The McCarrick Report and the Silence of the Sacrificial Lambs

Days before release of a Vatican report on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, an American Archbishop called for the laicization of all priests ‘credibly’ accused.

In the last months of 2020, as the Catholic Bishops of the United States anxiously awaited the long sought release of a Vatican report on the Rise and Fall of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, an obscure writer somewhere in France published a small but potent article on the knots of sin. Surprisingly, the subjects of the article were me and our friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.

The article was published at a site entitled, in French, “Cheminons avec Marie Qui Défaits les Noeuds” — in English, “Walk with Mary Who Unties the Knots.” The article, translated into English, is “Untying the Knots of Sin in Prison” by Marie Meaney. In it, she accomplished something in just a few short paragraphs that I have never before seen nuanced so succinctly. She summed it up in a single sentence: “It is a strange twist of fate that he who had been sexually abused would be helped by a priest falsely condemned for that crime.”

I have to admit that this subtle truth overshadows and informs my perspective on every aspect of the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and priesthood. I have to sum it up bluntly. From 1985 to 1988 in the State of Maine, Pornchai Moontri was the victim of an unspeakable combination of sexual assault and physical violence that nearly destroyed his life while those tasked with child protection looked the other way. At one point, local police even arrested him while running away and handed him back over to his abuser. When finally brought to justice, that man was convicted of forty felony charges of sexual abuse, but sentenced only to 18 years probation.

In those same years, less than 100 miles away in the State of New Hampshire, I became the subject of a witch hunt launched by a crusading sex crimes detective who pegged me as a suspect.

There is a lot more to this story that new evidence and witnesses will hopefully bring into the light of day, but the short version is more than disturbing as is. With no one having accused me, and no evidence to support this detective’s prejudice, he launched a determined search for a crime beginning with a horrific lie. Exactly whose lie it was, we still do not know. The detective claimed receipt of a letter attributing to a chancery official a story that I was once a priest in Florida where I molested two boys, “one of whom was murdered and his body mutilated.”

I had never been a priest in Florida, had never even visited Florida, and no such account, according to Florida police, had ever taken place there. The chancery official later denied, but minimally and without nuance, that this story was ever told to anyone by him and he had no idea of how it started. But over the next four years, from 1988 to 1992, the detective spread the story until he found someone willing to accuse me for the right price.

Today, I am serving life in prison for this prosecutorial abuse after having refused a plea deal, a negotiated lie, to plead guilty and serve only one year. To date, no one in any official capacity in either the justice system or the Church has been willing to look under the hood of this case or hear any testimony from me or any of the truth tellers who have come forward — including the statement of a young man who accused me, then recanted saying that he was offered a substantial bribe to secure his perjured testimony.

Saint John Paul II Under a Cloud

So, having read the above, you might imagine why I take with a dose of healthy skepticism rumors and innuendo that arise from or against priests and bishops. So did Pope John Paul II whose own experience in Soviet-controlled Poland made him cautious in accepting destructive rumors about priests with no accompanying evidence. His good name had been thrown under the bus in the 2020 McCarrick Report, but I will get back to this in a moment.

By the time Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was formally accused in 2017, he had been the subject of rumors for decades. He became bishop of the newly formed New Jersey Diocese of Metuchen in 1981, and previously served as an Auxiliary Bishop of New York where he was widely known to ambitiously seek eventual elevation to Archbishop of New York and the rank of Cardinal. By the time he arrived in Metuchen, rumors of a double life had already begun to circulate. I wrote of this in a controversial and not very politically correct post that I solidly stand by: “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.”

This requires a little side story. At the time it was written, a Jesuit priest and pro LGBTQ activist, Father James Martin, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he called for increased screening and vigilance to prevent the ordination of priests with pedophilic tendencies. His editorial veered away from any consideration of the role of homosexual orientation in the McCarrick case or the abuse scandal in general.

I wrote a comment to be posted on the op-ed, but received a notice the next day that The Wall Street Journal had rejected my comment for inappropriate language. I included a link to my post on Cardinal McCarrick along with what was perceived to be this inflammatory statement: “It is a testament to the power of reaction formation that an entire institution would prefer the term ‘pedophile scandal’ to ‘homosexual scandal’ even when the facts say otherwise.”

I assumed that the offending word in my comment was “pedophile,” but that was not the case. I protested the blocking of my comment because Father Martin had used that same terminology in his WSJ op-ed. But I was wrong. The WSJ Comments Moderator contacted me and said that the algorithm employed by the WSJ had blocked the comment for use of the now politically incorrect word, ‘homosexual.’ He apologized for this, posted the comment and link, and vowed to fine tune the algorithm to prevent this from happening again.

The incident revealed the lengths that some in our culture and in the U.S. Church have employed to shield same-sex attraction from playing any role in the abuse narrative. The McCarrick story was a great threat because it lifted the veil of secrecy from the role homosexual predation played in the victimization of young men and minors. Writers like Father James Martin with an obvious agenda scrambled to again separate the two in the public eye, but to no avail.

I was a seminarian at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore from 1978 through 1982, the usual period of four years after earning college degrees in philosophy and psychology. Several of then Bishop McCarrick’s seminarians were studying with me then, and I knew them well. I heard all the rumors about his notorious beach house at the New Jersey shore. In 1986, when he became Archbishop of Newark, I was told by a chancery official in my own Diocese that McCarrick was warned by the Apostolic Nuncio to sell his beach house which became the subject of scandalous rumors.

Most, if not all, of this was kept from Pope John Paul II until the 1990s when New York Cardinal John O’Connor broke the ranks of silence and wrote about the rumors to the Pope, urging him not to appoint McCarrick to the post of Archbishop of Chicago because of the scandalous rumors circulating about McCarrick.

Of all the commentary on the 400-page McCarrick Report, the best and most readable is one by Catholic League President Bill Donohue entitled, ‘Assessing “The McCarrick Report”’ (Catalyst, Dec. 2020).

Somehow, Bill Donohue managed to summarize 400 pages of nauseating truth without leaving anything out and without sparing anyone. His assessment is blunt, factual, and truthful, providing context where needed while letting the truth speak for itself. I highly recommend it. It revealed something I had not known. McCarrick wrote to Pope John Paul in his own defense and dismissed all the rumors about him as false and politically motivated by a culture of rumor, innuendo, and jealousy. In other words, he knew exactly how to play this Pope.

Bill Donohue was disappointed that Pope John Paul listened to McCarrick and heeded his plea over that of the heroic Cardinal O’Connor. It was then, in 2001 just as the Catholic clergy abuse story was about to erupt on a national scale, that McCarrick became Archbishop of Washington, D.C. Bill Donohue also expressed grave disappointment that Archbishop Viganó was never interviewed despite being mentioned in it 306 times — and mostly negatively.

In my view, there is nothing further to be said of Pope John Paul II in this, nor is there cause to fault him. He received competing versions from Cardinals O’Connor and McCarrick, and the latter manipulatively withheld his version until Cardinal O’Connor had died. In the absence of evidence or corroboration from other U.S. bishops who remained silent, the Pope opted not to act solely on rumor and innuendo. You might understand why I would agree.

Coverup Or Smoke Screen?

I now wonder why New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond chose the week before the release of the McCarrick Report to launch a campaign seeking the forced laicization of all “credibly accused” priests. This requires more reflection than the usual knee jerk reaction that children must be protected from abuse. The increasingly alarming Catholic newsweekly, Our Sunday Visitor highlighted a letter to the editor by Steven Shea (OSV, Nov. 29) who deduced from the Report that “bishops all the way up to Pope John Paul II put clerical careers and ‘avoiding scandal’ ahead of protecting victims.” This is nonsense, and there is nothing in the Report that suggests this. The “minor” who accused McCarrick in 2017 was 63 years old at the time of the accusation.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond’s proposal to now laicize all accused priests is shocking, and its motive is highly suspect. Cardinal McCarrick was appointed Archbishop of Washington just in time to collaborate with then USCCB President Bishop Wilton Gregory and SNAP activists to shield homosexual clergy from being implicated in the scandal in any way. At the 2002 Dallas Bishops’ Conference, they pushed a zero tolerance policy that now bars any accused priest from ministry even decades later.

Meeting in Dallas in 2002, in full view of the news media and with SNAP’s David Clohessy and Barbara Blane as invited guests, the nation’s bishops hanged their heads in shame as accusations of a sex abuse coverup were leveled at them. But what was really going on was a smoke screen. Then USCCB President Wilton Gregory, now Archbishop of Washington, and then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick led the bishops through a carefully choreographed agenda designed to shield homosexual orientation from having any exposure whatsoever in the scandal. They presented it as a pedophile scandal and allowed the news media to do the same.

By imposing a policy of zero tolerance and “one-strike-and-you’re-out, the bishops imposed a “credible” standard on their priests which from that day forward would treat every one of them as guilty for being accused. Bill Donohue described the agenda behind it all:

“Lurking behind all this is the overwhelming presence of a homosexual network of priests, both in the U.S. and in Rome. Until and unless this web of deceit and perversion is owned up to — which it hasn’t been — lay Catholics will be wary of the hierarchy.”

— Bill Donohue, Assessing “The McCarrick Report”

Archbishop Gregory Aymond knows well that the credible standard now imposed on U.S. priests is the weakest standard of justice and would not hold up in any legitimate arena of due process. He knows well that what our bishops mean by “credible” is simply that an accusation cannot be immediately disproven on its face. If a priest and an accuser lived in the same area 40 years ago, then the accusation is credible and the priest barred from ministry.

To take the next step and also summarily dismiss these priests from the clerical state is an egregious affront to justice and an absolute denial of mercy. Archbishop Aymond also knows that the same standard does not apply to accused bishops. Catholic author and commentator, Philip Lawler, who has been no friend to accused priests, has conceded this point:

“American church leaders who once ignored the rights of innocent children now ignore the rights of accused priests.”

— Philip Lawler

In a brief but potent article in First Things magazine published just days before The McCarrick Report emerged, Father Thomas G. Guarino wrote of Archbishop Aymond’s affront to justice in “The Battered Priesthood.” He charges that this push for laicization “accelerates the profound erosion of the Sacrament of Holy Orders that began with the Dallas Charter of 2002.” I remind you that this zero tolerance and the scapegoating of accused priests was pushed forward by a concordat between SNAP activists, then Bishop Wilton Gregory who is now Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

“A bedrock principle of Catholic faith and theology is that priests are called to the altar by Jesus Christ, and are ordained priests of Jesus Christ forever. They are not priests merely until they become inconvenient or troublesome for the local bishop. And American bishops, no matter how beleaguered or besieged they may be, need to understand and ardently defend that truth.”

— Rev. Msgr. Thomas Guarino, “The Battered Priesthood”

In the era of the post-Dallas Charter no one has summed up the cost paid by good priests better than David F. Pierre, Jr., moderator of The Media Report:

“The Catholic Church has become

the safest place in the world for children,

and the most dangerous place in world for priests.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. The Truth will set us free, but usually not before we suffer for standing by it. These related posts may be an additional aid in understanding The McCarrick Report:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

Catholic Priests Falsely Accused

The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories,

David F. Pierre, Jr.

Help Pornchai Moontri by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is asking everyone to sign a White House petition on an ICE detainee. He explains why.

A Christmas Message: An appeal to President Trump

If there is one Christmas message that needs the support of everyone this year, it is an appeal to President Donald Trump to release Pornchai Moontri from the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He has suffered too much already. He deserves to be repatriated to Thailand.

