit me and hear my confession. Then all visits were shut down for two years due to Covid. I just learned that he died in 2021. He was my age.

In the annals of both Church and State, this all sounds horrible, I know, but it does have some ironic moments. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu was interviewed on FOX News last month. The rumor is that he might be preparing a run for the White House. He made a big deal about being governor of a State whose motto is “Live Free or Die.” Ironically, my ambulance ride took place just days after Charlene Duline published her feisty article about me titled, “Dying in Prison in the Live Free or Die State.”

But death was not meant to be for me that night in July, 2022. My condition was treatable over the next several months, and I have mostly recovered. I have also once again adjusted to the reality that my release from prison was also not meant to be. At least not then, and at least not that way. So I had to get back to the hard work of seeking justice. It was either that or surrender to its absence.

New Hampshire Politics

That said, I have a plea for our readers. Please do not write to Governor Sununu asking for my pardon. The State cannot pardon someone who is not guilty of the crime in the first place. New Hampshire has not pardoned a prisoner since the Civil War, and will certainly not break that hallowed tradition for an imprisoned Catholic priest as the nation gears up for a presidential election with this state’s Governor as a likely contender. The pardon process brings far more heat than light anyway. In going on 29 years here, I have never seen it succeed for anyone.

The Democratic National Committee just stripped New Hampshire of its “First in the Nation Primary” awarding the first event to South Carolina. Since 1920, New Hampshire has held onto the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Since then, candidates campaigning for votes have attracted tremendous amounts of attention and money to New Hampshire every four years. Critics have charged that this was out of proportion with the state’s numbers, racial diversity, and fundamental political importance.

Now that the Democratic Party has rearranged that schedule, the New Hampshire Governor pledges to buck the edict and hold the State’s primary first anyway. The nation’s eyes will all be on New Hampshire as this dramatic standoff unfolds in 2024. I do not wish to be a part of its background entertainment.

There are many in U.S. prisons who are wrongfully convicted. By Christmas, 2021, after more than 28 years into my imprisonment, I resigned myself to the seemingly impenetrable fate that this State imposed upon me. Then, unexpectedly, I received a message on the first day of 2022 that there is a possible new path to restore justice. I outlined it in one of my first posts of 2022 and will link to it again at the end of this one. The post was, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.”

Defenders of the Truth

Back in 2012, just a few years after I began writing from prison for an earlier version of this blog, Australian priest and writer, Fr. James Valladares, Ph.D., published a book about procedural justice for priests who had been accused. He predicted that the priesthood scandal that spread from the United States poses the greatest threat to the traditional Catholic understanding of priesthood since the Protestant Reformation. That prediction was certainly supported years later by findings described in my recent post, “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”

Father Valladares titled his 2012 book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast. Nearly one-third of the book is about this blog and its revelations about the phenomenon of falsely accused priests. There is much within its pages that will be very familiar to long-time readers of this blog. In addition to my own earlier writings, the book strongly profiles the work of Ryan A. MacDonald, David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report, Bill Donohue at the Catholic League, and especially Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal.

Most readers of this blog know that one of the most formidable sources for exposing and resuscitating the truth has been The Wall Street Journal. The nation’s largest, most influential newspaper published two major articles in my regard in 2005, another in 2013, and a fourth in 2022. The first three were written by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on the WSJ Editorial Board. The fourth, written in 2022, was “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae” by Boston civil rights and criminal defense attorney Harvey A. Silverglate.

One observer noted that The Wall Street Journal has devoted more column space to this story than to that of any Nobel laureate. I do not know how to respond to that except with gratitude. I would not be writing today if not for the courage of Dorothy Rabinowitz and the Journal’s unrelenting pursuit of truth and justice.

Among our newer features on this blog is a page dedicated to the coverage of this story. It begins with a brief but compelling five-minute video interview with Dorothy Rabinowitz that should not be missed along with the full text of each of the WSJ articles on this story collected in one place. The page is entitled, The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae.

While perusing that page, you will note that two of the WSJ articles are followed by commentary from David F. Pierre, Jr., founder and moderator of The Media Report. David is a Catholic layman and a journalist in his own right. He literally took on Goliath when he began writing and publishing against the tide of media narratives claiming without evidence that the Catholic Church has been some sort of special locus of child sexual abuse.

Since then, David has published four books laying out his Herculean accomplishments to expose the whole truth of the story behind the scandal that other media would not cover. David, like the Biblical David, is a man of great courage and integrity. In coming months, we plan to create a BTSW Library page collecting his posts written for this blog, and highlighting each of his books. His most recent post was The Media Report: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.

Finally, and by no means least among the heroic efforts of media figures, the truth owes a debt to Dr. William Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Under his leadership, this organization dedicated to religious liberty — the largest in the world — has been relentless in its support of the truth. This includes the truth about the case against me. In coming weeks I plan to present a post highlighting the importance of the work of the Catholic League on the frontlines of Religious Liberty, and increasingly endangered rights in our culture.

