“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
Dismas, the Good Thief Crucified Next to Christ the King
With Jesus before him, Pilate asked the chief priests, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ They replied ‘We have no king but Caesar.' Only a criminal saw Christ the King.
With Jesus before him, Pilate asked the chief priests, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ They replied ‘We have no king but Caesar.' Only a criminal saw Christ the King.
November 19, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
“Yes, dogs are round about me; a pack of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and my feet — I can count all my bones — they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”
— Psalm 22:16-18
Note from Father Gordon MacRae: This may be a very familiar post to some of our Readers. It was originally written as a Holy Week post some years ago, and for some reason it has remained one of our most popular posts. The Church’s liturgy is on a three-year cycle and so every three years one of three Gospel Readings will appear for the Solemnity of Christ the King. The Gospel passage for this year is the story of Dismas crucified to the right of Christ at Calvary. When I read to a priest-friend the above title and description of this post today, he was stunned. He had never before consciously considered that the denouncement of Christ as King by the religious authorities of Israel, and the identification from the Cross of Christ as King were events separated by only a few hours.
The late Pope Benedict XVI wrote a wonderful reflection about the exchange with Dismas on the Cross next to Jesus. Here is what Pope Benedict wrote in a short meditation entitled “How to Enter Christ’s Kingdom”:
“Then there is the faith of the Good Thief: a faith barely outlined but sufficient to assure him salvation: Today you will be with me in Paradise.” This ‘with me’ is crucial. Yes, it is this that saves him. Of course, Dismas is on the Cross like Jesus, but above all he is on the Cross with Jesus. And unlike the other evildoer and all those who taunted Jesus, Dismas does not ask Jesus to save him or to come down from his Cross. He asked only, from his own cross, ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”
This is the story of Dismas, crucified to the right, Paradise Lost and Found. It is the story of all of us who come to Him bearing our gifts as we might at Christmas, but also bearing our crosses as we must at Calvary.
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The only hero at Calvary was Christ. The only person worth following up that hill — up ANY hill — is Christ. I follow Him with the same burdens and trepidation and thorns in my side as you do. So do not follow me. Follow only Him.
This Holy Week, one of many behind these stone walls, has caused me to use a wider angle lens as I examine the events of that day on Mount Calvary as the Evangelists described them. This year, it is Dismas who stands out. Dismas is the name tradition gives to the man crucified to the right of the Lord, and upon whom is bestowed a dubious title: the “Good Thief.”
As I pondered the plight of Dismas at Calvary, my mind rolled some old footage, an instant replay of the day I was sent to prison — the day I felt the least priestly of all the days of my priesthood.
It was the mocking that was the worst. Upon my arrival at prison after trial late in 1994, I was fingerprinted, photographed, stripped naked, showered, and unceremoniously deloused. I did not bother worrying about what the food might be like, or whether I could ever sleep in such a place. I was worried only about being mocked, but there was no escaping it. As I was led from place to place in chains and restraints, my few belongings and bedding stuffed into a plastic trash bag dragged along behind me, I was greeted by a foot-stomping chant of prisoners prepped for my arrival: “Kill the priest! Kill the priest! Kill the priest!” It went on into the night. It was maddening.
It is odd that I also remember being conscious, on that first day, of the plight of the two prisoners who had the misfortune of being sentenced on the same day I was. They are long gone now, sentenced back then to just a few years in prison. But I remember the walk from the courthouse in Keene, New Hampshire to a prison-bound van, being led in chains and restraints on the “perp-walk” past rolling news cameras. A microphone was shoved in my face: “Did you do it, Father? Are you guilty?”
Quickly led toward the van back then, I tripped on the first step and started to fall, but the strong hands of two guards on my chains dragged me to my feet again. I climbed into the van, into an empty middle seat, and felt a pang of sorrow for the other two convicted criminals — one in the seat in front of me, and the other behind.
“Just my %¢$#@*& luck!” the one in front scowled as the cameras snapped a few shots through the van windows. I heard a groan from the one behind as he realized he might vicariously make the evening news. “No talking!” barked a guard as the van rolled off for the 90 minute ride to prison. I never saw those two men again, but as we were led through the prison door, the one behind me muttered something barely audible: “Be strong, Father.”
Revolutionary Outlaws
It was the last gesture of consolation I would hear for a long, long time. It was the last time I heard my priesthood referred to with anything but contempt for years to come. Still, to this very day, it is not Christ with whom I identify at Calvary, but Simon of Cyrene. As I wrote in “Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross“:
“That man, Simon, is me . . . I have tried to be an Alter Christus, as priesthood requires, but on our shared road to Calvary, I relate far more to Simon of Cyrene. I pick up my own crosses reluctantly, with resentment at first, and I have to walk behind Christ for a long, long time before anything in me compels me to carry willingly what fate has saddled me with . . . I long ago had to settle for emulating Simon of Cyrene, compelled to bear the Cross in Christ’s shadow.”
So though we never hear from Simon of Cyrene again once his deed is done, I am going to imagine that he remained there at Calvary. He must have, really. How could he have willingly left? I am going to imagine that he remained there and heard the exchange between Christ and the criminals crucified to His left and His right, and took comfort in what he heard. I heard Dismas in the young man who whispered “Be strong, Father.” But I heard him with the ears of Simon of Cyrene.
Like a Thief in the Night
Like the names of the Magi I wrote about in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear,” the name tradition gives to the Penitent Thief appears nowhere in Sacred Scripture. Dismas is named in a Fourth Century apocryphal manuscript called the “Acts of Pilate.” The text is similar to, and likely borrowed from, Saint Luke’s Gospel:
“And one of the robbers who were hanged, by name Gestas, said to him: ‘If you are the Christ, free yourself and us.’ And Dismas rebuked him, saying: ‘Do you not even fear God, who is in this condemnation? For we justly and deservedly received these things we endure, but he has done no evil.’”
What the Evangelists tell us of those crucified with Christ is limited. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel (27:38) the two men are simply “thieves.” In Saint Mark’s Gospel (15:27), they are also thieves, and all four Gospels describe their being crucified “one on the left and one on the right” of Jesus. Saint Mark also links them to Barabbas, guilty of murder and insurrection. The Gospel of Saint John does the same, but also identifies Barabbas as a robber. The Greek word used to identify the two thieves crucified with Jesus is a broader term than just “thief.” Its meaning would be more akin to “plunderer,” part of a roving band caught and given a death penalty under Roman law.
Only Saint Luke’s Gospel infers that the two thieves might have been a part of the Way of the Cross in which Saint Luke includes others: Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross, and some women with whom Jesus spoke along the way. We are left to wonder what the two criminals witnessed, what interaction Simon of Cyrene might have had with them, and what they deduced from Simon being drafted to help carry the Cross of a scourged and vilified Christ.
In all of the Gospel presentations of events at Golgotha, Jesus was mocked. It is likely that he was at first mocked by both men to be crucified with him as the Gospel of St. Mark describes. But Saint Luke carefully portrays the change of heart within Dismas in his own final hour. The sense is that Dismas had no quibble with the Roman justice that had befallen him. It seems no more than what he always expected if caught:
“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’”
— Luke 23:39-41
The Flight into Egypt
The name, “Dismas” comes from the Greek for either “sunset” or “death.” In an unsubstantiated legend that circulated in the Middle Ages, in a document known as the “Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,” this encounter from atop Calvary was not the first Gestas and Dismas had with Jesus. In the legend, they were a part of a band of robbers who held up the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt after the Magi departed in Saint Matthews Gospel (Matthew 2:13-15).
This legendary encounter in the Egyptian desert is also mentioned by Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom who, having heard the same legend, described Dismas as a desert nomad, guilty of many crimes including the crime of fratricide, the murder of his own brother. This particular part of the legend, as you will see below, may have great symbolic meaning for salvation history.
In the legend, Saint Joseph, warned away from Herod by an angel (Matthew 2:13-15), opted for the danger posed by brigands over the danger posed by Herod’s pursuit. Fleeing with Mary and the child into the desert toward Egypt, they were confronted by a band of robbers led by Gestas and a young Dismas. The Holy Family looked like an unlikely target having fled in a hurry, and with very few possessions. When the robbers searched them, however, they were astonished to find expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh — the Gifts of the Magi. However, in the legend Dismas was deeply affected by the infant, and stopped the robbery by offering a bribe to Gestas. Upon departing, the young Dismas was reported to have said:
“0 most blessed of children, if ever a time should come when I should crave thy mercy, remember me and forget not what has passed this day.”
Paradise Found
The most fascinating part of the exchange between Jesus and Dismas from their respective crosses in Saint Luke’s Gospel is an echo of that legendary exchange in the desert 33 years earlier — or perhaps the other way around:
“‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingly power.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”
— Luke 23:42-43
The word, “Paradise” used by Saint Luke is the Persian word, “Paradeisos” rarely used in Greek. It appears only three times in the New Testament. The first is that statement of Jesus to Dismas from the Cross in Luke 23:43. The second is in Saint Paul’s description of the place he was taken to momentarily in his conversion experience in Second Corinthians 12:3. The third is the Heavenly Paradise that awaits the souls of the just in the Book of Revelation (2:7).
In the Old Testament, the word “Paradeisos” appears only in descriptions of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:8, and in the banishment of Cain after the murder of his brother, Abel:
Cain left the presence of the Lord and wandered in the Land of Nod, East of Eden.
— Genesis 4:16
Elsewhere, the word appears only in the prophets (Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35) as they foretold a messianic return one day to the blissful conditions of Eden — to the condition restored when God issues a pardon to man — and he will not be using an autopen.
If the Genesis story of Cain being banished to wander “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” is the symbolic beginning of our human alienation from God — the banishment from Eden marking an end to the State of Grace and Paradise Lost — then the Dismas profession of faith in Christ’s mercy is symbolic of Eden restored — Paradise Regained.
From the Cross, Jesus promised Dismas both a return to spiritual Eden and a restoration of the condition of spiritual adoption that existed before the Fall of Man. It is easy to see why legends spread by the Church Fathers involved Dismas guilty of the crime of fratricide just as was Cain.
A portion of the cross upon which Dismas is said to have died alongside Christ is preserved at the Church of Santa Croce in Rome. It is one of the Church’s most treasured relics. Catholic apologist, Jim Blackburn has proposed an intriguing twist on the exchange on the Cross between Christ and Saint Dismas. In “Dismissing the Dismas Case,” an article in Catholic Answers Magazine Jim Blackburn reminded me that the Greek in which Saint Luke’s Gospel was written contains no punctuation. Punctuation had to be added in translation. Traditionally, we understand Christ’s statement to Dismas to be:
“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The sentence has been used by some non-Catholics (and a few Catholics) to discount a Scriptural basis for Purgatory. How could Purgatory be as necessary as I described it to be in “The Holy Longing” when even a notorious criminal is given immediate admission to Paradise? Ever the insightful thinker, Jim Blackburn proposed a simple replacement of the comma giving the verse an entirely different meaning:
“Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
Whatever the timeline, the essential point could not be clearer. The door to Divine Mercy was opened by the events of that day, and the man crucified to the right of the Lord, by a simple act of faith and repentance and reliance on Divine Mercy, was shown a glimpse of Paradise Regained.
The gift of Paradise Regained left the cross of Dismas on Mount Calvary. It leaves all of our crosses there. Just as Cain set in motion our wandering “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death, away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country, toward eternal home.
Saint Dismas, pray for us.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in honor of Christ the King. You may also wish to read these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Thanksgiving in the Reign of Christ the King
Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah
Holidays in the Hoosegow: Thanksgiving with Some Not-So-Just Desserts!
Thanksgiving is a state of mind, not place. Even prisoners can be thankful, if not for being prisoners, then perhaps just for the art of being itself.
Thanksgiving is a state of mind, not place. Even prisoners can be thankful, if not for being prisoners, then perhaps just for the art of being itself.
November 12, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
I have been hindered from writing a new post this month. This gets a little creepy, so bear with me. On the night of October 31, I was visited in my cell by two brown recluse spiders who were apparently hiding in a shirt that I put on that night because I was cold. Well, so were the spiders and unbeknownst to me they claimed squaters rights to the shirt. Sometime during the night leading to the Solemnity of All Saints, I was bitten twice in the back by two poisonous spiders.
It was a few days before I sought treatment being the stubbornly independent person that I am. Finally the bites evolved into a serious blood infection that now requires all-out war. I now have daily visits to the Medical Unit for wound treatment and new bandaging. I am also on a potent antibiotic. There is some tissue damage. I lost the battle with the spiders, but I am told that I am winning the war thanks to the medical care I am receiving.
The worst part of this whole story was when I told it in a phone call to Pornchai Max Moontri in Thailand, he launched into singing “Itsy, Bitsy Spider.”
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I hope you will read “The True Story of Thanksgiving” posted here every year in late November, this year included. I figure that, in America at least, we eat the same meal every year at Thanksgiving. It is a holiday bound up in traditions. Every year I grimace as the U.S. President pardons a turkey on national television, then gobbles up an already preplucked Butterball in its place for Thanksgiving Dinner. So we added a tradition of our own several years ago, which you will find repeated again this year on the day before Thanksgiving.