I have known about the plight of Pornchai for many years. It was Fr. Gordon J. MacRae — he is another victim of injustice — who brought Pornchai’s story to my attention. Pornchai rightly credits Fr. MacRae with mentoring him. More than that, MacRae brought him into the Catholic Church. This was done in a New Hampshire prison where they were housed.

In 2007, the Catholic League published an essay by Pornchai on his incredible ordeal. The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Harvard Law professor emeritus Mary Ann Glendon also reached out to him.

Pornchai Moontri deserves to be released

Here is why Pornchai deserves to be released.

Pornchai was born in Thailand in 1973 and was abandoned by his mother when he was two-years-old. A young relative came to his rescue and brought him into his home. When he was 11-years-old his mother reemerged with a new husband; they took him to Bangor, Maine, against his will. His stepfather, Richard Bailey, immediately started raping him, and did so for three years. At age 14, Pornchai escaped (it was his second escape) and became homeless. When he was 18, he got into a fight with a much bigger man while he was intoxicated and took the man’s life during the struggle (he was so drunk he does not recall stabbing him).

While awaiting trial, Pornchai’s mother came to visit him in jail, warning him that if he disclosed to the authorities what his stepfather did to him, she would suffer the consequences. Fearing for his mother’s life, he prudently decided not to speak, even to the point of not defending himself in court. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Maine has no parole.

In 2000, his mother attempted to leave her husband; they were living in Guam. That is where she was beaten to death. The only suspect was her husband, but there was no evidence to convict him. Subsequently, many things changed.

In 2005, Pornchai was sent to a New Hampshire State Prison. That is where he met Fr. MacRae. Five years later, Pornchai became a Catholic; he soon became a fan of the Catholic League.

In 2018, after new evidence emerged—advocates for Pornchai pursued Bailey—and justice was finally done. Bailey was convicted on forty felony counts of child sexual abuse against Pornchai.

He Served His Full Sentence

On September 11, 2020, Pornchai, after serving his full sentence, was released at age 47 to the custody of ICE for deportation to his native Thailand. He is still in custody, with no end in sight.

Pornchai has served his time and has suffered enough. He should now be set free.

We are asking everyone to sign the White House petition. Christmastime is the perfect time to deliver justice to Pornchai Moontri.

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White House Petition

Please write your own message based on Dr. Donohue's presentation above, or feel free to copy and paste the paragraphs below into your White House petition.

I support Catholic League president Bill Donohue's petition to President Donald Trump. I request President Trump's assistance to secure the rapid repatriation of Pornchai Moontri, ICE detainee A-039064244. After serving the entire sentence imposed on him, Mr. Moontri has been held in ICE detention for many months past the completion of his sentence. This is not in keeping with our President's First Step Act for Criminal Justice Reform.

Pornchai Moontri's story is well known. He was brought to America at age 11 as a tragic victim of human trafficking. He was rendered homeless as a teenager in America, which led to his offense at age 18. After the passage of many years, Pornchai's abuser was brought to justice and was convicted of 40 felony charges of child rape. At age 47 Pornchai awaits his return to the country from which he was taken, but now languishes for many months in ICE detention. Please order the commutation of his removal so he may return home on his own with the help of his advocates, or in lieu of that, please order his rapid repatriation to Thailand, which remains mired in red tape.

To learn more on this case, please search "Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri." See the Catholic League's original statement at https://beyondthesestonewalls.com/posts/help-pornchai-moontri-by-catholic-league-president-bill-donohue

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A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe

Just decades after Christopher Columbus explored the New World, a Marian apparition near Mexico City left behind a work of art as wondrous for science as for faith.

I am not certain about how to explain my fascination with this story. I have been a priest for over 40 years, most of them in very challenging circumstances, and for the vast majority of those years I never had even a fleeting thought about Juan Diego, his strange encounter on Tepeyac Hill, or the image left behind. It is actually even worse than that. As a “science priest,” I thought it was very uncool to have a faith focused on Marian apparitions. Then I was taught a humbling lesson by the very image atop this post. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

Some years ago as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was on an official mission in Mexico City. Among her itinerary, her hosts brought her to view one of the nation’s most endearing and enduring national treasures. In the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Secretary Clinton marveled at the beautiful image and asked, “Who was the artist?” The astonished rector of the Basilica answered simply, “God.” Mrs. Clinton may have brushed that answer off, but to date there is no other rational account of how this image entered our world.

Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (we’ll settle for “Juan Diego!”) was a 15-year-old Aztec teenager when Christopher Columbus first sailed to the New World landing in the Caribbean in 1492. Two additional voyages, the last being in 1498, landed Columbus in Mexico where he charted the coast and claimed this New World for Spain. The sorely misled “cancel culture” wave of today would seek to erase this history. Saint Juan Diego might be among the most vocal in opposition to such a misguided cleansing of history.

In the ensuing years, as the Spanish colonized Mexico, many of the indigenous Aztecs converted to Catholicism. Among them was Juan Diego. Monsignor Eduardo Chavez Sanchez, the postulator of his cause for canonization, wrote of the depth of his spiritual commitment to letting faith inform the rest of his life:

“He had time for prayer in that way in which God knows how to make those who love Him understand when to exercise deeds of virtue and sacrifice.”

Like so many throughout Salvation History, God chose in Juan Diego the humble, simple, and unpretentious to make known His omnipotence, His eternal wisdom, His constant love for those He calls. It is a paradox of faith that He also saddles them with a heavy cross. Juan Diego’s cross was to rely only on his faith and his humility to speak truth to power — to bring to Church leaders who would set themselves against him the truth of what he encountered on Tepeyac Hill at the age of 55 in 1531.

Beginning on December 9 of that year, Juan Diego heard a woman’s voice call to him as he crossed Tepeyac Hill early in the morning on his way to Mass near Mexico City. Three days later, on December12, he was wearing a tilma, the broad cloak worn by the Aztecs of Mexico. It was woven from the thick, coarse fibers of a cactus called the agava plant. The fibers were known to break down and disintegrate within twenty years or so. The tilma hanging in the Basilica in Mexico City has been there for nearly 500 years with no sign of decay, and it has become the most visited shrine in the world.

Ave Maria, Gratia Plena

The Church’s Lectionary for the Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe presents a choice of two passages for the proclamation of the Gospel: the account of the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary foretelling the Birth of the Messiah (Luke 1:26-38), and the passage that immediately follows, the account of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth ending with Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:39-47). I have written previously of both accounts.

In “Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us,” I wrote of the great theological depths of Saint Luke’s account of the Annunciation which in time became the First Decade of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. Mary’s encounter with the Herald of God stands in striking contrast with the Archangel’s previous encounter with Zechariah, the father-to-be of John the Baptist. Gabriel approaches Mary with great deference and deep respect, a demeanor captured above by the artist, Fra Angelico in one of his most famous works, “The Annunciation.”

This encounter with Mary is unique in all of Sacred Scripture. It is the only instance in which an angel addresses a human with a title instead of a name: “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). In Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation of this passage from its original Greek, he rendered the title, “Gratia Plena” which was translated into the English, “Full of Grace.” It is accurate, but does not reflect the full sense of the original Greek.

Saint Luke had used the term in Acts of the Apostles as well. In his account of the demeanor of Saint Stephen at the time of his arrest and martyrdom, he again used the term, “full of grace.” It was translated from his original Greek, “pleres charitos” (Acts 6:8), referring to a characteristic of Stephen. The “full of grace” title given to Mary is very different. In Greek, the term used by Saint Luke was “kecharitomene” (Luke 1:28), referring not to characteristic, but essence. It implies that God had filled Mary with divine grace as a predestined vessel, a foundation for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In another post, “Advent of the Mother of God,” I mined the depths of the alternate Gospel passage for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is Saint Luke’s account of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, which ends with the beautiful “Magnificat” (Luke 1:39-56). The passage begins, “In those days, Mary rose and went in haste into the hill country to a city of Judah.” These words were meaningful to the ears of Israel. A thousand years earlier, King David arose and went in haste to the very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:2).

In Luke’s Visitation account, which in time would become the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaped in the presence of the Divine Presence in Mary’s womb. Elizabeth is struck with a sense of awe and unworthiness in Mary’s presence, the same awe and unworthiness that David felt (2 Samuel 6:9) as he leaped for joy as the Divine Presence in the Ark of the Covenant was on the way to being restored to Jerusalem. In this passage, Saint Luke presents Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, a vessel bearing the Divine Presence into our world. It is from this passage that she received the title, “Theotokos,” meaning, “God Bearer.”

Outside Mexico City, AD 1531

Fifty-five year old Aztec convert, Juan Diego heard a voice on his way to Mass as he crossed Tepeyac Hill outside Mexico City. It was a woman’s voice calling to him on the morning of December 9. The next day he heard the voice again in the same place, and a “beautiful lady” appeared instructing him to go to the bishop to ask for a church to be built on this site. The bishop demanded proof, of course, and told Juan Diego to return with it.

The later biographers of his cause for sainthood would describe him as a simple man who always chose to remain in the shadows. When he went back to the Lady on December 12, she pointed to some roses that had not been there previously. They were a rare variety that was never in bloom at that time of year or even in that region. She told him to bring these roses to the bishop so Juan Diego removed his coarsely woven tilma to collect them.

When Juan Diego returned to the bishop, there was a small entourage present. To their shock, he opened his tilma spilling the rare roses out, but that was not the source of the shock. Emblazoned upon the tilma was the image atop this post, an image that would become as mysterious to science as it is to faith. Nearly 500 years later, centuries after all similar tilmas have disintegrated, this image remains in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe where it is revered by millions of pilgrims each year.

Seeing the mysterious image for the first time, the Aztecs gave it the name, “Tecoatlaxope” which was translated into the Spanish, “de Guadalupe,” meaning “she will crush the serpent of stone.” After five centuries, her colors have never faded, not even after centuries of exposure to light, the smoke of incense, or the vapors released by countless vigil candles lit in her honor. Scientists and art historians who have carefully studied the tilma have no explanation for how it could exist. It has been the source of conversion for a multitude of skeptics.

And it has not been spared the spiritual warfare that sets its sights on all that is sacred. In 1791, a worker cleaning its silver frame spilled an entire bottle of nitric acid on it, but the image was unscathed. In the 1920s, when the Church in Mexico suffered under the persecution and tyranny of socialist governor, Plutarco Calles, the atheistic regime devised a plan to destroy the image and to kill the many Catholics who reverenced it. This is a dark time in Mexico history that I recounted in “Of Saints and Souls and Earthly Woes”

On November 14, 1921, a powerful bomb was planted in a nearby flower vase. The explosion in the middle of a Pontifical Mass destroyed the floor, the altar, the stained glass windows, and was felt a mile away. But it killed no one, and left not a scratch on the sacred image.

Studies with electron microscopes, infrared radiation, and multiple other tests have left scientists with the conclusion that no human hand could have painted this image, and none of its composition materials — other than the coarse fibers of the tilma itself — can be found anywhere on Earth. Electron microscope studies revealed no trace of any brushstroke or preliminary sketch on or within it.

In the Eyes of Mary

The most astonishing revelations about the image came 400 years after it first appeared on Juan Diego’s tilma. In 1929, Alfonso Gonzales, a professional photographer, photographed Mary’s face and enlarged it many times. He saw something very strange within her eyes. It appeared to be the face of a bearded man. From 1950 to 1990, a series of studies with more sophisticated equipment revealed a miracle within the miracle. The interior of the eyes is three dimensional allowing a depth and mirror-like reflection similar to human eyes. Reflected back to the observer looking deep within the eyes is the impossible stereoscopic reflection of twelve persons.