In the Acknowledgments section of his 2012 book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast, Father Valladares cited each of the persons I have mentioned in this post:

“Ms. Dorothy Rabinowitz, Mr. Harvey A. Silverglate, Mr. Ryan A. MacDonald, Dr. William Donahue, Mr. David F. Pierre, Jr., all of whom I have never met, but whose candid, forthright, persuasive writings have served as an added impetus in the pursuit of this vital research.”

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Next week in these pages: “A Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls.”

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and please visit our newer pages in honor of those who have so honored us by shining new life into my pursuit of truth and justice:

The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae

The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse

David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report

Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

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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.”

Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love

Pope Benedict XVI left the Chair of Peter amid debate about what his decision meant for the Church. Above all else, it was an act of fatherly love and sacrifice.

December 31, 2022

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: The Holy Father, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI entered Eternal Life at 9:34AM Rome time (3:34AM EDT) on the last day of the Year of Our Lord 2022. I wrote the following post in February 2013 in the weeks following his decision to leave the Chair of Peter. It was a time of great confusion for the Church, and great sorrow for those who loved this Pope. Upon the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978, Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that he offered a ‘Hail Mary’ for him, and then another ‘Hail Mary’ in his honor asking for his intercession before the Divine Presence. I offer these same prayers today for Benedict XVI and in the same way.

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February 2013

We are all prisoners of our own perception. We come to just about every concern and deliberation from the perspective of our own unique limits, circumstances, and points of view. The more fair and just among us practice varying degrees of empathy which is, in part at least, the ability to place ourselves in the shoes of another.

One truth became crystal clear to me on February 11, 2013. No matter how well honed our skills for empathy might be, none of us can ever adequately imagine ourselves in one pair of shoes — the Shoes of the Fisherman.

It was that very title that helped plant and cultivate my early thoughts of priesthood when I was 15 years old in 1968 — the same year Msgr. Charles Pope once wrote of in “1968 – The Year the Church Drank from the Poison of this World.” My friend, Father Louis Antonelli took me to see The Shoes of the Fisherman, the film starring Anthony Quinn as Pope Kyril I. It was scripted from the great novel of the same title by Morris West. In the end, the fictional Pope Kyril — who as a priest spent 20 years in a Soviet prison — sacrificed his papacy to avert nuclear war looming in the Communist stranglehold on the Soviet Union and China. The long, ponderous film deeply moved me at age 15 as Pope Kyril’s acts of love and sacrifice mollified the world at the expense of the Church. I left that film resolved to pray for the Pope, who in my sudden awareness became the most important man on Earth, and the most targeted man for the world’s wolves and the powers of evil.

Priesthood did not take me to where I had hoped back then to go. Like Kyril himself, it took me to prison. So it was from the perspective of my confinement in a prison cell that I learned the heartbreaking news on Monday morning, February 11, 2013, that our beloved Pope Benedict XVI would resign the Chair of Saint Peter effective February 28. Like so many of you, I found that news to be deeply disappointing — even devastating. That day felt as though someone had cast a pall over the entire Church.

The news footage soon to follow the Holy Father’s bombshell — the scene of a bolt of lightning striking the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica — did nothing to ease the sense of oppression that day wrought. Like so many of you, I was filled with dread that the wolves had won — the very wolves the Holy Father referred to in his first homily as Pope in April 2005: “Pray for me that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

After eight years of his pontificate, I could not imagine this Pope fleeing from anything. In the ensuing weeks, I have slowly come to see his decision not only as agonizingly painful in its making — for us, but most especially for him — but also as a courageous act of sacrifice motivated by love for the Church and the 1.2 billion souls who come to Christ through Her.

Not in His Own Best Interest

By the end of the day on February 11, 2013, I asked a friend to post a comment from me on BTSW’s Facebook page. My comment focused only on the Holy Father’s brief statement and avoided much of the media spin launched within minutes of it — most of which I was unaware of anyway, and could only imagine. Pope Benedict’s own words left little room for spin, and they are worth hearing again as he abdicates:

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.

“However, in today’s world, subject to many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to steer the boat of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

My immediate reaction to these words was one of great sorrow. I believed that Pope Benedict, who would soon turn 86 years of age, was convinced by those around him not to allow age and infirmity to become the media’s face of the Church. I believed such advice to have been rooted in the last years of Pope John Paul’s pontificate as his obvious infirmity became its own news event.

And so my brief comment that February 11, though well intentioned, assumed that the Holy Father was simply convinced, as he himself stated, that his “strengths and advanced age are no longer suited to the Petrine ministry” — especially so in a world in which every papal tremble, stumble, and foible is caught on camera for instantaneous global news.

I thought the Holy Father had agonized over this and concluded simply, and understandably, that age and infirmity taking center stage in the future years of his papacy were neither in his best interest nor that of the Church. I thought wrongly.