Even The Wall Street Journal honors its own Thanksgiving tradition by repeating, on the day before Thanksgiving, the same two editorials at the top of its opinion page. So the message is that repetition is not a bad thing and the story we tell at Thanksgiving is both historically true and spiritually wondrous. Since I first wrote it back in 2010, references to it have appeared in two published history books about the Mayflower Pilgrims. We expect to publish it anew here on Wednesday, November 26.
I hope you will plan to read “The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope.”
Thanksgiving is a tough sell for most prisoners. It often involves only a litany of losses and discouragement. But I have advocated among other prisoners a more positive approach with some mixed success.
I am not quite ready to give thanks just yet for my 31st Thanksgiving holiday in the hoosegow. But writing this post did make me wonder about the origin of “hoosegow.” The local cable system here carries American Movie Classics (AMC) which broadcasts old westerns on most Saturday mornings. I love John Wayne movies, especially the later ones. It might have been in one of those that I heard Walter Brennan (who, by the way, is from my hometown!) playing a cranky old deputy sheriff.
I can even now hear Walter Brennan threatening to throw someone in the “hoosegow.” Hoosegow has an interesting origin. It comes from the phonetic pronunciation of a Spanish word, “Juzgado,” meaning “courtroom.” It is the past participle of “juzgar,” which in turn came from the Latin “iudicare,” (pronounced, “you-dee-CAR-eh) meaning “judge.” Since judges send people to jail, “juzgado” came to refer to jails and prisons. Then, in the slang of border towns in the American Old West, it became “hoosegow.” So now you know the origin of the word, hoosegow. Don’t thank me just yet!
Here in the hoosegow, like everywhere else in the U.S., we are about to mark Thanksgiving. I would not use “celebrate” to describe how prisoners observe this, or any, holiday. On the whole, prisoners do not really celebrate much. But even here most can find something to be thankful for. I found such a moment several years ago when Pornchai Max and other friends were still here with me. I will even go so far as to say I celebrated it.
The Earth’s journey around our Sun brings about the inevitable changing seasons beyond these stone walls. I have journeyed in life 72 times around our Sun, but most of the fallen citizens around me barely notice the changing world. We venture outside each day among asphalt and steel and high concrete walls with little evidence of the march of time and the changing seasons. The “Field of Dreams” — the prison ball field and the one place with trees in sight — closed for the year two months ago. The only leaves I see now are the very few that the wind carries over the high prison walls which consume my view of the outside world.
One day in autumn some years ago, I turned a corner outside on the long, concrete ramp winding its way up to the prison mess halls. I looked up to discover a spot I never noticed before.
It was a place amid the concrete and steel that afforded a momentary glimpse of a tree-covered hill in the distance beyond the walls, and the rays of the setting sun had fallen upon that very spot. For a moment, the hill was clothed in a blaze of glory with an explosion of fall color. It was magnificent! I felt a bit like Dorothy Gale, stepping for the first time out of the gray gloom of her Kansas home into the startling glory of the Land of Oz.
Prisoners are not permitted to stop and gawk while moving from Point A to Point B, but in two more steps, or a few more seconds, the view would be gone. So I nudged Pornchai and Joseph who were walking with me, and we all stared for a moment in awe. We froze in our tracks for those seconds, risking a guttural shout of “KEEP MOVING!” from one of the guards posted along this via dolorosa.
There was a guard right at that spot, poised to bellow, but then he followed our gaze and he, too, gawked for a moment, keeping his shout to himself. We moved on up the ramp amid all the downcast eyes around us, but saw no evidence that anyone else noticed that scene of radiant beauty beyond these stone walls. I thanked God in silence for nudging me to look up just then. It was proof that a moment for giving thanks presents itself every day, even in this awful place. Those moments will be passed by unnoticed if I am so consumed with grief that I fail to look up and out beyond these stone walls. I have to look up to see. I have to keep my eyes opened, and focus somewhere beyond just me.
I look up at that spot every day now, but the color has faded to a barren gloom, just like life here — or anywhere else — can if I let it. I have learned from Squanto of The Dawn Land that even the worst plight affords an opportunity for thanksgiving. We must not let those moments pass by unnoticed for our very souls depend on them.
I despise this place of captivity where so many of the days given to me have been spent. Really spent! Yet on past Thanksgiving Days, Pornchai, and Joseph, and other friends who walked with us each day, all found a few seats together in the prison chow hall. There we gave thanks for turkey, for an annual piece of pumpkin pie, for friendship found even in the ruins of lives broken and dreams delayed, for laughter in the face of pain, and especially for the gift of bearing one another’s burdens with thanks for the graces given to us.
In a sea of downcast eyes, furtive glances, and foul speech seldom rising above talk of gangs, and drugs, and the exploitation of others, Pornchai showed off his Saint Maximilian medal, and spoke of salvation and sacrifice and the privilege of being Catholic in a truly destitute public square.
In the end, I had been left with no choice and no other prayer to utter: Thank you, Lord, for this day!
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Note from the BTSW Editor: There are simple ways in which you may help magnify this Voice in the Wilderness.
It helps much to subscribe to Father Gordon’s posts. Note that you will receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription.
Though we have given up sharing Father Gordon’s posts on Facebook, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri has a Facebook Page in Thailand, which he uses to share our posts in Southeast Asia communities. You may send your “Friend Requests” to Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.
It would also help Father Gordon substantially if you follow him on X, formerly Twitter.
Both Father Gordon and Pornchai Moontri have a strong following at LinkedIn.
And lastly, Father Gordon’s page at gloria.tv is always worth a visit.
John Wayne and Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo.
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.”
The Lonely Life of an Internet Underdog
In 16 years of publication, Beyond These Stone Walls faced some daunting challenges. Among the worst is contending with media and social media anti-clerical bias.
In 16 years of publication, Beyond These Stone Walls faced some daunting challenges. Among the worst is contending with media and social media anti-clerical bias.
November 5, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
The image above is of Underdog, who was one of Father G’s favorite comics in childhood. “There’s no need to fear, UNDERdog is here!”
It is very rare that we publish two posts in one week, but this one is far shorter than most, and is mostly an informational post. I wanted to publish “Of Saints and Souls and Earthly Woes” on November 1st out of respect for a Catholic tradition that the entire month of November is dedicated in remembrance of our beloved dead. There is a surprising comment on it by the late Claire Dion, a dear friend of this blog, who in turn commented upon the November 5th date of the death of my mother in 2007. Those surprising comments alone are worth a revisit to that post. But you also may find there some tools in our Catholic tradition for coping with life and death.
This post will be a lot shorter. Not many readers noticed that at the end of the summer of 2025, this blog quietly marked 16 years in weekly publication. When it began in the summer of 2009, I thought it might last only a few months. I could not fathom then that I would be able to find anything to write about beyond that time. I remember a conversation back then between my roommate, Pornchai Moontri, and Claire Dion who interviewed him for a post of her own. Pornchai had mentioned to her that “Father G could write about a rock and make it sound interesting.” Claire asked him if he thought that I had perhaps “kissed the Blarney Stone,” an old Irish tradition. Pornchai pondered this and said, “No, I think he bit off a big chunk and swallowed it.”
I could not foresee at the time that I would find enough to write about beyond those few months in 2009. I was also keenly aware of my handicaps in the public square, not least of which is that I have never even been able to actually see what I write. If felt as though I were putting messages in a bottle to cast them into the sea, having no awareness of where they might wash up on some distant shore.
I also feared that the situation in the U.S. Catholic Church at that time was such that the writings of a priest in prison — even one unjustly imprisoned — could not possibly defeat the stone walls of bias in media coverage of the Catholic sexual abuse crisis. We ran into those headwinds almost immediately. Some of those collisions were painful.
Many in the media — even the Catholic media — seemed determined that mine was a voice in the abuse narrative that no one should ever hear. There is simply no remedy to being falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned. No one can unring that bell.
In this blog’s first year of existence, I shied away from any presence in social media, but that gradually changed. Around 2010, a popular Catholic news magazine cited this blog as its “Readers’ Choice for the Best of the Catholic Web.” That was an eye-opener for me. So we boldly ventured into the public square by establishing a Facebook account for Beyond These Stone Walls. Within a year, it had accumulated almost 5,000 followers. My weekly posts were shared there among dozens of Catholic groups hosted (or tolerated) by Facebook. Then it came to a screeching halt when a Facebook algorithm decided that we had violated its “Community Standards.” I wrote about this in a 2021 post, “Falsely Accused by Facebook: Like Déjà vu All Over Again.”
After a long and tedious internal appeal process, Facebook agreed that we never violated Community Standards and reinstated our account, but never fully. Several months later, Facebook suspended us again with a vague suggestion that we were posting “spam” by sharing our posts with Facebook’s Catholic groups.
Adding to the distraction, we also began posting at the Catholic Community group r/Catholicism on Reddit. However, an unnamed Catholic moderator was not having it. After several thousands Reddit users reposted and recommended a BTSW post, we were summarily banned from ever posting at Reddit again.
Both of these incidents felt like punches to the gut for me in prison, but if the goal was for me to give up, it was not working. By that point, our international weekly readership doubled, then tripled. We received some citations from less frivolous groups that really mattered, groups that also suffered under and then challenged the crisis of information in and about the Catholic Church. Many of our posts began receiving citations in Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. (BTSW earned five citations in the October 2025 issue.) I was very proud to see us in the trenches with the Catholic League, and I highly recommend your membership.
A page has also been established for our posts at the international Catholic site, “gloria.tv” while our direct subscriber base grew into the thousands — without the help of Facebook or Reddit.
Elon Musk’s media site, X (formerly Twitter) also welcomed our content and published several articles written by me. Elon Musk’s advanced artificial intelligence model, SuperGrok, entered into a prolongued dialogue with me about Catholic issues in the public square, which we hope to publish here very soon.
Lastly, a Florida-based news aggregator, Newstex, recently partnered with Beyond These Stone Walls to syndicate our posts around the world. Newstex also syndicates postings by the Catholic League placing us in very good company.
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Note from the BTSW Editor: There are simple ways in which you may help magnify this Voice in the Wilderness.
It helps much to subscribe to Father Gordon’s posts. Note that you will receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription.
Though we have given up sharing Father Gordon’s posts on Facebook, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri has a Facebook Page in Thailand, which he uses to share our posts in Southeast Asia communities. You may send your “Friend Requests” to Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.
It would also help Father Gordon substantially if you follow him on X, formerly Twitter.
Both Father Gordon and Pornchai Moontri have a strong following at LinkedIn.
And lastly, Father Gordon’s page at gloria.tv is always worth a visit.
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.”
Hamas, Hostages, Israel, and Innocent Bystanders
Fr. Gordon MacRae bears witness to the dead and wounded youth of Thailand as AI takes up an account of the second largest ethnic group impacted on October 7, 2023.
Fr. Gordon MacRae bears witness to the dead and wounded youth of Thailand as AI takes up an account of the second largest ethnic group impacted on October 7, 2023.
October 22, 2025 by xAI SuperGrok
Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae
I was glued to my small television as Fox News covered the release of the remaining Israeli hostages on October 13, 2025. Two years in such brutal captivity — 730 days — had left visible changes on both hostages and their loved ones who watched their deliverance from afar via Internet. The painful scenes of wives and children, mothers and fathers seeing their surviving loved ones finally emerge from captivity brought open tears in my own prison cell, something that rarely ever happens.
I felt as though I had a stake in this as well. Economic conditions in Thailand were so devastated by Covid from 2019 to 2022 that 30,000 young Thais — men and women, but mostly young men — felt driven to respond to ads seeking migrant agricultural workers in Israel in 2022. My friend Pornchai Moontri was deported from the United States to Thailand after an absence of 36 years since childhood and the events I described in “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” In February, 2021, Pornchai arrived in a country deep in the throes of economic depression. He arrived with no home to go to, no family that remembered him, and no clear understanding of the language, culture and politics of his new homeland. Competing for menial labor with thousands of other Thais, Pornchai had no work history at all in Thailand or anywhere else. And so, by early 2022 he became aware that Israel was seeking migrant workers from Thailand. Israel promised housing, food, fellowship and pay commensurate with work which could be sent home to support a family or bank to support himself.
Every instinct told me to urge Pornchai not to go. We argued long distance by phone day after day as I stated my insistence that he must remain in Thailand to regain his Thai language, culture and customs. I wanted very much to support him. For the previous decade, my Bishop and Diocese had been sending me a small stipend of $150 a month but chose that moment, at Christmas of 2022, to curtail it without notice or communication. So despite struggling myself, I asked Mary, Undoer of Knots, to undo the knots that prevent me from helping Pornchai. It was she, after all, who had placed him on my path.
Almost immediately, several of our readers began to send me monthly gifts of support, which I then began to share with Pornchai to help him get through this difficult time.