The Catholic site, Aleteia, published a study of this phenomenon entitled, “What’s to Be Seen by Looking into Our Lady of Guadalupe’s Eyes,” (November 1, 2016). I was staggered by what the author discovered there. So are some of the world’s leading experts in optics and ophthalmology.

But none of this is the “encore” for which I entitled this post. It was something much more personal. I wrote of this briefly in my post, “Our Lady of Guadalupe Led Pornchai Moontri From His Prisons.” Some say I was too subtle so I will write of it again. It happened in 2017 in the middle of our latest front in our ongoing spiritual warfare. I work as the sole clerk in this prison’s law library. It is a job I inherited but never wanted. I was just the only person who did not step back leaving the impression that I did step forward. I was more or less saddled with a massive headache that pays all of $2.00 per day.

On my desk are two computers, one with the library database and one with a Lexis Nexus law office database. My predecessor in the job had a screen background on one of the computers that was a Hubble image of a galaxy. I liked it a lot, but on a whim one day, I decided to change it. I deleted the galaxy, but was out of time. So I went to a list of available backgrounds and saw only hundreds of computer coded numbers. Hundreds! So I randomly clicked one, then checked “Save as Background,” and left for the day.

On the next day, I went to work and booted up the computer. The image that greeted me was staggering, and it remains there to this day. It was Our Lady of Guadalupe perfectly reproduced on a tapestry photographed outside the Basilica in Mexico City. I could not begin to explain how it found its way into a prison and onto that computer, just one numbered image among hundreds. The date this happened seemed even more astronomically impossible than the photo of the galaxy the image replaced. It was the morning of December 12.

Many of our Protestant friends are critical of the Church’s reverence for Mary. They have no problem comprehending that Jesus is the Son of God who gave His life for all, but He also had a Mother and she witnessed it.

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From Saint John Henry Newman

“The glories of Mary for the sake of her Son”

(Discourse 17)

“And hence it was, that, when time went on, and the bad spirits and false prophets grew stronger and bolder, and found a way into the Catholic Body itself, then the Church, guided by God, could find no more effectual and sure way of expelling them than that of using this word Deipara (Mother of God) against them… When they came up again from the realms of darkness, and plotted the utter overthrow of Christian Faith in the sixteenth century, then they could find no more certain expedience for their hateful purpose than that of reviling and blaspheming the prerogatives of Mary. They knew full well that if they could once get the world to dishonor the Mother, the dishonor of the Son would soon follow.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post so that it may one day end up before someone who needs it.

You may also like these related posts mentioned in this one:

Our Lady of Guadalupe Led Pornchai Moontri From His Prisons

Of Saints and Souls and Earthly Woes

Advent of the Mother of God

An Open and Urgent Letter to President Donald Trump

In his 2020 State of the Union Address, President Trump showed mercy on some who had tragically fallen. This is a plea for mercy and justice for Pornchai Moontri.

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December 2, 2020

Dear Mr. President: 

I write on behalf of many Catholic followers of Divine Mercy with an urgent but simple appeal. Putting the politics of this nation's polarization aside, I join many American Catholics and people of other faiths who have been moved by your consistent agenda to promote both law and order and much needed reform of the criminal justice system. I wrote for publication about your landmark effort in "President Donald Trump's First Step Act for Prison Reform."

It is a basic tenet of your First Step Act that when a prison term has been fully served, it should not continue in other forms such as joblessness, job discrimination, and society's ongoing pointed finger of shame. Your First Step Act is a second chance for many to rise above the past and embrace a future of hope. This will be a part of your legacy for years to come. 

I am writing to request the assistance of your Administration in what should be a simple matter. As a teenager at age eighteen, Pornchai Moontri committed a crime out of desperation. He has served every day of his sentence and was released  at age forty-seven on September 11, 2020 to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation to his native Thailand. 

Mr. President, it is important to note that neither Mr. Moontri nor his many advocates and friends who have become his family in America are seeking commutation of his removal order. However, that could also be a just and merciful outcome. In lieu of that, what he and we seek is his rapid repatriation to his native Thailand, a nation from which, as you will read below, he was removed at age eleven as a victim of human trafficking. Since having fully served his prison sentence, Mr. Moontri has experienced an unjust and merciless three-month extension of that sentence with no end in sight. 

Taxpayers already have spent far more for Mr. Moontri's detention than would have been spent for his removal. We, his advocates, are more than willing to purchase his airfare to Thailand if permitted. We have built a future for him there with good people who anxiously await his return. This could be remedied easily by your office with a simple phone call.

There is much more to this story which should become part of your discernment on the right course of action. Pornchai Moontri was a child victim of human trafficking. He was abandoned by his mother at age two in Thailand. She fell under the influence and control of an American, Richard Alan Bailey, who brought her to the U.S.  After a passage of nine years, Bailey sent her to retrieve Pornchai at age eleven and bring him to this country. 

Pornchai was imprisoned by Bailey who repeatedly raped and beat him. At age thirteen he escaped but was returned by local police who did not understand his Thai protests. At age fourteen he escaped again and became a homeless adolescent living on the streets of a foreign country. At age eighteen, intoxicated and broken, he took a man's life during a struggle. 

While awaiting trial at age eighteen in 1992, Pornchai was visited by his mother who told him that Richard Bailey would harm her if Pornchai divulged any of what had happened to him. In fear for his mother’s life, Pornchai thus remained silent throughout his trial, refusing to participate in his own defense. In 2000, while attempting to leave Richard Bailey, Pornchai's mother was murdered on the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam while in Bailey's company. She was beaten to death. This matter remains an unsolved “cold case” homicide despite new evidence pointing to an obvious suspect who has never answered for this crime.

In 2018, after becoming fully aware of this story, from articles I had written and published, Pornchai's advocates brought Richard Bailey to justice. On September 12, 2018 Bailey was convicted in Penobscot (Maine) Superior Court on forty felony counts of child sexual abuse against Pornchai Moontri. 

A simple Google search of "Pornchai Moontri" will reveal much documentation of the above. It will also reveal the talented, gifted, intelligent man that Pornchai has become. Pornchai became a devout Catholic convert and a celebrated member of the Divine Mercy movement in the Catholic Church. He has been the subject of numerous published articles and a book, Loved, Lost, Found by Marian Press editor and author, Felix Carroll. 

As I mentioned above, it would be both justice and mercy if Pornchai's deportation order could be commuted, but he would nonetheless leave the United States for Thailand of his own accord. A life and future have been built for him there as a valued member of Divine Mercy Thailand. Regardless of what you decide in this matter, Mr. President, we implore you to help us get him out of ICE custody to commence rapid repatriation to his native land. Pornchai has suffered more than enough for one lifetime. 

Respectfully Yours, 

Father Gordon J. MacRae

BeyondTheseStoneWalls.com

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Editor’s Note: Please also read and share these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls: 

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform

Trump at Mount Rushmore, Lincoln at the Emancipation

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Help Pornchai

Please help us seek the assistance of President Trump by adding your voice to this petition. Please copy and paste the statement below to: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ in the section WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAY?

Re: Pornchai Moontri ICE detention A-039064244

Pornchai went to prison at age eighteen for a crime of desperation. Having served his prison sentence in full, he was released at age forty-seven to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation to his native Thailand.

Pornchai was taken from Thailand at age eleven as a victim of human trafficking by an American who has recently been convicted of forty felony counts of sexual assault against Pornchai as a child.

With the help from a Catholic priest in prison, Pornchai sought counseling for severe PTSD, became educated graduating with highest honors, completed numerous programs in restorative justice and mental health, and is today a celebrated Catholic convert and member of the Divine Mercy movement in the Catholic Church. He has been the subject of numerous published articles and a book.

Now he is an ICE detainee held far beyond his sentence at an overcrowded for-profit ICE facility in Jena, LA. His ninety day travel documents issued by his embassy were allowed to expire with no action on his removal.

If you Google "Pornchai Moontri" you will be hard pressed to find a "criminal alien" in the results. As a person who has followed the story of Pornchai Moontri, I implore our government to secure the immediate repatriation of this remarkable man and survivor.

For further info, contact: maxmoontri (at) gmail (dot) com

Thank you!

The Challenge of Thanksgiving in the Midst of the Fall

The Mayflower pilgrims arrived in America on November 21, 1620. Squanto, the real hero of our Thanksgiving, has a 400 year-old tale of survival in a pandemic.

Thanksgiving by Fr Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: The following post was written by Father Gordon MacRae in November 2020, a time when all Thanksgiving became a challenge under the weight of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, there is cause for Thanksgiving here.

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The autumnal equinox brought trial after trial to us behind these stone walls. My litany of woes will follow, but if you have been reading my posts you know I cannot let “autumnal equinox” pass by without comment. The equinox occurs twice each year when the Sun crosses the celestial equator resulting in equal day and night on Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere, this happened on September 22 marking the autumnal equinox. The term comes from the Latin, “aequinoctium” for “equal night.”

But for me, the equinox brought forth more night than day. I’ll get to the point in a moment. My friend, Father George David Byers often chides me for being too subtle when I write. He says that most people want to get right to the point without being led to it through the labyrinthine ways of one of my posts. That’s another really cool word. It refers to a maze. The word was first used in Greek mythology to refer to a maze built by Daedalus for Minos, King of Crete. In the Greek myth, Daedalus and his son, Icarus were imprisoned there, but escaped with wings made of wax. Icarus flew too close to the Sun and perished.

The word was also used by Francis Thompson in the first verses of one of my favorite epic poems, “The Hound of Heaven,”

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind;
And in the midst of tears, I hid from Him.
And under running laughter, up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated, adown Titanic glooms
Of chasmed fears, from those strong Feet.
That followed, followed after.

I never tire of reading these verses, but the rest seems a chore, a stark reminder of where I have spent the last 30 American Thanksgivings. The next verse reminds me too much of prison:

I stand amid dust of the mounded years —
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled, and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sunstarts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even to dream.

But I have thwarted Francis Thompson on one point. I still dream, even when I wish I did not. Like what Fr. Byers says of my writing, my dreams are too subtle, and leave me pondering them for days to come. I shared a strange one with you a few years ago, a time that now seems far older. That post was, “Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis.” It was a haunting dream in which I returned to where I started religious life some 48 years ago as a Capuchin. Strangely, Pornchai Moontri, my friend of the present, was with me there. I realized only days later that the dream took place early in the morning of August 17, the day I professed first vows as a Capuchin.

And I realize only now that at the time I was professing my first vows, Pornchai was two years old and had just been abandoned by both his parents whose lives had fallen apart. Pornchai was left to find food in streets, and was treated for severe malnutrition. The echoes of our lives resonate through these dreams. That one ended when Pornchai and I left Mass to start down a long winding path. “Where are we going?” he asked.

I bring this up again because I more recently suffered through a sequel to that same dream. It was a continuation of it. Pornchai was gone and I walked alone on that same path. I was back in my Capuchin habit with the large wooden rosary we once wore hanging from my cincture. I was troubled that the rosary was too long. The crucifix at the end of it was dragging along the ground as I walked. When I bent down to pick it up, I was startled to see that the Body of Christ was gone. I had to go back to find Him, but I was frozen in place not knowing how far back I would have to go. I decided that I will just have to carry the cross for the rest of the way.

