The Pillar; Msgr Jeffrey Burrill; Blackmail of the Vatican

A story of one U.S. priest and his moral fall from grace has spun into accusations of a witch hunt and international suspicions of Chinese blackmail of the Vatican.

August 18, 2021

After just weeks ago posting “Our Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests,” I have been highly resistant to stepping into this one. In a matter of weeks, this story has grown so many tentacles that I am not even certain of where to begin. My goal is not to join the frenzy, but rather to perhaps bring a little perspective to it. So I will begin where no one else has begun.

For the last year, Msgr Jeffrey Burrill had been in the high profile and highly prestigious position of General Secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For the preceding four years he served in the position of Associate General Secretary. He has been referred to as the highest ranking member of the U.S. Catholic clergy who is not a bishop. I do not have a defense of Msgr Burrill except to say that his life and priesthood have been shredded in recent weeks. Perhaps this is even right and just, but a Church should not settle for leaving the story there. I hope and pray for an avenue of repentance and restoration.

But first, the tabloid frenzy: The story is complicated. A new Catholic media venue called The Pillar published an investigative report on July 20, 2021 that resulted in the abrupt resignation of Msgr Burrill from his position in the leadership of the USCCB. It also ignited a firestorm of debate about journalistic ethics, priestly celibacy and homosexuality, and the difference between private behavior and public crimes. To date, Msgr Burrill stands accused of no crimes, but The Pillar report alleging promiscuous homosexual behavior left his career in ruins.

The Pillar, founded just eight months ago, is staffed by former Catholic News Agency editor J. D. Flynn and former CNA reporter, Ed Condon. Using and doggedly cross-referencing easily accessible data from a homosexual “hook-up” app called Grindr, the two journalists were able to pinpoint “emitted app data signals” from Grindr to a specific device “on a near daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020” according to The Pillar report. The device belongs to Msgr Jeffrey Burrill and was allegedly used for the purpose of anonymous sexual encounters from his USCCB office and residence as well as in other cities, sometimes while handling USCCB affairs.

The journalists sought comment from Msgr Burrill and the USCCB leadership before breaking this story. A meeting was scheduled, then cancelled. Msgr Burrill resigned from his position as USCCB General Secretary on July 19, a day before the 3,000 word story was published by The Pillar under the title: “Pillar Investigates: USCCB Gen Sec Burrill Resigns After Sexual Misconduct Allegations.”

Almost immediately, apologists for the gay agenda went into action. The National Catholic Reporter (please be clear that we are not talking about the NC Register) accused The Pillar of operating on “a shaky journalistic foundation.” (Coming from NCR, I found that to be most ironic.) Jesuit Father James Martin accused The Pillar of using “immoral tactics” to “out” Msgr Burrill. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Editorial Features Editor Matthew Hennessey wrote an outstanding defense of The Pillar's journalism in “Catholic Journalists Expose a Scandal, and Liberals Scoff” (August 2, 2021). Mr. Hennessey reported,

“Vox.com described Grindr in 2018 as ‘an underground digital bathhouse’ whose purpose is to ‘help gay men solicit sex, often anonymously, online.’ At the very least most Catholics, liberal or conservative, would say this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a priest should have on his phone. Is it news? Without a doubt ... If the priest who leads the USCCB is living a life antithetical to Church teaching on matters of human sexuality, It’s a story.”

— WSJ.com, August 2, 2021

Is This Really about Human Sexuality?

Complicating this story further, Msgr Jeffrey Burrill is a priest of the Diocese of Lacrosse, Wisconsin whose Ordinary, Bishop William P. Callahan, recently suspended the priestly faculties of another high profile priest, Father James Altman for the stated reason of being “divisive and ineffective.”

The criticism of Jesuit Father James Martin, that The Pillar journalists used “immoral tactics” to “out” Msgr Burrill, is curious at best. It is true that they went after this story with an unexplained laser focus and determination, but their methods were not at all unique in the digital age. Father Martin’s use of the term “out” leaves the impression that he protests exposing Msgr Burrill’s sexual orientation. Father Martin has invested a lot of energy and ink to present and lobby for same-sex unions to be perceived as both normative and acceptable in and outside of the Church.

His rhetoric on this only further harms Msgr Burrill, however. Grindr bills itself as “the largest social network for gay, bisexual, transgender and ‘queer’ people” for the singular purpose of locating and exploiting opportunities for anonymous sexual encounters, often between complete strangers. There is not even the remotest opportunity for relationship, mutuality, love, or companionship in such encounters. This is not a reflection of human sexuality. It is about narcissistic exploitation of oneself and other human beings. It is about sexual compulsion.

If all that has been suggested about Msgr Jeffrey Burrill’s use of the Grindr app is true, he does not need Father Martin’s affirmation or defense, nor does he need our revulsion or contempt. He needs our help. The great tragedy of all this is that the person most in place to help him — his own bishop — is rendered unable or unwilling to do so because of the tabloid frenzy of the media and the bishops’ collective fear of it.

When the story of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick first surfaced in the arena of public contempt, I wrote a controversial post entitled, “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.” It explained my own vicarious experience of the world and influence of Cardinal McCarrick in the seminary I attended in the 1970s. Its central point cautioned against a witch hunt to root out from the priesthood the existence of same-sex attraction because those who experience it are just as capable of living celibate lives committed to Christ as any other priest or religious. The real impediment to Holy Orders, that post suggests, is not same-sex attraction but rather narcissistic personality disorder, a condition that defies treatment and objectifies others, but is far more detectable in screening a candidate for priesthood or religious life.

I have known many priests who have struggled with same-sex attraction who are exemplary priests. I strongly believe that there is a direct correlation between the health of their lives as men and as priests and their ability to resist narcissism by leading selfless lives. The compulsion for anonymous sexual encounters and the objectification of others exploited by sites like Grindr have a lot more to do with the plague of narcissism than anything resembling human sexuality.

I have also known priests, though in a far smaller number, who gradually descended into the darkness of sexual narcissism and the world of anonymous “hook-ups” that Grindr exploits. Some of these men were sent to a residential treatment center for priests where I served as Director of Admissions. Many were helped, but only to the extent that they could do the hard work of exposing and understanding their narcissistic personalities and commit themselves to selfless and transparent lives and a priesthood centered on Christ.

In nearly every case, their long, slow descent into darkness was known to other priests who did nothing and said nothing to stop or challenge them. In the case of Cardinal McCarrick, it is a fact that many bishops knew of his behavior, but today lie about this. Today he is dismissed, scapegoated and ostracized, but his sins were not just his own. It will merely compound this tragedy, and the Church’s shame, if Msgr Jeffrey Burrill now is left with only one option: to disappear into the night.