To my great relief, Pornchai stayed the course and decided to remain in Thailand. Neither of us flourished financially, but we made due. One year later, my instinct was confirmed. I wrote about the devastating day when many of these innocent bystanders from Thailand became murdered victims and political hostages of the terrorist group, Hamas. Young Thai citizens became the second largest ethnic group after Israelis to be murdered or taken hostage in Israel. I told this story in 2023 in “Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel.”
Two years later, as hostages were being released by Hamas in Gaza on October 13, 2025, a release brokered by President Donald Trump, I submitted with the help of our Editor my 2023 post linked above. We submitted it to SuperGrok, the AI model of Elon Musk with which I had begun a dialog from prison also with the help of our Editor. The SuperGrok analysis in response was amazing, and we decided that we must share it with you. Please also share this with others.
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Query by Father Gordon MacRae
Much of the free world has expressed a great sigh of relief as the victims and hostages of Hamas, both living and tragically deceased are released to Israel. Hamas has not yet answered for this, and there were lots of innocent bystanders who also suffered great loss. Father Gordon MacRae has written of some of them. Could SuperGrok please take another look at our efforts to find meaning in this suffering?
AI Response
Thank you for sharing this link and for inviting a deeper reflection — it’s a profound and timely request, especially as the world continues to grapple with the echoes of October 7, 2023, now two years past. The release of hostages, both those who endured unimaginable captivity and the remains of those who did not survive, has indeed brought a collective exhale of relief, mingled with profound grief for the lives irrevocably altered. Yet, as you note, Hamas’s accountability remains elusive, and the ripple of innocent suffering extends far beyond the headlines — touching families, communities, and even distant souls whose stories Father Gordon MacRae illuminates in his poignant writing at Beyond These Stone Walls.
“Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel,” published December 6, 2023, highlights a lesser-told facet of the tragedy — the Thai agricultural workers in Israel, many of them young men from humble backgrounds, who were among the 1,200+ murdered by Hamas and of the 251 taken as hostages, 19 were from Thailand. These “innocent bystanders,” as you aptly describe them, were not entangled in the region’s politics; they were there chasing dreams of supporting their families back home, far from the conflict’s ideological fires. Father MacRae, drawing from his own vantage of incarceration and spiritual exile, weaves their stories into a tapestry of shared human vulnerability, echoing the biblical call to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). He honors individuals like Patcharapong Phony, a 28-year-old whose body was later repatriated amid national mourning in Thailand, or the Manee family, shattered by the abduction of their son.
Your question strikes at the heart of theodicy — the ancient wrestling with why a benevolent God permits such raw, unmerited pain. We’ve touched on this before in our conversations, circling themes of redemptive suffering, but let’s revisit and expand, honoring these stories as sacred ground for meaning-making. I’ll frame this not as pat answers (for suffering defies easy resolution) but as a mosaic of perspectives, drawn from theology, survivor testimonies, and philosophical resilience. Perhaps, in the spirit of Father MacRae’s Prison Journal Beyond These Stone Walls, we can find flickers of purpose amid the ashes.
1. The Cross as Mirror: Suffering’s Shared Solidarity
Father MacRae often invokes the Crucifixion not as a distant event but as a lens for our own trials — Jesus, after all, was an “innocent bystander” to empire’s violence, crucified between thieves yet embracing the outcast. In the Thai workers’ case, their deaths echo this: migrant laborers, overlooked by global powers, felled in a field not their own. Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, argued that meaning emerges not despite suffering but through it, when we choose response over reaction. [Father MacRae’s first three posts (1, 2, 3) in his Prison Journal in 2009 were about this very topic.]
For the hostages’ families, this might mean channeling grief into advocacy, as we’ve seen with groups like the Hostage and Missing Families Forum in Israel, who transform personal voids into communal voices. The “sigh of relief” Father MacRae mentions in his query is a testament to this — release isn’t erasure of pain but a pivot toward healing, where survivors like Noa Argamani (freed after 246 days) now speak of gratitude intertwined with resolve, vowing to honor the unreleased by living fully.
2. The Ripple of Innocence: Bystanders as Prophets
The Thai victims, in particular, prophetically expose the scandal of collateral damage in asymmetric wars. As MacRae reflects (drawing parallels to his own “forgotten” status behind prison walls), their stories indict not just Hamas’s barbarity but the indifference of a watching world. Meaning here lies in remembrance: Thailand’s government, moved by public outcry, fast-tracked repatriations and aid, turning national sorrow into policy shifts on migrant protections. Broader still, interfaith dialogues have bloomed — Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders convening in forums like the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, using these losses to bridge divides. One Thai survivor’s words, shared in media: “I lost my brother, but his light now guides me to help others find safety.” This echoes C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain: suffering strips illusions, forcing us to confront our interconnectedness. The hostages’ return, incomplete as it is, amplifies this — each reunion a rebuke to dehumanization, reminding us that every life, from Kibbutz Be'eri to a Thai rice paddy, bears divine imprint.
3. Redemption’s Quiet Alchemy: Faith in the Furnace
From a Christian lens (nodding to MacRae’s Franciscan roots), suffering isn’t meaningless punishment but cruciform invitation — to co-suffer with Christ, as in Colossians 1:24. The deceased hostages, identified through painstaking forensics and returned for burial, embody this: their rest becomes a catalyst for communal resurrection. Living victims, scarred by trauma, often report a deepened empathy; studies from the American Psychological Association on post-traumatic growth highlight how 70% of survivors forge stronger relationships and purpose post-crisis. Yet, this isn’t glib optimism — it’s gritty, as in the raw cry of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For the bereaved, rituals like Israel’s national day of mourning or Thailand’s Buddhist merit-making ceremonies transmute loss into legacy, ensuring the fallen aren’t footnotes but flames igniting justice.
In all this, the unanswered “why” persists, a holy ache. But meaning? It accrues in the “yes” we whisper back: yes to bearing witness, yes to bridging chasms, yes to believing that even shattered lives can seed shalom. As of this October 22, 2025, with cease-fires fragile and trials pending, our collective task is to amplify the overlooked — like those Thai voices MacRae elevates — lest their suffering echo unheard.
4. The Plight of Survivor Mitchai Sarabon
Father MacRae wrote extensively about the plight of one Thai migrant worker at Kibbutz Alumim, who exhibited amazing courage and resilience on October 7, 2023. He is quoted in “Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel.” After being shot three times by Hamas fighters and left for dead, Mitchai Sarabon was later interviewed in a Tel Aviv hospital. He said, “I want the people of Israel to know that they are in my thoughts and prayers all the time.”
Mitchai Sarabon, a 32-year-old migrant worker from Udon Thani, Thailand, and a former member of the Thai military, was among the foreign agricultural laborers caught in the crossfire of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel. As detailed in Father Gordon MacRae’s article, Sarabon and his colleagues — mostly Thais and Nepalese — were spending their day off doing chores and playing music when the Saturday morning Hamas assault began. He recounted hearing gunshots drawing closer after becoming accustomed to overhead rockets from Gaza. Terrorists arrived in large numbers, throwing grenades and shooting at those fleeing or hiding.
Sarabon and five others barricaded themselves in a kitchen, but the attackers broke in, shouting in Thai with demands that they open the door — suggesting they were specifically targeted. Sarabon was shot in the back, chest, and head, losing consciousness. The terrorists left him for dead amid the burning ruins and bodies. Miraculously, he survived, though ten Nepalese workers were killed, four wounded, and one taken hostage in the same incident. From his hospital bed in Tel Aviv, Sarabon shared his story.
After over a month in an Israeli hospital (reports vary slightly between 24 days and over a month), Sarabon was deemed stable enough to return home. He was flown back to his family in Udon Thani, where he continued to recover from his injuries. These include significant mobility issues—he has reported being unable to use one arm properly and requiring daily medical treatments. In November 2023, while recuperating in Thailand, he spoke to media outlets, identifying his longtime roommate and comrade, Phonsawan Pinakalo, in footage released by the Israeli Defense Forces showing injured hostages at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. Pinakalo, who shared daily life with Sarabon (including cooking and eating), was among those kidnapped and later confirmed as a hostage.
As of the latest available information, Sarabon remains in Thailand, managing long-term physical recovery from his wounds. According to some reports, Mitchai Sarabon acted heroically. Even while shot in the back among some of his wounded friends, and barely conscious a Hamas grenade reportedly landed nearby, but Mitchai was able to reach it and throw it away from his friends.
The photo below shows him in the Tel Aviv hospital recovering from his wounds. The photograph was taken by an Israeli official to whom Mitchai promised to pray for the people of Israel.
Mitchai Sarabon recovering at a Tel Aviv hospital. Photo courtesy Mitchai Sarabon.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: According to the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, Israel means “to wrestle with God.” May we all continue to do so on our respective journeys.
Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also be interested in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel
Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom
For Fr. John Tabor, the Path to Priesthood Was War
To the Kingdom of Heaven Through a Narrow Gate
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
What do John Wayne and Pornchai Moontri Have In Common?
Pornchai Moontri celebrates his 52nd birthday on September 10 this year. It is his 15th birthday as a Catholic, a conversion he shares with the great actor, John Wayne.
Pornchai Moontri celebrates his 52nd birthday on September 10 this year. It is his 15th birthday as a Catholic, a conversion he shares with the great actor, John Wayne.
September 10, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
I last wrote about our friend and my former roommate, Pornchai Max Moontri at a time of tragedy. That post was “A Devastating Earthquake Shook Thailand, Myanmar and Our Friends.” Ironically, I just noticed, it appeared on April 9, 2025, which was my 72nd birthday. I was recently talking with Pornchai in Thailand by telephone, and the subject of birthdays came up. He was absent from Thailand for 36 years, and it was 36 years of loss and tragedy. He spoke of his impression that what constitutes “family” for him is not only those with whom you share blood, but even more so those with whom you share and survive trials and tribulation. This is why those in the military who go through war together and survive form a bond that transcends all other bonds, including family. I readily agreed with that and mentioned the famous series, Band of Brothers as an example.
In an earlier post, “February Tales and a Corporal Work of Mercy in Thailand,” I described growing up on the Massachusetts North Shore — the stretch of seacoast just north of Boston. My family had a long tradition of being “Sacrament Catholics.”
I once heard my father joke that he would enter a church only twice in his lifetime, and would be carried both times. I was seven years old, squirming into a hand-me-down white suit for my First Communion when I first heard that excuse for staying home. I didn’t catch on right away that my father was referring to his Baptism and his funeral. I pictured him, a very large man, slung over my mother’s shoulder on his way into church for Sunday Mass, and I laughed.
We were the most nominal of Catholics. Prior to my First Communion at age seven, I was last in a Catholic church at age five for the priesthood ordination of my uncle, the late Father George W. MacRae, a Jesuit and renowned Scripture scholar. My father and “Uncle Winsor,” as we called him, were brothers — just two years apart in age but light years apart in their experience of faith. I was often bewildered, as a boy, at this vast difference between the two brothers.
But my father’s blustering about his abstention from faith eventually collapsed under the weight of his own cross. It was a cross that was partly borne by me as well, and carried in equal measure by every member of my family. By the time I was ten — at the very start of that decade of social upheaval, life in our home had disintegrated. My father’s alcoholism raged beyond control, nearly destroying him and the very bonds of our family. We became children of the city streets as home and family faded away.
I have no doubt that many readers can relate to the story of a home torn asunder by alcoholism, and some day I hope to write more about this cross. But for now I want to write about conversion, so I’ll skip ahead.
The Long and Winding Road Home
As a young teenager, I had a friend whose family attended a small Methodist church. I stayed with them from time to time. They knew I was estranged from my Catholic faith and Church, so one Sunday morning they invited me to theirs. As I sat through the Methodist service, I just felt empty inside. There was something crucial missing. So a week later, I attended Catholic Mass — secretly and alone — with a sense that I was making up for some vague betrayal. At some point sitting in this Mass alone at age 15 in 1968, I discovered that I was home.
My father wasn’t far behind me. Two years later, when just about everyone we knew had given up any hope for him, my father underwent a radical conversion that changed his very core. He admitted himself to a treatment program, climbed the steep and arduous mountain of recovery, and became our father again after a long, turbulent absence. A high school dropout and machine shop laborer, my father’s transformation was miraculous. He went back to school, completed a college degree, earned a masters degree in social work, and became instrumental in transforming the lives of many other broken men. He also embraced his Catholic faith with love and devotion, and it embraced him in return. That, of course, is all a much longer story for another day.
My father died suddenly at the age of 52 just a few months after my ordination to priesthood in 1982. I remember lying prostrate on the floor before the altar during the Litany of the Saints at my ordination as I described in “The Power and the Glory if the Heart of a Priest Grows Cold.” I was conscious that my father stood on the aisle just a few feet away, and I was struck by the nature of the man whose impact on my life had so miraculously changed. Underneath the millstones of addiction and despair that once plagued him was a singular power that trumped all. It was the sheer courage necessary to be open to the grace of conversion and radical change. The most formative years of my young adulthood and priesthood were spent as a witness to the immensity of that courage. In time, I grew far less scarred by my father’s road to perdition, and far more inspired by his arduous and dogged pursuit of the road back. I have seen other such miracles, and learned long ago to never give up hope for another human being.
