Of Saints and Souls and Earthly Woes

For Catholics, the month of November honors our beloved dead, and is a time to reinforce our civil liberties especially the one most endangered: Religious Freedom.

November 2, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

A lot of attention has been paid to a recent post by Pornchai Moontri. Writing in my stead from Thailand, his post was “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.” Many readers were able to put a terrible tragedy into spiritual perspective. Writer Dorothy R. Stein commented on it: “The Kingdom of Thailand weeps for its children. Only a wounded healer like Mr. Pornchai Moontri could tell such a devastating story and yet leave readers feeling inspired and hopeful. This is indeed a gift. I have read many accounts of this tragedy, but none told with such elegant grace.”

A few years ago I wrote of the sting of death, and the story of how one particular friend’s tragic death stung very deeply. But there is far more to the death of loved ones than its sting. A decade ago at this time I wrote a post that helped some readers explore a dimension of death they had not considered. It focused not only on the sense of loss that accompanies the deaths of those we love, but also on the link we still share with them. It gave meaning to that “Holy Longing” that extends beyond death — for them and for us — and suggested a way to live in a continuity of relationship with those who have died. The All Souls Day Commemoration in the Roman Missal also describes this relationship:

“The Church, after celebrating the Feast of All Saints, prays for all who in the purifying suffering of purgatory await the day when they will join in their company. The celebration of the Mass, which re-enacts the sacrifice of Calvary, has always been the principal means by which the Church fulfills the great commandment of charity toward the dead. Even after death, our relationship with our beloved dead is not broken.”

That waiting, and our sometimes excruciatingly painful experience of loss, is “The Holy Longing.” The people we have loved and lost are not really lost. They are still our family, our friends, and our fellow travelers, and we shouldn’t travel with them in silence. The month of November is a time to restore our spiritual connection with departed loved ones. If you know others who have suffered the deaths of family and friends, please share with them a link to “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”

The Communion of Saints

I’ve written many times about the saints who inspire us on this arduous path. The posts that come most immediately to mind are “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II,” and more recently, “With Padre Pio When the Worst that Could Happen Happens.” Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Saint Padre Pio inspire me not because I have so much in common with them, but because I have so little. I am not at all like them, but I came to know them because I was drawn to the ways they faced and coped with adversity in their lives on Earth.

Patron saints really are advocates in Heaven, but the story is bigger than that. To have patron saints means something deeper than just hoping to share in the graces for which they suffered. It means to be in a relationship with them as role models for our inevitable encounter with human trials and suffering. They can advocate not only for us, but for the souls of those we entrust to their intercession. In the Presence of God, they are more like a lens for us, and not dispensers of grace in their own right. The Protestant critique that Catholics “pray to saints” has it all wrong.

To be in a relationship with patron saints means much more than just waiting for their help in times of need. I have learned a few humbling things this year about the dynamics of a relationship with Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio. I have tried to consciously cope with painful things the way they did, and over time they opened my eyes about what it means to have their advocacy. It’s an advocacy I would not need if I were even remotely like them. It’s an advocacy I need very much, and can no longer live without.

I don’t think we choose the saints who will be our patrons and advocates in Heaven. I think they choose us. In ways both subtle and profound, they interject their presence in our lives. I came into my unjust imprisonment over 28 years ago knowing little to nothing of Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio. But in multiple posts at Beyond These Stone Walls I’ve written of how they made their presence here known. And in that process, I’ve learned a lot about why they’re now in my life. It is not because they look upon me and see their own paths. It’s because they look upon me and see how much and how easily I stray from their paths.

I recently discovered something about the intervention of these saints that is at the same time humbling and deeply consoling. It’s consoling because it affirms for me that these modern saints have made themselves a part of what I must bear each day. It’s humbling because that fact requires shedding all my notions that their intercession means a rescue from the crosses I’d just as soon not carry.

Over the last few years, I’ve had to live with something that’s very painful — physically very painful — and sometimes so intensely so that I could focus on little else. In prison, there are not many ways to escape from pain. I can purchase some over-the-counter ibuprophen in the prison commissary, but that’s sort of like fighting a raging forest fire with bottled water. It’s not very effective. At times, the relentless pain flared up and got the better of me, and I became depressed. There aren’t many ways to escape depression in prison either. The combination of nagging pain and depression began to interfere with everything I was doing, and others started to notice. The daily barrage of foul language and constantly loud prison noise that I’ve heard non-stop for over 28 years suddenly had the effect of a rough rasp being dragged across the surface of my brain. Many of you know exactly what I mean.

So one night, I asked Saint Padre Pio to intercede that I might be delivered from this awful nagging pain. I fell off to sleep actually feeling a little hopeful, but it was not to be. The next morning I awoke to discover my cross of pain even heavier than the night before. Then suddenly I became aware that I had just asked Padre Pio — a soul who in life bore the penetrating pain of the wounds of Christ without relief for fifty years — to nudge the Lord to free me from my pain. What was I thinking?! That awareness was a spiritually more humbling moment than any physical pain I have ever had to bear.

So for now, at least, I’ll have to live with this pain, but I’m no longer depressed about it. Situational depression, I have learned, comes when you expect an outcome other than the one you have. I no longer expect Padre Pio to rescue me from my pain, so I’m no longer depressed. I now see that my relationship with him isn’t going to be based upon being pain free. It’s going to be what it was initially, and what I had allowed to lapse. It’s the example of how he coped with suffering by turning himself over to grace, and by making an offering of what he suffered.

A rescue would sure be nice, but his example is, in the long run, a lot more effective. I know myself. If I awake tomorrow and this pain is gone forever, I will thank Saint Padre Pio. Then just as soon as my next cross comes my way — as I once described in “A Shower of Roses” — I will begin to doubt that the saint had anything to do with my release.

His example, on the other hand, is something I can learn from, and emulate. The truth is that few, if any, of the saints we revere were themselves rescued from what they suffered and endured in this life. We do not seek their intercession because they were rescued. We seek their intercession because they bore all for Christ. They bore their own suffering as though it were a shield of honor and they are going to show us how we can bear our own.

For Greater Glory

Back in 2010 when my friend Pornchai Moontri was preparing to be received into the Church, he asked one of his “upside down” questions. I called them “upside down” questions because as I lay in the bunk in our prison cell reading late at night, his head would pop down from the upper bunk so he appeared upside down to me as he asked a question. “When people pray to saints do they really expect a miracle?” I asked for an example, and he said, “Should you or I ask Saint Maximilian Kolbe for a happy ending when he didn’t have one himself?”