Trials That Came with the Fall

With the autumnal equinox, all the trials came at once. Father George David Byers wrote of some of them recently in his post, “Censoring the Already Censored: That Hurts Bad.” A BTSW reader kindly sent me a printed copy. I was grateful for the effort, but his title was not subtle enough. Nonetheless, it was all true, and even a little cryptic where it needed to be.

My writing over the years helped to develop a wonderful team from the United States, Thailand, and Australia that came together to assist my friend, Pornchai. His story is seen as one of the most amazing accounts of grace, conversion, and redemption ever to appear in print. Our team worked hard to prepare for his repatriation to Thailand. “Repatriation” is the nice word that we use to cover up the hard truth of it. He is being expelled from the United States as a criminal alien. “Send me your tired, and your poor, and your huddled masses yearning to be free,” and we will put them in cages until we can throw them out.

It was not long before the American disdain for the stranger and alien in our midst developed into a profitable business for some. “Profit” means that some private enterprise has taken over a task of government, and then stretched it out to strengthen the bottom line. After leaving me on this path on September 8, 2020, Pornchai was told by his ICE detention handlers that he would be in Thailand by the end of September. Then they misplaced his travel documents and he would leave by the end of October.

Then nothing — absolutely nothing — was done to arrange travel for him. He had seven different ICE handlers in seven weeks, each one starting from scratch, seemingly clueless about what came before or what comes next. The final one seemed at least professional and sympathetic, but the 90-day travel documents issued by his Consulate were left to expire on November 10, and we were left to start over. Meanwhile, Pornchai was living eight to a room, then forty to a room, and then eighty to a room. He was held in captivity a full five months after his prison sentence was served in full.

Funds I was saving for Pornchai’s future were rerouted to pay for his survival. Food is sold to detainees at hugely inflated prices. Telephone calls are eleven cents per minute. All the hopes Pornchai left here with began to fade. Our daily phone call, so necessary for his survival, became a daily pep talk while I struggled to really believe all that I was telling him, and he struggled to believe as well. ICE detention is a one-size-fits-all American horror story.

No nation can survive with open borders through which anyone can enter at will. Only the most clueless radical would advocate for such a thing. But ICE and the for-profit concentration camps that feed off it are not the American way. This is not a nightmare of four years in the making. This is a nightmare that has evolved since September 11, 2001. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s appointee to the Supreme Court, went on record with a majority opinion that any foreign national who commits a crime on U.S. soil is subject to rapid removal. I hope that what happened to Pornchai is not what she meant by “rapid.”

But there is also cause for Thanksgiving here — at least for me, and for Pornchai as well. The grace of Divine Mercy gave us in advance both the helpers and the means necessary to get us through this. Pornchai has never starved, and we were able to help a few around him as well. And we have been able to walk with him, and encourage him in the belief that there is some meaning and purpose in this odyssey. I am most thankful for that.

The Cracks in These Stone Walls

All during the above, as Father Byers wrote with no subtlety at all, we were also facing the collapse of These Stone Walls after eleven years of writing. I was faced with a very difficult choice, and the outcome seemed dismal. Then someone else appeared on the scene with the willingness and ability to salvage everything, and maybe even improve on it a bit. There is cause for much Thanksgiving in that, and in all that now awaits us Beyond These Stone Walls.

And at the same time all of that was going on, Covid-19 renewed and tightened its squeeze on this prison resulting in heightened confinement, even fewer resources for writing, almost no access to a library, and the complete shutdown of any access to Catholic Mass or even a Catholic presence here. All the progress Divine Mercy made in this prison was then in a three-year hibernation. With help from the prison chaplain, a Catholic deacon, I have been able to obtain the elements necessary for Mass once per week.

With Pornchai gone after fifteen years as my roommate, I have had to change the opportunity for Mass. I now begin it on Sundays at 11:30 PM Eastern Time. This is after my new assigned roommate falls asleep and all the prison counts and other security measures end for the day. It is the only time I will not be interrupted. From ICE detention in Jena, Louisiana, it was at 10:30 PM and Pornchai used the Spiritual Communion prayers from his United States Grace Force Prayer Book to join me. There is cause for Thanksgiving in all of this.

And right on cue about three weeks before Pornchai was taken away, I tore the rotator cuff in my right shoulder making normal daily things like writing, even subtle writing, a painful ordeal. This prison has an excellent physical therapist, however, and three-times-weekly treatment over the previous three months had resulted in remarkable recovery without surgery. There is cause for thanksgiving in this, as well.

Enter Squanto of the Dawn Land

Back then, I wrote a post that was to become one of the most read and cited from behind these stone walls. It was the story of the real unsung hero behind the account of the first Thanksgiving that you thought you knew. It is a story that was kept hidden in plain sight for centuries while the story of the bravery and resourcefulness of the Mayflower Pilgrims of 1620 prevailed. Don’t miss, “The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pi1grims, and the Pope.”

This story became a Thanksgiving tradition for our readers over the last decade. It is a remarkable story of human crisis and redemption told in the odyssey of Squanto, a Native American who, like our friend, Pornchai, was stolen from his home, taken to a foreign land, rescued from slavery by a Catholic priest, and then, in the end, restored to his homeland only to find it nearly devastated from a global pandemic. He arrived just before the Mayflower pilgrims did 400 years ago this week. Squanto became one of history’s great emissaries of Divine Mercy. It will be our special Thanksgiving Week post this year.

My version of the story has appeared in numerous sources including a pair of history books. One of them is 1620: The True Story of Thanksgiving by Rick Gregory (2015) and an essay, “A Eucharistic Thanksgiving” by Adam N. Crawford.

I hope you will read and share that story anew to mark Thanksgiving 400 years later as the Pilgrims did, in uncertain times and surrounded in darkness. And please pray for us as we do for you. There is cause for Thanksgiving here!

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You may also like these related links: 

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope

Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis

Life Goes On Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls

After eleven years in publication, These Stone Walls begins life anew as “Beyond These Stone Walls” in order to lend some volume to a wrongly imprisoned voice

I cannot put into words the gratitude I feel for the voice from behind these stone walls that has been given to me. I will always be grateful to God and to those who set my voice free when TSW began in 2009. A lot has happened in recent months that now calls for a change of direction and a broadening of our scope. For whatever remaining time God allows me to have this voice, These Stone Walls will have a change of name and venue to become “Beyond These Stone Walls.”

This new site will contain all the content of the old, but if you have found your way here then you have already noticed a substantial change in format and appearance. We ask for your patience as this is a work in progress that will require time to rebuild. Each week, we hope to present not only my new post for the week, but also related content from this and other sources. The idea for a “spin off” of sorts began when a reader came upon TSW one day in a Google search for Pope Benedict XVI which brought the reader to one of my posts, and then to others.

This reader is a person of deep faith and a broad background in science and technology, but chooses to remain anonymous. The reader also discovered scattered among the Internet a broad range of articles, commentary, blog posts, and a few published books about me, Pornchai Moontri, and These Stone Walls. A suggestion was made to allow this content to be collected in one place and call it, “Beyond These Stone Walls.”

As most readers know, my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri has been a part of this endeavor since my very first post in 2009. It was he who first came up with the name, “These Stone Walls.” As you know, Pornchai’s prison sentence ended on September 8, 2020. After 14 years as roommates, he was released to return to his native Thailand. You must not miss this story told in “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.”

As you might imagine, life was not easy behind These Stone Walls after Pornchai left. Since that day two months ago, I have been at the hub of a rescue mission. We had developed a promising new life for Pornchai in Thailand. That was entirely the work of TSW and its readers. We were well prepared for the day he was taken away, a day I described in a post about one of TSW ’s Patron Saints, “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

The rescue mission began because Pornchai’s departure should have been a simple affair that was filled with hope. All his necessary documents had been carefully prepared in advance. He left here with us both expecting that his stay in ICE detention would be brief — a matter of days, two weeks at most. Instead, he was thrust ever deeper into a nightmare of for-profit ICE detention while he was dragged across the country from one overcrowded facility to another. That whole story must be told, and it will be told.

So for much of the last two months since Pornchai was taken away, my prison cell became a center of operation for giving support to my friend and coordinating the efforts of people on three continents to secure his release and repatriation. Like all spiritual warfare, this battle was waged on many fronts. It was at this most difficult time that unwelcome changes began to take place with These Stone Walls. One technical difficulty after another surfaced over the last two months, and I finally decided that the new site currently being considered had to take on a larger role. The content on These Stone Walls was being manipulated.

Imprisoned Voices on a Global Scale

Complicating all of the above was our global confrontation with Covid-19, its latest series of outbreaks, and the near civil war taking place between left and right in America. There are those in our midst who know just what buttons to push and when to push them. The stories you have heard and read about people being silenced — even in the Church — are real, and I was nearly silenced as well.

Through grace, and with the help of advocates and your prayers, I think I have survived the onslaught for now. Pornchai is also surviving, though in horrible conditions, and is offering what he endures for our readers. I had hoped that by the time you read this his ordeal would be over and he would have arrived intactly in Thailand.  But even after 70 days in ICE detention, that is not the case.  I will write a full account of this story when that time comes, and I will count on you to make it known.

The photograph atop this segment demonstrates the enormity of the obstacles we face on a daily basis to maintain a voice from behind these walls and bring it to you. The most basic forms of human communication that we all take for granted must overcome many obstacles here. Even though Pornchai is no longer a prisoner, but merely an ICE detainee, I had to go to extreme lengths to reach out to him. One of our friends, Claire Dion in Maine, had to utilize two phones with separate lines and configure them so that their microphones and speakers were opposite each other. She added our photos for effect. Welcome to our world!

The real founder of These Stone Walls is Saint Maximilian Kolbe. When spiritual fatherhood beckoned him to secure the salvation of another prisoner, it cost him his life. He knew that going in, but self-preservation was overcome by heroic virtue. I do not lay claim to any of that, but I was beckoned by Divine Mercy to set my quest for freedom aside to help secure freedom for another. That did not end when Pornchai left these stone walls. Even in our disposable culture, spiritual fatherhood has no expiration date.

Others of our friends who were here with me behind these walls are now free, and restored to their homelands. They write to me, and read what I write, from Japan, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Each of these countries, and also Thailand, have seen recent dramatic increases in visits to These Stone Walls. Divine Mercy is powerful, and prison walls were no match for it.

Beyond These Stone Walls

It has been interesting to hear from some of our friends in Asian countries where Catholicism is a small minority faith. Our friend in Japan wrote that he had no idea what I had been typing during all those years he was here with us. He said he was astonished to look up me and Pornchai from Tokyo and discover These Stone Walls. He spent weeks devouring posts that he knew were written during some of our most trying times. He finds them to be not only meaningful, but powerful. He is in awe of the back story of Pornchai, and finds the account of how we were thrown together, of all we endured, and of Pornchai’s conversion to be life-changing.

I think that what our friends around the world have found so enthralling is that they expected what I write to mirror the deprivation of prison. But it doesn’t. Just like real life, there are many sordid things here to write about, but what a waste that would be. The fact that we believe, and continue to believe even in the face of adversity and loss, is an affirmation of the Gospel. At a time when Americans are at each others’ throats in the most recent election cycle, this little voice from behind these prison walls has grown in magnitude abroad.

