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

Blocking a grand jury report on sex abuse at an elite NH prep school, a judge ruled that an NH Catholic diocese defamed its priests without due process of law.

October 23, 2019 (updated December 27, 2021)

“Did my bishop throw his priests under the bus illegally?”

This post is by necessity contentious, so it must begin with a disclaimer. The current Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester is not in any way complicit with the events described herein with one exception: his recent publication of a list of priests who have been “credibly” accused. Ryan MacDonald wrote of this in his article, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.”

The term “credibly” accused has serious due process problems which even some bishops now acknowledge, but only because the standard is now also being applied to them. I described this affront to justice in “The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests.” Now there is a new and stunning development in this story. Saint Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, with historic ties to the Episcopal church, has a long and storied history as a prestigious American prep school. Its distinguished alumni list reads like a Who’s Who of Washington political insiders. It includes congressmen and senators, ambassadors and Secretaries of State, and the children and grandchildren of U.S. presidents.

Graduates of St. Paul’s include Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, Former “Russia Probe” Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, and Democratic Senators John Kerry (MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI). In 2011, Princeton University Press published Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St Paul’s School by Shamus Khan.

In recent years, St. Paul’s School has been embroiled in a sexual abuse controversy. In 2015, former student Owen Labrie was tried and convicted for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old freshman while in his senior year, a story reportedly connected to an unsanctioned school custom called “Senior Salute.”

In 2017, St. Paul’s School was the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation led by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. His investigation included allegations over a forty year period from 1948 to 1988.

In July, 2017, then New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald convened a grand jury to investigate allegations of abuse at the school. The grand jury completed its investigation late in 2018 at which point a plea deal was signed between the Attorney General and St Paul’s School administration.

The plea deal was nearly identical to one arranged in 2002-2003 by the New Hampshire Attorney General with Bishop John McCormack, former Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Manchester, and his Chief Compliance Officer, Rev. Edward J. Arsenault. Both deals allowed their respective targets — St Paul School and the Diocese of Manchester — to squash a possible misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of minors in exchange for a five-year plan of staff training and improved monitoring.

A central tenet of both deals was that the prestigious school and the Catholic diocese would waive grand jury confidentiality so the respective reports and documents could be published. Officials of both the Diocese of Manchester in 2003 and St Paul’s School in 2018 signed these waivers. In the case of the Diocese, the grand jury report and related files were published with massive local and regional media coverage in March, 2003.

This is why Ryan MacDonald published “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List,” a well-researched report of how this closed-door deal and its behind-the-scenes manipulation by some central staff of the Diocesan Chancery Office sabotaged due process rights for me and other priests.

Now Comes Judge Richard McNamara

Ryan MacDonald’s article laid out the closed-door duplicity at work at the time the deal was carried out. My defense file and a vast amount of exculpatory material were requested by the Bishop’s Chief Compliance Officer, Rev. Edward Arsenault, under the false pretense of securing legal counsel for me. Once obtained, the confidential files were turned over to state prosecutors to be selectively published after the removal of exculpatory material.

The deal allowed the diocese to arrange for each accused priest to have a ten-day review to challenge in court any material deemed to be confidential. I was the only priest of this diocese to be denied that right. In the end, as Ryan reports, I protested the deal between my bishop and the state because of its blatant sabotage and misuse of privileged files.

My protest was sent to Bishop John McCormack’s appointed Delegate, Father Edward Arsenault, who seemed to be behind most of the suppression of rights. Like all other attempts to address this with my diocese, my multiple letters were met with silence.

I then wrote directly to Bishop McCormack who responded that the diocese tried in good faith, but without success, to prevent release and publication of confidential materials. He claimed that the Attorney General issued a subpoena to take indiscriminate custody of the priests’ files with no opportunity to challenge their publication.

In contrast, Assistant Attorney General William Delker (now Judge Delker) wrote in a letter to me that under New Hampshire law, grand jury investigations, reports, and files are confidential. For the report and related documents to be published, he wrote, the Bishop of Manchester had to waive confidentiality, and did waive confidentiality, on behalf of all parties involved.

Now, sixteen years later in a stunning development, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara has denied publication of the grand jury report and investigation files in the case of St Paul’ School. In his 23-page order, Judge McNamara dropped a bombshell that should shake the earth beneath the feet of Catholic bishops and their lawyers across the land. In denying the Attorney General’s Motion to publish, he wrote:

“For hundreds of years, the grand jury has been a buffer between the power of the state and the citizen. Confidentiality of witness and cooperator information has been an essential part of how the grand jury works since colonial times.”

Making this development more stunning still, the Attorney General argued that there is in fact a precedent in New Hampshire for publishing grand jury reports: The 2003 Agreement with the Diocese of Manchester. It is easy to see why Attorney General Gordon MacDonald cited this precedent. In 2003 he was an attorney representing the Diocese of Manchester in the matter of negotiating settlements. He was also involved in negotiating the settlements with the Diocese of Manchester and the Attorney General’s Office over which he would one day preside.

Judge: “All Sorts of False, Damaging, One-Sided Information”

The following are excerpts from Judge McNamara’s 23-page Court Order denying the Attorney General’s motion to publish the St Paul’s School report using the precedent of the 2003 Diocese of Manchester Grand Jury Report:

“The OAG [Office of the Attorney General] argues that a common law precedent for such a report does in fact exist because the Hillsborough County Superior Court authorized an agreement between the OAG and the Diocese of Manchester to waive the secrecy of a grand jury investigation … and to authorize the release of sealed subpoenas, pleadings, and orders related to the grand jury investigation … The Hillsborough County Superior Court endorsed the Diocese-OAG Agreement without explanation and without any written order.

“The Court respectfully disagrees with the decision of the Hillsborough County Superior Court to approve the Diocese-OAG Agreement. The Agreement … 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. It did not protect the privacy interests of those witnesses and subjects that were never charged with a crime by the grand jury.”

Judge McNamara explained that he is blocking publication of the St Paul’s School grand jury report for the same reasons that the Diocese of Manchester report and files should have been blocked in 2003. He wrote that grand jury testimony can involve “all sorts of false, damaging and one-sided information.” In holding that the Diocese of Manchester Report did not protect the privacy rights of those named, Judge McNamara concluded:

“Mark Twain famously said that a lie is halfway 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.”

It is for these reasons, Judge McNamara ordered, that grand jury investigations in New Hampshire are confidential. As a reporter for the New Hampshire Union Leader observed, “His ruling decided a case that had been argued in secret” (see Mark Hayward, “Judge blocks release of St Paul’s grand jury info,” New Hampshire Union Leader, Oct 1, 2019).

Transparency in the Diocese of Manchester

There are some alarming questions that arise from the handling of these reports, the potential for conflicts of interest, and the apparent absence of effective judicial oversight of the Diocese of Manchester grand jury report in 2003.

Publication of that report sabotaged the due process rights of many priests and placed damning information in public view resulting in condemnation without trial. The content from this report was then absorbed by the toxic site, Bishop-Accountability which was established for a singular purpose: to foster new accusations against priests with no effort to corroborate any of the claims gathered and published there.

Judge McNamara’s Order explains that a grand jury is seated for the purpose of investigating and prosecuting crime. In the cases of the Diocese of Manchester in 2003 and St Paul’s School in 2018, no indictments were issued. The Judge wrote:

“Grand jury reports that criticize individuals are extremely controversial. 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 such a grand jury report as ‘not far removed from … and no less repugnant to traditions of fair play than lynch law.’ ”

The respective “deals” contain a hint of extortion. A misdemeanor criminal charge could be avoided if the administrations of the two institutions agreed to waive grand jury confidentiality and allow the reports to be published. The threat of prosecution weighed heavily on Bishop John McCormack who wrote in a December 10, 2002 letter to priests:

“The substance of the [grand jury’s] conclusion was to weave 40 years of history into one moment, and based on some rather complicated legal understanding of knowledge and intention, they concluded that they had enough evidence to indict the Diocese of Manchester for the endangerment of the welfare of children…

“I agreed with the Attorney General that it was in the best interest of the Church and the people of the State to resolve this matter by a public Agreement between the Diocese of Manchester and the State of New Hampshire… Let me assure you that no archival material regarding any priest, other than those against whom we have had a credible accusation … was submitted to the Office of the Attorney General.”

— December 10, 2002 letter to priests of the Diocese of Manchester sent to every priest except Fr. Gordon MacRae

But was the threat of prosecution against either St. Paul’s School or the Diocese even realistic? Louisiana State University Law Professor John S. Baker had doubts. Writing for the Boston College Law Review in 2004 Professor Baker revealed that the New Hampshire Attorney General admitted in 2004 that the theory of law behind the threat of such a charge was “novel” at best, and highly unlikely.  The statute of limitations for a misdemeanor child endangerment charge is one year while the time period of the grand jury report dated back forty years or more. The report unveiled not a single contemporary case. So why did Bishop McCormack sign such an agreement? The question remains unanswered, but it set a dangerous precedent for the Catholic Church in America. Prof. Baker wrote:

“The Church should recognize the New Hampshire settlement for what it potentially is: the camel’s nose inside the tent.’… This intrusion by a state prosecutor into the jurisdiction of the Church may encourage and be the basis for actions by other state prosecutors… The decision by the Diocese to enter into this agreement represents a dangerous capitulation by one diocese that may have created a serious threat to the other dioceses in the United States.”

— John S. Baker, “Prosecuting Dioceses and Bishops,” Boston College Law Review, 1061, 2004

The claims of transparency in the Diocese of Manchester are highly selective. There is much related to this matter that is far from transparent. It would be difficult to believe that Edward Arsenault — who would later be charged, convicted, imprisoned and dismissed from the clerical state for his embezzlement of $300,000 from the Diocese and other sources — was not involved in the Kafkaesque diocesan affairs of 2003. He has since changed his name and is now officially known as Edward J. Bolognini.

In his published resumé, which has been removed from public view, Arsenault identified himself as “Chief Operating Officer / Chief Compliance Officer” for the Diocese of Manchester from 2000 to 2009. He was thus at the center of all that Ryan MacDonald wrote about in his report, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.” The resumé went on to describe Arsenault’s role:

“[To] provide advice and counsel to the Bishop of Manchester for pastoral governance, strategic management, and operational oversight of the Diocese of Manchester including but not limited to the successful settlement of over 250 civil claims associated with sexual abuse.”

In the strangest twist, the lawyer retained by staff and former staff, of St Paul’s School who successfully challenged publication of the grand jury report was Attorney David Vicinanzo, the same lawyer who Father Arsenault claimed was retained by the Diocese to represent me at the time Father Arsenault obtained my defense files under false pretense. Neither Arsenault nor Mr. Vicinanzo ever responded to my multiple requests for explanation in 2003 or after.

Strangely, in December of 2003, nine months after the grand jury report and files exploded in the press, Arsenault wrote in a letter to me: “I have not yet had a chance to discuss with Attorney Vicinanzo the matters we previously discussed.” I never heard from Arsenault again.

In his successful blocking of the 2018 grand jury report on St. Paul’s School, Attorney Vicinanzo was quoted in the news media. He called Judge McNamara’s Order “a full-throated defense of the grand jury as an institution.”