Was the Holy See a Victim of Blackmail?

A side story has developed over use of the Grindr app that has led some to draw a possible connection with the Vatican’s troubling agreement with the Chinese Communist Party over the selection of bishops for the state-controlled church. The evidence is enticing, but entirely circumstantial. This aspect of the Grindr app story was first exposed in a Breitbart News article by Thomas Williams, Ph.D. entitled, “‘Extensive’ Gay Hookup App Usage Compromises Vatican Security,” (July 28, 2021). The article draws on the previous article in The Pillar to explore a possible exposure to blackmail for use of the app within Vatican walls.

The Pillar revealed that at least sixteen different mobile devices emitted signals from Grindr within areas of Vatican City not generally open to the public. That’s sixteen cellphones over four days within an eight-month period between March and October 2018. To date, the owners of those phones are unknown. With this information, and a lot of conjecture, some Vatican watchers now suggest that the 2018 Concordat, the contents of which to date remain private, may have been a result of blackmail over use of the app within the Vatican. From my perspective, this is possibly a huge leap of the imagination.

According to the Breitbart article, a Chinese entity was the original owner of the Grindr app. It is surmised that the CCP could have accessed the same data investigated by The Pillar. I have written more than once questioning the secret agreement of 2018 between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party. The Holy See appears to have conceded to allowing the CCP to select candidates for bishop in the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association which was first established by the late Chairman Mao Zedong. I wrote of this just weeks ago in “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”

Added to the circumstantial evidence is a June 2019 change in the Vatican’s longstanding China policy which previously forbade priests from joining that association. After the ban was lifted, Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen went on record to say that the lifting of that ban was even more destructive than the 2018 agreement itself.

Added to the above evidence has been the relative silence of the Holy See about Chinese atrocities toward the Uyghur people in the XinJiang Autonomous Region, and the increased persecution of priests and other Catholics who remain in the “underground” Church that is loyal to Rome even if Rome is not loyal to them. All of this is indeed cause for grave concern.

However, none of it is evidence of blackmail. Our friend and Canon Law adviser, Father Stuart MacDonald, sees this evidence as being similar in tone and substance to that used by bishops to expel accused priests in cases with no hard evidence. It all seems “credible,” but only in the sense that it “might” be true. It is, however, no measure of justice when it is the only evidence.

Earlier this month, I posted an important addition to our Library category, “Our Patron Saints.” The post is “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.” In 1937, Pope Pius XI published a courageous document entitled, in German, “Mit Brennender Sorge” (With Deep Anxiety). It was a bold confrontation with the Nazi regime over the forced deportation of Jews from Europe. In retaliation, many people were imprisoned. Some were put to death. Among them was Edith Stein, a woman who was born a Jew, became a Catholic, a celebrated university doctor of philosophy, and a Carmelite nun. She was dragged in full Carmelite habit from her convent in Holland, stuffed onto a cattle train, and transported to Auschwitz where she was immediately put to death.

When Pope Pius XII ascended the Chair of Peter shortly thereafter, he was, in a sense, blackmailed by this and other atrocities into silence about Hitler and the Third Reich. Speaking out would have jeopardized many lives, and many underground efforts at diplomacy to save people who were imperiled. To conclude today without evidence that the Pope is silenced by someone holding over his head a story of someone in the Vatican calling a gay hookup app is shameful in comparison. That part of the story might better belong in Soap Opera Digest.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this important post. Please also visit our Subscribe Page and Special Events. You may also like these relevant posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

The McCarrick Report & the Silence of the Sacrificial Lambs

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz

Photo courtesy of CNS/L'Osservatore Romano

From Hong Kong to America Freedom Is under Siege

Is America ready to surrender free speech and other civil rights? A daring escape from Hong Kong and its encroaching Communist Chinese regime should raise alarms.

Just a few weeks before America shuddered in abhorrence over a post-election mob raid at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, something remarkable unfolded in Hong Kong. Two young Danes — Thomas Rohden, age 25, and Anders Storgaard, age 26 — choreographed a young democracy activist’s escape from Hong Kong. It’s a story worthy of a John le Carré novel. The story was first written in The Wall Street Journal as “A Hong Kong Dissident’s Daring Escape” (Jan. 13, 2021) by Editorial Page writer Jillian Kay Melchior, and it’s fascinating.

The two young Danes, in opposite political parties, belong to a group called the Danish China Critical Society. Its purpose is to raise awareness among Danish citizens about human rights abuses in Communist China. After meeting with some Hong Kong pro-democracy activists in Copenhagen last year, they remained in contact with Mr. Ted Rui, age 38, a Hong Kong legislator who has openly dared to protest legislation that threatens free expression for Hong Kong citizens.

Last summer, China imposed a new law on Hong Kong citizens that outlaws any form of dissent. Mr. Hui’s protests resulted in an arrest for which he was out on bail awaiting prosecution. He had begun to notice that he and some of his family were being followed since the arrest. Other members of the Hong Kong freedom movement have been assaulted. Though Mr. Rui had not yet been charged under China’s new dissent law, he knew that its penalty is life in prison.

A little history: Hong Kong island and the Kowloon Peninsula were ceded by China to become a British dependency in 1841 and 1860 respectively. Over the next 150 years, Hong Kong became a global financial center and one of the world’s largest trading ports.

An agreement signed by the British and Chinese governments in 1984 provided for China to resume sovereignty over Kong Kong and the region in 1997. The agreement was that Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region with its laws guaranteeing its citizens rights for a period of fifty years. The “One State - Two Systems” agreement remained in place until Beijing began to crack down on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in recent years. The massive pro-democracy protests were sparked by a bill introduced in the Hong Kong legislature giving Beijing arrest and extradition authority in Hong Kong.

After Ted Hui was released on bail, Thomas Rohden and Anders Storgaard concocted a bold plan to host a fake climate change conference in Copenhagen and invite Mr. Hui in an effort to get him and his family to safety. Fearing that his telephone might be monitored, they never told him that the planned conference was not real when they invited him. He had already been considering finding a way to go into exile when the invitation came.

Postponing the exile plan, he told the Danes that Hong Kong courts wanted to review the climate change conference before Mr. Hui could accept the invitation to Copenhagen. The Danes put something together in haste while Mr. Hui booked flights for his wife and two children to go to London. Ted Hui arrived in Copenhagen ready to address climate change without ever even suspecting that the conference was a ruse. He was relieved beyond words that he and his family had escaped Chinese communist tyranny.

