“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
A Code of Silence in the U.S. Catholic Church: Affidavits
Silencing truth is never in service to the Church. No priest should ever have been sacrificed on the altars of tort lawyers, insurers, or a predatory news media.
Silencing truth is never in service to the Church. No priest should ever have been sacrificed on the altars of tort lawyers, insurers, or a predatory news media.
(Pictured above: The Chancery Office of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire.)
November 10, 2021
Editor’s Note: The following is Part 1 of a two-part post by Father George David Byers, SSL, STD, parish priest, chaplain to law enforcement, an accomplished theologian, and a Missionary of Mercy appointed by Pope Francis for the Year of Mercy, a position extended by the Holy Father to the present day. Father Byers writes of how a code of silence has inhibited justice in the case of Fr. Gordon MacRae.
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This post has spent a long time being written. I first wrote it, or rather one quite like it, a decade ago for my now retired blog, Holy Souls Hermitage. Its purpose now is to bring the abuse crisis full circle. It is about an ongoing abuse of power in the Church. It is about the replacement of one abuse with another.
The same abuse of power in which youngsters were abused is the same abuse of power in which guilty priests were moved from parish to parish with omertà, that evil code of silence. It is also the same abuse of power which, when caught out today, will feign heroism by throwing merely accused priests out of the priesthood or into prison with no presumption of actual innocence. It is the same abuse of power which will cover up actual innocence for the sake of self-referential self-congratulations, ad infinitum.
It is this self-referential element in the Church that Pope Francis once said he wants to bring to its knees in repentance and conversion to our Lord Jesus Christ. Just because actual cases of contemporary sexual abuse have wound down to zero, as they have today, does not necessarily mean that anything has changed. Until the abuse of power changes, it is all the same. It is manifested in omertà.
Omertà is a mafioso term with its origin in 13th Century Sicily. It refers to a code of silence practiced by the mafia, a highly organized crime syndicate with a strong hierarchy. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it spread to the United States. Of interest, the original meaning of omertà was connected to “humility.” To practice a code of silence required the humility to set aside one’s own truth in deference to the organization’s preferred or demanded truth. It has no place in a Catholic setting.
The Late John Brendan McCormack
Four years after Father Gordon MacRae was convicted in a sham trial and sent to prison, Auxiliary Bishop John Brendan McCormack of the Archdiocese of Boston was appointed by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to serve as Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire. Complicating this story somewhat, Bishop McCormack passed away in a Manchester, New Hampshire Catholic nursing home just weeks before I began to write this article. From his prison cell, Father Gordon offered Mass for him. Father Gordon had some concern about the timing of this post, but the truth has its own life and must not be buried with anyone.
Bishop McCormack became a part of the code of silence practiced in his new diocese, but there were signs that he may not have been an entirely willing one, at least, not at first. Back in Boston, Bishop McCormack had been instrumental in seeking the administrative laicization of Boston priest and notorious abuser, Father John Geoghan. Later, Geoghan was brutally murdered in prison, in part due to the publicity that his dismissal from the clerical state brought about.
In 1998, at the time of Bishop McCormack’s appointment as Bishop of Manchester, he received a letter from Mr. Leo Demers, a senior official from WGBH-TV in Boston, a flagship production house for PBS public television. Mr. Demers revealed that he was present for much of the 1994 trial of Father Gordon MacRae. He expressed concern that this was not a fair trial and any dismissal from the priesthood could not justly be based upon its outcome.
Bishop McCormack responded that he was unfamiliar with the case, but is aware of no plan in the diocese to seek Father MacRae’s dismissal. He pledged to begin an investigation of the matter to determine what, if anything, he could do. There were also some media rumblings at the time. An organization known as the National Justice Committee worked with FOX News to review Father MacRae’s trial, but prison officials blocked these contacts. A Fox News representative appealed to then Governor Jeanne Shaheen, now U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) who responded:
“I understand your organization’s interest in the matter of Gordon MacRae, now an inmate in the NH prison, but I will not interfere with the decision not to allow media access to Mr. MacRae.”
— 1999 letter of Gov. Shaheen
The Wall Street Journal
It is likely that a file on the case was then sent from FOX News to The Wall Street Journal. Later in 1999, a correspondence ensued between Father MacRae and Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on the WSJ Editorial Board who opened an inquiry on the case. The Diocese of Manchester suddenly became much more interested in the fate of Father MacRae. Then, in 2000, Bishop McCormack was approached by New Hampshire attorney Eileen Nevins who also had been present throughout the MacRae trial. Ms. Nevins later produced the following sworn affidavit:
Affidavit of Eileen Nevins, Esq:
“My name is Eileen A. Nevins and I am an attorney licensed to practice in the State of New Hampshire and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
I met Reverend Gordon MacRae in the early 1980s when he was an associate priest assigned to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Parish in Hampton, New Hampshire.
On or about 1994, while still a law student, I became aware of charges of sexual misconduct filed against Gordon MacRae. I contacted his . . . attorney, Ron Koch, to offer my assistance in doing any legal research that may assist Father MacRae in New Hampshire.
Upon acting in a clerk capacity for Attorney Koch I became firmly convinced that the charges against Father MacRae were false and brought for financial gain.
I believe now as I believed during his trial that the charges against him are false and have assisted him however possible in obtaining further legal assistance to address the wrong against him. My belief is based on personal knowledge of the case against Father MacRae acquired during the investigation prior to his trial and my ongoing pursuit and review of the investigation into his situation subsequent to his trial and incarceration.