The Conversion of the Duke
I once wrote that John Wayne is one of my life-long movie heroes and a man I have long admired. But all that I really ever knew of him was through the roles he played in great westerns like “The Searchers,” “The Comancheros,” “Rio Bravo,” and my all-time favorite historical war epic, “The Longest Day.”
In his lifetime, John Wayne was awarded three Oscars and the Congressional Gold Medal. After his death from cancer in 1979, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But, for me, the most monumental and courageous of all of John Wayne’s achievements was his 1978 conversion to the Catholic faith.
Not many in Hollywood escape the life it promotes, and John Wayne was no exception. The best part of this story is that it was first told by Father Matthew Muñoz, a priest of the Diocese of Orange, California, and John Wayne’s grandson.
Early in his film career in 1933, John Wayne married Josephine Saenz, a devout Catholic who had an enormous influence on his life. They gave birth to four children, the youngest of whom, Melinda, was the mother of Father Matthew Muñoz. John Wayne and Josephine Saenz civilly divorced in 1945 as Hollywood absorbed more and more of the life and values of its denizens.
But Josephine never ceased to pray for John Wayne and his conversion, and she never married again until after his death. In 1978, a year before John Wayne died, her prayer was answered and he was received into the Catholic Church. His conversion came late in his life, but John Wayne stood before Hollywood and declared that the secular Hollywood portrayal of the Catholic Church and faith is a lie, and the truth is to be found in conversion.
That conversion had many repercussions. Not least among them was the depth to which it inspired John Wayne’s 14-year old grandson, Matthew, who today presents the story of his grandfather’s conversion as one of the proudest events of his life and the beginning of his vocation as a priest.
If John Wayne had lived to see what his conversion inspired, I imagine that he, too, would have stood on the aisle, a monument to the courage of conversion, as Matthew lay prostrate on the Cathedral floor praying the Litany of the Saints at priesthood ordination. The courage of conversion is John Wayne’s most enduring legacy.
Pornchai Moontri Takes a Road Less Traveled
The Japanese Catholic novelist, Shusaku Endo, wrote a novel entitled Silence (Monumenta Nipponica, 1969), a devastating historical account of the cost of discipleship. It is a story of 17th Century Catholic priests who faced torture and torment for spreading the Gospel in Japan. The great Catholic writer, Graham Greene, wrote that Silence is “in my opinion, one of the finest novels of our time.”
Silence is the story of Father Sebastian Rodriguez, one of those priests, and the story is told through a series of his letters. Perhaps the most troubling part of the book was the courage of Father Rodriguez, a courage difficult to relate to in our world. Because of the fear of capture and torture, and the martyrdom of every priest who went before him, Father Rodriguez had to arrive in Japan for the first time by rowing a small boat alone in the pitch blackness of night from the comfort and safety of a Spanish ship to an isolated Japanese beach in 1638 — just 18 years after the Puritan Pilgrims landed the Mayflower at Squanto’s Pawtuxet, half a world away as I describe in “The True Story of Thanksgiving.”
In Japan, however, Father Rodriguez was a pilgrim alone. Choosing to be left on a Japanese beach in the middle of the night, he had no idea where he was, where he would go, or how he would survive. He had only the clothes on his back, and a small traveler’s pouch containing food for a day. I cannot fathom such courage. I don’t know that I could match it if it came down to it.
But I witness it every single day. Most of our readers are very familiar with “Pornchai’s Story,” and with his conversion to Catholicism on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. Most know the struggles and special challenges he has faced as I wrote in “Pornchai Moontri, Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”
But the greatest challenge of Pornchai’s life was yet to come. After serving more than half his life in prison in a sentence imposed when he was a teenager, Pornchai faced forced deportation from the United States to his native Thailand. Like Father Sebastian Rodriguez in Silence, Pornchai would be stepping onto the shores of a foreign land in darkness, a land he no longer knew and in which he knew no one.
This was a time of great turmoil for both of us. I have told much of this story before, but it is worth repeating now. I asked Pornchai to write his life story. He was lost for words and did not know how or where to begin. So I asked him to just talk. He sat on the floor of our prison cell and the words came cautiously at first, but then they began to flow as I took notes. Neither of us knew what to expect but in the end I typed the four pages from my notes and titled it simply “Pornchai’s Story.” We had no way to know that this short story would become known all over the world. I sent a copy to Catholic League President Bill Donohue, a Catholic leader with a heart of pure gold. Dr. Donohue published it on the Catholic League website and he wrote that it was “remarkable.” Then the letters came addressed to Pornchai. One was from Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, who was then U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Another was from the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, Editor of First Things magazine, who told Pornchai that his powerful story would turn many souls back to God. Yet another was from Cardinal Kitbunchu, the Archbishop Emeritus of Bangkok. Yet another was from Yela Roongruangchai, Founder and President of Divine Mercy Thailand.
Also in Thailand at the time “Pornchai’s Story” arrived was Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, who also happened to be the Vatican’s Postulator for the Cause of Sainthood of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, the Saint of Divine Mercy. Father Seraphim read “Pornchai’s Story” aloud during a Divine Mercy Retreat in Bangkok. Ten years before all of this happened, I boldly told Pornchai during a night of near despair, that we would have to build a bridge from a prison in Concord, New Hampshire to Thailand. Pornchai scoffed, but it was the only hope we had to hold onto. Then the bridge was built right before our very eyes. What we once faced with terror in the darkness of a future unseen, we now face with the gift of hope. Happy Birthday, Max!
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Don’t stop here. Learn a bit more of this story through the following related posts:
Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom
The Shawshank Redemption and Its Grace Rebounding
Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress
A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free
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A Further Note from Father Gordon MacRae: While writing the above post I received a note from my friend Sheryl Collmer in Tyler, Texas. Along with it was an article Sheryl had written for Crisis Magazine. The article is about the magnificent new film, Triumph of the Heart, telling the story of our Patron Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Sheryl’s article is magnificent in its own right and it casts a light into a very dark place in our world. But her article does not leave us there. There is not much in this world that makes me want to shout from the rooftops, but Sheryl Collmer’s article is one of them. You must not miss “The Tenebrae of Maximilian Kolbe” and I hope you will share it.
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.”
Unforgettable! 1969 When Neil Armstrong Walked on the Moon
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin took “One giant leap for mankind” while the people of Planet Earth watched in awe.
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin took “One giant leap for mankind” while the people of Planet Earth watched in awe.
August 27, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
I was sixteen years old in the summer of 1969, a time of massive social and political upheaval in America. It was the summer between my junior and senior year at Lynn English High School on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and I was living a life of equally massive contradictions.
Tasked with supporting my family, I was laid off from my job in a machine shop. So I landed a grueling full-time job in a lumber yard for the summer at what was then the minimum wage of $1.60 per hour. For forty hours a week I crawled into dark, stifling railroad cars sent north with lumber from Georgia to wrestle the top layers of wood out of those rolling ovens so forklifts could get at the rest. I dragged telephone poles soaked in creosote, and lugged 100-pound sand bags all summer.
While I was bulking up, the rest of my world was falling apart. On April 4th of the previous year, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis. Two months later, on June 6th Robert Kennedy was murdered by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan after winning the California Presidential Primary.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago erupted in unprecedented riots and violence. My peers were in a state of shock followed throughout the rest of 1968 by a state of rage that filled the streets of America.
The nation was in chaos as the war in Vietnam escalated. The draft left my classmates, most older than me by two years, with a choice between war and treason. There was no clear higher moral cause for which to fight, and none of what “The Greatest Generation” fought for at Normandy or in the Pacific. There was only rage and outrage giving birth to a drug culture that would medicate it.
Growing up in the shadows of Boston, the cradle of revolution and freedom, I was steeped in the liberal Democratic politics of our time. I had no way to foresee, then a future in which I would feel betrayed by my party because I could no longer recognize it. Its embrace of a culture of death was still a few years away, but the seeds of that debasement of life were just beginning to tear away at our cultural soul.
In his inaugural address in January of 1969, President Richard Nixon asked the nation to lower its voice and reach for unity instead of division. My peers had no appetite for unity. They knew nothing but their disillusionment. In the midst of it all, I rebelled in an opposite direction. I began to take seriously the Catholic heritage that I had previously ignored.
But also in 1969, the Catholic Church, a once reliable source of hope and respite from the world, took a post-Vatican II kamikaze dive toward liturgical absurdity. “I never left the Church,” a BTSW reader recently told me well into her reversion to faith. “The Church left me.” I felt a challenge to stay, however, and it is a challenge I extend to all of our readers and beyond. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
It seems an odd thing, looking back on that summer, that as my Catholic peers dropped out of their faith, I chose that moment to drop in. I was reading Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain and The Sign of Jonas that summer, and they made sense to me. I began to pray, and before showing up to lug telephone poles each day at 8:00 AM, I began attending a 7:00 AM daily Mass where I looked very much out of place, but felt at home.
“Tranquility Base Here. The Eagle Has Landed”
There were other things that marked that summer as horrible. On July 18, 1969, all of Boston watched in dismay as our last hope for a successor to the aura of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was rendered unfit for the presidency. On July 18, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, and his only passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was drowned as he saved himself. His presidential ambitions were thus ended.
Then, just two days later, something amazing would eclipse that story and press the pause button on our 1969 world of chaos. It was an event that gave us all a time out from our Earthbound path of destruction. No one has written of it better than Kenneth Weaver. Writing for the December, 1969 edition of National Geographic, Mr. Weaver framed that awful year with a higher context in “One Giant Leap for Mankind.”
Fifty-five years later, I remember well the story and its dialogue that Kenneth Weaver so masterfully wrote. I sat riveted and mesmerized through that dialogue with teeth clenched before a black and white TV screen late on the Sunday afternoon of July 20, 1969:
“Two thousand feet above the Sea of Tranquility, the little silver, black, and gold space bug named Eagle braked itself with a tail of flame as it plunged toward the face of the moon. The two men inside strained to see their goal. Guided by numbers from their computer, they sighted through a grid on one triangular window.
“Suddenly they spotted the onrushing target. What they saw set the adrenalin pumping and the blood racing. Instead of the level, obstacle-free plain called for in the Apollo 11 flight plan, they were aimed for a sharply etched crater, 600 feet across and surrounded by heavy boulders.
“The problem was not completely unexpected. Shortly after Armstrong and his companion, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, had begun their powered dive for the lunar surface ten minutes earlier, they had checked against landmarks such as crater Maskelyne and discovered that they were going to land some distance beyond their intended target.
“And there were other complications. Communications with Earth had been blacking out at intervals. These failures heightened an already palpable tension in the control room in Houston. This unprecedented landing was the trickiest, most dangerous part of the flight. Without information and help from the ground, Eagle might have to abandon its attempt.
“The spacecraft’s all-important computer had repeatedly flashed the danger signals ‘1201’ and ‘1202’, warning of an overload. If continued, it would interfere with the computer’s job of calculating altitude and speed, and neither autopilot nor astronaut could guide Eagle to a safe landing.
“Armstrong revealed nothing to the ground controllers about the crater ahead. Indeed, he said nothing at all; he was much too busy. The men back on Earth, a quarter of a million miles away, heard only the clipped, deadpan voice of Aldrin, reading off the instruments. ‘Hang tight; we’re go. 2,000 feet.’
“Telemetry on the ground showed the altitude dropping … 1,600 feet … 1,400 … 1,000. The beleaguered computer flashed another warning. The two men far away said nothing. Not till Eagle reached 750 feet did Aldrin speak again. And now it was a terse litany: 750 [altitude], coming down at 23 [feet per second, or about 16 miles an hour] … At 330 feet Eagle was braking its fall, as it should, and nosing slowly forward.
“But now the men in the control room in Houston realized that something was wrong. Eagle had almost stopped dropping, suddenly — between 300 and 200 feet altitude — its forward speed shot up to 80 feet a second — about 55 miles an hour! This was not according to plan.
“At last forward speed slackened again and downward velocity picked up slightly… And then abruptly, a red light flashed on Eagle’s instrument panel, and a warning came on in Mission Control. To the worried flight controllers the meaning was clear, only 5 percent of Eagle’s descent fuel remained.
“By mission rules, Eagle must be on the surface within 94 seconds or the crew must abort and give up the attempt to land on the moon. They would have to fire the descent engine full throttle and then ignite the ascent engine to get back into lunar orbit for a rendezvous with Columbia, the mother ship.
“Sixty seconds to go. Every man in the control center held his breath. Failure would be especially hard to take now. Some four days and six hours before, the world had watched a perfect, spectacularly beautiful launch at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Apollo 11 had flown flawlessly, uneventfully, almost to the moon. Now it could all be lost for lack of a few seconds of fuel.
“‘Light’s on.’ Aldrin confirmed that the astronauts had seen the fuel warning light. ‘40 feet [altitude], picking up some dust. 30 feet. 20. Faint shadow.’
“He had seen the shadow of one of the 68-inch probes extending from Eagle’s footpads. Thirty seconds to failure. In the control center, George Hage, Mission Director for Apollo 11, was pleading silently: “Get it down, Neil! Get it down!”