About seventy percent of our readers are in the United States. Canada, England, and Australia have always comprised the majority of others. In the last year or so, this has changed. In the weeks before making this transition to Beyond These Stone Walls, people from many other nations have flocked to these pages. Routinely now, India, Nepal, Japan, Thailand, China, Nigeria, and South Africa show up here in large numbers. Meanwhile, much of the European Union has drifted down the ranks of visitors. This mirrors almost exactly the weakness of Catholic practice and presence in historically Catholic countries while it thrives in Asia.

I like to think that the growing presence of readers from Beyond These Stone Walls is not because they relate to my imprisonment, but rather to the power of the Gospel and Divine Mercy to break through it. I hope you will continue to come here as we venture further Beyond These Stone Walls. We will need your help as this new adventure finds a foothold in the vast wasteland called the Internet.

A Necessary Postscript

Father Richard Heilman at the site, RomanCatholicMan.com has published a little book, the United States Grace Force Prayer Book. Claire Dion sent one each to Pornchai and me. It is a potent little book with a collection of the very prayers and devotions that I would have chosen had I composed it. My friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, has a presence in its pages. His Prayer of Consecration to Jesus Through Mary is found there along with the Consecration Prayers of Saint Louis de Montfort and Saint Maximilian Kolbe. I sure hope that doesn’t go to Father Michael’s head, but I doubt that it will.

But none of that is the final point I want to make. If you ever doubt the power of Divine Mercy to invade your life with a not so-always-easy-to-see abundance of grace, then consider this: as I write this first post for Beyond These Stone Walls, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri is living in a cramped room with eighty ICE detainees in a chaotic place with the blazing lights on 24/7.

As he was preparing to leave here on September 8 for what we hoped would be a short stay in ICE detection during this global pandemic, we prepared a box of his books and other personal belongings to ship to Thailand ahead of him. Before sealing the box, he removed his copy of the United States Grace Force Prayer Book. He said he would rather risk losing it than not having it.

I had to pause while typing this because he contacted me through a friend to ask if we could send him another copy. “Did you lose it?” I asked in our phone call while wedged between two books. “No,” he said. “The other guys in the bunks around me all want to borrow mine.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:  If you have been a subscriber to These Stone Walls, we have done our best to transfer your email address for notification of posts at Beyond These Stone Walls. If by chance we missed you, or if you wish to subscribe anew, please subscribe at the end of the post.

Also from Father G:  If you would like to send a note or card of encouragement to Pornchai, it may help to sustain him through this trial.  The address is:

Pornchai Moontri

A039064244

LaSalle Detention Facility 

P.O. Box 560

Trout, Louisiana 71371

And if you would like to help him as he begins life anew you may do so at:

Pornchai Moontri

c/o Beyond These Stone Walls

P.O. Box 205

Wilmington, MA 01887-0205

We also invite you to like and follow Beyond These Stone Walls Facebook. You would assist us greatly by sharing this post on your social media.

Please share this post!

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

Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe, the Patron Saints behind These Stone Walls, have an obscure thread of connection that magnifies witness, sacrifice, and fatherhood.

There was an eerie sense about us as Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I walked around the concrete prison yard at 0500 on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of Mary. There was not yet any sign of the dawn, nor was there any moon in the sky. If there were stars, we were blinded to them by the blazing prison lights reflected from the high walls that surrounded us. I asked Pornchai to take a long last look at these walls, for he was about to enter the final stretch of his long road to freedom.

Just then, a sliver of bright light emerged above the building where we have lived in a 60-square-foot cell for the last three of our years in prison — 28 for Pornchai and 26 for me. We stood still to watch as the bright half-moon arose above all the walls. I told Pornchai that he will gaze upon the same moon in Thailand that I will see from this very spot. There was a long silence as he considered this, and then it was followed by tears. I had been putting a brave face on things up to this point, but I could no longer contain it.

It is difficult for men to talk and sob at the same time. I do not suggest that women cry more than men. Perhaps men do not cry enough. It is just that there was so much to say, and so I choked back the tears until another time. If you have been reading These Stone Walls for any length of time, then you understand what was transpiring that morning. It was expressed best by Pornchai himself in a recent guest post, “Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”

Soon after, we had to end that walk, after fourteen years sharing and building faith, conversion and redemption in a tiny prison cell, Pornchai was taken away and we will never see each other again in this life.

Backing up a little, it was Pornchai who brought up the most urgent and necessary part of our conversation that morning. It goes back to one of the first conversations we ever had about Pornchai’s faith experience. It was back in 2006 just before we were moved into the same cell. He described this in his post above. He walked into my cell, saw an image of St. Maximilian Kolbe on the mirror, and asked, “Is this you?” He described that as one of the most important questions of his life.

Fourteen years later, as we walked in the pre-dawn light of a half moon, he said through tears, “Now I have the answer. You have saved me, but no one is saving you.” We talked a lot about our patron saint, of the mystery of how he came into our lives, and of what his witness means for us. Maximilian went to prison because he was writing the truth. I went to prison on trumped up charges, and have been writing the truth ever since. I told Pornchai that he is a very important and powerful part of that truth. I said that no matter what happens to me now, “you are a living witness to the truth that no past is lived at the expense of the present, that no wounds can prevent a soul in search of God from emerging above prison walls.”

The Wounds of Padre Pio

At this writing, Pornchai is now in a tomb of solitary confinement, with no ability to communicate with the outside world. I can support him only with my prayers, but this should only last a few days. By the time you are reading this, he will have already emerged from that to enter another purgatory: ICE detention awaiting deportation. This is probably the most disorganized, haphazard, inhumane and one-size-fits-all thing that the American government bureaucracy does. But we have a team of advocates working to make this stay as brief as possible. They are in touch with me every day.

The Thai consulate will — hopefully soon — arrange a repatriation flight for Pornchai to return to his native land after a 36-year absence. Under ICE rules, he is allowed to have nothing but the clothes he is wearing. We had the foresight to pack a box of his treasured few possessions — a handmade rosary sent to him by TSW, reader Kathleen Riney, a Saint Maximilian medal, some photographs, and a set of Divine Mercy books by Father Michael Gaitley and others. These include Loved, Lost, Found by Felix Carroll which features a chapter about Pornchai’s life. The box is on its way to Thailand and may arrive ahead of him.

When Pornchai himself arrives in Bangkok, he will have a final 14-day stay in solitary confinement, but it will not be in a cell. The Thai government requires a 14-day quarantine period in a Bangkok hotel. Pornchai will not be allowed to leave his hotel room for the 14 days, but it will be unlike all previous experiences of solitary confinement.

[Editor’s note: You can see the solitary confinement unit that held Pornchai decades ago at wgbh.org/frontline/solitarynation. Pornchai knows many of the solitary confinement prisoners in this documentary about his first prison in Maine. If you haven’t seen this, you can’t begin to know what Pornchai has been through. It’s traumatic just to watch it. It’s the video right at the top of that link.]

One of our friends in Thailand will drop off a Samsung smart phone for Pornchai’s use so he and I can communicate. After 28 years in prison, he has never seen a smart phone. His first assignment is to learn how to answer the phone.

His second assignment will be to learn how to use the phone to read the post that you are reading right now. I want him to see what followed our painful discussion on the morning he left in tears — and left me in tears as well. I want him to ponder the mystery of the other patron saint who insinuated himself behind These Stone Walls with us. I want him to ponder the graces imparted to us by Saint Padre Pio who bore the wounds of Christ for fifty years.

I have been aware of Padre Pio for most of my life. As the young Capuchin studying (aka, misled by) pop psychology in the 1970s, a story I told in “Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis,” I am ashamed to write that I once denounced Padre Pio’s wounds as psychosomatic. I hope he forgives me for my ignorance back when I knew everything. I knew a lot about Padre Pio back then, but I did not know Padre Pio. Now I do. Pornchai knows him as well. He came to us behind These Stone Walls in a personal and powerful way.

I had already been in prison on false witness for four years back in 1998. I had, for all of those years, been living in a horrible situation with eight men in each prison cell designed for only four. To “honor” Catholics’ reverence for Padre Pio then — six years before he was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 2002 — The New York Times ran an article alleging that Padre Pio was the subject of twelve Vatican investigations in his lifetime. The unjust and inflammatory article alleged that “Padre Pio had sex with female penitents twice a week.”

This was the first inkling I ever had that Padre Pio suffered more than the visible wounds of Christ. He also suffered wounds upon his name, his integrity, his priesthood. Here we were, thirty years to the day since his death, and the “Scandal Sheet of Record” was still repeating an unfounded story for the sole purpose of deflating the faith of Catholics who reverenced him. It resonated with me in a most personal way.

Seven years passed. In April, 2005, a newspaper of integrity, The Wall Street Journal, published a two-part account of false witness, wrongful prosecution and public hysteria entitled, “A Priest’s Story” by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz. The article was read all over the world. As a result of it, Bill Donohue at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights asked me to submit an article about my own awareness of false witness. My article was published in the November 2005 issue of Catalyst under the title, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.”

I was surprised to see that I shared the cover of that issue of Catalyst with a story about how Padre Pio was similarly defamed throughout his life and even after death. None of it was ever substantiated nor was it supported by evidence in any form. On the contrary, many witnesses had testified in Vatican investigations that the detractors were themselves discredited beyond any doubt. That did not stop The New York Times from slander.

The Echoes of a Special Blessing

Among the readers of the WSJ series on my trial’s perversion of justice was Pierre Matthews, a Belgian with dual American citizenship who at the time was living in Chicago. The articles were his first realization — as they were for many — that the whole truth about the nature of Catholic scandal had not been told by the mainstream media. Pierre wrote to me. Months later, on a return trip from Belgium, he diverted his flight itinerary for a stop in Boston from where he drove up to Concord, NH to visit me in prison.

Later in 2005, Pornchai Moontri — who had spent the previous seven years in solitary confinement in Maine — was transferred to the Concord, NH prison where we met. In 2006 we became friends. In 2007 we became roommates. In 2010, on Divine Mercy Sunday, Pornchai renounced his troubled past to become Catholic. Later, in September 2010, I wrote “Saints Alive! Padre Pio and the Stigmata: Sanctity on Trial.”

That post told an amazing story. In an earlier visit with Pierre Matthews, I told him about Pornchai, about how our long and winding roads converged, and about Pornchai’s decision to renounce his past and become Catholic. Pierre told me a remarkable story. He said that when he was growing up in Belgium, his father sent him to a boarding school. In the 1950s, at just about the time I was born, Pierre’s school sponsored a trip to Italy. Pierre’s father wrote to him saying that his trip will take him near a place called San Giovanni Rotondo where there is a very famous priest and mystic who bears the wounds of Christ.

Pierre’s father instructed his skeptical 16-year-old son to take a train to San Giovanni Rotondo and ask to see Padre Pio. Being 16, Pierre did not want to go. But his father was insistent so Pierre read his Father’s account of Padre Pio’s mystical fame that was at the time being suppressed by the Church, but rising up from the sensus fidelium — the sense of the faithful.

When Pierre Matthews learned that Pornchai was to become Catholic, he sent me a registered letter asking — no, insisting — that he be permitted to become Pornchai’s Godfather. Pierre asked me to submit a special request to the prison warden asking approval for Pierre to fly over from Belgium to visit both me and Pornchai. In all the years that I had been here, such a thing was never allowed. No visitor can visit two prisoners at the same time. So I submitted the request with the intent of sending the denial back to Pierre. To my shock, the request came back with a single word: “approved.”