There was absolutely nothing in this decision that the Holy Father considered to be in his own best interest. Like so many of the loving fathers I know, his own best interest never entered the equation at all. On the morning after the Pope’s announcement, The Wall Street Journal  published a superb and influential commentary by Catholic writer George Weigel that helped to give me some perspective on this development. “Catholics Need a Pope for the ‘New Evangelization‘ ” (February 13, 2013) was a service to the Church calling upon us to look forward to consider the urgent challenges to be faced by the successor of Pope Benedict. George Weigel pointed out something that the Holy Father himself was deeply aware of as “we widen the historical lens through which we view this papal transition.” Pope Benedict XVI will be the last pope to have participated in the Second Vatican Council.

By ending his papacy, he had ended an ecclesiastical era. The question George Weigel asks us to ponder is not “What wolves brought this about?” but rather “To what future has Pope Benedict led Catholicism?” I believe the answer to that question is the urgent issue of the coming conclave, and I believe the Holy Father is convinced of the necessary timing of this as the Church summons forth a Pope for the New Evangelization.

And Not without Precedent

In the Western world, and especially in the Americas, it’s difficult for some to factor the Catholic Church as an ancient structure, the sole institution in human history to have survived — to have even thrived — for 2,000 years. In “The Canonization of Pope John Paul II,” I wrote of a History Channel presentation on the papacy. Hopefully, we may see it again before the coming conclave.

With reverence and historical accuracy, the cameras took us from the tomb of Saint Peter to the tomb of Blessed John Paul II. Between them, two millennia had past — 2,000 years of war, scandal, all manner of human debacles, and countless assaults on the Church and Holy See. And yet at the tomb of Saint John Paul II the Church stood. The gates of hell had not prevailed against Her — and not for lack of trying.

That trial continues. A pope’s resignation is rare, but not unheard of. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Saint Louis University history professor Thomas F. Madden unveiled some of this history in “The Pope Joins a Fine but Rarely Seen Tradition” (Feb. 15, 2013). For the first 1,200 years in the life of the Church, Professor Madden explained, it was assumed that a pope could not resign except under extreme conditions such as being thrown into prison — a fate that befell three popes in the first millennium.

The last resignation of a pope was six centuries ago in the year 1415. Eight decades before Columbus sailed to the New World — 360 years before the United States even existed — Pope Gregory XII resigned the papacy to end the Great Schism. In so doing he was praised throughout Europe for placing the interests of the Church above his own interests and ambition.

But the real precedent was set in 1294 when Pope Celestine V, now Saint Celestine, resigned for reasons very similar to those now put forward by Pope Benedict. A conclave had been unable to arrive at a consensus for two years when Pietro del Murone was elected to resolve it. Already in his 80s when he became Pope Celestine V, he quietly established in canon law a tenet allowing for the resignation of a pope, and then applied it to himself with the support of the College of Cardinals.

The Prayer to Saint Michael

The Church canonized Saint Celestine in 1313. In the 2010 book, Light of the World (Ignatius Press), based on Peter Seewald’s extensive interviews with Pope Benedict XVI, the Holy Father cited the precedent set by Saint Celestine, and even hinted — then at age 84 — that if ever a pope’s reserves of strength no longer served the Church, that precedent could be repeated.

But there is still the matter of the wolves circling from both without and within. They have always been here. George Weigel pointed out that the Second Vatican Council’s deep reforms in the Catholic Church actually began in the previous century in 1878. According to Mr. Weigel, “Pope Leo XIII made the historic decision to quietly bury the rejectionist stand his predecessors had adopted toward cultural and political modernity.” George Weigel ended his article with a reflection about the current state of disunity in the Roman Curia, calling upon the coming conclave to elect a pope who will address the Curia’s “disastrous condition . . . so that the Vatican bureaucracy becomes an instrument of the New Evangelization, not an impediment to it.”

Pope Benedict XVI cited a similar concern in his Ash Wednesday homily from the pulpit of Saint Peter’s Basilica: “The face of the Church is at times disfigured by the sins against the unity of the Church and the divisions of the ecclesial body.” It is of interest that in 1888, Pope Leo XIII also cited this while composing his famous Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, only a small part of which has become the common prayer we know. In its original form, Pope Leo wrote:

“In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the pastor is struck, the sheep may be scattered.”

Pope Benedict XVI has never had to earn our deference, but earn it he did, many times over, as our Holy Father in a time of great trial for the Church. We owe him the benefit of our fidelity, unity, and prayers, and I know he has those. By abdicating at this time, and by calling the Church’s focus to what comes next at this moment in history, Pope Benedict is engaging in an act of love and sacrifice for the Church.

What remains heartbreaking is that so many of us have come not only to reverence and respect this Pope for his gifted mind and great personal holiness, but we have come to love him. Even in life, this Holy Father’s long-serving predecessor was given another title in his last years. My friend, the late Father Richard John Neuhaus and others deservedly dubbed him “John Paul the Great,” and it stuck.