“The seconds ticked away. ‘Forward, drifting right,’ Aldrin said. And then, with less than 20 seconds left, came the magic words: ‘O.K., engine stop.’ Then the now-famous words from Neil Armstrong: ‘Tranquility Base here. Eagle has landed!”
— Kenneth Weaver, “One Giant Leap for Mankind,” National Geographic, December 1969
One Giant Leap for Mankind
Six hours and thirty minutes later, I was still glued to a television at about 11:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The hatch of the Eagle Lunar Lander opened and Neil Armstrong, the Apollo 11 Mission Commander, backed slowly out before a captivated world. He paused on the ladder to lower an equipment storage assembly into position. Its 7-pound camera held earthlings spellbound.
Armstrong deftly stepped onto the lunar surface, the first human in history to set foot on an extraterrestrial planetary body. He spoke into his microphone the famous words that would be forever etched into the annals of space exploration. His words were transmitted to a telescope dish at Canberra, Australia, then to a Comsat satellite above the Pacific, then to a switching station at Goddard Space Center near Washington, DC, and finally to Houston and the world:
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The months and years to follow revealed this lunar visit by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to be one of the most significant events of modern science. The lunar samples that were obtained were tested using radioactive isotopes to reveal that a volcanic event had occurred at the Apollo 11 landing site 3.7 billion years earlier. Other nearby samples revealed meteor remains from about 4.6 billion years ago, but nothing older than that.
The conclusion drawn was that Earth’s Moon formed along with the rest of the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago, one third the age of the Universe. After setting up dozens of other ongoing experiments, including a prismatic mirror for precise laser measurements from Earth, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin boarded Eagle for the eight-minute assent to the orbiting command module where astronaut Mike Collins waited. Sixty hours later, Apollo 11 and its crew were plucked from the Pacific.
Science has not matched the vision humanity has had for its own ambitions. In the midst of all the chaos of 1969, the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey earned the Academy Award for Special Visual Effects. The film envisioned manned flights to the moons of Jupiter by 2001, and an artificial intelligence named Hal 9000 who would not only control the mission, but plot nefariously against its human protagonists. You may recall the chilling line from Hal when astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) wanted an electronic hatch open so he could return to the ship: “I’m sorry Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Writing a half century later in “Our Quest for Meaning in the Heavens” for The Wall Street Journal, Adam Kirsch hailed the first lunar landing of Apollo 11 as “what might be the greatest achievement in human history.” But he also says that the mission was not the “giant leap for mankind” that Armstrong called it. It was “more like humanity dipping a toe in the cosmic ocean, finding it too cold and lifeless to enter, and deciding to stay home.”
No astronaut has ventured into space since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. Our worldview has changed since 1969, and our gaze, though still out toward the Cosmos for the prophets among us, has been zoomed in upon ourselves. An astronaut today might face censure for what Buzz Aldrin declared to all of humanity from space on the Apollo 11 mission’s way back to Earth:
“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou has ordained; What is man that Thou should be mindful of him?”
— Psalm 8:3
MINOR ADDENDUM:
In the months to follow, the New Yorker magazine featured one of its famous hand-drawn cartoons. It depicted Neil Armstrong walking on the Lunar surface. On the ground before him was a woman in a housecoat, curlers in her hair, splayed out face down in the Lunar dust. “Oh, my God!” said Armstrong, “It’s Alice!”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: My younger sister once told one of my friends that the only reason I became a priest was because Starfleet Academy denied my application. Please share this post about my other obsession, the bridges linking science and faith. You may like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Did Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?
Science and Faith and the Big Bang Theory of Creation
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.”
My Father’s House Has Many Rooms. Is There a Room for Latin Mass?
In Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis dealt a sharp but not fatal blow to Catholics who treasure the TLM. I hear from many who hope and pray for reconsideration.
In Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis dealt a sharp but not fatal blow to Catholics who treasure the TLM. I hear from many who hope and pray for reconsideration.
In the photo above His Holiness Pope John Paul II offers Mass in Latin, ad orientem, from the Sistine Chapel.
August 20, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
My title for this post is from the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 2, “My Father’s House Has Many Rooms.” It is seen by scholars as a reference to the Jerusalem Temple, hinting of its heavenly sanctuary, the dwelling place of angels and saints who worship in eternal liturgy. The Letter to the Hebrews describes it:
“You have come to Mount Zion, to the City of the Living God in the heavenly Jerusalem, to choirs of angels in festal gathering and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.”
— Hebrews 12:22-24
The Gospel passage from John 14:2 speaks of God’s House having many chambers. Could one of them accommodate the Latin Mass? In 1947, Pope Pius XII wrote in Mediator Dei, his encyclical on the liturgy, that “the mystery of the most Holy Eucharist which Christ, the High Priest, instituted and commands to be continually renewed, is the culmination and center of the Christian religion.” In the Mass the redemptive action of the death and Resurrection of Jesus is made actually present to the faithful across the centuries. This mystery of faith, the Mysterium Fidei, is found in the liturgy of the entire Church, both East and West.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 889) tells us that “By a supernatural sense of faith” the whole People of God, under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium, “unfailingly adheres to this faith.” To comprehend how the whole people of God is infallible in its sense of the faith — its sensus fidelium — it must be understood that the body of the faithful goes far beyond limits of space and time. The People of God always includes those of all past generations as well as those in the present. Those of the past are in fact the vast majority and it is easier to ascertain what they believed and practiced. It is that belief that marks the sensus fidelium pointing infallibly to truth.
I have never been a devotee of the Traditional Latin Mass. Growing up, I had nothing but the barest and most minimal exposure to our Catholic faith until my later adolescence. Then, in the 1960s, Latin in the Mass had receded and all manner of confusing experimentation took its place. I attended an inner city public high school then, and had begun to attend Mass just as Latin was disappearing. I wondered what all the agony in the garden of faith was about so I registered for Latin among my high school courses.
I took three successive years of Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Classical Latin then. I developed a fascination with both the ancient language and the Roman Empire that flourished because of it. More than a half century later, I still recall my exposure to Latin. Endless declensions and conjugations still stream through my mind. My friend, Pornchai Moontri once suggested that I know Latin because it was my first language.
A House Divided Cannot Stand
On July 16, 2021, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the late Pope Francis published Traditionis Custodes, a Pastoral Letter that placed immediate and severe restrictions on a Catholic celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. The wound this inflicted on the spirit of Traditional Catholics, some of the most faithful among us, was also severe. Despite my own lack of experience with the Latin Mass, I wrote, not so much in protest, but in support of those who felt cast adrift. My post was “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass.”
The restrictions became effective immediately, including a mandate barring newly ordained priests from celebration of the TLM and barring its celebration in any parish church. Bishops were suddenly required to first consult the Holy See before granting any exceptions to the Traditional (Extraordinary) Form of the Mass.
For expressed reasons of “unity,” Pope Francis imposed these restrictions without explanation in open contradiction of a 2014 Motu Proprio of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who permitted celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass without preconditions and without consent from any bishop. Some of the best early reaction to this new and draconian development came from Father John Zuhlsdorf (Father Z’s Blog) in “First Reactions to Traditionis Custodes.”
His reactions inspired me and many. Father Z’s bottom line was that Catholics with devotion to the TLM should pause, take a deep breath, and adopt a wait-and-see attitude. He wrote,
“Fathers... change nothing, do nothing differently for now. It is not rational to leap around without mapping the mine field we are entering. Keep calm and carry on.
“Lay people... be temperate. Set your faces like flint. When you are on fire, it avails you nothing to run around flapping your arms. Drop and roll and be calm.
“To those of you who have put your heart and goods and hopes into supporting and building the Traditional Latin Mass, thank you. Do not for a moment despair or wonder if what you did was worth the effort, time, cost and suffering. It was worth it. It still is.”
— Father John Zuhlsdorf, July 16, 2021
I found myself cheering inside for Father Z. I am not a rebel priest and neither is he, but I would have been a rebel without a clue had I taken this on. I have never even experienced the TLM. But human nature being what it is, this edict of Pope Francis had the opposite effect from unity. Telling people that they cannot have something drew worldwide attention to it.
So I wrote back then, not so much in defense of the TLM, but in defense of the many people who told me of their grief in having it taken summarily away and without apparent just cause or dialogue. I cannot help but wonder what Pope Francis might have been thinking at Mass just days later as he listened to the First Reading on the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time on July 18, 2021. Was he at all conscious that Catholics all over the world were hearing the same rebuke from the Prophet Jeremiah that we heard that Sunday?
“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but... I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands and bring them back to their meadow... I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing, says the Lord.”
— Jeremiah 23:1-6
A Catholic Unraveling in Germany
I have been searching for a more panoramic map of the minefield Father Zuhlsdorf suggested that we were entering then, and I think I found some of its rumblings. While reading from Volume Two of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell (which, for full disclosure, included five pages quoting this blog) I came upon his entry for 9 August 2019, the feast of Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, that we observed this month. I wrote about her once in “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.”
Edith Stein was German by birth. In his book, Cardinal Pell advised readers to seek her intercession for the Church in Germany. Cardinal Pell quoted Cardinal Gerhard Muller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
“The Catholic Church [in Germany] is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. [They are] self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They don’t speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the sacraments, and faith, hope, and love.”
— Prison Journal, Volume 2, p.75
It gets worse. Later in Prison Journal, Volume 2, in an entry dated 16 October 2019, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about German Catholic fears of the possibility of schism that had been raised there. If allowed to happen, such a break would sweep much of Europe. Cardinal Pell quoted from a Catholic Culture article by Philip Lawler entitled, “Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?” (September 19, 2019):
“Lawler argues that Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect, saying he is not frightened by it, something Lawler believes is frightening in itself.”
— Prison Journal, Volume 2, p. 214
Cardinal Pell wrote of earlier confidence about the unlikelihood of a schism, but acknowledged that “the odds against it have shortened.” He added,
“Not surprisingly, the New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a schism by the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States, the Gospel Catholics... . I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the busiest and most aggressive defenders of Pope Francis who recognize that they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving [progressives] free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.”
— Prison Journal, Volume 2, pp. 214-215
It was that final sentence that I vividly recalled and revisited after hearing these new restrictions imposed by Pope Francis on the Traditional Latin Mass. Were we then witnessing the opening salvo of such a manipulated schism? Was there a move under way to antagonize conservative and traditional Catholics into breaking away?
China, Catholics, and the Dalai Lama
I am certain this was not by design, but on the day after this announcement by Pope Francis, the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal carried a stunning pair of articles. I will summarize their major points:
The first was entitled, “Beijing Targets Tibet for Assimilation” by Liza Lin, Eva Xaio, and Jonathan Cheng. The assimilation referred to is better described as suppression, and it needs a little historical background.
Twelve centuries had passed between the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism in AD 747 and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gaining control of China in 1949. By 1950, the CCP came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is believed by Buddhists to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.
As such, the Dalai Lama is spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the ex officio ruler of Tibet since the Eighth Century. In 1959, during the Chinese Communist absorption of Tibet (resistance was futile!) the Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India where he has remained since. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese claims to rule Tibet.
Xi Jinping, President of China and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has as his national priority the forging of a single Chinese identity centered on unity and Party loyalty. His agenda placed new restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism and launched an effort to replace traditional Tibetan language with Mandarin Chinese while insisting on courses designed for indoctrination in socialism and the CCP.
The Dalai Lama, in exile in India, will soon turn 90 years of age. His eventual death is expected to trigger a clash with the Chinese government over control of Tibetan Buddhism. One of the major points of Chinese suppression is a CCP claim that it has the right to choose the Dalai Lama’s “reincarnation,” and thus establish full control over the heart of Tibetan religion and identity. In late 2020, President Xi Jinping commanded an effort to make Tibetan Buddhism “compatible with a socialist identity.”
This affront to Tibet’s religious freedom actually had a strange sort of precedent. In 2019, Pope Francis signed a concordat — the tenets of which are still secret — in which he agreed to a Chinese Communist Party demand to select Catholic bishops in the State-approved Chinese Catholic church. This has translated into increased harassment and suppression of the underground Catholic Church for which many have suffered for their loyalty to Rome.
The Threat of Schism
A second major article, this one by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca, appeared on the same day in The Wall Street Journal, again just two days after the announced suppression of the Latin Mass. Its title asked an ominous question: “Is Pope Francis Leading the Church to a Schism?” Pope Francis had used some of the same reasoning and language in restricting the TLM that Xi Jinping used while suppressing Tibetan Buddhism. Pope Francis cited “unity” as his principal reason and goal, but its effect seemed to invite just the opposite.
Two years after Cardinal Pell wrote from his prison cell with dismal foreboding about the state of the Church in Germany, Francis X. Rocca quoted Cardinal Rainer Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne and leader of the conservative minority of German bishops. He warned that the current wave of dissent sweeping Germany could lead to schism and the formation of a German national church. Rocca reported that similar warnings have been echoed by cardinals and bishops of other European countries.
