From Dorothy Rabinowitz: ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth’

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist inspired poetic justice for a wrongly imprisoned priest with some obscure poetry that left a giant footprint on world history.

November 8, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Introductory Note: A few years ago I wrote a post to honor Veterans Day, and have reposted a link to it each year near November 11. History is important and if we ignore it we end up repeating it. In the photo above, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in 1941 to discuss a possible American entry into World War II after the Nazi invasion of Europe cast the entire free world into darkness. Strangely, their final decision was prompted by their trading two obscure poems each delivering to the other a message about vital events in history. Winston Churchill’s message to FDR was a pivotal moment. It was recently sent to me by Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz who inspired hope for me in the tyranny of darkness I faced. This is that remarkable story.

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As most readers know, I work in a library and though it is technically a law library it still gives me access to a world of books. Some of what is available there is not very helpful and not exactly literary but I still try to keep classic literature from being discarded to make room for the junk that too many prisoners want to read, such as graphic novels and comic books. Graphic novels fly off the shelves while Les Miserables collects dust.

The library has a fairly large poetry section, but what most prisoners are looking for is not Robert Frost or T.S. Elliot. They scour the shelves for snippets of love poems to plagiarize for their letters to girlfriends, both real and imagined. Longfellow languishes on the shelf while Cowboy Love Poetry blazes happy trails through the prison mail room.

I had also been scouring the poetry section. After the struggle described in some of our posts — such as “Dying in Prison in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State” — I received one day a surprising message from Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal with the subject, “Thoughts Between Deadlines.” It set me on a course of self-assessment in the face of struggle when she wrote:

“Do you have access to Google for information seeking? This isn’t the kind of information that moves legal proceedings, but it is a great source of empowerment nonetheless. I would ask you to look up just the line, ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.’ It should bring up the poem, written by the Victorian poet, Arthur Clough, who never wrote anything in the least memorable, except this one whose powers were such that, a hundred years after it was written, Winston Churchill sent it to Franklin Roosevelt.”

With this, Dorothy Rabinowitz certainly had my rapt attention pushing all the buttons — history, literature, and irony — that would draw me into a course of discovery. Between 2005 and 2022, The Wall Street Journal published a series of four major articles about my struggle culminating in the most recent, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.”

In all that time, Dorothy maintained a rather stolid interest, more inclined to uncover and report the facts of a difficult and nebulous story than its implications far beyond just me. In all these years, this message from her was the first contact that went to my struggle for justice and not just the discernment of facts.

With no access to Google or the internet, it took a few days for Dorothy’s message to get to me along with the results of the search she recommended. By telephone, I asked a friend to conduct the search that Dorothy recommended. To my surprise it took us to a remarkable but obscure poem, and I will get back to that in a moment. But first, the remainder of Dorothy’s equally remarkable message:

“The year was 1941. The English stood alone. America was not yet at war, but FDR was doing all within his power to get aid to them. The world faced a Europe overrun with triumphant Nazi troops. FDR had just won his fourth term and sent his new personal ally, the very Republican he had defeated — a heroic internationalist, Wendell Wilkie, who had been the standard bearer for an entirely isolationist Republican party — with a personal message of support to Churchill.”

There is more to the message, which I will get back to in a moment, but what made it so fascinating for me was my admiration for both Churchill and FDR. By 1940, Nazi Germany under Hitler occupied Poland, France and much of Europe with terrifying speed while America slept. The Battle of Britain (a very fine historical film) made clear that Hitler could not defeat the British air and naval forces under Churchill. Back to that in a moment as well.

Readers may have heard or read recent articles about newly discovered information about Pope Pius XII and the Vatican during the Nazi terror in Europe in the 1940s. A lot of ink has been spilled suggesting that Pope Pius was “Hitler’s Pope.” It was a slur derived from commentary about his reticence to publicly condemn Hitler and the Nazi Party during the war. The new information recently divulged centered on an archbishop advising Pope Pius who became concerned that Germany was going to win this war and a slaughter would ensue. It could have been the end of the Catholic Church. So with Nazi troops on his doorstep, and the rest of Europe under siege, Pope Pius became extremely cautious. The Catholic bishops of Holland issued a public statement in German condemning the Nazi deportation of Jews who had become Catholics to Auschwitz and other death camps. In retaliation, the Nazis raided convents and monasteries in Holland arresting anyone with Jewish roots. One result was the execution of Edith Stein who is now revered as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. This is a story I told in “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.”

Poetic Justice

The origin of the term, “Poetic Justice” has been difficult to nail down. It appears to have been first used in the Sixth Century B.C. in reference to the Greek poet, Ibycus. His works were collected in seven books, of which only fragments survive. The manner of his death created a legend. Dying from an assault by robbers, the legend held, Ibycus called on a passing flock of cranes to avenge him. Near Corinth, one of the robbers saw the flock of cranes and cried out, “Behold the avengers of Ibycus!” His cry betrayed him and the cranes devoured him, a death described as “poetic justice.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz sent me the most stunning example of poetic justice in the modern era. Fears of Nazi domination of the Atlantic made it easier for Franklin Roosevelt to defy the American isolationists by increasing aid to Britain. When the U.K. depleted its financial reserves, FDR replaced them with U.S. funding for arms production. Under the “Lend-Lease” act of 1941, there were no terms for payback. Dorothy continued in her message:

“FDR’s message to Churchill included the Longfellow poem that ended, ‘Sail on, Sail on, O Union strong and great — humanity with all its hopes and fears is resting on thy fate.”

This, of course, sent me on a hunt for its source. I found it in a collection of poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow entitled, “The Building of a Ship” published in 1850. Remember that both FDR and Churchill had come to the realization that England alone held the fragile line against German invasion and global tyranny. Its collapse seemed just a matter of time. This epic poem sent by FDR to Churchill nearly a century after it was written concluded,

“Then too, sail on O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, are all with thee.”

I can readily see why FDR sent this to Churchill along with his diplomatic message about US funding for arms production. The demonic shroud of darkness that Hitler cast over all of Europe 83 years ago placed the rest of the world in a state of hopeless terror. Dorothy’s message to me continued:

“Churchill had no trouble grasping the importance of the pledge in this American poem, and recited it in a 1941 address to Parliament. As a return message, he sent to FDR the British poem I am writing to you about. You will see why I thought of you when I read it. Read it in the face of all the silences and rejections of appeals to justice that you have seen.”

Dorothy’s message was printed and snail-mailed to me. As soon as I received it, I called a friend to search for the poem she refers to. Its author is the British poet, Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861). Educated at Oxford, he became a tutor there during the Oxford Movement. Also called “Tractarianism,” one of the chief leaders of the Oxford Movement was Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman. Newman and the other adherents of the movement challenged a common view that the English Reformation constituted a complete break between Rome and the Church of England. The movement began in 1833 when the British government abolished ten bishoprics in Ireland. The Oxford Movement’s adherents warned that the Church of England was abandoning the principles of the 16th Century Reformers by allowing the Church of England to be dominated by secular authorities.

The Oxford Movement proposed that the Church of England could be saved from secularism only through a return to its Catholic origins. This became wildly controversial in the Church of England when Cardinal Newman published “Tract 90” in 1841 in which he attempted to prove that the Anglican 39 Articles of Religion were not inconsistent with Roman Catholic teaching. As a consequence of the Oxford Movement being suppressed, several hundred English clergy left the Church of England to become Roman Catholic, including Cardinal Newman himself. It was at this time that Arthur Hugh Clough left Oxford in protest against the Church of England’s 39 Articles of Religion, a struggle that informed his poetry.

Background (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in her message to me, Arthur Clough wrote little that was memorable except this one poem, “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.” A century after its writing, it had an oversized footprint on history. Here is the entire poem sent from Churchill to FDR:

Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.

Clough’s beautiful poem is a testament to the notion that whatever struggle we must take up and endure in this life, the struggle itself is worthy, even when what we fight against is unjust and impenetrable. This is sometimes difficult to see and accept, but what sort of person would I be if I did not struggle against injustice not only against me, but for all priests falsely accused for financial gain? Margaret Drabble, a poetry critic at Literary Hub wrote of the poem:

“This poem by Arthur Hugh Clough unfailingly brings tears to my eyes. It speaks of hope, and effort, and disappointment, and perseverance... The imagery is profoundly beautiful, and reminds me of the great beaches of my childhood, of Wordsworth’s immortal shore. I can feel those ‘tired waves, vainly breaking,’ and then the flooding fullness of the sea.”

Dorothy also described the poem in her message:

“Clough was unspecific in the references. There are references to military battles, but they are clearly only metaphors. Its imperishable eloquence is exactly the kind that fires resolve to win in the end, which I depend on, which we must all depend on. Read it, and let me know you found it.”

So, Dorothy, as you can see, I found it! “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth” is now enshrined on my cell wall. As you have suggested, I read it in the face of all the silences and rejections of appeals to justice that I have seen. It is a vivid reminder, as it was for Churchill and FDR, that some struggles are much bigger than their mere protagonists. This struck home for me when a prominent writer — an author and Catholic deacon in Pennsylvania where the priesthood and Church have been much maligned of late — published this review of Beyond These Stone Walls:

“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, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

— Deacon David Jones

With that, Dorothy, I stopped being a victim of this struggle and became a warrior.

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Note From Father Gordon MacRae: Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, so, for America, the struggle was availeth after all.

Please share this post. Please watch and listen to Dorothy Rabinowitz in a five-minute WSJ interview on this story.

You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes and The New York Times

Catholic Scandal and The Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic

November 11 is Veterans Day, a day set aside to remember all those who bravely risked much to win and defend our freedoms. Please honor them with me by sharing my post, “Veterans Day: War and Remembrance and the Cost of Freedom.”

May the Lord Bless you and keep you.

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.”

Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell

Paul Haring | CNS

In strange ways, injustices I have known as a prisoner and a priest intersected the lives of Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell who died just ten days apart.

February 8 , 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Pope Benedict XVI passed from this life at age 95 on the final day of 2022. Ten days later, Cardinal George Pell died of cardiac arrest at age 81 while recovering from routine surgery at a hospital in Rome. Both of these men were giants in the Church as the many tributes to them from around the world make clear. They were also targets for much vitriol and injustice. It was in this targeted injustice that my path crossed with that of both men.

In “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae,” a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by famed Boston criminal defense and civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, he cited a ground-breaking book by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board entitled, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusations, False Witness, and Other, Terrors of Our Time. Ms. Rabinowitz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of writings about unjust sex abuse prosecutions that generated a spate of wrongful convictions of innocent people in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of her subjects in the book and subsequent writings spent decades in prison. I am one of them.

One of the tragically misguided prosecutions cited in the book is that of Margaret Kelly Michaels, then a 24-year-old nursery school teacher in New Jersey. Charged with multiple counts of child molestation in a witch hunt atmosphere, Kelly was innocent of the heinous crimes, none of which actually took place. The charges were fantastical and false, but the child abuse terror of the time resulted in easy convictions with no valid evidence.

The nature of the evidence in Kelly’s case was chilling. The prosecution’s child psych expert — who had no real expertise at all — fashioned a theory that young children who say that no sexual abuse happened actually mean the opposite. A vigilante jury bought that theory and convicted Kelly Michaels. At age 24, she was sentenced to 47 years in prison.

After failed appeals having nothing whatsoever to do with truth or justice, Kelly’s fate seemed sealed in wrongful imprisonment until Dorothy Rabinowitz began writing about it. Then New York civil rights attorney Morton Stavis came out of retirement to take the case pro bono. In her book, Ms. Rabinowitz revealed that Mr. Stavis sought the aid of a New York-based left-leaning legal think tank, the Center for Constitutional Rights that he himself founded. The CCR wanted nothing to do with this case. As Ms. Rabinowitz explained:

“Arguing for due process on behalf of a person charged with child sex abuse violated the politically progressive views held by many at the center. In the 1980s, as today, there was a school of advanced political opinion of the view that to take up for those falsely accused of sex abuse was to undermine the battle against child abuse. It was to betray children and other victims of sexual predators.”

No Crueler Tyrannies, 17-18

The charges against me stem from the same time period, filtered through the same progressive political opinions, and hyped by the same prosecutorial mindset that to be accused of such things is to be guilty. It is the cruelest of tyrannies that even our Catholic bishops have cowed in fear under that progressive steamroller as priests so accused are discarded without defense. This was articulated in my recent post, “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”

The heroic attorney Morton Stavis was not defeated by the progressive disdain for his effort from his own tribe at the Center for Constitutional Rights. He did not live to see his victory in this case, but he had put together a small team of righteous defenders who eventually prevailed by exposing the truth and winning Kelly’s freedom. One of these defenders was Robert Rosenthal whose prior legal briefs on my behalf are still on display at the National Center for Reason and Justice.

Kelly Michaels went on in life to marry a judge. She eventually recovered — to the extent one can — from the tyranny of wrongful imprisonment. She has corresponded with me in freedom, imparting as much hope for justice as she can by urging me to never give up. I haven’t, but I will be 70 on my next birthday and like Job, I know that my Redeemer lives (Job 19:25).

Vincenzo Pinto | AFP

Benedict’s “Crimes against Humanity”

However, reading Dorothy’s book was unfortunately not my final encounter with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Clinging to the progressive view that to be accused of sexual abuse is to be guilty, the Center for Constitutional Rights allowed itself to be duped and used by SNAP, the activist group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. I wrote a post some time ago that seemed to mark the beginning of the end of this organization's campaign to destroy any due process for Catholic priests. The post was, “David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

Prior to writing that post, David Clohessy and SNAP manipulated the Center for Constitutional Rights into bringing a “crimes against humanity” charge against Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican at the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands. It was a shameless publicity stunt that had no hope of success, but was filed only to shame Pope Benedict and bring attention to SNAP.

Though I was aware of the charge, it was only after the International Criminal Court dismissed it that I learned that I was an unwitting pawn in this debacle. Journalist Joann Wypijewski, a reporter of courage and high integrity, wrote of it in her blistering review of the movie “Spotlight,” a film about The Boston Globe Spotlight Team coverage of the sexual abuse scandal. The following is an excerpt of her bold article, “Spotlight Oscar Hangover: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film”:

“The film’s advertisement for SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, faithfully represents the Globe’s affiliation. It elides SNAP’s belief that wrongful prosecutions are a minor price to pay in pursuit of its larger mission, something [The Boston Globe] did not much concern itself with either as it collected its Pulitzer for service in the public interest; something even the Center for Constitutional Rights disregarded in 2011 when it joined with SNAP to file a grotesque brief to the International Criminal Court demanding ‘investigation and prosecution’ of the Vatican for crimes against humanity.

“Liberals who cheer this sort of thing ought to ponder whether they have any principles at all ... . The CCR brief failed ... but to CCR’s shame, Father MacRae is specifically mentioned in that brief, with respect to allegations of videotape (that is, child porn), which prosecutors threw in at sentencing but for which there is no evidence according to the lead detective in the case cited by [Dorothy] Rabinowitz.”

I was frozen in place by grief upon first learning of this. I knew that the charge had no substance. I also knew that in her WSJ investigation, Dorothy Rabinowitz confronted NH Detective James McLaughlin who first contrived the charge. Cornered, he finally admitted, “There was never any evidence of pornography.”

This did not stop SNAP and CCR from including it in a falsified brief before the International Criminal Court. There was no repercussion for the attempt at fraud upon the court. Even now, as recently as a few months ago, biased NH reporter Damien Fisher— whose wife Catholic blogger Simcha Fisher has ties to my diocese — repeated the pornography allegation without even mentioning that it had been widely discredited, including by the dishonest detective who first raised it.

All the claims that Pope Benedict XVI enabled accused priests and failed to protect victims are of a kind with the above story. In the end, it was never any of this that really made him a target. It was his orthodoxy, his fidelity, his clear-minded exposure of Catholic truths. None of this could ever successfully be assailed, so instead they smeared him with a weapon straight from hell: false witness. Let that sink in.

The Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell

In the same manner that Kelly Michaels reached out to me upon her exoneration, it was because I had been so falsely accused that I reached out to Cardinal George Pell during his 400 days of unjust imprisonment. Having come to recognize signposts of dishonesty in such a case, I was certain that Cardinal Pell had been falsely accused. But because of prison rules barring direct contact with other prisoners, I could not contact in prison directly.

A friend, Sheryl Collmer, a Tyler, Texas writer for Crisis Magazine and other venues, was my intermediary. I know that pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but in this case it was perhaps a bit less deadly. There have been few really proud moments during my imprisonment, but my ability to detect and expose the truth in support of Cardinal Pell was one of them.

As a result, I found this excerpt in his published Prison Journal Volume 2 (Ignatius Press 2021). It was written from his prison cell:

“Friday, 2 August 2019: By a coincidence, today I received from Sheryl Collmer, a regular correspondent from Texas, a copy of the 15 May 2019 post on the blog, Beyond These Stone Walls, written by Fr Gordon MacRae. The article was entitled, ‘Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?’

“Fr MacRae was convicted on 23 September 1994 of paedophilia and sentenced to sixty-seven years in a New Hampshire prison for crimes allegedly committed around fifteen to twenty years previously. The allegations had no supporting evidence and no corroboration.

“It is one thing to be jailed for five months. It would be quite another step up, which I would not relish, to spend another three years if my appeal were unsuccessful. But we enter another world with a life sentence. Australia is not New Hampshire, and I don’t believe all the Australia media would blackball the discussion of a case such as MacRae’s.

“The late Cardinal Avery Dulles, whom I admired personally and as a theologian, encouraged Fr MacRae to continue writing from jail, stating, ‘Someday, your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and be instrumental in a reform.’

“Fr MacRae recounts extraordinary similarities between the accusations I faced and the accusations of Billy Doe in Philadelphia, which were published in Australia in 2011 in the magazine, Rolling Stone. Earlier this year, Keith Windshuttle, editor of the quality journal Quadrant, publicized the seven points of similarity, pointing out that ‘there are far too many similarities in the stories for them to be explained by coincidence.’ (See Keith Windshuttle, ‘The Borrowed Testimony that Convicted George Pell,’ Quadrant, 8 April 2019).

“The author of the 2011 Rolling Stone article was Sabrina Rubin Erdely, no longer a journalist, disgraced and discredited. In 2014 she had written, and provoked a storm which reached Obama's White House, about ‘Jackie’ at the University of Virginia, who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity party in 2012 by seven men.

“As Fr MacRae points out, ‘The story was accepted as gospel truth once it appeared in print.’ [Note: Rolling Stone later retracted the article in 2015] . Jackie’s account turned out to be a massive lie. A civil trial for defamation followed; the seven students were awarded $7.5 million in damages by the jury; and Rolling Stone was found guilty of negligence and defamation.

“The allegations behind the 2011 Rolling Stone article, published in Australia, have also been demolished as false by, among others, Ralph Cipriano’s ‘The Legacy of Billy Doe’ published in the Catalyst of the Catholic League in January-February 2019. No one realized in 2015, when the allegations against me were first made to police, that the model for copycat allegations, or the innocent basis for the remarkable similarities, was also a fantasy or a fiction.

“I am grateful to Fr MacRae for taking up my cause, as I am to many others. These include in North America George Weigel and Fr Raymond de Souza and here in Australia Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Gerard Henderson, Fr Frank Brennan, and others behind the scenes.

“I will conclude, not with a prayer, but with Fr MacRae’s opening quotation from Baron de Montesquieu (1742) [from the BTSW About Page], ‘There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice]’”

Addendum

You may see — from Cardinal Pell’s last citation above — where Dorothy Rabinowitz got the inspiration for the title of her book, No Crueler Tyrannies. Once free from his wrongful prison sentence, Cardinal Pell was restored to his rightful position in Rome. From there, he reached out to me again in ways that I only learned about posthumously. He wrote to a mutual friend that he plans to refer to my situation in talks he is slated to present in Rome and Australia. He never got to present them.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, “Cardinal George Pell Faced Down a Hostile World” (January 13, 2023), Fr Raymond de Souza wrote that “His faith even during wrongful detention, was the crown of an inspiring Catholic life.” Reading his Prison Journal, I have no doubt been so inspired.

It is my prayer, and perhaps not even a necessary one, that Pope Benedict and Cardinal Pell both now stand in the Presence of God where they behold the fruition of all the graces bestowed upon them, and hopefully now upon us through them. We have not heard the last of them.

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Note from Fr. Gordon Mac Rae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also wish to visit these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell

The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

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Francesco Sforza | Osservatore Romano | AFP

One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanow. The site has a real-time live feed of its Adoration Chapel with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. We invite you to spend some time before the Lord in a place that holds great spiritual meaning for us.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”