Pope Benedict XVI also stands to have a new name. Springing from the hearts of millions, no matter what role he plays or what the Church comes to call him, this Holy Father will forever be for us, “Benedict the Beloved.”

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Prologue — December 31, 2023: As cited above, in 1888 when Pope Leo XIII composed the prayer to Saint Michael, he added in the original version, “In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the pastor is struck, the sheep may be scattered.”

For so many faithful Catholics the world over, history sometimes repeats itself.

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The James Webb Space Telescope and an Encore from Hubble

James Webb Space Telescope illustration courtesy of ESA/Hubble (Northrup Grumman).

As the James Webb Space Telescope entered orbit in a neutral gravity zone one million miles from Earth, the waning days of Hubble revealed an astronomical surprise.

June 22, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or lose the chords of Orion?”

— Job 38:4,31

“Astronomy, Cosmology, Physics, Theology, History! Reading this blog is like enrolling in a graduate program at NYU.” That message was sent to me in a letter several years ago from a friend, an official of the Archdiocese of New York. I have written a good deal about the sciences of astronomy and cosmology, but only about a dozen posts over the 13-year lifespan of this blog.

In a recent telephone call from exile to my friend, Father George David Byers, STD, SSL, he chided me that I am way overdue for a science post. I cite his academic credentials here — a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University Angelicum in Rome and a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and Jerusalem — to reflect that his suggestion of a mere “science” post might contain just a hint of academic hubris. If so, I can only respond with a quote from the great English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.”

I actually did write a science post even before Father Byers brought it up. Please don't yawn or click me away just yet. For me, this is a very big deal and it has a “WOW” factor. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched into Earth orbit in 1990, has been operating for 32 years and has far exceeded its intended operational limit. In the waning days of Hubble, it surprised Earthbound scientists with an amazing discovery. I will get to it below, but first ...

Star Trek: The Next Generation

The next generation of space exploration was born with the December 25, 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It has recently arrived at its designated orbit in what is called a “Lagrange point.” Named for the 18th Century French mathematician and physicist, Joseph Louis Lagrange, a “Lagrange point” is a zone of neutral gravity between the Earth and the Sun about one million miles from Earth. That point is now host to the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope.

Thousands of scientists and engineers took part in this project on the cutting edge of astronomical science. The Space Telescope Science Institute will operate and monitor it from Baltimore. Webb successfully separated from its launch vehicle and unfolded a giant solar array to power the telescope. Armed with huge primary and secondary mirrors and a suite of cameras, spectrometers, and other instruments, the Webb Telescope is the size of a large truck. It is capable of producing spectral images of 100 galaxies at a time. As one scientist described it:

“[Webb] will crack open the treasure chest of the magnificent infrared sky invisible to the human eye. If a bumblebee hovered in space at the distance from Earth to the Moon, Webb will be able to see both the sunlight it reflects and the heat it emits.”

One of the burning questions of both science and faith that Webb may lend itself to solving is the existence of life elsewhere in the Universe. All the latest media craze about evidence of UFOs points only to Earth-bound technology. Distances between stars are like impenetrable barriers. If sentient life exists, we will detect each other long before we ever encounter each other. So far, after decades of searching, no such evidence yet exists.

A general consensus among astronomers is that life does exist “out there,” but complex life is much more rare, and sentient complex life like us, if it exists elsewhere at all, is extremely rare. I once wrote a post laying out a case for our uniqueness in the Cosmos. It was, “Star Trek and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.”

That post introduced readers to a remarkable contributor to the science that made the Webb Space Telescope possible. Astronomer Vera Rubin defied all the stereotypes of her time to become one of the great icons of cosmology. She discovered that the visible Universe that we see in the night sky is only about 10 to 15 percent of what is actually there. She wrote of this in “Dark Matter in the Universe” (Scientific American, 1998):

“As we have done for centuries, we gaze into the night sky from our planetary platform and wonder where we are in this cavernous cosmos. Flecks of light provide clues about great objects in space. And what we do discern about their motions and apparent shadows tells us that there is much more that we cannot yet see.

“From every photon we collect from the universe’s farthest reaches, we struggle to extract information. Astronomy is the study of light that reaches Earth from the heavens. Our task is not only to collect as much light as possible — from ground and space-based telescopes — but also to use what we can see in the heavens to understand better what we cannot see and yet know must be there.

“Based on 50 years of accumulated observations of the motions of galaxies and the expansion of the universe, most astronomers believe that as much as 90 percent of the stuff constituting the universe may be objects or particles that cannot be seen. In other words, most of the universe’s matter does not radiate. It provides no glow that we can detect in the electromagnetic spectrum. … We call this missing mass ‘dark matter,’ for it is the light, not the matter, that is missing.”

— Vera Rubin, 1998

In coming months, the first images to come from the James Webb Space Telescope now hovering one million miles between Earth and the Sun may provide humanity’s first illumination of dark matter, that 90-percent of the Universe that we have never before seen. The Webb Telescope enormous primary mirror has unfolded perfectly. In coming months Webb’s first images of the ancient cosmos will arrive on Earth. Be prepared to be amazed!