During the special visit, Pierre told us that he indeed took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo at age 16 over a half century earlier. He said he rang the monastery doorbell and asked a friar if he could see Padre Pio. “Impossible” came the curt reply. Pierre explained that his father had sent him from Belgium so the friar invited him inside to be given a prayer card to show his father that he was there. When he stepped inside to be given the card, a strange man in a Capuchin habit, with hands heavily bandaged, was just then walking down the stairs. His eyes were fixed upon Pierre, Padre Pio approached Pierre, placed his bandaged hands upon his head, and blessed him.

Visiting us 55 years later, Pierre said that he knows this blessing was meant for us. He spoke of the long, winding journey from faith that led to his learning about me, then about Pornchai, and then, when These Stone Walls began in 2009, it was what drew Pierre back to faith. It was then, in 2010, that I added Saint Padre Pio as one of the Patron Saints of These Stone Walls. Through Pornchai’s Godfather, Padre Pio shared his wounds with us and became a witness for the defense against our own wounds. It was Pierre who first noted that I was condemned to prison on September 23, 1994, the Feast of Saint Padre Pio.

Among the many letters of Padre Pio to the thousands of pilgrims and penitents who wrote to him, was one dated in the year before his death on September 23, 1968. In that letter, Padre Pio advised a suffering soul to enroll in the Knights at the Foot of the Cross, a spiritual mission founded by Father Maximilian Kolbe for the offering of life’s wounds as a share in the suffering of Christ. I was amazed to read that Padre Pio had such an awareness of our other patron saint two decades before St. Maximilian was canonized. Pornchai and I are both members of the Militia Immaculata and the Knights at the Foot of the Cross.

Our beloved friend Pierre, Pornchai’s Godfather, passed away in Belgium on July 7 this year. Pornchai and I were blessed to be able to talk with him by telephone in the weeks before his death. He never took redemption for granted, but I know with the certainty of faith that he and Padre Pio have renewed their bond.

So Pornchai, my son, if you are reading this then you must know that there is much more to our life’s wounds than the prison walls that surrounded us and surround me still. To be free of them is not just a matter of the body, but of the heart and soul. So be free. Be free enough to convey to others the great gifts imparted to us by these patron saints. You will no longer have a guest post at These Stone Walls. You will now be a partner in mission, writing from Divine Mercy Thailand about how God is inspiring hearts and souls through the transfiguration of your wounds.

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Please visit our Special Events page.

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Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio were both canonized by Saint John Paul II.

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Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Mid-Life Crisis

As major transitions loom for our friends behind These Stone Walls, Social Psychologist Erik Erikson was the catalyst for a midsummer night’s mysterious dream.

In eleven years of writing from prison for These Stone Walls, this has always been the most difficult time of year to produce a post. Labor Day is looming in the United States, and in 2020 it is on the latest date possible. It’s a time of staff vacations in prison so pretty much every department is understaffed. This year, Labor Day conspires with a pandemic for limited access to everything.

All outside vendors, visitors, volunteers, program facilitators, and medical providers are currently barred from entry. Visitors have been barred for months. What was once a three-hour visiting period twice per week with family or friends was reduced last year to ninety minutes. In the time of Covid-19 it is now reduced to a single monthly 45-minute no-contact visit from behind glass with masks, and it has to be arranged three weeks in advance.

And as you know by now, my friend Pornchai Moontri and I have the added stress of knowing that major change is coming but we know neither the day nor the hour. Each day I face the possibility that I could return from work to an empty cell and no chance to wish him well and give him my blessing. Such is the nature of prison.

We do have a plan for when Pornchai finally arrives in Thailand after an ordeal in ICE detention. I hope you have read our recent posts, Pornchai’s “Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind,” and my bombshell post, “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.” These have been the most visited posts of the year during our most difficult days of the year. Now, more than ever, our faith in Divine Mercy is getting a workout.

All of this has conspired to create a perfect storm lending itself to anxiety and, for me, a mid-life crisis. It is not my first, nor will it likely be my last. When I told a friend that I think I am now having one, he sent me this story about a midlife crisis. It is not a true story - at least, I hope it isn’t true - but it made me laugh and I needed a good laugh right now. Maybe you do, too:

• “Approaching her sixtieth birthday, Mildred lapsed into a depression that sent her to a therapist. He diagnosed her downward spiral as a possible midlife crisis, and assured her that it is a very common phenomenon. The therapist suggested that Mildred take up something new and challenging, perhaps something adventurous.

• “‘Well, I’ve always wanted to try horseback riding,’ said Mildred. Affirmed as a great choice by the therapist, she stopped at the library and checked out a couple of books on horseback riding. When she felt she had a grasp of the rudimentary details, Mildred ventured out on a Saturday morning for her first ride.

• “Approaching the horse with some trepidation, Mildred placed her left foot into the stirrup, grabbed the crop atop the saddle just as the books suggested, and found mounting the horse to be surprisingly easy. Then the horse began an enjoyably slow but steady pace. As it worked up to a more pronounced gallop, however, Mildred found herself growing anxious.

• “The horse picked up a little more speed, but Mildred’s anxiety grew along with it. Fearing that she was slipping from the saddle, she began to panic. Clutching the horse in her panic as it gained speed, Mildred began to scream for help as she struggled to hold on for dear life. Then, just as Mildred began to tumble completely from the saddle, Walter the Wal-Mart Greeter rushed over, and unplugged the horse.”

Erik Erikson on the Origins of Our Midlife Crises

I have known and counseled many people in the midst of a midlife crisis. I’ve had more than one of them myself. It’s a time when values and beliefs are questioned and sometimes even abandoned. The concept is not at all new in psychology or literature. In a few past posts on These Stone Walls, I have written that Dante Alighieri began the Inferno, Part One of his famous 14th Century literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, with what may very well be world literature’s first description of a midlife crisis:

• “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear. So bitter — death is hardly more severe! I cannot clearly say how I had entered that wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path. But to recall what good I found there, I must also tell you the other things I saw.”

I was once an avid student of psychology before studying theology. Dante put a spiritual spin on the “shadowed forest” of his midlife abandonment of ‘the true path.” That is fitting, for a midlife crisis is as much a spiritual phenomenon as a psychological one. Its evidence is just as Dante described it seven centuries ago.

Since Sigmund Freud became the Father of Psychoanalytic Theory in the early Twentieth Century, the various efforts to understand what makes us tick are fascinating. I once wrote a controversial TSW post about the secrets we keep even from ourselves entitled, “Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well.”

But I have since abandoned a good deal of psychoanalytic theory and practice as bunk. To be clear, the practice of it is often bunk but the science behind it is sometimes still helpful. There is one psychoanalytic pioneer, however, whose work has withstood the test of time and contrasts well with human experience.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Austrian-born Harvard social psychologist Erik Erikson developed his Stages of Psychosocial Development which today remains a standard for understanding how we develop psychologically. Much of his work became pivotal for comprehension of one particular stage of growth: adolescence, the most stressful time in the life of every parent. Erikson defined the central crisis of adolescence as one of identity verses role confusion.

Though he never used it, the term “Identity Crisis” has its origin in his work. For parents, an adolescent identity crisis results in experimentation, sometimes recklessly so, and a questioning of the parental status quo and value system. It is the time in which many parents are stressed to the limit.

The identity crisis is but one of Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial development. The other stages and their respective life crises are, in a nutshell: infancy (basic trust vs. mistrust), early childhood (autonomy vs. shame and doubt), preschool years (initiative vs. guilt), middle childhood (industry vs. inferiority), adolescence and its crisis of identity, young adulthood (intimacy vs. isolation), middle adulthood (generativity vs. stagnation), and late adulthood (integrity vs. despair).

My Midsummer Night’s Anxious Dream

For this post, my focus is on the backdrop of every midlife crisis. Erikson never actually used the term, but it clearly has its origin in his stages of development. It comes in between the last two of the eight stages, between middle and late adulthood when the human psyche naturally begins a nostalgic, and sometimes excruciating examination of the past and a measurement of one’s place in it. Our minds are very complex, as is this subject, so let me stick my neck out a little with a personal example.

Early in the morning of August 17, 2020, I was awakened at about 3:00 AM by a troubling dream that seemed to play out in epic performance. It needs a little background. I began religious life as a member of the Capuchin Order, one of the main branches of the Franciscans. It was while a member of the order that I began formal studies in psychology working toward both undergraduate and graduate degrees

My mentor in this was Father Benedict Groeschel who years later would part from the Capuchins along with the late, Father Andrew Apostoli to become founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Like them, I, too, left the Order on very good terms, but in a very different direction: to study for diocesan priesthood. I wrote about how that experience, from almost day one, became a crisis in its own right in “Priesthood, the Signs of the Times & the Sins of the Times.”

I don’t have to tell you where that change in my path ultimately led me. Now, at age 67, I look back over the decades and find myself spontaneously doing exactly what Erik Erikson predicted. My mind wanders often into a sort of inventory of my life and my place in it. All these years later, I find myself questioning my decision to leave my religious community, wondering to this day whether I did the right thing.

It’s interesting that I still, after forty years, refer to the Order is “my community.” The inner struggles that we have are often expressed in dreams, and in dreams my conflict is evident. The early morning dream of August 17 this year was no exception. It was both then and now. Dreams often have temporal confusion.

In the dream, I was in my Capuchin habit at Mass with my community, but I was also a prisoner having just been released on a sort of leave from prison. I was the age that I am right now, but everyone else in the dream was as they were back then. Except for my friend, Pornchai, who was with me at the Mass. In the dream, I was stricken by how out of place we were. Pornchai and I were deeply wounded by life while all the others present had been sheltered - just as I would want them to have been — from the sort of trials we have endured.In the dream, before the Mass ended, I had to leave. I removed my habit and left it there in the chapel. Others gathered at the door as Pornchai and I walked away. He asked me, “Where are we going?” I answered mysteriously, “We’re going to where this path leads.” It was then that I woke up, troubled, anxious and depressed. Only later in the day did I realize that the date was August 17, the day that I first professed vows in the Order forty-five years ago.

As I look back with some nostalgia, I realize that those years were among the happiest of my life. Then something happened that suddenly altered them. It is a story that I have never before told, but I know that someday I will tell it. It adds no light, but only more mystery, to the path I ended up upon.

That path led down a long and winding road to where I am right now, approaching 26 years in prison for crimes that never took place. This is not the sort of “community” I had in mind when I first discerned a vocation to religious life all those decades ago. It is also not lost on me that this condemnation and imprisonment began in 1994 on September 23, the feast day of the most famous of the Capuchin saints, Padre Pio, who would later insinuate himself behind These Stone Walls with us.

He Knows What He Is About

Over the last decade at These Stone Walls, we have told a story very much like the one Dante Aligheri told seven centuries ago in The Divine Comedy. It may have been divine, but it did not always feel much like a comedy. Like Dante, having strayed from the path I was on - though not by choice - I entered the dark wood of prison and brought the readers of These Stone Walls with me. Across this decade, we told a tale of all that I had found there, both the good and the bad. In the end, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two.

My friend, Pornchai Moontri is an example. On the surface of life he was seen as just another bad actor who made terrible choices that led him on a path to prison. My recent post, “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri” pulled back the veil to reveal his life as a victim of horrific crime long before he was driven into one of his own.

