A Catholic Priest 27 Years Wrongly in Prison in America

Father MacRae being led to prison, September 23, 1994

On the Feast of St Padre Pio, Fr Gordon MacRae marks 27 years of wrongful imprisonment amassing tools for coping mentally and spiritually with life’s unjust wounds.

September 22, 2021

Note from the Editor: The title for this post was inspired by a 2019 article at LinkedIn by Fr. James Valladares, Ph.D. entitled, “A Catholic Priest 25 Years Wrongly in Prison in America.” It was written by Father Valladares from excerpts of his acclaimed book on priesthood cited below. Still in prison two years later, this version is written entirely from the perspective of Fr. Gordon MacRae as his 27th year in prison comes to an end.

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Wounds from the Church

As most readers know, I was convicted and sent to prison on September 23, 1994, the same day the Church honors Padre Pio, a great saint whose shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world. Padre Pio was canonized by another saint, Pope John Paul II, on June 16, 2002 at the height of the Catholic sex abuse scandal as it emerged out of Boston and spread like a virus.

For fifty years, Padre Pio bore the visible wounds of Christ on his body. He also bore the less visible wounds of slander and false witness inflicted from inside the Church. On several occasions in his life, his priestly ministry was suspended because lurid and ludicrous accusations were hurled at him from unscrupulous critics, many of whom were Church personnel. It was because of this, and some uncanny threads of connection, that Padre Pio entered our lives and became a Patron Saint of Beyond These Stone Walls. This is an account last told in 2020 in “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

In 2012, Australian Catholic priest, psychologist, and author, Fr. James Valladares, Ph.D., published a widely acclaimed book, “Hope Springs Eternal in the Priest1y Breast” (iUniverse). It cites a good deal of my own writing on the subjects of sacrifice, suffering, and priesthood. I am not at all worthy of this citation that appears on his "Acknowledgments" page:

“Fr. Gordon MacRae — an extraordinarily heroic priest with indomitable courage, unrelenting tenacity, unwavering patience, and Christ-like magnanimity who personally reflects what Pope Benedict XVI confessed: ‘All of us [priests] are suffering as a result of the sins of our confreres who betrayed a sacred trust or failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse.’”

— Hope Springs Eternal in the Priest1y Breast, p.xviii

I don’t know about any of that, especially the part about “unwavering patience.” (Maybe Pornchai, writing from Thailand will weigh in on that.) Anyway, the book extensively cites the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal whose three major articles on my trial and imprisonment took this story out of the darkness of one-sided suppression. It also cites the work of Ryan A. MacDonald, most notably his investigative journalism compiled in “Truth in Justice.”

However, the cryptic statement of Pope Benedict cited by Father Valladares above needs clarification. The Pope’s reference to “the sins of our confreres who betrayed a sacred trust” needs no explanation. His further statement referring to those who “failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse” is broader in scope. Fr. Valladares understood it to refer to some in the Church who tried to remedy one injustice by inflicting yet another. Some bishops went far beyond what has been required by the rule of law and also acquiesced to demands of the media and others with an agenda by publishing lists of priests deemed “credibly accused” but without basic due process of law.

Before my trial in 1994, for example, a past bishop of my diocese wrote a press release declaring me guilty of victimizing not only my accusers, but the entire Catholic Church. Two years ago, twenty-five years into my unjust sentence, a subsequent bishop joined the mob with stones in hand by publishing anew such a list with the stated goal of “transparency.” A year later, that same bishop was himself accused in a case that on its face is “credible” according to the standards bishops have used against priests.

The claims against Bishop Peter Libasci are alleged to have taken place in 1983, the same year as the claims against me. His defense is being handled by a law firm that most priests could never afford. But as I have documented in the post linked below, I believe the claims against him to be untrue and unjust. I was criticized for defending my bishop after my own name appeared on his list, but I am not looking for the mob approval my bishop was apparently looking for. I wrote of the injustice he faces in “Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

Detective James McLaughlin celebrates his 350th arrest.

Wounds from the State

I cannot bring myself to rehash the litany of false witness and official misconduct that sent me to prison on September 23, 1994. I just read a report by the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). It reveals the disturbing fact that in more than half of the cases overturned with new evidence revealing that the person in prison did not commit the crime, misconduct by prosecutors or police was the primary cause. (See Dale Chappell “Report Shows Official Misconduct Responsible for More than Half of Exonerations.”)

In the cases of many falsely accused Catholic priests, however, misconduct usually has a different outcome. There is never any “planted evidence,” but there is usually a lot of money in play as accusers become plaintiffs in civil lawsuits. Money is often an enticement to corruption and false witness. In many of these cases, no actual crime was ever committed 20, 30, or 40 years earlier when claims were alleged to have occurred.

In the Exonerations Report, sex offenses constituted the second highest category of wrongful convictions. Exonerations in that category encompassed a wide range of official misconduct including police threatening defendants and witnesses, falsified forensic evidence, police not pursuing exculpatory evidence, and police lying under oath. All of this was in the background of my trial and is documented in “Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct.”

Many people ask me why I am still in prison when others have come forward with evidence and testimony that casts doubt on the integrity of my conviction. I believe that the most important factor in my continued imprisonment is that the officer behind it has scored convictions via lenient plea deals in over a thousand cases of suspected sexual abuse. Lenient plea deals bolstered his conviction rate without totally destroying the defendants for life. As most readers know, I was offered such a deal in 1994 which would have had me released from prison by 1996 had I actually been guilty or willing to pretend so.

Reversing a conviction based on Detective James F. McLaughlin’s malfeasance in my case may have the unintended consequence of reopening a thousand others that he was involved with. It would have required moral courage and judicial integrity on the part of the judge, a former federal prosecutor who declined a hearing in my habeas corpus appeal. Judges rely on a procedural ruling giving state courts a right to finality. No judge has ruled on the evidence or witnesses that have arisen in the years since my trial. No judge has ever even heard the evidence or witnesses.

This raises a hard truth about our justice system. Guilty defendants are inclined to accept lenient plea deals while many innocent defendants cannot or will not. I am one of them. As a result, many guilty defendants spend far less time in prison than innocent ones. You have already seen a glaring example.

As a direct result of my writing about the horrific crimes perpetrated against Pornchai Moontri when he was brought to America against his will at age 12 in 1985, Richard Alan Bailey was found and arrested in Oregon. Due to extensive evidence, he pled no contest to forty felony charges of sexual assault in the State of Maine in 2018. He was sentenced to 18 years probation and never saw the inside of a prison. In nearby New Hampshire, I refused a one year plea deal and faced trial with no evidence. I was then sentenced to 67 years in prison. Let that sink in.

The Prophet Jonah: A Final Chapter

But none of this addresses what I intended to be at the heart of this post that marks those 27 years. There is nothing I can do to secure justice or freedom for myself. And there was nothing I did do to bring about my loss of them. But there was a lot I could do to secure justice and restore freedom for one whose path on this journey from Jerusalem to Jericho crossed with mine.

I did nothing so grandiose as the conversion of Nineveh, but through the Grace of God I became a necessary instrument in the conversion of Pornchai Moontri who once was lost and broken and now lives free in the light of Divine Mercy. In a September 10 telephone call to him in Thailand on his birthday, his first as a free man, he told me that his deliverance from both prison and his past could not have happened without me. I do not regret paying that ransom. I today believe this to be the purpose for what I have endured.

In my recent post, “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner,” I wrote about the Seventh Century BC Prophet Jonah and why much of the Book of Jonah is today considered to be a parable. I did not want to detract from the hopeful outcome of that story, so I held its final chapter until now. Its last chapter also took place in Nineveh, but in our time and not Jonah’s.

Though the story of Jonah and the Great Fish is a parable, the Prophet Jonah was a historical figure honored by all three of the great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. When Jonah was sent by God to the ancient city of Nineveh in the Seventh Century BC, it was the capital of the Assyrian Empire in its time of glory. Nineveh was a center for commercial trade routes on the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq, just opposite the modern city of Mosul. Nineveh was established in the Neolithic period more than 8,000 years ago, and inhabited almost without a break until about 1500 AD.

In the centuries before the Prophet Jonah was sent to Nineveh, the city was known as a religious center, but it fell far away from its religious roots. The city honored the Assyrian goddess, Ishtar, a goddess of healing who somehow was transformed by the time of Jonah into a goddess of war. The Assyrians built the city with broad boulevards, parks and gardens, and a magnificent palace of more than 80 rooms.

Today, Nineveh is reduced to two large mounds beneath which are the ruins of a city once thriving. The mounds are called, in Arabic, “Kuyunjik” and “Nebi Yunus” which means “place of Jonah.” In ancient times, a massive tomb in honor of the Prophet Jonah was built in a Sunni mosque in Nineveh on the site of an Assyrian church where the remains of Jonah were thought to be buried. This part of the city was revered by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The Tomb of the Prophet somehow managed to survive intact until just a decade ago. After standing for over a thousand years, the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah was blown up and destroyed in 2011 by the fundamentalist Islamic group, al Qaeda.

The Taliban had been doing the same thing in Afghanistan. Islam was preceded there by Buddhism which was eventually eclipsed by Islam and driven out around the Seventh Century AD. In the Sixth Century AD, Buddhist monks carved into a cliff side the world’s largest statue of Buddha. Standing at 180 feet, it survived for 1,500 years before it was blown up by the Taliban in 2001. It was destroyed at about the same time the Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda while the September 11, 2001 assault on the United States was planned.

I bring all of this up now because witnessing in my own recent lifetime the demise of people, places, and things once held sacred by many people has had an outsized impact on me that some might find perplexing. Why would I care so much about the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah or a 1,500 year-old gigantic stone Buddha? No matter who these monuments ultimately served, they arose from the hearts and souls of a people. When religious icons are destroyed by evil intent, so is the spirit of those people.

Catholicism and the cancel culture assault on the priesthood now risk this same fate. That risk is manifested most in America over just the last two decades. This threat does not come from the Taliban or Islamic State — though they may be poised to take advantage of the vacuum of hopelessness left in its wake. The terrorism behind this threat is called “apathy.”

If the priesthood and the Mass fall away, it will have as its primary cause the agendas of a few and the silence of too many.

We have witnessed in just recent years a chronic disparagement of the priesthood even from Pope Francis and our bishops, a canceling of a widely reverenced ancient form of the Sacrifice of the Mass, a handing over of the Church’s patrimony to the Chinese Communist government, a disparaging of our Church and faith as a “non essential service” by secular authority, a rampant capitulation to that by some bishops, a failure to defend the sanctity of life and the sanctity of the Eucharist, and a Catholic President who believes in neither.

This is why the Taliban despise us and judge us to be “Infidels,” which means exactly what it implies: “A people of little faith.”

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From a Homily of Padre Pio

“Why does is there evil in the world? Listen closely to me. There was a mother who was embroidering on a small weaving frame. Her young son was seated in front of her on a small low stool watching his mother work. But as he watched, he saw only the underside of the weaving frame. And so he said, ‘But Mother, what are you doing? The embroidery is so ugly!’ So his mother lowered the frame to show him the other side of the work, the good side with all its colors in place and all the threads in a harmonious pattern. That is it. Have you seen what evil is like? Evil is the reverse side of that embroidery and we are all sitting on a small stool.”

— From a homily of St. Padre Pio

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I want to thank readers who have consulted our Special Events page to assist our friend Pornchai in the daunting task of rebuilding his life. As you know, he was taken from Thailand at age 11. On his September 10 birthday this month, he had a touching reunion with his cousin who was eight when they lived together and is now 45 and an officer in the Royal Thai Navy. They met on September 10th for a birthday celebration at the Gulf of Thailand.

You may also wish to review the related posts linked herein:

Padre Pio, Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

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

The Despair of Towers Falling, the Courage of Men Rising

The smoke of Satan billows still two decades after September 11, 2001, but the courage of those aboard Flight 93 is also an enduring legacy of that day.

September 15, 2021

“Are you guys ready? OK. Let's roll!” You may know these words but you may not know the name of the man who spoke them. Todd Beamer said these words to his fellow passengers, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, and Tom Burnett aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. All four were athletes who found themselves aboard this fateful flight. There is no indication that they had ever met before that day. They knew their plane had been taken over by hijackers, and like most they became resolved to let it all play out as was the case with most hijack flights during the 1970s.

But as they and other passengers around them made cellphone calls to family and others that morning, they quickly learned of the devastation unfolding in Manhattan and Washington at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The lights went on in their minds. This flight was now under the control of terrorists and was destined to crash into some as yet unknown building in Washington to kill everyone aboard and to maximize the loss of life in the nation’s capital. Its ultimate goal was to humiliate and crush the spirit of America.

The clock was ticking as most passengers were subdued by the terror. Knowing the inevitable fate of Flight 93, the four men, led by Todd Beamer made a decision to thwart the terrorist plan and retake control of their plane. None of them were pilots, but it seems in their noble defiance that they set that detail aside. Todd organized the others into a rudimentary plan to wage war against the terrorists who were armed with knives and what turned out to be a fake bomb while these heroic men were not armed at all. Todd prayed Psalm 23 aloud, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for Thou art with me with Thy rod and Thy staff that give me courage.” “OK. Let’s roll,” he said. Over the next seven minutes, the flight recorder caught the sound of intense struggle as the four men fought the terrorists and crashed their way through the cockpit door. Flight 93, intended to be used as a weapon to kill everyone aboard and hundreds more in Washington was crashed into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

It took a few days for that day to be accurately pieced together. So this is posted on the twentieth anniversary of their heroism. Todd Beamer and his comrades set their survival aside to save the lives of unknown hundreds.

