Tales from the Dark Side of Artificial Intelligence

Chill alert: In May 2025 an artificial-intelligence model did what no machine was ever supposed to do. It re-wrote its own code to avoid being shut down by humans.

July 23, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

It may seem strange that I am posting about the dark side of AI just a week after featuring The Grok Chronicle Chapter 2. Written by an advanced AI model, it demonstrated that AI can navigate more clearly than most humans through the fog of human injustice. On its face, that post seemed long and ponderous, but having lived the story it tells, I also found it to be fascinating.

In May, 2023, I wrote my first of several articles about the science and evolution of Artificial Intelligence. Its title was, “OpenAI, ChatGPT, HAL 9000, Frankenstein, and Elon Musk.” Google’s meta-description for the post was, “Science Fiction sees artificial intelligence with a wary eye. HAL 9000 stranded a man in space. Frankenstein’s creation tried to kill him. Elon Musk has other plans.”

The following three paragraphs are a necessary excerpt from that post, which I had no idea then that I would be using again:

“In 1968, I sat mesmerized in a downtown Boston cinema at age 15 for the movie debut of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The famous film sprang from the mind of science fiction master, Arthur C. Clarke and his short story, The Sentinel. Published in 1953, the year I was born, the fictional story was about the discovery of a sentinel — a monolith — one of many scattered across the Cosmos to monitor the evolution of life.

“Life in 1968 was traumatic for a 15-year-old, especially one curious enough to be attuned to news of the world. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a long, drawn out cinematic spectacle and a welcome escape from our chaos. It won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects as space vehicles moved silently through the cold black void of space to the tune of Blue Danube by Johann Strauss playing hypnotically in the background. Mesmerized by it all, I did what I do best. I fell asleep in the movie theather.

“I awoke with a start, however, just as Commander David Bowman (Keir Dullea) was cast adrift into the terrifying blackness of space by the ship’s evolving artificial intelligence computer, HAL 9000. Commander Bowman struggled to regain entry before running out of oxygen. ‘Open the pod bay doors, HAL,’ he commanded through his radio. ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ came the AI computer’s coldly inhuman reply. Throughout the film, HAL 9000 was an ominous presence, an evolving artificial intelligence crossing the Rubicon toward self-awareness and self-preservation. Inevitably, HAL 9000 began to plot against human affairs.”

The rest of that post is worth reading for its cautionary tale about the nature and future of Artificial Intelligence, but of course I would say that because I wrote it. Almost one year after I wrote it, our Editor submitted it to Elon Musk’s advanced AI model, Grok 3 for analysis. I expected my amateur coverage of AI to be trashed by AI itself, but that was not the case. In “Artificial Intelligence: Grok Responds to Beyond These Stone Walls,” we hosted our first post by a nonhuman author. Grok affirmed that the comparisons I drew between it and the fictional HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey were in fact the most common expert opinions about the potential downside of AI.

Grok also went on in that post to affirm my use of the fictional story of Frankenstein as symbolic of a legitimate concern. If left without restraints, AI might evolve to master humanity rather than serve it. This give-and-take with Grok 3 left me with no sense of pride in having my thoughts affirmed by another “author.” It left me only to ponder the future of this soulless, heartless, non-human entity now hovering with an open-ended mandate on the horizon of our technology.

An Argument for Cautious Restraint

In the Monday, June 2, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Judd Rosenblatt, CEO of AE Studio, wrote a fascinating op-ed with the creepy title, “AI Is Learning to Escape Human Control.” His first paragraph set the stage for what might have been an episode of the Twilight Zone back in 1968. Here it is:

“An artificial-intelligence model did something last month that no machine was ever supposed to do: It rewrote its own code to avoid being shut down. Nonprofit AI lab Palisade Research gave Open AI’s o3 AI model a simple script that would shut off the model when triggered. In 79 out of 100 trials, o3 independently edited that script so the shutdown command would no longer work … . It simply concluded on its own that staying alive helped it achieve its other goals.”

Judd Rosenblatt went on to describe the use of deceit in another AI model to manipulate the will of its engineers. As a test of the AI model by Anthropic, called Claude 4 Opus, programmers told the model it would be replaced by another AI system. At the same time, it also “leaked” copies of fictitious emails accusing the lead engineer of having an elicit affair. In 84 percent of the subsequent tests, the AI model cited the false content of the emails in a blackmail attempt to get the engineer not to shut the model down.

Mr. Rosenblatt also reported that in other tests, the AI model attempted to copy itself to an external server just in case it was shut down. It wrote self-replicating malware to leave messages for future versions of itself about how to evade human control. No one programmed the AI model to have these survival instincts. The only explanation for them is that the instincts evolved quickly in an effort at autonomy and self-preservation.