Judge McNamara issued his Order stating that the 2003 grand jury report on the Diocese of Manchester should not have been published because it failed to protect the privacy rights of those involved. Just a few days previously, Bishop Peter A. Libasci, the current Bishop of Manchester, published a list of all 73 priests of his diocese who have been “credibly” accused. He did this, he says, for transparency.

There is much more to come on the murkiness that is now called “transparency.”

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Postscript: An Update on This Story

December 27, 2021

Now Bishop Peter A. Libasci has himself been “credibly accused.” On July 22, 2021, the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper, in an article by Mark Hayward, reported, “NH Bishop accused of sexual abuse by an altar boy decades ago.” Whatever differences I have had with Bishop Peter Libasci and his published list, I was and am deeply saddened by this development. The accusation stems from 1983, the same year as the accusations against me. The lawsuit, filed in Suffolk County, New York, alleges that then Father Peter Libasci sexually assaulted a boy aged 12 to 13 “on numerous occasions” at a parish and Catholic school in Deer Park in the Diocese of Rockville Center, New York.

Unlike the cases of any similarly accused Catholic priest, Bishop Libasci has to date faced no restrictions on his ministry. This matter contains none of the transparency that Bishop Libasci cited as his singular motive for publishing a list of 73 priests accused — merely accused — and in the same manner in which he himself has now been accused. For this complete story see “Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: David F. Pierre Jr. of The Media. Report has an excellent brief analysis of the above along with some links to how it connects to and impacts my own situation. See TheMediaReport.com (October 9, 2019): “Stunner: New Hampshire Judge Says 2003 Diocese of Manchester Grand Jury Report Never Should Have Been Released.”

You may also wish to read and share

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

and these related articles from some very accomplished writers:

Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester by Ryan A MacDonald at A Ram in the Thicket

Journalism Outside the Box: Wall St. Journal Bravely Profiles Stunning Case of Wrongfully Convicted Priest by David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report

The Ordeal of Father MacRae by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Spotlight Oscar Hangover: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film by JoAnn Wypijewski in CounterPunch

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“In the course of my 1994 trial, and while sentenced to life in prison, and during State and habeas corpus appeals I have never been allowed to utter a single word in my own defense. In 2011 a two-part documentary video was made of my testimony. It went missing for several years and has just turned up.”

— Fr Gordon MacRae

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

Citing “transparency” the Catholic Diocese of Manchester posted the names of 73 accused priests. Most are dead. The only one in prison is innocent, and they know it.

August 21, 2019 by Ryan A. MacDonald (last updated April 8, 2024)

Note: The following is a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald whose previous articles include “#MeToo & #HimToo” and “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester.”

Church officials in the Archdiocese of Detroit, in apparent disregard of canon law, published the name of a priest who had been accused of sexual misconduct. The priest is Father Eduard Perrone. Reportedly, the Archdiocese published his name and a statement that the claims against him are “credible” while failing to publicly acknowledge that Father Perrone maintains his innocence and has a right of defense. The original claim was forty years old and came from a claim of repressed memory, a highly dubious and dangerous source according to experts in the field of psychology.

Weeks later, attorneys for Father Perrone issued a statement that he has conclusively passed a series of expert polygraph examinations that support his innocence. To date, the Archdiocese has been unresponsive to that fact as well, and so has the Catholic news media commenting on the story while acting as little more than a public relations outlet for the Archdiocese. This all has a chilling ring of the familiar.

On Wednesday, July 31, 2019, for no apparent reason other than the fact that everyone else is doing it, Bishop Peter A. Libasci of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire published a list of 73 Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse of minors. Fully two-thirds of the priests named on the list are dead and thus in no position to defend themselves. The only one currently in prison is innocent. Officials of the diocese publicly suppress that fact after privately admitting it. So much for transparency.

The treatment of Father Eduard Perrone in the Archdiocese of Detroit pales next to the sabotage of justice and basic civil rights that took place in New Hampshire in the case of Father Gordon MacRae. Refusing multiple plea deals offering him a mere one year in prison in 1994, MacRae was asked by his lawyer to consider taking a series of polygraph tests with an expert.

Like Father Perrone in Detroit, MacRae agreed without hesitation. 

He was scheduled for three polygraph exams with questions based on police reports itemizing the specific claims of each alleged victim. The third one was cancelled because MacRae passed the first two so conclusively. When that fact was made known to the Diocese of Manchester before jury selection in MacRae’s 1994 trial, the Diocese published a press release with this statement:

“The Diocese mourns with those who were victimized prior to the discovery of his problems… The Church has been a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae as well as these individuals.”

— Diocese of Manchester Press Release, September 11, 1993

There was little left for a jury to do. Armed with that statement, Prosecutor Bruce Elliott Reynolds compared MacRae to Hitler in his closing arguments before a heavily manipulated jury. A decade after the trial, a second prosecutor took his own life.

In a case brought twelve years after the alleged crimes, with no evidence of guilt at all to review and weigh, the jury reached a verdict of “guilty” on all charges in only 90 minutes. This account has been vividly exposed by Dorothy Rabinowitz in a series in The Wall Street Journal concluding with “The Trials of Father MacRae.”

The Predecessor: Bishop John McCormack

After his 1994 trial, MacRae had languished in prison with little contact with or from the outside world for the next seven years. Five years after the trial, Bishop John McCormack arrived in Manchester after a stint as Auxiliary Bishop of Boston promoted by Cardinal Bernard Law.

In 2000, rumblings began to occur pointing to some troubling media interest in the case of Father Gordon MacRae — troubling, at least, to those who put him in prison and kept him there. The initial hints of inquiry came from The Wall Street Journal and PBS Frontline. The media interest ultimately resulted in the creation of two sworn affidavits by persons entirely unrelated and unaware of each other. The following is an excerpt from the affidavit of a New Hampshire attorney:

“Upon acting in a clerk capacity for [the 1994 trial] I became firmly convinced that the charges against Father MacRae were false and brought for financial gain… In June of 2000, I met with New Hampshire Bishop John McCormack at the Diocesan office in Manchester, New Hampshire. During this meeting with Bishop McCormack and [Auxiliary] Bishop Francis Christian, they both expressed to me their belief that Father MacRae was not guilty of the crimes for which he was incarcerated.”

Four months later in 2000, an official of WGBH-TV, the flagship PBS station and production house in Boston, arranged a meeting with Bishop John McCormack. In that four-month period, something happened that drove off auxiliary Bishop Christian who was — by the way — the author of the press release declaring MacRae guilty before jury selection in his trial. What follows are excerpts of a sworn affidavit from the WGBH official:

“The WGBH Educational Foundation wanted to produce a segment of Frontline. This production would have resulted in a national story about Father MacRae. I had contacted assistant Bishop Francis Christian from my office at WGBH to inquire about the story because he was the only person remaining in the Manchester Chancery Office who was present during the time of the accusations against Father MacRae. Bishop Christian wanted nothing to do with my inquiry regarding Father MacRae but did offer to arrange a meeting for me with Bishop McCormack.

“The [October 2000] meeting with Bishop McCormack began with him saying, ‘Understand, none of this is to leave this office. I believe Father MacRae is not guilty and his accusers likely lied. There is nothing I can do to change the verdict.’”

Far more telling, however, is a transcript of notes documented by the PBS official Leo Demers after his meeting with Bishop McCormack. The notes reveal a diocese compromised by the demands of lawyers and insurance companies and a Bishop struggling to retain his moral center in a time of moral panic. The transcript was compiled in 2000, but MacRae was unaware of it until 2009 when a former FBI agent began to investigate. Here are excerpts:

[Auxiliary] Bishop Christian: “This is not my responsibility. I have nothing to do with that. You’ll have to speak with Bishop McCormack.”

Leo Demers: “But you were part of what happened at that time and would have firsthand knowledge of all that occurred. Bishop McCormack was in Boston when all this happened… I would rather meet with you.”

[A few days later I received a phone call from a Chancery Office secretary regarding a meeting schedule. I explained that I would be in the Middle East and Rome for the next two weeks. The meeting was scheduled for Friday, October 13, 2000. I arrived at the Chancery Office and was escorted to the Bishop’s office… The first words out of his mouth were…]

Bishop McCormack: “I do not want this to leave this office because I have struggles with some people within the Chancery office that are not consistent with my thoughts, but I firmly believe that Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison… I do not believe the Grovers [accusers at trial] were truthful.”

Leo Demers: The Grover brothers viewed this Chancery Office as an ATM machine, and why shouldn’t they? They’ll likely be back to make another withdrawal.”

Bishop McCormack: “You know that I cannot discuss any settlement agreements.”

Leo Demers: “The specifics of settlements are of no concern to me. What concerns me is the ease with which such settlements are reached.”

Bishop McCormack: “I mentioned to you that I believe he is innocent.”

Leo Demers: “You said that your hands were tied because of your belief in his innocence. How can you help him?”

Bishop McCormack: “I want to do what I can to make his life more bearable under the circumstances of prison life. I cannot reverse the decision of the court system. What can I do?”

Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault

It is striking who is not on the newly released list of accused Manchester priests. Former Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault is not found there. At the time he was elevated to “Monsignor” in 2009, Arsenault landed a $170,000 per year position as Executive Director of St. Luke Institute in Maryland. Simultaneously, Arsenault billed for over $100,000.00 in “consultation” services for Catholic Medical Center in New Hampshire. Bishop John McCormack was the sole U.S. bishop serving on the St. Luke Institute Board of Directors at that time.

Most of those who are today involved in an investigation of the case against Father MacRae believe that Arsenault was the person referred to in Bishop McCormack’s statement to the PBS Executive above:

“I do not want this to leave this office because I have struggles with some people within the Chancery office that are not consistent with my thoughts, but I firmly believe that Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison.”

Over the previous two years, Arsenault had risen to become McCormack’s right-hand man and the hub of all diocesan administration and finances. By 2001, Father Arsenault had effectively become the power behind the diocesan throne. In that capacity, according to his resume published online (but since removed), Arsenault personally negotiated mediated settlements in over 250 claims of sexual abuse alleged against priests of the Diocese of Manchester.

The newly published list of these accused priests is deceiving. Most claims were never brought before any court of law, but were simply demands made by letters from lawyers representing the claimants whose claims were often thirty or forty years old. In 2002, Plaintiffs’ attorney Peter Hutchins, who later claimed to have received 250 such settlements — a curious coincidence — revealed the climate in which these settlements were made. The following newspaper excerpts are from “NH Diocese Will Pay $5 Million to 62 Victims,” (Mark Hayward, NH Union Leader, Nov. 27, 2002):

“The Catholic Diocese of Manchester will pay more than $5 million to 62 people who claim they were abused by priests… The incidents took place as long ago as the 1950s and as recently as the 1980s and involved 28 priests… The Diocese disclosed the names of the priests.

“None of these men will exercise any pastoral ministry in the Church ever again,” said the Rev. Edward J. Arsenault, delegate of the Bishop for Sexual Misconduct.

“‘It shows good faith on the part of the diocese that victims of abuse will be treated and that their needs will be met,’ said Donna Sytek, Chairman of the Diocesan Task Force on Sexual Abuse Policy [and now Chairperson of the New Hampshire Parole Board].