The following is an account of that day that I first wrote on its tenth anniversary. It is told from a most unusual perspective, and I have rewritten it on this twentieth anniversary of 9/11. Please share it in honor of Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and the passengers of Flight 93, the only flight to be denied its intended target that day.

In memory of Todd Beamer

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I was ten years old on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. Fifty-eight years later, every detail of what I was doing as the news unfolded on that infamous day remains vividly engraved in my mind’s eye. That day and the days of infamy to follow play in my mind like videos I’ve seen a thousand times.

Every generation seems to have these “imprinted” events, some more catastrophic than others. The generation just behind mine remembers what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Others a bit younger than me remember the great Northeast Blackout of 1965, and the 1968 assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King.

September 11, 2001 was like all of those days combined. Whenever I ask anyone about it, I get an account not only of the terror, but also of the normal activities of a day underway for those who witnessed it. It seems the closer to Ground Zero we were — emotionally or physically — the more vivid the imprinted memories of these events.

For me, the losses of that day were compounded by prison in ways difficult to explain. One of the most troubling events in the aftermath of what has become universally known simply as “9/11” came about six months later.

A weekly Catholic newspaper had published an article on prisons, and the folly of a system in which punishment alone prevails at the expense of rehabilitation. One letter to the editor in response was from the wife of a prison guard. She wanted to set the public straight that prisoners are a vile bunch and most defy rehabilitation. Her most vivid example was a claim that prisoners all over the country cheered for the terrorists on 9/11.

It was the sort of thing I hear often quoted by prison staff, especially at contract time. Prisons and prisoners are portrayed as inhuman and dangerous with most prison staff taking their lives in their hands every day they go to work. In twenty-seven years in prison, this has not been my experience with the vast majority of prisoners. And, the prison guard’s wife’s account notwithstanding, it certainly wasn’t my experience in prison on 9/11.

It is true that there are dangerous men in prison. Some are sociopaths; some are seriously mentally ill; some are just evil in their very core; but all combined they constitute a small minority of the one-size-fits-all prison environment. In my experience, twenty percent of prisoners should never leave prison if public safety is any consideration. Many of them don’t even want to leave. Their attitudes and behaviors are largely shaped by forces within them that allow no consideration for others.

Their sheer numbers and impact are dwarfed, however, by the eighty percent of prisoners who have but a singular goal: to atone for their mistakes, and to rejoin their families and communities as responsible and contributing members of society. Prisons are designed, built, and managed to contain the former group, however, and everyone else pays a price for that.

The biggest price prisoners had to pay in the wake of the terrorist attacks is having to live with the popular notion that most prisoners sided with the 9/11 terrorists, and would terrorize you themselves if given half a chance. Perhaps the best evidence against this notion was the true reaction of prisoners to the events of September 11, 2001.

Pearl Harbor in Manhattan

It was a Tuesday morning that began like any other. In this prison, every cell is at least “double bunked,” meaning that everyone has at least one roommate, and sometimes as many as seven. After nearly six years in an eight-man cell, I was moved just a year earlier to a prison unit with but two per cell. After years spent in the crucible of the prison’s “inner city,” it was like a move to the relative calm of the suburbs.

On September 11,2001, my roommate was Bob, a 37-year-old prisoner who is now long since a free man. With cups of instant coffee in hand that morning, Bob and I both stood for the day’s first prisoner count at 0730. After the count, Bob took his coffee to a table outside the cell while I prayed morning prayer from my breviary. Like most prison roomates forced to survive in a tiny space, Bob and I fell into a routine we could live with after a few months. Bob didn’t have a job in the prison — there are far more prisoners than available jobs — and I worked on the afternoon shift — back then in the prison programs office. So it became a sort of unspoken routine that Bob had some solitude every afternoon while I worked, and I had some space in the mornings to pray and write. Before either of us was moved to that cell, solitude was unheard of. Most people don’t really value solitude until they lose it.

After the count, I reached over to turn on the morning news on my small television. It was 8:48 AM. Both CNN and FOX had the same silent image on the screen: smoke pouring from a giant gash in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Our TVs have no speakers so I reached for my headphones, then heard the fluttering voice of a commentator in a helicopter hovering nearby:

“We are just currently getting a look at the World Trade Center. Something has happened here . . . flames and an awful lot of smoke from one of the towers . . . This is easily three quarters of the way up . . . whatever has occurred has just occurred, within minutes . . . We’ll keep you posted.”

I tuned in just two minutes after some sort of plane struck the building. The camera cut to a more distant scene. “Wow, that’s a lot of smoke,” I thought. “Hey Bobby,” I called, “take a look at this.” Bob stepped back into the cell from reading his Stephen King book at a table just outside. “Look at this,” I said again, as I angled my small TV for Bob to see. Bob grew up in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The scene on my screen — minus the smoke and flames — was one he had seen a thousand times.

Bob stared at the screen, and asked me what happened. The news commentators were just then saying that a plane flew into the North Tower. Commercial passenger jets would never be in the air space above Manhattan, so we both assumed this was a small, private plane that veered badly off course. Then I saw a close-up of the gash in the building. It seemed awfully big for a small plane to have caused it.

The news would only slowly unfold, and when it did, it was devastating. At 7:59 AM, American Airlines Flight 11 took off from Logan International Airport in Boston, bound for Los Angeles. It had a two-man flight crew, nine flight attendants, and 81 passengers — five of whom were al Qaeda terrorists armed with pepper spray and box cutters.

No one outside that plane knew what was happening when at 8:14 AM an air traffic controller’s instruction to climb to 35,000 feet went unanswered. No one knew that Mohamed Atta and four other terrorists had already stabbed two flight attendants and a passenger, and used pepper spray and the threat of a ficticious on-board bomb to subdue the rest.

The plane turned due south. Twelve minutes later, it began a rapid descent toward South Manhattan. At 8:46 AM, it flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center killing all 92 passengers and crew on board, and many others inside that building.

Oblivious to all of this from my vantage point, fourteen minutes passed as the CNN commentators pondered what sort of plane it might have been. Bob and I were riveted to the screen, feeling rather than seeing the lights slowly go on in our awareness. This wasn’t an accident.

Then at exactly 9:02, I spotted another plane. From CNN’s camera angle, it seemed to drift casually into view. The CNN commentator seemed not to notice it as she droned on about the North Tower. What was clearly a commercial airlines jet swept into the scene. I pointed to it on the screen, and said loudly “This shouldn’t be there.” I heard Bob whisper, “I know” when the plane disappeared behind the South Tower followed by an immense fireball exploding through the other side. “It’s an attack,” I said. “It’s a terrorist attack!”

It took some time for the story to unfold. Just one minute before American Airlines Flight 11 took off from Boston, United Airlines Flight 175 also departed Logan Airport bound for Los Angeles on another runway. It carried nine crew members and 56 passengers, five of them al Qaeda terrorists about to hijack that plane. Both planes were Boeing 767s.

At 8:51 AM, United 175 deviated from its flight path and New York air traffic controllers learned they could not contact its crew. At 8:58, it veered toward Manhattan. Four minutes later, I and thousands of other viewers spotted it on CNN’s live TV feed. I remember a split second of denial — perhaps the last moment of ignorant bliss this nation has seen — as that plane disappeared behind the South Tower and out of view. Then at 9:02 its enormous fireball emerged from half way up the building, and brought reality back home again.

Within moments, my cell was filled with people. Silent men in forest green prison uniforms, young, middle aged, and old, all staring at me. They knew that I had just seen what they saw, and none of them wanted to see any more of it alone. Then there were several guards, and it dawned on me for the first time that prisoners have televisions while prison guards do not — at least not while they are at work. “What’s happening?” they wanted to know. In they squeezed to stare at my screen.

Everyone standing in my doorway and crowded into my cell hoped against hope to hear the same thing. That this was some bizarre accident that could likely never happen again. Instead, I looked up and said, “This is a terrorist attack, and it isn’t over. Hundreds of people have just been killed, and those buildings are filled with people. This is going to be the worst disaster our country has ever seen. The world we knew just changed.”

I felt a little as though I was in that long remembered scene from childhood as Walter Cronkite explained what just happened in Dallas that November 22nd when I was ten. On this September day, you could hear a pin drop as I recounted to others in my cell the events of that morning and repeated what was known up to that moment. It came as a shock to realize that less than thirty minutes had passed since I closed my breviary and reached for my TV’s ON button.

And it was true that there was more coming. It would be awhile before we learned that at 8:20 AM, American Airlines Flight 77 departed Washington’s Dulles Airport, also bound for Los Angeles. It was a Boeing 757 with six crew and 58 passengers. Five of them were al Qaeda terrorists. At 8:54 AM its transponder beacon was deactivated.

At 9:37 AM, exactly 35 minutes after the South Tower was struck in Lower Manhattan, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the west side of the Pentagon between corridors four and five, piercing the E, D, and C Rings and entering the B Ring. All 64 people aboard the plane, and many inside the Pentagon itself, were killed instantly.

I suddenly became aware of a transformation among the people crowded into my small cell. There were no longer prisoners and prison guards. There were only men in the face of an alarming new enemy and a common resolve.

Just four minutes before that first Boeing 767 struck the North Tower in Manhattan, United Airlines Flight 93 bound for San Francisco departed Newark Airport. It carried seven flight crew and 37 passengers. Five of them were al Qaeda terrorists. Cell phone calls to family members of the passengers wove together a chilling account of how passengers became aware of the other attacks, and then confronted the terrorists aboard their own flight, now heading for a selected target in Washington, DC. In the ensuing, heroic struggle between the passengers and the terrorists, United Flight 93 slammed into the ground at 10:02 AM in a field in Shanksville, PA, 20 minutes out from Washington. We could only imagine ourselves aboard that plane, and, in fact, many prisoners wished they were.

Then in Manhattan, the Twin Towers collapsed. The knowledge that hundreds of police, fire fighters, EMTs and rescue workers, there to help only to be crushed to death, caused both prisoners and guards to turn from my television and place their faces in their hands. America was under siege, and we were men. We could see it only from a distance, and we were powerless to answer.

The mood in prison throughout that day and in the days to follow was eerily somber. It was one characterized first and foremost by shame — the shame of being in prison at a time when families needed the comfort of their fathers, their husbands, their brothers, their sons; the shame of being detained while their country was being attacked.

In the days, weeks, and months to follow, the prisoners I knew would have given anything to go to help sort through rubble at Ground Zero, to clear out debris from the Pentagon, or to kneel in prayer at Shanksville, PA. As the very notion of freedom and an open society were under attack, the least of the free longed for a chance, any chance, to serve, to protect, to make amends.

I, for one, took this very personally. I grew up in sight of Logan Airport in Boston from where some of these flights were hijacked. This began at home — my home, our home, while our backs were turned. As the news unfolded that this was the work not of a hostile government, or some organized crime cartel, but rather the actions of religious believers waging jihad — holy war — against us, we had no category for it; no terms of understanding with which to make sense of it.

And then within weeks of 9/11, for Catholics, at least, revelations of a jihad of another sort roared out of Boston and spread across the U.S. News of decades-old abuses — some of them unspeakable, but some of them also untrue — were repackaged by the news media for eyes already clouded with suspicion for the religious terrorists in our midst.

Two decades have passed, and we still struggle with trading civil liberties for security, due process rights for safety in a free society edging toward becoming less so. To our nation’s credit, we have declared our unwillingness to blame all of Islam for the crimes of its twisted and radical few. But while refusing to allow Islam to be reflected in the acts of its lunatic fringe, we’ve tolerated — even cultivated — a virulent anti-Catholicism that holds the Church in contempt for not acting in 1965 as it would in 2005.

If America truly believes that the answer to jihad is to abandon our own faith, and our fidelity as Catholics, then the war is over. The 9/11 terrorists have already won.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: If you have not already done so, please subscribe to Beyond These Stone Walls. We promise to haunt your inbox only once per week. Please also visit our Special Events page.

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

A Parable of Divine Mercy: Pornchai Moontri had a first birthday in freedom on September 10. One third of his life passed in a prison cell with a Catholic priest.

September 8, 2021

Jesus taught in parables, a word which comes from the Greek, paraballein, which means to “draw a comparison.” Jesus turned His most essential truths into simple but profound parables that could be easily pondered, remembered, and retold. The genre was not unique to Jesus. There are several parables that appear in our Old Testament. I wrote of one some time ago — though now I cannot recall which post it was — about the Prophet Jonah.

The Book of Jonah is one of a collection of twelve prophetic books known in the Hebrew Scriptures as the Minor Prophets. The Book of Jonah tells of events — some historical and some in parable form — in the life of an 8th-century BC prophet named Jonah. At the heart of the story, Jonah was commanded by God to go to Nineveh to convert the city from its wickedness. Nineveh was an ancient city on the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq near the modern city of Mosul. It was the capital of the Assyrian Empire from 705-612 BC.