I wonder if Pornchai knew how incredibly irritating it was when he stumbled spontaneously upon a spiritual truth that I had spent months working out in my own soul. Pornchai’s insight was true, but an inconvenient truth — inconvenient by Earthly hopes, anyway. The truth about Auschwitz, and even a very long prison sentence, was that all hope for rescue was the first hope to die among any of its occupants. As Maximilian Kolbe lay in that Auschwitz bunker chained to, but outliving, his fellow prisoners being slowly starved to death, did he expect to be rescued?

All available evidence says otherwise. Father Maximilian Kolbe led his fellow sufferers into and through a death that robbed their Nazi persecutors of the power and meaning they intended for that obscene gesture. How ironic would it be for me to now place my hope for rescue from an unjust and uncomfortable imprisonment at the feet of Saint Maximilian Kolbe? Just having such an expectation is more humiliating than prison itself. Devotion to Saint Maximilian Kolbe helped us face prison bravely. It does not deliver us from prison walls, but rather from their power to stifle our souls.

I know exactly what brought about Pornchai’s question. Each weekend when there were no programs and few activities in prison, DVD films were broadcast on a closed circuit in-house television channel. Thanks to a reader, a DVD of the soul-stirring film, “For Greater Glory” was donated to the prison. That evening we were able to watch the great film. It was an hour or two after viewing this film that Pornchai asked his “upside-down” question.

“For Greater Glory” is one of the most stunning and compelling films of recent decades. You must not miss it. It’s the historically accurate story of the Cristero War in Mexico in 1926. Academy Award nominee Andy Garcia portrays General Enrique Gorostieta Delarde in a riveting performance as the leader of Mexico’s citizen rebellion against the efforts of a socialist regime to diminish and then eradicate religious liberty and public expressions of Christianity, especially Catholic faith.

If you haven’t seen “For Greater Glory,” I urge you to do so. Its message is especially important before drawing any conclusions about the importance of the issue of religious liberty now facing Americans and all of Western Culture. As readers in the United States know well, in a matter of days we face a most important election for the future direction of Congress and the Senate.

“For Greater Glory” is an entirely true account, and portrays well the slippery slope from a government that tramples upon religious freedom to the actual persecution, suppression and cancelation of priests and expressions of Catholic faith and witness. If you think it couldn’t happen here, think again. It couldn’t happen in Mexico either, but it did. We may not see our priests publicly executed, but we are already seeing them in prison without just cause, and even silenced by their own bishops, sometimes just for boldly speaking the truth of the Gospel. You have seen the practice of your faith diminished as “non-essential” by government dictate during a pandemic.

The real star of this film — and I warn you, it will break your heart — is the heroic soul of young José Luis Sánchez del Río, a teen whose commitment to Christ and his faith results in horrible torment and torture. If this film were solely the creation of Hollywood, there would have been a happy ending. José would have been rescued to live happily ever after. It isn’t Hollywood, however; it’s real. José’s final tortured scream of “Viva Cristo Rey!” is something I will remember forever.

I cried, finally, at the end as I read in the film’s postscript that José Luis Sánchez del Río was beatified as a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI after his elevation to the papacy in 2005. Saint José was canonized October 16, 2016 by Pope Francis, a new Patron Saint of Religious Liberty. His Feast Day is February 10. José’s final “Viva Cristo Rey!” echoes across the century, across all of North America, across the globe, to empower a quest for freedom that can be found only where young José found it.

“Viva Cristo Rey!”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Our Faith is a matter of life and death, and it diminishes to our spiritual peril. Please share this post. You may also like these related posts to honor our beloved dead in the month of November.

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand

The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

A Not-so-Subtle Wake-Up Call from Christ the King

To assist your friends from Beyond These Stone Walls, please visit our Special Events page.

A Few Bold Bishops in Defense of Religious Liberty

There are hopeful signs that some Catholic bishops are speaking boldly about the erosion of religious rights even while facing criticism for it from other bishops.

The Catho1ic World Report is a venerable old publication of Ignatius Press that is now only available as an online magazine. The publication recently posted through its Twitter account that Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s nominee for the post of Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services, is (or was) “a biological man who [now] identifies as a transgender woman.”

That mere statement of verifiable fact by a Catholic publication resulted in a charge of “hateful conduct” by Twitter and the suspension of its account. After the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights posted this story, I was one of many thousands who emailed Twitter in protest. My protest message charged that Twitter’s response poses a significant threat not only to religious liberty but to freedom of speech and freedom of the press as well, three of the fundamental rights defined in the First Amendment.

I have no delusion that my message to Twitter made a difference, but Twitter rescinded its suspension of CWR ’s account the next day. It nonetheless struck me after this affair that the tyranny of such suppression of rights and civil liberties is the result of two forces working in tandem with each other:

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the noise of a few

and the silence of many.

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The suspension of the Catholic World Report ’s Twitter account was the result of a single complaint by an LGBTQ activist. The reconsideration came as a result of a multitude of protests on the side of right. I am proud to have been one of them.

We live in a time in which the measure of our self-worth is not determined by our system of values or our moral fiber in living up to them for the greater good. As a culture, we have been lulled into a quest for social media “likes” and approval from those whose mission it is to discard and replace the truths we have long lived by. Any media source that does not uphold the sensitivities of identity politics and the progressive social agenda will find itself parked far outside the public square.

The Catholic World Report simply did what the news media is supposed to do. The news media has traditionally been dubbed, “The Fourth Estate,” its public role being a much needed checks and balance on government. CWR reported no falsehood, nor did it cast any aspersion on President Biden’s appointee to Health and Human Services. The Catholic publication simply pointed out that the nominee has a lifestyle that by implication may lend itself to bias against traditional moral beliefs and practices.

Then Twitter was allowed to do what the Chinese Communist Party does on a daily basis. It eliminated from public view information, regardless of its truth, that the progressive agenda does not want us lesser folks to see or hear. I hope I am not the only one who resents this. As a Catholic, as a writer — even as a condemned prisoner — I resent it with every fiber of my being.

Les Miserables

One of the most visited posts at Beyond These Stone Walls has had an effect that I never intended. It is “Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean.” My post has been visited by countless high school students around the world who have used it as a source of “CliffNotes” when assigned a book report on the novel. I am glad to have been some service, but the novel itself is soaring. So is its musical rendition that has appeared on Broadway and in theaters across the globe. Bear with me. There is a point here and I am getting to it.

My post about Les Miserables above tells the story of Bishop Bienvenue (which means “Welcome” in the novel’s original French). Bishop Bienvenue is one of literature’s most noble characters. He seeks out the poor and downtrodden, sees himself primarily as a servant, and has no interest in amassing political clout or Earthly power in any other form. His encounter with ex-convict Jean Valjean sets the latter on a course toward his own noble future. The two are unforgettable literary characters.