A Pre-retirement Surprise from Hubble

My favorite post of the past year is one that was only half written by me. The other (and far better) half was written by Fr. Andrew Pinsent, a noted particle physicist and Research Director at the Ian Ramsay Center for Science and Religion at Oxford University in the U.K. I was way out of my element in this joint venture, but it was this humble blog’s best foot forward. The jointly written post was, “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.”

It was among our most popular and enduring posts of the last year. Perhaps it was just a nice break from this world’s seemingly never-ending preoccupations with war, pestilence, scandal, and other obsessions of our time.

In that post, I quoted an excerpt from the book, Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2005), a wondrous book by a brilliant mathematician, Robyn Arianrhod:

“In 1931, [Georges] Lemaitre formally sowed the seeds of the Big Bang theory when he suggested the universe had started as an explosion of a ‘primeval atom,’ and that it had continued expanding from that explosive beginning.... Einstein’s equation predicted the universe had expanded not from a tiny piece of matter located in an otherwise empty cosmos, but from a single point in four-dimensional space-time .... Before this point, about thirteen billion years ago, there was no time and no space. No geometry, no matter, nothing. The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.” ( p. 187)

“The Universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.” And it all happened in an instant 13 billion years ago on “A day without yesterday.” This conclusion of modern cosmology was the work of a brilliant priest, mathematician and physicist, Fr. Georges Lemaitre. If you wonder about the relevance of faith in the scientific world, you may be surprised to learn that science and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are on the same page in describing the origin of a created universe:

“God created the universe out of nothing.” (CCC 290)

“We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create. God created freely out of nothing.” (CCC 296)

“God said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:4). Scripture bears witness to faith in creation ‘out of nothing’ as a truth filled with promise and hope.” (CCC 297)

“Since God created everything out of nothing, He can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them, and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection.” (CCC 298)

The Hubble Space Telescope is destined to soon retire, but not before it gave us some amazing images of the visible Cosmos. Its latest surprise is a photograph of the most distant star ever seen by human eyes or instruments, a star now called “Earendel.” It is 28 billion light years from Earth. A light year is a measure of distance and not of time. It is the distance light travels in a single year at the constant rate of 186,000 miles per second. A light year works out to be 5.6 trillion miles. Multiply that by 28 billion and that is the distance from Earth to Earendel. Please don’t ask me to convert this to kilometers.

The light Hubble captured from Earendel emanated from the star 12.9 billion years ago in the very infancy of creation as calculated by Fr. Georges Lemaitre. The only reason Hubble could spot this star is because of a rare cosmic alignment. A galaxy cluster beyond the Milky Way — our galaxy — was positioned in such a way that its gravity bent light creating a sort of cosmic magnifying lens.

If you did the math, you might have noticed that Earendel is twice the distance of the age of the Universe which is possible only because the Universe has continually expanded over those 13 billion years. This expansion, and the now proven fact that galaxies are defeating gravity by speeding away from one another, was also a discovery of the physics of Fr. Georges Lemaitre which in the end were applauded and embraced by Albert Einstein.

Who says priests are boring?

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Note: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please visit our “Special Events” page and these related links:

Star Trek and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered The Big Bang

“A Day Without Yesterday:” Father Georges Lemaitre and The Big Bang

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Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, A Year in Freedom

Pornchai Moontri marks one year since his return to Thailand after 36 years away, and one year in freedom after 29 years in prison. Divine Mercy has won this day!

February 23, 2022 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Sawasdee Kup, my friends. The photo that you see below is my first moment in freedom in Thailand after a 36-year absence and 29 years in prison since age 18. As many of you know, the last 16 of those years were in the company of Fr. Gordon MacRae. Without him, none of the rest of this post would ever have taken place.

In the photo, that’s me on the left. It was the 24th day of February in 2021. I think I was the only person in Thailand to wear a pair of western jeans that day. It was all I had, and it was a very hot 40-degrees Celsius which is about 104-degrees Fahrenheit and extremely humid. The three people with me are (L to R): Khun Chalathip, a supporter and benefactor of the Divine Word Missionary work in Thailand; Yela Smit, co-founder of Divine Mercy Thailand and the person who worked with Fr. Gordon to prepare for my return; and Fr. John Hung Le, SVD who you already know well. Father G is not in the picture, of course, but he was still very much present.

There are many others who made this picture possible. Because of Beyond These Stone Walls, an international effort formed to move a mountain. This included Yela Smit and Father John Le in Thailand, my legal advocate Clare Farr in Australia, Viktor Weyand in Michigan, Dilia E. Rodríguez in New York, Fr. George David Byers in North Carolina, Charlene Duline in Indiana, Bill Wendell in Ohio, Claire Dion, Carol Slade, Judith Freda, and Samantha McLaughlin in Maine, and Mr. Narongchai at the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington. All made a mighty effort to bring me home. Many of you contributed to my support in the great challenge of starting life over. I do not have adequate words to thank you all.