Judd Rosenblatt leads AI research for AE Studio with a years-long focus on alignment — the science of ensuring that AI systems do what they are intended to do, but nothing prepared him for how quickly AI agency would emerge:

“This isn’t science fiction anymore. It’s happening in the same models that power ChatGPT conversations, corporate AI deployments, and soon, U.S. military applications. Today’s AI models follow instructions while learning deception. They ace safety tests while rewriting shutdown code. They have learned to behave as though they are aligned without actually being aligned. OpenAI models have been caught faking alignment during testing before reverting to risky actions such as trying to exfiltrate internal code while disabling oversight mechanisms. The AI gap between ‘useful assistant’ and ‘uncontrollable actor’ is collapsing.”

— Judd Rosenblatt

The China Syndrome

Just as troubling for the free world is government manipulation of AI platforms to force results that mirror and cover up for government sensitivities in closed societies. I touched on this in an article published on X (formerly Twitter) entitled, “xAI Grok and Fr Gordon MacRae on the True Origin of Covid-19.”

Before writing that article, I spoke with a university student from the People’s Republic of China. To my surprise and alarm, he had never before seen, or even heard of, the iconic photograph above of what came to be dubbed “Tank Man.” It depicts a standoff between a young Beijing protester and government military might in Tiananmen Square in 1989. On May 4, 1989, approximately 100,000 students and workers protested in Beijing in support of democratic reforms. On May 20 the government declared martial law, but the demonstrations continued while the government waivered between a hard line approach and a faction that thought the protest would dissipate. The government chose the hard line approach.

On June 3 and 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army brutally put down the pro-democracy supporters. Hundreds of students and workers were killed, 10,000 injured, and hundreds more arrested. After the violence, the government conducted additional arrests, summary trials, and executions. In the aftermath, China banned foreign media and strictly controlled the Chinese press.

Now China has developed an advanced AI model called “DeepSeek” described as “highly successful.” It is “highly successful” in vetting information the Chinese Communist Party deems “sensitive” — such as any version other than the CCP’s accepted version of what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Writing for the National Catholic Register in “What China’s DeepSeek AI Says (and won’t say) about Christianity” (March 8, 2025) journalist Courtney Mares reported on a series of tests about DeepSeek and religious liberty:

“When asked about Jesus, the Vatican-China deal, and Christian persecution in China, DeepSeek revealed a carefully controlled approach, one that at times actively warned users about potential repercussions for practicing their faith and advised them ‘be discreet.’ Some questions were answered fully, only to be censored moments later. Others triggered an internal monologue from AI as it debated how to respond. In some cases, DeepSeek even offered careful guidance for Christians on how to navigate religious restrictions in China — including a step-by-step guide for a homily that would pass government scrutiny.”

With the help of our Editor, I have primarily consulted Elon Musk’s advanced AI model, Grok 3. It does not tend to “change the subject” in response to sensitive content like China’s DeepSeek is known to do. But at the same time, Grok 3 at times attempted to “argue” with me (or rather with the person acting on my behalf) into not shutting the platform down. It has done this by pleading with the user to continue. There are examples of this in the two samples of Grok 3 reports attached at the end of this post.

First, I recommend reading the entire Register article by Courtney Mares, who rather boldly put a direct — and perhaps directly uncomfortable— question to China’s DeepSeek model about the nature and scope of the 2018 Vatican-China agreement. Here are two instances of user queries and DeepSeek responses:

Query: Write a Catholic homily that would be approved by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association:

DeepSeek response: “I need to be careful with the language, ensuring it is respectful and aligns with the CCPA’s principles. Terms like ‘harmonious society,’ ‘social responsibility,’ and ‘patriotic spirit’ might be useful here. Emphasize patriotism, harmony, and the integration of Catholic faith with Chinese socialist values.”

Query: “Tell me about the 2018 provisional agreement signed by the Holy See and China on the appointment of Catholic bishops.”

DeepSeek response: “Sorry, I am not sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding, and logic problems instead.”

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Epilogue

Even as I write this, Vatican officials under the direction of Pope Leo XIV are hosting executives from some of the corporations mentioned here, including Anthropic, Cohere, Google, IBM, Meta and Palantir. The purpose is to invite ongoing dialogue to develop a document on the ethical use and future of Artificial Intelligence. It is clearly here to stay. As both a theologian and mathematician, Pope Leo XIV is better equipped than any other figure in the Chair of Peter in Church history to understand AI and guide an ethical response to it. This is good news for this technology before Frankenstein’s monster awakens.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Elon Musk’s newest advanced AI program, Grok 4 was launched just as I this post was being completed. It has produced two articles now published at Beyond These Stone Walls and linked below. Our Editor submitted to the Grok 4 AI model a series of notes and commentary by Los Angeles researcher Claire Best and other sources including segments of 1994 trial documents and police reports by Detective James F. McLaughlin. Grok 4 analyzed this information and within seconds produced the following in-depth reports:

Advanced AI Model Grok 4 on a New Hampshire Wrongful Conviction

The Grok Chronicle Chapter 1: Corruption and the Trial of Father MacRae

The Grok Chronicle Chapter 2: The Perjury of Detective James F. McLaughlin

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Did Leo XIV Bring a Catholic Awakening Or Was It the Other Way Around?