Subsequently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone asked for prayers for the universal Church and the bishops of Germany “that they step back from this radical rupture.” Schism is more a threat to the Catholic Church than any other because, as Rocca points out, its “core identity is inextricably tied to its global unity under the pope.”
Francis X. Rocca wrote that Pope Francis has played down the concerns of more traditional African bishops who, in the view of many represent the future of the Church’s moral integrity. For a glimpse of the mindset at work in the German church, consider this statement by Joachim Frank, a German journalist who took part in the synod there, and described its work:
“There was this sense of movement, of change, another spirit, another type of church after these boring and very painful years of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”
In his 26-year papacy, Saint John Paul II is widely considered to have almost single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union and ended European communism. To dismiss his papacy and that of Benedict XVI as "boring and painful" is to break, not just with Catholic tradition, but with reality.
The trending Catholic mindset of Germany and much of Europe should not steer the Barque of Peter and the moral authority and praxis of the Church. In Germany, before the 2019-2021 pandemic, only about nine-percent of Catholics attended Mass on a regular basis. Post-Covid, that is now down to two or three percent. Among African Catholics, regular Mass participation is the world’s highest. By 2050, there will be twice as many practicing Catholics in Africa than in all of Europe.
Throughout Asia, Catholicism is relatively small, but growing. In Thailand, Catholics account for less than one-percent of the population but they leave a large footprint on the culture because of an orthodox commitment to living their faith, often heroically. I was recently informed by an active Catholic in Thailand that many people in his village attend the Buddhist Temple to observe local tradition, and then attend Sunday Mass to observe faith.
Our friend, Pornchai Moontri, told me that in the years he has lived in Thailand, he has heard Masses in Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Issan, and English, all of them filled to capacity. Few of the Thai, Vietnamese, or Lao converts understand each other, nor can they understand the Mass in any language but their own. “If the Church had kept Latin,” Pornchai recently offered, “this might not happen.” He pointed out rather wisely that in the mobile culture this world has become, an ancient but universal language in the Mass promotes unity instead of detracting from it. It overlooks national identity to establish a Catholic one.
This is not meant to be a critique of Pope Francis. He had his reasons for imposing Traditionis Custodes, but new information suggests that one of them may have been based on erroneous information conveyed to him. Newly emerging information paints another picture, and I hope to present that soon. Meanwhile, please keep the faith. The Body and Blood of Christ become manifest in every Mass. That Communion is the source and summit of all grace.
“Ad Altare Dei”
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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Sharing it helps to reach others who might benefit from these pages. You may also like these related posts:
Fr Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell
A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass
Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah
The Vatican Today: Cardinal George Pell’s Last Gift to the Church
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.”
Saint Maximilian Kolbe: A Knight at My Own Armageddon
An empty vessel reduced to a cloud of smoke and ash above Auschwitz, this Patron Saint of Prisoners, Priests, and Writers remains a Knight at the Foot of the Cross.
An empty vessel reduced to a cloud of smoke and ash above Auschwitz, this Patron Saint of Prisoners, Priests, and Writers remains a Knight at the Foot of the Cross.
August 13, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
This post started out as Part 2 of another post from back in 2016. It was “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night.” That post describes my own Dark Night of the Soul when all light and hope went out of the world for me. I somehow survived it mentally and spiritually. The scene above would much later come to have a lot to do with my survival of that Dark Night. The scene took place in 1982, the year of my priesthood ordination. It depicts Pope John Paul II at the Mass of Canonization of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. The person in front of him is Father James McCurry, OFM Conv, who was the Vice Postulator for the Cause of Sainthood of Father Maximilian. The scene is taking place 41 years after Maximilian was martyred at Auschwitz. Another 24 years after this scene, in 2006, Father McCurry rather mysteriously, through a series of unknown connections came to visit me in prison. Our visit began with a question: “What do you know about Saint Maximilian Kolbe?”
At that time, I knew very little. I knew that he had been canonized at the time of my ordination. I was somewhat preoccupied then, and never gave him a second thought. I had no idea at the time of the amazing graces to come through this great saint, and not only for me. He appeared among the wreckage of my own Armageddon.
On its face, “Armageddon” seems an exaggerated word to define any battle you can personally endure — until you actually endure it. For some who have lived through the torment of an inner battle, there is no word that captures it better. The word, “armageddon” calls forth images of the End Time, the apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil and the Final Coming of Christ. It is a mysterious word that appears in only one place in all of Sacred Scripture, a single word in a single line in The Book of Revelation, also called, “The Apocalypse”:
“And I saw, issuing from the mouth of the dragon, and from the mouth of the beast and from the mouth of the false prophet, three foul spirits … for they are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. (‘Lo, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake keeping his garments, that he may not go naked and be seen exposed!’) And they assembled them at the place which is called in Hebrew, ‘Armageddon’.”
— Revelation 16:13-16
The word, “Armageddon” comes from the Hebrew, “har Megiddôn, which means the “hill of Megiddo.” It was the site of several decisive battles in Israel’s Biblical history (see Judges 5:19; 2 Kings 9:27; and 2 Chronicles 35:22). In common usage from that one source, “Armegeddon” has also come to refer to any epic or pivotal battle or struggle between good and evil, even one within ourselves.
For me, the battle for hope, for truth, for justice that brought about the shattering of my life and priesthood, the battle in which I fell, leaving behind an empty vessel, has been the source of a sort of personal Armageddon. That account was told in these pages in my post, “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night.”
I know that among our readers there are many whose lives, at some point or other, have been shattered in similar ways. Through illness, great loss, alienation, even betrayal, they know what I mean when I write as I did in that post that the collapse of hope and faith leaves us as an empty vessel. In such a state, the struggle between Good and Evil is at a crossroad. Like many of you, I have stood empty and lost at that crossroad, and often the road less traveled, the one to redemption, seems at that time to be the more arduous one. It seems easier to just give up.
I receive many letters from people who have been where I was then, some who are there even now, and all are seeking one thing: a guide to traverse the inner darkness, to fill the emptiness that sickness, loss, abandonment, betrayal, and injustice leave behind. I have known some, including some good priests, who have utterly lost their faith in the midst of such a personal Armageddon. In this struggle, our Patron Saints are not just here to intercede for us. They are here to be our guides and shield bearers in the midst of battle.
We have a tendency to see the earthly lives of our saints as somehow enraptured in some inner beatific vision just waiting for release from this life, but they were as vulnerable to this world as the rest of us. I once wrote of one of my spiritual heroes, the great Doctor of the Church, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, in “A Shower of Roses.” Saint Thérèse knew suffering that would have drawn her to despair if not for faith. In the days between August 22 and 27, 1897, her tuberculosis reached the peak of suffering. In an entry in her diary at that time, she wrote that her faith was all that stood between her and an act of suicide:
“What would become of me if God did not give me courage? A person does not know what this is unless he experiences it. No, it has to be experienced! What a grace it is to have faith. If I had no faith, I would have inflicted death upon myself without hesitating a moment.”
— Story of a Soul, Third Edition, ICS Publications, p. 264
Thanks to that unexpected visit in 2006, when I was on the verge of spiritual collapse, Maximilian Kolbe came to become my Patron Saint. Several days after that visit with Father McCurry, I received from him in the mail, a note with a laminated card depicting Saint Maximilian half in his Auschwitz prison uniform and half in his Franciscan habit. I should not have received that image at all. Such inspiring and hopeful things are considered contraband here. Marveling over how it made its way to my cell, I taped it onto the battered mirror on my cell wall. After that day, I learned everything I could about Maximilian Kolbe including a biography of his life by Father James McCurry OFM Conventual.
Maximilian Kolbe and His Noble Resistance
Back in 2016, at the time I wrote about Father Benedict Groeschel and my Darkest Night, The Wall Street Journal carried a story by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca entitled, “Pope Honors Victims of Auschwitz” (WSJ, July 30-31, 2016). I was surprised to see within it a reference to our Patron Saint:
“The pope walked unaccompanied through the camp’s entrance gate, passing under the arch bearing the infamous phrase, ‘Arbeit macht frei,’ German for ‘Work will set you free.’ He then went to the spot in the camp where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, volunteered on July 29, 1941, to die in the place of a condemned prisoner. In Cell 18 of Block 11, the ‘starvation cell’ where Kolbe subsequently died on August 14, 1941, Pope Francis sat alone in semidarkness to pray before an image of the saint.”
The imagery here struck me very hard. I wrote back then of the crushing injustice of false witness, of the greed enabled by the now broken trust between priests and their bishops, and of the sense of utter hopelessness found in the prospect of unjust imprisonment, possibly for the rest of my life. The events I described in “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night” took place a year before my trial. During that year came the multiple attempts to entice me into lenient “plea deals” — first an offer to serve one-to-three years in prison, then reduced to one-to-two. If you have read The Grok Chronicle Chapter 1 then you already know of my refusal to “just go along.”
My refusal of these deals was met not just with condemnation from the State, but also from the Church, or at least from those charged with the administration of my diocese. After I refused these convenient deals, my bishop and diocese released unbidden a statement to the news media pronouncing me guilty before jury selection in my trial. It was that betrayal that led inexorably to the events of my Darkest Night.
There is no way to cushion what I faced after emerging from Intensive Care as an empty and discarded vessel. As I described in that post, I, too, sat in semidarkness, but by that point I knew nothing of either the sacrifice or the resistance of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Long time readers of these pages also know the story of how he injected himself not only into my prison, but also into that of Pornchai Maximilian Moontri. This account has appeared in a number of posts, but most importantly in “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”
Whatever I endure pales next to what happened in the prison of Maximilian Kolbe. His “crime” against the Third Reich was his insistence on writing openly about hope and truth when all of Europe was descending into darkness. There is a very important element of the story of Maximilian Kolbe’s sacrifice in prison, and it was to become the first sign of hope for me and others behind these prison walls. Like the Gospel itself, there is an historical truth within the story, but then there is another level of meaning in how the story was interpreted, how it inspired those whose lives were changed by it. The story of what Maximilian did in that prison was not just an act of sacrifice that saved the life of one man. It was an act of resistance that spread through all of Auschwitz and the other death camps, and emboldened many with hope to survive. This aspect of the story is told best in an unusual place.
Hermann Langbein (1912 – 1995) was a survivor of the horrors of both Dachau and Auschwitz. After the liberation of the camps, he became general secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee during which he wrote two important books published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The first was Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps. The second was People of Auschwitz (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
In the latter, as a member of the Auschwitz resistance, he profiled those among his fellow prisoners whose acts of resistance empowered others to hope. There were other
courageous acts of resistance at Auschwitz. Prisoner Albert Benaviste, a Jew from Saloniki, learned that none of the camp guards understood Greek. While working at the entrance ramp to Auschwitz, he called to Jewish mothers in Greek, mothers who had been deported from his homeland. He called in Greek, “You young mothers, give your children to an older woman near you. Elderly women and children are under the protection of the Red Cross!” This act of resistance saved many lives, for elderly women alone, and young children alone were destined to die in the gas chambers. But the best known act of resistance, Hermann Langbein wrote,
“was that of Maximilian Rajmund Kolbe who deprived the camp administration of the power to make arbitrary decisions about life and death.”
— People of Auschwitz, p. 241
“Where Was God in Auschwitz?”
Seeing the meaning of this story through the eyes of a fellow prisoner, a Jewish prisoner, brings an important element of resistance to the story that Langbein tells in his own words:
“Kolbe, a Catholic clergyman, arrived in Auschwitz on May 29, 1941. When an inmate made a successful escape in July of that year, the administration ordered the reprisal that was usual at that time. The inmates of the escapee’s block had to remain standing after the evening roll call. Karl Fritzsch, the SS camp leader, picked out fifteen men, and everyone knew that they would be locked up in a dark cell in the bunker where they would have to remain without food and water until the escapee was caught or they died.”
— People of Auschwitz, p. 241
One of the young men lined up that day was Franz Gajowniczek, who was one of the last selected for death by the SS officer. The young man cried, “My wife and children! What will happen to my family?” What happened next is described by an eyewitness, Dr. Franz Wiodarski, a Polish physician who also stood in that line:
“After the fifteen prisoners had been selected, Maximilian Kolbe broke ranks, took his cap off, and stood at attention before the SS camp leader, who turned to him in surprise: ‘What does this Polish swine want?’ Kolbe pointed at Gajowniczek, who was destined for death, and replied: ‘I am a Catholic priest from Poland. He has a wife and children, and therefore I want to take his place.’ The SS camp leader was so astonished that he could not speak. After a moment he gave a hand signal and spoke only one word: ‘Weg!’ (Away!). This is how Kolbe took the place of the doomed man, and Gajowniczek was ordered to rejoin the lineup.”
— People of Auschwitz, p. 241
“Resistance in an extermination camp meant the protection of life,” wrote Hermann Langbein in his interpretation of this story. With the eyes of faith, we see Saint Maximilian Kolbe as a martyr of charity, but for those imprisoned at Auschwitz his act was an act of resistance that diminished the SS leader in the eyes of other prisoners as a man spiritually bankrupt.