Beijing and Hong Kong were not amused. Beijing has asserted that its anti-dissent laws also apply to citizens of other countries who conspire to free Chinese residents. Rohden and Storgaard now must avoid travel to or through any country that has an extradition agreement with Beijing. The most important part of this story is Ted Hui’s reaction to his freedom:

“The message I want to take for the Danish people is not to take freedom for granted. Freedom is very fragile. It can go away in months or weeks. The hand of tyranny can extend very quickly, and can influence the world.”

— Ted Hui

The Rise of Socialism

The United States has just witnessed firsthand the need for a warning like Ted Hui’s, formerly of Hong Kong, that “freedom is very fragile.” Exactly as he has warned, “it can go away in months or weeks.” In the month since the mob attack at the U.S. Capitol, forces in this nation have shamed Americans using progressive ideology and the “cancel culture” pandemic to accept without dissent the open suppression of three foundational civil liberties guaranteed in the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and religious freedom.

After years of denials by Facebook and Twitter that the platforms suppress conservative points of view, that suppression is now in the open and inflicted without apology. As information technology, these venues have also suppressed freedom of the press. Here is the example that comes most readily to mind: In October, 2020, the New York Post, this nation’s fourth largest daily newspaper, covered on its Front Page a potentially explosive story that has since emerged as both factual and with hard evidence and witnesses that back it up. That story was about the business practices of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son.

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, blocked the story from exposure through social media. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did so as well. The rest of the mainstream media, taking their marching orders from Twitter and Facebook, suppressed the story as fraudulent. It was not. The obvious reason for the suppression was the fact that the story emerged a month before an election, but it had little to do with the election. The business practice that was exposed in the story was an allegation that Hunter Biden had received millions in profit from foreign entities through “influence peddling” by selling access to his father during the administration of President Obama.

It was and is an ugly story involving three of the most politically contentious foreign enterprises now faced by President Biden’s administration: China, Russia, and the Ukraine.

My purpose in writing of this is not to denigrate the current president, nor is it to determine truth and falsehood. That is for the Justice Department to do. It turns out that the FBI has been investigating Hunter Biden for many months, and that investigation now includes allegations of multi-million dollar deals within China while his father was vice president. That said, Hunter Biden deserves, and should have, the full spectrum of due process rights afforded to him, but the suppression of news coverage is not one of those rights.

The arrogance of some in the mainstream media being what it is, admissions of culpability are as rare as the unnuanced truth. The story remains suppressed by most of the mainstream news media, but that is changing as the DOJ investigation can no longer be ignored or covered up. Under public pressure, Facebook and Twitter have finally stopped removing the story or suspending the accounts of those sharing it. U.S. foreign policy has been critical of the Chinese Communist government for its suppression of news, but I have been hard pressed to see the difference.

That is the real harm caused by media suppression of this story. Repressive regimes that balk at America’s claim of having a free press all know of it. The mob that attacked Washington all knew of it, and it lent fuel to their insistence that the election was not a free and fair election. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Adam Schiff both knew about it even as they dismissed it as “Russian disinformation.”

The greatest harm has been to President Biden himself. This story will not go away. The fact of its pre-election suppression will cause it to expand and fester. It will haunt his term in office for the next year as he is drawn further into it. Freedom of the press has been abdicated in favor of a deeply partisan bias about the news we should be allowed to see and hear. The institution in our society that should act as a bipartisan government oversight for and by the people has openly betrayed that role. Freedom itself will suffer for it. So will we all.

The Assault on Freedom of Speech

The mob that assaulted the Capitol on January 6 — purportedly Trump supporters all — inflicted far more damage on Donald Trump and his presidency than any of his political enemies could accomplish. This mob attack at the heart of democracy was not an example of freedom of expression, but it is one of the core rights of our democracy —freedom of speech — that now suffers for it. And, again, so will we all.

Back in 2016, I wrote a pre-election post entitled, “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.” That seems almost a reserved and innocent time when compared with the unfathomable chasm between left and right that the four years hence have wrought. I had no frame of reference then for just how relatively fair Mrs. Clinton was being when she relegated a mere half of Trump voters to “a basket of deplorables.” There is now a highly charged and partisan effort to lump all 74 million Trump voters into that basket, keep them there, and silence them.

Blacklists are now emerging among publishers. Simon & Schuster just cancelled a forthcoming book by Senator Josh Hawley entitled, “The Tyranny of Big Tech.” Remember Mike Lindell? He’s the contagiously happy guy who sells pillows and “Dream Sheets” on TV. Exposed now as a Trump campaign donor, several large U.S. retail outlets have ordered his products pulled from their shelves. I could fill pages with similar examples of political suppression.

It is a credit to Hillary Clinton that she only called half of Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” in 2016. The other half, she said with candid honesty, “are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them; nobody worries about what happens to their lives and futures ... Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

President Biden should call upon Democrats to end this blood lust for Republicans who cannot in conscience embrace cancel culture, identity politics, and a partisan disregard for the most inherent civil right of all, the right to life. Our newly elected president did not get off to a good start when he called for unity and healing with the insistence that “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue.” It seems clearly to me right now to be rather the other way around.

Catholics Still in the Basket of Deplorables

There have been some unfortunate — scandalous is a better word — examples of the suppression of free speech even among Catholic leaders since the mob scene of January 6. A reader sent me a very troubling article from America magazine by Father James Martin, SJ entitled, “How Catholic Leaders Helped Give Rise to Violence at the U.S. Capitol” (Jan. 12, 2021).

The article is little more than a shameful attempt to use the events of January 6 to score political points against the author’s perceived theological and ideological enemies. I found it to be profoundly sad. Father Martin singled out Father James Altman, Father Ed Meeks, Father John Zuhlsdorf, Father Richard Heilman, Father Kevin Cusick, Bishop Richard Stika, Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, among others, to be examples of “priests and bishops who count themselves as pro-life (but) helped spawn a hate-filled environment that led to mayhem, violence and, ultimately, death.”

These names, and others like them, are the heroes of traditional Catholics and the Catholic pro-life community. They are deeply respected for speaking openly and with fidelity to Church teaching about the Holocaust of our time, the infanticide of 60 million aborted Americans who have no free speech rights of their own. By denigrating and accusing them so duplicitously, Father Martin scored some ideological points, but only within his own tribe — far left Catholics who would likely be far more comfortable in the U.S. Episcopal church. Frankly, no one else would even be reading America.

In his unfortunate America article, Father James Martin contributes to the atmosphere of tribalism that has so separated Americans in recent years. And clearly, he separates Catholics along the same sad partisan lines.

President Joe Biden’s greatest challenge may not be the conversion of Republicans to more progressive ideologies. It may well be the conversion of the progressive left to the tolerance and unity he rightly calls for. Trump is gone. The Democrats control the House and the White House and have the deciding tie-breaker vote in the Senate. But Portland, Seattle, and other-Democrat controlled cities are still rioting, as they did all last summer. CNN blamed it all on Donald Trump then, and is still calling these “peaceful protests.”