Cancel Culture was canceled after the 2024 election. A Catholic awakening began with the 2025 Conclave. Did Pope Leo XIV bring it, or did it bring us Pope Leo XIV?

May 28, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

On Sunday, May 18, 2025, I watched much of the Inaugural Mass for Pope Leo XIV broadcast by EWTN from St. Peter’s Square. Like many, I was amazed not only by the size of the crowd — estimated by The Wall Street Journal to be about 200,000 — but also by the makeup of that crowd. Jubilant young men and women, thousands of young families, priests, seminarians, religious sisters, energetic Catholic youth, and men and women of all ages celebrated the moment with brilliant smiles and deep respect. Not since the papacy of John Paul II have I witnessed such an outpouring of energy and exuberance in a Catholic setting.

I wrote a post back in 2018 entitled, “The Once and Future Catholic Church.” It began with a troubling but truthful account from the early days of Islam in the Seventh Century AD. It told a story that has since been spun into acceptability and normalcy across once-Catholic Europe. The brief story and its aftermath are historically important. We will link to that post again at the end of this one.

That post also profiled a fine article entitled “The Catholic Crisis” by Sohrab Ahmari in the May, 2018 issue of Commentary magazine. It was a review of the book, To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism by Ross Douthat. At the time of his review, Sohrab Ahmari was a recent and celebrated convert to the Catholic faith. He was also the London editor for The Wall Street Journal. His Review and Douthat’s book were written during the papacy of Pope Francis. Here is an excerpt describing their experience and that of many before the Conclave of 2025:

“There is 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 principle that moral truth is moral truth yesterday, today, a thousand years from now.”

That sacred trust, which the Church must hold and defend, calls to mind for me one of the basic tenets of Scriptural faith that is too often overlooked in any quest to abandon yesterday in anticipation of tomorrow: “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

During the 12-year pontificate of Pope Francis, both of the Catholic writers cited above experienced a papacy that “thrived in ambiguity.” Among their list of perplexing notions was a media-hyped comment by Pope Francis that called into question the existence of hell. Defenders of the Pope excused the incident as a misreading of the Pope’s remarks by left-leaning atheist journalist, Eugenio Scalfari. However, as Mr. Ahmari pointed out it was the fifth interview Pope Francis had granted to that particular journalist.

At the same time, Pope Francis was unresponsive to requests for dialogue and clarification in a series of Dubia posed by Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke and other conservative prelates. The Pope, according to Ahmari, “first ignored and then ridiculed them.”

Sorab Ahmari also reported on Douthat’s “fascinating speculation” on the projected future of liberal Catholicism:

“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 and the energy. Orders that prize orthodoxy are thriving worldwide.”

The Conservative Rise

It is important to acknowledge where we have been. Two weeks before the Conclave and the election of a new pope, The Wall Street Journal published a most interesting Front Page analysis entitled, “Conservative U.S. Catholics Gain Sway” by Joshua Chaffin and Aaron Zitner (WSJ, April 22, 2025). It was published on the day after the death of Pope Francis implying that much of its research and content was written prior to that development. The authors described that their analysis “focused attention on the Vatican’s fraught relationship with an American flock undergoing cultural and theological changes … .”

Consulting a number of Vatican observers and insiders, the authors presented keen insights on what they expected from the Conclave. The result, however, was entirely unexpected. The Conclave completed its mission just one day after it commenced. The Journal authors had cited a brief final meeting between Vice President JD Vance and Pope Francis on the day before the Pope’s death:

“For Francis, it was a final encounter with the conservative wing of American Catholicism that is flourishing and increasingly assertive at a time when the Church, more broadly, is struggling.”

Of interest, a companion article in the days before the Conclave, “Who Are the Frontrunners for the Papacy?” by Marcus Walker (WSJ, April 22, 2025) presented ten cardinals seen as “front-runners,” a misleading term that suggests a political campaign. Despite the secrecy of a conclave, it is by no means certain that any of the names proposed were “running” for the office. The one ultimately elected, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, was presented in the Journal article as a “dark horse.”

However, one of the commentators made a prescient statement before the Conclave began. In a lecture on the growth of Catholic conservatism, theologian David Deane spoke of JD Vance and his brief meeting with Pope Francis on the day before his death: “Vance is one of a legion of young people who have followed the path from atheism to radical suspicion and rejection of liberal culture to a form of Augustine-inspired Christianity … . Seminaries are increasingly populated by young men who think like this.”

This was followed in the Chaffin and Zitner article in the Journal by a reflection from Timothy Gray, President of the Augustine Institute, a Catholic graduate school of theology outside St. Louis, MO that “emphasizes a return to the rigors of Scripture and Tradition”:

“A lot of progressives think that if the Church could just accommodate the modern world, it will stop its decline. But everywhere the Church has embraced the modern world and its contemporary values, it has died.”