After the above photo was taken, I had my first meal in a Thai restaurant, and then we went shopping for clothes. Father John took me to the biggest, busiest shopping mall in Bangkok where I had to fight off a panic attack. It was a very long time since I was in the presence of so many people, and in a city as huge as Bangkok. It felt overwhelming.

Father G and I had talked a lot about what my first moments of freedom might be like, but living them was another matter. So many competing feelings rushed through my mind: excitement, terror, gratitude, terror, happiness, terror. It is not easy to describe how freedom feels after spending 60-percent of my life in a U.S. prison. Did I mention terror?

Samsung to the Rescue

The photo above was my first “selfie.” It was taken when I figured out how to use the camera on a smart phone. There is a little rosary and cross hanging from the mirror. That was made for me out of foil candy wrappers by a 19-year-old Honduran young man who I helped during five awful months in ICE detention. From the moment I arrived in Thailand, everything I did, saw, or touched that day and the days to follow was completely new to me. I feared that I will never be able to fit in. During these 14 days of quarantine in a hotel room alone for the first time in 29 years, Father G called me every day. For the rest of my life I will always remember that first phone call. It was the morning after my arrival.

We spoke about my first anxious night in that room. It was small, but still about three times bigger than the 60-squarefeet where I lived with Father G. I could not see anyone during my two weeks in quarantine, but our friend, Yela, left a Samsung Galaxy smart phone in the hotel for me. I looked at it like it was left behind by space aliens. It took me a while to figure it out, but I somehow managed to find Beyond These Stone Walls.

I wish you could have felt my heart thumping with excitement. This blog that had been so much a part of our lives, reaching out from a tiny prison cell to the whole world, was now right in front of me. I realized with deep emotion that I am now seeing it while Father G never has. It struck me that almost everyone I will meet in Thailand in coming days will already know about me. Then I found Father G’s Documentary Interview and listened for the next two hours as he talked while I fell asleep. “Just like old times,” I thought, but don’t tell him I said that.

One year ago, on February 24, 2021, Father G wrote about that first night in Thailand and my embarrassing encounter with a 21st Century toilet. It was “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” I remember thinking that this Samsung smart phone that now connects me to the world is a miracle, and that BTSW was an even greater miracle. I felt for the first time that I am not among strangers. I am home, and Father G came with me.

Pictures of Freedom

Father G and I still speak by telephone each day. He calls me with his GTL tablet from the same prison cell where we both lived. Sometimes it is for just ten minutes and sometimes longer. Every time I tell him about what is going on in my life now, he says the same thing: “Send me photos! We need photos.” Now I can see the reason for that. He suggested that the best way to tell the story of my first year in freedom is with photographs and links to what he and I have both written. So here goes!

Free at Last Thanks to God and You

I wrote this post just a few weeks after my arrival. I was living then in the Divine Word Community House with Fr. John Le and some members of his Order in Nontha Buri. Father G and Father John spoke often. It is with deep gratitude that I thank both of them. No one knows how difficult it is to re-enter society after almost thirty years in isolation. On the day I arrived at Father John’s home, he and Yela had a photo taken with me in the presence of the One most responsible for bringing me there. So that photo is posted above.

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Just a week later, Father Gordon wrote this amazing post after talking with me. It turned out that the headquarters for Father John’s Community in Thailand were located in the Province of Nong Bua Lamphu in the Northeast of Thailand, about a nine hour drive from Bangkok. That was the place of my birth and the place from where I was taken at age eleven. Just a few kilometers from a special home and clinic operated by Father John’s Order for Thai children, the Aunt and cousins I lived with as a child were still there. It was a most painful but also joyful reunion.

I spent my first night there in the unfinished home my mother was building before she was killed on the Island of Guam in 2000. All her things were still there. The next morning, I visited and prayed at her tomb for the first time. I was so thankful that Father John was with me. Though most of Thailand practices Buddhism, and so did I as a child, I am now a Catholic, and I asked Father John to bless my mother’s tomb. I will be going there again in April for Chakri, the annual Buddhist Water Festival when family members clean and honor the tombs of their loved ones.

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

Father Gordon has told me many times that this was his favorite post of my first year in freedom. He told my story combined with the story of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael from the Book of Tobit. There is a mysterious dog in the Tobit story, and during this same journey my dog, Hill, adopted me. This was a very special post. Hill and I have had similar lives in which we both got battered around a bit. He started following me as soon as I first arrived in the village of Phu Wiang (Poo-vee-ANG) just as a dog followed Tobias in the company of Raphael in the Book of Tobit. Whenever I return there, Hill comes running and howling as I give him a special treat. Then he never leaves my side.