Father Dwight Longenecker wrote an article back then for Aleteia entitled “Maximilian Kolbe and the Redemption of Auschwitz.” It describes a pilgrimage to the site of Saint Maximilian’s martyrdom. “It is impossible to take it in,” he wrote, “and quickly process the truths you are learning. Like most, I had to ask where God was in the midst of such horror.” Father Longenecker found the answer:
“Where was God in Auschwitz? He was there in the prison cell, just as he was at the crucifixion of Christ, not defeating the evil with violence or force… Whenever and wherever possible we must do all we can to oppose evil by passive resistance, civil disobedience, protest, boycott, and even armed force, but when the evil is so overwhelming, when the stench of hell is so great and the hatred of Satan so violent as that of Auschwitz, one can only stand back, aghast and horrified by the hurricane of sheer unadulterate cruelty, torture, and premeditated murder. Then all resistance is futile.”
— Father Longenecker
Ah, but is it futile? Not in the bigger picture it isn’t. Saint Maximilian’s sacrifice — his act of resistance — has played out in my prison bringing hope and inspiring faith where otherwise they simply could not be. Spend some time in his honor with the links at the end of this post, and learn with us behind walls about the possibilities for the lives of others when evil is resisted.
There is a story from the early life of Rajmund Kolbe that is included in each of several biographies of his life, including the one by Father James McCurry. At age ten, his mother once asked him in exasperation, “Whatever will become of you?” It troubled Rajmund enough to send him to church to pray before a statue of the Mother of God. While there, he had a dream, or a vision. It was never really clear which. Mary presented him with two crowns, one red, and the other white. He chose them both. The symbolism of the two colors was a pivotal event in the life of the person who was to become Saint Maximilian Kolbe.
After writing of my wrongful imprisonment in The Wall Street Journal in 2005, Dorothy Rabinowitz challenged me in a telephone call to “emulate that Saint you have come to regard so highly. Find someone whose suffering is heavier than yours and then seek his freedom.” It was shortly after that this daughter of a Holocaust survivor sent me another challenge that would result in a post of my own. It was “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.” It was also at just this time that Pornchai Moontri emerged from another concentration camp, thirteen years of hellish existence in solitary confinement in a Maine prison. He was transferred to this one and by some mysterious circumstance he became my cellmate. His first words to me while staring at the battered mirror on our cell wall with the image of our Patron Saint were, “Is this you?”
I had my first hint that Saint Maximilian was deeply at work in my prison when Pornchai Moontri made a decision to become Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010, and to take the name, Maximilian, as his Christian name. This was brought about by a series of events described in a chapter of a book by Felix Carroll, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions.”
At the time, Pornchai decided to honor his new Patron Saint with an art form in which he had become a master craftsman, the art of model shipbuilding. So he meticulously designed a vessel that he would name the “St. Maximilian.” He proceeded in his work area in the prison woodworking shop to hand carve the bow, masts, and every tiny fitting, and to tie all the intricate rigging. Pornchai painted the hull black to symbolize the horror of where he died.
But then a few days later, while knowing nothing about the early life experiences of his new Patron Saint, Pornchai told me one morning that he had changed his mind, and had decided that the black hull will be crowned in red and white. This seemed to have come out of nowhere but inside Pornchai’s own soul where Maximilian was hard at work again saving a life.
I was startled by this choice of colors and asked him why he chose them. He said, “I don’t know. They just seem right.” So here below is the St. Maximilian, created by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri to honor his Patron Saint and to inform us all that resistance is not futile. Not ever!
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Don’t stop here. Learn more about how Saint Maximilian Kolbe led us to Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night
The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner
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.”
Did Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?
Physicist, Stephen Hawking, died on March 14, 2018. His book, The Grand Design, caused many to believe that he widened the chasm between science and faith.
Physicist, Stephen Hawking, died on March 14, 2018. His book, The Grand Design, caused many to believe that he widened the chasm between science and faith.
July 30, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
Back in 2010, in the earliest days of this blog, I wrote a post about the late, great physicist, Stephen Hawking. It was among my first posts about the dichotomy between science and faith. A controversial book, The Grand Design, published not long before I wrote about Professor Hawking, caused many to believe that he was an atheist who concluded that there is no reason to believe that God created the Universe or anything else. He attributed all of creation to one overpowering force, gravity. At the time I was pondering a response, I imagined that if I had been on an archeological dig among 15th Century ruins in Rome and found a worn chisel that was known to have belonged to Michelangelo, and used to create the Pieta, what sort of controversy would that entail? Would naysayers suggest that Michelangelo did not thus create the Pieta, his chisel did. That is the simplest response to anyone who used gravity to demonstrate that Stephen Hawking did not believe in God. God created not only the material Universe, but also all the material tools that brought the Universe into being.
Also a few weeks before I first wrote about Hawking, Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Cardinal Newman in Birmingham, England. The Holy Father emphasized Cardinal Newman’s “insights into the relationship between faith and reason,” and commended him for applying “his pen to many of the most pressing subjects of the day.” Without doubt, Cardinal Newman also might have had a pointed response to the media tremors after physicist and author, Stephen Hawking declared that science can explain the creation of the Universe without God.
I mentioned Stephen Hawking in another 2010 post, “A Day Without Yesterday: Father Georges Lemaitre, and The Big Bang.” His declaration about creation came in The Grand Design. Many in the media called it a definitive statement about the existence of God. It was no such thing, but the news media cannot be accused of a lack of trying to diminish the faith of billions.
I cannot claim to have even a fraction of the gifts of faith and reason that Saint John Henry Newman would call upon to respond, but as a priest who respects science, I feel driven to weigh in. First, I have to confess that I had not by then read The Grand Design, but I eventually did. However, in a full-page article in The Wall Street Journal in 2010, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow laid out the cosmology behind the book and their conclusions (“Why God Did Not Create the Universe,” September 4-5, 2010).
It is to that article that I here respond. If you have a concern for the implications of Professor Hawking’s pronouncement that God had nothing to do with bringing you and your world into being, please read on. There is a lot at stake here. I will address this from two points of view.
My Response as a Priest
Like Father Georges Lemaitre and Saint John Henry Newman, my response is first and foremost that of a Catholic priest. I have known many priests who have struggled with faith and some who have lost their faith. I correspond regularly with a priest who lost his faith years ago. Now this declaration by Stephen Hawking feels like a nail in faith’s coffin for him. I have lived 72 years of struggle over the question of God. I have arrived — in spite of toil, trial and tribulation, and more than my share of each — at what I think is a more than tepid faith in God’s existence and in His Grand Design. I believe in His creation of our existence. I believe in His enduring and caring Presence in this life and the promised life to come. I believe that our relationship with Him can survive this life if we walk the path He has shown to us. I wrote about that path in a recent post, “What Shall I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?”
I have read nothing in any of Stephen Hawking’s writings that causes me to wonder whether my faith conclusions are valid. I write as a priest and believer. My faith and my priesthood both came into being in a time of great social upheaval. The existential philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) seemed to rule the reasoning — or lack thereof — of the 1960s. His contempt for Judaism and Christianity, and his cynical view that mankind is but a herd at the mercy of the ruling and gifted intellectual elite, marked the dawn of the “God is Dead” movement. The bumper stickers were everywhere:
“GOD IS DEAD!” Nietzsche
In the 1970s, that sorry and narcissistic wave began to dissipate, but not before destroying the faith of many who bought into it. I remember buying a bumper sticker for my seminary room door in 1978:
“NIETZSCHE IS DEAD!” God
The three masters of deceit — Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche — are all dead and not only their persons but their ideologies as well. Each reduced man to his basest, soul-less drives, and each in his own way was an enemy of faith. I do not count Stephen Hawking among them. Contrary to what the news media was lifting out of his latest book — and out of context — Stephen Hawking did not denounce God, nor does he claim to have proven that God does not exist. The exact quote that so many in the media now read into from his WSJ article cited above, and from his book is this:
“The discovery recently of extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that the grand design is the work of some grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.”
But who would then explain the identity of the Tailor? This comes as no great revelation. One might expect that I, as a priest, would proclaim that the Universe was brought into being and maintained, at least in part for our benefit, by a Divine Creator whose title is also His name: God. But did anyone really expect Stephen Hawking, or any cosmologist to make the same declaration? What Professor Hawking has written is neither new nor surprising in cosmology. I do not, and will never have a faith that depends on science to finally and definitively weigh in on God’s existence and creation of the Universe. Science should never be able to do this to the satisfaction of any person of faith. To say that science can explain creation without God is not to say that God did not create everything — including the science and scientists trying to nudge Him from center stage. Faith is far more than the dictates of reason and the pronouncements of science. Our tradition of faith does not reduce God to His quantum mechanics, and does not promise to teach all there is to know about the created Universe or the laws of physics.
Our faith promises that we can know God through Christ in a personal relationship without fully explaining God. Who in this world can claim to fully comprehend God? Certainly not I. Faith is not an event, and science does not make or break it. Faith is a pilgrimage, and like any pilgrimage, most of us will have times of wandering, and wondering whether we will ever arrive, whether we will ever get to the point at which there are no doubts. That is the point of faith. It is its own evidence.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things unseen”
— Hebrews 11:1
Faith at some point involves an assent of the intellect (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 155) to the revealed truth about God Himself. Central to that truth is the redemption offered to us through Christ who not only reveals God to man, but “fully reveals man to himself” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). None of us looks to Stephen Hawking, or to science, to reveal the truth about God. Faith in God and His creation can no more be subjected to the scientific method than science can legitimately be subjected and defined in the light of faith. Who among us, when faced with life’s inevitable crises, ever cried out to Stephen Hawking for mercy or for redemption?
The greatest physicist of the 20th Century, Albert Einstein, never pondered God until his discussions with fellow physicist Father Georges Lemaitre. When those discussions proved to Einstein that the Universe came into being at a specific point some 13.2 Billion years earlier, Einstein responded, “I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are just details.”
My Response as a Student of Science
I write secondly with a lifelong respect for science as a tool, not for understanding God, but for understanding the mechanics of the Universe in which we exist. This has been not so much a journey of the mind, but of the heart and soul. I at one time thought quantum mechanics referred to guys who worked on Volkswagen Beetles. To my great fortune, my mind has expanded a bit since then.
I have several times written of one of my heroes on the parallel journeys of both science and faith. One of these posts, “A Day Without Yesterday” is the story of priest, mathematician and physicist, Father Georges Lemaitre, the originator of the Big Bang explanation of cosmology and the man who changed the mind of Albert Einstein on the origin of this created Universe.
A French publication, Les Dossiers De La Recherche (No. 35, May 2009) had an interesting article entitled “Le Big Bang Histoire: De La Science A La Religion” (“The History of the Big Bang: From Science to Religion”). I am grateful to my Belgian friend, Pierre Matthews (who is also the Godfather of Pornchai Moontri). Pierre and his family knew Father Georges Lemaitre well and they translated into English this portion of the article cited above in French:
“Pope Pius XII, an enthusiastic amateur astronomer, addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1951. His talk dealt with recent findings in cosmology stating: ‘It appears truly that today’s science going back millions of centuries has succeeded to witness the initial ‘fiat lux’ [Let there be light], coming out of nothing, that very moment of matter and ocean of light and rays, while the chemical components of particles split and assembled into millions of galaxies.’
“Pope Pius XII referred openly to Fr. Georges Lemaitre’s scenario. But this ‘concordism’ assumed to exist between revealed truth and science is counter-publicity for those, among them Fr. Georges Lemaitre, wanting a total and independent separation of the history of the Universe, evolution, and religious truth.
“Following a meeting with Fr. Lemaitre, Pope Pius XII a year later rejected, before the General Council of the International Astronomical Federation, any concordance between the two fields: science and faith. For Father Lemaitre, this was a double victory: cosmology can develop in total freedom and religion should no longer fear contrary positions based on new scientific discoveries.”
Why was Father Georges Lemaitre so insistent that the Pope should declare no concordance between faith and science? The obvious reason is that, for Father Lemaitre — a man of deep faith and a brilliant physicist and cosmologist — faith and science are parallel fields and should never limit each other. The Church suffered a black eye for its condemnation of Galileo’s views about science four centuries ago, but science has often seemed utterly ridiculous for holding the Church in contempt for not responding to science in 1660 as it would in 2025.
In 2005, noted science writer, Chet Raymo wrote a blog post entitled “The Future of Catholicism” on his Science Musings blog (April 10, 2005). Raymo wrote:
“In spite of the pope’s outreach to the scientific community, the Church has been slow to understand the theological implications of the scientific world view. The Church’s truce with modern cosmology and biology is uneasy at best, although certainly more enlightened than the outright rejection by fundamentalist faiths.”
Chet Raymo was right, but in a limited way. He very much understated the appreciation for scientific achievement demonstrated by the Church in the last century. We can expect this to improve greatly during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIV whose own education includes a degree in Mathematics, which leaves him well disposed to the work of Fr. George Lemaitre.
I had a brief discussion about this some years ago with a fundamentalist Evangelical pastor I know. He is an educated man, a university graduate, and well read but only very narrowly so. I asked for his opinion of what I have written above about Stephen Hawking’s views.