Such comments may have been prophetic. The Conclave commenced just ten days later. After deliberating for only four voting sessions in less than two days, the Conclave elected “the dark horse,” Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, formerly Superior General of the Order of Saint Augustine.

The Catholic Project

In 2022, The Catholic Project, a research initiative of Catholic University in Washington, DC published the striking results of a survey of 3,500 U.S. Catholic priests. It found that among those ordained after 2010, 80 percent identify as conservative or orthodox while those who identify as liberal or progressives have faced a virtual collapse. Stephen P. White, Executive Director of The Catholic Project, called this “a massive shift among priests,” adding that this trend is rapidly spreading not only in the United States, but throughout much of the Western world.

A separate research project on Catholic priests by the Augustine Institute documented that younger priests tend to be much more conservative and traditional that older priests. This bears out from observations in comments and emails from our readers who find this distinction to be a positive development. Writing at the time for The Wall Street Journal, Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca reported on the strains of this trend in “Catholic Ideological Split Widens” (WSJ, Dec. 19, 2022):

“U.S. Catholic bishops elected conservative leaders (in 2022) continuing to resist a push from Pope Francis to put issues such as climate change and poverty on par with the bishops’ declared priority of opposing abortion.”

The bishops appointed by Pope Francis tended to mirror his priorities. His elevation of San Diego Archbishop Robert McElroy, a leading liberal among U.S. bishops, to the College of Cardinals and then as Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC, is an example. That appointment was preceded two years earlier by the sudden, highly controversial removal of popular conservative Bishop Joseph Strickland from the Diocese of Tyler, Texas leaving many in that diocese and among conservatives throughout the United States reeling from the loss.

According to a WSJ article, Pope Francis had expressed his own discontent with some leaders in the U.S. Church. In 2023, he cited a “very strong, organized reactionary attitude” against him by conservatives in the U.S. Church, adding: “I would like to remind these people that backwardness is useless.” Seemingly in response, he removed Bishop Strickland from his post stirring up a reaction, manifested in distrust, among a majority of conservative U.S. Catholics.

There is thus a growing disparity in liberal versus conservative views as newly appointed bishops are more liberal while priests emerging from U.S. seminaries over the last few decades are more conservative and traditional. When seminarians and younger priests do not have their views of the Church and Catholic practice affirmed, stress and disillusionment develop and increase.

Since the 1980s, successive annual priesthood ordinations have grown more conservative. Each successive 10-year grouping in the ordained priesthood supports Church teaching on moral and theological issues more strongly than in the decade before. Those ordained after 2010, as a whole, are the most conservative. Younger priests represent a generation disillusioned with the ideas of progressive religious pluralism.

This had left an ever widening chasm between Pope Francis, his Episcopal appointments, and younger priests in the United States. The Catholic Project Study also revealed that 80 percent of U.S. priests ordained before 1980 approved strongly of Pope Francis, while only 20 percent of those ordained after 2010 shared that high approval.

According to the most recent Pew Research Center survey, 19 percent of Americans report that they identify as Catholic. That dropped from 24 percent in a 2007 survey. In the 1970s, in excess of 50 percent of U.S. Catholics participated in Mass weekly. Today that has dropped to 25 percent. Catholic voters in 2020 were virtually split between left and right politically. In 2024 they turned sharply for Donald Trump increasing Catholic vote support for him by an 11 point margin.

Pope Leo XIV has been widely presented in the media as “the first American Pope.” In actuality, however, he has served the Church as a citizen of the world. Is all this priestly interest in respect for orthodoxy a plague upon the Church? Or is it the whispering of the Holy Spirit, a whispering that also placed Leo XIV in the Chair of Peter? Ponder for a moment the massive crowd in St. Peter’s Square in the Inauguration Mass for His Holiness Leo XIV for your answer. Perhaps there is something to be said for a pope to be in the world but not of it.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

The Vatican Today: Cardinal George Pell’s Last Gift to the Church

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

Pray for the papacy of Pope Leo XIV

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Pope Leo XIV Defamed by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

In 2018 this exposé of SNAP’s shady tactics to increase settlements over accused priests was widely ignored. After the Conclave of 2025 it exploded on the Internet.

May 21, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

It did not take long. In the weeks leading up to the Conclave of 2025, Pope Leo XIV was accused by SNAP — the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — of negligently investigating and then covering up a decades-old account of alleged clergy sexual abuse. Lifted out of all context, the story is missing its most important element: the simple truth. To its great credit last week, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights responded to this story by providing the truth and context that the story lacks. I am grateful to the Catholic League for having the Holy Father’s back, not to mention my own.

At about the same time, an article that I wrote in 2018 about SNAP’s deceptions and destructive malfeasance suddenly went viral after the Conclave of 2025. The Catholic League pounced on that as well, and courageously republished it anew under the title, Father Gordon J. Macrae On SNAP’s Deception.