Portland, Oregon police reported that the “peaceful protesters came armed with pepper-ball guns, tasers and other electronic crowd control weapons, fireworks, rocks, and shields.” Some were armed with molotov cocktails, knives, batons, chemical spray, and crowbars. In Seattle, the January 20 “peaceful protesters” burned American flags and caused damage to an ICE headquarters. In Portland they carried signs reading, “We don’t want Biden. We want revenge!" They identified themselves as anarchists and antifa protesters responding to racism, fascism, and police brutality.

They also attacked the Democratic headquarters. Police made multiple arrests at the “peaceful protests.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like a related post that is mentioned in the text above:

Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables

And for an example of media duplicity and coverup:

Hitler's Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times.

Please share this post!

A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers

A global pandemic, a world in chaos, divisive politics, sheepish shepherds, misguiding lights, Catholic confusion. Even in a year from hell, there was hope.

I offered Midnight Mass in my prison cell this Christmas. It was for the intentions of our readers beyond these stone walls. I much appreciate your presence here at this new site, and I hope you will subscribe. It makes things a lot easier for me.

The First Reading at Midnight Mass this year was from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was both familiar and comforting: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone” (Isaiah 9:2). Without a doubt it seemed as though Isaiah had walked through this year with me. He went on to bring some perspective to the present darkness: “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed ... For a child is born to us, a son is given us. Upon his shoulder dominion rests” (Isaiah 9:4,6).

I thought the Prophet had really nailed my experience of dwelling in the land of gloom that was 2020. Of course, if you have been a regular reader, then you know that I cannot let a cool word like “gloom” pass by without a little digging. It’s a fascinating word with origins both obscure and mysterious. It first came into use in English around the Twelfth Century in the period that we now call Middle English. Unlike about half the vocabulary of that era, gloom has no Latin root, however.

My digging took me to a much older term, “the gloaming,” which arose from Anglo-Saxon tribes in the Fifth Century in the period we call Olde English. The gloaming referred to the dark of night just before the dawn when the first glow of twilight could be seen on the eastern horizon. We in the 21st Century cannot fathom the darkness of the Fifth. The gloaming was a time of both dark and the promise of light. The words, “gloom” and “glow” both arose from it even though they are functionally opposites.

That Midnight Mass excerpt from the Prophet Isaiah was packed with hidden meaning. “Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shown.” The word “dwelt” (or dwelled) also comes from an Olde English term, “dwellan,” which originally meant “to be misled.” How and when it came to refer to a place in which you live is uncertain. It could thus be fair to reinterpret Isaiah’s Christmas prophecy in light of that original meaning: “Upon those misled in the land of gloom, a light has shown.”

Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo and the Bishop of the Diocese of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas J. Lucia

Misled by Earthly Powers

It is likely, however, that many or even most of you never got to hear that Midnight Mass proclamation from Isaiah because many civil authorities placed severe limits on the practice of your faith in 2020. The contradictions were staggering, but never explained. The coronavirus was extremely contagious in Catholic and other Christian churches, but only minimally during anti-police urban riots this year. Liquor stores (which in my State are all owned by the State) were deemed essential, along with abortion clinics, casinos, etc. Churches were deemed nonessential and saddled with draconian limits.

I believe that many have been misled in the current darkness of 2020, and fear has drawn some of us away from the light. The governors of New York and California, for example, imposed limits on Catholic Masses and other congregations that made no sense. In New York, a church that can accommodate 1,000 people was forced to limit Mass participation to ten, or 25 if the church was in a less infectious zone. Most of the news media has been complicit in furthering such propaganda. The pastor on one small Evangelical congregation began his Sunday service with strip club music while he loosened his tie and threw it into the pews. He explained that strip clubs are open in his state while churches were ordered closed.

I was encouraged recently when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an edict from New York Governor Cuomo declaring his limits on church attendance to be an unconstitutional infringement on the free exercise of religion as defined in the First Amendment. The Governor dismissed the SCOTUS ruling as “irrelevant and political.”

But then a bigger bomb dropped. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Bishop of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas Lucia, reinstated the very restrictions that the Court said the Governor could not impose. So Masses in churches that could hold 1,000 remained limited to 25. As in many areas, government imposed registration is also required. Even when some civil authorities did not demand this, some bishops imposed it anyway. This memo from the bishop of a large archdiocese was sent to his priests:

“Contact Tracing: Especially during the Christmas season, it is mandatory that each parish maintain a list of all persons attending services in the church including their contact information (i.e. phone number). Such lists shall be placed with parish financial records and maintained for a period of not less than six years.”

It is troubling, at best, that some bishops would confuse the care of souls with the exercise of their own Earthly powers as sheepish deputies of civil authority. I am by no means the first to recognize this troubling trend. I felt a glow of hope when Matthew Hennessey, the Deputy Editorial Features Editor for The Wall Street Journal, addressed this head-on in this OpEd, "No More Bishop Nice Guy" (December 9, 2020):

“We are told that lives have been saved by keeping churches half empty. Do we know how many souls have been lost? As a Catholic raising five children in the faith, I’m particularly concerned wit the future of my church ... It’s inspiring to see ordinary people stand up to bullies like (Governors) Cuomo an Newsom. But what are America’s bishops doing to inspire their flocks? What will they do? We are tired of watching our leaders kneel before junior varsity Caesars ... Show some backbone. Open the churches. Get rid of the sign-up sheets. No more roped off pews. No more 25% capacity ... Be the heroes we need you to be. The alternative is subservience. The alternative is empty pews forever. The pandemic generation may never return.”

— Matthew Hennessey

AMEN!

With prophetic witness early in the pandemic, Father James Altman courageously preached his now famous homily, “Memo to the Bishops of the World.” It came as Catholic Masses across the nation were shutting down and, for many, the Eucharist became inaccessible. It alarmed Father Altman, just as it alarms me, that many of the shutdown orders came, not from governors, but from our bishops. I wrote of this in what I think is the most urgent post of 2020, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.”

From Fr. James Altman, “Memo to the Bishops of the World: The Faithful do not need you to look after their bodies. They need you to follow the supreme law of the Church and look after their souls.”

A Year of Pandemic in Prison

I just realized that I began this post with a description of my Christmas Eve Mass this year. Dorothy Rabinowitz did the same in a series in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Trials of Father MacRae.” Here is her first paragraph from seven years ago:

“Last Christmas Eve, his 19th behind bars, Catholic priest Gordon MacRae offered Mass in his cell at the New Hampshire state penitentiary. A quarter-ounce of unfermented wine and the host had been provided for the occasion, celebrated with the priest’s cellmate in attendance.”