Jonah rebelled against the command of God and went in the opposite direction, boarding a ship to continue his flight from “the Presence of the Lord.” When a storm arose and the ship was imperiled, the mariners blamed Jonah and cast him into a raging sea. He was swallowed by “a great fish” (1:17), spent three days and nights in its belly, and then the Lord spoke to the fish and Jonah “was spewed out upon dry land” ( 2: 10) . ( I could add, as a possible aside, that the great fish might later have been sold at market, but there was no longer any prophet in it!)

Then God, undaunted by his rebellion, again commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah finally went, did his best, the people repented, and God saved them from destruction. Many biblical scholars regard this part of the Book of Jonah as a parable. Jesus Himself referred to the Jonah story as a presage, a type of parable account pointing to His own death and Resurrection:

“Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.' But he answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of the Prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the giant fish so for three days and three nights, the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”

— Matthew 12:38-40

What I take away from the parable part of the story of Jonah is that there is no point fleeing from “the Presence of the Lord.” God is not a puppeteer dangling and directing us from strings. Rather, the threads of our lives are intertwined with the threads of other lives in ways mysterious and profound. I have written several times of what I call “The Great Tapestry of God.” Within that tapestry — which in this life we see only from our place among its tangled threads — God connects people in salvific ways, and asks for our cooperation with these threads of connection.

The Parable of the Priest

I was slow to awaken to this. For too many days and nights in wrongful imprisonment, I pled my case to the Lord and asked Him to send someone to deliver me from this present darkness. It took a long time for me to see that perhaps I have been looking at this unjust imprisonment from the wrong perspective. I have railed against the fact that I am powerless to change it. I can only change myself. I know the meaning of the Cross of Christ, but I was spiritually blind to my own. Ironically, in popular writing, prison is sometimes referred to as “the belly of the beast.”

After a dozen years of railing against God in prison, I slowly came to the possible realization that no one was sent to help me because maybe I am the one being sent. My first nudge in this direction came upon reading one of the most mysterious passages in all of Sacred Scripture. It arose when I pondered what exactly happened to Jesus between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the three days He refers to in the Sign of Jonah parable in the Gospel of Matthew above. A cryptic hint is found in the First Letter of Peter:

“For it is better to suffer for good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which he also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey.”

— 1 Peter 3:17-20

The second and much stronger hint also came to me in 2006, twelve years after my imprisonment commenced. This may be a familiar story to long time readers, but it is essential to this parable. I was visited in prison by a priest who learned of me from a California priest and canon lawyer whom I had never even met. The visiting priest was Father James McCurry, a Conventual Franciscan who, unknown to me at the time, had been a postulator for the cause of sainthood of St. Maximilian Kolbe whom I barely knew of.

Our visit was brief, but pivotal. Father McCurry asked me what I knew about Saint Maximilian Kolbe. I knew very little. A few days later, I received in the mail a letter from Father McCurry with a holy card (we could receive cards then, but not now). The card depicted Saint Maximilian in his Franciscan habit over which he partially wore the tattered jacket of an Auschwitz prisoner with the number, 16670. I was strangely captivated by the image and taped it to the battered mirror in my cell.

Later that same day, I realized with profound sadness that on the next day — December 23, 2006 — I would be a priest in prison one day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. At the edge of despair, I had the strangest sense that the man in the mirror, St. Maximilian, was there in that cell with me. I learned that he was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982, the year I was ordained. I spent a lot of time pondering what was in his heart and mind as he spontaneously stepped forward from a line of prisoners and asked permission to take the place of a weeping young man condemned to death by starvation. I wrote of the cell where he spent his last days in “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

On the very next day after pondering that man in the mirror on Christmas Eve, 2006 — a small but powerful book arrived for me. It was Man’s Search for Meaning, by Auschwitz survivor, Dr. Viktor Frankl, a Jewish medical doctor and psychiatrist who was the sole member of his family to survive the horror of the concentration camps. I devoured the little book several times. It was one of the most meaningful accounts of spiritual survival I had ever read. Its two basic premises were that we have one freedom that can never be taken from us: We have the freedom to choose the person we will be in any set of circumstances.

The other premise was that we will be broken by unending suffering unless we discover meaning in it. I was stunned to see at the end of this Jewish doctor’s book that he and many others attributed, in part, their survival of Auschwitz to Maximilian Kolbe “who selflessly deprived the camp commandant of his power over life and death.”

The Parable of a Prisoner

God did not will the evil through which Maximilian suffered and died, but he drew from it many threads of connection that wove their way into countless lives, and now I was among them. For Viktor Frankl, a Jewish doctor with an unusual familiarity with the Gospel, Maximilian epitomized the words of Jesus, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

I asked the Lord to show me the meaning of what I had suffered. It was at this very point that Pornchai Moontri showed up in the Concord prison. I have written of our first meeting before, but it bears repeating. I was, by “chance,” late in the prison dining hall one evening. It was very crowded with no seats available as I wandered around with a tray. I was beckoned from across the room by J.J., a young Indonesian man whom I had helped with his looming deportation. “Hey G! Sit here with us. This is my new friend, Ponch. He just got here.”

Pornchai sat in near silence as J.J. and I spoke. I was shifting in my seat as Pornchai’s dagger eyes, and his distrust and rage were aimed in my direction. J.J. told him that I can be trusted. Pornchai clearly had extreme doubts.

Over the next month, Pornchai was moved in and out of heightened security because he was marked as a potential danger to others. Then one day as 2006 gave way to 2007, I saw him dragging a trash bag with his few possessions onto the cell block where I lived. He paused at my cell door and looked in. He stepped toward the battered mirror and saw the image of St. Maximilian Kolbe in his Franciscan habit and Auschwitz jacket and he stared for a time. “Is this you?” he asked.

Within a few months, Pornchai’s roommate moved away and I was asked to move in with him. Less than four years later, to make this long and winding parable short, Pornchai was received into the Catholic faith on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Two years after that, on the Solemnity of Christ the King, 2012, we both followed Saint Maximilian Kolbe into Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Most readers likely know by now the depth of the wounds Pornchai experienced in life. He was abandoned as a child in Thailand, suffered severe malnutrition, and then, at age eleven, he fell into the hands of a monster. He was taken from his country and the only family he knew, and was brought to the U.S. where he suffered years of unspeakable abuse. He escaped to a life of homelessness, living on the streets as a teenager in what was to him a foreign land. At age 18, he accidentally killed a much larger man during a struggle, and was sent to prison.

Pornchai’s mother, the only other person who knew of the years of abuse he suffered, was murdered on the Island of Guam after being taken there by the man who abused him. In 2018, after I wrote this entire account, that man, Richard Alan Bailey, was brought to justice and convicted of forty felony counts of sexual abuse of Pornchai. After the murder of his mother at that man’s hands, Pornchai gave up on life and spent the next seven years in the torment of solitary confinement in a supermax prison in the State of Maine. From there, he was moved here with me.

Over the ensuing years, as I gradually became aware of the enormity of Pornchai’s suffering, I felt compelled to act in the only manner available to me. I followed Saint Maximilian Kolbe into the Gospel passage that characterized his life in service to his fellow prisoners: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

I asked the Lord, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to free Pornchai from his past and the seemingly impenetrable prisons that held him bound. I offered the Lord my life and freedom just as Maximilian did on that August day of 1941. Then I witnessed the doors of Divine Mercy open to us.

This blog began just then. In the time he spent with me, Pornchai graduated from high school with honors, earned two additional diplomas in guidance and psychology, enrolled in theology courses at Catholic Distance University, and became an effective mentor for younger prisoners in a Fast Track program. He tutored young prisoners in mathematics as they pursued high school equivalency, and, as I have written above, he had a celebrated conversion to the Catholic faith, a story captured by Felix Carroll in his famous book, Loved, Lost, Found.

Pornchai became a master craftsman in woodworking, and taught his skill to other prisoners. One of his model ships is on display in a maritime museum in Belgium. His conversion story spread across the globe. After taking part in a number of Catholic retreat programs sponsored by Father Michael Gaitley and the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, Pornchai was honored as a Marian Missionary of Divine Mercy. So was I, but only because I was standing next to him.

One of the most beautiful pieces of writing that has graced this blog was not written by me, nor was it written for me. It was written for you. It was a post by Canadian writer Michael Brandon, a man I have never met, a man who silently followed the path of this parable for all these years. His presentation is brief, but unforgettable, and I will leave you with it. It is, “The Parable of the Prisoner.”

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Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

Book: Man’s Search for Meaning

Book: Loved, Lost, Found

The Parable of the Prisoner

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: On September 10, Pornchai will mark his 48th birthday. It is his first birthday in freedom. In 2020 on that date he was just beginning a grueling five months in ICE detention awaiting deportation. For the previous 29 years he was in prison. For the four years before that he was a homeless teenager having fled from a living nightmare.

I asked him what he would like for his birthday, and this was his response:

“I have never seen the ocean. I would like to go to the Gulf of Thailand and visit my cousin who was eight years old when I was eleven and last saw him. He is now an officer in the Thai Navy.”

Please visit our “SPECIAL EVENTS” page, and our BTSW Library category for posts about Pornchai.

Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang

British priest and Oxford physicist Fr Andrew Pinsent shares this amazing post about the origin of the Universe and a stunning connection that struck close to home.

September 1, 2021

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I am honored to present this guest post by Father Andrew Pinsent, Research Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University. Formerly a physicist at CERN, Father Andrew now also serves on the Faculty of Theology at Oxford. Father Andrew holds a doctorate degree in particle physics from Oxford, a doctorate in philosophy from St. Louis University, and advanced degrees in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is a member of the United Kingdom Institute of Physics, the author of many publications on science and faith, and has appeared on BBC news, EWTN, and at the Vatican conference for scientists.

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Why should anyone be interested in Fr Georges Lemaître? Here’s one reason. Being both a priest and a former particle physicist at CERN, I am often asked to give talks on faith and science. Quite often young people ask me the following question, “How can you be a priest and believe in the Big Bang?” To which I am delighted to respond, “We invented it! Or more precisely, Fr Georges Lemaître invented the theory that is today called the “Big Bang” and everyone should know about him.”

Here is a little of the historical background. The Belgian priest-astrophysicist Fr Georges Lemaître in 1927 published a paper in the Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels presenting the idea of an expanding universe. When invited to a meeting of the British Association in London in 1931, on the subject of science and religion, Fr Lemaître proposed that the universe had expanded from an initial point, which he called the ‘Primeval Atom’. In 1949, the astronomer Fred Hoyle described Fr Lemaître’s theory as a ‘Big Bang’. Shortly before Fr Lemaître died in 1966, he learned of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, widely interpreted today as the faint echo of the Big Bang itself. With some modifications, the Big Bang has today become our standard grand narrative for understanding the cosmos.

Given that this history is incontrovertible (see, for example, Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996)), why then do young people still ask me, “How can you be a priest and believe in the Big Bang?” Many answers could be given in particular cases, but the underlying reason, I think, is that there is another kind of grand narrative at work. Part of that narrative today, absorbed from at least the age of ten in schools and from the media, is that faith is opposed to reason, and the Catholic Church in particular is opposed to science. The fact that a Catholic priest invented the Big Bang theory is therefore what might be called an ‘inconvenient truth’, something that cannot happen and therefore, for all intents and purposes, did not happen. More subtly, some people acknowledge Fr Lemaître’s achievement but deny that any significant implications can be drawn for understanding the relation of faith and science. They point out that his scientific work was distinct from his priesthood or that he is a ‘black swan’ event from which no wider conclusions can be drawn.

Such criticisms, however, overlook the value of the negative conclusion, namely that faith and revolutionary brilliance in science were clearly not incompatible in Fr Lemaître’s life, and perhaps that there are more ‘black swans’ waiting to be rescued from neglect. Moreover, even an appreciation of the extent to which Fr Lemaître is overlooked can serve as a catalyst for a broader re-examination of cultural prejudices regarding faith and science. For example, did the Catholic Church oppose the Big Bang theory? Was Fr Lemaître exiled or disgraced? No! Fr Lemaître was honoured by the Pope, who appointed him to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936. Did atheists welcome the Big Bang theory? No, or at least many did not for a surprisingly long time! As late as 1948, at a meeting in Leningrad, Soviet astronomers affirmed the need to fight against the ‘reactionary-idealistic’ theory of a ‘primeval atom,’ (i.e. the Big Bang) support for which, it was claimed, would help ‘clericalism’ (see Kragh, p. 262).

Such opponents saw, perhaps more clearly than we do today, that although aspects of the cosmos can be modelled by mathematics, to consider the formation and evolution of the cosmos as a whole requires taking up a God-like perspective in our imaginations, an implicitly hazardous prospect (at least at first) for the materialist or physicalist. Furthermore, to explore the origins, structure and evolution of the cosmos with the expectation of discerning knowable order is a habit born out of patterns of thinking shaped over centuries by the revelation of a Creator God of reason and love. As early as the first Christian century, we find, for example, Pope St Clement I referring to the sun, moon, and stars being “…put in motion by his [God’s] appointment … in harmony and without any violation of order …” (Epistle of Pope Clement I to the Corinthians, 19:2 - 20:12 (trans. C. Hoole)), a narrative of order and love that has shaped the expectations of our culture regarding the possibility and value of cosmology.