Victor Hugo wrote and published Les Miserables in 1862. In the decades after the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, France entered a period of anti-clericalism. Bishops and priests were widely regarded with disdain. When Victor Hugo’s son read the manuscript for Les Miserables, he pleaded with his father to change the character of Bishop Bienvenue to someone the French might more easily see as noble. It is one of the ironies of French literature that Victor Hugo’s son wanted Bishop Bienvenue recast as a lawyer.

But Hugo defended his choice. He argued that Bishop Bienvenue may not represent a Catholic bishop that France has in real life, but rather he represents the bishop that France wants to have. I find a sort of parallel in this time of our own cultural revolution. Many Catholics struggle to maintain and nurture an identity as Catholics on a moral course against a more vocal majority speeding toward identity politics and a culture of open disregard for the value of human life.

The United States has now elected the second Catholic president in its history. He has described himself as a devout Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket everyplace he goes. He has also also openly promoted unlimited and unrestricted access to abortion at any point in a pregnancy and has pledged to repeal the Hyde Amendment which for decades has spared taxpayers from being forced to violate their consciences by providing taxpayer funded abortions.

If such a situation existed in 1862, Victor Hugo’s Bishop Bienvenue would have as the least of his concerns the erosion of his social standing or political clout if he presented an apostate nominally Catholic leader with merciful but truthful fraternal correction. I described the problem that the current President brings to Catholics of conscience in a previous post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life."

The mainstream media has played down this conflict while playing up the President’s Catholic identity. So the media never revealed a statement published by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez at the time of the President’s inauguration. With inherent charity and true moral leadership, Archbishop Gomez commended this President for his thoughtful concern for the plight of immigrants (a concern that I share after some experience with Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Archbishop Gomez also spoke, and wrote, of this President’s unapologetic promotion of abortion, his threat against the Hyde Amendment — which he publicly supported until he ran for President — and his stated intent to codify into federal law the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade so that it cannot be readdressed by the current or any other future Court. These, according to Archbishop Gomez, are the preeminent Catholic issues of our time.

Accommodations in the Garden of Good and Evil

The Washington Post accused the Archbishop of “assailing” the President over abortion rights. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter described the statement as “churlish.” I had to look up “churlish” since I hardly ever use the word. It means “surly” or “mean spirited,” the absolute opposite of the Archbishop’s demeanor or intent. NCR ’s Winters also wrote that Archbishop Gomez “threw cold water on the most Catholic Inauguration in history.”

Archbishop Gomez went on to add in his statement his “deep concern for the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.” This latter concern is heightened by some of the nominees our devout Catholic President has put forth. Foremost among these is Xavier Becerra, current Attorney General of California. He is passionate about expanded access to abortion and embyonic stem cell research. Beccera has been awarded One-Hundred percent ratings on reproductive rights by Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

In “Becerra Is a Threat to Life and Liberty” Bill Donohue wrote in the February 2021 issue of Catalyst that “Becerra is one of the cultural warriors” threatening to haul the Little Sisters of the Poor back into court again if they do not comply with a mandate to provide insurance coverage for contraception. In a previous issue of Catalyst, Bill Donohue wrote of the current President, “It is okay for Catholics to bludgeon the Little Sisters of the Poor so long as they carry a rosary.”

Of all the responses to the courageous statement of Archbishop Jose Gomez, however, the one from Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich is the most troubling. As the elected President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Gomez carefully framed his statement in accord with Catholic teaching, inc1uding Catholic social teaching. Using his Twitter account, Cardinal Blase Cupich publicly rebuked the Archbishop describing his statement as “ill considered.” He suggested that the statement should have been vetted before the entire body of bishops for discussion and a vote. I know of no other Catholic bishop who spoke against the statement. I applaud Archbishop Gomez for his fidelity.

And he is not alone. In an equally courageous statement, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote forcefully against state and local government declarations that Catholic Mass is not an essential activity worthy of consideration.

Writing boldly for The Wall Street Journal, Archbishop Cordileone spoke truth to power in “California’s Unscientific Worship Ban.” The Governors of California and New York have been in lockstep with one another on this, a point I made recently in “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” Archbishop Cordileone described his long ordeal against civil authority at both the state and local level. He did not mince his words:

"Whether religious services are ‘essential’ isn’t a matter for government to decide ... In lifting California’s blanket ban on indoor worship (in a 6-3 decision), the high court rightly acknowledged the blatant unfairness of treating religious worship differently from secular activities such as shopping ... Such blatant disregard for the Constitution bodes ill for everyone. These next four years will be a time to coalesce around core ideals or continue to divide along ideological lines.”

Even as the pandemic lessened during the summer and many other activities opened up, the City of San Francisco doubled down on its bans for religious gatherings. All indoor worship was banned while even outdoor services were limited to no more than 12 participans. At the same time, the city government had nothing to say about street protests that were openly allowed to continue, and with some in the city’s government participating.

We who have faced this pandemic with a dismal sense of Les Miserables are empowered by the witness of Archbishops Gomez and Cordileone.

Bishop Bienvenue lives on.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and if you have not already done so, please subscribe. It’s free, and we will only invade your inbox once per week. You may also like the related posts featured in this one:

Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean

Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers

Please share this post!

The State of Our Freedom, The Content of Our Character

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington, D.C., August 28,1963

Character matters, so may it not come up short as the world watches what America does with our hard-won freedoms in this age of discontent. What becomes of them determines what becomes of us. Character matters for me, too, but sometimes there is just no way to retain it except by writing the bare-knuckled truth. I admit that, like most priests in America, I fear the repercussions, but there is just no safe, politically correct way to write what I must now write.

There had been a decades-long progression of examples reflecting patently dishonest character and leadership in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. When Archbishop Wilton Gregory succeeded Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who in turn succeeded Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of Archbishop Gregory’s first messages to his people was, “I will always tell you the truth.”

In light of that promise of transparency, what a disappointment the downward slide has been. In “The Death of George Floyd: Breaking News and Broken Trust,” I wrote of a visit by President Donald Trump to the Saint John Paul II Shrine in Washington. After the visit, Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory stated that he learned of the visit only on the night before, adding:

“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree… Saint John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth.”

Many now find it far more baffling and reprehensible that Archbishop Gregory would so blatantly mischaracterize the long-planned purpose of the President’s visit and snub it with both his absence and his disdain. It turns out that the Archbishop did know of the visit. He was invited by the White House to participate in it, but declined the invitation to be with the President due to a “previous commitment.”