— Dorothy Rabinowitz, "The Trials of Father MacRae," WSJ

The “cellmate in attendance” then was, of course, Pornchai Moontri. This year is the first time in 15 years that he has not been here with me at Christmas. It is during Mass that his absence is most deeply felt. It is a wound upon my heart that, despite all our valiant efforts, Pornchai remains in ICE detention soon to begin a fifth month beyond his sentence, which had been fully served. It is not too late to join me and Catholic League President Bill Donohue in our petition to the White House to “Help Pornchai Moontri.”

I know I am working backward in my description of the year spent in pandemic mode behind prison walls, but the last four months since Pornchai was taken away have been too busy to grieve.

Besides, I do not want to grieve. I want to rejoice, but I have had to postpone it until he arrives safely in Bangkok. You know from reading these pages all that happened to Pornchai in life. You also know that in the fifteen years in which we lived in the same prison cell, Saint Maximilian Kolbe insinuated himself into our lives in profound and mysterious ways. Together, with the help of Mary, Undoer of Knots, St. Maximilian and I set course to reverse the damage life had inflicted upon my friend who wrote of our lives here in “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”

By the time Pornchai wrote those parting words to us, he and I had been through many trials together. Some have been recounted in these pages, but many others were not. One of them was our ordeal early in 2020 during which — we now both believe — we both contracted Covid 19.

It was late in January 2020. Everyone around us here had come down with a flu virus that moved among us like a wildfire. I went to work every day — even when I contracted it myself — because there seemed no cause to fear any contagion. Everyone with whom I had contact already had it. For some it seemed just a head cold. For others it was a more serious flu. For me and several others, it was devastating. I was fatigued to the point of collapse, chronically short of breath, and had frequent troubling episodes of cardiac arrhythmias — all what we later learned to be classic symptoms of Covid-19. I had this for all of February and well into March.

Pornchai also had it, but for only three weeks and not as severe. We just toughed it out, rested as much as we could, and looked after some others even worse off. By March, I had to seek medical intervention. I have a lifelong autoimmune disorder called sarcoidosis. It develops painful but otherwise benign tumors on the lymphnodes. The Covid — presumably Covid anyway — caused my immune system to go into overdrive. So I spent several weeks on prednizone to quiet the immune system. I was miserable, and I hope my posts at the time didn’t show it.

Pornchai and I both fully recovered, but I would not want to repeat the experience. To date, 231 prisoners here and 81 staff have tested positive with symptoms. Most went into quarantine, which in prison is quarantine from quarantine and it’s miserable. As the first and biggest wave traveled through the country, it had dire consequences for prisoners and equally so for you in the real world. For a time, my Sunday Mass in my cell was the only Mass offered in the entire state.

Beyond These Stone Walls

In the midst of all this misery, just as Covid was again rampaging, just as Pornchai was leaving, while separation loomed and life in prison became solitary for me, and filled with gloom, someone chose that moment to attack These Stone Walls and bring it down. There were some weeks of unclarity as we pondered what to do. It was also just as the elections in America were elevating to a state of frenzy.

At the end of October this year, we had serious decisions to make. I told Pornchai by telephone in ICE detention that These Stone Walls had come to an end. “It can’t end!” he said forcefully. He asked me, “What would Maximilian do?”

A proposal had been floated by a friend who announced that she had an inkling from some unknown grace to copy all the content from These Stone Walls and preserve it. I had no idea that she had done this. Then she proposed starting anew with a new name and blog format. Connecting with Father George David Byers and me, she chooses to remain in the background while rebuilding this Voice from the Wilderness. I have not yet seen it, but then again, I never saw These Stone Walls either.

Beyond TSW is a work in progress now, and is slowly being built. One feature of this new site format that I especially like is our “BTSW Library.” Instead of just chronologically listing posts by date, the Library displays them in multiple categories such as “Father Gordon MacRae Case,” “Mysteries of History,” “Science & Faith,” etc. like a real library’s card catalog where posts are sorted by subject. We have only a few categories up right now as the site is being rebuilt, but we expect to have at least twenty five. Our volunteer webmaster said that I “have written on so many topics that we could fill a library.” I think that is a polite way of saying that I have never had an unpublished thought!

Pornchai Moontri was thrilled and encouraged when I told him that he will have a category of his own. There was a time when he could not imagine a life beyond these stone walls. Now he cannot imagine life without it.

We have a new “ABOUT” page too, and bigger print! I still have a few things to write about so I hope you will stay, subscribe, and continue to walk in this land of gloom with us. Thank you for being here with us in this year of trials. You have been the glow that we see from beyond at twilight.

May the Lord Bless you and keep you in this New Year.

Father G.

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Editor's Note: Please share this post with others. You may also like to visit the related posts mentioned in this one:

The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass

The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ

Help Pornchai Moontri by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind

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The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass

As President Trump called upon governors to classify churches as essential, a Catholic Bishop in a state among the least impacted by Covid-19 suspended public Mass.

I have to write about this now because I wrote about it then. During the now notorious presidential election of 2016, I wrote “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.” If you missed it then, you probably should not miss it now. I and many others naively lent credence to all the media hype about Russian collusion back then — now proven to be entirely false and an egregious injustice to General Michael Flynn. The above post actually commended the Russian hackers for providing transparency often promised but rarely delivered by American politicians.

That post was about revelations found in the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, about the Democratic Party’s plans for the Catholic Church in America. I wrote the post just after Mrs. Clinton’s now infamous debate declaration: “Supporters of Donald Trump are a Basket of Deplorables.” I was not one of Donald Trump’s supporters, but I knew that Hillary lost the election then and there. Attacking candidates is just politics as usual. Attacking voters is political suicide.

The post above cited several examples of emails between the Clinton campaign and various Catholic entities with overtures to move the Church from a pro-life agenda toward a more left-leaning script for Catholic social progress. Climate change and open borders are to be the moral imperatives of the day.

I had more or less forgotten about the now famous Basket of Deplorables until the current election raised it anew — though not in so many words. Three years after the term was first
uttered, many in the news media still apply it by inference to everything and everyone in any way connected to the current American President.

Now thrust upon his growing heap of media scorn is a call from the President to America’s governors to give churches and other houses of worship the same treatment some of them have bestowed upon liquor stores, abortion clinics, and beauty salons. This President wants churches to be deemed “essential.” He at first threatened to “override” any governor who balks at this, a notion that the news media has gone to great lengths to ridicule. In a hastily scheduled White House Press Conference, Trump said:

“I call upon the governors to allow our churches or places of worship to open. If they don’t do it, I will override the governors. The ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders will make sure their congregations are safe as they gather and pray.”