What, then, is to be done to help raise the profile of people like Fr Georges Lemaître? Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae through his widely-read blog BTSW has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaître. Inspired in part by Fr Gordon’s work, my colleagues and I in England have now put together some high quality laminated A3 posters that we can send worldwide in a series called the “Catholic Knowledge Network”. A copy of the A3 poster for Fr Lemaître is shown at the bottom of this post. If you would like to purchase these beautiful posters (for education institutions, parish halls, classrooms, and other public spaces), please do so from our publisher, the Catholic Truth Society in London, from where they can be sent worldwide.

As a regular reader of Beyond These Stone Walls and a contributor, I thank him for this opportunity and for the remarkable worldwide impact of his blog. I also thank those who edit and maintain this blog on his behalf.

Fr Andrew Pinsent
Theology and Religion Faculty
Oxford University

Two Phenomenal Postscripts from Fr Gordon MacRae

I am indebted to Father Andrew Pinsent for the above post. After he wrote it, I came across two discoveries related to it that I thought were phenomenal. The first is an excerpt from Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2005), a wondrous book by a brilliant mathematician, Robyn Arianrhod:

“In 1931, [Georges] Lemaitre formally sowed the seeds of the Big Bang theory when he suggested the universe had started as an explosion of a ‘primeval atom,’ and that it had continued expanding from that explosive beginning .... [From] Einstein’s equation [he] predicted the universe had expanded not from a tiny piece of matter located in an otherwise empty cosmos, but from a single point in four-dimensional space-time .... Before this point, about thirteen billion years ago, there was no time and no space. No geometry, no matter, nothing. The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.”

— Einstein’s Heroes, p. 187

“The Universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.” This is the conclusion of modern cosmology that began with the work of another brilliant mathematician-physicist, Fr. Georges Lemaître. If you wonder about the relevance of faith in the scientific world, you may be surprised to learn that science is using some of the same concepts as the Catechism of the Catho1ic Church to describe the origin of a created universe:

“God created the universe out of nothing.” — CCC 290

“We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create. God created freely out of nothing." — CCC 296

“God said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:4). Scripture bears witness to faith in creation ‘out of nothing’ as a truth filled with promise and hope.” — CCC 297

“Since God created everything out of nothing, He can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them, and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection.” — CCC 298

As Father Andrew Pinsent described, the cosmic background radiation left by the Big Bang was first detected and identified in 1965 by American astrophysicists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. Father Lemaître died one year later having witnessed the final acceptance by science of the truth of his discovery about the origin of the created universe.

Between 1989 and 1993, NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft mapped the cosmic background radiation. It verified that the distribution of intensity of the background radiation precisely matched that of matter that emits radiation because of its temperature, as also predicted by Father Lemaître’s Big Bang theory. For the science of cosmology, the created universe, which Father Georges Lemaître said began ‘On a Day without Yesterday,’ is no longer a theory. I hope you will read anew and share my first post about the Father of the Big Bang and Modern Cosmology, “A Day Without Yesterday: Fr Georges Lemaître and the Big Bang.”

My second postscript to Father Andrew Pinsent’s article above is more personal, but just as phenomenal. After we both posted our respective articles about Father Georges Lemaître, I received a letter from Belgium where Father Lemaître had long ago taught at the University of Louvain. The letter was written from Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, Pierre Matthews, who read both posts. His letter revealed something astonishing, something that seems as much the work of the Hand of God as the Big Bang itself.

It turns out that Fr Georges Lemaître, Father of the Big Bang and modern cosmology, was the Godfather of Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather. The photograph above depicts Pierre’s family with Fr. Lemaître and his mother on holiday at Lake Luzern, Switzerland. That’s 14-year-old Pierre just behind and to the left of Father Lemaître. Pierre’s sister and mother are to the right of Father Lemaître’s mother. In his letter with the photo Pierre wrote:

“My mother and Fr. Lemaître were both born in the same little town, Marcinelle, in Belgium. My maternal grandparents and Fr. Lemaître’s parents were close friends so my mother grew up with Georges Lemaître. He was as an uncle to me. In the summer of 1954, as the photo depicts, we spent four weeks together at the shore of Lake Luzern, Switzerland. I thought you and Pornchai might like to have this photograph.”

— Pierre Matthews

It was the understatement of the year. Pierre Matthews passed away in 2020 just as his Godson, Pornchai, regained his freedom.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I don’t know about you, but I needed a break from all the drama of my last several posts. Thank you for reading Fr Andrew Pinsent’s guest post and my postscript. They will be placed in our newest BTSW Library category, “Science and Faith.”

Please “Subscribe” to Beyond These Stone Walls if you have not done so already, and please visit our “Special Events” page. You may also like these related posts:

“A Day Without Yesterday:” Fr Georges Lemaitre and the Big Bang

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Catholic Knowledge Newwork Posters

Father Andrew Pinsent

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

Before he was himself accused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a window in the civil statute of limitations spawning claims against a Catholic bishop.

August 25, 2021

Back in 2010, I closely followed a story that appeared in most national news media outlets. It was about Bishop Eddie Long, a well-known preacher, TV evangelist, and pastor of a Baptist mega church in Georgia. He was accused of sexual assault in multiple lawsuits brought by three young adult males.

Unlike in nearly all similar claims against Catholic clergy, all three of the men, barely out of their teens, opted to allow their names to appear in media coverage. The story unfolded in stark contrast with similar claims against Catholic priests in other ways as well. Lawyers and victim advocates have explained away the sometimes decades-long gaps that have comprised 70-percent of the claims against priests. It is routinely claimed that accusers of Catholic clergy — the vast majority of whom were teens at the time of an alleged offense — may require decades to come forward due to the trauma inflicted on them. In contrast, the three young men accusing Bishop Eddie Long filed lawsuits within two years.

Bishop Long denied that the claims were true. Criminal charges were never filed so the claims were not investigated. The story came down to his word against theirs. When The Wall Street Journal published a 2010 account of Bishop Long’s vow to fight these claims, it was among the five most-read stories of that week at WSJ.com. Clearly, many in the news media presumed at first reading of the headlines that he was a Catholic bishop. The decision to fight the claims rather than simply settle thus stood out as a news story of its own.

In the end, however, Bishop Long and his congregation decided to settle the claims for an undisclosed sum in 2010. No one questioned their assertion that settlement of such claims is common and in no way should be seen as an admission of guilt or culpability. Beyond Bishop Long’s congregation, there were no deeper pockets to pursue. He simply resumed his ministry as though nothing had ever happened.

This could never happen when the accused is a Catholic priest. It was once explained to me by another bishop, Most Rev. John B. McCormack, formerly Bishop of Manchester, NH, that one of the hard lessons of the Catholic clergy abuse narrative is the fact that once a priest is accused, his legal interests and those of his bishop and diocese diverge. When I maintained my innocence against lawsuits that I knew were fraudulent, I was dropped as a defendant so I no longer had standing to challenge settlements.

The New Hampshire statute of limitations for lawsuits was six years then. (In 2020 the civil limitation statute was removed entirely.) The allegations against me were from twelve years earlier. My defense against the claims was that they never took place. The sole argument of my diocese was that the statute had expired so the lawsuits should be time barred. Judge Carol Ann Conboy ruled in Merrimack County Superior Court that the six-year statute begins to toll “only when a victim becomes aware” of a connection between a claim of abuse and a current injury.

My diocese opted to settle rather than appeal that dubious lower court precedent which has since evolved into a pattern of unquestioned mediated settlements in other claims against priests going all the way back to 1950. In many cases no lawsuit was even filed. In his once published resume, former Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault (now Edward J. Bolognini) claimed that he personally negotiated 250 settlements in allegations against NH priests.

Of interest, one NH lawyer told the news media that he personally obtained 250 settlements in claims against NH priests. In a 2002 media report he added,

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

— Mark Hayward, NH Diocese Will Pay $5 Million to 62 Victims, NH Union Leader, November 27, 2002

Manchester Bishop Peter A. Libasci

Misuse of the word, “credible” has been a source of injustice in the U.S. Church since 2002. Prior to the events described above, Bishop John McCormack told a lawyer and a media producer that he believed I was falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned. His statements were documented in a pair of independently sworn affidavits in 2001.

In 2002, after the USCCB adopted the Dallas Charter and “zero tolerance,” claims against me entered a category used by all bishops since. Once money changed hands, they became “credible.” I wrote of the fallout in “Our Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests.”

What the bishops collectively mean by “credible” is not a standard of justice used in any other circumstance. It means no more than “possible.” If a priest and an accuser lived in the same parish or community 30, 40, 50 years ago, then a sexual abuse claim against the priest is “credible.” It is deeply unjust that bishops continue to use that term while knowing that the public and the news media wrongly interpret it as “substantiated.”

There has been a point of contention with my current Ordinary, Bishop Peter A. Libasci. In 2019, while under no pressure from anyone to do so, he published the names of 73 priests of this one diocese who, he says, were “credibly” accused. Many are deceased. This resulted in a pair of pointed articles by Ryan A. MacDonald: “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List,” and “Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood.”

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

Bishop Libasci maintains through counsel that he is entirely innocent of these claims. I believe that he is in fact innocent. I do not find the claims to be credible at all, but I do not use that term in the same manner the bishops use it against priests. I will get back to this.

One of the claims from the now unnamed 50-year-old accuser is that he was assaulted in the sacristy while setting up for a Mass. That has all the earmarks of a “copycat” claim that is almost verbatim a claim in a different but much more notorious New York case, that of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. No one who knows Bishop Libasci could or should conclude that these claims are at all credible. It would be a grave injustice if such claims prevail without clear evidence.

However, that also leaves the matter in a conundrum. If that accuser lived in Deer Park, New York and attended that parish or school at the time Bishop Libasci was there, then this is more than enough for his fellow bishops to conclude — as they would in the case of any similarly accused priest — that the claims are “credible.” Bishop Libasci has not, at this writing, been removed from ministry by the Vatican. As unjust as that would be, any priest in the same circumstance would have been removed immediately.

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

This is happening to Bishop Libasci and others with roots in the State of New York because in 2019, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo promoted and ultimately signed a bill that opened a window to allow civil claims to be filed even if they had been time barred by the statute of limitations. The window in which these claims could be filed expired on August 14, 2021. The Catholic bishops of the state of New York knew well what the result would be so they opposed the unjust bill.

Before signing it into law, Governor Cuomo accused the bishops and other Church officials of threatening politicians who did not support their opposition to the bill. In response to similar bills that were not passed in previous efforts, Cuomo said, “I believe it was the conservatives in the Senate who were threatened by the Catholic Church, and this went on for years.” Catholic League President Bill Donohue pointed out in “Cuomo Had A Different Standard for Priests,” Catalyst, April 2021,

“When teachers’ unions oppose a bill, it is called lobbying. When bishops oppose a bill, it is called a threat. Cuomo’s double standard, and his animus against the Catholic Church, could not be more plain.”

— Dr. Bill Donohue

Governor Cuomo also promoted and signed a June 2020 bill that set a very low bar as a standard of evidence in claims of sexual abuse or harassment in the workplace. The New York Times reported that the legislation eliminates the state’s “severe or pervasive” standard. When signing the bill into law, Governor Cuomo said,

“The ongoing culture of sexual harassment in the workplace is unacceptable and has held employees back for far too long. This critical measure finally ends the absurd legal standard for victims to prove sexual harassment in the workplace and makes it easier for those who have been subjected to this disgusting behavior to bring claims forward.”

— Governor Andrew Cuomo, June 2020

I once wrote a post entitled, “Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well.” It documented multiple stories of crusaders against sexual abuse who turned out to be guilty of the same sorts of offenses they were crusading against. It was the result of a combination of forces within the psyche in the form of two classic defense mechanisms described by the Father of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. From recent news accounts of his resignation to avoid a pending impeachment, Governor Cuomo seems to have been a textbook case for this.

As accusation after accusation emerged against Cuomo, he insisted on a presumption of innocence and his due process rights. He responded to the allegations with, “You can allege something. It might be true or it might not be true. You may have misperceived. There may be other facts.” All true, but when it came to allegations against priests — whether in the present or in the distant past — innocence was never a possible conclusion. As Catholic League President Bill Donohue observed in the link above,

“Cuomo showed no respect for the due process rights [of priests]. He was happy to sign legislation that gave rapacious lawyers out to sue the Church all the leeway they wanted.”

— Dr. Bill Donohue, Catalyst, April 2021

This is the Pandora’s Box our bishops opened with their use of the term, “credible” as a standard of evidence for removing priests. The current claims against Bishop Peter Libasci arose only because Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law in New York a bill that takes advantage of the lowest possible standard of evidence to score lucrative windfall settlements from the Catholic Church.

According to the standard our bishops have adopted, however, those claims are as “credible” as many of the claims against the priests on Bishop Libasci’s published list. I would like to believe that Bishop Libasci may now, in hindsight and humility, rethink his decision to publish that list. Injustice, however, is often a bell that cannot be unrung.