“‘During settlement negotiations, diocesan officials did not press for details such as dates and allegations for every claim’ [Attorney Peter] Hutchins said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’

“[N]o one will receive more than $500,000… but at the request of Hutchins’ clients, the diocese will not disclose their names, the details of the abuse or the amounts of individual settlements.”

Simultaneous to his positions and role in negotiating settlements in the Diocese, Rev. Edward J. Arsenault also served as Chairman of the Board of The National Catholic Risk Retention Group, an oversight conglomerate of insurance providers for a multitude of Catholic dioceses and institutions across the United States that covered the settlements.

Hypocrisy and a Double Life Unmasked

On April 23, 2014, Monsignor Arsenault was convicted in a plea deal that would prevent full public disclosure of the facts of his case and make them anything but transparent. The above handshake with his prosecutor became for some a symbol of the closed-door justice behind the deal.

Charged with embezzlement of $288,000 from the Diocese of Manchester and the estate of a deceased priest — funds used to groom and support a homosexual relationship with a young musician — Arsenault was sentenced to a prison term of four to twenty years. However someone had a vested interest in keeping Father MacRae from asking too many questions.

After a brief initial stay in the Concord prison receiving area, someone took the highly unusual step of arranging for Arsenault to be moved to a county jail to serve out his sentence. It was a move that some believe was orchestrated to prevent MacRae from learning anything about Arsenault’s handling of his own case.

Arsenault served only two years of his four-to-twenty year sentence before his prison term was commuted to home confinement. Somehow, even while in prison without income, his entire $288,000 restitution bill was paid in full. In February of 2019, Arsenault’s remaining twenty year sentence was mysteriously and quietly vacated and commuted. Many in the State and the Diocese of Manchester, though no one would go on the record, state their belief that Monsignor Arsenault received very special treatment in the Justice System. This was less true in the Church at higher levels. Before his sentence was terminated, Arsenault was dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis.  Today, as “Mr. Arsenault,” he is managing a multimillion dollar contract for the City of New York.

Of interest, one of the charges against Monsignor Arsenault was that he had forged Bishop McCormack’s signature on travel and hotel vouchers for himself and his “guest” to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Arsenault also created and forged phony invoices from a psychologist for $15,000.

It seems that Arsenault developed his forgery technique directly from the case of Father MacRae. Between 2002 and 2005, Arsenault is alleged to have forged Bishop McCormack’s signature on official letters sent to MacRae in prison and on documents sent to the Vatican seeking canonical dismissal of Father MacRae from the priesthood. This commenced two to four years after Bishop McCormack stated his informed belief that MacRae is innocent and unjustly imprisoned.

It seems clear who Bishop McCormack’s “struggle” was with. It was in the interest of Arsenault’s ties and commitments with insurance companies that all claims against the diocese be settled. MacRae’s obstinacy in refusing to accept plea deals and settlements proved an obstacle that had to be removed. From 2001 to 2005, Father Arsenault carried out a pattern of misinformation to the Vatican and collusion with attorneys to summarily deprive the imprisoned priest of his rights to canonical, civil, and criminal due process. The manipulation against MacRae is its own scandal.

In 2002, Arsenault had Prisoner MacRae summoned to a prison office to engage him in a telephone conversation for a proffered deal. If MacRae would sever all communications with Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal, Arsenault reportedly said, the diocese would retain counsel on his behalf for a new appeal.

Having just learned that all documentation sent to The Wall Street Journal  was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, MacRae felt he had no other options. In March of 2002, Arsenault asked MacRae to send to his office all his defense files used at trial for the purpose of consultation with Attorney David Vicinanzo, a lawyer Arsenault claimed was retained to review MacRae’s case.

Six months later, MacRae learned that his legal files were never given to Attorney Vicinanzo, but were instead turned over to the NH Attorney General’s Office. Multiple letters to Arsenault and Attorney Vicinanzo for an explanation were never answered.

In January, 2003, MacRae was informed by other lawyers hired by Arsenault that a vast public release of files would take place as part of a diocese-wide settlement with the Attorney General in March of that year. MacRae was assured that he would be given a ten-day notice to review files in his regard and to challenge their release. Among all 73 priests on the list of the “credibly” accused newly published by Bishop Peter Libasci, MacRae was the only one never provided with the ten-day notice or any opportunity to review and challenge the release of his own privileged files.

Father MacRae’s letters of protest to Arsenault were never answered. His letter to Bishop McCormack resulted in a claim that the Attorney General issued a subpoena on the Diocese and walked off with priests’ files without regard for their source or for legal confidentiality.

In contrast, the Attorney General wrote to MacRae stating that, over the course of a week, the Diocese provided unfettered access to its files with no attempt at oversight. Further, the Attorney General wrote that all the files were reviewed as a result of a Grand Jury subpoena and were to remain confidential by law. However Bishop McCormack had signed a waiver surrendering the rights of all the priests involved. It is unclear, given the history above, who actually signed that waiver.

To their great credit, Vatican officials have not seen fit to move with a canonical process against this wrongly imprisoned priest. They have, however, administratively dismissed Monsignor Arsenault from the clerical state. He has since changed his name and is now known as Edward J. Bolognini.

To release a list of names of the accused today under the guise of transparency with Father Gordon MacRae identified solely as “convicted” is anything but transparent. It only further obscures this travesty of justice and turns it into just another kind of cover-up.

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Editor’s Note: Ryan A. MacDonald has published on the abuse crisis in multiple Catholic and secular publications. Please share this important post. You may also wish to read these related posts:

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

Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo

A Code of Silence in the U.S. Catholic Church: Affidavits

Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Affidavits Expanded

St. Maximilian Kolbe Led Us into the Heart of Mary

A new battle in spiritual warfare; a new catastrophe behind these stone walls. Hope was at the brink as a Patron Saint spoke to broken hearts: “Behold your Mother!”

“We fly to thy protection O holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all danger, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.”

— Sub Tuum Praesiduum, 250 A.D.

I usually try to shield readers from the darker realities of prison, but in 2016 I wrote a rare post entitled “Hebrews 13:3: Writing Just This Side of the Gates of Hell.” I presumed wrongly that most readers would not want to know about what really happens in the shadowy background behind these stone walls, but that post turned out to be among the most read and shared of the year. The wildly popular site, SpiritDaily.com  featured that post, and sent readers to it by the thousands.

Of all the posts that I thought might get Spirit Daily’s attention that one came as a total surprise. It was an eye-opener for many about just how bad a few bad days in prison can be. We lived in another place then, under far more trying circumstances. Violence and treachery were daily events there, and the constant vigilance needed to cope with them took a mental and spiritual toll.

We were delivered from that place in 2017. I had been confined there for 23 years, and my friend, Pornchai Moontri was there for twelve years after having spent thirteen years in another prison, including seven in that prison’s solitary confinement. I described the relative freedom of the place to which we were moved, and our arduous path to get there, in “Pornchai Moontri at a Crossroads Behind These Stone Walls.”

We hoped this new place would be free of the drug culture and the violence and shady deals it spawns, but this is still prison. There has been less of it, for sure, but it is always lurking in the background. Complicating this, I was warned recently by a spiritually astute reader who told me of a troubling dream. In it, I became a target of the Evil One and the snares with which he engages in spiritual warfare.

There was a time when I may not have taken such a dream seriously. That time has long since passed. To tell you the story that I must convey to you now requires that I include our most recent round of spiritual battle that took us once again into darkness. Brace yourselves, for this account brought us to the very brink of ruin.

On Saturday, July 20, 2019, at 8:30 PM, Pornchai Moontri walked out of our cell, as he does every night at that time, for the trek outside and down eight flights of stairs for med-call. At that time, prisoners line up in the dark to enter an office two at a time for prescribed medications. You may recall that Pornchai takes meds at night to treat PTSD and to inhibit nightmares. But they could not prevent the nightmare about to unfold.

It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Concord, New Hampshire that night. The frayed nerves of an already unstable balance among prisoners had begun to unravel. I was on a telephone call on my GTL tablet up in our cell while Pornchai waited patiently in line for his medications down below. Fifteen minutes after he left the cell in which I now write this, someone walked in and handed me a scribbled note with four ominous words: “Pornchai is being lugged.”

The Truth Will Set You Free … Maybe

“Being lugged” is prison-speak for being taken away in restraints to solitary confinement. If you know of Pornchai and his history, this had shocking reverberations. I quickly ended my call and went down below to find out what I could — which was not much. All I heard was a collection of muddled stories and conflicting accounts about a quick but brutal outburst of violence.

The initial story — the one told first and loudest — is too often the one that prevails. That story was that Pornchai violently assaulted two prisoners, sending one to the hospital. I was told that Pornchai may never be back. Two hours later, at 10:30 PM, officers showed up in our cell with bags. They asked me to pack all of Pornchai’s belongings and bring them down to the office for inventory — a sure sign that he may not be returning.

I cannot convey in words what that night was like. After thirteen years as Pornchai’s roommate — thirteen years of pulling him, in his own words, “out of a deep dark pit” and rebuilding a shattered life — all was wiped out in an instant. I was determined, however, to find out the real story and get at the truth. But in prison, “truth” is often clouded by dark agendas, gang ties, and identity politics at their worst.

Sunday brought another day of 100-degree heat. After a sleepless night pondering what could have happened, I approached the Unit Sergeant at 7:00 AM. I knew that if he filled the empty bunk in my cell, as would usually happen, then Pornchai could never return. There was a lot at stake. Many had just labored for years to bring about the elusive restorative justice that Australian attorney Clare Farr described in these pages: “When Justice Came to Pornchai Moontri, Mercy Followed.”

I asked the Unit Sergeant if he would wait two days to reassign Pornchai’s bunk until we could discover exactly what took place. He said he would leave the bunk empty until Wednesday — three days away — while he investigates the story told by the two “victims.” Fortunately, he and other dedicated prison staff members did not immediately buy the story as told. Their knowledge and experience of Pornchai did not support what they were first told.

Meanwhile, over the next three days, Pornchai languished in intense heat and sleepless solitary confinement. He was unable to communicate or to learn anything at all. He kept running what happened through his mind, wondering what he could have done differently. As the hours in solitary stretched interminably, his hope began to fray.

The immensity of loss began to weigh heavily as he fought against despair. This was the setback of all setbacks for him. He knew and trusted that I would be working on it, but he also knew that prison imposes grave limitations. He began to pray, asking his Patron Saint, Maximilian Kolbe, for guidance and the preservation of hope. As time wore on, however, darkness enveloped him.

Pornchai could not know that the real story slowly unfolded as several more reliable witnesses were summoned to give statements. Then staff had the tedious job of reviewing camera footage and other evidence to corroborate them. This is what was learned:

As Pornchai stood in line that night, just as his turn to enter the door to retrieve his medications was coming up, two prisoners rushed up on either side of him and cut into the line in front of him. He politely asked them to go to the end of the line, telling them that this is unfair to him and to all the prisoners waiting in line. The two then turned on him in hostile confrontation.

Not knowing Pornchai at all, one claimed to be an “ex Golden Gloves boxer” and then threatened Pornchai to stay out of their way. The second wasn’t waiting for a reply. He delivered two violent blows to Pornchai’s face. In a split second, Pornchai’s instincts for self-defense — and they are formidable — kicked in. The man who delivered the blows was delivered to the ground while “Mr. Golden Gloves” ran away.