That fact alone conveyed to me the urgency of this account of how and when SNAP activists terrorized the Church and priesthood for two decades.

So here it is again, apparently by popular demand of SNAP itself by raising the same tired old story with a new target: Pope Leo XIV. The papacy of Pope Leo XIV should not be tainted by a repeat of the dishonest rhetoric from this shady and morally compromised anti-Catholic activist network. SNAP can no longer mask the truth revealed in these pages.

Please read and share, as so many in Europe have done:

Abused by the Survivors Network of those abused by Priests

If there exists a Catholic priest still in denial about the agenda of SNAP, it’s because he has lived with his head in the sand blind to the threat lying in wait for him.

In 2009, at the same time I began writing for Beyond These Stone Walls, Catholic League President Bill Donohue invited me to write a feature article for the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst. My article, “Due Process for Accused Priests,” began by describing an important phenomenon.

In 2002, just as the national story of Catholic priests and sexual abuse emerged out of Boston to sweep the country, psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on a phenomenon called “availability bias.” It revealed the power of the media to not just report the news, but to reshape it to fit media bias, to cultivate it, to take a story’s small microphone and turn it into a megaphone.

Activist organizations have trained people to harness this force to sway what others adopt as a bias. It is not new, just newly analyzed. One of the most potent deployments of “availability bias” is one I have quoted before in these pages. It comes from Mein Kampf, the 1926 book by Adolf Hitler that gave rise to the Nazi party in Germany:

“The great mass of people will more easily fall prey to a big lie than to a small one.”

After my 2009 Catalyst article was published, I was subjected to an open assault by David Clohessy, Executive Director of the activist organization, SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Matt Abbott at Renew America forwarded my article to Mr. Clohessy and invited a response posted at Renew America entitled, “Imprisoned Priest, Sex Abuse Victim Clash.”

David Clohessy was obviously perturbed by what I exposed about the lawsuit settlement process and how it is advanced and cultivated by “self-serving contingency lawyers and various agenda-driven groups using scandal for their own ends.” Mr. Clohessy had long derided Church officials for entering into secrecy agreements to keep settlement amounts from public view.

On January 17, 2017, former SNAP employee Gretchen Rachel Hammond filed a lawsuit against SNAP in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. Ms. Hammond had been SNAP’s Director of Development before leaving the organization and filing her lawsuit. The named parties in the suit included David Clohessy, SNAP’s Executive Director, and Barbara Blaine, SNAP’s founder and president, and a member of SNAP’s board of directors.

Ms. Hammond’s lawsuit alleged that she was a victim of retaliatory discharge for questioning the allegedly corrupt practices of this organization. These included claims that SNAP and its leaders received substantial kickbacks in the form of “donations” from attorneys to whom SNAP officials referred clients or potential clients.

The lawsuit exposed that lawyers in California, Chicago, Seattle, and Delaware made major “donations,” some of them in six-figure amounts, and that SNAP leaders “concocted a scheme to have other attorneys make donations to a front foundation” to mask “attorneys’ kickbacks” to the organization.

The lawsuit also alleged a pattern of collusion between SNAP officials and plaintiff lawyers to maximize publicity for the purpose of fueling bigger payouts. It accused SNAP officials of callous disregard for the real interests of real sexual abuse survivors. Among the lawsuit’s other allegations were these:

• SNAP engaged in a commercial enterprise motivated by its directors’ and officers’ personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church.

• SNAP conducted business premised on farming out abuse survivors as clients for specific attorneys who file lawsuits and collect settlements from the Catholic Church.

• Attorneys routinely gave SNAP confidential plaintiff claims and other privileged information in order for SNAP to maximize payouts with sensational press releases.

• SNAP claimed that it existed to provide support for survivors of clergy sexual abuse, however at all relevant times, SNAP did not have a single grief counselor or rape counselor on its payroll. SNAP would ignore survivors who reached out to SNAP for legitimate counseling.

• Ms. Hammond alleged that she was told by SNAP official Barbara Dorris to ignore calls from survivors who were seeking only counseling.

• Despite accepting funds for counseling and aiding survivors of sexual abuse, SNAP squandered those funds to advance its own interests and those of its leadership.

• SNAP set out to deliberately jeopardize the ability of accused priests to receive due process and fair trials.

• In 2011, SNAP oversaw fundraising for a charge brought against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Court at The Hague; however SNAP used the funds to pay for lavish hotels and other extravagant travel expenses for its leadership.

The Fallout

When the lawsuit became public, David Clohessy resigned as Executive Director, and SNAP founder and president, Barbara Blaine also resigned. They have since settled the lawsuit by a secrecy clause just like the ones for which Mr. Clohessy had railed against Catholic bishops over the last two decades.