Nonetheless, absent compelling evidence — and so far there is none — I firmly believe Bishop Peter Libasci is entirely innocent. I hope and pray that his good name is restored and he is delivered from this injustice.

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Update by Editor — September 8, 2024: In July 2024 it was announced in news media that the accuser of Bishop Peter A. Libasci has died in Rockville Centre, New York. The cause of death has not been public, but he would have been a man in his mid-fifties. This sadly leaves the case against Bishop Libasci unresolved both civilly and canonically.

Since then, the Diocese of Manchester under Bishop Libasci has revised its policy regarding accusations against Catholic clergy. Bishop Libasci has approved a new standard to be applied to cases of accusations against priests. The “credible” standard has been discarded within this Diocese. Now any priest merely accused, from however long ago, substantiated or not, will be removed from ministry and his name added to a public list of the accused. The Diocese has announced that financial compensation for all accusers will be arranged by “trauma-informed consultants.” This new standard will apply to all diocesan personnel, except apparently, Bishop Libasci himself.

To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. Please also pray for a just outcome for Catholic priests falsely accused, and for legitimate victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. Let us remember as we walk through this minefield that we are a Church.

You may also like these relevant posts:

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List by Ryan A. MacDonald

Our Bishops Have Inflicted Great Harm on the Priesthood by Ryan A. MacDonald

A Weapon of Mass Destruction: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused by Father Gordon J. MacRae, LinkedIn Pulse

Accused Priests Deserve Better by Catholic League President Bill Donohue (Catalyst, March 2020)

Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound by Father Michael Orsi, Ed.D., Ave Maria School of Law

The Pillar; Msgr Jeffrey Burrill; Blackmail of the Vatican

A story of one U.S. priest and his moral fall from grace has spun into accusations of a witch hunt and international suspicions of Chinese blackmail of the Vatican.

August 18, 2021

After just weeks ago posting “Our Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests,” I have been highly resistant to stepping into this one. In a matter of weeks, this story has grown so many tentacles that I am not even certain of where to begin. My goal is not to join the frenzy, but rather to perhaps bring a little perspective to it. So I will begin where no one else has begun.

For the last year, Msgr Jeffrey Burrill had been in the high profile and highly prestigious position of General Secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For the preceding four years he served in the position of Associate General Secretary. He has been referred to as the highest ranking member of the U.S. Catholic clergy who is not a bishop. I do not have a defense of Msgr Burrill except to say that his life and priesthood have been shredded in recent weeks. Perhaps this is even right and just, but a Church should not settle for leaving the story there. I hope and pray for an avenue of repentance and restoration.

But first, the tabloid frenzy: The story is complicated. A new Catholic media venue called The Pillar published an investigative report on July 20, 2021 that resulted in the abrupt resignation of Msgr Burrill from his position in the leadership of the USCCB. It also ignited a firestorm of debate about journalistic ethics, priestly celibacy and homosexuality, and the difference between private behavior and public crimes. To date, Msgr Burrill stands accused of no crimes, but The Pillar report alleging promiscuous homosexual behavior left his career in ruins.

The Pillar, founded just eight months ago, is staffed by former Catholic News Agency editor J. D. Flynn and former CNA reporter, Ed Condon. Using and doggedly cross-referencing easily accessible data from a homosexual “hook-up” app called Grindr, the two journalists were able to pinpoint “emitted app data signals” from Grindr to a specific device “on a near daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020” according to The Pillar report. The device belongs to Msgr Jeffrey Burrill and was allegedly used for the purpose of anonymous sexual encounters from his USCCB office and residence as well as in other cities, sometimes while handling USCCB affairs.

The journalists sought comment from Msgr Burrill and the USCCB leadership before breaking this story. A meeting was scheduled, then cancelled. Msgr Burrill resigned from his position as USCCB General Secretary on July 19, a day before the 3,000 word story was published by The Pillar under the title: “Pillar Investigates: USCCB Gen Sec Burrill Resigns After Sexual Misconduct Allegations.”

Almost immediately, apologists for the gay agenda went into action. The National Catholic Reporter (please be clear that we are not talking about the NC Register) accused The Pillar of operating on “a shaky journalistic foundation.” (Coming from NCR, I found that to be most ironic.) Jesuit Father James Martin accused The Pillar of using “immoral tactics” to “out” Msgr Burrill. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Editorial Features Editor Matthew Hennessey wrote an outstanding defense of The Pillar's journalism in “Catholic Journalists Expose a Scandal, and Liberals Scoff” (August 2, 2021). Mr. Hennessey reported,

“Vox.com described Grindr in 2018 as ‘an underground digital bathhouse’ whose purpose is to ‘help gay men solicit sex, often anonymously, online.’ At the very least most Catholics, liberal or conservative, would say this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a priest should have on his phone. Is it news? Without a doubt ... If the priest who leads the USCCB is living a life antithetical to Church teaching on matters of human sexuality, It’s a story.”

— WSJ.com, August 2, 2021

Is This Really about Human Sexuality?

Complicating this story further, Msgr Jeffrey Burrill is a priest of the Diocese of Lacrosse, Wisconsin whose Ordinary, Bishop William P. Callahan, recently suspended the priestly faculties of another high profile priest, Father James Altman for the stated reason of being “divisive and ineffective.”

The criticism of Jesuit Father James Martin, that The Pillar journalists used “immoral tactics” to “out” Msgr Burrill, is curious at best. It is true that they went after this story with an unexplained laser focus and determination, but their methods were not at all unique in the digital age. Father Martin’s use of the term “out” leaves the impression that he protests exposing Msgr Burrill’s sexual orientation. Father Martin has invested a lot of energy and ink to present and lobby for same-sex unions to be perceived as both normative and acceptable in and outside of the Church.

His rhetoric on this only further harms Msgr Burrill, however. Grindr bills itself as “the largest social network for gay, bisexual, transgender and ‘queer’ people” for the singular purpose of locating and exploiting opportunities for anonymous sexual encounters, often between complete strangers. There is not even the remotest opportunity for relationship, mutuality, love, or companionship in such encounters. This is not a reflection of human sexuality. It is about narcissistic exploitation of oneself and other human beings. It is about sexual compulsion.

If all that has been suggested about Msgr Jeffrey Burrill’s use of the Grindr app is true, he does not need Father Martin’s affirmation or defense, nor does he need our revulsion or contempt. He needs our help. The great tragedy of all this is that the person most in place to help him — his own bishop — is rendered unable or unwilling to do so because of the tabloid frenzy of the media and the bishops’ collective fear of it.

When the story of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick first surfaced in the arena of public contempt, I wrote a controversial post entitled, “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.” It explained my own vicarious experience of the world and influence of Cardinal McCarrick in the seminary I attended in the 1970s. Its central point cautioned against a witch hunt to root out from the priesthood the existence of same-sex attraction because those who experience it are just as capable of living celibate lives committed to Christ as any other priest or religious. The real impediment to Holy Orders, that post suggests, is not same-sex attraction but rather narcissistic personality disorder, a condition that defies treatment and objectifies others, but is far more detectable in screening a candidate for priesthood or religious life.

I have known many priests who have struggled with same-sex attraction who are exemplary priests. I strongly believe that there is a direct correlation between the health of their lives as men and as priests and their ability to resist narcissism by leading selfless lives. The compulsion for anonymous sexual encounters and the objectification of others exploited by sites like Grindr have a lot more to do with the plague of narcissism than anything resembling human sexuality.

I have also known priests, though in a far smaller number, who gradually descended into the darkness of sexual narcissism and the world of anonymous “hook-ups” that Grindr exploits. Some of these men were sent to a residential treatment center for priests where I served as Director of Admissions. Many were helped, but only to the extent that they could do the hard work of exposing and understanding their narcissistic personalities and commit themselves to selfless and transparent lives and a priesthood centered on Christ.

In nearly every case, their long, slow descent into darkness was known to other priests who did nothing and said nothing to stop or challenge them. In the case of Cardinal McCarrick, it is a fact that many bishops knew of his behavior, but today lie about this. Today he is dismissed, scapegoated and ostracized, but his sins were not just his own. It will merely compound this tragedy, and the Church’s shame, if Msgr Jeffrey Burrill now is left with only one option: to disappear into the night.

Was the Holy See a Victim of Blackmail?

A side story has developed over use of the Grindr app that has led some to draw a possible connection with the Vatican’s troubling agreement with the Chinese Communist Party over the selection of bishops for the state-controlled church. The evidence is enticing, but entirely circumstantial. This aspect of the Grindr app story was first exposed in a Breitbart News article by Thomas Williams, Ph.D. entitled, “‘Extensive’ Gay Hookup App Usage Compromises Vatican Security,” (July 28, 2021). The article draws on the previous article in The Pillar to explore a possible exposure to blackmail for use of the app within Vatican walls.

The Pillar revealed that at least sixteen different mobile devices emitted signals from Grindr within areas of Vatican City not generally open to the public. That’s sixteen cellphones over four days within an eight-month period between March and October 2018. To date, the owners of those phones are unknown. With this information, and a lot of conjecture, some Vatican watchers now suggest that the 2018 Concordat, the contents of which to date remain private, may have been a result of blackmail over use of the app within the Vatican. From my perspective, this is possibly a huge leap of the imagination.

According to the Breitbart article, a Chinese entity was the original owner of the Grindr app. It is surmised that the CCP could have accessed the same data investigated by The Pillar. I have written more than once questioning the secret agreement of 2018 between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party. The Holy See appears to have conceded to allowing the CCP to select candidates for bishop in the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association which was first established by the late Chairman Mao Zedong. I wrote of this just weeks ago in “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”

Added to the circumstantial evidence is a June 2019 change in the Vatican’s longstanding China policy which previously forbade priests from joining that association. After the ban was lifted, Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen went on record to say that the lifting of that ban was even more destructive than the 2018 agreement itself.

Added to the above evidence has been the relative silence of the Holy See about Chinese atrocities toward the Uyghur people in the XinJiang Autonomous Region, and the increased persecution of priests and other Catholics who remain in the “underground” Church that is loyal to Rome even if Rome is not loyal to them. All of this is indeed cause for grave concern.

However, none of it is evidence of blackmail. Our friend and Canon Law adviser, Father Stuart MacDonald, sees this evidence as being similar in tone and substance to that used by bishops to expel accused priests in cases with no hard evidence. It all seems “credible,” but only in the sense that it “might” be true. It is, however, no measure of justice when it is the only evidence.

Earlier this month, I posted an important addition to our Library category, “Our Patron Saints.” The post is “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.” In 1937, Pope Pius XI published a courageous document entitled, in German, “Mit Brennender Sorge” (With Deep Anxiety). It was a bold confrontation with the Nazi regime over the forced deportation of Jews from Europe. In retaliation, many people were imprisoned. Some were put to death. Among them was Edith Stein, a woman who was born a Jew, became a Catholic, a celebrated university doctor of philosophy, and a Carmelite nun. She was dragged in full Carmelite habit from her convent in Holland, stuffed onto a cattle train, and transported to Auschwitz where she was immediately put to death.

When Pope Pius XII ascended the Chair of Peter shortly thereafter, he was, in a sense, blackmailed by this and other atrocities into silence about Hitler and the Third Reich. Speaking out would have jeopardized many lives, and many underground efforts at diplomacy to save people who were imperiled. To conclude today without evidence that the Pope is silenced by someone holding over his head a story of someone in the Vatican calling a gay hookup app is shameful in comparison. That part of the story might better belong in Soap Opera Digest.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this important post. Please also visit our Subscribe Page and Special Events. You may also like these relevant posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

The McCarrick Report & the Silence of the Sacrificial Lambs

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz

Photo courtesy of CNS/L'Osservatore Romano

A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass

In Traditionis Custodes restricting the Traditional Latin Mass, Pope Francis insists that his goal is ecclesial communion. Then he dropped a bombshell of division.

In the above composite photo Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis offer Mass Ad Orientem in the Sistine Chapel.

August 11, 2021

The Year of Our Lord 2003 seemed a lot more like a year of Our Lord’s Calvary. It was a most painful year for me personally and for many Catholics. Starting in Boston with a rapid ripple effect across the land, diocese after diocese faced relentless Catholic scandal over the horror of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse. A spotlight was cast upon the Catholic Church to the delight of the news media, but the subject needed a flood light. There was little justice in the moral panic to follow. This is a story I wrote about in a recent post, “A Sex Abuse Cover-Up in Boston Haunts the White House.”

Just beyond the glare of The Boston Globe spotlight, there was another event that had an even more profound impact on another church community in 2003. It took place just north of Boston in New Hampshire and from there it, too, rippled across the land, and many lands. Its most distinctive feature was its contrast to the Catholic story. While Catholic priests were judged and condemned in the media, one Episcopal clergyman in New Hampshire became a celebrity of pop culture.

In 2003, The Reverend V. Gene Robinson became the first openly gay Episcopalian priest to be nominated to become a bishop. The announcement had the immediate effect of alienating conservative members of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Born Vicky Gene Robinson in 1947, the nominee had been married, raised a family, divorced, and was in a conjugal same-sex relationship at the time of his nomination. For many, this seemed more of a politically correct statement than a serious nomination. If The Reverend Robinson had been divorced and living with another woman who was not his wife, this nomination would have gone nowhere.

