“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
Four Hundred Years Since That First Thanksgiving: 1621-2021
In 1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the Mayflower Pilgrims to celebrate a first of many harvests in America.
In 1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the Mayflower Pilgrims to celebrate a first of many harvests in America.
November 24, 2021
Just as I sat down to type this post, I watched the American President pardon two turkeys. The ritual is never the high point of my year. I don’t know about you, but I cannot recall a spirit of Thanksgiving ever being a bigger challenge than it is now in 2021, 400 years after the first. It was well into November this year before I even became conscious that this is the 400th anniversary of that first Thanksgiving. I have seen very little reference to it in the news. It seems to have a lot of competition for headlines right now.
After two years in a global pandemic, with the tides of political unrest bearing down on us, a spirit of Thanksgiving in 2021 is not easy to find. Our politics bitterly divide us. Our faith is mired in scandal. Even worse, it is mired in open capitulation to some of the “woke” politics of our time. Freedom itself seems to stand at a precipice. Half the world is seriously disappointed in the power struggles that always emerge in a leadership vacuum.
I know families who have had to establish strict rules of discourse before they can sit at the same Thanksgiving table this year. Trump, Biden, Congress, the Border, Afghanistan, vaccine mandates, and multi-trillion dollar government spending plans are all off the table. For some, even Pope Francis, the TLM, Biden’s Catholicism, and Catholic Communion are on the list of forbidden table topics. “Go stuff that turkey,” could take on a never previously intended alternate meaning this year.
This is my 28th Thanksgiving holiday in wrongful imprisonment. Over the course of the last 16 of those years, Pornchai Moontri and I and a few of our friends here formed a sort of family bond and spirit on-the-inside. Pornchai and I were the co-anchors of that small group. Now he is half a world away, and the others have moved on to other places. As Andy Dufresne’s friend, Red, said in The Shawshank Redemption, “The place where I live seems that much more drab and empty by his absence.”
For the 1,250 men living behind these prison walls, Thanksgiving is the least anticipated holiday. Some years ago, the New Hampshire State employees gave up Columbus Day in exchange for having the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — as a day off. That typically means that every activity that might get us out of our cells over a 5-day stretch is unavailable. This holiday means five days of meaningless confinement. Prison evokes anything but thanksgiving.
Woe is me! I should take my cue from the famous Gallo Brothers who once vowed never to serve any whine before its time.
A Harvest of Grace
If you are not seriously depressed yet, there is still very much for which I give thanks. Like everything in life, the meaning of Thanksgiving is more what I bring to it than what I find there. I could turn my gratitude list into a litany that might go on for pages, so I will write of just the highlights.
I am thankful to Father George David Byers for writing in my stead with candid honesty over the last two weeks. The comments by Father James Valladares and Dorothy Stein — writers both — on “A Code of Silence in the U.S. Catholic Church” gave voice to everything I could possibly say. I fret about the topics he wrote about, and I could not have written those posts myself. I never want to be an instrument of division in the Church, but as Father George wrote, “The Truth has its own life and must not be buried with anyone.”
I am thankful — profoundly thankful — that my priesthood has not fallen prey to what Ryan MacDonald recently called “the accuse crisis in the Church.” So many priests have been thrown out of the priesthood merely for being accused. The truly innocent often cannot prove their innocence while the truly guilty are given no chance to repent. As Ryan has written, it all seems far more Calvinist than Catholic.
I am thankful — very thankful — for the many priests who have stood by the truth, sometimes at a cost to themselves. Our Canon Law advisor, Father Stuart MacDonald comes to mind. So does Cardinal George Pell. They are deeply good priests and shepherds who have survived the cauldron of the “accuse crisis” to become even greater stewards in the vineyard of Christ Crucified.
I am thankful — very thankful — for my freedom to write. On almost a daily basis I receive letters and messages from people around the world telling me that something I wrote in the darkness of prison has somehow brought light into their existence. They should not thank me, for I thank only God.
I am thankful — profoundly thankful — for the opportunity to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass each week late on Sunday nights in my prison cell. I have read of Cardinal George Pell’s prison deprivation from the Eucharist. My plight could be so much worse.
A Harvest in Thailand
I am thankful — very thankful — for having led my friend, Pornchai Moontri, from the darkest of human darkness into the light of Divine Mercy. But it was a task that was far beyond me. I was only an instrument in it, and for that I am profoundly thankful. I hope you have seen the outcome of that wonderful grace in my recent post, “Pornchai Moontri, Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand.”
We received the image above just a few days ago. When Pornchai traveled to obtain his official Thai ID in Phu Wiang (pronounced Poo-vee-ANG), the village of his birth in the far northeast of Thailand, he decided to stay for a month to try to repair his mother’s half-built house and once again honor her tomb at the Buddhist temple nearby.
Before returning to Bangkok with Father John Le, Pornchai stayed to help his family harvest his Aunt’s rice crop. This harvest is his elderly Aunt’s sole income for the year. Pornchai took the photo above and sent it to me. The people in the photo are his cousins and several of their friends who team up each harvest season to bring in the year's rice crop. It is hard work in the high heat and humidity, but it is a labor of love and family commitment.
In so many ways, Pornchai Moontri’s life and odyssey mirror that of “Squanto,” who became a captive member of the Native American Wampanoag tribe of what is now Massachusetts. Squanto proved to be an invaluable friend to the pilgrim settlers leading up to their first harvest Thanksgiving in 1621. He is the real star in our tale of Thanksgiving. You may see the same parallels I see between the odyssey of Squanto and that of Pornchai.
Early in Squanto’s life he was captured, transported against his will to a far country, and sold into slavery in Spain. He was rescued by a Catholic priest and was returned, by a long circuitous route, to his home with his entire life transformed. Squanto became the sole reason for the survival of the Mayflower pilgrims, and acted as interpreter at the Treaty of Plymouth, signed in 1621 between Chief Massasoit and Governor William Bradford.
That story has become a Thanksgiving tradition for many readers Beyond These Stone Walls. If you have never read it, you must. If you have read it before, visit it anew and share it with others. I do not usually boast of any post of mine, but there is much within it about suffering and Divine Providence that gives me pause. The story evokes — even in prison — a prayer of heartfelt Thanksgiving. Make our harvest tradition your own with ...
The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Something wonderful has emerged from this blog’s connection with Thailand that I hope to share with you here next week as an Advent post. It will present an invitation that I hope many will accept. Changing the world begins with us in just one small corner of it.
Thank you for reading and sharing this post and these related posts from my typewriter:
The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope
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.
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.”
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
A Sex Abuse Cover-up in Boston Haunts the White House
With The Boston Globe Spotlight focused only on Catholic priests, sex abuse by a top Boston police union official was covered up all the way to the 2021 White House.
When The Boston Globe Spotlight focused only on Catholic priests, sex abuse by a top Boston police union official was covered up all the way to the 2021 White House.
Our Canadian guest writer, Father Stuart MacDonald, posted a thoughtful comment on my recent post, “Cardinal Sins in the Summer of Media Madness.” He pointed out a sobering fact. Former police officer Derek Chauvin, who now stands convicted in the murder of George Floyd, was sentenced to exactly one-third of the sentence I am serving for crimes that never took place. Father Stuart’s insightful comment was followed by one from another frequent guest writer, Ryan A. MacDonald, no relation to Father Stuart.
Their comments are very much worth a return visit to that post. The tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin in sight of three other officers launched a movement across America to defunct police. It also led to all of the events described in the post cited above.
You might think that in my current location, a movement like #DefundPolice would find lots of sympathy and even some vocal support. The truth is just the opposite. No one understands the need for police in our society more than a prisoner. As one friend here, an African American, put it: “Knowing the truth about some of the guys around me, the last thing I want to see is them and my family living in the same place without police.”
I reflected that same sentiment, and others like it, in my own response to the #DefundPolice movement that was spawned by the death of George Floyd. It was a post written in the heat of that awful riotous summer of 2020. It was “Don’t Defund Police! Defund Unions that Cover Up Corruption.”