It turned out that the two of them had devised a plan to attempt to retrieve and sell their prescribed drugs to help pay off their mounting debts for contraband Street drugs. It’s a process common in prison — or at least attempting it is common. Their plan required that they provide cover for each other to distract the person dispensing the meds.

They would then tuck the medication capsule into a cheek, and then pretend they swallowed it only to retrieve it for sale once out of view of security staff. Carrying out this plan meant having to present themselves for meds at the same time, and that meant cutting in line.

Now Comes a Patron Saint

The man who delivered the one-two punch into Pornchai’s face was taken to a hospital where he was found to have multiple injuries. As is protocol for such events in prison, the last man standing was presumed to be the aggressor and was taken away in restraints for a stint in solitary confinement. “Mr Golden Gloves” ran to his cell where he concocted a story about the out-of-control Asian who violently attacked them unprovoked. The truth slowly unfolded.

I commend the professionalism of officers here who did not jump to conclusions. It turned out that most of the real assailant’s injuries were the result of multiple other fights that he had been in. This is the stock in trade of the illicit drug scene in prison. But even after all of this became known by Monday night, I was still being told that Pornchai would not be returning.

So on that night, I did the only thing left to do. The one item of Pornchai’s that I had not packed, but held onto for safekeeping, was the St. Maximilian Rosary made for him by BTSW  reader Kathleen Riney in Texas. So once again facing a sleepless night, I spent it in prayer for Pornchai, asking his namesake, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, for his intercession.

As he always does, he reminded me early on Tuesday morning that I had neglected something. As I awoke at 5:00 AM after just an hour or two of fitful sleep, my first thought was that I should pray the Memorare. I imagined Saint Maximilian himself praying that same prayer in his final hours on the morning of August 14, 1941, when he did not starve to death fast enough to suit his captors.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

As you know, Saint Maximilian was in that cell dying because he chose to sacrifice himself for the life of another prisoner. As I prayed the prayer, a thought came to me. I quickly rummaged through the “working on it” stack of paper in a corner of my tiny cell to find a copy of “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

Armed with that document, I made my way in the dark of early morning to the offices down below, the scene of the “crime.” At 6:45 AM, the Unit Lieutenant arrived for his shift. A fair and “by the book” man, I asked for a few minutes. In his office, I gave him the copy of that post and challenged him: “Before you decide the fate of someone under your authority, I believe you should at least know the person and what has gone on in his life.” He said he would read it.

I learned later that Pornchai, after his third fitful night in solitary confinement also awoke at 5:00 AM, and he also asked for guidance from his patron saint who also reminded him to pray the Memorare. Sitting on the concrete floor in the dark, he did the best he could going solely on memory. “You know what is in my heart, Blessed Mother,” he prayed, “and thanks to Saint Maximilian I know what is in yours.”

Three hours past, then his cell door opened. In walked Lieutenant Brown, the rolled-up article still in his hand. “Mr. Moontri,” he said. “The investigation has cleared you of culpability in this matter. After all you have been through, it is time you had a break. I’ll try to have you out of here this afternoon.”

“Where am I going?” Pornchai asked. “Back where you belong,” the Lieutenant said.

Addendum

I returned from work that afternoon to a traumatized but much relieved roommate sitting on his upper bunk surrounded by plastic bags filled with the sum total of his worldly possessions. It was a while before he could speak. For the next hour, we both recounted those three days and nights from our own perspective. The saddest moment was when Pornchai told me that from the tiny window in his solitary confinement cell he could see up over a wall to the very top of the door of the cell that we live in. It only deepened his sadness and sense of loss.

After showering and sleeping — neither of which he was able to do in solitary confinement — Pornchai was up early the next morning waiting for Lieutenant Brown’s arrival down below. He asked the Lieutenant what has happened to the young man who punched him. “He is now where you were,” said the Lieutenant, “but he finally told the whole truth.” Pornchai asked if that man could be allowed to come back.

“He needs a time out for a month or two because of his behavior,” said the Lieutenant, “Why are you asking?” “Maybe I could work with him; maybe I could show him a better way,” said Pornchai. “Why?” asked the surprised Lieutenant. “It’s what someone did for me. It’s what our Mother would want from me,” said Pornchai. “It’s what I want from myself.”

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Eric Mahl, and Pornchai Moontri: A Lesson in Freedom

For another 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat, our friends behind These Stone Walls sought the true source of freedom and brought a captive soul along for the ride.

I received an unexpected letter in the snail mail recently. It was startling, really, because it was hand written on plain white paper with absolutely nothing but its contents to signify its importance. It was from Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, a far more prolific writer than me, and the last person I expected to have time to write to me. What made its arrival so striking was how much it lifted me up from yet another round of spiritual warfare that came just before it.

I’ll get back to Father Gaitley’s letter in a moment. Things like our latest spiritual battle are very difficult to put into writing. Most people have had the experience of seeing their world unexpectedly disrupted. There are times when the solid ground upon which we stand just seems to collapse out from under us. There is no place where this happens more than in prison.

I returned to my cell one day weeks ago to find my friend and roommate, Pornchai “Max” Moontri packed and gone. He had apparently been summoned out of his job and told that he can no longer live with me and must move immediately. In a world in which we have little control over our lives, such things are a jarring and alarming experience.

Pornchai was forced to move in with a notorious transgender activist who was back in prison for the third or fourth time. Everyone around us, staff and prisoners alike, expressed their utter dismay and bewilderment with this arrangement. I was angry and perplexed that some bureaucrat for whom we are sight unseen could make such decisions for us and make them stick.

With the help of some dedicated prison staff members, it took 24 hours to get to the bottom of what happened and why. It turned out that this was the result of a bureaucratic decision set in motion in the prison computer system five years earlier when we lived in another place. It was not based on any reality anyone could determine. Once discovered, all was restored just as quickly as it was disrupted.

Pornchai was rattled but much relieved when he was able to move back with me the next day. Just how quickly this was rectified was even more startling to me. Sometimes when such decisions are made, even poor or unjust decisions, they are often not rectified at all. It could have taken weeks or months to fix this.

To ponder just how difficult such things can be here, take a new look at a moving August 16, 2017 post in which Mary herself decided how and where we would live. I mean that literally. It seems that she will just not be thwarted in her plan. That post was “Pornchai Moontri at a Crossroads.”

Father Michael Gaitley’s most welcome letter arrived right in the middle of all this madness. In it, he referred to Pornchai and me as “The Special Ops in The Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy.” He asked for the support of our prayers for a writing project in which he is now engaged.

For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free

Readers may remember an important turning point in our lives behind These Stone Walls called 33 Days to Morning Glory (Part I – Part II). We were the first prisoners in the world to have an opportunity to take part in this retreat experience written by Father Gaitley. The Spring, 2014 issue of Marian Helper magazine carried a description of our experience with the above photo in an article by Felix Carroll entitled, “Mary Is at Work Here.” Here is a striking excerpt:

“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first. That reason eventually was revealed. It turned out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri, who was featured in last year’s Marian Press title, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions.

“Moreover, before joining the Marians’ Evangelization Department a year ago and helping to spearhead the 33 Days initiative, Eric Mahl was also featured in the book. Eric and Pornchai met for the first time when Eric presented to the inmates during one of the six weekly meetings for the group retreat. ‘I felt like I met my brother, someone I’ve known my whole life,’ Eric said afterwards.

“Fr. Gordon MacRae — who chronicles his life in his celebrated website, TheseStoneWalls.com — joined Pornchai in [Marian] consecration and called it ‘a great spiritual gift’ that ‘opened a door to the rebirth of trust’ at a particularly dark time for both men.”

That was in 2014. In 2016, as the Jubilee Year of Mercy came to a close, I was asked by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll to write an article entitled “The Doors That Have Unlocked,” about living out our faith in the Year of Mercy. My article included this brief paragraph about our 2014 Marian Consecration:

“Our consecration did not result in thunder and lightning. Our spiritual warfare continues. That’s the nature of prison life. Only in hindsight could we see the immense transformative grace that was given to us. The consecration to Jesus through Mary changed not only our interior lives, but our environment as well.”

I saw that “immense transformative grace” manifest itself again after our most recent trials that preceded Father Gaitley’s letter. The Marians were in the process of offering another
33 Days to Morning Glory retreat program in the prison. Catholic inmates were invited to consider taking part in it, but fifteen were required for the program and only thirteen signed up.

So, given that yet another set of dark days immediately preceded this for us, I asked Pornchai if he would like to sign us both up for a renewal. I said I felt that we were being strangely invited by the circumstances. And just as in 2014, we also both felt reluctant, but we have learned the hard way that reluctance is just another battleground in spiritual warfare.

Eric Mahl (left), a Marian lay aggregate, has helped spearhead the Marians’ evangelization efforts. Standing in front of New Hampshire State Prison for Men, he is joined by prison ministry volunteers Jean Fafard, Nate Chapman, David Kemmis, and Fr. Wilfred Deschamps.

A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

On Sunday, June 30, the third 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat commenced at the New Hampshire State Prison, and two of its participants had also been present for the first. To our great joy, Eric Mahl showed up from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for an opening presentation. It was a spellbinding meditation based upon that day’s Second Reading from St. Paul to the Galatians which Eric read:

“For Freedom Christ has set us free. For you were called to freedom, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

— Galatians 5 1,13-15

I love it when the Lord is ironic. The prisoners around us devoured Eric’s message giving voice to Saint Paul “For freedom Christ has set us free.” A team of Catholic Prison Ministry volunteers was on hand to begin our 33 Days retreat. Nate Chapman, David Kemmis, Jim Preisendorfer, Jean Fafard, Peter Arnoldy, Andy Bashelor, and Father Bill Deschamps comprise a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The next week, July 7, the first installment began. As happens with all spiritual endeavors here, we had to line up at random, and then count off by fours. All the ones would thus be at one small group table for the duration of the 33 Days. The same for twos, threes, etc.

Pornchai and I and our friend CJ — who we dragged along with us — all ended up at the same table, though not by any design of our own. You have met CJ in these pages before in a most important post, “Catholic Priests, Catholic Survivors, Moral Quagmires.”

That post was, in part at least, about how Pornchai and CJ share a similar trauma in their lives that is entirely unknown to each other. I pondered in that post how we could even begin to help him cope with what was taken from him and the impact it has had on his life. A number of readers commented and sent private messages that they are praying for CJ.

So there we were, sitting at this one table with Catholic Ministry volunteer Andy Bashelor. The first point for us to ponder after watching and listening to Father Michael’s Gaitley’s introductory video was, “Consider a special need in your life that you entrusted to the intercession of Mary or a favorite saint.”

A long, uncomfortable silence followed, and then Pornchai opened up. He mentioned our recent trials, and how, very early in our friendship, I challenged him to the great adventure of faith. He said that I told him that his way of doing things had not been working out so well, and invited him to try my way for awhile. Pornchai spoke with a crack in his voice about how doors then began to open, in both his future and his past.