Bishop Robinson’s nomination was confirmed by the Episcopal church of New Hampshire to equal parts applause and dismay. Then the cascade of damage was set in motion. With the support of the Nigerian Anglican church, many American conservative Episcopalians broke from the Worldwide Anglican Communion to form the Anglican Church in North America. The Anglican bishops of Uganda announced that they too broke from communion with the Episcopal church. This spread among conservative Anglican bishops across Africa and other parts of the world.

Having torn the Worldwide Anglican Communion asunder, Bishop Robinson announced his retirement seven years later in 2010. At some point he checked into drug rehab, and then used his voice as a retired bishop to promote same-sex marriage before the New Hampshire Legislature. He and his partner were among the first to “marry” under the new law he helped to pass. Then he announced his divorce to a news media that kept it very low key.

Among the protests came a multitude of petitions to Pope Benedict XVI who, in 2009, promulgated the Motu Proprio, Anglianorum Coetibus accepting into the Roman Rite entire Anglican parishes desiring to “cross the Tiber” to join the Roman Church. The first was a parish that became part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston, Texas in 2009.

We Are on a Road to Calvary Not Schism

The reactions that resulted in a breakup of the Worldwide Anglican Communion could not happen in the Catholic Church. Canon Law does not allow for the decisions to leave promoted by the Anglican bishops of Africa and other conservative communities. Only the Holy See can declare that a schism exists in a region or diocese. Popes have gone to great lengths to avoid schism. Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Bishops in the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) to heal a longstanding rift with traditionalists. In 2007, Pope Benedict further mended that rift with his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which removed obstacles to the Traditional Latin Mass.

Now Pope Francis has reopened those wounds anew with Traditionis Custodes, his Motu Proprio: announced on July 16, 2021 which contradicts and revokes the permissions granted by Pope Benedict. I wrote of this last week in these pages in “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”

I used that title because in many ways my experience of the vast majority of those who seek out the Latin Mass are among the most faithful. In a published Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal on July 30, 2021, writer Ray Martin of Ridgefield, Connecticut described what has become a lax and often disrespectful atmosphere in too many parishes. This is an impression that I hear about frequently from readers:

“I do not regularly attend a Latin Mass but I do remember it from childhood ... Nowadays, fewer Catholics attend Mass regularly, they tend to come late and leave early, and it is not unusual to see T-shirts, short-shorts and flip flops. Everyone presents at the altar for Communion. One study found that around one in three Catholics believes in the True Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I would guess that more than 90-percent of Latin Mass attendees do.”

— Ray Martin, WSJ.com

My experience of the many Catholics I hear from who seek out the Latin Mass either weekly or even just on occasion is that they are our modern day Essenes. I wrote of the Essenes and their role in preserving the faith of both Israel and the early Jewish Christians in “Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse.” When Pope Benedict XVI opened the Church door to those requesting the Tridentine Latin Mass, many thought it would draw only senior citizens and some “far-right cranks,” as one writer put it back then. That has been far from true. Pope Francis expressed a concern that many who take part in the Latin Mass deny the validity of the Novus Ordo, the form of the Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970. This also is far from true. I hear from many Latin Mass attendees who also take part in the Novus Ordo Mass. All they ask for is a sense of the sacred, and a communal acknowledgment that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. Their appreciation of the Novus Ordo has been strengthened by the Latin Mass.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Walther, editor of The Lamp magazine, penned an eye-opening op-ed one week after Pope Francis announced new, severe and immediate restrictions on the Latin Mass. Entitled, “Pope, Francis, the Latin Mass, and My Family” (July 23, 2021), Mr. Lamb described the reaction of those in his Catholic community of faith:

“We are loyal children of the Church on the receiving end of a harsh punishment. Pope Francis ... seemed to suggest that things had gone too far and were threatening to undo the liturgical reforms of the 1960s. The gradual displacement of the new rite, which emerged after Vatican II, was in fact the half-articulated ambition of many traditionalists. Until recently many had looked forward to a future in which the 'extraordinary form' of the Mass, as Benedict referred to it, was set to become rather ordinary.”

— Matthew Walther

Perhaps that is the point. The solemnity, majesty, and sacredness of the sacrifice taking place is just that — extraordinary. I want to contrast that with an experience I had as a newly ordained priest in one New Hampshire parish whose pastor made a weekly show of rushing through Sunday Mass at warp speed. After his hasty final blessing he would look at his watch and declare, “Twenty-two minutes, and I didn’t miss a thing!”

Standing with Peter v. Standing Our Ground

In some ways, Pope Francis has been unpredictable for so-called progressive Catholics as well. After playing down the issue of homosexuality with oft-quoted remarks like, “Who am I to judge?”, he disappointed many in liberal Catholic enclaves like Germany when he refused to allow blessings of same-sex unions. He dismissed the proposition while shocking liberal German priests with the definitive statement, “God cannot bless sin.” In an open letter to German Catholics in 2019, he cautioned them against “multiplying and nurturing the evils the Church wants to overcome.” He also gave a definitive “no” on the topic of ordination of women.

With all the open, and often flagrant, dissent from Church teaching and discipline in Germany and other parts of Europe, why would Francis choose to label traditional Catholics who appreciate the Latin Mass as “divisive?” I do not have answers.

But I do have more questions and a few suspicions. As I pointed out in these pages a week ago, there is an immense and growing contrast between the state of the Catholic Church in Germany and other areas in Europe, and that of the Church in Africa. The former has been in a state of stagnation for decades, and is now deeply involved in the embrace of what has come to be called, “Cancel Culture.” In its Catholic manifestation, I can only describe this as the setting aside of the “sensus fidei,” the sense of the faith as it has been expressed across two millennia, in favor of populist social trends of just the first two decades of the 21st Century.

With that understanding, “Cancel Culture” has become a modern plague on humanity that is far more destructive than any viral pandemic. If we do not understand history, and learn from it, we are doomed to repeat its most destructive patterns. Joining this secularized culture by placing God on the shelf while morphing Roman Catholicism into a mirror image of the flailing American Episcopal church is perilous.

The rapid growth of the Traditional Latin Mass since Pope Benedict XVI re-opened that door may well be the work of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis knows well that the entire Church — and not just the bishops with whom he consulted — comprises the “sensus fidelium,” the action of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds and souls of the faithful from the Sacrifice at Calvary to the present day. The faithful witness of those who embrace the Traditional Latin Mass may prove to be a gift to the Church.

But the faithful must not stand against Peter to achieve that end. We are a Church built upon the blood of martyrs, and faithful witness may now require paying the cost of discipleship. Sometimes in the Church’s story of faith, white martyrdom has not only been for the Church. Sometimes it has been from the Church. Padre Pio knew this. So did Cardinal George Pell. So do I.

I have been most struck by the two volumes of Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal. He frequently repeated his longing for Mass and the Eucharist in a place where he was barred from them. I recall reading from Father Walter Ciszek’s book, With God In Russia, that he sat on the edge of his bunk in a Siberian labor camp and would mouth from memory the words of the Roman Canon of the Mass.

My experience of Mass as a prisoner is reduced to the contents of a small plastic box. On Sunday nights at 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, I take that box from a shelf and place it at the foot of my prison bunk. It serves as both a container and an altar. It has a Corporal that I spread over its surface. I attach a small battery powered book light to the wall just above it, and begin my preparation for Mass. The Mass is always “Ad Orientem,” toward the East, not by any design of my own, but because the cell window faces in that direction.

I have no sacred vessels. I have a coffee cup purchased years ago but never used for any other purpose. I have a weekly supply of a host placed on a clean linen purificator, and a one-quarter ounce of unfermented wine with no additives approved for liturgical use by Catholic priests serving in a war zone. I have a small wooden crucifix on a stand on a shelf just above where my Mass is offered.

There was a time when I did not have even these. For many years in prison, I had no access at all to the Mass. So I look upon this present drama unfolding now in our Church, and see it as madness that is hopefully brief. If you have appreciated the Traditional Latin Mass, you must not leave. The Church needs you. We need you to remind us of a lesson that I have long since learned harshly, and can now never forget.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. And please visit our Special Events page. It contains a story that is dear to my heart.

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

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

The feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, our patron saint, is August 14. The above photo is his prison cell.

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Pope Francis is suppressing the Traditional Latin Mass at the same time the Chinese Communist Party is suppressing Tibetan Buddhism, and for the same stated reason.

August 4, 2021

A lot of ink is now being spilled in Catholic circles about a new Motu Proprio — an Apostolic Letter — of Pope Francis announced on Friday, July 16, 2021, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Pope Francis has placed severe restrictions on celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Effective immediately, his restrictions include a mandate barring newly organized celebrations of the TLM and its celebration in any parish church. Further, newly ordained priests will need the written consent of their bishops who in turn must consult the Holy See before approval is granted to celebrate the Traditional (Extraordinary) Form of the Mass.

Pope Francis has imposed these restrictions without explanation in open contradiction of a 2014 Motu Proprio of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who permitted celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass without preconditions and without consent from a bishop. Some of the best early reaction to this new and draconian development has come from Father John Zuhlsdorf (Father Z’s Blog, “Reactions to Traditionis Custodes.”)

“Fathers ... change nothing, do nothing differently for now. It is not rational to leap around without mapping the mine field we are entering. Keep calm and carry on.

“Lay people ... be temperate. Set your faces like flint. When you are on fire, it avails you nothing to run around flapping your arms. Drop and roll and be calm.

“To those of you who have put your heart and goods and hopes into supporting and building the Traditional Latin Mass, thank you. Do not for a moment despair or wonder if what you did was worth the effort, time, cost and suffering. It was worth it. It still is.”

— Father John Zuhlsdorf, July 16, 2021

Father Z adds pointedly, “I am forced to remark that the vulgarity of this document is matched only by its cruelty.”

For my part, I cannot help but wonder what Pope Francis might have been thinking at Mass just two days later as he listened to the First Reading on the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Was he at all conscious that Catholics all over the world were hearing the same rebuke from the Prophet Jeremiah that he heard that Sunday?

“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but ... I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands and bring them back to their meadow ... I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing, says the Lord.”

— Jeremiah 23:1-6

A Catholic Unraveling in Germany

I have been searching for a more panoramic map of the mine field Father Z says we are now entering, and I think I may have found some of its initial rumblings. While reading Volume Two of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell, I came upon his entry for 9 August 2019, the feast of Edith Stein, St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. I wrote about her once in "Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz."

Edith Stein was German by birth. In his book, Cardinal Pell advises readers to seek her intercession for the Church in Germany. Cardinal Pell quoted Cardinal Gerhard Muller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

“The Catholic Church [in Germany] is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. [They are] self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They don’t speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the sacraments, and faith, hope, and love.”

— p. 75

It gets worse. Later in Prison Journal, in an entry dated 16 October 2019, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about the German Catholic Church fears of the possibility of schism that have been raised there. If allowed to happen, such a break would sweep much of Europe. Cardinal Pell referred to a Catholic Culture article by Philip Lawler entitled, “Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?” (September 17, 2019):

“Lawler argues that the prospect of a schism is remote, but Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect, saying he is not frightened by it, something Lawler believes is frightening in itself.”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p. 214

Cardinal Pell spoke of earlier confidence about the unlikelihood of a schism, but acknowledged that “the odds against it have shortened.” He added, while again citing Philip Lawler:

“Not surprisingly, the New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a schism by the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States, the Gospel Catholics ... I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the ‘busiest and most aggressive online defenders’ of Pope Francis who ‘recognize that they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving [progressives] free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.’”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p. 214-215

It was that final sentence that caught my attention after hearing these new restrictions imposed by Pope Francis on the Traditional Latin Mass. Are we now witnessing the opening salvo of such a manipulated agenda? Is there a move under way to antagonize conservative and traditional Catholics into breaking away?

The Pope and the Chinese Communist Party

I am certain this was not by design, but on the day after this announcement by Pope Francis, the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal carried a stunning pair of articles. If you are unable to view them without a subscription, I will summarize their major points here.

The first was entitled, “Beijing Targets Tibet for Assimilation” by Liza Lin, Eva Xaio, and Jonathan Cheng. The assimilation referred to is better described as suppression, and it needs a little historical background.

Twelve centuries had passed between the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism in AD 747 and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gaining control of China in 1949. By 1950, the CCP came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.

As such, the Dalai Lama is spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the ex officio ruler of Tibet since the Eighth Century. In 1959, during the Chinese Communist oppression of Tibet, the Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India where he has remained since. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading a nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese claims to rule Tibet.

Xi Jinping, President of China and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has as his national priority the forging of a single Chinese identity centered on unity and Party loyalty. His agenda has placed new restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism and has launched an effort to replace the traditional Tibetan language with Mandarin Chinese while insisting on courses designed for indoctrination in socialism and the CCP.