Archbishop Gregory should also have been well aware of what took place before and during the President’s appearance at the Saint John Paul II Shrine on the 2nd of June, 2020. Its significance was spelled out in “A Big Step for Religious Freedom,” (June 12, 2020) a Wall Street Journal  editorial by Nina Shea, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom:

“[I]n a rare ray of light this dark spring, America’s defining right has been recognized at the highest level as a ‘moral and national security imperative.’ This is more than a symbolic gesture. On June 2, President Trump signed an executive order that declares support for religious freedom a foreign policy ‘priority.’ It mandates that ‘the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom’ abroad… The Trump administration has elevated the cause of religious freedom since the president came into office.”

Ms. Shea refers to Religious Liberty as “America’s defining right,” highlighting its importance as the most fundamental of our freedoms. It is President Trump’s emphasis on this right that Archbishop Wilton Gregory dismissed as “reprehensible,” and denigrated its culmination in a presidential visit to the Saint John Paul II Shrine as a “Catholic facility [that] would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated” for a partisan political purpose.

Nina Shea writes in the WSJ  that the President’s executive order puts teeth in the International Religious Freedom Act’s listing of severe religious persecution in countries like Nigeria and China, notorious for their suppression of religious freedoms. The order allocates funding for programs that protect religious rights in communities abroad through economic sanctions and other measures against oppressive governments.

Wading in the Washington Swamp

It would be informative to know whether Archbishop Gregory objected when President Barack Obama received an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame ignoring his global promotion of abortion. To dismiss President Trump’s visit to the Saint John Paul II Shrine as “reprehensible” is… well… reprehensible. In a recent comment on These Stone Walls, a reader from Texas expressed a widely felt dismay:

“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. Archbishop Gregory denigrated the visit by President Trump to the Saint John Paul II Shrine. Turns out the Archbishop was invited to be with Trump but declined. This after he claimed to not have known about the visit. What an embarrassment!”

The drama in Washington became more mysterious six days later. At a time when the Archdiocese was still under a ban from public Masses and an order to maintain social distancing, priests of the Archdiocese received a highly unusual June 8 email from the Chancery Office. They were asked to participate in a protest in front of the White House.

The email specifically asked that the priests wear a cassock or black clerical clothing along with a mask. It instructed them to bring protest placards. Several priests of the Archdiocese said they were surprised by this given the volatile atmosphere of the protests descending into riots at that time and the fact that priests of the Archdiocese were still under a conflicting order to maintain social distancing and refrain from any gatherings related to their ministry.

Two priests spoke with the Catholic News Agency  on condition of anonymity because they, too, feared repercussions from the Archdiocese. So much for religious freedom and freedom of speech. The priests told the Catholic News Agency:

“We have been told for weeks that we cannot meet in groups of the faithful, open our churches, serve in our parishes. Now they want us to take to the streets.”

Other priests objected that media photographs of them in clerical garb protesting in front of the White House had the appearance of doing exactly what Archbishop Gregory accused President Trump of doing: creating a photo opportunity for partisan political purposes “manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.”

Was there any reason to believe that the rights of priests would be protected against media criticism of such a clerical protest? Archbishop Wilton Gregory was no champion for the rights of his priests. As President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002, Archbishop Gregory extended invitations to SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, to address the Bishops’ Dallas conference representing the voices of victims.

SNAP director, David Clohessy, and founder, Barbara Blame offered emotional, but highly contrived testimony while bishops tripped over each other to get their tears on camera. There was no rebuttal except that propounded by Cardinal Avery Dulles who opposed the Dallas Charter in “The Rights of Accused Priests.”

The objections of Cardinal Dulles were ignored. Under the leadership and direction of Archbishop Gregory, the standard employed for removing accused priests from ministry was the lowest standard possible. If an accusation is “credible” on it’s face — meaning only that it cannot be immediately disproven — then the cleric is out forever or until he is indisputably able to prove his innocence. In First Things magazine, a shocked Father Richard John Neuhaus described the end result:

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“Zero Tolerance. One strike and you’re out. Boot them out of ministry. Our bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting in the Dallas Charter a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, and unCatholic approach to sin and grace. They ended up adopting a policy that was sans repentance, sans conversion, sans forbearance, sans prudential judgment, sans forgiveness, sans almost everything one might have hoped for from the bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

Scandal Time, 2002

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“Will No One Rid Me of This Turbulent Priest?”

One of the main developers and proponents of that standard was also one of Archbishop Gregory’s predecessors in Washington, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick whose own history is about to be published in a soon-to-be-released Vatican report. SNAP and its director, David Clohessy, were also later accused of extensive corruption in a lawsuit from a SNAP employee reported by Bill Donohue and the Catholic League in “SNAP Exposed” and by me in “David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

In the 12 Century, Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of the King, excommunicated some of the corrupt barons of King Henry II after they summarily executed two accused priests. The King raged at Becket’s affront to his authority saying, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Four of the King’s men, taking that as a directive, murdered the archbishop at Mass in his cathedral on December 29, 1170. In the end, King Henry had to accede to canon law and the jurisdiction of church courts over clergy. As for Becket, he became a saint and martyr canonized in 1173.

It pains me greatly that an organization I deeply respect, the Becket Law firm, defenders of religious liberty taking its name from the legacy of Saint Thomas à Becket, published a defense of “credibly accused” as sufficient for denying the civil rights of Catholic priests, but no one else. Maria Montserrat Alvarado wrote on behalf of the Becket Law firm:

“In ‘Diocese of Lubbock v. Guerrero,’ the plaintiff, a Catholic clergyman, sued for defamation after the Diocese of Lubbock included him on a list of credibly accused clergy. The lower courts sided with Guerrero [saying] that because the Diocese published the information that could be seen… outside the confines of the church [it] could be used to sue the Church… The lower court’s strange view runs counter to Pope Francis and USCCB’s specific call for greater transparency”

The above was posted by Becket Law on Twitter, but These Stone Walls does not have the reach that the Becket Law firm has. My rebuttal was but a mere whisper, posted nonetheless, so maybe you can make it a bit louder by sharing this post:

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“I must register my objection and grave disappointment with Becket Law for statements about the defamation lawsuit by a priest whose name appears on his bishop’s list of the ‘credibly accused.’ Becket’s website cites Pope Francis in a call for transparency. Pope Francis also said in 2019 that the names of accused priests should only be published if the accusations are proven. The U.S. bishops adopted a ‘credible’ standard that does not even come close to that. It is of deep concern that Becket Law appears to either not know this or not care… for the great damage done by this practice.” (See “The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests”)

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For over a decade on These Stone Walls, I have warned against the practice of bishops citing a false and unjust “transparency” as justification for publishing lists of priests who have been merely accused with little to no effort at real substantiation. This is the legacy of the Dallas Charter and “credibly accused.”