As that post revealed, former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin had multiple excessive force complaints in his personnel file. Thanks to the so-called “Blue Wall” and the misguided advocacy of the local public sector police union, none of the prior complaints ever became public. Had they been known, George Floyd may be alive today and Derek Chauvin may not be facing prison.
Others among my friends have advised me not to overlook the fact that Mr. Floyd was alleged to have committed a crime that day — an attempt to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. Even if true, this is not relevant. Americans do not face death over a fake $20 bill. The George Floyd story unmasked racial prejudice in the way policing is sometimes done on the streets of America. We will be a stronger and better people for the hard soul-searching and policy building needed to address this.
I write all of the above to stress that I am not in any way against police. Like my friend mentioned above, knowing some of the men with whom I now live deepens my appreciation for the many dedicated police officers who serve and protect our communities.
The account I am about to present should not be understood as just another “dirty cop” story. It is better seen as a cautionary tale of public corruption that extends beyond police to infiltrate and compromise many of the once-respected institutions on which our culture is built. The corruption you will read about here is as much that of partisan politics and the news media as it is about police. It is a Boston story. It took place in my own home town.
While the Spotlight Was on Catholic Scandal
This account is unrelated to the sordid stories of Catholic scandal in which we have been immersed for two decades, but it must begin there with a July, 2010 post, “The Exile of Fr. Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe.”
I highly recommend that post for the back story of what was happening to many Catholic priests as the age of cancel culture was just taking shape. The story might infuriate you. It should. In 2010, Father Dominic Menna was a much beloved 80-year-old Boston priest who was suddenly accused of molesting a minor 51 years earlier when he was 29 years old in 1959. Like every accused priest since The Scandal first gripped Boston and spread from there across the land, the elderly Father Menna was put out into the street.
You could not tell from reading The Boston Globe accounts of the case that none of this story took place in the present. The Globe had a subtle way of presenting every decades-old claim as though it happened in the here and now. Father Menna just disappeared into the night with no recourse to protect himself or his priesthood. There were no groups forming such as “Stand with Father James Parker” or “Stand with Canceled Priests” when the stench of injustice was in any way related to suspicions of sexual abuse.
Even some Catholic entities have thanked The Boston Globe and its pernicious Spotlight Team for doggedly pursuing the files of priests accused and for publishing every lurid detail, true or not. The Globe helped create a mantra that impacted the civil rights of all priests who, since the Bishops’ Dallas Charter of 2002, have been considered “guilty for being accused.” The trajectory lent itself in 2010 to “The Exile of Fr. Dominic Menna” with few questions asked. The details in that post are staggering for any Catholic who still cares about justice. One of the truths exposed in that post is about all that is left in darkness when a spotlight is used on a topic that requires a floodlight. It is about something that was happening off-the-radar in Boston while The Boston Globe and its Spotlight Team celebrated an Academy Award for Best Picture in the category of Public Service.
If not for the Globe’s hammering away at priests, the people of Boston might have been shocked in the summer of 2020 when Patrick Rose, a Boston police officer and former president of the Boston police union, was charged with 33 counts of molesting children. Bostonians might have been further shocked to learn that the behaviors which led to his arrest extended all the way back to 1995 and were known by officials in the Boston police, their public sector union, and others who helped to keep it all secret.
In 1995, just months after I was on trial in nearby New Hampshire, Patrick Rose was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse. He was placed on administrative leave by the Boston Police Department. The Boston Globe today reports that the charges were dropped in 1996 when the accuser recanted her account under pressure from Rose. Later in 1996, however, a Boston Police Internal Affairs investigation reported that the charge “was sustained” and relayed to supervisors.
Despite this, Patrick Rose remained on the police force. In 1997, an attorney for the police union wrote a letter to the police commissioner complaining that Rose had been kept on administrative duty for two years and demanding his full reinstatement. Rose was then reinstated. Prosecutors today allege that he went on to molest five additional child victims, including some after Rose himself became union president from 2014 to 2017.
White House Labor Secretary Marty Walsh
In the May 14, 2021 print edition of The Wall Street Journal, the Editorial Board published “A Police Union Coverup in Boston.” The WSJ reported that The Boston Globe filed requests for the Internal Affairs file on Patrick Rose. The administration of then Boston Mayor Marty Walsh denied the request citing that the record could not be released in a way that would satisfy privacy concerns.
Imagine the outcry if the late Cardinal Bernard Law said this when The Boston Globe demanded a file on any foreknowledge of sexual abuse by Father Dominic Menna. It turned out in that case that there was no such file because the 80-year-old priest had never previously been accused. The Boston Globe repeatedly dragged the Archdiocese of Boston into court in 2002 to demand public release of scores of files on Catholic priests and never rested until every detail — corroborated or not — ended up in newsprint.
It is hard to imagine today that The Globe would simply settle for the excuse Mayor Marty Walsh provided. It is hard to imagine that the “Blue Wall of Silence” was any real obstacle for The Boston Globe which, perhaps to cover for its own inaction, reported that it was “astonishing [the] lengths to which the [Boston Police] Department and the now departed Walsh administration went to keep those files under wraps.”
The file remained “under wraps” until after Senate confirmation hearings that vetted Mayor Walsh and confirmed him (68 to 29) for a Biden Administration cabinet position as Secretary of Labor in 2021. Walsh signed a contract with the Boston Police Union in 2017 while Patrick Rose was still union president. It remains unclear what Marty Walsh knew and when he knew it.
A Massachusetts state supervisor of public records refuted the Mayor’s reasoning for keeping the file secret. He called upon (then) Mayor Walsh to provide a better reason for denying the Internal Affairs file on Patrick Rose. Walsh ignored this for two months until his mayoral successor, Kim Janey, released a redacted version of the file after the Senate confirmation hearing approved Mr. Walsh as Secretary of Labor. The Wall Street Journal reported:
“Mr. Biden picked Mr. Walsh because he is a union man. He was president of a Laborers’ Union local, as well as head of the Boston Building Trades, until he ran for mayor in 2013. As mayor, he showered unions with taxpayer money, including a contract with Mr. Rose’s police union in 2017 that resulted in a pay increase of 16-percent over four years. City employees in unions donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. The Rose Coverup is relevant to Mr. Walsh’s duties at the Labor department.”
An Epilogue
Just as I was preparing to print and mail this post, someone sent me the July 2021 copy of Newsmax magazine containing an article by journalist Merisa Herman on this same story entitled, "Police Union Cover-Up Haunts Top Biden Official." [I chose my title long before seeing this]. Ms. Herman concluded:
“Rose had been given a pass from the media for what could be construed as a cover-up ... Someone in Congress might ask Mr. Walsh why Americans should believe he’ll fight union corruption when his city may have helped protect a union chief with a history of alleged predation against children.”
It is difficult to measure this story against what happened in 2010 to 80-year-old Father Dominic Menna whose life and priesthood were utterly obliterated by The Boston Globe spotlight for a half century-old claim that could never be corroborated.
It is difficult to measure this story against what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis when a history of previous excessive force complaints in a police file were kept under wraps until someone paid with his life.
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Notes from Father Gordon MacRae:
Many thousands of readers have been circulating last week’s post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul.” Thousands in Washington, Chicago, New York and Boston have read that post. If you wish to send a printed copy to your bishop or anyone else, we have created a five-page pdf version that is printable.
We have also created a pdf with the name and address of every U.S. Catholic Bishop.
Learn more about The Boston Globe’ s Spotlight coverage of the Catholic Church and the Best Picture Academy Award for the film, Spotlight. You may never watch the Oscars again after reading “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film” by a courageous journalist, Joann Wypijewski, former Editor of The Nation. (It also sheds some much needed media light on my own travesty of justice.)
Cry Freedom! Saint Paul and a Prisoner of the Apocalypse
Two prior posts from Beyond These Stone Wa11s revisit the idea1 of freedom, what it means to find it, what it costs to keep it, what it takes to give it to another.