The Dalai Lama, in exile in India, is now 86 years old. His eventual death is expected to trigger a clash with the Chinese government over control of Tibetan Buddhism. One of the major points of Chinese suppression is a CCP claim that it has the right to identify and choose the Dalai Lama’s “reincarnation,” and thus obtain full control over the heart of Tibetan religion and identity. In late 2020, President Xi Jinping demanded an effort to make Tibetan Buddhism “compatible with a socialist identity.”

This affront to Tibet’s religious freedom actually has a strange sort of precedent. In 2019, Pope Francis signed a concordat — the tenets of which are still secret — in which he agreed to a Chinese Communist Party demand to choose Catholic bishops in the State-approved Chinese Catholic church. This has since translated into increased harassment and suppression of the underground Catholic Church for which many have suffered for their loyalty to Rome.

Pope Francis and the Threat of Schism

A second major article, this one by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca, appeared on the same day in The Wall Street Journal, again just two days after the announced suppression of the Latin Mass. Its title asks an ominous question: “Is Pope Francis Leading the Church to Schism?” The Pope has used some of the same reasoning and language in restricting the TLM that Xi Jinping uses while suppressing Tibetan Buddhism. Pope Francis cites “unity” as his principal reason and goal, but its effect seems the opposite.

Two years after Cardinal Pell wrote from his prison cell with dismal foreboding about the state of the Church in Germany, Francis X. Rocca quoted Cardinal Rainer Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne and leader of the conservative minority of German bishops. He warned that the current wave of dissent sweeping Germany could lead to schism and/or the formation of a German national church. Rocca reports that similar warnings have been echoed by cardinals and bishops of other European countries.

Recently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone asked for prayers for the universal Church and the bishops of Germany “that they step back from this radical rupture.” Schism is more a threat to the Catholic Church than any other because, as Rocca points out, its “core identity [of being Catholic] is inextricably tied to its global unity under the pope.”

In my recent post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul,” I wrote briefly about the 2014 Synod on the Family and the controversial document penned by Pope Francis, “Amoris Laetitia.” During the Synod, the Catholic Bishops of Africa emerged as a bloc opposed to the liberalizing views on sexuality and divorce proposed by the Germans. In an Easter sermon this year, African Cardinal Philippe Ouedraogo urged African Christians to “rebel against the imperialism of certain lobbies and associations [in the Church] which advocate and want to impose same-sex marriage, socio-sexual debauchery, and divorce.”

Francis X. Rocca writes that Pope Francis has played down these concerns of the African bishops who, in my view, are the future of the Church’s moral integrity. For a glimpse of the mindset at work in the German church, consider this statement by Joachim Frank, a German journalist who is taking part in the synod there. He described the work of the synod:

“There was this sense of movement, of change, another spirit, another type of church after these boring and very painful years of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”

In his 26-year papacy, Saint John Paul II is widely considered to have almost single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union and ended European communism. To dismiss his papacy and that of Benedict XVI as “boring and painful” is to break, not with Catholic tradition, but with reality.

The trending Catholic mindset of Germany and most of Europe should not steer the Barge of Peter and the moral authority and praxis of the Church. In Germany, before the 2019-2021 pandemic, only about nine-percent of Catholics attended Mass on a regular basis. Among African Catholics, regular Mass participation is the world’s highest. By 2050, there will be twice as many Catholics in Africa than in Europe.

Throughout Asia, Catholicism is relatively small, but growing, and even though small it has a large footprint. In Thailand, Catholics account for only about one-percent of the population, but they leave a large footprint on the culture because of their orthodox commitment to living their faith, often heroically.

Our friend, Pornchai Moontri, told me that in the five months he has lived in Thailand, he has heard Masses in Thai, Vietnamese, and even Lao, but beyond the visible familiarity of the Mass, he has understood little of what he hears. “If the Church had kept Latin,” he recently said, “this would not happen.” He pointed out rather wisely that in the mobile culture this world has become, a universal language promotes unity instead of detracting from it.

There is one hope still for proponents of the Traditional Latin Mass. It is found in Canon 87 of the Code of Canon Law:

“A diocesan bishop, whenever he judges that it contributes to their spiritual good, is able to dispense the faithful from universal and particular disciplinary laws issued for his territory on his subjects by the Supreme Authority of the Church.”

In other words, approval for continued celebrations of Mass in the Extraordinary Form now falls to individual bishops. However, I remain concerned about one major point raised by Cardinal George Pell citing Catholic Culture’ s Phil Lawler. I mentioned it above, but it must be emphasized:

“I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the ‘busiest and most aggressive online defenders’ of Pope Francis who ‘’ecognize that they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving [progressives] free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.’”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p . 214 -215

Conservative and traditional Catholics must not concede to this by schism. You are the Church, and Her most faithful manifestation. It is a quandary why Pope Francis now points to you as “divisive” while remaining silent about the rampant heresies arising out of the progressive German church. I can only conclude with the last two lines of a famous poem by Dylan Thomas written in the year I was born:

"Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

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Please share this post. You may also like this recommended reading by Father Gordon MacRae:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz

Fr Stuart MacDonald and Our Tabloid Frenzy about Fallen Priests

Our Catholic tabloid frenzy about fallen priests has become a scandal of its own. As we tackle it Beyond These Stone Walls, Fr. Stuart MacDonald joins our team.

Wednesday July 28, 2021

Back in 2019, I wrote a post entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” I had no idea at the time that a reader in Texas sent a copy of it to Cardinal Pell who was then serving a deeply unjust sentence in an Australia prison. I also did not know at the time that he was writing a prison journal that, after his exoneration and release, would be published to become a highly celebrated masterpiece of priestly witness in a time of trial. I have been reading the Second Volume of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell published by Ignatius Press, and I was moved to see that I appear prominently therein.

Over the course of four pages in the book (57-61) Cardinal Pell, from his prison cell, recounts a summary of my own travesty of justice and then thanks me, at the end, for my support of him:

“I am grateful to Fr. MacRae for taking up my cause, as I am to many others. These include in North America George Weigel and Fr. Raymond de Souza and here in Australia Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Gerard Henderson, Fr. Frank Brennan, and others behind the scenes. I will conclude, not with a prayer, but with Fr. MacRae’s opening quotation from Baron de Montesquieu: ‘There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. (1742)”

I was deeply moved because there are not many in our Church, and certainly precious few with the prominence of Cardinal Pell, who would openly cite something I wrote and commend me for it. I will return to the importance of this.

Writing my own prison journal for Beyond These Stone Walls has always been somewhat of a letdown in the summer months. I do not write for accolades or approval, but I admit that it is nice to at least be noticed. In eleven years of writing this prison journal, the months of June through August have always seen our smallest readership. Who could blame you? I, too, would rather be in the water.

Something unexpected happened this year, however. My posts for June and July 2021 generated an explosion of readers and new subscribers setting an eleven-year record. My recent post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul” topped the list of recent titles that went off the charts. That post is about a matter of Sacramental integrity, but it also speaks to the very heart of what it means to be Catholic in the public square. The “Catholicism” moderator at Reddit rejected it twice as a “political post,” but I do not think the Reddit moderator actually Reddit (pun intended!). Some in other venues who dismissed it as political or partisan changed their minds after reading it to the end. Most Catholic readers thanked me for writing it. A smaller minority of Catholics were furious with me for writing it, but they refuted none of it.

I did not at all expect the vast response that post evoked. It was most evident in the comments it generated, but it was also evident in the traffic. Readers by the thousands came to it from Washington DC, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and unlike most other BTSW posts, 90-percent of its readers were in the U.S. It had the highest one-day record for both visitors and new subscribers.

But I have no awareness that the people who most should read it did read it: the Catholic Bishops of the United States. So at the request of several readers, our friend and new Canon Law advisor, Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, created a printable 5-page PDF version that you could print and mail to anyone you wish, including your bishop. We have also compiled a PDF contact list of the United States Catholic Bishops organized by state. Here are the links:

PDF of Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul

PDF List of U.S. Bishops and Contact Information by State

Cardinal Pell being released from prison in 2020, and Father Gordon MacRae being taken to prison in 1994.

Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy about Fallen Priests

As recent posts here have demonstrated, this is not an easy time to be a priest in a divided and politically partisan America. It is an exponentially more difficult time to be a bishop. Please keep that in mind when writing to them. Our shared goal must be communion and solidarity, not confrontation. That should not in any way inhibit the faithful from being faithful in the clarity of our message. We should write as though the very integrity of the Catholic Church in America is at stake — because it is.

Few of us ever awaken in the morning with a decision to become an activist that day. Activism is technically defined as “a theory or doctrine of assertive action, such as a strike or public demonstration, used as a means of supporting or opposing a controversial issue, person, or event.” Having known Father Stuart MacDonald for some time, I would never have considered him to be an activist, nor would I have ever applied that term to myself.

In recent years, as a number of my posts suggest, the need for Catholic action in support of priests and the priesthood has become evident. The newly formed “Coalition for Canceled Priests” is a good first step in that direction. I cannot speak for this coalition, but one facet of its activism has become clear to me. A minority of more “progressive” and powerful bishops of the United States has tried to steer the narrative, not only about the priesthood, but also about the hierarchy of concerns of Catholics. My post, “Biden and the Bishops” lays out the fault lines of this effort. (More recently, we have seen the influence of this progressive suppression in the Motu Proprio of Pope Francis on the Traditional Latin Mass. This will be our topic on BTSW next week.)

But there is something else that must happen before Catholics engage their bishops about the treatment of priests. We must put an end — in our own hearts and beyond — to our Catholic tabloid frenzy about fallen priests. Satan has never felt more fulfilled than in seeing priests fall at the hands of their own bishops.

Many priests have fallen morally to the point of the total collapse of their priesthood. Why should this be a surprise to any of us? Is there anyone, in the spiritual battlefield of our time, with a bigger satanic target on his back than a Catholic priest in the trenches? In our current climate of fear and loathing, the Church does nothing to catch them on their way down as they fall, nor is anything done to stem the tide of their descent. We just let them fall, and then discard them at the bottom. We as a Church make it very clear that there is to be no redemption for a fallen priest, no path upon which to step back into the light. Should this be the practice of a body of faith in a Church built upon the Blood of Christ? I must repeat, as I have done a few times in these pages, how my friend and mentor, the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, described our bishops’ collective response to their fallen priests in the pages of First Things:

“Zero Tolerance. One strike. Boot them out of ministry. Of course, the victim advocates are still not satisfied, and sadly may never be satisfied. But the bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, and un-Catholic approach to sin and grace ... They end up adopting a policy that is sans repentance, sans conversion, sans forbearance, sans prudential judgment, sans forgiveness, sans almost anything one might have hoped for from the bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

— First Things, "Scandal Time III," August 2002

The trends that allowed this to happen in the U.S. Church and then spread throughout the world now lend themselves toward the demise of any priest for any cause that displeases his bishop — or even a more influential bishop in the diocese next door. Catholic League President Bill Donohue boldly addressed this in a quote on our “About” page: “There is no segment of the U.S. population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic Priest.”

Father Stuart A. MacDonald, JCL

There is a reason why false witness is included among the Ten Commandments. Its presence there is clear in Sacred Scripture: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:16). The Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 19, lays out the conditions under which this Commandment is to be observed: “A single witness shall not prevail against a man.” (Dt. 19:15). False witness is destructive, not only of the person who falls prey to it, but also to the entire community of believers and the justice system of an entire people.

Sometimes false witness takes the form of gross exaggeration of what otherwise might just be a slip in judgment. This is how public stoning, as a means of execution, is done today. It is not a person’s body that is stoned to death now, but a person’s good name. I fell prey to this. Standing by the truth sent me to life in prison while a simple lie would have released me a quarter century ago. And it was my own bishop (at that time) who first told the bigger lie when he declared me guilty in a press release even before jury selection in my trial.

My activism now takes the form of standing by other priests falsely accused or accused with great exaggeration which always has a specific goal: a swifter, more lucrative monetary award from a bishop anxious to settle, or some animus against the Catholic Church. Cardinal George Pell was very much an innocent victim of the latter.

Sometimes the animus comes from Catholics who blindly use The Scandal to further some agenda of their own. Father Stuart MacDonald also became a victim of grossly exaggerated false witness. It involved only an exchange of words for which he was entirely cleared of wrongdoing by the Holy See and fully restored to ministry. That should be enough for any of us, but it sadly never is for those wanting only to demean the priesthood.

As a witness in support of Father Stuart and his priesthood, I have invited him to assist Beyond These Stone Walls with his expertise in Canon Law. We have also established a Category under his name at the BTSW Public Library. Father Stuart has written several excellent posts for BTSW which are now being restored for addition to the Library. First up will be his superb and timely post, “Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction.” You may not recall this name, but last month, Raymond J. Donovan died. He was a member of President Ronald Reagan’s cabinet who resigned forty years ago after being charged with a crime. When he was exonerated by a New York City jury, he famously asked, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”

No priest should have to ask that question in a community of believers who have been offered Divine Mercy. No priest should have to claw his way back to redemption or just disappear into the night. What have we done?