On May 22, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control supplemented the President’s request by laying out a series of guidelines for houses of worship to safely provide services. These include the usual recommendations for social distancing, cleaning practices, and face coverings all of which churches could easily observe.

The Real Presence and the Present Absence

But what do we do when it is Catholic bishops, and not politicians, closing church doors to faithful Catholics? As the American President deemed churches to be essential and called to reopen them, the Catholic Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire, one of the states least impacted by the contagion, issued his formal “Decree Establishing Liturgical Norms During Covid-19 Pandemic”:

“Mindful that the dignity of the human person requires the pursuit of the common good (CCC 1926) and as Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester understanding my responsibility to issue liturgical norms by which all are bound (Canon 838:4), I hereby decree [that] the public celebration of Mass remains suspended… until such time as I deem it prudent to modify [this decree].”

There are a multitude of reasons why the ongoing suspension of Catholic Mass in this of all states is an unintended assault upon the religious needs of the people. In a surprising juxtaposition of roles, as some bishops closed churches and barred the faithful from Mass, the Centers for Disease Control issued a statement that should give pause to secular and spiritual leaders alike: “Millions of Americans embrace worship as an essential part of life.”

I would have expected such a sentiment from our bishops, not from a government entity established to control contagion. Sadly, however, that truth professed by the CDC applies less to New Hampshire than any other state. According to the Pew Research Center, New Hampshire is ranked 50th out of the fifty states for religious identity, observance, and influence. It also ranks 50th out of the fifty states in charitable giving.

In publishing his recent Decree, the Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, NH, Bishop Peter A. Libasci, stated that as of May 18, 2020, over 3,600 New Hampshire citizens [out of a population of over 1.3 million] have tested positive for Covid-19, and 172 of our neighbors have lost their lives.” This is true, and at this writing the death toll in New Hampshire stands at about 250. Tragically, all but 65 of them were residents of nursing homes, the most vulnerable among us but they would not have been present at Mass anyway. These figures pale next to how Covid-19 has impacted some other states where governors and bishops are reopening churches while applying the norms for safety recommended by the CDC.

But there is another New Hampshire statistic that should be far more alarming to both the Governor and the Bishop. Among the fifty states, New Hampshire has the nation’s highest and most hopeless rate of death among working age young adults between the ages of 16 and 40. This is driven by another, far more deadly contagion: opiate addiction and all the physical, mental and spiritual hopelessness it entails. I wrote about this Grim Reaper in “America’s Opioid Epidemic Is Wreaking Havoc in this Prison.”

That post described a wall of sorrows in one unit in this prison containing the photos of young men who have lost their lives to addiction after leaving prison. The 37 photos on that wall of death included only those who lived in this one unit of 288 prisoners. And just as I sat down to type this post, a 38th photo was added. One of our good friends just tragically ended up on that wall.

Jerry came to prison at age 19 in 2005. In recent years, he attended Sunday Mass with Pornchai Moontri and me. Before the Covid-19 shut down he was able to come and talk to me in the prison Law Library where I work. On Friday, May 15, 2020 he was released from prison having completed his sentence at age 33. He lived in freedom for only a single day before losing his life to a fentanyl overdose. This is a painfully familiar story here as young prisoners face the reality that life in freedom sometimes means bringing the bondage of addiction home with them.

Bishop Libasci’s Decree cited his justification for keeping the churches closed: “172 of our neighbors have lost their lives” to Covid-19 statewide. This pales next to the grim truth of those in his Diocese who lost their lives in hopeless addiction. The New Hampshire Chief Medical Examiner reports that 2,500 young lives were lost to opioid drug overdoses in this small state since 2015.

Most of these deaths were those of young men and women from 16 to 40 years of age. One small New Hampshire city recently saw over 400 drug overdose deaths in a single year. There is likely no other state more in need of the spiritual strength and solace of open churches and the Sacrifice of the Mass than New Hampshire.

Trusting Faithful Catholics

One commenter on this subject in a Facebook discussion (which I could not see because I have never seen Facebook) commended Bishop Libasci and other bishops for helping to keep people safe by closing churches. I could only think of a statement of Saint Paul in his letter to the Corinthians:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

— 1 Cor. 13:11

The point should be obvious. When I was seven, I needed the help of adults to take care of myself. At sixty-seven that is simply no longer so. The Centers for Disease Control issued guidelines for what we adults must do to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe in public environments, including at Mass.

This is a point for which conservatives and Libertarians refer to the Left as purveyors of Big Government and “The Nanny State.” And it’s a point for which George Orwell cautioned us all in his dystopian 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. We surrender our freedoms when we hand the interpretation of them over to “Big Brother.” Remember the cautionary words of the late President Ronald Reagan:

“The most dangerous words in the English language are, ‘Hello, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

America is vigilant about concessions to totalitarian governments but too many turn a blind eye to how our political, social, economic, intellectual, and spiritual narratives are dominated in our media by the extreme left of our cultural elite. For someone to make the decision for us by denying Mass to the faithful when they should be entrusted with caring for themselves is insulting, at best.

When that decision leaves faithful Catholics in spiritual deprivation, they are placed at even greater risk by traveling long distances to seek out Mass in a more reasonable Diocese. This point was made by some readers of a recent post of mine. One comment that stands out is this one by “Judith” posted on “Pandemic Lockdown: Before the Walls Close In.”

“Here in the trenches, we recently received a communiqué from the Minister of Compliance in the Department of the State-Sanctioned Religious Observance informing us of the new rules regarding worship. If the Church / State requires masks, reception of Communion after Mass, and taking down our names and contact information in order to attend Mass, I will be assisting at the SSPX Mass an hour-and-forty-minutes away [which happens to be in Bishop Libasci’s diocese]. I know for a fact they don’t put up with this… God forbid you exercise your free will by choosing to risk your life to follow the precepts of the Church.”

Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal and one of the most honorable members of Congress, wrote a March 19, 2020 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Why Does Reopening Polarize Us?” He raises an interesting twist of political psychology. Liberal and conservative brain functioning shows differences in their mapping when risk-taking is considered.

But it is now the conservatives who “are the ones ready to confront risk head-on.” He says this is also consistent with his experience in the military, and may explain why the vast majority of Special Forces operatives identify as political and social conservatives. But he cautions that liberals lagging behind in re-opening society may have another agenda, treating the lockdowns and consequent economic devastation as an opportunity to restructure America into a socialist utopia.”