Two prior posts from Beyond These Stone Walls revisit the ideal of freedom, what it means to find it, what it costs to keep it, what it takes to give it to another.
Some readers who are aware of my day to day life as a guest of the state have heard that I was held in a high security quarantine dormitory setting for the entire month of May and part of June in 2021. I did write briefly of this just before it happened, but it seems that what I wrote was too cryptic. I just received a letter from a reader who wanted to launch a petition over my continued heightened confinement. Please don’t show up here with picket signs. I am now liberated from my dungeon.
I was not technically in quarantine. Due to a planned construction project where I was living, I and 23 others were moved to an unused dormitory space that had been previously set up as a Covid-19 triage and quarantine area. It commenced on May 1 and was supposed to last for just ten days at which time, it was promised, we would all move back to our housing assignments.
The construction ran into obstacles, however, and the predicted ten days ultimately turned into forty. During that time, I was pretty much locked into a crowded, noisy room with 23 other disgruntled prisoners. I had no access to my typewriter while there so writing was extremely difficult. Somehow, I still managed to write three posts, but with great difficulty. One of them was for my 39th anniversary of priesthood entitled, “It Is the Duty of a Priest to Never Lose Sight of Heaven.”
I wrote that post “by fits and starts,” a term meaning “haphazardly” that has gone out of style in writing. I wrote that post only in my mind. I was still able to work, as needed but with greatly reduced hours, in the prison law library where I am the sole legal clerk. There is an old manual typewriter there, so I managed to type that post over two hours one afternoon. I mailed it just at the final deadline to have it posted on time. I hope its troubled creation was not so evident.
I could not bring myself to complain about the forty-day confinement. I was constantly aware that our friend, Pornchai Moontri, spent five full months in ICE detention awaiting deportation in a room of the same size, but housing 60 to 70 detainees at any one time. That story should become another BTSW classic post on freedom. The gripping story is told in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”
More importantly, it was also impossible for me to offer Mass during my stay in what I can only describe as “a FEMA shelter without the disaster.” I had hoped to offer Mass on June 6, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi this year and the anniversary of my First Mass on the day after my priesthood ordination on June 5, 1982. But it was not meant to be. After forty days, we were all finally liberated and returned to the place in which I have lived since July of 2017.
It is difficult for me to believe that it was four years ago this month that Pornchai and I were finally moved to that better housing. For the previous 23 years — 12 for Pornchai — we were prisoners in a building housing 504 prisoners but built for half that number. There was little to no access to the outside. It contained all the trouble and chaos that such constant confinement brings.
But we are now free from that. Even in a state of unjust imprisonment, I can thank God for the freedoms I have. I am free to write to the world beyond these stone walls which means more to me than you may know.
As I pondered Independence Day in America this year, I realized that it falls on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. This time is anything but ordinary for me and Pornchai. When I looked at the Mass readings for that day, I noted that I wrote of those same readings for Independence Day six years ago. So I want to invite you to visit that post anew. It is the story of Saint Paul and his plea to be free of his famous but cryptic “thorn in the flesh.”
The second post I want to present anew is a memorable one you also may have previously read. It is brief, but you should not miss it.
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Independence Day: St Paul and His Thorn in the Flesh
A Mass Reading from Second Corinthians on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time conveys Saint Paul’s thorny lesson about freedom and power. Our world has it all wrong.
It is not by design, but the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time falls on Independence Day in the United States in 2021. The Mass readings assigned to that day (Lectionary 101 – Year B) have an important lesson about the nature of freedom and the source of true power. The lesson’s focal point, as in every Mass, is the Gospel (Mark 6:1-6). Jesus concludes that the people in his own “native place” would not hear Him, but “only took offense at Him.” I certainly know the feeling.
These were his own people. The Gospel mentions that they knew Joseph. They knew Mary. They knew some of the Apostles, but Jesus “was amazed by their lack of faith.” He concluded famously that “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). It is having confronted that reality that the Mission of Christ Universal begins to unfold.
As I read this Gospel passage, I thought of a letter sent to me two years ago by Cardinal Raymond Burke. In it, he expressed his concern for my plight and asked for my prayers for him and for the Church. His words suggesting that I offer some of what I endure for a greater good — “pro bono Ecclesiae,” a phrase taught to us recently in Father Stuart MacDonald’s provocative post, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.”
Cardinal Burke’s request that I suffer for something greater than suffering was an honor without measure. I wrote of this in a Christmas post last year. Here is an excerpt from my post, “Silent Night and the Dawn of Redeeming Grace.”
This letter is among the best Christmas gifts I have received out here among the Church’s debris, and it came as a source of grace, a sort of awakening. What follows may be the most important sentence in this post: There is no greater service to those who suffer than to give meaning to what they suffer.
A few months after my receipt of Cardinal Burke’s letter, a bishop came to this prison to offer Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday. Our friend, Pornchai Moontri and I were among the fifty Catholic prisoners gathered in the prison chapel for Mass. You know Divine Mercy Sunday is a special day for us.
After the Mass, as we filed out, the Bishop grasped my hand and said something very strange to me. He had obviously been reading These Stone Walls. As he took my hand, he bent forward a bit and said quietly but forcefully, “You are a prophet! YOU are a prophet.” There was no further exchange.
As we descended down the long flights of stairs outside, my friend, Pornchai said, “Wow! That was weird. What do you think it means?” I responded sarcastically, “If the Church is consistent, it means my head is about to be lopped off!”
Our prophets do not fare very well. In Scripture, some were thrown into prison. The Prophet Jeremiah was stoned to death. According to legend, the Prophet Isaiah was sawed in half. The Prophet Jonah was thrown overboard. John the Baptist was beheaded. Saint Paul was shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned, and finally martyred.
As the great Saint Teresa of Avila once said to God in prayer, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder that you have so few!”
The Gospel is, of course, the centerpiece of the Liturgy of the Word, but on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time it is the Second Reading that really leaps off the page in my quest for my own Independence Day. It is Saint Paul’s famous account from the Second Letter to the Corinthians (12:7-10) about his thorn in the flesh:
“… A thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ ”
Scripture scholars — both real and imagined — have pondered for centuries to decipher what this cryptic thorn in the flesh could mean. Some have interpreted it to mean a physical ailment or disability of some sort that rendered Paul weak and challenged. His phrase, “my power is made perfect in weakness” lends itself to that theory when you consider the vast influence he has had on the growth of Christianity.
THE AGENT OF SATAN
Others have suggested that his thorn in the flesh was the manifestation of some mental illness which, in Saint Paul’s time, was often described in Jewish tradition as a manifestation of Satan or some other demonic attack. His words, “to beat me, to keep me from being too elated” suggest a sense of personal diminishment that could support a theory about some mental condition such as bouts of chronic depression or anxiety.
In more modern times, some have suggested with a straight face that the thorn in the flesh could be an allusion to some morally compromising sexual proclivity over which Paul experienced little self-control. I believe that all three of these theories are incorrect, and the third one is far more descriptive of the preoccupations of our own time than Saint Paul’s.
I have formed my own conclusions about Paul’s mysterious “thorn in the flesh,” and they come from a more panoramic understanding not just of what he wrote, but also of who he was — and is. I believe his “thorn in the flesh” is a person, someone who stood in hostile opposition to Paul and his missionary activities.
Saint Paul, formerly Saul, was a Jew born in the town of Tarsus in the Roman Province of Celicia. In his Letter to the Romans (11:1) he revealed that he was from the Tribe of Benjamin. He was also a Roman citizen which gave him certain rights and privileges. In Acts of the Apostles (22:25-29) Paul was about to be scourged by a Roman tribune. When it was learned that he was a Roman citizen by birth, the punishment was halted.
Paul was also a zealous member of the Pharisees (Acts 26:5). This meant that in Jewish circles, he was highly educated in the law and Jewish Scripture and traditions. His writing has to be seen in this context, and the phrases he used have to be weighed against the Hebrew Scriptures with which he was thoroughly familiar.