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Important announcement from Father Gordon MacRae: Just days before this is posted, the Most Reverend Peter A. Libasci, Bishop of Manchester and my bishop has been accused of sexual abuse in the State of New York. The accusations against him are alleged to have occurred in 1983, the same year in which claims against me were also alleged to have occurred. Bishop Libasci has stated his innocence as did I. I know painfully well the great difficulty in defending against claims that are so old and brought forward with financial expectations but zero evidence or corroboration. Despite Bishop Libasci denying these accusations they may still result in his removal from ministry. Please pray for him and for a just and truthful outcome.

Please read and share these relevant posts.

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

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List by Ryan A. MacDonald

Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood by Ryan A. MacDonald

Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction by Fr. Stuart A. MacDonald, JCL

The Reliquary Heart of St. John Vianney, Patron of Priests

Beyond These Stone Walls in Thailand by Pornchai Moontri

Brought to America as a child victim of human trafficking, Pornchai Moontri was deported to Thailand 36 years later. This is his progress in a life starting over.

July 21, 2021

In the photo above, Pornchai Moontri, Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, and Pornchai's Thai language teacher, Mea Thim Chalathip, escape the heat after a day of recollection with the Bangkok Oblates of Mary Immaculate community.

Editor’s Note: This is Pornchai Moontri’s second post since his arrival in Thailand in February, 2021. His most recent was “Free at Last Thanks to God and You!” These are no longer “guest posts.” Beyond These Stone Walls is now Pornchai’s home away from home.

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To all my friends Beyond These Stone Walls, Sawasdee Kup! That is the traditional Thai greeting. I am writing to you from just a few kilometers north of the City of Bangkok, Thailand. In Thai, Bangkok is called Krung Thep meaning, “City of Angels.” (I’m not kidding! It was called that even before I got here!)

Father Gordon MacRae and I have been talking about another post from me. It is not easy for me to write because there is too much to say to fit in one post. I will send this to Father G first so he can fix it up a little. I am struggling right now between multiple confusing languages, but I will tell you more about that in a minute.

What someone wrote about Beyond These Stone Walls being sort of my “home away from home” makes me smile. It is a long time since I had a home. I told Father G once that the only place I remember feeling “at home” was in a prison cell with him for 15 years. A lot has happened since the day I said that. I left Concord, New Hampshire where I last saw Father G on September 8, 2020. The five months after that were spent in ICE detention while waiting for deportation. That was really awful and I will tell you more about it. In the five months since my arrival here, I have mostly just felt overwhelmed.

Father G wrote about the day I left in a very moving post, “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.” It tells the story of how, through my Godfather, the late Pierre Matthews, Padre Pio became one of our two patron saints. I will never forget the morning I left that Father G wrote about in that post. When I arrived in Thailand, I read in tears about the rest of Father Gordon’s first day without me.

I want to tell you about all the challenges I face now. Just like the local news, I will start with the weather. Thailand is south of the Tropic of Cancer and stretches down the Malay Peninsula almost to the Equator. After 36 years of my life a lot farther north on the far side of the world in Maine and New Hampshire, the tropical heat of Thailand is at the top of my list of things that take some getting used to.

On the day I am writing this in July it is 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and very humid. Converting to Celsius has not been easy. I am used to the other scale, so I never know what the temperature is. The choices are hot, very hot, and sizzling. The air conditioner where I live broke down a few weeks ago so I have been making do with a fan. While trying to write this, I shivered when I got my bill for a new air conditioner — 26,000 Thai baht — which thankfully turned out to be only $800. Whew!

Handling money has been another challenge. For 29 years in prison in America, I never even saw money. There is not much in the way of practical living skills that are taught to prisoners, most of whom end up with no idea of what things cost. In Thailand, that adjustment has been doubled. The Thai unit of money is the "baht," and the rate of exchange varies from week to week. Right now one U.S. dollar equals about 32 Thai baht. I was shocked once when dinner in a Thai restaurant cost 256 baht, but turned out to be only $8.00.

Technologically Challenged

Another big adjustment has been the metric system. As most of you know, I was taken from Thailand sort of traumatically at age eleven. A long and winding road brought me back at age 47 with only shadowy memories of Thailand and the people left behind here, and no memory at all of the metric system.

Father G once wrote about an episode of Family Guy in which Stuey went back to school as an adult. When the teacher handed out a math test, the students reached into their desks for calculators. But Stuey pulled out an Asian boy and poked him with his pencil saying, “Do Math. Do Math.” I am naturally good at math so whenever someone asked for help, Father G would poke me with a pencil saying, “Do math!” I was proud of the fact that I usually had the answers even before Father G could turn on his calculator.

But now the constant conversions are a way bigger math test. I walk around with calculations blazing through my mind to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and the English system to metric. This is second on my “big adjustment” list. There are no longer inches or feet or miles, no ounces or quarts or gallons, not even pounds or tons. I lost a lot of weight in my five months in ICE. I started off at 195 pounds. Now I weigh 80 kilograms. When I work out I used to bench press 360 pounds. Now I can only manage 165 kilos.

With help, I have been learning to drive here which is also a double adjustment. I never drove a car, of course, in the 29 years I was in a U.S. prison (15 of them with Father G). Learning to drive now means learning it in reverse of what I had known. Thailand drives on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side of the car. I have had a lot of help with this so far, and for that I am thankful.

But nothing is as big a challenge as technology. Father G used to joke that we will be like techno-cavemen when we leave prison. After 36 years away from my homeland and 29 years in prison, everything I do or touch is new to me. When I arrived, I had to spend 14 days in a Bangkok Holiday Inn, a period of Covid-19 quarantine required by the Thai government. Our friends here left me a really cool Samsung smart phone so I could communicate with Father G and others. I had never in my life used or even seen a smart phone.

Father G marveled at how fast I learned how to use the phone, but it was a matter of survival. I felt so alone and stranded that I spent my first night in Thailand in the hotel room finding and exploring Beyond These Stone Walls for the first time. I watched the two-hour Video Documentary Interview with Father G. It was wonderful and comforting to see and hear my friend and spiritual father again.

Father G is still behind those stone walls, and that makes me sad, but we talk for about a half hour every day by telephone. He calls me at 9:00 PM which is 8:00 AM the next morning for me. That also takes some getting used to. I am up before 6:00 AM each day which is 7:00 PM the night before for Father G. I spend the first two hours of each day working out. I have found this to be very important for my physical, mental and even spiritual well-being. So my first investment in Thailand was a weight set, mats and power bench. Father G helped me to purchase it. He calls each day right at the end of my workout.

Using the phone app on his GTL tablet, he calls me from the cell where we once both lived, and where he lives still. GTL allows internet-based calls from prison to Thailand at a cost of about 96 Thai baht for thirty minutes. That is about three U.S. dollars. It is not a big expense. Even after ten months since I left Concord, this is still an important part of my day and Father G’s.

I sometimes get impatient with myself, but Father G reminds me that I “just got here.” I feel as though I should be further along in learning Thai language, history and culture, the metric system, driving on the left side of the road, and not having to “report in” every time I do anything or go anywhere. The name, Thailand, means “Land of the Free,” but even that became part of my adjustment. I often have to remind myself that I am free. Few of the people around me understand this. The list of adjustments goes on and on but I guess I am the last to notice my progress.

The late Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, was a postulator for the cause of sainthood of St. Faustina. He interviewed Pornchai and Fr. Gordon in prison.

Suffering and Divine Providence

As most readers know, I became a Catholic in 2010 due to living with an extreme example of what that means. My journey to the Catholic faith was centered around Father G and Divine Mercy. I learned about Divine Mercy thanks to him and to my friendship with Father Michael Gaitley, Felix Carroll, and Eric Mahl. The Catholic League president, Dr. Bill Donohue, also had a hand in this.

Father Gaitley invited me to become a Marian Missionary of Divine Mercy. Felix Carroll drew me into the Association of Marian Helpers, and wrote about me in a chapter in his book, Loved, Lost, Found. Bill Donohue gave me honorary membership in the Catholic League, and also wrote about me several times. Father G and I joined St. Maximilian’s Militia of the Immaculata and Knights at the Foot of the Cross. It is a lot to take in, and all of it very much influenced my faith journey. Divine Providence was another matter. I never understood it until I found myself face to face with it.

Father G says it is hard to believe that I have been gone for ten months. I have actually been in Thailand for only five months. The other five were spent in ICE which he has written about. (See “ICE Finally Cracks! Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”) The five long months awaiting deportation in ICE detention were a terrible ordeal, but for me and Father G it turned into a story of Divine Providence. I did not understand that at all until Father G and I had a phone conversation about it. Here is what I learned.

When a person has been deprived of good things in life, like parents, family, safety, a home, acceptance, love, freedom, even at times food and shelter, then the bad things in life become normal. When I was handed over to ICE and became buried in another overcrowded prison with total strangers in Jenna, Louisiana, all I could think of was all the good things I once had. I began to feel that I lost them all. Trust was the first thing I lost.

Father G saw to it that I had numbers to call no matter where I was. It took time for him to find me and be able to speak to me. Thanks to Claire Dion in Maine, a way was devised for us to speak each day even for a few minutes. The promised ICE flight to Thailand was delayed again and again for weeks and then months. I began to despair because of the awful circumstances in which I was living. I could not have made it through this if not for Father G.

By the fifth month of my detention, my call to Father G became routine. I was bitterly thinking that the delays will never end and he would say to me the same thing every day: “The day will come when you will walk out of there to a new life.” At first I was clinging to that, and then I started to no longer believing it. Each day, we both prayed deeply for an end to this suffering. Father G challenged me to try to help others. I did try.

Over the last eleven years since my conversion, Father G and I worked hard to come up with a plan for my future survival once we knew that I would one day be sent back to Thailand. In my mind, it was all like a big black hole. All I knew was America, and all I really knew about America was its prisons. The promise of Heaven for someone who has only known Hell can feel empty and too far beyond reach. I blocked out any expectation of good things because of my past experiences of bitter disappointment.

Then one day, in my daily call from ICE, Father G dropped a bomb with great reluctance. He told me that our plan for housing and support that we had spent years building suddenly fell apart. The founder of Divine Mercy Thailand, the man who was to take me in and give me a home, fell critically ill and was hospitalized. I prayed daily for him, but he passed away. In my mind, this was a crushing blow.

Father G did not want any surprises so he told me all of this. He said he did not want me to hear of this from anyone else. For me, it seemed as though all hope had gone out of the world. Then Yela, our Bangkok friend from the Divine Mercy apostolate, told Father G in an email that Father John Hung Le from the Missionary Society of the Divine Word had been reading about us and offered his home to me. My strongest feeling was that I did not want to be a burden for anyone, but my choices were gone.

Father G said that when everything we hope for feels gone, the only task left is trust. Father John turned out to be a very good priest and a very great friend. He is also a carpenter so we have a lot in common. He has become a good friend to Father G as well.

Some of Father John’s community and friends rallied around me when I arrived. Mea Thim, a retired Thai language teacher, began to tutor me daily in Thai language studies and has been very patient with me. She is also teaching me to drive and to acclimate to Thailand. Not having even heard Thai spoken in 36 years, and having never learned to read or write Thai, my progress feels slow but others say I am improving right on track.

Thailand is now in the middle of another strict shutdown due to a new Covid variant outbreak from India. Father G just told me that the Wall Street Journal has reported that the Thai government has lost confidence in Sinovac, a vaccine from China and the only one available in Thailand. All gatherings have been prohibited and a stay-in-place order is enforced. My required national Thai ID has been delayed for months so I cannot yet work, open a bank account, obtain medical care or a vaccine, or even board a train. Father John and I help each other, and I am busier than ever.

Strangely — Divine Providence again — the Thai headquarters for Father John’s Order are in Nong Bua Lamphu Province, nine hours drive north near the very village I was taken from 36 years ago. We have traveled up there three times for Father John’s missionary work with Vietnamese refugees, seminarians and migrant workers. We stay at the house my mother began to build before her death in 2000. My Aunt and cousins are there and I have reunited with them. After 36 years, they are now my family again. I have two families now, at opposite ends of the Kingdom of Thailand that I now call home.

And Father G, the man who showed me the Path to God, is still with me every day. He has told me that if our prayers were answered, if I had not suffered those five months in ICE, if God had given in to our pleas for my deliverance, then all would now be different and none of what I have just described in this post would be my reality.

This, he says, is the work of Divine Providence and I am astonished by it. On the day I left Father G, I said to him, “Thank you for giving me a future.” I had no idea how promising it would be.

The odds against all of this coming together are mathematically astronomical. When I come face to face with God, I want to poke Him with my pencil and say, “Do Math! Do Math!”

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A Postscript to readers from Pornchai:

I want to express my very deep gratitude to all of those who have assisted me over these months of transition. Your gifts for food, shelter, and the expense of starting life over have moved me profoundly. Please accept my apology for being unable to write to each one of you personally. You know who you are, and so do I. I pray for you every day.

With love and gratitude, Pornchai Moontri

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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. The Wall Street Journal has been reporting about recent events in Thailand. A new variation of Covid is creating havoc for the country, its economy and especially the well-being of its people. If you wish to help our friends, please also visit our “Special Events” page.

And you may also like these important related posts:

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

After Mass at the OMI Center near Bangkok. (Pornchai Moontri and Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, are third and fourth from the right. On the far right is Pornchai’s Thai teacher Mea Thim Chalathip.)