Beyond These Stone Walls in Thailand

Father G helped me to write this post which describes my long and difficult adjustment. In the photo above, Father John and Khun Chalathip, who took on the task of helping me to learn Thai again, brought me to a day of prayer at an Oblate retreat in Bangkok. Much of this post was written while I was there. Back at the New Hampshire State Prison, the Lieutenant of the unit where I lived saw it and had it posted on the wall outside his office. He asked the 300 prisoners there to all read it and he included it in a prison newsletter. Father G says that they especially liked this last paragraph and wanted other prisoners to read it:

“Sometimes I get impatient with myself. I wish I could be further along in learning Thai language, history and culture, the metric system, driving on the left side of the road, and not having to “report in” every time I go anywhere or do anything. After 29 years “inside” I am now out of prison but I still have to get prison out of me. The name, Thailand, after all, means ‘Land of the Free’.”

Pornchai Moontri: Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand

Every Thai citizen is presented with a Thai National ID at the age of 16. But I was not in Thailand then and never received it. So returning at age 48 with my citizenship not yet fully established was a burden for me. There have been times in my life when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I made multiple trips up to the village of my birth to visit with my family and my dog, Hill. Each time, I applied for my Thai ID and each time I was told that it is still pending.

In late October, much to my relief and Father G’s as well, I was summoned to Phu Wiang. I told Father G that I was buying a new dress shirt for the ID photo. Surely they could not turn me away with this beautiful new yellow shirt. Father G scoffed, but I had faith. (Now that’s a twist!) But this time I was successful and I wanted all of you to see my Thai ID. So Father G had my ID number blocked out and posted it.

This was my birthday reunion with my cousin and his family. He was eight years old and I was eleven when we lived as brothers. Now he is an officer in the Royal Thai Navy. While being with him and his family at the Gulf of Thailand, the struggles of the past just evaporated for a time.

A Year in Photos

One of the things that I looked forward to was swimming. I had not been immersed in water for thirty years. I lived with my cousins as a child, but 36 years had passed before I saw them again. On my first visit with them, they took me to a lake. I was not sure I even still knew how to swim so they put some little flotation devices on me. I did not even know how to get into the water the first time. When Father G saw the picture of me floating he wrote, “This is what freedom looks like.”

Visiting with my Aunt and cousins during the rice harvest was humbling for me. I am no stranger to hard work, but they feared I would be too unaccustomed to the relentless Thai heat so they gave me the easy job of collecting bundles. It was a great blessing to be with them during this most important time.

When Father G wrote about our Advent project with Father Tim Moyle and Saint Anne’s Parish in Mattawa, Ontario, and Father John Le here in Thailand, I got to experience first hand what it means to take part in a Corporal Work of Mercy. Visiting the Vietnamese refugee families with Father John and helping to distribute food is an unforgettable experience for which I am most thankful. I greatly admire Father John’s ministry in Thailand, which Father G has described at our Special Events page.

Here in Thailand, far beyond those stone walls, my heart aches that Father G is still behind them. I thank you for continuing to visit him in prison by reading these posts. I will always be indebted to you all for your acceptance of me, your kindnesses toward me, and the support of your prayers. I know that I would not have experienced this year in freedom without you. Father G will always be a part of my life and so will this wonderful blog.

May God bless you. With love to you all from me and Father G and from Hill too!

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri with his dog Hill. The tattoo on his arm is from a portrait of his Mother etched on his arm by an artistic prisoner after Pornchai learned of her death. It was his only means to memorialize and mourn her.

Four Hundred Years Since That First Thanksgiving: 1621-2021

In 1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the Mayflower Pilgrims to celebrate a first of many harvests in America.

November 24, 2021

Just as I sat down to type this post, I watched the American President pardon two turkeys. The ritual is never the high point of my year. I don’t know about you, but I cannot recall a spirit of Thanksgiving ever being a bigger challenge than it is now in 2021, 400 years after the first. It was well into November this year before I even became conscious that this is the 400th anniversary of that first Thanksgiving. I have seen very little reference to it in the news. It seems to have a lot of competition for headlines right now.

After two years in a global pandemic, with the tides of political unrest bearing down on us, a spirit of Thanksgiving in 2021 is not easy to find. Our politics bitterly divide us. Our faith is mired in scandal. Even worse, it is mired in open capitulation to some of the “woke” politics of our time. Freedom itself seems to stand at a precipice. Half the world is seriously disappointed in the power struggles that always emerge in a leadership vacuum.

I know families who have had to establish strict rules of discourse before they can sit at the same Thanksgiving table this year. Trump, Biden, Congress, the Border, Afghanistan, vaccine mandates, and multi-trillion dollar government spending plans are all off the table. For some, even Pope Francis, the TLM, Biden’s Catholicism, and Catholic Communion are on the list of forbidden table topics. “Go stuff that turkey,” could take on a never previously intended alternate meaning this year.

This is my 28th Thanksgiving holiday in wrongful imprisonment. Over the course of the last 16 of those years, Pornchai Moontri and I and a few of our friends here formed a sort of family bond and spirit on-the-inside. Pornchai and I were the co-anchors of that small group. Now he is half a world away, and the others have moved on to other places. As Andy Dufresne’s friend, Red, said in The Shawshank Redemption, “The place where I live seems that much more drab and empty by his absence.”