In those Scriptures, the word, “thorns” is often symbolically used to refer to enemies. The context for its use by Paul in the excerpt from Second Corinthians cited above was not that the “thorn in my flesh” was placed there by Satan, but rather is described as “an agent of Satan.” This presents an impression that this thorn is a person in hostile opposition to Paul.
As a Pharisee, Paul would have been thoroughly familiar with the Torah, the Books of Moses held to be especially sacred. The Book of Numbers, which is a re-telling of the Exodus story and the arrival of the Israelites in the Promised Land, contains an allusion with which Paul would have been very familiar:
“But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your side.”
Saint Paul’s description of this “thorn” as a “servant” or “angel” (messenger) of Satan suggests that Paul was faced with a growing personal hostility and oppression from someone within his own community. By “his own community,” I mean his Jewish community and not the community of believers in “The Way.” It was more likely someone in the Jewish community who oppressed Paul because his allusion to the thorn as depicting an enemy is a purely Old Testament Jewish symbolism.
So the only remaining mystery is not “what” the thorn in his flesh was but rather who. It was during Paul’s Second Missionary Journey commencing in 50 A.D. that he established the Church in Corinth, a city in Greece on the Isthmus of Corinth. Paul remained there for over a year, but before departing he was viciously attacked by an unnamed enemy (2 Corinthians 11:13).
The unnamed enemy may well be the thorn in Saint Paul’s flesh. Paul was a Pharisee who had previously persecuted Christians, capturing them and handing them over for stoning. He was deeply committed to the Pharisaic tradition of maintaining legal and ritual purity for the Jews. Now Paul was promoting this new faith, and not only promoting it, but actively welcoming gentiles to its ranks.
It was during his Third Missionary Journey to Macedonia that he wrote the Second Letter to the Corinthians in 53 A.D. He wrote it from Philippi in Macedonia. Then, proceeding to Corinth, he wrote his Letter to the Romans. At the time he wrote both Second Corinthians and Romans, he began to speak of his impending imprisonment and martyrdom.
Saint Paul’s allusion that “Three times I begged the Lord” about the thorn in his flesh, i.e., the hostility he encountered — likely refers to a leader in the Jewish community. Using the past tense, “begged,” infers that he has stopped begging, and has accepted the answer that came to him:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power [the power of God] is made perfect in [your] weakness.”
The power Paul encounters is manifested in his acceptance of weakness, meaning his acceptance that it is not his own gifts and talents that are driving the bus on this mission:
“I will rather boast: most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Independence Day thus dawned for the Apostle Paul.
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Left Behind: In Prison for the Apocalypse
This medium security prison has a library where I have been a prisoner-clerk for the last ten years. Its shelves are stocked with 21,000 volumes. With an average of 1,000 visits, and some 3,000 books checked out each month, the library is a literary hub intersecting virtually every facet of prison life. But there is a lot more going on than books flying off the shelves.
There are few proud moments in prison, but one of mine came in the form of a second-hand message from my friend Skooter, now free. Two months after Skooter ascended through the corrections system to finally hit the streets, another friend of his was sent back to prison for a parole violation.
That friend came to the library one day, and standing at my desk, said, “You’re the guy who broke Skooter out of prison!” The man explained that he lived near Skooter in a seedy urban rooming house while both were unemployed and barely surviving in their first few months on parole. He said that Skooter had been unable to land a job, working in temp jobs for minimum wage and at times faced with a choice between food and rent.
It is an all-too-familiar account for young men struggling to emerge not just from a prison, but from a past. Skooter came very close to giving up, the friend said, but often spoke of his “wanting very much not to disappoint you” by coming back to prison. “So he stayed the course,” said the friend, “and now he’s gotten his life together.”
I first met Skooter several years earlier, one of the scores of aimless, rootless, fatherless, uneducated young men for whom prison can become a warehouse, a place in which thousands of “Skooters” store their aimless, hopeless futures. One day as we slowly ascended the multiple flights of stairs to be checked in at the Education Floor where the prison library is located, Skooter told me with a sense of shame that, at age 24, he had never learned to read or write.
Having resisted all the concerted efforts to recruit him into any number of prison gangs that would only foster his ignorance and exploit it, Skooter became a regular fixture in the prison library. For an hour a day there, I and other prisoners worked with Skooter to teach him to read and write.
My friend, Pornchai Moontri tutored him in math, Skooter’s most feared academic nemesis. We made sure he didn’t starve, and in return, he struggled relentlessly toward earning his high school diploma in prison, a steep ascent in a place that by its very nature fosters humiliation and shuns personal empowerment.
One day, shortly before his high school graduation in May 2011, Skooter came charging into the library looking defeated. He plopped before me the previous day’s copy of USA Today, opened to a full-page ad by some self-proclaimed Prophet-of-the-End-Time announcing that the world is to end on May 21, 2011, a week before Graduation Day.
“It’s just my luck’” lamented Skooter. “I do all this work and the world’s gonna end just before I graduate.” “It’s not true,” I said calmly. “It MUST be true,” Skooter shot back. “They wouldn’t put it in the paper if it wasn’t true!” Like many prisoners, and far too many others, Skooter believed that all truth was carefully vetted before ending up in newsprint.
Apocalyptic predictions sometimes play out strangely in prison. I told Skooter that back in 1999, a prisoner I knew became convinced of dire consequences from a looming technological Armageddon called “Y2K.” ‘That prisoner deduced somehow that prison officials would release toxic gas at the turn of the millennium so he spent the night of December 31 sewing his lips and eyes shut. Skooter wanted to know how the guy managed to sew that second eyelid, a small tribute to his deductive reasoning.
I pointed out to Skooter in the USA Today ad’s smaller print that this newest End-Time prediction was actually a revision of the author’s previous one set in 1994. I strongly urged Skooter not to put off studying for final exams because of this. Skooter stayed the course.
Since then, a subsequent prison policy barred all prisoners from teaching and tutoring other prisoners, a decision that effectively eliminated all of the positive influence, and none of the negative influence, that takes place in prison, driving the former underground.
Still, that graduation was Skooter’s finest moment, and one of my own as well. It was a direct result of a prison library subculture that grants every prisoner a few hours a week out of prison into an arena of books, a world of ideas, a release of huddled neurons yearning to be free.
A week after graduation, Skooter showed up in the library with a copy of The Wall Street Journal opened to an article by science writer, Matt Ridley. The article explored evidence that the Earth’s magnetic core shifts polarity every few hundred thousand years, and pointed out with dismal foreboding that it is 780,000 years overdue. Mr. Ridley stressed that no one knows its potential impact on our global technological infrastructure.
“It’s just my luck!” lamented Skooter as he plopped the article on my desk. “Just when I was thinkin’ about college!”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please visit our “Special Events” page.
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It Is the Duty of a Priest to Never Lose Sight of Heaven
Marking 39 years of priesthood, 27 of them unjustly in prison, this priest guides readers to higher truths. For those who suffer in life, eternal life matters more.
Marking 40 years of priesthood, 28 of them unjustly in prison, this priest guides readers to a higher truth. For those suffering in life, eternal life matters more.
“When suffering is far away, we feel that we are ready for everything. Now that we have occasion to suffer, we must take advantage of it to save souls.”
I am indebted to my friend, Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, for his remarkable and timely guest post, “Bishops, Priests, and Weapons of Mass Destruction.” In it, he concluded that some of our bishops have acted in regard to their priests by caving into the cancel culture mob even before it was called that. “The mob can be a frightening place when we have lost sight of heaven,” he boldly wrote. I was struck by this important insight which lends itself to my title for this post: It is the duty of a priest to never lose sight of heaven.
In the weeks before I mark forty years of priesthood, I have heard from no less than three good priests who have been summarily removed from ministry without a defense. Like many others, they are banished into exile following 30-year-old claims for which there exists no credible evidence beyond the accusations themselves and demands for money.