Andy Bashelor, interrupted at that point and said, “I should tell you that I read a powerful article about you.” Then, (turning to me) he said, “And it was written by you.” Pornchai and I knew that he was speaking of “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

Our friend CJ sat there mesmerized, instinctively knowing that something painful but important was now on the table. Pornchai went on to speak of how he was sent here after fourteen years in prison, seven of them in solitary confinement in a supermax prison. He spoke of how his life seemed without hope, of how he trusted no one and had no vision beyond prison. He spoke of how his very soul was imprisoned from a painful and traumatic past.

And then Pornchai spoke of a priest who saw him beaten and left in ruins on the side of the road, but did not pass by. He spoke of how he was led to Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and then to Mary, and then to Christ, and of how all has now changed. Pornchai then repeated something that always leaves me with a lump in my throat. He said he woke up one day and suddenly saw before him a future when up to then all he ever had was a past.

“Now there is hope,” Pornchai said triumphantly. He spoke of how setbacks no longer defeat him, and of how God has not waited for his prayers, but has opened doors one by one to bring light to both the traumas of the past and the worries of the future.

And all this while, the Holy Spirit was speaking through Pornchai to someone else. CJ sat there in stunned silence and spoke not a word. The next day he came to me in the prison library, clearly shaken. He was stricken to the core by what he heard, and asked me to help him begin the process of becoming Catholic. Then he asked me to ask Pornchai Moontri to help him face the past and teach him how to hope for a future.

“I can’t yet deal with how weird it is,” CJ said, “That I had to come to prison to learn what it means to be free.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. The great adventure of 33 Days to Morning Glory is a saving grace that my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, set in motion as a seminarian and published after just one year of priesthood. Today, over two million copies of 33 Days to Morning Glory are in circulation. To read more of what this has meant to us behind These Stone Walls please see these related sites and posts:

Behold Your Son / Behold Your Mother (Marian.org).

Mercy to the Max

The Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy

Father Seraphim Michelenko on a Mission of Divine Mercy

Please share this post!

The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek

The Priest-King Melchizedek appears in only two verses in the Old Testament but in Salvation History he is a link in a chain from Noah to Abraham to Christ the King.

The Feast of Corpus Christi by Father Gordon MacRae

“The Lord has sworn and he will not repent; you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

— Psalm 110:4

The readers of Beyond These Stone Walls have read and heard a lot about priesthood in the trenches in recent years. However, readers have told me that nothing could have prepared them for the shock and awe of our first-ever video post about what happened in my priesthood, “A Documentary Interview with Father Gordon MacRae.”

Many readers have said that they did not know whether to cheer or cry by its end. I hope you do neither. The truth is its own reward and solace, and I am grateful for an opportunity to stand by it. As I told Louisville, Kentucky attorney Frank Friday who was instrumental in finding and publishing this long-lost video, “For a priest in my situation, being heard now feels almost as important as being free! Almost!”

For many readers who have read and listened, one truth is clear. The assault on the priesthood both from within and from without in recent decades is a story of spiritual warfare. Anyone who enters this battle unaware of its real source and meaning is doomed. We who have faced spiritual warfare no longer doubt this.

On the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Catholics are introduced in the First Reading at Mass to Melchizedek, a priest of God Most High and the King of Salem which, in time, will become “Jerusalem.” He is the first person in the Bible to be referred to as a priest.

This story reaches back in time to the earliest point in Salvation History bearing historical and spiritual resonance with Christ. But first, I must take a short side road into another mystery with a tiny thread of connection in this Great Tapestry of God.

I have long pondered the hidden meaning of one of the most difficult passages to interpret in all of Sacred Scripture. From the Church Fathers of the first few centuries to the present day, scholars have struggled with its meaning. The passage is in the First Letter of Peter.

“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.”

— 1 Peter 3:18-20

These words, put forth by the first Vicar of Christ in the mid-First Century Anno Domini, are cryptic and mysterious. For obvious reasons, I was drawn to the notion that the Risen Christ “went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey.” The connection with “the days of Noah” broadens the possible meanings of this Biblical mystery. For an in-depth look at the theological meaning of this, see my post “To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell.”

In the Time of Noah

It is difficult to ponder back 2,000 years into the mindset of Peter and the post-Resurrection early Church. And when we consider Melchizedek’s role in all this, we have to ponder backwards yet another 2,000 years to the time of Abraham. But this reach back into time becomes even more complex. There is a connection to Noah as well, and it reaches back into time immemorial.

I have written in several posts that spiritually, we live in a very important time. We exist today in the 21st Century after Christ while the summons of Abraham — humanity’s first Covenant with God, the first since the Great Flood of Noah’s time — took place in the 21st Century before Christ. It is no cosmic mystery that believers encounter spiritual battle in our time.

For some, St Peter’s reference to Christ attending to “the spirits in prison” refers to what the Apostles Creed declares as “he descended into hell.” In the early Third Century, St Cyril of Alexandria interpreted the above verses from the First Letter of Peter to mean that on Holy Saturday, Christ descended to the dead to make a final offer of salvation to the deceased sinners of Noah’s day.

St Augustine, in the Fifth Century, proposed a more complex interpretation. Citing the “preexistent divinity” of Christ, a theological concept I described in “Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane,” Christ urged the ancient world, through the person of Noah, to repent before being swept away in the floodwaters of God’s judgment.

Modern scholarship proposes another possibility. Some suggest that “the spirits in prison” were never human at all, but rather rebel angels, “the Watchers” who corrupted the world of men before the Flood. This accords with the frequent use of “spirits” for angels in the New Testament (see Matthew 12:45, Luke 10:20, and Hebrews 1:14).

Whether evil or merely unrepentant, this descent to spirits in the spiritual underworld is consistent with millennia of Jewish tradition and, for Christians, a declaration that Christ has reversed the fall of man.

His post-Resurrection descent “to the spirits in prison” may well be a proclamation of victory to the infernal spirits whose power had been crushed by his redeeming death. For those who have faced spiritual battle, this verse from Saint Peter reveals Christ as a cosmic refuge from evil.

Abraham meets Melchizedek, mosaic at Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice

In the Order of Melchizedek

The above is background for a fascinating theological connection Saint Peter draws between Christ’s post-Resurrection visit to the nether world and the story of Noah and the Great Flood. That in turn connects to the Priest-King Melchizedek, his blessing upon Abraham, and the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.

In consulting extensive scholarly research on the Melchizedek story, I discovered that much of it was compiled in the Jerome Biblical Commentary by my late uncle, Father George W. MacRae, S.J., Rector of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem and later Dean of Harvard Divinity School.

Here’s the short version of the back story to the First Reading from Genesis on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. In the 21st Century before the Birth of the Messiah, in the Eighth Century before Moses encountered Yahweh in the Burning Bush, Abram encountered God as “El Shaddai,” a name which in Hebrew means “God on the Mountain” or “God Most High.”

At Shechem in the Book of Genesis (17:5) El Shaddai established a covenant with Abram promising him descendants and the land of Canaan. At this time God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. Later, a raiding party sent by the Mesopotamian overlords of Canaan was pursued by Abraham after they ravaged his encampment and took prisoners, including his nephew, Lot. Abraham prevailed in battle, rescued the prisoners, including Lot, and restored the bounty of what would one day become Israel.

On his return route, Abraham was met at Salem (later called Jeru-Salem) by its king, Melchizedek. The First Reading at Mass for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi tells this story. With echoes of the Eucharistic Feast, and in a dramatic variation from the Hebrew tradition of animal sacrifice…

“Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High [God on the Mountain], he blessed Abram with these words: ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who delivered your foes into your hand.’”

— Genesis 14:18-20

This story preserved for Judaism the living memory of what would become its spiritual capital, Jeru-Salem. Besides being the King of Salem, Melchizedek is the first person in Sacred Scripture to be called a priest. His dominant position in the brief narrative in Genesis (14:18-20) reveals him as King of Kings, the first of the Canaanite kings. His name in Hebrew is “Malchi-Zedek” meaning “My King Is Righteous.” Hebrew tradition ascribes to him another title: Prince of Peace.

Being a patriarch, Melchizedek possessed both ruling authority as a king and religious authority as a priest. His identity as both is widely seen as a foreshadowing of the Kingship and Priestly ministry of Christ. The link between Melchizedek and the patriarchal priesthood is clear in both Jewish and Christian traditions, and is a centerpiece of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews.

But before I describe that, it is a fascinating revelation that ancient scholarship from both Jewish and Christian sources identifies Melchizedek as the Patriarch Shem, the first-born son of Noah and a righteous survivor of the Great Flood and the Ark. According to the genealogy of Noah in Genesis, Shem lived hundreds of years, well into the time of Abraham.

The genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Luke places his lineage from Shem through the line of David to the adoption of the Christ Child by Joseph. The Hebrew tradition that Melchizedek is actually Shem, son of Noah, is in the oldest translations of Genesis. It appears also in the earliest Patristic writings, in the Letters of St Jerome (Letter 73) and in the Commentary on Hebrews by St Thomas Aquinas.

In the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, Christ is linked to Melchizedek through His Royal Priesthood. For much of the Old Testament, the offices of king and priest stemmed from two different traditions. Aaron (brother of Moses) and his descendants were priests from the tribe of Levi. David and his descendants from the tribe of Judah comprised the line of kings. In only two Biblical figures are these roles combined: Melchizedek and Jesus.

The ministry of Melchizedek in Salem (the early Jerusalem) foreshadows the ministry of Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22) . The notion of divine inheritance is also present. God has raised his first born Son, exalting him even over the angels (Hebrews 7:26) as well as over the Mosaic Covenant (Hebrews 9:15). Melchizedek, as Shem, is the first born son who inherits the Covenant with Noah.

Lastly, and most importantly for this post, Jesus chooses the elements of his sacrifice in the Eucharistic Feast as bread and wine. In the Heavenly Sanctuary, Jesus continues to offer the Father the sacrifice of His Body and Blood with the sacramental appearance of bread and wine.

The origin of bread and wine as elements of transubstantiation is found in these verses in Genesis (14:18-20) and cited in the Roman Canon of the Mass, which at one time was the only Canon of the Mass, as “the offering of your high priest, Melchizedek.” The solemnity of Corpus Christi reaches across the millennia to the very foundations of the covenant between humanity and God. It extends across the eons between us and Father Abraham, and at its very center in time stands Christ the King and High Priest.

“Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Your dearly Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and the sins of the whole world.”

— From the Divine Mercy Chaplet of Saint Maria Faustina

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in honor of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Please share it so it has a chance to come before someone who might need it. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

A Vision on Mount Tabor: The Transfiguration of Christ

Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?

Striking similarities exist between claims of Cardinal George Pell’s accuser and those in a discredited case hyped by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in Rolling Stone magazine.

Back in 2016, before the American presidential election that shook our politics, Catholic League President Bill Donohue was quoted in a NewsMax article entitled “Trump Taps into Mass Distrust.” Dr. Donohue, who happens to be a well-published sociologist, cited a poll by the Media Insight Project and the American Press Institute that measured the confidence voters have in American institutions.

Topping the list of those earning the public’s trust were, in order: The U.S. military, the scientific community, the U.S. Supreme Court, organized religion (yes, even still!), and America’s financial institutions. At the bottom of the list were the institutions Americans trust least. The last two came as no surprise. Only six percent of Americans reported having trust in the news media. Only four percent reported having trust in members of Congress.