It is for good reason that Catholic League President Bill Donohue, reflecting on my own case on NBC’s “Today” show on October 13, 2005 said:

“There is no segment of the American population which has less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.”

— Catholic League President Bill Donohue

A Dire Threat to Freedom of the Press — from Within

Another grave threat to our freedoms is the diminishment of Freedom of the Press by stewards not quite up to the task. Most people who read newspapers have seen the term, “op-ed,” but few know its true origin. It began as a feature of The New York Times  once America’s most respected flagship newspaper but now slowly collapsing under the weight of its own hubris. “Op-ed” was newspeak for “Opposite the Editorial Page.”

Its meaning was both literal and figurative. It was a feature by a guest writer invited by the Times for an opinion piece that would appear on the page opposite the newspaper’s own main editorial page. Over time, it also came to be symbolic of the Times’ commitment to integrity in journalism. The “op-ed” also provided a forum in which writers could reflect positions that were opposite of those the editors propounded on their editorial page. Thus, “op-ed” came to have a double meaning.

The old liberal order for which The New York Times  and other newspapers became a sometimes honorable mouthpiece has given way to a more radical form of liberalism and what today is manipulated as news coverage. Along with its rise, two of America’s signature freedoms, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech, have fallen.

The most recent evidence for that is something that just happened in the editorial offices of two formerly liberal newspapers, The New York Times  and the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the Times, a revolution has occurred in the newsroom when Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, wrote an op-ed defending President Donald Trump’s statement that the 1807 Insurrection Act could be invoked to call upon the military to quell rioting and massive destruction in our cities.

Senator Cotton alluded (as did I in these pages in recent weeks) that Democrat President Lyndon Johnson summoned the military to quell riots following the 1968 assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King. And Republican President George H.W. Bush also invoked the Insurrection Act to call for military intervention against 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four L.A.P.D. officers who brutally beat Rodney King. Today, the progressively manipulated media wants us to believe that this was an original but unconstitutional idea of President Trump.

A Wall Street Journal  editorial referred to the Times  reporters as “social justice warriors” who ransacked an opinion piece by Senator Cotton because it expressed a view that “millions of Americans support if the police cannot handle the rioting and violence.” As a result of the Times  reporters’ rebellion and rage over allowing such views in public view, The New York Times  demurred and accepted its Editorial Page editor’s resignation.

The once honorable concept of the “op-ed” is now dead, murdered by activist reporters whose politics now take precedence over the news. The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer  was also pushed out because that newspapers’ own activist reporters revolted over an opinion piece headline, “Buildings Matter, Too” by Architecture Critic, Inga Saffron. It was seen by the reporters as an affront to the “Black Lives Matter” movement and a demand was made to remove it, and remove its author.

This all began unchecked in America’s universities where sensitive ears cannot bear to hear opposing views and college administrators cave as militant protesters scream down conservative voices. I recently had a headline posted on Facebook and Google along with a link to my post, “The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek.” The headline was “Eternal Life Matters.” It was seen and “liked” by several readers before being silenced by both Facebook and Google, both of which deny placing limits on conservative viewpoints.

In “I Have a Dream,” The Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous ode to liberty, he included the moving sentence:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

— Rev. Martin Luther King

The great irony for Martin is that his much needed voice would not be heard today had not his very life been forfeit. And the irony for me is that I could not be free to write today had not freedom itself been taken from me.

It is the content of our character that determines the state of our freedom. America is at a tipping point, but it is not too late to save our freedoms from madness. The content of our character is what unites us, not as Black Americans, or White Americans, or Native Americans, but as Americans.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: My late friend, father Richard John Neuhaus, said there are only three things required to address the madness of our time: Fidelity, Fidelity, and Fidelity. I thank you for yours. Please Subscribe to BeyondThese Stone Walls and Follow us on Facebook. You may also like to read and share these related eye-openers:

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

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

Catholics, Communist China, and Hope for Hong Kong

James W. Harris, a friend of These Stone Walls, writes of the state of the Church in China since a 2018 concordat between Pope Francis and the Communist government.

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Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae

In September, 2018, Pope Francis signed a concordat with the Communist government of the People’s Republic of China. The details of the Sino-Vatican agreement have never been published. One of its known tenets, however, allows the Communist government of China to select Catholic bishops in a State-approved Catholic church while the Underground Church that remains loyal to Rome is suppressed.

With this agreement, Pope Francis stands in stark contrast to the papacy of Saint John Paul II whose role in ending Communist rule in Poland is legendary. The Sino-Vatican agreement was signed by Pope Francis one year after a September, 2017 crackdown by the Chinese government enforcing strict requirements on churches and religious adherents of the traditional Church in China.

On Christmas Eve this year, The Wall Street Journal  published column by Walter Russell Mead entitled “Pompeo Champions the Faithful” about the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting religious freedom. Mr. Mead wrote:

“Persecution hangs over beleaguered Christian communities in much of the world… The most alarming developments are taking place in China… China’s Communist rulers are well aware that Christians have led democracy movements in many countries… Some of the most visible leaders of the Hong Kong protests are prominently identified as Christians.”

Thomas Farr, President of the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, D.C., wrote in “Diplomacy and Persecution in China”, (First Things, May 2019):

“The assault on religion currently taking place [in China] under President Xi Jinping is the most comprehensive attempt to manipulate and control religious communities since the Cultural Revolution.”

Early in 2017, while living near Shanghai, China, James W. Harris discovered These Stone Walls. At the time, his outreach to us was a sign of Divine Providence. James provided helpful guidance in my efforts to assist a young friend who was stranded and delayed in the ICE deportation system while awaiting documents from the Chinese consulate so he could return to his family in China.

After graduating from Seton Hall University in 2010, James taught English at a bilingual Catholic school in Honduras. Also fluent in Mandarin Chinese, James subsequently spent several years in China where he taught English at the Hua Mao Foreign Language School. It was in China that James met his wife to whom he has been married for over six years. They have a five-year-old son.

While in China, James was also co-founder of Real English Learning, a linguistic organization formed to teach Chinese students the use of English language in business and other real life settings, and also to introduce them to Western Culture. Together, the young family left China and relocated to the United States a year before Pope Francis signed a troubling concordat with the Chinese Communist government.