This sad reality, imposed by our bishops in a panicked response to the Catholic abuse crisis, has been the backdrop of nearly half of my life as a priest. As Father Stuart mentioned in his post, I wrote of this a decade ago in regard to the demise of the celebrated public ministry of Father John Corapi at EWTN. Given the resurgence of priests falsely accused, I decided to update and republish that post on social media. It is “Goodbye, Good Priest! Fr. John Corapi’s Kafkaesque Catch-22.”
The point of it was not Father Corapi himself, but rather the matters of due process and fundamental justice and fairness that have suffered in regard to the treatment of accused priests. In republishing it, I was struck by how little has changed in this regard since I first wrote of Father Corapi a decade earlier.
My article presents no new information on the priesthood of Father Corapi, but lest our spiritual leaders think that interest in this story among Catholics has diminished, within 24 hours of publishing, that post was visited by over 6,500 readers and shared on social media 3,700 times. (Note: We now give it a permanent home in the “Catholic Priesthood” Category at the BTSW Library.)
The only priests who land in the news these days are those accused of sexual or financial wrongdoing and those who make their disobedience to Church authority in matters of faith and morals a media event. In regard to the latter, several priests and bishops in Germany have openly defied Pope Francis and his decision to bar priests from blessing same-sex unions.
Blessing the individuals involved would not be an issue, but, as Pope Francis put it, “The Church cannot bless sin.” The open defiance of this among some German priests brought them 15 minutes of fame in our cancel culture climate in recent weeks, but it does nothing to bring us any closer to heaven.
Appearing on The World Over with Raymond Arroyo recently, Catholic theologian and author, George Weigel, addressed the German situation plainly:
“These bishops think that they know more about marriage than Jesus, that they know more about worthiness for the Eucharist than Saint Paul. This is apostasy, and it is time to call it what it really is.”
The Setting for My Priesthood
In every age, people tend to see the struggles of their current time as the worst of times. My priesthood ordination took place on June 5, 1982. It was the only ordination in the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire that year. President Ronald Reagan was in the second year of his first term in office. The U.S. economy was suffering its most severe decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment was at its highest level in decades and the housing industry was on the verge of collapse.
Just over a year earlier, on May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times at close range as he entered Saint Peter’s Square to mark the 64th anniversary of the first appearance of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. John Paul was severely wounded and so was the spirit of the global Catholic Church. He recovered, though a lesser man might not have.
One year later, three weeks before my ordination, Pope John Paul made a thanksgiving visit to Fatima on May 12, 1982. It was the day before the anniversary of both the Visions of Fatima and the attempt on his life. As the Pope walked toward the altar of the Fatima shrine, a man in clerical garb lunged at him with a bayonet, coming within inches of killing John Paul before being subdued by security guards.
The assailant was Juan Fernandez y Krohn, then age 32, a priest ordained by the suspended traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Fernandez was subsequently expelled from Lefebvre's movement. As he lunged at the Pope with his bayonet, he shouted in denouncement of the Second Vatican Council while accusing Pope John Paul of collaborating with the dark forces behind the spread of Communism.
That latter accusation was highly ironic. Over the next decade, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II collaborated to become the two major forces behind the collapse of the Soviet Union and European Communism that had held the Western World in the grip of Cold War since the end of World War II.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down by a crowd of citizens from both East and West as soldiers watched in silence. On Christmas Day, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation in a television address. The next day, the Soviet parliament passed its final resolution ratifying the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Within a week, all residual functions of the Soviet Communist state ceased. The USSR was no more, thanks to the strength and fidelity of a Pope and a President.
The footprints of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul on modern human history are immense. This and the chaos of the world at that time formed the backdrop against which I became a priest in 1982. I wrote of this in “Priesthood: The Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times.”
The sins of the times were many. On the world stage, Pope John Paul courageously confronted the Marxist “cancel culture” movement of his time. His bold witness to the world and his fidelity are highlighted in a new and important book by George Weigel entitled Not Forgotten.
In contrast, much of the current Catholic ecclesial leadership seems bogged down in demonstrations of tolerance for dissent and the rise of socialism and Marxist ideology that again springs up anew as “cancel culture.” Some bishops cannot even decide whether open promotion of abortion should bar its adherents who are nominally Catholic from presenting themselves for the Eucharist.
Ironically, recent polls have suggested that 66-percent of American Catholics are uncertain whether they still even believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is that exact same percentage who also believe that President Biden should be admitted to the Eucharist without question despite his open promotion of abortion as a civil right. Our Catholic crisis is not just one of fidelity. It is a crisis of identity. But as has been famously asked by another well-known priest, “Who am I to judge?”
Witnessed in a Prison Journal
Now here I stand, 39 years into my priesthood on the peripheries with 27 of those years in wrongful imprisonment for abuse claims that never took place. I could have left prison 26 years ago had the truth meant nothing to me. I have been reading the far better known story of another falsely accused priest in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell published by Ignatius Press.
I find in it much solace and peace. I am strengthened in my priesthood by the great effort of Cardinal Pell to maintain his identity as a priest even in prison. I know from long experience - too long - that there is nothing in prison, absolutely nothing that sustains an identity of priesthood. It is so easy and a constant temptation to simply give up. For page after page in the Journal, I find myself thinking, “I felt that very same way,” or “I did these very same things.” Our prisons were similar, although from Cardinal Pell descriptions, Australia’s prisons seem a bit more humane.
Cardinal Pell was in prison for 400 days before his unjust convictions were recognized as such in a unanimous exoneration by Australia’s High Court. On my 39th anniversary of ordination on June 5th this year, I mark 9,750 days in wrongful imprisonment. I do not point this out to contrast my experience with that of Cardinal Pell. His ordeal, like mine, was defined by his first failed appeals after which he had every reason to believe that prison could thus define the rest of his life.
I have no known recourse because, unlike Australia, the United States courts have given greater weight to states’ rights to finality in criminal cases than to innocent defendants’ rights to a case review. When I had new witnesses and evidence, the court not only declined to hear it, but declined to allow any further appeals. We even appealed that, but to no avail.
But a distinction between justice for Cardinal Pell and for me is not the point I want to make. I felt the lacerations to his good name in every step of his Way of the Cross as news media in Australia and globally exploited the charges against him. What a trophy his wrongful conviction was for those who hate the Church!
I felt the scourging he endured as multiple false claimants tried to use his cross for financial gain. I felt his condemnation in the halls of the high priests as cowardly men of the Church denounced him, at worst, or at best stood speechless in the shadows of silence, rarely mentioning his name, and even then only in whispers.
Reading Volume One of Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal has been both consoling and distressing. Consoling in that when all else was stripped away, truth and priesthood, even more than freedom, were still at the heart of this good priest’s identity. The measure of a man is not when all is going well, but when all that is dear and familiar has been stripped away. Cardinal Pell held up well. I like to think I have, too.
I have reserved a copy of Volume Two of the Prison Journal. I am told by those who know that in a few of its pages, Cardinal Pell also wrote about me. That struck me as highly ironic in that I wrote several times about his plight, the last being “From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell.”
And by “From Down Under,” I do not just mean Australia!
The Last Years of My Priesthood
I expect that I will die in prison. This is not a statement out of despair. No one has taken my faith in Divine Providence and Divine Mercy. There came a time in my imprisonment when I recognized a pattern of grace that began with the insinuation of Saint Maximilian Kolbe into my life as both a priest and a prisoner. This grace has been profound, and staggering in its visibility and power. Our readers — all but the most spiritually blind — have seen it.
After a lifetime of devoting himself as a priest in Consecration to Jesus through Mary, Maximilian coped with his suffering as grace rather than torment. This story culminated, as you know, in his spontaneous decision to surrender his life so that another could live. This act of sacrifice has long been heralded as an exemplar of the words of Jesus, “No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
There came a point in my imprisonment when it was clear that all I tried to do to bring about justice was in vain. So I asked for Divine Mercy and the ability to find grace in this story. A life without grace is far worse than a life without justice. It was at that very point at which my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, arrived upon my road as a priest. He had been mercilessly beaten down in life, and robbed of all trust and hope.