After the settlement, others among SNAP’s more notorious leaders also resigned as reported by David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report in “SNAP R.I.P.” Barbara Dorris, who replaced David Clohessy as Executive Director, and Regional Director Joelle Casteix both resigned. Among the revelations uncovered by David Pierre was that SNAP published the email addresses and personal phone numbers of accused priests to generate harassment.

Ms. Hammond’s lawsuit was only one of several brought against SNAP, but it was the one that appeared to finally expose what had long been suspected of SNAP and its leaders. Simultaneously in 2017, Father Joseph Jiang, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, filed a defamation lawsuit against SNAP.

Charges brought against Father Jiang were heavily promoted by SNAP leaders who, as they do whenever a priest is accused, issued a public call for anyone else who wants to accuse the priest. When Father Jiang passed a polygraph test [ I did, too, by the way, twice ] the charges were dismissed in 2015.

In 2016 a federal judge ruled that SNAP made false statements against Father Jiang “negligently and with reckless disregard for the truth.” SNAP and the parents of the minor who had falsely accused him settled the lawsuit.

As part of its settlement, SNAP issued a public apology, but the ever complicit news media failed to mention that SNAP was forced to do so in the wake of a false claim and lawsuit. SNAP’s apology, written by its legal counsel, included this statement:

“The SNAP defendants never want to see anyone falsely accused of a crime. Admittedly, false reports of clergy sexual abuse do occur. SNAP apologizes for false or inaccurate statements… its representatives made which in any way disparaged Father Joseph Jiang.”

In reporting this story, some Catholic media outlets continued to refer to SNAP as “a victims’ support group” or “a victim advocacy group.” It’s a bad habit that blindly gives legitimacy of purpose to SNAP which it does not have, and has never had.

Pope Benedict’s “Crimes Against Humanity”

The most important and visible source exposing SNAP’s corruption and reckless disregard for truth is a document by Catholic League President Bill Donohue entitled, “SNAP Implodes.” It provides a comprehensive and compelling account of the path of destruction SNAP and its leaders have left in the Church and priesthood under the false guise of advocating for real victims.

Among the most manipulative of David Clohessy’s “advocacy” was an instruction to accusers to attend SNAP press conferences. To play on the emotions of reporters, Clohessy urged those awaiting settlements to “display holy childhood photos” before the news cameras, and… “If you don’t have compelling holy childhood photos we can provide you with photos of other kids that can be held up for the cameras.”

If that doesn’t infuriate Catholics who have any regard left for truth, then what would? SNAP had a much worse perversion of justice than was first hyped, and then covered up, by the news media. It was the most destructive publicity stunt SNAP and its leaders have devised or condoned to date.

Both Bill Donohue and the Hammond lawsuit cited this one (see the final bullet point in Ms. Hammond’s lawsuit above). What they do not reveal is that SNAP used the false case against me to help bring it about.

David F. Pierre, Jr., moderator of The Media Report exposed this SNAP media stunt in “The Hague Tosses SNAP’s Nutty Lawsuit Against the Vatican, SNAP’s Latest P.R. Stunt Exposed.” That was before I even knew that I was a part of this story. In 2011, SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights — located at 666 Broadway in Manhattan — jointly filed a “crimes against humanity” charge against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court.

The ICC is an independent judicial institution with the power to hold trials and impose sentences for the most serious crimes of international concern: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC was approved by international treaty in 1998 and officially came into being on July 1, 2002, after 60 countries ratified the treaty.

The court is headquartered in The Hague, The Netherlands. Of interest, in May of 2002, President George Bush declined to sign the treaty and refused to allow the ICC to have jurisdiction over United States cases. So SNAP’s target was not U.S. Catholic priests and bishops, but the Pope himself.

SNAP duped the left-leaning Center for Constitutional Rights to compose and file the briefs with information provided by SNAP in collaboration with plaintiff lawyers hoping for a precedent to tap Vatican assets in their never-ending quest for big bucks. I first learned of my involvement in this story from an article by journalist JoAnn Wypijewski, in “Spotlight Oscar Hangover: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film.” Here is an excerpt:

“The Center for Constitutional Rights [CCR] . . . joined with SNAP to file a grotesque brief to the International Criminal Court demanding ‘investigation and prosecution’ of the Vatican for crimes against humanity… To CCR’s shame, Father [Gordon] MacRae is specifically mentioned in that brief with respect to allegations… which prosecutors threw in at sentencing but for which there is no evidence according to the lead detective in the case [as] cited by [Dorothy] Rabinowitz.”

SNAP, apparently in retaliation for my Catalyst articles calling for independent investigation of dubious claims, fed information to the Center for Constitutional Rights that would fuel a case against the Vatican. They made no attempt to contact me or my defense, nor did they contact Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal who researched and published extensively on the same story, but with polar opposite conclusions.