Since his return from China with his family, James taught religion and Mandarin Chinese at Paramus Catholic High School in New Jersey. Today, James works in the technology field as a Senior Sales Development Representative for ThoughtSpot. I invited James to write of his experiences as a Catholic in the People’s Republic of China. Due to the nature of this post and its first-hand witness, some names, events, and locations are redacted. It is a privilege to bring to our readers the following account from James W. Harris.

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Catholics, Communist China, and Hope for Hong Kong

The three and a half years I spent in China contain some of the most precious and memorable moments of my life: the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, the study of thousands of years of ancient history, the best boost to my career, and much more… but I have no plans on going back. It is unfortunate to say this about a country and place I view as my second home, though it is true, and the number one reason I am not looking to return to China is the Chinese Communist Party.

To protect the folks to be mentioned in this writing, names and specific locations will not be given. In 2012, after I broke the news to numerous people in the United States that I was about to begin a new adventure in China, several of them became nervous about my safety. They said the Chinese government was dangerous. I shrugged it off, pointing out that many foreigners from around the world were living and working in China.

Yet, while in China, I soon found out from first-hand interviews with the Chinese people the truth about the evil dictatorship of the Chinese Communist government. The first account goes back to the mid-Twentieth Century in central China. A well-liked family owned land and a farm with several hired laborers who helped with the farm work. They received word that Mao Zedong’s army was approaching the area and would kill all landlords and plunder any possessions of value that could be found.

The family began to destroy, hide, and rid themselves of every possession that they owned. They actively made themselves appear as poor as possible so that the army might spare them the fate suffered by thousands of other landowners. From that day forward, they lived an impoverished life for the rest of their lives.

Another story from the same area revolves around a man who founded and became principal of a school. Every person who knew this man while he was alive spoke highly of his integrity and good will. Since the Communist Party controlled all education as well as food distribution at the time, the school received a fixed amount of food that could be distributed to students. The rations were meager and the students were suffering.

After months of bearing with the lack of nutrition, the principal stated in an internal school meeting with his colleagues that “One steamed bun per day is not enough nutrition for the students.” A student who had heard the words of the principal informed on him with the government for being anti-communist. Soldiers came to the school, arrested the principal, and tortured him to death. For decades after this event, students and colleagues who knew the man spoke highly of him and treated his family well.

There are dozens of these stories from the 20th Century to share, but let’s fast forward to 2012 when I arrived in China. Businesses were thriving; food was abundant; cars and Western clothing were seen, and spoken English was heard, throughout the country. There were a large number of Catholic churches in the various places I visited and lived in. I thought this was quite a different Communist regime from the one that previously ruled.

The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association

While in the United States, I heard of the Underground Church in China, but for my first two years there little was spoken of it. The churches had pictures of Pope Benedict XVI and distributed his writings in addition to praying for him at every Mass. They sold Catholic books and Bibles published by a Catholic diocese and not the State-approved Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA).

All seemed well between the Catholic Church in China and the government controlled CPCA until I began to learn what was going on behind the scenes. A parishioner described to me that there are priests, who are “with the Pope” and priests who are “with the government.” “Some people say [this priest in this particular church] is with the government,” the parishioner said.

I had been told by a seminarian that the local seminary had been shut down by the government so his studies were delayed. The government does not recognize seminarians for their academic achievements and forbids societal recognition of their bachelors, masters, or doctorate degrees. The bishop of that diocese was not allowed to celebrate Mass publicly and was forced — until his death — to reside at the seminary without permission to leave.

I also attended a Christmas Eve practice session at a church to be an altar server for the Traditional Latin Mass on Christmas Day. When Christmas Day came, the Novus Ordo in Latin was offered instead. It turned out that the parish priest could not obtain permission from the government to offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form.

It became increasingly evident how government entities controlled the Catholic Church in China. Though far from the style of persecution in decades past, there was an uptick in anti-Catholic and anti-Christian activity by the Chinese government around 2015-2016. A popular Catholic pilgrimage site that I had visited in 2013 was no longer open to pilgrims because the government had closed it down.

This was confirmed by a priest whose cell phone was wiretapped. He was planning a pilgrimage for a group of parishioners, but on the day they were due to leave, the police arrived at the church, interrogated the priest about the pilgrimage, and told him that the group was not permitted to go. It was then that I realized that underground or above ground — all priests in China are subject to being persecuted at any time.

It was around this same time that the “de-crossing” saga began. Thousands of crosses were forcibly removed by police from the steeples and facades of churches. Apparently, a government official was jealous after seeing crosses from Christian churches present in the skyline of one area so he ordered that all crosses be removed. Thus began outright persecution of Christians and their churches in broad daylight. Parishioners who resisted were beaten or arrested. There was little they could do.

A song then began to be sung in Christian churches throughout China: “The Cross Is My Glory.” I remember singing that hymn in a church where the priest was afraid to leave lest the government show up to remove the cross from the rooftop of his church. This was not even the saddest event at that time. I received news that the body of a priest in the Underground Church was found in a river. This was the lowest that things could go, and I began seeking employment in the U.S. not long after these events took place

[Editor’s Note: It was at this time that Mr. Harris contacted Father MacRae through These Stone Walls, but he was not able to be candid then about what he had encountered in China.]

How could the Chinese Communist Party commit such grievous sins against its own people? Many may not realize it, but the Chinese government professes and embraces atheism. In order to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party, or to work for the government, one must openly and publicly adhere to atheist beliefs. Although some government officials are secretly Christian most are not and work to further the Communist agenda.

This is why I could not disagree more with the decision of Pope Francis to recognize Catholic bishops appointed by the Chinese Communist government instead of by the Vatican. What kind of bishops does the Communist Party elect? Are they bishops who would speak out against forced abortions, the killing of priests, the forced removal of crosses from churches? No. The Chinese Communist Party appoints as bishops atheists who agree to further the Communist agenda in China.

About a year ago, police began showing up in local villages throughout China. They had a two-part agenda. First, it was made illegal for parents to bring their children to church. Second, fires were started and villagers were ordered to throw their Bibles into the fires. Arrests would be made any time there was a failure to comply. This was confirmed to me by a Chinese person forced to throw a Bible into the fire.

Hope for Hong Kong

It is not by accident that we arrive today in 2020 Hong Kong where millions of people have been protesting in the streets over the last year against the overreaching arm of the Chinese Communist government. While those in mainland China have suffered decades of hiding from the government — hiding their faith, burying their Catholic objects, and having Masses offered secretly in their homes — Hong Kong up to this point had not suffered the same fate as the protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

For the people of Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party is more of an external force than an internal one. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are permitted in Hong Kong while barred in the rest of China. A visa is required for U.S. citizens to travel to China, but not so for Hong Kong. The list of differences between life in mainland China and that in Hong Kong is extensive. It should be no surprise that the current protests arose as China began to impose more laws on the people of Hong Kong.