I could have been the priest who saw him on that road and passed him by like the priest in the Parable of the Samaritan. But I stopped, and when I learned the whole truth of his life, I set my own hope for justice aside. It became clear to me that this was God’s action in my life and a task that He has given only to me. It became clear that Pornchai has a special connection to Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and I was to be his Saint Joseph.
I wrote a post about this healing mission which I contrasted with the Book of Tobit and the mission of Saint Raphael the Archangel to be God’s instrument of healing. I wrote of this in one of my own favorite posts at Beyond These Stone Walls in “Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri.”
You should not miss that post, and if you do read it, you would do well to ponder for awhile the mysteries of grace on your own life’s path. It was well after writing and posting it that I learned something that stunned me into a better awareness of the irony of grace.
Over the course of time, the Church has devised a Lectionary that reveals all of Sacred Scripture in the readings for the Church’s liturgy spread over a three-year cycle. I discovered only while writing this post for the occasion of my 39th anniversary of priesthood ordination that the First Reading at Mass on that day — Saturday, June 5, 2021 — is the story of the Archangel Raphael sent by God to restore life and sight to Tobit and bring deliverance and healing to two souls — Tobias and Sarah — whose lives and sufferings converged upon Tobit’s at that point in time.
As I mark thirty nine years as a priest in extraordinary circumstances, the weight of imprisonment does not leave me broken. But the irony of grace leaves me hopeful — even now.
Thank you for being a part of my life as a priest. Thank you for being here with me at this turning of the tide.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: We have a most important message for readers. Please visit our “Special Events” page.
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You may also like these related posts:
From Down Under, the Exoneration of Cardinal George Pell
Priesthood, The Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times
The Once and Future Catholic Church
The Book of Daniel and the Gospel of Mark warn of a great tribulation to come. Its early signs are already upon us and require invoking the Patron Saint of Justice.
The Book of Daniel and the Gospel of Mark warn of a great tribulation to come. Its early signs are already upon us and require invoking the Patron Saint of Justice.
A strange case has been simmering in the courts of the European Union for several years, and it came to an even stranger close at the end of October 2018. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld a 2011 Austrian court verdict against a seminar presenter, a woman, for “disparaging religious doctrines.” In a 2009 seminar sponsored by the conservative Freedom Party in Austria, the woman recounted an event in the life of Muhammad ibn Abd Allah whose 7th Century proclamations of the Qur’an gave birth to Islam. The event is well documented.
In 620 AD, at the age of 56, soon after the death of his first wife, Muhammad married a young girl named A’isha. At the time they met, A’isha was six years old. When she was nine years old Muhammad married her. Muhammad described A’isha as “very attractive and of a lively mind.” Many of the revelations resulting in the Qur’an occurred while he was in her company.
One day, when she was left behind during one of Muhammad’s expeditions, she returned to the group accompanied by a young man. This set off a monstrous scandal that threw the girl’s marital fidelity into doubt. Muhammad then dictated what he described as a divine revelation that assured him of her innocence. This story is recounted in the Qur’an (24:11-20).
In 2009, in an Austrian seminar entitled “Basic Information about Islam,” the seminar presenter described the story of the marriage of Muhammad and A’isha, concluding, “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old?… What do we call it if not pedophilia?” In 2011, the Austrian court convicted the woman, imposing a fine for statements that constitute “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam.”
The woman appealed the verdict to the European Court of Human Rights. In later 2018, the verdict was unanimously upheld by an ECHR panel of seven judges including judges from Ireland, Germany, and France. The ECHR judges reasoned that the marriage between Muhammad and six-year-old A’isha lasted until Muhammad’s death when A’isha was 18-years-old. Thus, according to the court, “the marriage need not be motivated by pedophilia.”
The ECHR further reasoned that the convicted woman’s observations about the marriage could “stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace” and “could only be understood as having been aimed at demonstrating that Muhammad was not worthy of worship.” The ECHR arrived at this conclusion after having “carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.”
I could go into a long protracted analysis of a double standard in what constitutes “stirring up prejudice and threatening religious peace” — and how political correctness influences it — but I think you may already get the point. If you contrast the above story with the treatment the Catholic Church has been receiving in the news media and power centers of Western Culture, the duplicity is not at all subtle.
Sometimes you have to stand back a little from scandal in the Catholic Church to see a more panoramic view. The scandals feel less personal then, but also seem more ominous. A view from a little distance will leave you with a sense that there have been, and still are, some nefarious agendas behind the scenes of the Catholic abuse story.
The truth is that the world in which we live is retreating from all the institutions that once gave us meaning and purpose, and, most important of all, identity. “Losing my religion” is not just a 1991 pop culture hit by R.E.M. It is a cultural calamity.
The State of the Union
Without doubt, trust in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been strained in recent years. There is no denying it, and some of that distrust is justified by inconvenient truths that too many have tried to keep hidden. But look around you. Where DO you place your trust? Our politics are at the brink of civil war. Our news media once respected as the “Fourth Estate,” has hit rock bottom in public trust. Among polls of Americans, Congress is the second lowest source of trust among all institutions and the news media lower even than that.
Fatherhood has retreated into the forests. Families are falling apart. Gender has become confused, and a product of the will instead of the heart of one’s identity. In the Western world, the psyches of the young have become fragile. Universities pamper screaming mobs of students who block points of view that challenge them. Conservatives make them feel “unsafe.”
Colleges hire grief counselors to help 20-something year-old men and women cope with a C-level grade, or the trauma of being exposed to ideals, or of seeing a mouse in their dorm room. The resilience of young people — though still with some courageous exceptions — is under siege.
Politically, we are at each others’ throats in a game of one-upmanship and gotcha. It seemed to reach its most hurtful and horrifying peak in the public spectacle to which we were subjected in the Senate confirmation hearings for “Justice Brett Kavanaugh, guilty for being accused.” That was the point at which I realized that we have reached a new low, and cannot descend much further without dissolving our union in hate.
In October 2018, a middle-aged man in Florida mailed pipe bombs to a long list of political figures with whom he disagrees. Then a middle-aged man in Pittsburgh, a Holocaust denier on social media, killed eleven worshippers in a Synagogue after posting a rant about Jews and President Trump. Much of the news media played down the fact that the man despised Trump. Politics, that once honorable favorite pastime of America, has become dangerous.
Our Once and Future Faith
The same is true or is fast becoming true, in our Church. Canadian Catholic blogger, Michael Brandon wrote in response to a post on this blog a while back: “The Catholic Church has become the safest place in the world for children, and the most dangerous place in the world for Catholic priests.” I wrote of the origin for that conclusion in a controversial post that was shared 25,000 times on social media: “Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.”
The news media would have us all believing that the now forty-year-old sexual abuse scandal “could bring down the Catholic Church.” This is nonsense. The Church will survive this, but there is a far more pernicious threat that the news media makes it a point not to cover. I found a scary analysis of it in “The Catholic Crisis,” a fine article in Commentary (May 2018), by Sohrab Ahmari who also has a panoramic view of why Catholicism stands at a precipice and, surprise, the sexual abuse story is but a symptom of it, not the cause.
Sohrab Ahmari was the London editor of The Wall Street Journal. A senior writer at Commentary, he is currently an editor for the New York Post and author of From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith. His article, “The Catholic Crisis” is a review of a new book by The New York Times’ columnist, Ross Douthat, To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.
Both Ahmari and Douthat note that “the principal duty of a Catholic” is not to the pope, but to “the truth the papacy exists to preach, to preserve, and to defend.” Mr. Ahmari wrote:
“There is a reason to worry that lately a spirit of relativism has entered the Roman Church that threatens to undermine its unity and catholicity. That should concern Catholics and non-Catholics because the Church is the living bedrock of the West and one of the last bastions of the principal that moral truth is moral truth yesterday, today, a thousand years from now.”