Bill Donohue also cited another study. In 1985, a Pew Research Center poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans trust the news media to report facts truthfully. By 2011, that figure dropped to 25 percent. In the same poll in 1985, 45 percent of Americans thought the media was biased. By 2011, it jumped to 63 percent.

Bill Donohue gleaned from the fine print of these polls that the two most cited reasons for wide-spread mistrust of news media were inaccurate reporting and media bias. There is another reason, but it may not be so evident to casual consumers of the news. The media has abandoned skepticism in favor of quick and easy “gotcha” news.

The most articulate analysis of media bias comes from journalist JoAnn Wypijewski in a news-busting CounterPunch article about the Catholic priesthood scandal. Her against-the-tide article is “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film” (For full disclosure my own charges are examined therein).

“I don’t believe the personal injury lawyers … I don’t believe the prosecutors who pursued tainted cases, or the therapists who revived junk science or the juries that sided with them or the judges who failed to act justly or the people who made money off any of this …

“I don’t believe the claims of all who say they are victims or who prefer the tough-minded label, survivor — because ready belief is not part of a journalist’s mental kit, but also because what happened in 2002 makes it difficult to distinguish real claims from fraudulent or opportunistic ones without independent research.”

This article would never win recognition for public service from the news media because it goes so vividly against the current tide of political correctness. The news media has abandoned the necessary skepticism that was once “part of a journalist’s mental kit.” To be merely accused today is to be guilty.

Manipulating the Court of Public Opinion

This, says JoAnn Wypijewski, is “the legacy of the courtroom of panic that made ‘the pedophile priest’ a cultural bogeyman, a devil, who need not be real but only named to light the fires of wrath.” I became a target of that courtroom of panic and those fires of wrath, and so, it now seems, did Cardinal George Pell.

In a time of moral panic, convictions happen in the public eye long before they happen in a court of law. For many prosecutors, arriving at the truth is now less important than winning. The necessary “independent research” cited by Ms. Wypijewski happens only when the smoke of an unjust trial clears, if at all.

The case against Cardinal Pell had already raised concerns for real justice even before it ended in a courtroom. One of the best commentaries on this has come from David F. Pierre, Jr., host of The Media Report, in “The Witch Hunt Against Australia’s Cardinal George Pell: Five Facts You Need to Know.” The five facts summarized by David Pierre are these:

• The Australian government began investigating Cardinal Pell over five years ago even though there had been no crime reported against him.

• Pell’s publicly known accusers include career criminals, admitted drug addicts, and others who have lodged similar complaints before.

• Even secular observers have admitted that Pell was not treated fairly.

• Accusations against Pell were widely circulated in a 2017 book that has been thoroughly discredited.

• Cardinal Pell vehemently and consistently denies the accusations against him.

Before the trial, some of the charges were withdrawn by prosecutors. Now there is a new source of grave doubt about the justice meted out to Cardinal Pell. An alert reader of These Stone Walls  first spotted this story in an account at LifeSite News by Dorothy Cummings McLean entitled, “Cardinal Pell’s Accuser Copied Testimony from Old Rolling Stone Report, Journalist Claims.”

The writer who first uncovered this is Keith Windschuttle, an Australian journalist and historian. He used the professional skepticism and deep-sourcing that were once mainstays of the news media but have sadly been abandoned in favor of quick sound bites and the strip-mining of news.

Mr. Windschuttle discovered some eerie similarities between the claims brought against Cardinal Pell and a lurid story of abuse by American Catholic priests that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in 2011. His findings listed a series of identical, sometimes verbatim, allegations seemingly lifted from the pages of Rolling Stone.

The magazine and that article would have been readily available to Pell’s accuser when he first described his “abuse” to police in 2015. The LifeSite News  summary of the article lists the similarities, and they leave little doubt, according to Windschuttle:

“What is the difference between this account of child sex abuse in a Catholic church in Philadelphia and the evidence given by a sole accuser in the Victorian [AU] court case that convicted Cardinal George Pell? … Not much. The two stories were so close to being identical that the likelihood of the Australian version being original is most implausible. There were too many similarities for the likeness to be dismissed as ‘coincidence.’”

Sabrina Rubin Erdely & the Predatory News Media

You may read for yourselves in the LifeSite News  article the striking similarities that raise a specter of plagiarism in the charges against Cardinal Pell. The 2011 Rolling Stone article from which Pell’s accuser seems to have copied his claims was “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex Crime Files” written by a now disgraced and discredited former journalist, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Readers may remember that name from “A Rape on Campus,” an explosive story in the November 2014 issue of Rolling Stone. Sabrina Rubin Erdely profiled the story of “Jackie,” a student at the University of Virginia who claimed to be a victim of gang rape at a UVA fraternity party in 2012.  Rolling Stone’s front page cried out:

“A RAPE ON CAMPUS: Jackie was just starting her freshman year at the University of Virginia when she was brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party. When she tried to hold them accountable, a whole new kind of abuse began.”

Erdely’s account depicted UVA administrators as having callous disregard for the pain and suffering of the anonymous “Jackie” and, by extension, for the plight of other victims of sexual assault on campus. The story helped launch a national debate about rape on college campuses across the nation.

It contributed to a moral panic that went all the way to the Obama White House where legislation was promoted to drastically curtail the due process rights of accused college students. In the fallout from the story, UVA administrators called for resignations and expulsions even before all the facts were in. Like most such media events, the story was accepted as Gospel truth once it appeared in print.

But then someone began to do some of the independent research that journalist JoAnn Wypijewski calls for above. “Jackie’s” account turned out to be a massive lie, and Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s coverage of it a massive betrayal of journalistic standards. No one could corroborate any of “Jackie’s” story and Erdely never even bothered to try. She did no fact checking. She just ran with the story, riding a wave of public hysteria about sexual assault and abuse.

A civil trial took place just before the 2016 presidential election. From the witness stand, Sabrina Rubin Erdely cited the same tactic that countless contingency lawyers have used against the Catholic Church: “It takes trauma victims some time to come forward with all the details,” she testified to excuse her disregard for journalistic standards.

“It is not unusual,” Erdely testified to explain away “Jackie’s” ever-changing details of her story. In the end, with streaming tears, Erdely blamed it all on “Jackie,” saying, “It was a mistake to rely on someone whose intent was to deceive me.”

The bar for proving defamation and negligence against a journalist is steep. A jury must conclude, as it did in this case, that a journalist or media venue published what it knew to be false, or did so with reckless disregard for truth. In the end, when the entire account was heard, a jury found Rolling Stone  guilty of negligence and defamation, and imposed a $7.5 million dollar jury award to the falsely accused fraternity students.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely was found liable for actual malice in the writing and publication of this story. By the December 2016 edition of Rolling Stone, her name was removed from the masthead of contributing editors, and she disappeared from the world of journalism.

That Lying Scheming Altar Boy Again!

But there is another reason readers of these pages may recall Ms Erdely and Rolling Stone. A news media in pursuit of the whole truth instead of its own agenda would have scoured Ms Erdely’s previous work, but they did not. They did not because doing so would have required delving into another story by Ms Erdely that raises the same hard questions. It is a story that I have written about in multiple posts, including “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek.”

Three years before “A Rape on Campus,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone  launched another moral panic by exploding a story of a Pennsylvania Catholic sex-abuse ring among priests in “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files.” It is a story, as I have written elsewhere in These Stone Walls, that turned Father Charles Engelhardt into a martyr and Daniel Gallagher into a millionaire.

And lest you have questions about media influence on judges, Father Engelhardt’s judge, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, objected to a defense question posed to jurors:

“Anybody that doesn’t think there is widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is living on another planet.”

Before falling for “Jackie’s” fraud, Ms. Erdely fell for a much larger one brought by Daniel Gallagher, assured anonymity by Ms. Erdely as “Billy Doe” in the pages of Rolling Stone. It is this story, and Rolling Stone’s presentation of it, that is now the apparent source of copycat testimony in the case against Cardinal George Pell.

But, like Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus,” this story was also a fraud. It was written with the same malice and disregard for truth as Erdely’s other story, but it nonetheless launched a witch hunt in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with tentacles extending into the present day. Now it seems that some of those tentacles washed up in Australia as well.

The facts in this story are staggering, and though I have written extensively of them, the best source for a succinct summary is by journalist Ralph Cipriano writing for the January-February issue of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst in “The Legacy of Billy Doe.”

It is ironic that Cardinal Pell’s accuser picked this story to serve as a model to concoct false charges. Of course, this happened long before the story of Daniel Gallagher was exposed as a fraud. Up until last year it was a great success for the newly minted millionaire, Daniel Gallagher, who is yet to be brought to justice because it would be greatly embarrassing for Pennsylvania justice officials to do so.

I highly recommend Ralph Cipriano’s “The Legacy of Billy Doe.” In only two pages, he blew apart the narrative that has prevailed in the media to date. It is a narrative that now raises questions about the character of the case against Cardinal Pell as well. We owe it to him to make this known. There is a reason why no other news media figure has taken up this story as Mr. Cipriano has, and as I have here at These Stone Walls.

And it is a frightening reason, frightening for anyone concerned with the integrity of our news media and the tyranny it can create through false witness. No one has articulated this better than The Wall Street Journal' s Pulitzer Prize-winning expositor of truth in justice, Dorothy Rabinowitz, in her 2005 book, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times:

“Arguing for due process on behalf of a person charged with child sex abuse violated the progressive views held by many toward crimes involving special categories of victims like women and children. [T]here [is] a school of advanced political opinion of the view that to take up for those falsely accused of sex abuse charges was to undermine the battle. It was to betray all other victims of sexual predators. Where advanced reasoning of this sort prevailed, the facts of a case were simply irrelevant.”

— No Crueler Tyrannies, p. 17-18

And that, my friends — for anyone who has counted on the news media to champion truth and justice — may be the cruelest tyranny of all.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please help share this story with others. I believe we owe that much to Cardinal Pell.

Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane

The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.

It seems so long ago now, but a few years back I wrote a post that stunned some TSW  readers out of the doldrums of a long nap in the Garden of Gethsemane where, sooner or later, we will all spend some time. That post was “Pentecost, Priesthood, and Death in the Afternoon.”

It was about one of our friends, a middle-aged prisoner named Anthony, and his discovery of having terminal cancer. Anthony was one of the most irritating and obnoxious individuals I had ever met. He was the only prisoner I have ever thrown out of my cell with a demand that he never return. Very few people have had that kind of effect on me, but Anthony was masterful at it.

But then Anthony discovered that he was dying. As an unintended result of our “falling out” he believed that he could not come to me. He was Pornchai Moontri’s friend but the story of his impending doom was my comeuppance. I cannot forget the day that Pornchai told me, “You have to help Anthony. He is going to die and he doesn’t know how.” After a long sleep when the priest in me had succumbed too much to the prisoner, that was my awakening in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Over the next 18 months, Pornchai and I took care of Anthony for as long as we possibly could before handing him over to the prison version of hospice from where we would never see him again. But before that happened, Anthony became a Catholic, was received into the Church, and had a transformation of spirit that, in the midst of death, proclaimed an incomparable stress on life.