Every Catholic who has been frustrated with the rise of religious persecution in China over recent years must pray for the success of the people of Hong Kong in this conflict. The alternative would be the same fate as the murdered underground priest multiplied a thousand times over the course of many years.

Hope and pray for the freedom of the Chinese people to own private property, to be educated and employed without government tyranny, and to practice the fullness of Catholic faith openly. This will not come from Beijing — neither the government nor the people. The majority of the good people of China have had their spirit of protest wiped out after decades of murder, mind control and oppression.

If anyone in China develops the spirit to resist the evil of Communist tyranny, a physical beating would be the most favorable outcome. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is a rallying point for anyone who believes that an atheistic and tyrannical government must be stopped.

Unfortunately, the events in Hong Kong are suppressed throughout the rest of China and cannot be viewed by the people there. However, there are many Chinese Americans who are hoping and praying for Hong Kong so that their heritage and former home in China may become a place of faith and freedom.

What lessons can we learn from China? How much do we tolerate evil behavior in our own country? What do we do when there is a small or large injustice committed against our faith and our freedom?

The stories I have shared in this writing took place in China, one particular country. Yet, there are forms of atheism, Communism, and many worse ideologies in every country across the globe where followers of those beliefs try to suppress religious freedom. Catholics must work harder than them all to put into practice the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Holy Church.

Thank you for reading, and God bless you.

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Editor’s Note: Visit James W. Harris on LinkedIn

Notes from Father Gordon MacRae:  I am most grateful to James Harris for this outstanding and important post. Please share it on your social media as a sign of hope for the people of Hong Kong and those in mainland China who will not be permitted to read it.

These Stone Walls  was once cited by Today’s Martyrs for original reporting on the suppression of human rights for a specific population: Catholic priests. I invite you to visit Today’s Martyrs  for a periodic report on the suppression of rights in China and throughout the world.

President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform

Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump, he brought about a sweeping bipartisan reform for the most alienated citizens of the free world: America’s prisoners.

History sometimes repeats itself in subtle ways. In 587 BC, the Kingdom of Judah fell to Babylonian invaders who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and carried off the people of Judah to exile in Babylon. It is one of the mysteries of Sacred Scripture that, two centuries earlier, the Prophet Isaiah wrote about this, and actually named the person — Cyrus — who would show up two centuries later to fix it:

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed: To Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed.”

— Isaiah 45:1

Two hundred years after that prophecy was set down by Isaiah, a man named Cyrus united the Medes and the Persians to form the great Persian Empire. In 539 BC, fifty years after Babylonians captured Jerusalem, deported the Jews into exile, and destroyed the Temple, Cyrus, and his armies conquered Babylon.

For the Jews in exile, however, Cyrus turned out to be more of a liberator than a conqueror. Though he practiced no faith the Jews could recognize and lived with values deplorable to them, Cyrus carried out exactly what Isaiah had prophesied. He restored the Kingdom of Israel, rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple, and returned the Jews to their promised land. King Cyrus then published a charter of freedom declaring an end to slavery and oppression and the restoration of religious freedom.

The Prophet Isaiah certainly never envisioned anyone like Donald Trump, but there is a curious sort of parallel in his presidency. He is notorious for having lived with a lifestyle and value system that would be anathema to Evangelical Christians, and yet they have come to see him as a Cyrus-like protector of religious liberty.

Devout Catholics might find some of his value system embarrassing, but he has also embraced the right to life and is transforming the federal courts with pro-life judicial nominees who respect religious liberty, the most fundamental freedom in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. American Jews traditionally identify as Democrats, but many might be thinking of King Cyrus right about now in the wake of a stream of anti-semitism from two new Democratic members of Congress who resist correction. Also like King Cyrus, President Trump restored the American Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s traditional capitol for three thousand years.

For my part, I don’t know quite what to make of this president. As I write this, a family member sent me an email declaring, “Right now I am committed to despising Donald Trump and waiting for the day he is charged with treason.” My family is still reeling from a photo of me portraying him in “Assassins’ Deed: My Stage Debut as President Donald Trump.” They were horrified

The President’s First Step Act

Most people have heard of the First Step Act initiated by the Trump White House and signed into law after receiving wide bipartisan support. it is the most significant prison reform initiative in decades, but most people do not know that its title is actually an acronym. First Step = the “Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed, Safely Transitioning Every Person.”

This is a bold and very broad initiative that encompasses far more than I could fit into a single TSW post, but as a prisoner, reading the act brought about my own “Cyrus-like” moment. This president, who has been droning on about walls for three years, has set into motion a policy statement for federal prisons that exposes prison walls to some much-needed daylight. Some TSW readers have asked me if this could have an effect on my own imprisonment and over time this is a hopeful notion. For the present, however, the initiative only affects the Federal Bureau of Prisons just as the President’s pardons and commutations power is limited only to federal prisoners.

But this First Step Act is just that, a first step. States often, though sometimes slowly and sometimes begrudgingly, follow what has been adopted by the federal government, however. We can only hope that this president’s bold course of action has a trickle-down effect.

For the moment, the First Step Act is being talked about and implemented in several states, but not yet in the Live Free or Die State where I am in my 25th year of imprisonment. I do not doubt, however, that time will erode that resistance so let’s have a look at what the First Step Act has taken on.

This President has ordered the removal of what prisoners everywhere call “the box” on federal employment applications. Let’s hope this catches on. Mr. Trump has asked that employers in the private sector follow his lead on this. “The Box” is a check-off box on federal job applications that must be checked if a job applicant has ever been convicted of a felony. Even in the best job markets, like the present one, checking “the Box” means a dead end for all but the most menial employment for ex-prisoners.

No matter how long ago an offense had been committed, no matter how much education and rehabilitation the former prisoner has been invested in, no matter that his or her debt to society has been paid in full, checking “the Box” has too often meant chronic unemployment for former prisoners — and even worse, exploitation. Not checking it subjects ex-prisoners to charges of falsifying applications. Its removal is a giant step toward helping former prisoners remain free.

President Trump’s rhetoric on this has also been bold, and against the tide for both Republicans and Democrats. In demanding removal of “the Box” he has stated forcefully that any former prisoner who applies for a job is able to do so because he or she has paid in full a debt to society and their imprisonment has ended.

The First Step Act also funds and implements evidence-based rehabilitation programs to enable prisoners to regain their freedom and to remain free once a sentence is completed. The prejudice in our culture against former prisoners is akin to that against the rights of slaves that I wrote about in “Senator Susan Collins Stokes the Embers of Civil War.” It took a federal edict — Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation — to begin a cascade of events and attitudinal adjustments toward meaningful reforms. “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key” does not reflect a free and enlightened society.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here!