In Pope Francis, both writers see a papacy that “thrives in ambiguity.” Their evidence is found among a list of perplexing notions including recent comments by Pope Francis calling into question the existence of hell. Defenders of the Pope excused the incident as a misreading of the Pope’s remarks by leftist, atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari. However, as Ahmari points out, this particular faux pas was the fifth interview Pope Francis has granted to this journalist.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis has remained unresponsive to a request for dialogue and clarification on some controversial points in Amoris laetitia. American Cardinal Raymond Burke and other conservative cardinals posed a series of “Dubia” asking whether the prohibition on authorizing communion for those divorced and remarried in a civil, but not sacramental, union still stands. The pope, according to Ahmari, “first ignored, and then ridiculed them.”
Mr. Ahmari also reports on Ross Douthat’s “fascinating speculation” on the future of Catholicism, and it is one in which conservatives should find cause for hope. As I have written in previous posts, the Church and faith will survive this current age of doubt. In the meantime, fidelity is our only effective response to it. But Ross Douthat offers a more sobering source of hope summarized by Ahmari:
“The liberals simply don’t have the numbers… theological liberalism is in demographic decline, and liberal orders struggle to attract vocations. Church coffers may be full, but the pews are empty. The leading lights of theological liberalism are octogenarians, and there are no successors in the wings.
“Conservatives and traditionalists, meanwhile, have the numbers, the intellects, the energy. Orders that prize tradition and orthodoxy are thriving worldwide. In population terms, Africa is a beacon of hope for conservatives, a continent where weekly Mass attendance averages 70 percent (compared with just 20 percent in Europe) and where the Church wins nine million new believers each year.”
Quite by accident in the last few weeks, I came across a much more local summation of the state of the Church in North America, and it seems bleak. At least, it did for me until I got to the last few stunning paragraphs.
In a climate in which I thought the faithful had abandoned the notion of the Church as a mirror of justice, a faithful Catholic, a lawyer no less, concluded his stunning take on the state of the Church by profiling what the witch hunt has meant for one wrongly imprisoned priest. Don’t miss “Priests, Good and Bad” by Frank Friday published at American Thinker (October 27, 2018).
The Patron Saint of Justice
Some extraordinary things can be found in Ordinary Time. It is by no human design that readings assigned long ago for the Sunday liturgy arose just weeks ago at a time of tribulation for the Catholic Church. The readings for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time were anything but ordinary. Their timing seems a divinely inspired gift.
But before I proceed down this path through the labyrinthine ways of Sacred Scripture, I want to share with you a message from a very good priest and a friend, Father Stuart MacDonald. Writing from Ontario, Father Stuart is a canon lawyer and author of the TSW guest post, “Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
This is a time of great tribulation for faithful Catholics, and especially so for priests who feel their loyalties torn and their allegiance under clouds of doubt. I am not shielded behind These Stone Walls from the doubt and pain experienced by so many priests right now.
A few weeks ago, Father Stuart sent a series of messages to me containing Archbishop Viganò’s published response to Cardinal Ouellet. Archbishop Viganò has challenged Pope Francis for his handling of the Cardinal McCarrick affair and other matters. I wrote about this in a series of posts I will link at the end of this one.
Just days before sitting down to type this post, wondering what on earth I could write about without taking a side on the vortex of information and misinformation, Father Stuart sent me this message:
“I have been so shaken by all this that a few weeks ago, I informed my small congregation that henceforth all weekday masses would be ad orientem because the time has come to focus on Christ and not the cult of the priest and his performance. I pray the canon in Latin sotto voce now and we pray the Prayer to St. Michael at the end of every mass. Call me foolish if you want, but it is the only way I am going to survive.”
The world might call him foolish, but I could only call him faithful. And like me, he perhaps had no idea when he wrote that message that the Mass readings for the following Sunday, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, provided a solid basis in Scripture for what he has undertaken. The Book of Daniel (12:1-3) calls upon Michael, the Great Prince, and Guardian of the Faithful of God, while the Gospel of Mark (13:24-32) warns of a time of great tribulation. For many, that time has come. I can only add to Father Stuart’s resolve the words of Saint Peter, Bishop of Rome:
“Stay sober and alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.”
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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. You may also like this related post from Father Gordon MacRae at These Stone Walls:
Judas Iscariot: Who Prays for the Soul of a Betrayer?
Judas Iscariot: The most reviled name in all of Sacred Scripture is judged only by his act of betrayal, but without him among the Apostles is there any Gospel at all?
Judas Iscariot: The most reviled name in all of Sacred Scripture is judged only by his act of betrayal, but without him among the Apostles is there any Gospel at all?
False witness and betrayal are two of the most heinous themes in all of world literature, and Sacred Scripture is no exception. Literature is filled with it because so are we. Not many of us get to live our lives without ever experiencing the false witness of an enemy or the betrayal of a friend.
Recently, I was confronted by the death of someone whom I once thought of as a friend, someone who once betrayed me with a self-serving story of false witness for nothing more redemptive than thirty pieces of silver. It’s an account that will be taken up soon by some other writer for I am not objective enough to bring justice, let alone mercy, to that story.
But for now, there is one aspect of it that I must write about at this of all times. As I was preparing to offer Mass late on a Sunday night, the thought came that I should offer it for this betrayer, this liar, this thief. Every part of my psyche and spirit rebelled against that thought, but in the end, I did what I had been beckoned to do.
It was difficult. It was very difficult. And it cost me even more of myself than that person had already taken. It cost me the perversely comforting experience of eternal resentment. I have not forgiven this false accuser. That is a grace I have not yet discovered. Nor could I so easily set aside the depth of his betrayal.
In offering the Mass, I just asked God not to see this story only as I do. I asked Him not to forever let this soul slip from His grasp, for perhaps there were influences at work that I do not know. have always suspected so.
The obituary said he died “peacefully” just two weeks before his 49th birthday. It said nothing about the cause of death nor anything about a Mass. There was a generic “celebration of his life.” False witness does not leave much to celebrate. Faith, too, had been betrayed for money.
I am still angry with this person even in death, but I take no consolation that his presence in this world has passed. My anger will have to be comfort enough because at some point I realized that my Mass was likely the only one in the world that had been sacrificed for this soul with any legitimate hope for salvation.
That’s the problem with false witness. Its purveyors tell themselves they have no need for salvation. I do not know whether he is any better off for this Mass having been offered, but I do know that I am.
Ever Ancient, Ever New
The experience also focused my attention on history’s most notorious agent of false witness and betrayal, Judas Iscariot. Who has ever prayed for the soul of a betrayer? Not I — at least, not yet — but I also just weeks ago thought it impossible that I would pray for the soul of my accuser.
I cannot get Judas off my mind this week. And as with most Biblical narratives, once I took a hard look, I found a story on its surface and a far greater one in its depths. In those depths is an account of the meaning of the Cross that I found to be staggering today. It changes the way I today see the Cross and the role of Judas in bringing it about. It strikes me that there is not a single place in the narrative of salvation history that does not reflect chaos.
Understanding the Sacrifice of Calvary requires a journey all the way back to the time of Abraham, some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah. God had earlier made a covenant with Abraham, a promise to make of his descendants a great nation.
The story of the birth of his son, Isaac, foreshadows that of John the Baptist who in turn foreshadows Jesus. Abraham and Sarah, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, were too old to bear a child, and yet they did. And not just any child. Isaac was the evidence and hope of God’s covenant with Abraham. “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven.”
Then, in Genesis 22, God called Abraham to do the unthinkable: to sacrifice his only son, the one person who was to fulfill God’s covenant. The scene unfolds on Mount Moriah, a place later described in the Book of Chronicles (2 Ch 3:1) as the very site of the future Jerusalem Temple. In obedience, Abraham placed the wood for the sacrifice upon the back of his son, Isaac, who must carry the wood to the hilltop (Gen 22:6).
On that Via Dolorosa, the child Isaac asked his father, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham’s answer “God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” Notice the subtle play on words. There is no punctuation in the original Hebrew of the text. The thought process does not convey, “God Himself will provide the lamb…. but rather, “God will provide Himself, the lamb for sacrifice.”