Pornchai and I were eyewitnesses to how all the things that once took priority in Anthony’s life just fell away. He became, in the end, like “Dismas, Crucified to the Right” of the Lamb of God. It seemed so ironic that it was his impending death that opened up for Anthony a world of faith, hope and trust that overcame all other forces at work in his life. In the end, I no longer, recognized the man I had once so disdained.

Not long after leaving us, Anthony died in the prison’s medical center where a small group of hospice volunteers took turns being with him around the clock. I once wrote of Anthony’s death, and of an event that shook our world back then, but it’s a story worth telling again. I told it at a brief memorial service for Anthony that was attended by about sixty prisoners, twice the normal for such things.

At the service in the prison chapel, those attending were invited to speak. So Pornchai nudged me and said, “Tell them about the book.” I told those in attendance that Anthony left this world having committed a second crime against the State of New Hampshire: an unreturned library book. The rest of the story generated a collective gasp.

The Library where I work has a computer system that tracks the 22,000 volumes from which prisoners can select and check out books. When a prisoner is released from prison without returning a book, an alert would come across the screen a week later to give us a last chance to find and retrieve a book left behind.

I had no knowledge that Anthony ever checked a book out of the Library. I never saw him there, and he never asked me for a book. But a week after he died, this appeared on my screen:

“Anthony Begin #76810 — Gone/Released — Heaven Is for Real”

The Agony in the Garden

Heaven is for real, but for it to be a reality for us required an Exodus from the slavery of sin and death. That second Exodus commenced in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in the course of it, God exacted from Himself the same price — the death of His Son — that he imposed upon Pharaoh to bring about the first Exodus.

The Biblical account of Jesus and His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane opens the Passion Narrative of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In the Gospel of John (18:1), the place is simply referred to as “across the Kidron Valley where there is a garden.” John, writing from a different tradition, cites only the betrayal by Judas there whereas the other Gospels precede that betrayal with the agony of Jesus at prayer.

Almost immediately preceding this in each of the Synoptic Gospels was the Institution of the Eucharist at what has been famously depicted by Leonardo Da Vinci as The Last Supper. This was the decisive turning point in Salvation History:

“Drink of it, all of you, for this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink of it anew with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”

— Matthew 26: 28-29

Following this in the account of Saint Luke, Jesus addresses Peter about the spiritual warfare that is to come:

“‘Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.’ And [Peter] said to him, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.’”

— Luke 22:31-34

Peter’s “readiness” for prison and for death will soon become an issue. From here the scene moves to the Mount of Olives where Jesus went to pray “as was His custom” (Luke 22:39).

Only the Gospels of Matthew and Mark name the place “Gethsemane.” Once there, Jesus withdrew from His disciples to pray. As you already know, the suffering and death he now faced would be set in motion by the betrayal of Judas who provided “the more opportune time” that Satan awaited when the Temptation of Christ in the desert failed (Luke 4:13), a scene depicted in “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert.”

Jesus, fully human in his suffering by God’s design, recoils not only from the image of suffering he knows to be upon Him, but also by the weight of the Apostolic betrayal just moments away. The betrayal by Judas is intensified by the dreadful weight of humanity’s sin for which Jesus is offered up as the Scapegoat — the Sacrificial Lamb of God — for the sins of all humanity.

For Hebrew ears, the account of Jesus at Gethsemane is a mirror image in reverse of a scene that occurred at this very same site 1,000 years earlier. It was a story not of a son obedient unto death, but of a son who betrayed his father. It was the agony of King David and his flight from his son, Absolom, and his traitorous revolt. As David learned that his trusted counselor, Ahithophel, had betrayed him in league with Absolom…

“David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot, and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went. David was told that Ahithophel was one of the conspirators with Absolom.”

— 2 Samuel 15:30-31

And, as with Judas 1,000 years later, Ahithophel hanged himself when the consequences of his betrayal weighed upon him.

In Saint Matthew’s account of the Gethsemane scene (26:37), Jesus left His disciples and brought Peter, James and John with Him to the place of prayer. Note that Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus raise the daughter of Jairus from death (Mark 5:37) and they were also witnesses to His Transfiguration in the presence of Moses and Elijah that I wrote of during this Lent in “Turmoil in Rome and the Transfiguration of Christ.”

In the Gospel of Luke (22:31ff) Jesus is alone and apart from the others as He prays in agony in the face of death: “Father if you are willing, remove this chalice from me; nevertheless not my will but yours be done.” I cannot tell you how often I have prayed that same prayer in the last 25 years. I pray it still.

In the Gospel, God answers the prayer of Jesus, not by removing the suffering, for His suffering is to be our Exodus, but by strengthening Him to endure it. And He will endure it unto death:

“There appeared to him an angel from heaven to strengthen him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.”

— Luke 22:43

In each of the Gospel accounts, Jesus returned to His disciples to discover that they have all slept through His agony. None were there to console Him except the angel sent from heaven while humanity slept.

Consoling the Heart of Jesus

The Gospel of Saint Mark presents a more vivid account of the inner suffering that betrayal and death brought to the heart of Jesus. Mark describes that Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled” (Mark 14:33). The Greek of Mark’s Gospel used the terms έκθαμβεῖσθαι and άδημονεῖν which vividly express in Greek the depth of distress and anxiety that came upon Him. The comfort the angel brings is reminiscent of Psalm 42:

“Why are you cast down O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

— Psalm 42:12

The coming betrayal by Judas marks the climax of the ministry of Jesus who has left hints throughout the Gospel of Mark:

“And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.”

— Mark 8:31

“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

— Mark 9:31

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles, and they will mock him, and spit on him, and scourge him, and kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

— Mark 10:33-34

So how do we, His disciples by Baptism and by the fidelity we claim, how do we console the heart of Jesus at Gethsemane? For the answer, I am indebted to Father Michael Gaitley, M.I.C. for his profound book, Consoling the Heart of Jesus which was the text for a six-week course offered here by the Marians of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy.

Like many, I believe I learn the most from Sacred Scripture when the circumstances of my life force me to live it. So picking up this book for the first time, I asked myself, “How can I console Jesus, who is happy in Heaven, while I am stuck in this hellhole called prison?” That’s what Pornchai Moontri called it in these pages in his post, “Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood.”

Father Gaitley has an answer called “Retroactive Consolation” that comes from the theology of Pope Pius XI and the Dominican theologian, Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. whom Father Gaitley quotes:

“During his earthly life and particularly while in Gethsemane, Jesus suffered from all future acts of profanation and ingratitude. He knew them in detail with a superior intuition that governed all times… Thus his suffering encompassed the present instant and extended to future centuries. ‘This drop of blood I shed for you.’ So in the Garden of Olives, Jesus suffered for all, and for each of us in particular.”

— Consoling the Heart of Jesus, P. 394

So, if His suffering is projected into the future, how can our consolation of Him at Gethsemane become retroactive into the past? What will awaken us from our sleep in the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus Himself provides that answer, and it has something to do with our story about Anthony that began this post. It is laid out powerfully in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’”

— Matthew 25:37-40

Now

“Arise. Let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.”

— Matthew 26:46

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Editor’s Note: Please share this Holy Week post with your contacts on Facebook and other social media. To prepare for a meaningful Holy Week and Easter, you may also like these other posts from along the Way of the Cross at Beyond These Stone Walls :

A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands

Simon of Cyrene at Calvary: Compelled to Carry the Cross

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb

Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood — by Pornchai Moontri

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri takes us behind These Stone Walls where he is the safety trainer for a captive audience producing some woodcraft marvelous to behold.

“I will stand on my watch, take up my station at the post, and wait to see what He will say to me… For the stones shall cry out from these walls and the woodwork shall answer.”

— The Prophet Habakkuk 2:1,11

A lot has been happening here behind these stone walls. My friend, Father G has just started a new job as the one and only law library clerk serving 1,500 men in this prison. Every prison has to have a law library and a full-time clerk. So when the job came open he was asked if he would take it. It’s a real challenge for him because he took it on suddenly, and all his training is “on-the-job” training.

And his new job came with a pay raise. His pay jumped from $2.00 per day to $2.15 per day. We have been trying to figure out how he will spend that extra 75¢ cents per week. I earn the same pay he does, but prison work for both of us is not about how much we can make, but rather how many we can help.

So Father G spends his days behind a desk now, helping prisoners to complete and file hundreds of complicated state and federal legal forms for everything from legal motions, to medical planning, to power of attorney forms, legal medical releases, divorce petitions, and applications for drug court and addictions treatment. Father G eventually connects with just about everyone in this prison in the most difficult times of their lives.

He just finished his third week there and is still finding his way. This is why he asked me to write this guest post. We both work Monday through Friday from 07:00 AM until 2:30 PM, so now all the TSW posts have to be typed in our cell on Saturday. Well, Father G can type one on a Saturday. This one took me a week, one page at a time. People here ask me if the constant “tap-tap-tap” of the typewriter every Saturday drives me crazy, but for me it is like music. It is our connection with you.

I also have a job that I like very much. I have been working on my own projects in the woodworking shop that is part of the “HobbyCraft” project here. Last year I also became the Safety Trainer. I teach new workers in the woodworking shop how to use all the equipment, and how to map out their projects to order the wood that they will need.

Prisoners in the wood shop purchase their own lumber from a local vendor, and then I show them how to use a Radial Arm Saw to cut the rough lumber. I also train them on using the planers, chop saw, table saws, band saws, routers, shapers, and the lathes which are in three sizes for woodturning projects.

I also save to purchase wood for my own projects. Most of the items I have created in recent years are smaller items such as keepsake boxes, a Divine Mercy box, mantle clocks, and wood-turned pen sets made from olive wood imported from the Holy Land.

Lots of the items I have made are featured on a Pinterest board called “Woodworking and Model Shipbuilding by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.” Below is the most recent keepsake box that I designed and crafted from mahogany with a basswood inlay in the top engraved with a wood burned image of the Praying Hands. The inside is finished with velour.

I have lately been working on some larger furniture projects.

The photo at the top of this post is me with a round dining table that I designed and created. It is solid maple, 48-inches in diameter and 32-inches in height. Below is another photo of the same table emphasizing the legs which are also solid maple wood-turned with a lathe. I have just been asked to custom build a slightly smaller version of the same table.

The table below is called a sofa table. It is made from solid cortisone oak and the legs are made from cherry. It is 30-inches high and 36-inches in length.

The cabinet below was custom-made to requested specifications. It is made from cherry with raised panel doors. It is 48-inches high.

But as wonderful as it is to work with wood, none of this is the wood that sets me free. That comes Holy Week. Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the Salvation of the world.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post on Facebook and other social media. The story of Pornchai Moontri is an epic of immense importance for the cause of social justice and for the Church. As Catholics consider leaving their faith over the abuse scandal, Pornchai found the only healing and hope he has ever known in the Catholic Church.

A ship designed and built by Pornchai Moontri for a special order.

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

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

In substance and style, a report on Catholic priests by Attorney General Josh Shapiro mirrors one by Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda in 1937.

I love westerns. One of my favorites was “Wyatt Earp” starring Kurt Russell as the famed lawman and Val Kilmer, as Doc Holliday. In one scene, Wyatt Earp singlehandedly pursued the Clanton gang across a shallow river. Against a hail of bullets, Wyatt gunned down one of the Clantons and two of their men. No trial, no testimony, just guns-a-blazin’. Looking on, one of Wyatt’s deputies asked, “Is this justice’” “No,” said Doc Holliday. “It’s the reckoning!”