In the current prison system in some states, rehabilitation and restorative justice are dead-ended by laws like New Hampshire’s “Truth in Sentencing.” When that law passed in the early 1980s, it required that a New Hampshire prisoner must serve every single day of his or her imposed prison sentence and nothing a prisoner could do would mitigate that.

The politicians who pushed such a law onto its citizens later justified it by saying that they expected judges to temper their sentences in accord with the new law, but that never happened. Prison became like the “Hotel California.” No one ever leaves, and those who do are so institutionalized by long sentences, and so unprepared for a return to society that they are set up for failure. All incentives for rehabilitation were destroyed, and prisons became mere warehouses of nothing more redemptive than endless punishment.

As a direct result of such laws — and the draconian prison sentences resulting from the Clinton Crime Bill of the 1990s — America’s prison population grew far beyond the capacity of its prisons. The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. This nation imprisons more of its citizens than all 28 countries of the European Union combined.

In the 25 years from 1980 to 2005 in New Hampshire, for example, the State population grew just 34% while its prison population grew almost 600% with no commensurate increase in crime rate. This is entirely because of Truth in Sentencing, and the fact that it overcrowded its prisons with long sentences and no avenue or incentive to mitigate them. Currently, only two states — New Hampshire and Iowa — cling to their Truth in Sentencing laws. They also happen to be the two states at the earliest epicenter of every presidential election.

To try to fix this, New Hampshire passed measures like NH-RSA 651:20 that, on paper at least, provides a forum for prisoners to demonstrate their rehabilitation to the court and earn up to a one-third reduction in sentence. Such reductions, however, are rarely if ever granted by the courts. Judges want legislators to fix this while legislators blame judges for not using discretion — or worse, for abusing discretion — that the law affords them.

In the late 1990s, then NH State Representative Maxwell Sargent wrote in a legislative newsletter of his dismay at the attitude of one judge, Judge Arthur Brennan (who also happened to be the judge who presided over my trial and sentencing). Representative Sargent had been encouraging one young prisoner to work doggedly toward his own rehabilitation and release. Over a decade in prison, the man earned both Bachelor and Masters degrees at his own expense and jumped through every possible hoop to redeem himself. In the end, Judge Brennan dismissed his petition with a blithe, “I’m not at all impressed,” and denied his request for a sentence reduction. The message sent was, “Why bother trying?”

The Injustice of Extreme Prison Sentences

Among the many signs of hope that have followed on the heels of President Trump’s First Step Act has been an increasing clamor of voices to revisit the length of the prison sentences imposed on first-time offenders. One such voice is Colorado Judge Morris Hoffman whose commentary in The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 9, 2019) was entitled, “The Injustice of Extreme Prison Sentences.”

Judge Hoffman wrote of how mandatory minimum sentences required him to impose a 146-year prison term on a teenaged armed robber in 1995. The only person injured in the incident was the teenage robber himself who was shot in the foot. Still, his earliest possible parole date is 2065 at the age of 90. Judge Hoffman reflected on this a bit:

“Since I imposed that sentence 23 years ago, that DA has retired, my children have grown up and had their own children, and my black hair is turning gray. The world saw the mapping of the human genome and the rise of the internet. My teenage robber saw the inside of a prison, and has 48 more years to go.”

Judge Hoffman wrote that many people have celebrated the First Step Act, but warned that it does little to address the American epidemic of overly long prison sentences. Some of his statistics are an eye-opener. According to the Justice Policy Institute, the average length for a first-time offender in Canada is four months; in Finland it is 10 months, in Germany it is 12 months; and in “rugged, individualistic Australia” it is 36 months. The United States leads the Western world with an average length of prison sentence for a first-time offender at 63 months.

I should point out here that when I appeared before Judge Arthur Brennan for sentencing on September 23, 1994, I too was a “first-time offender” though I to this day insist that the offense for which I was sentenced never actually occurred at all. I was sentenced to 804 months, nearly 13 times the national average. I was privileged, however, to publish a comment on Judge Hoffman’s article at WSJ.com with the help of a friend. Here it is:

“It is a good and just thing that Judge Hoffman reflects so candidly on the rampant imposition of extreme prison sentences. Other factors, besides those he mentioned, are the injustices of the plea bargain system, the fact that former prosecutors are over-represented on the judges’ bench, and a profession-wide bias against allowing convicted persons to have a voice. I am perhaps an exception to the latter. I was sentenced in 1994 in the Live Free or Die State to serve 67 years in prison after three times refusing a plea deal, proffered in writing, to serve one year. I am now 65-years old in my 25th year in prison for a crime alleged to have occurred when I was 29, but that never actually occurred at all. Why else would someone decline a single year in prison and risk sixty-seven?”

Judge Morris Hoffman makes a critical distinction about the sentencing of offenders in his court. “We have a duty to punish wrongdoers,” he wrote, “but that duty comes with the obligation not to punish them more than they deserve. Much of our criminal justice system has lost that moral grounding and our use of prisons has become extreme.”

I must add a qualifying principle to that. It is not just the offense that is being punished, but also the offender, and that requires evaluation for factors that may mitigate a sentence. Refusing a one-year plea deal offer may be seen as a defendant having no remorse. It may also be the result of actual innocence, something that too many judges simply never consider.

A far more egregious example is that of Pornchai Moontri who has served 27 years in prison for a crime that he did commit. But today every objective observer of that story agrees that his offense at age 18 was the direct result of extreme conditions that were never evaluated. That memorable story was told in “Pornchai Moontri, Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

Pornchai has vastly demonstrated that he is no longer the abused and homeless teenager who committed a desperate act on March 21, 1992. He is to be deported upon completion of his sentence in two more years. His only hope for some relief from that sentence – as is mine – was a political solution. Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage is leaving office and had the ability to commute those last two years. In various articles, he has spoken of his concern for the homeless and abused, and for victims of domestic violence. He had no political risk whatsoever in evaluating this story, but he reportedly refused to even look.

The First Step Act is a step in the right direction, but only a step. Justice requires taking it out of the hands of politicians and placing it where it belongs — before judges who are permitted the discretion to do what they are supposed to do: judge.

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post, but don’t stop here. Learn more about prisons and the potential for restorative justice with these related posts from These Stone Walls:

The Shawshank Redemption and Its Real-World Revision

Prisons for Profit and Other Perversions of Justice

At Play in the Field of the Lord

Cry Freedom: A Prisoner Unlocks Doors from the Inside