In the National Catholic Register, Thomas M. Farr, President of the Religious Freedom Institute, has a recent column entitled, “Coronavirus and Religious Freedom.” He cites that the line drawn between “essential and nonessential” businesses and services by government decree is highly suspect. He singled out Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, former pediatrician, and notorious proponent of late-term abortion, as declaring that religious services are not essential,” but abortion clinics and liquor stores are.

Thomas Farr also adds that for Catholics, access to the Sacrifice of the Mass is “essential to our happiness in this life and the next.” I can only repeat what Father James Altman so courageously declared in a recent, now viral, homily entitled, “Memo to the Bishops of the World”:

“The faithful do not need you to look after their bodies. They need you to follow the Supreme Law of the Church and look after their souls.”

Effective June 6, 2020, Bishop Libasci modified his Decree to allow public Masses to resume in his diocese with strict conditions and limitations in addition to those recommended by the CDC.

Elsewhere, on the topic of faithful priests with courage, Father George David Byers had a memorable quote in a recent post, “Coronavirus ‘Creativity’ for Mass: ‘Just do it in the Parking Lot.’ No. And… Hell no!”

“I’m not going to be a Parking Lot Priest just to look up-to-date. No! … Hell no!”

But I am giving the last word to Saint Paul’s Second letter to Timothy:

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort; be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itchy ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

— 2 Tim 4:1-5

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You may also wish to read and share these memorable related posts:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester

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Priesthood, The Signs of the Times and The Sins of the Times

There is a difference between the signs of the times and the sins of the times. It is required that priests are vigilant of the former but resistant of the latter.

Just days before sitting down to write this post, I was bestowed with the honor of membership in The Catholic Writers Guild. One of my first thoughts as I plugged in my typewriter today is that this might be the post that gets me kicked out. We are in one of the strangest times in the life of the Church and in the ministry of bishops and priests that we have seen in many centuries.

There have been times almost as strange, but the difference is that you were kept from knowing about them.

My priesthood ordination took place on June 5, 1982 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Hudson, New Hampshire. It did not start off well. There was another candidate for ordination that year, but he fled just days before. Someone then scrambled to revise and reprint the program for the Mass of Ordination. It was presided over by The Most Reverend Odore Gendron, Bishop of Manchester. That was four bishops ago.

Like most Catholic priests in America, I was ordained on a Saturday afternoon. Unlike most, I was ordained alone. Such a thing became a more prevalent phenomenon, however, as the signs of the times began to reflect the sins of the times. In the 1970s and 1980s, fewer men found the courage for such a counter-cultural commitment as the Catholic priesthood, a response I wrote of in a Pentecost Post, “Inherit the Wind: Pentecost and the Breath of God.”

That post described the story behind the story of the gathering of the Apostles at Pentecost. The Acts of the Apostles (1:13) reports that the Eleven — Judas had come to ruin — came to Jerusalem in the company of Mary, Mother of the Resurrected Jesus, to mark the Pilgrimage Feast of Weeks fifty days after the spring celebration described in the Book of Leviticus (23:15-16). Among the Greek-speaking Jews of the New Testament, it came to be called Pentecost for “fiftieth day.”

Pentecost became a Christian feast when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles in Jerusalem in the form of a mighty wind and tongues of fire. Then almost immediately, the newborn Church saw its first scandal as Peter rose to defend the Apostles against a false accusation that they were all drunk at 9:00 in the morning (Acts 2:15). I took a part of my title, “Inherit the Wind,” for that Pentecost post from a cryptic passage in the Book of Proverbs (11:29): “Those who trouble their household will inherit the wind, and the fool will become a servant to the wise.”

Seminary studies throughout the 1970s and priesthood ordination in 1982 were both such counter-cultural endeavors that I troubled my household greatly when I became a priest. The Proverb came true. Ever since that day, I have been a fool by the standards of this world, and a servant to the wise. Whether I have inherited the wind that so moved the Apostles to evangelize even in the face of martyrdom remains to be seen. I am still here writing.

Though my ordination was 38 years ago, I remember every moment as though it were yesterday. As I lay alone and prostrate on the floor before the altar, the Litany of the Saints was intoned. I had a fleeting thought that my sister, from a pew just 12 feet away, was mentally urging me, “Get up, you fool! Flee!” Later when I asked her about it she confirmed it. “Yes, that was me.”

Thirty-one years later in 2013 Dorothy Rabinowitz was writing “The Trials of Father MacRae,” her third in a series for The Wall Street Journal. She interviewed my sister who spoke candidly with a comment that never made its way into the articles. “The Catholic Church took my brother,” my sister said, “And now look what they have done to him.”

I have written of this in past Ordination Day posts, but many people have since asked me The Big Question. If I knew then what I know now, would I have joined John, the man who was to be ordained with me, in flight from this fate? I answer the question in one of the links at the end.

The Signs of the Times

Back in 2012, Anne Hendershott penned a research study for The Catholic World Report entitled, “Called by Name.” There were some interesting statistics analyzed in the study. In 2010 in the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, a region that is 79-percent Catholic, there were no priesthood ordinations.

In the same year in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, a region that is only 17-percent Catholic, there were seven ordinations to the priesthood. In Portland, Oregon, the population of which is only 16-percent Catholic, there were nine ordinations in 2010. Researchers suggested that areas with large Latino populations may have fewer candidates for priesthood.

That turned out to be untrue. In the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas in 2010 there were seven priesthood ordinations and most were Latino. But across the nation in 2010, the number of priesthood ordinations and their ratio to the Catholic population varied greatly. Something less obvious was driving this.

In 1996, then Omaha, Nebraska Archbishop Elden Curtis penned an article entitled “Crisis in Vocations? What Crisis?” He theorized with some compelling data to back it up, that the attitudes and strength of fidelity in Church leadership is the number one causal factor in reduced numbers of viable candidates for priesthood. Archbishop Curtis wrote:

“When dioceses and religious communities are unambiguous about the ordained priesthood and vowed religious life as the Church defines these calls; when there is strong support for vocations, and a minimum of dissent about the male celibate priesthood and religious life; when there is loyalty to the Magisterium; when the bishops, priests, religious and lay people are united in vocation ministry — then there are documented increases in vocations. Young people do not want to commit themselves to dioceses or communities that permit or simply ignore dissent from Church doctrine”

— Archbishop Elden Curtis

In her article for The Catholic World Report cited above, Anne Hendershott analyzed a study by Andrew Yuengert, a Pepperdine University sociologist, who tried to quantify the observations of Archbishop Curtis about the connection between priesthood vocations and the attitudes and fidelity of Church leaders. He discovered some fascinating corollaries.