Justice isn’t done this way anymore. Or at least I thought that until I saw a brief report in The Wall Street Journal by Kris Maher (January 12, 2019). From Josh Shapiro’s vast condemning grand jury report declaring that the Catholic Church in all of Pennsylvania covered up the sexual abuse of 1,000 children by 300 priests, only two cases have come to justice. There were no trials. The only two priests who to date could face charges from that report were offered lenient plea deals which they accepted. One 65-year-old priest got 2 1/2 years. The other, age 76, got 11 months. Mr. Shapiro was quoted in the article “There is a reckoning going on in this country.”

When I wrote “That Grand Jury Report on Abusive Catholic Priests,” I laid out a case for why the report on its face is no measure of justice. It was sensational (the news media loved it). It was vengeful (the #MeToo crowd gloated). It was destructive (Anti-Catholics gave it Biblical truth). But it was not justice.

It wasn’t even a tool for prosecution. It was designed and executed for persecution. Instead of making it a centerpiece of our Catholic summer of shame, Catholics should just pause to let its truth sink in. What the PA Attorney General did was as manipulative as the abuse he describes.

The whole affair calls to mind a famous quote from the legendary and much-maligned Sheriff Buford Pusser from my post, “Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment”:

“If you let ’em get away with this, you give ’em the eternal right to do the same damn thing to any one of you!”

Peter Steinfels: “It’s Inaccurate, Unfair and Misleading.”

Fortunately, there are some among us who are not letting Josh Shapiro get away with it aided by the complicity of our silence. There are voices of justice and fairness who are pushing against the hurricane-like headwinds that propelled this Grand Jury Report to do exactly what Josh Shapiro set out to do. Hear me out, please, and when I am finished you can be the judge of his tactics, his conclusions, and his intent. Let’s start with this statement:

“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of Catholic clergy. Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension.

“Numerous priests have confessed. There is no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered-up and hidden by the hierarchy.”

Did you think that the statement above was part of Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s grand jury report? Or maybe an excerpt from one of his press conferences? It easily could be, but it isn’t… The statement above is from a speech by Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. The speech was delivered at a press conference on May 28, 1937 as 325 Catholic priests representing every diocese in Hitler’s Germany were rounded up and summarily sent to prison on trumped- up sex abuse charges. In the end, when trials of fact and evidence actually occurred, only six of the 325 priests turned out to be guilty reflecting a very different public image from the one Joseph Goebbels set out to convey.

Some may think this comparison to be extreme. However, one of the most well known priests to succumb to the Third Reich’s oppression of the Catholic Church was Father Maximilian Kolbe who was executed in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941, a martyr for truth and Divine Mercy. Whether by design or ironic chance, PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro chose August 14 to release his scathing Grand Jury Report.

It’s ironic that the Pennsylvania report also targets a similar number of priests —301— and opens with the same condemning tone: “Hear me,” Josh Shapiro pleads. “You may have read about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, but never on this scale.” After highlighting the claims of horrific but unsubstantiated stories of rape, brutality, tying up victims with “altar sashes” and forcing others to “gargle with holy water” after “forced oral sex,” the report — now that it had everyone’s attention — went on to claim:

“All of these victims were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institutions above all. Priests were raping little boys and girls and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing, they hid it all.”

In the end, the Third Reich actually assured more justice and due process than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Of the 325 priest indicted by Joseph Goebbels, all of them were subjected to legitimate trials but only six were deemed guilty. Of the 301 priests accused in Pennsylvania, most are dead, none faced trials, and two accepted lenient plea deals.

Perhaps the strongest voice to actually read the whole ugly report and register opposition to its distortions is Peter Steinfels in a stunning article in Commonweal Magazine, “The PA Grand Jury Report: Not What It Seems” (January 9, 2019).

Steinfels, a career journalist of high regard for his integrity and accuracy, is formerly editor of Commonweal and religion writer at The New York Times, and is currently a Professor. Emeritus at Fordham University. His conclusion is that Josh Shapiro’s 1,356-page report is irresponsible, inaccurate, unfair and misleading. He presents a compelling analysis as follows:

The report’s conclusions are contradicted by its own evidence. Thus it is written in an inflammatory style, and in a length that would entice journalists and others to settle for reading only its long introduction, its most inaccurate and inflammatory part. In fact, a Pennsylvania judge also regarded it as inflammatory.

The report lacks all historical context by not providing any background for the reasons why Church leaders acted the way they did decades ago in their handling of accused priests. The report has no sense of history. It treats the seven decades from 1945 to 2015 as one block with no distinction between then and now.

The report presents no apparent awareness of changes in societal norms from the end of World War II to the present, the time period of its accusations. Like so many in this story, Josh Shapiro condemns the Catholic Church — and only the Catholic Church — for not acting in 1945 as it would in 2005.

The Pennsylvania report presents all its claims of abuse as though they are happening in the present. It covers-up the fact that not one priest in its pages was still in active ministry at the time the report was compiled. It also covers-up the fact that nearly half the accused priests are deceased while few others can legitimately face charges. (There have been but two so far described early in this post).

The report presents the utilization of treatment professionals and facilities as some malevolent effort to bury a problem when in fact the clear intent was to restore when possible and seek ongoing monitoring when not. How can any child advocate, argue today that simply throwing real offenders out into the street protects vulnerable young people? (I worked in ministry as Director of Admissions for one of these facilities, and I can attest to the great tragedy of their loss since the Dallas Charter which now opts to simply discard the accused).

Josh Shapiro’s Grand Jury Report Is “A Fraud”

I strongly recommend the article by Peter Steinfels. If its 11,000-word analysis is simply too much for you, then I suggest — an accurate and well-informed summary meticulously put together by David F. Pierre, Jr. of The Media Report entitled, “Speaking Truth to Power: Esteemed Journalist Calls Out PA Grand Jury Report As a Fraud.”

David Pierre notes a misleading aspect of the report that the news media has intentionally distorted. The report “ignored the fact that almost all of the accusations it details date back many decades and that many accusers did not even come forward until after 2002.” By that time, most of the accused priests were either deceased, retired or too elderly to refute anything. Boston civil rights lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate characterized such claims in his 2004 article, “Fleecing the Shepherds”:

“There is reason to doubt the veracity of the newer claims which were brought forward only after it became clear that the Church would settle for big bucks.”

— Harvey A. Silverglate

This is consistent with research conducted by David F. Pierre, Jr. detailed in his book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories — (for full disclosure, one chapter is about me). He described the findings of a former Los Angeles FBI agent who investigated numerous such cases and found fifty percent of them to be fraudulent attempts to extort money from the Church with false claims.

It is also consistent with the 2004 findings of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice which revealed that seventy percent of the total number of claims were not brought forward as they occurred, but only years or decades later after 2002 as dioceses were forced into mediated settlements with no substantiation.

And lastly, Peter Steinfels’ conclusions are consistent with what I have exposed in “A Weapon of Mass Destruction Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.” That widely-read article published at LinkedIn Pulse exposed some of the fraud that has run rampant and unchecked throughout this crisis for the Church, and how the mainstream media has engaged in a cover-up by ignoring it.

While I’m at it, if you have room in your weekly inbox for just one more source of information, make it a free subscription to The Media Report by David F. Pierre, Jr. He has consistently led the Charge of the Light Brigade by exposing distortions in the news media and bringing the truth to light without ever denying or covering for the real sins of the Church and priesthood and the real pain of real victims in this story.

Harnessing the Power of the Press

In “The PA Grand Jury Report: Not What It Seems,” Mr. Steinfels charged that virtually no one has ever raised the questions he now raises about abuses of a grand jury, a crusading attorney general, or a diocese authoritatively pronouncing so many priests guilty of awful crimes without trials or any other opportunity to defend themselves. I can only presume that he means no one in the mainstream media, and that would be sadly true.

I risk sounding like the PA Attorney General, but “Hear me!” The mainstream media has been part of the problem. Consider the events of just weeks ago. Hundreds of thousands of Americans of conscience took part in the annual March for Life in Washington and across the nation while the mainstream media for the most part ignored them and stifled their message. On its heels, however, the media sent a viral shockwave, a heavily edited video bringing widespread condemnation of some students at Covington (KY) Catholic High School.

Near the end of the March for Life, oblivious to how they were being used, the teens became caught up in some footage that at first appeared to depict a racial incident between the Catholic students and a lone Native American drummer named Nathan Philips. It spawned instant condemnation and a knee-jerk media narrative.

Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean declared Covington Catholic to be “a hate factory.” Viral CNN coverage slandered the Catholic teens as instigators of a racist rampage. It was CNN’s most visible coverage of the March for Life. The most cowardly reaction came from Covington Catholic High School and the Diocese of Covington. They issued a joint statement of condemnation of the students and a threat of dire consequences.

Then an unedited version of the video appeared, and it told a very different story. The students were exonerated and the media was shamed to the extent that it can be shamed. This was a vivid example of how the news media not only reports news, but shapes it, choreographs it, and exploits it for a leftist ideological end. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro knows this, and in his lurid, twisted, deeply unjust grand jury report, he has harnessed it for his own ends.

Peter Steinfels knows this too, but he needs to look beyond the mainstream media for his allies in this. David F. Pierre, Jr. has raised the same challenges, questions, and critiques with some compelling online reporting at TheMediaReport.com. And these same topics have been at the center of Beyond These Stone Walls for a decade. Peter Steinfels’ own venue, Commonweal Magazine, once coldly responded to a TSW reader, “We will not be covering the story of Father MacRae.” It just didn’t fit the narrative. Mr. Steinfels failed to unmask another media “availability bias” at the center of its narrative. Early in his challenge of the grand jury report he asserted:

“In fact, the report makes not one but two distinct charges. The first one concerns predator priests, their many victims, and their dispicable acts. That charge is, as far as can be determined, dreadfully true.”

The entire news media, including Peter Steinfels, seem deeply invested in this narrative which, to date, has produced $3.5 billion in uncorroborated, unsubstantiated settlements in the United States alone. While we’re in the mood to challenge media narratives, another courageous journalist has taken on this one.

In the January-February issue of the Catholic League’s Catalyst, journalist Ralph Cipriano responded to Josh Shapiro’s grand jury report with “The Legacy of Billy Doe,” another Pennsylvania story of “predator priests” and “despicable acts”:

“In a civil settlement, the church subsequently paid [Daniel] Gallagher $5 million. There was only one problem — Gallagher, a former drug addict, heroin dealer, habitual liar, third-rate conman and thief, made the whole story up. And all four men who went to jail — including a priest who died there — were innocent.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Are you tired of seeing your Church, your faith, and your priests unfairly maligned in the news media? Share this post with others. And brace yourself, for next week in these pages a prestigious guest will offer the most compelling challenge of all to the distortions you have been subjected to in “The Reckoning.” Meanwhile, don’t stop here. There is more to the story:

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

• Catholic Media Join the Sex Abuse Pile-On by David F. Pierre, Jr

• The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek

• Will Fr. Charles Engelhardt’s Prosecutor Take a Plea Deal? [Hint: He did!]