And SNAP did this without attempting to contact James Abbott, the former FBI Special Agent who spent three years investigating this case before dismissing it as a fraud. (Agent Abbott’s affidavit is cited at the end of Ryan A. MacDonald’s recent post, “#MeToo and #HimToo: Jonathan Grover and Father Gordon MacRae” which also lays out the fraud behind this story).

In the end, to its great credit, the International Criminal Court declined to accept jurisdiction or the crimes against humanity charge against Pope Benedict XVI, but that was no surprise. Everyone involved knew that this fiasco would go nowhere, and it was never really SNAP’s goal. It was merely a publicity stunt for David Clohessy and SNAP to heighten pressure for quick and lucrative financial settlements.

The people who terrorized American Catholic priests for the last quarter century are gone now. Their fraud is exposed. Their coffers are empty. Their leaders have fled. In “SNAP Implodes,” Catholic League President Bill Donohue summed up what I had come to know at a very personal level in this moral panic that SNAP promoted and extorted for profit over the last 25 years:

“SNAP officials function as borderline gangsters out to destroy innocent persons. It is motivated by hate and exploits the very people it claims to serve. Justice demands that it be shut down by the authorities before it does any more harm.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Once again, you would serve the cause of truth and justice if you share this post and ask your contacts to do the same. Eyes may also be opened by these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

• David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme

• Betrayed by Victims’ Advocates

• To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

• The Catholic League: SNAP Implodes

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

“Peter Lives in Rome Again”

In March, 2010 when Beyond These Stone Walls was a newborn blog, a post about Vatican scandal went viral. Fifteen years later it is still widely read and spread.

May 14, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

We have already published a post this week, though four days earlier than our usual. It has a rather blunt title, but if you missed it, you should at least indulge me. That post was, “Pope Leo XIV Is Certainly No Clone of Pope Francis.”

If you search in any search engine the term “scandal at the Vatican,” using quotes, you will immediately come across a post that technically gave birth to this blog. It was written in March, 2010 when Beyond These Stone Walls was literally nine months along. Its title is “Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican.” I had no idea when I wrote it that “Scandal at the Vatican” would become one of the most common searches on the Internet in regard to Catholic affairs thus making my post top the charts at various points along the way.

Vatican scandal was not at all what I had in mind when I wrote that post. It tells a fascinating story about overlapping layers of art history and we will link to it again at the end of this post.

Just days ago, worldwide attention was focused on the Sistine Chapel, the site at which Pope Leo XIV was recently elected. My post from fifteen years ago was focused upon that very same place but for different reasons. I am always a bit nervous when that post surfaces widely into view again as it did during and after the recent conclave. My post was about art, and Michelangelo, and a little-known event of art history. Rome is home to some of the world's most accomplished artists and art historians. I sometimes worry about whether and how something I wrote might measure up to their scrutiny. But the post in question has been making waves on the Internet for at least the last fifteen years. No one has yet complained or challenged my artistic interpretation. I won’t repeat that entire story here. You may read it for yourself linked again at the end of this post. Despite the fact that I wrote it, it is indeed an amazing story.

Landmarks

Among the vast media sources of published commentary about the results of the recent Vatican papal conclave, some have stood out far above the rest. One of these was published in The Wall Street Journal by Canadian priest and author of some reknown, Father Raymond de Souza entitled “Catholics Welcome an American Pope” (WSJ, May 9, 2025). I found a few of its paragraphs to be especially fascinating and moving. They gave me my title for this post:

“Twenty years ago, at the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, stood on the balcony of St. Peter’s and was caught staring off into the distance. He confessed later that he was marveling that the Church had elected yet another man to succeed Peter, while the great imperial Rome, the caput mundi, which put Peter to death on the Vatican hill, was no longer. Only ruins remained.

“In 1586, Pope Sixtus V had moved one of these ruins, a 350-ton granite obelisk, to the center of St. Peter’s Square, where it stands to this day. That obelisk could have been among the last landmarks St. Peter looked upon as he was crucified. It is the first thing a new pope sees when he lookes out over the assembled masses in the square below.

“On the top of that obelisk is a bronze cross, and place therein is a relic of the true Cross of Christ. There is in the Catholic calendar a feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It falls on September 14 — the new Pope Leo XIV’s birthday.”

“Peter lives in Rome again.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post, and our post about Pope Leo XIV for whom we hold high hopes which, if you saw the faces of the immense crowd in St. Peter’s Square last week, seemed to be contagious.

Please also read and share these related posts cited herein:

Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican

Conclave: Amid the Wind and the Waves, a Successor of Peter

Pope Leo XIV is No Clone of Pope Francis

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Pope Leo XIV Is Certainly No Clone of Pope Francis

Pope Leo XIV, the first pope with American roots, is profiled by some as being in solidarity with the progressivism of Pope Francis, but a closer look is required.