For the 1,250 men living behind these prison walls, Thanksgiving is the least anticipated holiday. Some years ago, the New Hampshire State employees gave up Columbus Day in exchange for having the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — as a day off. That typically means that every activity that might get us out of our cells over a 5-day stretch is unavailable. This holiday means five days of meaningless confinement. Prison evokes anything but thanksgiving.

Woe is me! I should take my cue from the famous Gallo Brothers who once vowed never to serve any whine before its time.

A Harvest of Grace

If you are not seriously depressed yet, there is still very much for which I give thanks. Like everything in life, the meaning of Thanksgiving is more what I bring to it than what I find there. I could turn my gratitude list into a litany that might go on for pages, so I will write of just the highlights.

I am thankful to Father George David Byers for writing in my stead with candid honesty over the last two weeks. The comments by Father James Valladares and Dorothy Stein — writers both — on “A Code of Silence in the U.S. Catholic Church” gave voice to everything I could possibly say. I fret about the topics he wrote about, and I could not have written those posts myself. I never want to be an instrument of division in the Church, but as Father George wrote, “The Truth has its own life and must not be buried with anyone.”

I am thankful — profoundly thankful — that my priesthood has not fallen prey to what Ryan MacDonald recently called “the accuse crisis in the Church.” So many priests have been thrown out of the priesthood merely for being accused. The truly innocent often cannot prove their innocence while the truly guilty are given no chance to repent. As Ryan has written, it all seems far more Calvinist than Catholic.

I am thankful — very thankful — for the many priests who have stood by the truth, sometimes at a cost to themselves. Our Canon Law advisor, Father Stuart MacDonald comes to mind. So does Cardinal George Pell. They are deeply good priests and shepherds who have survived the cauldron of the “accuse crisis” to become even greater stewards in the vineyard of Christ Crucified.

I am thankful — very thankful — for my freedom to write. On almost a daily basis I receive letters and messages from people around the world telling me that something I wrote in the darkness of prison has somehow brought light into their existence. They should not thank me, for I thank only God.

I am thankful — profoundly thankful — for the opportunity to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass each week late on Sunday nights in my prison cell. I have read of Cardinal George Pell’s prison deprivation from the Eucharist. My plight could be so much worse.

A Harvest in Thailand

I am thankful — very thankful — for having led my friend, Pornchai Moontri, from the darkest of human darkness into the light of Divine Mercy. But it was a task that was far beyond me. I was only an instrument in it, and for that I am profoundly thankful. I hope you have seen the outcome of that wonderful grace in my recent post, “Pornchai Moontri, Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand.”

We received the image above just a few days ago. When Pornchai traveled to obtain his official Thai ID in Phu Wiang (pronounced Poo-vee-ANG), the village of his birth in the far northeast of Thailand, he decided to stay for a month to try to repair his mother’s half-built house and once again honor her tomb at the Buddhist temple nearby.

Before returning to Bangkok with Father John Le, Pornchai stayed to help his family harvest his Aunt’s rice crop. This harvest is his elderly Aunt’s sole income for the year. Pornchai took the photo above and sent it to me. The people in the photo are his cousins and several of their friends who team up each harvest season to bring in the year's rice crop. It is hard work in the high heat and humidity, but it is a labor of love and family commitment.

In so many ways, Pornchai Moontri’s life and odyssey mirror that of “Squanto,” who became a captive member of the Native American Wampanoag tribe of what is now Massachusetts. Squanto proved to be an invaluable friend to the pilgrim settlers leading up to their first harvest Thanksgiving in 1621. He is the real star in our tale of Thanksgiving. You may see the same parallels I see between the odyssey of Squanto and that of Pornchai.

Early in Squanto’s life he was captured, transported against his will to a far country, and sold into slavery in Spain. He was rescued by a Catholic priest and was returned, by a long circuitous route, to his home with his entire life transformed. Squanto became the sole reason for the survival of the Mayflower pilgrims, and acted as interpreter at the Treaty of Plymouth, signed in 1621 between Chief Massasoit and Governor William Bradford.

That story has become a Thanksgiving tradition for many readers Beyond These Stone Walls. If you have never read it, you must. If you have read it before, visit it anew and share it with others. I do not usually boast of any post of mine, but there is much within it about suffering and Divine Providence that gives me pause. The story evokes — even in prison — a prayer of heartfelt Thanksgiving. Make our harvest tradition your own with ...

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Something wonderful has emerged from this blog’s connection with Thailand that I hope to share with you here next week as an Advent post. It will present an invitation that I hope many will accept. Changing the world begins with us in just one small corner of it.

Thank you for reading and sharing this post and these related posts from my typewriter:

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope

Pornchai Moontri, Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand

The Challenge of Thanksgiving in the Midst of the Fall