Thanks to readers, that post found its way into several internet sites dedicated to addressing human trafficking. Pornchai’s story was told prolifically at These Stone Walls, but it remained hidden in plain sight until one of you shared it in just the right place. Whoever you were, you acted as a bond of connection between persons, a very important concept that I will return to below. In my midlife crisis dream, Pornchai asked me, “Where are we going?” I told him, “We’re going to where this path leads.” It seemed to me to be a strange response until I pondered it. Our path - the paths of all of us in life - lead along the threads of connection placed there by God through us - through the bad as well as through the good.

These Stone Walls became Pornchai’s religious community, the community of faith that formed him. His leaving, and leaving me behind, is painful, but at least one TSW reader has equated him to Timothy, the companion of Saint Paul. In that sense he is not leaving. He is being sent.

Where do I go from here? I have not even pondered that yet. My priority at the moment is to do what I can to spare my friend from the one-size-fits-all nightmare of ICE detention. Thanks to some of you sharing my posts in the right places, there is now a glimmer of hope for that. Just a glimmer, so please pray for that intention. I hope that in a month or two, These Stone Walls will have a voice from Catholic Thailand.

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From the voice of Saint John Henry Newman: “Some Definite Service.”

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

“Somehow, I am necessary for His purposes... I have a part in this great work. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connections between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

“Therefore I will trust him, whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him. If I am in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end which is quite beyond us.

“He does nothing in vain. He may prolong my life, He may shorten it, He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, he may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, hide my future from me - Still, He knows what He is about.”

— St. John Henry Cardinal Newman - March 7, 1848

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NOTE FROM FATHER GORDON MACRAE: Mine is not the only “Prison Journal” in circulation these days. I have just pre-ordered my copy of the soon-published Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell from Ignatius Press which promises to be a spiritual classic. You may also like these lesser classics from These Stone Walls:

• Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times

• Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind

• Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

• Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

Taken from Thailand to America at age 11 by a now-convicted sex offender, this Thai victim will now be an ICE detainee awaiting forced deportation 36 years later.

Posted August 19, 2020; updated July 11, 2022 by Father Gordon MacRae

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Editor’s Note: This revised article by Father Gordon MacRae is a necessary expansion of the stunning post by Pornchai Moontri entitled “Independence Day in Thailand.”

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“I’m reclaiming my time!” That term became a familiar line of political theater during a recent congressional grilling of Attorney General William Barr. Our friend, Father George David Byers, wrote a short post highlighting the ridiculous nature of that sad moment in American politics.

I’m reclaiming my time, too. All 26 years of it. That’s how long I have been unjustly held in an American prison while its crazy politics play out before polarized audiences. At about the time I reach the 26-year mark in September 2020, my friend, Pornchai Moontri will have been handed over to the hidden national shame of ICE detention. It is easy to stay on the sidelines and keep this topic out of sight and out of mind until someone you know and care about is on the receiving end of it.

This looming deportation process, especially its weeks or months in overcrowded detention, is a personal crisis for us. The politics of it do not help at all. A word of advice: Try to avoid having a crisis in a deeply divided presidential election year. It will inevitably become subjected to the political, and some of those around you will use it to score political talking points.

It has already been suggested to me that President Donald Trump is to blame for my friend’s looming deportation, and for the inhumane treatment that he and other ICE detainees will endure. The deportation order that is just now unfolding in the case of Pornchai Moontri was a decision of a federal judge in 2007. It’s the result of a one-size-fits-all policy requiring removal of any non-citizen who commits any crime on U.S. soil regardless of circumstances.

Then it was suggested to me that ICE detention and forced removal is a strictly Republican endeavor that Democrats would happily fix if elected and given the power to do so. I subscribe to a publication of the Human Rights Defense Center called Prison Legal News. If anything, it leans to the left of our divisive political spectrum. In the July 2017 issue is a well researched article by Derek Gilna entitled “Deportations of Undocumented Reach Record High.” It is an analysis of deportations in the six years prior to the 2016 election. Here is an important excerpt:

“In the past six years, the number of people removed from the country against their will far surpassed the totals of the previous administration of George W. Bush reaching over two million people. According to human rights advocates, President Obama had become the ‘Deporter in Chief.’”

So please don’t subject the real human tragedy of what is happening now to the polarity of our “if you’re not with us you’re against us” politics. We are struggling right now behind These Stone Walls and I do not want our struggle to become political ammunition. Instead, I want to point you to something deeply unjust — demonic would be a better word — that has happened here. In his recent post, “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers, for a Friend Left Behind,” Pornchai wrote something that struck me like lightning and stabbed at my conscience as an American:

“In December of 1985 I was taken from Thailand and brought against my will to the United States. Though it was my mother who took me, I did not know her. She had abandoned my brother and me in Thailand when I was only two years old. She waited until I was age eleven to come and take me away because her life was under the control of a monster who sent her to bring me to him. It is that simple, and that terrible.”

An American Horror Story

Pornchai’s mother would later be murdered — beaten to death according to the autopsy report — on the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam in the company of Richard Bailey. Referred to by Pornchai as “An American Horror Story,” the case remains today an unsolved “cold case” homicide despite new evidence pointing to Bailey.

The murder occurred in 2000 as Wannee filed for divorce from Bailey and just before court-ordered dispersal of finances and property to Wannee was to take place. After the murder, Bailey sold his home and left Guam without settling the financial court orders with Wannee’s estate. He returned to Thailand to bring back a young Thai woman barely out of her teens. They settled in Oregon.

Back in the 1970s when Bailey prepared to bring Wannee from Bangkok to the United States, he knew she left two young sons behind in Thailand but he had no interest in a two-year-old. They settled in Bailey’s town of Bangor, Maine. Just blocks away, Stephen King was writing his own American horror stories. Bailey bided his time until Pornchai was 11 years old. Then, in 1985 he sent Wannee to Thailand to retrieve her sons.

This is a clear story of human trafficking, but it remains off that radar screen. In Bailey’s devious and narcissistic mind, these were human beings whose rights were at his personal disposal. Bailey would not permit Wannee to apply for U.S. citizenship. He knew her sons would one day reach an age that no longer interested him. It would thus be easier to be rid of them if they were not citizens.

In September 2018, Richard Bailey was finally brought to some form of justice. He entered a “no contest” plea deal, but was found guilty in Penobscot (Maine) Superior Court on forty felony counts of violent sexual assault against Pornchai and his brother. He was sentenced to 44 years in prison, all suspended, and 18 years of supervised probation. He returned to his lakeside home in Oregon without ever serving a day in prison.

That the vicious sexual and physical assaults against Pornchai and his brother had never previously been investigated or prosecuted remains another unsolved mystery. They took place over four years after Pornchai’s arrival in Bangor in 1985. There were school reports of a battered child. There were neighbors who expressed concern about the bleeding and traumatized Asian boy at their door pleading for help in a foreign language. There were reports from sheriff’s deputies who picked up a runaway child and handed him back over to Richard Bailey because they could not understand his protests.

Bailey’s violence and perversion drove Pornchai into homelessness — a teen stranded in a foreign country. There were reports filed by staff at the Maine Youth Center that took custody of Pornchai at age 14. There were reports when he was made a ward of the state at age 15. There were reports when he again became a homeless adolescent living alone on the streets of Bangor at age 16. It does not take rocket science to connect all this to the offense of a drunken 18-year-old in 1992. But all this history just disappeared.

Pornchai could not himself raise it. Right under the noses of state officials, Richard Bailey sent a battered and desperate Thai woman — Pornchai’s mother — to warn him while held pre-trial at the county jail that her life would be in danger if Pornchai told. Pornchai thus refused to participate in his own defense.

At sentencing, Judge Margaret Kravchuk told him that he was given a new life in America but squandered it.

Certainly no one can claim that sexual abuse was not on the public radar at that time. Just one state away in New Hampshire in 1988, a witch hunt was underway involving Catholic priests. The story that sent me to prison was just taking shape at that time while some local lawyers were taking out their calculators. The dollar signs were dangled before them by a local sex-crimes detective who brought over 1,000 cases while Maine, right next door, was ignoring the predator who was openly destroying the lives of three young Thai immigrants. A lot of people in the State of Maine covered up for Richard Bailey. Who investigates the investigators?

Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

On the U.S. territorial Island of Guam, officials have reacted with silence about inquiries into the unsolved homicide of Wannee in 2000. The Guam police, the Attorney General, and the U.S. Attorney there have been only minimally responsive over the last two years.

Pornchai Moontri, whose life was destroyed by Richard Bailey when he was twelve to fourteen years old, has now spent the last 28 years in prison for an offense that Bailey himself set in motion. In days or weeks, Pornchai will be moved to an overcrowded ICE holding facility where he will be forced to wait out the Covid-19 pandemic sleeping on a dayroom floor filled with ICE detainees.

Meanwhile, Richard Bailey, now convicted of 44 felony counts of sexual abuse against Pornchai and his brother, has not spent a single night in prison. He waits out the pandemic in his lakeside home in Oregon. He has simply ignored attempts by Pornchai’s advocates to recover what he owes to Wannee’s estate — funds that could make an enormous difference to someone who must now start his shattered life over. Not a single American attorney would agree to represent Pornchai for civil protection.

In his moving recent post, “ Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind,” Pornchai himself raised the enormous paradox in our parallel stories of imprisonment:

“Father Gordon MacRae freed me from the evil this man inflicted on me. He taught me that this evil is not mine to keep. What do I do with such a story? If Father G had not been here, what would have become of me? He freed my mind and soul from the horror inflicted by a real predator. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom will now be left behind in prison.”

These are Pornchai’s questions, but they are not the questions I would ask. For 26 years, I have witnessed the unbridled outrage leveled at Catholic bishops and priests over allegations of sexual abuse and the necessity of protecting the vulnerable from abusers. But Americans are very selective in their outrage. Is there none left for Richard Bailey? Is there no outrage for Pornchai’s expulsion from the very country where his horrific abuse took place?

Some time ago, I wrote a post entitled, “President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform.” This President undertook a bold initiative for criminal justice. He called for the removal of “The Box” from all federal employment application forms. “The Box” was infamous among prisoners. It was a check-off box on most employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony. In effect, it was an extension of a prison sentence that had long since been fully served. It took a non-politician to do what most politicians lack the political will or courage to do. “The Box” served only one purpose: to prevent former prisoners from finding meaningful jobs.

The President’s rationale for this is the fact that if a man or woman applying for a job had ever been in prison, the fact that they are now filling out this application means that the sentence has been served and it is over.

ICE Detention

By mid-September 2020, Pornchai Moontri will have fully served the entire sentence that the State of Maine imposed upon him at age eighteen. He has accomplished many things in that time, and is today an asset, not a hindrance, to his country. His country is Thailand, but he was taken from there as a child by a monstrous American predator who has never answered for it. Now America will keep the predator in freedom while expelling the victim.

The truth is that Pornchai wants to go and is ready to go. Thanks to These Stone Walls, a future has been built there for him, and a fresh start with people who will care for him. Our well-founded concern is not for his deportation, but for the added insult and injury that he must emerge from prison just to wait out this pandemic in a horribly crowded ICE detention facility — aka, another prison. He could not be deemed any threat to the community because his sentence is over. If he were not an ICE detainee, he would simply walk free.

And he could not be considered a flight risk because he has worked long and hard to build a future in Thailand that he now looks forward to. The Divine Mercy Thailand organization has a team waiting for Pornchai. The Father Ray Foundation (www.fr-ray.org) has a plan for training him and putting his skills to use. It is an awesome place as a visit to their website will show.