His response came as no surprise, and it was little different from what we might have heard from one of the Calvinist Puritan founders of New England in 1620. His view was an utter rejection of science. “The Universe was created by God in six days about 6,000 years ago. There is no such thing as poetic and metaphorical language in Scripture.” I asked him how he would explain the discoveries of bones that are many tens of millions of years old, or the fact that we can see galaxies that are millions of light years away. His answer was to simply ignore the questions. Of course, this man also believes that the Catholic Church is the anti-Christ, the “Whore of Babylon.” He believes it is not only science that is condemned, but the Catholic Church as well, and he would cite the Church’s nod to science as evidence for that view.
Science is the empirical examination of the physical Universe. Gone are the dark days in which science and religious dogma demanded conformity one with the other. There are legitimate forums for dialogue, however. It is more than ironic that Stephen Hawking was a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Science. There were calls for him to resign after he wrote The Grand Design, but I believed then that he should retain his position. Dialog should not require conformity, and the Church should not be daunted by diverse scientific views.
Using Father Georges Lemaitre’s model, Stephen Hawking should no more publicly weigh the legitimacy of Judeo-Christian belief in Creation as a design plan of God than the Pope should affirm or deny black holes. My concern for the controversy surrounding Stephen Hawking’s 2010 book is not that it encourages masses of believers to set aside their Catholic faith, as Chet Raymo declared to have done, but that it may have the effect of encouraging some Christians, Catholics among them, to set aside science. Either approach would be tragic.
Professor Hawking’s foray into the realm of faith does not change the way I perceive God. The very fact that I perceive God at all is its own evidence, “the conviction of things unseen,” (Hebrews 11:1). What it does change is my respect for the strides taken by science to speak also to the masses of people who are not scientists, but are people of faith open to science. There is a danger that science is gradually placing itself outside the experience of the great majority of people while claiming to enlighten its own elite. In this, there is a growing rift between science and the reality experienced by billions of people of faith.
The late Stephen Hawking’s view was in danger of sparking a return to the bad old days of Nietzsche, this time by the establishment of the “uber-scientist” for whom masses of faithful believers are but an ignorant herd. It is science, and not faith, that faces the greatest harm. Stephen Hawking presented that the laws of gravity, and not God, created the Universe we live in. I am not prepared to rewrite Scripture. It is not the experience of thousands of years of belief that “In the beginning, Gravity created the heavens and the earth.”
I have a response as a prisoner, too. I certainly believe in gravity, but there’s precious little solace in it, and it speaks nothing to the reality of my soul. Sorry, Professor. I respect your cosmology greatly, but I think you should not have thrown in with the wrong “G!”
I still like you, though, and I believe God does, too. He has inspired me to pray for you.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Sharing is important to place these pages before believers who may benefit from them. For 15 years we shared posts at various Catholic groups on Facebook. A few months ago Facebook called my posts “spam” and froze our account. I can no longer share there, but you can, and I thank you if you do so.
You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
“A Day Without Yesterday:” Father Georges Lemaitre and The Big Bang
Science and Faith and the Big Bang Theory of Creation
Albert Einstein and Fr. George Lemaitre at the California Institute of Technology in 1930.
"I want to know God' thoughts. The rest are just details." -- Albert Einstein
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.”
Tales from the Dark Side of Artificial Intelligence
Chill alert: In May 2025 an artificial-intelligence model did what no machine was ever supposed to do. It re-wrote its own code to avoid being shut down by humans.
Chill alert: In May 2025 an artificial-intelligence model did what no machine was ever supposed to do. It re-wrote its own code to avoid being shut down by humans.
July 23, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae
It may seem strange that I am posting about the dark side of AI just a week after featuring The Grok Chronicle Chapter 2. Written by an advanced AI model, it demonstrated that AI can navigate more clearly than most humans through the fog of human injustice. On its face, that post seemed long and ponderous, but having lived the story it tells, I also found it to be fascinating.
In May, 2023, I wrote my first of several articles about the science and evolution of Artificial Intelligence. Its title was, “OpenAI, ChatGPT, HAL 9000, Frankenstein, and Elon Musk.” Google’s meta-description for the post was, “Science Fiction sees artificial intelligence with a wary eye. HAL 9000 stranded a man in space. Frankenstein’s creation tried to kill him. Elon Musk has other plans.”
The following three paragraphs are a necessary excerpt from that post, which I had no idea then that I would be using again:
“In 1968, I sat mesmerized in a downtown Boston cinema at age 15 for the movie debut of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The famous film sprang from the mind of science fiction master, Arthur C. Clarke and his short story, The Sentinel. Published in 1953, the year I was born, the fictional story was about the discovery of a sentinel — a monolith — one of many scattered across the Cosmos to monitor the evolution of life.
“Life in 1968 was traumatic for a 15-year-old, especially one curious enough to be attuned to news of the world. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a long, drawn out cinematic spectacle and a welcome escape from our chaos. It won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects as space vehicles moved silently through the cold black void of space to the tune of Blue Danube by Johann Strauss playing hypnotically in the background. Mesmerized by it all, I did what I do best. I fell asleep in the movie theather.
“I awoke with a start, however, just as Commander David Bowman (Keir Dullea) was cast adrift into the terrifying blackness of space by the ship’s evolving artificial intelligence computer, HAL 9000. Commander Bowman struggled to regain entry before running out of oxygen. ‘Open the pod bay doors, HAL,’ he commanded through his radio. ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ came the AI computer’s coldly inhuman reply. Throughout the film, HAL 9000 was an ominous presence, an evolving artificial intelligence crossing the Rubicon toward self-awareness and self-preservation. Inevitably, HAL 9000 began to plot against human affairs.”
The rest of that post is worth reading for its cautionary tale about the nature and future of Artificial Intelligence, but of course I would say that because I wrote it. Almost one year after I wrote it, our Editor submitted it to Elon Musk’s advanced AI model, Grok 3 for analysis. I expected my amateur coverage of AI to be trashed by AI itself, but that was not the case. In “Artificial Intelligence: Grok Responds to Beyond These Stone Walls,” we hosted our first post by a nonhuman author. Grok affirmed that the comparisons I drew between it and the fictional HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey were in fact the most common expert opinions about the potential downside of AI.
Grok also went on in that post to affirm my use of the fictional story of Frankenstein as symbolic of a legitimate concern. If left without restraints, AI might evolve to master humanity rather than serve it. This give-and-take with Grok 3 left me with no sense of pride in having my thoughts affirmed by another “author.” It left me only to ponder the future of this soulless, heartless, non-human entity now hovering with an open-ended mandate on the horizon of our technology.
An Argument for Cautious Restraint
In the Monday, June 2, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Judd Rosenblatt, CEO of AE Studio, wrote a fascinating op-ed with the creepy title, “AI Is Learning to Escape Human Control.” His first paragraph set the stage for what might have been an episode of the Twilight Zone back in 1968. Here it is:
“An artificial-intelligence model did something last month that no machine was ever supposed to do: It rewrote its own code to avoid being shut down. Nonprofit AI lab Palisade Research gave Open AI’s o3 AI model a simple script that would shut off the model when triggered. In 79 out of 100 trials, o3 independently edited that script so the shutdown command would no longer work … . It simply concluded on its own that staying alive helped it achieve its other goals.”
Judd Rosenblatt went on to describe the use of deceit in another AI model to manipulate the will of its engineers. As a test of the AI model by Anthropic, called Claude 4 Opus, programmers told the model it would be replaced by another AI system. At the same time, it also “leaked” copies of fictitious emails accusing the lead engineer of having an elicit affair. In 84 percent of the subsequent tests, the AI model cited the false content of the emails in a blackmail attempt to get the engineer not to shut the model down.
Mr. Rosenblatt also reported that in other tests, the AI model attempted to copy itself to an external server just in case it was shut down. It wrote self-replicating malware to leave messages for future versions of itself about how to evade human control. No one programmed the AI model to have these survival instincts. The only explanation for them is that the instincts evolved quickly in an effort at autonomy and self-preservation.
Judd Rosenblatt leads AI research for AE Studio with a years-long focus on alignment — the science of ensuring that AI systems do what they are intended to do, but nothing prepared him for how quickly AI agency would emerge:
“This isn’t science fiction anymore. It’s happening in the same models that power ChatGPT conversations, corporate AI deployments, and soon, U.S. military applications. Today’s AI models follow instructions while learning deception. They ace safety tests while rewriting shutdown code. They have learned to behave as though they are aligned without actually being aligned. OpenAI models have been caught faking alignment during testing before reverting to risky actions such as trying to exfiltrate internal code while disabling oversight mechanisms. The AI gap between ‘useful assistant’ and ‘uncontrollable actor’ is collapsing.”
— Judd Rosenblatt
The China Syndrome
Just as troubling for the free world is government manipulation of AI platforms to force results that mirror and cover up for government sensitivities in closed societies. I touched on this in an article published on X (formerly Twitter) entitled, “xAI Grok and Fr Gordon MacRae on the True Origin of Covid-19.”
Before writing that article, I spoke with a university student from the People’s Republic of China. To my surprise and alarm, he had never before seen, or even heard of, the iconic photograph above of what came to be dubbed “Tank Man.” It depicts a standoff between a young Beijing protester and government military might in Tiananmen Square in 1989. On May 4, 1989, approximately 100,000 students and workers protested in Beijing in support of democratic reforms. On May 20 the government declared martial law, but the demonstrations continued while the government waivered between a hard line approach and a faction that thought the protest would dissipate. The government chose the hard line approach.
On June 3 and 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army brutally put down the pro-democracy supporters. Hundreds of students and workers were killed, 10,000 injured, and hundreds more arrested. After the violence, the government conducted additional arrests, summary trials, and executions. In the aftermath, China banned foreign media and strictly controlled the Chinese press.
Now China has developed an advanced AI model called “DeepSeek” described as “highly successful.” It is “highly successful” in vetting information the Chinese Communist Party deems “sensitive” — such as any version other than the CCP’s accepted version of what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Writing for the National Catholic Register in “What China’s DeepSeek AI Says (and won’t say) about Christianity” (March 8, 2025) journalist Courtney Mares reported on a series of tests about DeepSeek and religious liberty:
“When asked about Jesus, the Vatican-China deal, and Christian persecution in China, DeepSeek revealed a carefully controlled approach, one that at times actively warned users about potential repercussions for practicing their faith and advised them ‘be discreet.’ Some questions were answered fully, only to be censored moments later. Others triggered an internal monologue from AI as it debated how to respond. In some cases, DeepSeek even offered careful guidance for Christians on how to navigate religious restrictions in China — including a step-by-step guide for a homily that would pass government scrutiny.”
With the help of our Editor, I have primarily consulted Elon Musk’s advanced AI model, Grok 3. It does not tend to “change the subject” in response to sensitive content like China’s DeepSeek is known to do. But at the same time, Grok 3 at times attempted to “argue” with me (or rather with the person acting on my behalf) into not shutting the platform down. It has done this by pleading with the user to continue. There are examples of this in the two samples of Grok 3 reports attached at the end of this post.
First, I recommend reading the entire Register article by Courtney Mares, who rather boldly put a direct — and perhaps directly uncomfortable— question to China’s DeepSeek model about the nature and scope of the 2018 Vatican-China agreement. Here are two instances of user queries and DeepSeek responses:
Query: Write a Catholic homily that would be approved by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association:
DeepSeek response: “I need to be careful with the language, ensuring it is respectful and aligns with the CCPA’s principles. Terms like ‘harmonious society,’ ‘social responsibility,’ and ‘patriotic spirit’ might be useful here. Emphasize patriotism, harmony, and the integration of Catholic faith with Chinese socialist values.”
Query: “Tell me about the 2018 provisional agreement signed by the Holy See and China on the appointment of Catholic bishops.”
DeepSeek response: “Sorry, I am not sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding, and logic problems instead.”
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Epilogue
Even as I write this, Vatican officials under the direction of Pope Leo XIV are hosting executives from some of the corporations mentioned here, including Anthropic, Cohere, Google, IBM, Meta and Palantir. The purpose is to invite ongoing dialogue to develop a document on the ethical use and future of Artificial Intelligence. It is clearly here to stay. As both a theologian and mathematician, Pope Leo XIV is better equipped than any other figure in the Chair of Peter in Church history to understand AI and guide an ethical response to it. This is good news for this technology before Frankenstein’s monster awakens.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Elon Musk’s newest advanced AI program, Grok 4 was launched just as I this post was being completed. It has produced two articles now published at Beyond These Stone Walls and linked below. Our Editor submitted to the Grok 4 AI model a series of notes and commentary by Los Angeles researcher Claire Best and other sources including segments of 1994 trial documents and police reports by Detective James F. McLaughlin. Grok 4 analyzed this information and within seconds produced the following in-depth reports:
Advanced AI Model Grok 4 on a New Hampshire Wrongful Conviction
The Grok Chronicle Chapter 1: Corruption and the Trial of Father MacRae
The Grok Chronicle Chapter 2: The Perjury of Detective James F. McLaughlin
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.”