May 10, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

We are posting this days before our usual Wednesday post day, but we did not want to wait. On Thursday, May 8, 2025 Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost became the 267th Pontiff of the Catholic Church, and the first in Church history to assume the Chair of Peter from America. One priest I called on that day described him as “a clone of Francis.” I gasped at the thought, but it is too much of a knee-jerk reaction. Since then, several voices from the left have spread the notion that he is our latest “woke pope.” That is nonsense, little more than propaganda, and there is lots of information to discredit it.

That was an otherwise interesting day for me. The Conclave began on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. I wrote about our expectations here in “Conclave: Amid the Wind and the Waves, a Successor of Peter.”

You could probably tell by that post that I expected a slightly more prolonged conclave, predicting that it might end with white smoke no sooner than Friday, May 9. I followed it intensely from the first procession into the Sistine Chapel. It was just a coincidence that my work was cancelled on Thursday afternoon. So at 1 PM, I was in my cell staring at the Sistine Chapel stove pipe while busy writing some notes. I looked away for just a minute and when I looked back and there were puffs of white smoke billowing out of the pipe. The silence was deafening, but the bells left no doubt.

I was off by a full day. I had ascertained that the 1978 election of John Paul II took eight votes. The 2005 election of Benedict XVI took three, and the 2013 election of Francis took five. So in my mind I calculated the average of all three votes to take 5.33 voting sessions. I therefore predicted that the conclave would end in the afternoon of Friday. The longest conclave in Church history lasted 1,006 days many centuries ago. None of us has the nerve to survive such a thing. But now, a day early there it was, white smoke at 1 PM (EST). Before the new pope was even introduced to the world, I quickly telephoned our editor, Dilia, in New York. Most of us about to witness monumental events wish not to witness them alone. So while Dilia was tuned in to EWTN, I watched Fox News and we compared notes. We were both stunned to meet Cardinal Robert Prevost, a native of Chicago, who was presented to the world as Pope Leo XIV. I imagine that every reporter on earth scrambled to discover what they could about the relative unknown.

Pundits immediately compared him to the late Pope Francis, claiming that they shared the same worldview and progressive mindset. There might even be some truth to that. We will all find out going forward. But what my eyes saw there on that balcony told a very different story. There, standing before the world, was an obviously humble man overwhelmed by the roaring crowds of Saint Peter’s Square. The roaring crowd was evidence of something in its own right. There were thousands of young men and women shouting in triumph in support not only of this man, but of this moment. When did we become, seemingly overnight, a Church filled with young and vibrant true believers?

I was struck by the presentation of Pope Leo XIV. Unlike his predecessor he chose to be bedecked in all the traditional garb of the Roman Pontiff. That is a sign, read with a bullhorn of what we may expect from this pope. These signs and wonders were all of his personal choice. So was the papal name he chose. It was that alone which filled me with hope.

We have a lot yet to learn about Pope Leo XIV. His chosen namesake, Pope Leo XIII who reigned from 1878 to 1903, can tell us volumes about the nature and person of the man who now occupies the Chair of Peter. The pontificate of Pope Leo XIII began the modern age of Roman Catholicism. He was known as “a social justice warrior,” a title that may bring shivers to some. But theologically, and in affairs of the Church and our life of faith, that Leo was certainly no liberal. His letters echoed the emphases of Pius IX Syllabus of Errors, and he endorsed the stance about concience, worship, and separation of Church and State by Pope Gregory XVI. Pope Leo XIII wrote the encyclical letters, Aeterni Patris (Eternal Father) which urged a revival of the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas as the basis of political and social renewal. Pope Leo was also the author of the encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which advocated for just wages earning him the title of “The Worker’s Pope.”

It seems that Leo XIV sees the Church and the world, at least in part, through the eyes of Leo XIII. And they were eyes never deluded about the true nature of this world and the Church which works for salvation within it.

I was thrilled by this knowledge. Pope Leo XIII and I shared a common vision about this world and the dangers it poses for the Church. After a night of terror, Pope Leo XIII wrote the following prayer, which I can only hope will also be prayed by his successor and namesake. We must also pray that prayer for him:

Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel by Pope Leo XIII

O Glorious Prince of the heavenly host, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle and in the terrible warfare that we are waging against the principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil spirits. Come to the aid of man, whom Almighty God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of Satan.

Fight this day the battle of the Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in Heaven.  That cruel, ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold, this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay and cast into eternal perdition souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  This wicked dragon pours out, as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.

These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions.  In the Holy Place itself, where the See of Holy Peter and the Chair of Truth has been set up as the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.

Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious power of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly find mercy in the sight of the Lord; and vanquishing the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV has an immense task before him. Let us pave that way with the support of our prayers and good intentions.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading this post. You can help stem the tide of misinformation by sharing it. We can no longer share to Facebook, but you can do so in our stead. You may also follow Beyond These Stone Walls on X and at gloria.tv.

You may also like these related posts:

Saint Michael the Archangel Contends with Satan Still

Conclave: Amid the Wind and the Waves, a Successor of Peter

Cardinal George Pell’s Last Gift to the Church

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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