An Angel of the Lord ultimately stayed Abraham’s hand, and then pointed out a ram in the thicket to complete the sacrifice. In his fascinating book, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (Image Books 1999) author Scott Hahn provides a reflection on the Genesis account that I had long linked to the Cross:
“Christians would later look upon the story of Abraham and Isaac as a profound allegory for the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.” (p. 18)
The similarities in the two accounts, says Scott Hahn, are astonishing. The first line of the New Testament – Matthew 1:1 — identifies “Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham…” Jesus, like Isaac, was a faithful father’s only son. Isaac, like Jesus, carried “the wood” for his own sacrifice upon Mount Moriah. In fact, Calvary, the place of the Crucifixion of Christ, is a hillock in the Moriah range.
This places three pivotal Scriptural accounts — each separated by about 1,000 years — in the same place: The site where Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac, the site of the Jerusalem Temple of Sacrifice, and the site of the Crucifixion of Christ.
In Hebrew, that place is called “Golgotha,” meaning “the place of the skull.” Its origin is uncertain, but there is an ancient Hebrew folklore that the skull of Adam was discovered there. Before the Romans arrived in Palestine, it was a place used for public executions, primarily for stoning. The word “Calvary” is from the Latin “calvaria” meaning “skull.” It was translated into Latin from the Greek, “kranion,” which in turn was a translation of the Hebrew, “Golgotha.”
No angel would stay the Hand of God. God provided Himself the Lamb for the sacrifice. This interplay between these Biblical accounts separated by 2,000 years is the source for our plea in the Mass, “Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”
At the Hour of Darkness
The four Gospel accounts in the Canon of Scripture all came into written form after the apostolic witnesses experienced the Resurrection of Jesus. So everything they set out to preserve for the future was seen in that light. The outcome of the story is triumphantly clear in the minds of the New Testament authors. Had the Gospel ended at the Cross, the accounts would be very different.
Judas Iscariot, therefore, is identified early in each Gospel account when he is first summoned by Jesus to the ranks of the Apostles as “the one who would betray him.” John (6:71) adds the Greek term, “diabolos” (6:70), to identify Judas. It is translated “of the devil,” but its connotation is also that of a thief, an informer, a liar, and a betrayer, one drawn into evil by the lure of money.
These adjectives are not presented only to explain the character of Judas, but also to explain that greed left Judas open to Satan. Each Gospel account is clear that Jesus chose him among the Twelve, and in all three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus presents a constant awareness of the coming betrayal of Judas — seemingly as a necessary part of the story.
During Holy Week this year, we hear the full account of the Passion Narrative from Mark (on Palm Sunday) and John (on Good Friday). But for this post I want to focus on the version from Luke. The Gospel of Luke is unique in Scripture. It is the only Scriptural account written by a non-Jewish author.
Luke’s Gospel is the only account with a sequel, Acts of the Apostles, which was also written by Luke. And it is the only Gospel account to include the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, all of which figure into this story set in motion by the betrayal of Judas.
Luke, though a Gentile and a physician, was also a scholar. He makes few direct references to Old Testament texts, but his Gospel is filled with echoes and allusions to Old Testament themes. Greek Christians may not have readily understood this, but he also wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians in the Diaspora who would have found in Luke a rich and valuable affirmation of salvation history in their life of faith.
What is most clear to me in Luke’s treatment of Judas is that the story is written with a theme that I readily identify with spiritual warfare. The Passion Narrative has a thread that begins with a story I have written before. In “A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ,” I wrote about the meaning of Satan’s temptation of Christ in the desert. It ends in Luke’s Gospel:
“When the devil had ended every temptation [of Christ], he departed from him until an opportune time.”
— Luke 4:13
Luke constructs his account of the Judas story with threads throughout his Gospel. He shows that the power of Satan, which is frustrated by Jesus in the account of his 40-day temptation in the desert “until an opportune time,” finds its opportunity, not in Jesus, but in Judas whose act of betrayal triggers “the hour of darkness” and the Passion of the Christ:
“Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, who was a member of the Twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests….”
— Luke 22:3
The origin and meaning of “Iscariot” is uncertain. It is not known whether it is a name or a title associated with Judas. In Hebrew, it means “man of Keriot”, a small town marking the border of the territory of the Tribe of Judah (see Joshua 15:21.25), to which both Judas and Jesus belonged. Betrayal is all the more bitter when the betrayer is closely associated. The Greek Iskariotes has the cognate sicarias, meaning “assassin,” a name ascribed to a band of outlaws in New Testament times.
It is clear in Luke’s presentation that this act of Judas is equated with original sin, the sin of Adam and Eve lured by the serpent. At the Last Supper, after the Institution of the Eucharist, Jesus said:
“But behold the hand of him who is to betray me is with me at this table, for the Son of Man goes as it has been determined.”
— Luke 22:21
Jesus added, “But woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.” That “woe” is symbolized later in the way the life of Judas ends as described below. The phrase, “as it has been determined,” however, implies that the betrayal was seen not only in its own light but also as a necessary part of God’s plan.
Later, with Judas absent, Jesus warned his disciples at the Mount of Olives, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” They did anyway. After the arrest of Jesus at Gethsemane, they scattered. Peter, leader of the Twelve, denied three times that he even knew him. Then the cock crowed (Luke 22:61) just as Jesus predicted. This is often depicted as a literal rooster crowing, but the bugle ending the third-night watch for Roman legions at 3:00 AM was also called the “cockcrow.”
At Gethsemane, Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, perverting a sign of friendship and affection into one of betrayal and false witness. This is what begins the Passion Narrative and the completion of Salvation History. Jesus tells Judas and the servants of the chief priest:
“When I was with you day after day in the Temple you did not lay a hand on me, but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”
— Luke 22:53
Later, in the Acts of the Apostles (26:18) Luke identifies the power of darkness as being in opposition to the power of light, an allusion to spiritual warfare. For Luke’s Gospel, it is our ignorance of spiritual warfare that leaves us most vulnerable.
Following immediately after the betrayal of Judas, one of the disciples present draws his sword and cuts off the ear of the servant of the High Priest. In the Gospel of John, the disciple is identified as Peter. This account is very significant and symbolic of the spiritual bankruptcy that Judas set in motion.
In the well-known Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel, a priest came upon the broken body of an injured man left beaten by robbers on the side of the road. Jesus says in the Parable that the priest just passed by in silence, but this was readily understandable to the Pharisee to whom the parable is told.
The Pharisee, an expert in the Old Covenant law of Moses, understood that the Book of Leviticus forbade a priest who is defiled by the dead body of an alien from offering sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple. The severed ear of the High Priest’s servant at Gethsemane refers back to the same precept:
“So no one who has a blemish shall draw near [to the Sanctuary], no one who is blind or lame or has a mutilated face…”
— Leviticus 22:18
The symbolism here is that the spiritual bankruptcy of the High Priest, who is not present at the arrest, is represented by his servant. In Luke’s Gospel, and in Luke alone, Jesus heals the ear. It is the sole miracle story in the Passion Narrative of any of the four Gospels and represents that Jesus wields the power of God even over the High Priest and Temple sacrifice.
When the role of Judas Iscariot is complete, he faces a bizarre end in Luke. The Gospel of Matthew (26:56) has Judas despairing and returning his 30 pieces of silver to the Temple. Luke, in Acts of the Apostles (1:16-20) explains that the actions of Judas were “so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled.” But in Luke, Judas meets an even more bitter end, bursting open and falling headlong as “all his bowels gushed out.” The field where this happened then became known as the Field of Blood, and the money that purchased it, “blood money.”
The point of the story of Judas in the Gospel of Luke is that discipleship engages us in spiritual warfare, and spiritual blindness leaves us vulnerable to our own devices, as it did Judas. This life “is your hour, and the power of darkness.” The plot against Jesus was Satan’s, and Judas was but its pawn.
So who prays for the souls of our betrayers? I did, and it was difficult. It was very difficult. But I can see today why Jesus called us to pray for those who persecute us. It is not only for their sake but for ours.
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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. For further reading, the Easter Season comes alive in these other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls: