“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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 5/1/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 5/1/24

After Eight Years in Exile Fr William Graham Is Credibly Innocent

Fr William Graham of the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota was falsely accused and cast out in 2016 after his bishop deemed a nearly 40-year-old claim to be “credible.”

Fr William Graham of the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota was falsely accused and cast out in 2016 after his bishop deemed a nearly 40-year-old claim to be “credible.”

May 1, 2024 by Fr William Graham with an Introduction by Fr Gordon MacRae.

“Now have salvation and power come … for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accused them day and night before God. They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”

— Revelation 12:10-11

From Fr Gordon MacRae: Some of our readers might have passed over my recent post, “Pop Stars and Priests: Michael Jackson and the Credible Standard.” Much more than the strange story of Michael Jackson, that post was really about the much stranger story of Catholic priests falsely accused. Commenter James Anderson wrote of it, “This article is the best ever on your false conviction.” The matter of falsely accused Catholic priests has received some increased attention of late, but not nearly enough to counter the vast media bias that grew and festered through news of the scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood since the moral panic of 2002.

In my post linked above, I wrote of a development in my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire. A press release from the diocese has indicated that more names of long deceased priests have been added to a published list of the merely accused. The previous standard of “credibly accused” has now evolved to include everyone accused with no apparent investigation whatsoever. We published about the grave injustice posed by this practice in another post, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.”

Also in recent years, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has published a good deal about the rights of priests and why those rights must be defended within the Church. Another excellent source of commentary built upon justice is The Media Report hosted by writer David F. Pierre, Jr. Back in 2019, he sent a title and link into our Inbox: Two Falsely Accused Priests Fight Back and Win! In the matter of one priest in the Diocese of Duluth, MN, Dave Pierre summarized a development that caught my attention back then:

We are pleased to report that a Minnesota appeals court recently upheld a $13,500 jury award to Rev. William C. Graham after the jury found that an accuser had falsely accused him.

As we reported last year, the accuser was represented by the notorious law firm of J eff Anderson, and Anderson's sleazy lawyer, Mike Finnegan, lied to the media that there was somehow a "split verdict" in the jury's decision.

But a woman on the jury wrote a letter blasting Finnegan's characterization of the verdict and added that there was "no proof" that any abuse occurred. Good for her.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new trend. When folks lie to courts claiming they were abused by priests, the priests should countersue, naming names. Justice demands it.

The slowly evolving matter of justice for Father William Graham finally came to a conclusion just days ago when Father Graham’s removal from ministry was overturned by the Vatican for lack of any credible evidence. Father Graham has been restored as pastor to the very parish from which he was removed unjustly eight years ago, and exiled from any priestly ministry, barred from even identifying himself as a priest. It comes as a great and triumphant irony that Father William Graham is now restored as pastor of Saint Michael the Archangel Parish, a parish named to honor the Patron Saint of Justice. Here is Father Graham’s first homily upon his return sent to me just days ago.

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Father William Graham on the Road to Emmaus

Well, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted ... Thank you. I’ve been working on that line for the last 95 months.

The old gospel hymn describes what I see here today: “When all God’s children get together, what a time, what a time, what a time!” And what a wonderful sight this is to me: all of us together again around book and table, thanking God for the gift of Christ, remembering and celebrating that the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. Vatican II teaches us that: “the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the Paschal Mystery: reading those things ‘which were in all the scriptures concerning Him’ (Luke 24:27), celebrating the Eucharist in which ‘the victory and triumph of His death are again made present,’ and at the same time giving thanks ‘to God for His unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. 9:15) in Christ Jesus, ‘in praise of His glory’ (Eph. 1:12), through the power of the Holy Spirit. To accomplish so great a work, Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations.’

We are much like those disciples who, on the road to Emmaus, met Jesus. He was made known to them as He is made known to us: in the telling of the stories and in the breaking of the bread. Those disciples shared the agony of the passion and death of Jesus. We, too, have suffered as the Body of Christ, broken, but called to new life and renewed hope.

You and I have been through a terrible, traumatizing experience. I was falsely accused and denied both justice and mercy by our local Church. A number of folks have asked why I didn’t just quit and go away. That is not how justice is accomplished; it is not how we seek the Truth, who is Christ, and who will set us free. Doing the right thing is a demanding task. You know that. I have found the path to justice exhausting and worrisome and, let me say, very, very, very expensive. All that we have is our human dignity, and it is our obligation to assert and defend that dignity as we seek the face of God. Pope St. Leo the Great told us of that duty of ours when he said in the fifth century, “Christian: remember your dignity!”

I am deeply sorry that the pursuit of justice was so long and difficult for you here, and for me, and for all who were involved. Those who stood for justice will enjoy what the psalmist promises, that the Lord does wonders for his faithful ones, and hears us when we call upon him. Further, the light of the Lord will shine on us, and he will put gladness into our hearts (Psalm 4).

The Vatican official who made the last determination of my case spoke out on March 25. He is Archbishop Charles Scicluna, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. He told Vatican Media that “The pope very often repeats this phrase: ‘When one of us suffers, we all suffer.’” Scicluna added, “If there is this attitude of solidarity, if there is the thirst for justice of which Jesus speaks, but also the will to do good, then the law becomes a living instrument, otherwise, like all laws, it could remain a dead letter.”

I am grateful for the Church’s laws and courts. I received no justice, no comfort and no word of mercy from the Diocese of Duluth during my long ordeal, and often told the bishop, and the previous bishop, that Psalm 31 speaks to my pain: “I am like a dead man, forgotten, like a thing thrown away.”

Pope Paul VI told us that if we want peace, we must work for justice. We who seek Christ among us must understand that justice is the first virtue of both Church and civilization. Without justice, we have no future or no hope. I am grateful to the Vatican, my legal team, my family and friends, and many of the members of this parish, and many former members, who insisted that justice be done. We cannot walk away from injustice and hope that the universe will fix it. Our mission is to build the Reign of God among us; we cannot do so if we ignore the demands of justice. Justice is first and obligatory; we are bound to seek justice; we are called to do charity. Jesus Himself tells us in today’s Gospel passage why we pursue justice, no matter the cost. Remember that the two disciples who had encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus were telling the others about their experience. “While they were still speaking about this, [Jesus] stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” They were terrified, thinking He was a ghost. When they recognized Jesus, He ate with them, and said:

“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name to all the nations,
beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”

Christ “claims dominion over all creation,
that He may present to [the] almighty Father,
an eternal and universal kingdom:
a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace.”
— Preface of Christ the King

We, you and I, are called to be men and women of peace, in imitation of Jesus, with whom we are on the road, and whose Spirit gathers us to Himself. Here at St. Michael’s, our immediate task will be to pray together and listen to each other with the ears of our hearts. After that, we will ask each other, Where do we go from here? We can’t have a plan or an agenda yet, but we will move to healing and peace, reconciliation, cooperation with grace, “Proclaiming the Gospel in Word, Sacrament, and Service” (Parish Mission Statement 2015).

I have heard that some say that this is a time for mourning, or grief or grieving. I do not say that. I say that this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it.

May The One who began this good work in us bring it to completion in the day of Our Lord Jesus Christ!

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

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write on the Ground?

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

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.”

Frank X. Panico 6/21/23 Frank X. Panico 6/21/23

Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam

Frank X. Panico and Xs in the Sky Films present “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam,” a film about a Catholic priest falsely accused and imprisoned for life.

Frank X. Panico and Xs in the Sky Films present “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam,” a film about a Catholic priest falsely accused and imprisoned for life.

June 21, 2023 by Frank X. Panico and Xs in the Sky Films

Editor’s Note: This is our first “video post” at Beyond These Stone Walls. This 44-minute documentary film was created by Frank X. Panico, an award-winning short filmmaker whose work has been featured on EWTN, NewsMax, Salem Now and multiple other venues. Here is Frank X. Panico:

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“Take no part in unfruitful works of darkness, but expose them.”

— Ephesians 5:11

I created this short documentary film because I believe that railroading, convicting and imprisoning a Catholic priest through lies and deceitful tactics is an unfruitful work of darkness. The railroaded Catholic priest I refer to is Father Gordon MacRae. This documentary film is entitled “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam.” It exposes the plight of a man of God wrongfully imprisoned.

When I learned of this true story, it drew me in. I have known Fr Gordon MacRae for less than a year, but after researching this story I feel that I have known him forever. I have studied every detail, and I have never personally vetted a subject of my films so extensively. There were many credible sources before me: The Wall Street Journal, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, The Media Report, The Catholic World Report, all bravely taking up the case of this wrongfully imprisoned priest against an avaricious tide of Catholic scandal and media coverage.

During production of this film, I often felt as though unseen spiritual warfare was in play. The evil one and his minions would have liked nothing more than for me to abandon this cause. I rejected such thoughts and came to know the truth. Father MacRae is an innocent man and the victim of a sham trial. I felt called to help someone who was absolutely falsely accused through a rogue communist-like legal system.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not the only reason I produced this film. I also found its subject matter to be intriguing and marketable. Not long after Tucker Carlson aired footage from the January 6th affair, an innocent prisoner caught in its net was released from prison just days later. I pray for the same result that this innocent man might be freed.

I am immensely pleased with the documentary, “Convicted for Cash.” Salem Now has picked it up so obviously they were pleased with it as well. As a daily communicant, I continue to pray at Mass for the well being and release of Fr. Gordon MacRae, a brother in Christ. Please view and then share Convicted for Cash by clicking on the link or the image below.

The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz on the Father MacRae case

NOTE — NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE: In 2022, after Father MacRae had served 29 years in prison, compelling exculpatory evidence surfaced. It turns out that former Keene, NH sex-crimes Detective James F. McLaughlin was censured for “falsification of records” in another case nine years before MacRae went to trial. Previous Supreme Court rulings required that this be revealed to defendant MacRae and his legal counsel before trial. Instead, it was kept hidden. Since then, a Court has secretly sealed McLaughlin’s police file from further discovery. Nonetheless, news reports in New Hampshire reveal that the detective had a long history of police misconduct including allegations of falsifying evidence, threatening witnesses, tampering with tape recordings, selective investigation, and lying under oath. He briefly appeared on a list of dishonest police that is now also under judicial seal in New Hampshire.

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

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/26/23 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/26/23

Follow the Money: Another Sinister Sex Abuse Grand Jury Report

Targeting Holy Week and Easter, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released a grand jury report on unproven decades-old claims of abuse by Catholic priests.

**OSV News photo/George P. Matysek Jr., Catholic Review**

Targeting Holy Week and Easter, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released a grand jury report on unproven decades-old claims of abuse by Catholic priests.

April 26, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

In Baltimore, Maryland, excluding the rest of the state, there were 1,018 victims of gun violence in 2022. Of that number, 338 are classified as homicides in Baltimore City alone. There have been 80 additional homicides in the first three months of 2023. The State of Maryland currently has 74 unsolved cold case homicides. And yet, the Maryland Attorney General invested vast resources in a grand jury report released this year just as Catholics the world over prepared to honor Holy Week and Easter. The Wall Street Journal carried the story on Holy Thursday by journalists Scott Calvert and Jon Kamp headlined: “Baltimore Archdiocese Long Allowed Abuse of Children, AG’s Report Says.” The article opened with a paragraph now painfully familiar to U.S. Catholics:

“BALTIMORE — Scores of priests and other people affiliated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused hundreds of children over more than 60 years, and church officials often protected the perpetrators while keeping their crimes a secret, Maryland’s attorney general said in a new report.”

News coverage of the recent grand jury indictment of former President Donald Trump by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg has illuminated the grand jury process with lots of commentary by legal minds. You have likely heard it said that “a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich.” It means that a grand jury is an entirely one-sided prosecutorial affair. There is no cross-examination of witnesses, no testimony from the accused, often even no testimony from an accuser, and no defense of any kind. If the legal process stops there, as it did in the Maryland Grand Jury Report, accusations alone are the end of the road. Due process of law and the Bill of Rights are rescinded.

The WSJ article went on to point out that of the 156 alleged priestly perpetrators whose names came before this grand jury with accusations dating back to 1940, no one was indicted. Most of the subjects of the report are either long ago deceased or the statute of limitations has long since expired for any legitimate legal prosecution. Anyone who would dismiss this as “just a legal loophole” does not understand the U.S. justice system at all. These rules of due process were not adopted by the Founders to inhibit justice, but to protect it. Some allegations in the report stretch back more than 70 years with not a single claim that is less than two decades old. The report makes no effort to distinguish between allegation and proven conviction.

The WSJ article eventually got to the real agenda behind this story. On the same day the report was released, the Maryland legislature passed a bill that, if signed into law, will eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims — not for criminal prosecutions, but solely for civil claims to result in deep-pocket lawsuits for monetary settlements. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has orchestrated a great gift to the state’s tort lawyers each of whom will now stand to amass upwards of forty percent of every settlement or jury award. This is not about real abuse or real victims of abuse.

The legislation caps settlements or damage awards for private institutions at $1.5 million per claim. A lawyer who extorts such settlements could pocket up to $600,000 for each claim filed from hereon. Public institutions — such as public schools which receive a vastly larger number of abuse claims — are typically exempt from such legislation. The bill’s foremost target is the Catholic Church, an unjust reality that I once wrote about in a centerpiece article for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, entitled, “Due Process for Accused Priests” (July/August 2009).

How an Attorney General Becomes a Governor

The Maryland Grand Jury Report is a mirror image of a similar report published in 2018 by then Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro who, in 2022, was predictably elected Governor. I wrote of that report and its shocking historical precedent in, “Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Joseph Goebbels in ‘The Reckoning.’”

After its initial shock value, and after its political rewards were reaped, the 2019 Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report was widely exposed as a slanted and deeply unjust application of law. I expect the same will follow closer examination of the Maryland report. One journalist who has dismantled the credibility of the former is David F. Pierre, Jr., moderator of The Media Report and the author of four published books on the sexual abuse narrative in the Catholic Church. His most recent, The Greatest Fraud Never Told, is subtitled, False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church. Here is an excerpt:

“No other episode in the Catholic Church sex abuse story has more epitomized the reality of ‘groupthink’ mentality than the Pennsylvania grand jury report.... Attorney General Josh Shapiro stood before an enormous throng of national and international media to make the incredible claim that ‘over 300 priests’ in Pennsylvania had sexually abused ‘over 1,000 children’ in the last several decades while Church officials ‘did nothing’ and ‘covered it all up’.”

— The Greatest Fraud Never Told, p. 34

Dave Pierre went on to describe how ‘every action by Shapiro was a masterful stroke of public relations media exposure to enhance his own public profile’ as he prepared to run for higher office:

“Shapiro called a local poster company to create a new, official-looking seal to be placed behind him as he broadcast his grand jury report to the world. Whereas the official seal of his office displayed ‘Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’ along the top and ‘Office of the Attorney General’ along the bottom, Shapiro not only flipped them, but replaced the words with ‘Attorney General Josh Shapiro’ so everyone across the globe could now easily see his name behind his head as he stood at the podium.”

— The Greatest Fraud Never Told, p. 34

The Democratic Party has since thrown Josh Shapiro’s name out as a potential future White House contender. In just about every jurisdiction where a similar grand jury report was constructed and released to the public slamming the Catholic Church, the exploitation of an upward political trajectory was its unstated goal. David Pierre went on in his book to ask a most important question: “Were the claims from Shapiro’s grand jury report actually true?” “In a nutshell,” he wrote, “No, not at all.” He offers a simple explanation of what a grand jury is and does:

“A ‘grand jury report’ is simply a report written by government attorneys with a predetermined outcome. The folks in the [grand jury] are merely a formality, window dressing to make the entire matter legal. The jury does not actually investigate a case, question witnesses, or scrutinize all sides of a story. It simply listens to one-sided proceedings orchestrated by prosecutors. There is no fact-checking, no cross examination, and no due process.”

— The Greatest Fraud Never Told, p. 35

How Grand Jury Reports Defeat Justice

Multiple states have had grandstanding prosecutors harboring political ambitions propelled forward with sensationalized grand jury reports that singled out the Catholic Church and priesthood as some sort of special arena of historical child sexual abuse. But as my title implies, we should follow the money for an understanding of what drives this.

New Hampshire, the state from which I write, has been no exception. In 2003, a grand jury report here caused much damage to the state of due process for priests accused when the local Catholic bishop waived the rights of all the accused without their knowledge.

But when a New Hampshire attorney general went on to apply the same to a grand jury report on a local prestigious prep school with an alumni list that looks like a Who’s Who of Washington insiders, a local judge blocked publication of that grand jury report. In so doing, the judge acknowledged that a similar grand jury report on my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, should never have been published regardless of a Bishop’s signature waiving our due process rights.

NH Superior Court Judge Richard B. McNamara explained why in his Order entitled, “Re, Grand Jury, No. 217-2018-CV-00382.” This is a story that I wrote about in a widely read 2019 post, “Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester.”

The following are pertinent excerpts from Judge McNamara’s Order:

“The grand jury is one of the oldest institutions of Anglo American law, and to some extent, one of the most problematic. The United States Supreme Court recently rejected the traditional view of the grand jury as an arm of the courts, describing it as a separate institution that has not been ‘textually assigned’ to any of the three branches of government described in the federal Constitution.
“The original purpose of the grand jury was not only to increase the number of criminal prosecutions but to enhance the King’s authority and indirectly to increase revenue for the Crown which received the property forfeited by persons accused of crimes. But by the 17th Century, English grand juries had begun to act as an institution that could shield the innocent from unfounded charges. By the time of the American Revolution, English law characterized the grand jury as one of the principal protections against arbitrary government prosecution.
“Yet by the middle of the 19th Century there was no longer a consensus regarding the value or appropriate function of the grand jury.... The late 19th Century concern that grand juries were inquisitorial procedures that pose a threat to individual liberty was reflected in language that the Constitution did not require states to institute felony prosecutions by grand jury and suggested that the earliest grand juries were little more than a mob.
“The prevailing view of the federal courts is that grand juries have no common law authority to make accusations against individuals falling short of an indictment... A grand jury report that does not result in an indictment but references supposed misconduct results in a quasi-official accusation of wrongdoing drawn from secret ex parte proceedings in which there is no opportunity available or presented for a formal defense.
“The Florida Supreme Court described a grand jury report finding a public official guilty of wrongdoing without affording him a trial as ‘not far removed from, and no less repugnant to traditions of fair play, than lynch law.’ (Report of Grand Jury, 93 So. 2d 99, 102 (Fla. 1957).
“In the public mind, accusation by report is indistinguishable from accusation by indictment and subjects those against whom it is directed to the same public condemnation ... as if they had been indicted. An indictment charges a violation of a known and certain public law, and is but the first step in a long process in which the accused may seek vindication through exercise of the right to a public trial, to a jury, to counsel, to confrontation of witnesses against him, and, if convicted, to an appeal. … A [grand jury] report, on the contrary, is at once an accusation and a final condemnation. Its potential for harm is incalculable.
“[This] Court respectfully disagrees with the [2003] decision to approve the [New Hampshire] Diocese-OAG Agreement [which] fulfilled none of the traditional purposes of the common law grand jury. Rather than investigation of crime, the report is a post hoc summary of information the grand jury considered, but did not indict on.
“Mark Twain famously said that a lie is half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In an internet age, he might have added that the lie will forever outrun the truth as search engines become ever more efficient. An allegation of wrongdoing or impropriety based upon half-truths, illegally seized evidence or rumor, innuendo or hearsay may blight an individual’s life indefinitely.
“Accordingly, the Court DENIES the Office of the Attorney General Motion. The Attorney General may not produce any report that contains any material produced to the grand jury through subpoena or testimony or that is characterized as a ‘Grand Jury Report.’”

— Presiding Justice Richard B. McNamara August 12, 2019

Just two weeks before Judge McNamara issued that Order and published it, Bishop Peter A. Libasci of the Diocese of Manchester, of his own accord, published a list of 73 priests who had been accused and condemned in the 2003 Diocese of Manchester Grand Jury Report. Most of the priests on the list were long since deceased. None of them were afforded constitutional due process. Bishop Libasci cited “transparency” as his motive for publishing this list.

The motive of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown for releasing his one-sided report as Catholics observed Holy Week and Easter seems clear. What is less clear is the legal basis for such a report and especially for widely publishing it. The Maryland Attorney General’s Grand Jury Report should be seen in light of all of the above.

A lot of people, primarily lawyers and claimants, will profit greatly from this latest official state government travesty of justice, but it should not be the basis for whether or how you exercise your faith, or your membership in this Mystical Body that we call a Church. It should also never be the source of your own determination of any priest’s guilt or innocence.

This story is, as David F. Pierre Jr. has described it, The Greatest Fraud Never Told.

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To our readers: Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. Next week at Beyond These Stone Walls it is our privilege to welcome an internationally known expert in Canon Law on due process crisis in the priesthood. It is an excellent sequel to this post.

You may also be interested in these related links that beg to be read and shared:

Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Joseph Goebbels in ‘The Reckoning’

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

The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek

And Follow David F. Pierre, Jr. at TheMediaReport.com

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

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/22/23 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/22/23

In the Live Free or Die State, Justice Has a Ray of Hope

For this wrongly convicted priest, The Wall Street Journal, The Media Report and the Catholic League have breathed new life into a dying pursuit of truth and justice.

For this wrongly convicted priest, The Wall Street Journal, the Catholic League and The Media Report have shined new life into a dying pursuit of truth and justice.

March 22, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The acclaimed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in 1953, the year I was born. “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” was one of his best-known poems. The death he railed against within it was his father’s and not his own. I, for one, have never feared death. For persons of real faith, death is not the dying of the light, but rather light’s rebirth. I have much more feared the dying of the truth. It is that alone against which I rage.

I turn 70 years old on April 9th this year. Friends in the real world tell me that 70 is the new 50 but my arthritic knee and recently dislocated shoulder do not agree. Prison is a sort of twilight zone of distorted time. I was 29 and a priest for only one year when my fictitious crimes are alleged to have taken place. I was 41 when first accused and placed on trial for them. After I three times refused to plead guilty and serve one year in prison, Judge Arthur Brennan imposed a sentence of 67 years. As it stands, I will be eligible for release at age 108.

I will not, of course, outlive this sentence. That is why my friend, Father George David Byers and I had a recent phone conversation about what happens if and when I die here. It was prompted by my ambulance ride to Concord Hospital last summer with a cardiac event that turned out to be pericarditis — inflammation of the pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. I am told by one physician that it is now a suspected side effect of the mRNA Covid vaccine.

As a child, my mother often reminded me of the necessity of always having clean underwear lest I am run over by a car and my family might be embarrassed. The cardiac event was not really scary so much as inconvenient. What passed through my mind while chained up in the back of that ambulance was how much I had yet to do, how much I had yet to write, and how unprepared I am for death because the truth may die with me. I never even gave a thought to my underwear. Sorry, Mom.

A part of my concern, and that of Father Byers, is one of the other heartaches of life in this prison. I have no access to the Sacraments, and neither does anyone else here. The private Mass in my cell late on Sunday nights is the only Mass offered here for at least the last three years. A Capuchin priest who voluntarily came here for Mass for over 25 years died in 2019. A priest from the Portland, Maine diocese used to come here monthly to visit me and hear my confession. Then all visits were shut down for two years due to Covid. I just learned that he died in 2021. He was my age.

In the annals of both Church and State, this all sounds horrible, I know, but it does have some ironic moments. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu was interviewed on FOX News last month. The rumor is that he might be preparing a run for the White House. He made a big deal about being governor of a State whose motto is “Live Free or Die.” Ironically, my ambulance ride took place just days after Charlene Duline published her feisty article about me titled, “Dying in Prison in the Live Free or Die State.”

But death was not meant to be for me that night in July, 2022. My condition was treatable over the next several months, and I have mostly recovered. I have also once again adjusted to the reality that my release from prison was also not meant to be. At least not then, and at least not that way. So I had to get back to the hard work of seeking justice. It was either that or surrender to its absence.

New Hampshire Politics

That said, I have a plea for our readers. Please do not write to Governor Sununu asking for my pardon. The State cannot pardon someone who is not guilty of the crime in the first place. New Hampshire has not pardoned a prisoner since the Civil War, and will certainly not break that hallowed tradition for an imprisoned Catholic priest as the nation gears up for a presidential election with this state’s Governor as a likely contender. The pardon process brings far more heat than light anyway. In going on 29 years here, I have never seen it succeed for anyone.

The Democratic National Committee just stripped New Hampshire of its “First in the Nation Primary” awarding the first event to South Carolina. Since 1920, New Hampshire has held onto the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Since then, candidates campaigning for votes have attracted tremendous amounts of attention and money to New Hampshire every four years. Critics have charged that this was out of proportion with the state’s numbers, racial diversity, and fundamental political importance.

Now that the Democratic Party has rearranged that schedule, the New Hampshire Governor pledges to buck the edict and hold the State’s primary first anyway. The nation’s eyes will all be on New Hampshire as this dramatic standoff unfolds in 2024. I do not wish to be a part of its background entertainment.

There are many in U.S. prisons who are wrongfully convicted. By Christmas, 2021, after more than 28 years into my imprisonment, I resigned myself to the seemingly impenetrable fate that this State imposed upon me. Then, unexpectedly, I received a message on the first day of 2022 that there is a possible new path to restore justice. I outlined it in one of my first posts of 2022 and will link to it again at the end of this one. The post was, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.”

Defenders of the Truth

Back in 2012, just a few years after I began writing from prison for an earlier version of this blog, Australian priest and writer, Fr. James Valladares, Ph.D., published a book about procedural justice for priests who had been accused. He predicted that the priesthood scandal that spread from the United States poses the greatest threat to the traditional Catholic understanding of priesthood since the Protestant Reformation. That prediction was certainly supported years later by findings described in my recent post, “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”

Father Valladares titled his 2012 book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast. Nearly one-third of the book is about this blog and its revelations about the phenomenon of falsely accused priests. There is much within its pages that will be very familiar to long-time readers of this blog. In addition to my own earlier writings, the book strongly profiles the work of Ryan A. MacDonald, David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report, Bill Donohue at the Catholic League, and especially Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal.

Most readers of this blog know that one of the most formidable sources for exposing and resuscitating the truth has been The Wall Street Journal. The nation’s largest, most influential newspaper published two major articles in my regard in 2005, another in 2013, and a fourth in 2022. The first three were written by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on the WSJ Editorial Board. The fourth, written in 2022, was “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae” by Boston civil rights and criminal defense attorney Harvey A. Silverglate.

One observer noted that The Wall Street Journal has devoted more column space to this story than to that of any Nobel laureate. I do not know how to respond to that except with gratitude. I would not be writing today if not for the courage of Dorothy Rabinowitz and the Journal’s unrelenting pursuit of truth and justice.

Among our newer features on this blog is a page dedicated to the coverage of this story. It begins with a brief but compelling five-minute video interview with Dorothy Rabinowitz that should not be missed along with the full text of each of the WSJ articles on this story collected in one place. The page is entitled, The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae.

While perusing that page, you will note that two of the WSJ articles are followed by commentary from David F. Pierre, Jr., founder and moderator of The Media Report. David is a Catholic layman and a journalist in his own right. He literally took on Goliath when he began writing and publishing against the tide of media narratives claiming without evidence that the Catholic Church has been some sort of special locus of child sexual abuse.

Since then, David has published four books laying out his Herculean accomplishments to expose the whole truth of the story behind the scandal that other media would not cover. David, like the Biblical David, is a man of great courage and integrity. In coming months, we plan to create a BTSW Library page collecting his posts written for this blog, and highlighting each of his books. His most recent post was The Media Report: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.

Finally, and by no means least among the heroic efforts of media figures, the truth owes a debt to Dr. William Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Under his leadership, this organization dedicated to religious liberty — the largest in the world — has been relentless in its support of the truth. This includes the truth about the case against me. In coming weeks I plan to present a post highlighting the importance of the work of the Catholic League on the frontlines of Religious Liberty, and increasingly endangered rights in our culture.

In the Acknowledgments section of his 2012 book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast, Father Valladares cited each of the persons I have mentioned in this post:

“Ms. Dorothy Rabinowitz, Mr. Harvey A. Silverglate, Mr. Ryan A. MacDonald, Dr. William Donahue, Mr. David F. Pierre, Jr., all of whom I have never met, but whose candid, forthright, persuasive writings have served as an added impetus in the pursuit of this vital research.”

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Next week in these pages: “A Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls.”

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and please visit our newer pages in honor of those who have so honored us by shining new life into my pursuit of truth and justice:

The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae

The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse

David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report

Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

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Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

David F. Pierre, Jr. 10/19/22 David F. Pierre, Jr. 10/19/22

The Media Report: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused

David F. Pierre, Jr. is a widely acclaimed author on the Catholic abuse story. One of the cases presented in his book, entitled above, is that of Fr. Gordon MacRae.

David F. Pierre, Jr. is a widely acclaimed author on the Catholic abuse story. One of the cases presented in his book, entitled above, is that of Fr. Gordon MacRae.

October 19, 2022 by David F. Pierre, Jr.

A Message from David F. Pierre, Jr.:

“When I published my book Catholic Priests Falsely Accused over a decade ago, I never thought that the contents would still reverberate today and that the chapter on the case of Fr. MacRae would especially impact its readers. Since the book was released, there have been numerous additional revelations further vindicating Fr. MacRae — as Beyond These Stone Walls has compiled — and I consider the chapter just one piece of many chronicling the many important aspects of the case.”

The case of Father Gordon J. MacRae — from the Diocese of Manchester (New Hampshire) — falls into a category all its own. No single case in the Catholic Church abuse narrative has been more feverishly debated. The case has bitterly polarized observers for several years. There are those who maintain the priest’s guilt and those who forcefully assert his innocence.

Since 1994, Fr. MacRae has been incarcerated in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men. On September 23, 1994, a jury convicted the priest of repeatedly molesting a teenage boy during counseling sessions and elsewhere. A judge later sentenced the cleric to 67 years in prison.

Fr. Gordon vehemently asserts his innocence and claims that he is falsely accused. With the help of outside supporters, an old typewriter, and the use of traditional postal mail, Fr. MacRae authors BeyondTheseStoneWalls.com from his small prison cell. Fr. MacRae utilizes the blog not just as a forum to assert his innocence. He also posts thoughtful spiritual and theological commentary. BeyondTheseStoneWalls.com is truly a compelling venue on the Internet.

What are the facts in this controversial case? Those who believe Fr. Gordon’s guilt is demonstrable gesture to reams of court documents and articles available at an anti-Church watchdog site. However, as with so many other cases, there is an alarming opposite side to Fr. MacRae’s narrative that has not been widely told.

The criminal conviction of Fr. Gordon in 1994, which would catapult him to his sentence of 67 years in prison, rested on the uncorroborated testimony of one individual. The man’s name is Thomas Grover [who at this writing is 55 years of age]. Amazingly, two of Thomas’ brothers and two other men — known to the Grover boys — also accused Fr. Gordon of molesting them. Yet only the claims of Thomas Grover would be the subject of an actual criminal trial.

It is certainly a matter of debate whether the justice system yielded a fair trial for Fr. Gordon. Although the accuser Grover had a lengthy juvenile and adult criminal history of “theft, assault, forgery and drug offenses,” the presiding judge, the Hon. Arthur D. Brennan, did not allow the priest’s defense to present this as evidence. Had the judge allowed this important information, the jury may have examined Grover’s claims a bit more critically.

Indeed, Thomas Grover’s accusations were quite untenable. According to the court testimony of Grover, Fr. Gordon repeatedly sexually assaulted him about a decade earlier during four different counseling sessions in 1983, when he was fifteen years old. Asked at trial why he would repeatedly return week after week to counseling sessions at which he had been previously attacked, Grover testified that he had “repressed” the memory of the experience after each assault. He claimed that he had an “out-of-body experience” which resulted in him completely forgetting the fact that he had been victimized during the previous visit.

In addition, according to trial testimony, when Grover attended a drug treatment center in 1987, he told a counselor that his father had abused him. Grover did not cite the priest as an abuser. In fact, the accuser identified the priest by name to his counselor in only one instance. Grover wrote Fr. MacRae’s name on his discharge contract indicating that the priest would be his sponsor in sobriety. She reported that Grover went on in therapy to accuse so many people of sexually abusing him that the staff thought “he was going for some kind of sexual abuse victim world record.” But he never accused Fr. MacRae.

In a previous deposition under oath, Grover made more bizarre claims about Fr. Gordon, one of which was that the priest had chased him with a car. “And he had a gun,” the accuser added, “and he was threatening me and telling me over and over that he would hurt me, kill me, if I tried to tell anybody, that no one would believe me. He chased me through the cemetery and tried to corner me.” However, at Fr. MacRae’s trial, the prosecution did not call a single witness to corroborate the public spectacle of a priest with a gun in a car chasing a boy through a cemetery.

As the trial progressed, even the prosecution could see that Thomas Grover had serious credibility problems. In the middle of the trial, after Grover’s flimsy appearance, the prosecution offered Fr. Gordon a plea bargain in which the priest would agree to serve only a maximum of two years in jail in exchange for an admission of guilt. It was not the first time the prosecution extended such a generous deal. On two other occasions before the court case — six months before trial and again a week before trial — the state offered plea deals to Fr. Gordon, both of which would ask that he serve no longer than three years in prison. The prosecution would have loved to have seen the priest take the offers.

But Fr. Gordon was adamant. He would not plead guilty to charges that he maintained were false. “I am not going to say I am guilty of crimes I never committed so that the Grovers and other extortionists can walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars for their lies,” the priest asserted.

The trial progressed, and although Thomas Grover’s testimony may have seemed hard to believe on the surface, the accuser was effectively theatrical during his appearance. He railed against the priest for “forcing” him to withstand the agony of a trial. In addition, during Grover’s testimony, the accuser’s therapist — retained by the man’s contingency lawyer — reportedly coached her former patient while sitting in open view inside the courtroom. Apparently directed by the therapist, Grover became emotional at strategic moments during his testimony. Courtroom witnesses have reported that when Grover was confronted with difficult questions, the therapist would gesture to her patient that he should cry. Grover would then become emotional and dramatic, often leading the judge to call a recess.

Meanwhile, Judge Brennan purposefully ordered the jury to “disregard inconsistencies in Mr. Grover’s testimony.” To the shock of Fr. Gordon, the jury returned with a guilty verdict in less than 90 minutes.

At Fr. Gordon’s sentencing, the prosecution efficiently utilized accusations of abuse charges by other men. Stomach-turning stories of child pornography also impacted the jury. An angry Judge Brennan railed against the convicted priest. He berated the cleric for his “lack of remorse” over his crimes. (Lost on the judge was the fact that the priest forcefully maintained his innocence and had rejected three different plea offers.) Building upon his rage, the judge added, “The evidence of your possession of child pornography is clear and convincing.”

There was one problem, however. “There was never any evidence of child pornography,” the lead detective on the case later admitted to The Wall Street Journal.

Under New Hampshire prison guidelines, Fr. Gordon will never be eligible for parole unless he admits guilt. As with the case of Msgr. McCarthy (Chapter 6), Father Gordon’s narrative highlights the zeal with which some detectives will seek a prosecution, despite the claims presented to them.

The criminal case against Fr. Gordon actually began when one of Thomas Grover’s brothers, Jonathan, approached Keene, New Hampshire, Detective James McLaughlin with the claim that Fr. Gordon had abused him years earlier. However, Jonathan did not just accuse Fr. Gordon of abuse; he accused a second priest as well — Fr. Stephen Scruton. However, as Detective McLaughlin further examined Jonathan’s claims, he realized that Fr. Scruton did not even serve at the parish of the alleged abuse until years after Jonathan claimed that the acts took place.

With this startling discovery of fact, many detectives would have concluded that Jonathan was not being truthful. There would even be more reason to doubt Jonathan when two of his brothers came forward to claim similar abuse by the two priests. But rather than dropping the investigation altogether and issuing charges against Jonathan for filing a false report, McLaughlin continued his crusade by simply scrubbing the existence of Fr. Scruton from future investigations altogether. [It was at this point in police reports that Detective McLaughlin gave the Grover brothers a copy of Fr. MacRae’s resume “to help them with their dates.”]

In the course of trying to nab Fr. MacRae, McLaughlin initiated a couple of attempted “stings” to get the priest to admit to the alleged abuse. One was a letter claiming to be from Jonathan Grover that “recalled” several sexual escapades and declared that the “sex between us was very special.” Fr. Gordon replied to the letter by saying that the letter writer must be an imposter, because no such acts ever took place. McLaughlin also attempted a number of secretly recorded phone calls to try to bust the priest, but none of them yielded anything incriminating. The calls were an utter failure, by all investigative measures.

Fr. Gordon would have been out of prison long ago if he had accepted the plea deals and admitted guilt. Instead, in staunchly maintaining his innocence, he will likely live in a prison cell for the remainder of his life.

In recent years, even more evidence has surfaced to support the claim that Fr. Gordon was falsely accused. One of the priest’s accusers (not Thomas Grover) has reportedly recanted his claims. In early 2011, a document surfaced in which the accuser plainly acknowledges that fraud was committed against Fr. Gordon and the Catholic Church. According to a New York investigative writer, the document says:

“I was aware at the time of the trial, knowing full well that it was bogus and having heard of the lawsuits and money involved, and also the reputations of those making accusations … whom I went to school with. It seemed as though it would be easy money if I would also accuse Fr. Gordon of some wrongdoing. … I believed easy money would come from lawsuits against MacRae. I was at the time using drugs and could have been influenced to say anything they wanted for money.” [Signed statement of Steven Wollschlager]

So despite the tempting opportunity of a high-stakes payout, the man refused to go along with what he saw was a gross money-grubbing scam.

In 2005 and 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dorothy Rabinowitz profiled the case of Fr. Gordon for a trio of eye-opening articles for The Wall Street Journal. After months of studying court documents and combing through testimonies, Rabinowitz concluded that Fr. MacRae was clearly a victim of fraud and was wrongly convicted.

Sadly, under intense public pressure from events of the past decade, Church officials have essentially abandoned Fr. Gordon. Despite the fact that evidence possibly indicating innocence continues to surface, Church officials have kept their distance from the incarcerated cleric. While Church officials have publicly supported the prosecution of Fr. Gordon, there are reports that privately they admit that the cleric may have been falsely accused. For example, in 2011, two signed statements surfaced which claim that Bishop John McCormack, the longtime head of the Diocese of Manchester, has privately stated that he believes Fr. Gordon is innocent.

One such statement comes from a man who once worked at a television station that was to profile Fr. Gordon’s case. It quotes Bishop McCormack as saying to the man, “Understand, none of this is to leave this office. I believe Father MacRae is not guilty and his accusers likely lied. There’s nothing I can do to change the verdict,” Bishop McCormack said, according to the statement. [See Fr. George David Byers, “Omertà in a Catholic Chancery: Affidavits Expanded”]

The man submitted his statement about Bishop McCormack’s remarks because he believed there was a glaring injustice in the inconsistency between the Bishop’s public actions and his private statements.

Should the case against Father Gordon MacRae be reviewed? Considering the totality of the evidence, especially that which has surfaced in recent years, the answer is, “Yes.” Justice demands it.

In addition, recent developments and emerging information will likely result in appeals of Fr. MacRae’s case. Stay tuned.

David F. Pierre, Jr. is the country’s leading observer of the media’s coverage of the Catholic Church abuse narrative and is the author of four books. His most recent is The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church. David has been heard on National Public Radio (NPR) and cited in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and many other media outlets. He is the creator and author of TheMediaReport.com, an educational cooperative to chronicle and monitor the mainstream media’s coverage of the Catholic Church sex abuse narrative. He lives with his wife and family in Massachusetts.

Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound

Editor’s Note: In a 2012 article for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Rev. Michael P. Orsi, research fellow in Law and Religion at Ave Maria School of Law, wrote an extended review of David F. Pierre’s book cited above. His review is titled “Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound.”

The following is an excerpt from that review:

Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories by David F. Pierre, Jr., Mattapoisett, Massachusetts: www.TheMediaReport.com

“David Pierre is one of the country’s leading observers of the Catholic Church abuse narrative. In Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories, he presents case studies backed by hard data which clearly demonstrates some of the injustices foisted on Catholic priests and the Church. ...

“A sure way to ameliorate the injustices perpetrated against priests and to rehabilitate the reputation of the Church would be to re-examine the cases of those priests found guilty due to false or dubious abuse claims filed against them. The widely reported case of Fr. Gordon MacRae, of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, would be a good place to start. Pierre outlines it in his book. It is quite obvious that Fr. MacRae did not receive a fair trial according to the facts cited in a piece published in The Wall Street Journal.

“MacRae’s accuser, a fifteen year old boy, had a lengthy juvenile record and presented doubtful evidence in trial testimony. The judge even went so far as to order the jury to ‘disregard inconsistencies in Mr. Grover’s (his accuser) testimony.’ Father MacRae, protesting his innocence, refused a plea bargain deal of two years in prison. Now he is serving a 67 year sentence. His own, now retired, bishop believes him to be innocent. What a moral boost this would be for the nation’s priests and for the Catholic laity ... to have this case reopened!”

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BREAKING NEWS: Just as this post went to print, David F. Pierre, Jr. and The Media Report published “Twice Is a Charm? Wall St. Journal Again Profiles Stunning Case of Wrongfully Convicted Priest Fr. Gordon MacRae.”

To learn more about the rampant fraud, dishonest grand jury investigations, and career-building prosecutorial misconduct behind the Catholic Church abuse story, please consult these additional books by David F. Pierre, Jr. and The Media Report. Father Gordon MacRae also urges readers to subscribe to The Media Report.