Public risk and flight risk are the only real reasons why ICE detainees are held. We were hoping and praying that bail could be arranged for Pornchai to live in the community until Thailand can open its borders for a flight during this pandemic. Some TSW readers nearby had an ideal location for Pornchai to spend those weeks learning instead of just surviving. However that was deemed to be impossible.

What follows is a recent letter I received from another former prisoner, an Asian friend from here who recently went through ICE deportation and is now back in his native country after an ordeal lasting months:

“You will first sit in a holding tank with a bunch of junkies and young criminals whining about a two-week county sentence in a county jail. Then at about 11 PM you will get moved to a federal detention pod. If you are lucky you might get a cell with one other person, but more likely you will be sent to a crowded dayroom with a thin mattress. You will have to find a place to put it among the crowd. If there are no bunks, they use these things like plastic canoes to sleep in. You will have to find a place to park it. One of the cells is kept empty so all the detainees living on the dayroom floor can use the single toilet in it.”

Justice is supposed to be blind, but sometimes it is deaf and dumb too. Our friend deserves better than to go to his new life like this. Here is a small exercise in the blindness of criminal justice you can easily do and that we now hope those who measure Pornchai will do. He has the most unlikely internet footprint of any person who has been in a U.S. prison for 28 years. Do a google search for “Pornchai Moontri” using the quotes. It is a great stretch of the imagination that the results are anything less than a good man deserving of our protection. America was once better than this.

Please pray for us as we do for you.

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UPDATE: July 11, 2022 — Guam Daily Post reporter Nick Delgado has published an article about the plethora of “cold case” unsolved homicides on the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam. Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, is number 70 on the list. Guam’s authorities remain unresponsive to new evidence and other new information on this case.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Pornchai Moontri was handed over to ICE on September 11, 2020. He and we were told by ICE officials that he would be in Thailand by the end of the month. Instead, he spent the next 150 days in a room holding 70 detainees in a for-profit ICE detention facility in Jenna, Louisiana. He arrived in Thailand in mid-March 2021. As of June 19, 2021 his Thai State ID and full citizenship remain mired in bureaucracy. Without it, he is unable to find work, open an account, or support himself.

For the full story of Pornchai’s life, don’t miss:

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.

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Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic presidential nominee in U.S. history but his pro-abortion stance leaves him in broken communion with his profession of faith.

Millions of American Catholics who uphold the Right to Life as a foundational human right in accord with Catholic teaching and the Bill of Rights were disappointed in recent weeks. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices in a matter of life and death. The question before the Court was whether a Louisiana law requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was unconstitutional.

In the split (5-4) decision in favor of abortion providers, Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority in a matter from which he had earlier dissented. This may not be the setback some in the pro-life movement have feared. The Court’s ruling in support of the precedent set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey did not address the precedent itself which inserted into the Constitution a right to abortion. This is a distinction that I wrote about early this year in “March for Life: A New Great Awakening.”

The timing of publishing this decision — in the final months of a highly charged presidential battle for the soul of America — reminded me of something that unfolded in these pages during the 2016 election. At that time, I wrote a post entitled “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.”

Among a vast media leak from the Hillary Clinton campaign back then was a set of email exchanges between Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and some progressive U.S. Catholics. The leaks exposed a plan to recreate U.S. Catholicism into an entity more appealing to the Democratic Party and its ever descending slide toward the left.

The central tenet of that plan was to move American Catholics away from any identification as a “Roman” Catholic Church into a state of mere symbolic authority from Rome. The result would be something more akin to the U.S. Episcopal church and its open embrace of identity politics, reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology, and a much-weakened moral voice in the public square.

Climate change, open borders, and a global identity were to be the new moral imperatives. Abortion without limits would quietly fall without challenge into the politically correct category of “settled law.” It is easy for the living, while descending toward the left, to compartmentalize their consciences and deny a right to life to the most vulnerable among us.

Back in 2016, Pope Francis raised an alarm among conservative Catholics and the pro-life mission when he was quoted in the media as suggesting that the Church cannot speak only about abortion. The left arm in Catholicism seized upon that, but since then Pope Francis has offered some clarity. You may not know about it because the mainstream media only hypes his more trite sayings such as “Who am I to judge?”

On the matter of life, however, Francis has been as unequivocal as his predecessors, articulating clearly his support for and continuance of the pro-life emphasis of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis affirms that the foundational human right is the right to life. He has stated that the right to life and transgender ideology are the most pressing moral issues of our time. To say that the Church should not speak only of these issues does not at all suggest what the 2016 Clinton and Podesta agenda suggested: that we just set them aside and not speak of them at all.

Joe Biden’s Catholic Communion

Among the moral issues of our time, Pope Francis agrees with the U.S. Bishops that the right to life is the most fundamental human right in Catholic moral teaching. This places Democratic nominee Joe Biden far outside the moral life and teaching of his professed faith. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Joe Biden said from his basement campaign forum:

“We need to ensure that women have access to all health services during this crisis. Abortion is an essential health care service.”

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party. All four have been Democrats. The first was New York Governor Alfred Smith who was easily defeated by Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. Smith’s Catholic faith was widely seen as a cause of his defeat. The anti-Catholic political ice was not broken again until 1960 when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. President.

Neither Al Smith nor President Kennedy faced a pro-life question because Planned Parenthood v. Casey had not yet happened. The matter of Catholic identity and abortion first arose in 2004 when Massachusetts Senator John Kerry became the nation’s third Catholic nominee for president exposing a wide contradiction between his professed Catholic faith and his public promotion of abortion rights.

Senator Kerry lost the election when President George W. Bush won a second term. Throughout his campaign, Kerry openly defied Church teaching on abortion. For that he was endorsed by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. His open defiance launched a debate among bishops about responding to pro-abortion Catholic politicians who receive the Eucharist, the ultimate sign of communion with their faith.

The argument was based on Canon 915 in the Code of Canon Law which holds that those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” For an analysis of how this has applied to Catholic political candidates, I rely on an excellent account in the National Catholic Register by Lauretta Brown: “Biden and the U.S. Bishops” (May 24, 2020).

The matter of promoting abortion while pretending to be Catholic has been raised anew in the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden. As a Delaware Senator and vice-presidential nominee on the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008, Joe Biden declared on Meet the Press that he “was prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.” He qualified his belief, however, by stating that he would not impose that belief by promoting laws that reflect it.

Archbishop Charles Chaput and Bishop James Conley published a rebuttal, stating that the beginning of life is a matter not only of faith but of scientific truth. Embracing objective truth has nothing to do with imposing it on anyone. The two bishops wrote:

“If, as Senator Biden said, ‘I am prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception,’ then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.”

Mr. Biden was also criticized by Bishop Francis Malooly during the 2008 presidential campaign for his public misrepresentation of Church teaching on abortion. And he was criticized by Bishop John Ricard for receiving Communion during a campaign trip to Florida. This raised anew the debate among bishops about Communion for Catholic politicians who promote abortion.

Now Comes Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — Again!

Cardinal Raymond Burke, then Archbishop of St. Louis, was one of the first bishops to state in 2004 that he would deny Communion to Catholic candidate John Kerry due to his public stance on abortion. Many bishops joined him in support of that view. In June of 2004, the U.S. Bishops Conference released a document entitled “Catholics in Political Life.” It communicated the U.S. Bishops’ unqualified “commitment to the legal protection of life from the moment of conception until natural death.”

Previous to the publication of that document, however, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then Archbishop of Washington DC, was appointed by the bishops to chair a USCCB Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians. McCarrick quietly lobbied other bishops to oppose denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians. There was significant foul play in McCarrick’s lobbying effort.

In 2004, The USCCB Task Force received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was a year before the death of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger’s election at the Conclave of 2005. As Task Force Chair, McCarrick received the letter from Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the other members. The future Pope Benedict’s letter was entitled, “Worthiness to Receive Communion: General Principles.” Here is one of its major points:

“[R]egarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood in the case of a Catholic politician as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws) his pastor should instruct the person about the Church’s teaching and tell him not to present himself for Communion.”

However, in his own report Cardinal McCarrick misrepresented the Ratzinger letter and manipulated the Task Force findings and recommendations to the U.S. Bishops in 2004. He instead reported to the bishops that it was the Task Force Commission’s conclusion that denial of Holy Communion to Catholic politicians could further divide our Church and could have serious unintended consequences.” The report concluded:

“In light of these and other concerns, the Task Force urges for the most part renewed efforts and persuasion, not penalties.”

An official who assisted Cardinal Ratzinger in the writing of that letter tells me today that it carefully referenced Canon 915, instructing that those who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

In revealing his Task Force Report to the U.S. bishops in 2004, Cardinal McCarrick attempted to hide the Cardinal-Prefect’s letter and his misrepresentation of it. The letter from Cardinal Ratzinger was later leaked by an unknown source exposing the manipulation, but only after the bishops accepted McCarrick’s more accommodating view — that pro-abortion politicians should be instructed but not penalized.

The Pro-Life Sensus Fidelium

What those “unintended consequences” cited by Cardinal McCarrick were can only be imagined. However, hindsight sheds some light on them. There are some who viewed McCarrick in the same way he apparently viewed himself — as a power-broker in the politics of both Church and state.

The full report on Theodore McCarrick’s rise and fall will likely soon be released by the Holy See. It will be interesting to see whether and how it reflects this, and reflects his manipulation of the U.S. Bishops’ collective approach to politicians who claim to be Catholic while dissenting with impunity from Catholic moral teaching on something as fundamental as the Right to Life.

In 2020, the U.S. Bishops formulated a new letter for Catholic voters that specifically cited the priority of life and abortion as “preeminent” priorities. It adopted the language of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI with clarity about the central importance of life issues in the current political climate.

Meanwhile, Candidate Joe Biden continues to espouse his Catholic identity while moving even further left in his promotion of abortion rights up to and including late-term abortion. In recent months he has withdrawn his four decades of support for the Hyde Amendment, a 1974 bilateral agreement between parties that protected U.S. taxpayers from violating their consciences by government application of their tax dollars for abortions.

There are few steps left to take for a Catholic candidate who openly rejects the Right to Life and other tenets of Catholic moral teaching, but Candidate Joe Biden has discovered them. He has officiated at a same-sex “marriage” and promotes the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ ideology and identity politics. Most recently Mr. Biden has called for codifying the right to abortion in federal law. After a recent Supreme Court decision on religious liberty, he vowed to roll back rights extended to the Little Sisters of the Poor concerning forced contraception coverage.

Some courageous bishops would deny him Communion for the simple but grave fact that he is no longer in communion with his faith. Other pro-life Catholics have asked for his excommunication.

Canon Law limits such a step to those who actively perform or otherwise cause abortion.

Joe Biden’s unabashedly pro-abortion rhetoric and promotion may collectively rise to that standard. In such a case, the Sensus Fidelium may call for something as decisive as excommunication. It would not be a penalty, but a discipline, an invitation to tend to the state, not only of Mr. Biden’s politics, but of his soul.

And how utterly strange and unacceptable that the current Archbishop of Washington, DC, while remaining silent on the Democratic nominee’s pro-abortion politics, chose this moment for a public repudiation of the only major party candidate who has been unequivocal in his support for the Right to Life, his promotion of religious liberty, and his efforts to appoint pro-life judges to the federal judiciary.

I can only ask the same question that has been on the minds of many faithful Catholics in recent weeks:

What in Hell is going on here?

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U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington and Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, look on during a news conference at the Vatican April 24, 2002. (CNS photo/Vincenzo Pinto, Reuters)