Andrew Yuengert found that dioceses with bishops ordained in the 1970s had significantly lower numbers of priesthood vocations than those with bishops ordained before or later. He found that corollary to be most prominent in the ordination statistics of bishops who were characterized as orthodox or progressive. Of interest, he discovered that bishops who regularly published articles in America magazine — considered to be more liberal — fostered fewer vocations than bishops who were more likely to publish articles in The Catholic Answer, considered to be more orthodox.

There was another interesting corollary in the Yuengert study. You may remember the great controversy at the University of Notre Dame in 2009 when then President Barack Obama was invited to give the Commencement Address and was bestowed with an honorary degree.

At the time, eighty-three U.S. bishops signed a formal statement disapproving of the University administration’s decision to bestow an honorary degree on the openly pro-abortion President Obama who worked to expand access to abortion throughout the U.S. and the world. Yuengert discovered in this another unexpected corollary: Many of the 83 bishops who signed that statement led dioceses with the highest percentages of priesthood ordinations in the country.

The Sins of the Times

I have heard many horror stories from priests ordained in the 1970s and 1980s that the seminaries they were sent to were anything but loyal to the Magisterium and supportive of priestly vocations. I have a horror story of my own that I wrote about a decade ago. It is worth repeating because it was typical of the sins of the times in the 1970s and 1980s, the era in which the decline of priesthood was set in motion.

I had requested to go to St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, MA, but was sent instead to Baltimore. This story took place in the fall of 1979 in my second year of theological studies at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore. St. Mary’s was at the time considered to be the most academically challenging and most theologically liberal of U.S. seminaries. It was called “The Harvard of seminaries,” but it also had a reputation for fostering — even demanding — dissent.

There were about 160 seminarians from some 40 U.S. dioceses studying for priesthood at St. Mary’s then. It had a capacity for more than twice that number, a reality that created an atmosphere of competition among national seminaries (as opposed to local seminaries like St. John’s in Boston). Though St. Mary’s has undergone a complete revision of its direction since then, in the 1970s and 1980s it was known as a birthplace of theological dissent among priests.

The atmosphere reflected that. Seminarians never wore any form of clerical attire, and would have been laughed out the door if they did. The beautiful main chapel was used for Mass only once per week — on Wednesday nights where a weekly seminary-wide liturgy took place, often hosting clown masses, experimental music (“Dust in the Wind” by Kansas was once the Communion hymn).

There were many liturgical abuses, and any refutation earned the commenter a notation of “theologically rigid” in his file. Other weekday masses were held in small groups in faculty quarters. On Sundays, seminarians were on their own, encouraged to attend Mass at one of several Baltimore parishes. Some rarely ever attended Mass at all.

In 1979, a rift of sorts formed between the seminary rector and those planning for a U.S. visit by Pope John Paul II at the end of the first year of his pontificate. In October, 1979, Pope John Paul II spent six eventful days in the United States, visiting Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Iowa, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

One of the highlights of the visit was Pope John Paul’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on October 2, 1979. He stressed the theme of human rights and the dignity of the person, deploring violations of religious freedoms. However, most of the 67 addresses given by the pope during his visit were directed to Catholics and stressed their responsibilities as believing members of the Church.

The messages were conservative in tone and contained unqualified condemnations of abortion, artificial birth control, homosexual practice, and premarital and extramarital sex. The pope reminded priests of the permanency of their ordination vows and also ruled out the possibility of ordination for women, bringing protests from a number of Catholic feminists.

Little of Pope John Paul’s vision for the Church in the modern world was received with any enthusiasm by the administration and faculty of St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. It was in the weeks before this momentous visit that all hell broke loose at St. Mary’s. The seminary rector, now deceased, was a priest of my diocese and a member of the Order of St. Sulpice — aka The Sulpicians — which ran the nation’s oldest seminary since its founding some 200 years earlier.

Just weeks before Pope John Paul’s planned visit, it was somehow learned that all seminarians from several major seminaries in the region were invited by the Holy Father to take part in a Mass for seminarians on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Upwards of a thousand seminarians were to have special seating with an expected crowd of 100,000.

Seminarians at St. Mary’s, however, were never told of the invitation, nor were we told that the Seminary Rector had declined it on our behalf for reasons that he refused to divulge. The resultant furor was shocking; not only for the majority liberal seminarians, but for the administration and faculty who just assumed that we would disdain the theology and vision of Pope John Paul II just as much as they did. A line had been crossed that threatened to sever our identity as future priests.

A letter of protest was quickly drafted and signed by more than half of the 160 seminarians representing some forty dioceses across the land. I was one of the signatories of that letter, a fact that the Rector took very personally because we represented the same diocese. As a result, I was labeled a disobedient rebel.

A seminary-wide meeting was held, and the Rector doubled down on his rejection of the papal invitation. He warned that anyone who attempted to attend the Pope’s Mass one hour away in Washington would not receive permission to do so, and would receive failing grades for any course work assigned for that day. He also said that several crucial exams would be held that day and failing grades would be reported back to the diocese of each seminarian along with a report of disobedience to his legitimate authority.

Needless to say, we went anyway. No one has a vocation to the seminary.

The Priest Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

The graphic above is not a real book, so please don’t try to order it on Amazon. It was created by the TSW publisher in response to a post of mine that stirred an uproar when first posted in November, 2013. It was “Stay of Execution: Catholic Conscience and the Death Penalty.”

That post publicly refuted another priest who published a letter in Our Sunday Visitor calling for expanded use of the death penalty in the United States. As a prisoner-priest, I wrote in favor of mercy. But it was I, and not he, who kicked the hornet’s nest.

Back to the seminary: One factor that struck me at St. Mary’s in the 1970s was the unwillingness of some bishops to become involved in — or even aware of — the training of their future priests. Formal complaints from seminarians about the blatant disregard for Pope John Paul II by seminary administration were ignored by most of the bishops who received them.

Some of the more traditional seminarians survived only because they were academically brilliant. They became the priests who kicked the hornets’ nest merely for refusing to either bend in their fidelity or be driven out as candidates for priesthood.

In the years since my ordination, I have heard many stories from priests whose priestly spirits were wounded in a kind of spiritual abuse that characterized their seminary years. Perhaps some will comment here.

But the last word on this goes to Father James Altman, whose recorded homily has mesmerized those Catholics who still value religious freedom, the hardest won of our freedoms, and the most fragile under any hint of a totalitarian regime. Father Altman has kicked the hornet’s nest, too, in a prophetic and much-needed plea to our bishops who have allowed Caesar to rule in the place of Christ. Here is Father James Altman whose brilliant and moving homily has moved many Catholics with the authority of truth. Don’t miss this “Memo to the Bishops of the World.”

“The faithful do not need you to look after their bodies. They need you to follow the Supreme Law of the Church and look after their souls.”

— Father James Altman

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