In June of 2000, I met with New Hampshire Bishop McCormack at the Diocesan office in Manchester, New Hampshire to discuss the possibility of the Diocese offering some financial assistance to obtain an appellate relief.
During this meeting with Bishop McCormack and [Auxiliary] Bishop Francis Christian, they both expressed to me their belief that Father MacRae was not guilty of the crimes for which he was incarcerated and that Bishop McCormack would consider offering some financial aid to assist with a legal defense.
In follow-up correspondence with the Bishop, I stated that it was my understanding that the Diocese would now consider financial aid to retain an attorney to assist in [Fr.] Gordon’s appeal.
I had been working with Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal and she recommended Attorney Robert Rosenthal to assist with the appeal.
Due to the unforeseen events of clergy abuse scandals in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the Bishop subsequently failed to act on his offer of assistance. It is my understanding that Bishop McCormack has transmitted Father MacRae’s case to the Vatican for disposition.”
Signed and sworn by Eileen A. Nevins, Esq. 18 October 2005.
Falling Towers and Fallen Hope
Father MacRae knew nothing about the above affidavit or the meetings it described until years after it was issued in 2005. In the interim, there were many setbacks and disappointments. After two years of gathering evidence from prison and submitting reams of documentation to The Wall Street Journal, the imprisoned priest learned that all had been destroyed along with The Wall Street Journal offices in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
He would have to start over, and he was not certain that he could. Meanwhile, a series of correspondence began between Father MacRae, Bishop John McCormack, and the Diocesan Moderator of the Curia and Delegate for Ministerial Conduct, Father Edward J. Arsenault.
Without ever telling Father MacRae of his stated belief in his innocence, Bishop McCormack and Father Arsenault appeared to make their offer of legal assistance contingent upon the priest’s assent to curtail his contacts with Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal. This effort to sever any media contact was clear in a series of confidential memos between the Bishop and Father Arsenault. These memos were later released as part of an Attorney General grand jury report in the diocese in 2003. (In 2019, Father MacRae described this report and its consequences in “Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester.”)
The internal memos and the Bishop’s correspondence also set other conditions. Father MacRae was asked to agree to allow the Diocese to choose his legal counsel. He also had to agree that he would appeal only his sentence and not his convictions. Father MacRae refused these conditions, and then the matter went silent. The account of what transpired at this time was stunning. It was revealed by Ryan A. MacDonald in “The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence.” It was a classic example of omertà.
However, Attorney Nevins was not the only one with an affidavit. Enter Leo Demers, the PBS executive who earlier wrote to Bishop McCormack in 1998 with a concern about the fairness of Father MacRae’s trial. He, too, was summoned to a meeting with Bishop McCormack in 2000, six months after the Bishop’s meeting with Attorney Eileen Nevins. At the time, Mr. Demers was Director of Engineering for WGBH-TV in Boston which produced, among other PBS programming, the award-winning investigative journalism program, Frontline. This affidavit and the dialogue that follows is an eye-opener:
Affidavit of Leo P. Demers, Jr.
“The purpose of this affidavit at this time is to convey the context and substance of a meeting by me with Bishop John McCormack during which he expressed his belief in the innocence of the charges against Fr. Gordon MacRae that led to his conviction and subsequent imprisonment for the past twelve years.
My name is Leo P. Demers, Jr. and I have been a broadcast engineer in New England since 1962. I am a practicing Catholic.
I first met Reverend Gordon MacRae in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s when he was a Franciscan Friar in Novitiate training at the former St. Anthony’s Capuchin Friary in Hudson, New Hampshire.
During 1994, I visited Father MacRae in New Mexico where he was working in ministry. At that time Father MacRae informed me that criminal charges of sexual misconduct with a minor had been filed against him in New Hampshire.
I believe now, as I testified under oath during the sentencing phase of his trial in Keene, New Hampshire, that the charges against him are false.
During October 2000, I met with Bishop John McCormack at the Diocesan office in Manchester, New Hampshire. At the time, my employer, the WGBH Educational Foundation, wanted to produce a segment of Frontline. This production would have resulted in a national story about Father MacRae. Auxiliary Bishop Francis Christian arranged the meeting with Bishop McCormack.
I had contacted assistant Bishop Francis Christian from my office at WGBH to inquire about the story because he was the only person in the Manchester Chancery Office who was present during the time of the accusations against Father MacRae. Bishop Christian wanted nothing to do with my inquiry regarding Father MacRae but did offer to arrange a meeting with Bishop McCormack.
The meeting with Bishop McCormack began with him saying, ‘Understand, none of this is to leave this office. I believe Father MacRae is not guilty and his accusers likely lied. There is nothing I can do to change the verdict.’
I have recently learned that Bishop McCormack submitted an expert report to Rome. This report purportedly concludes that Father MacRae’s trial was fair and his sentence just. Further, this report avers that no avenue of appeal is available to Father MacRae. Since I have been in contact with various professionals representing Father MacRae, who are actively involved in investigating his case and prosecuting an appeal, I believe any expert opinion submitted by the Diocese of Manchester to be subject to challenge and serious defect.
I am motivated to submit this affidavit, obviously in disregard of any confidentiality requested by Bishop McCormack, because I cannot accept the inconsistency between Bishop McCormack’s statements to me regarding Father MacRae’s innocence and his submission of an expert report to the contrary that is in clear opposition to his stated belief.”
Signed and sworn by Leo P. Demers, 13 February 2005.
Those with Ears to Hear but Hear Not (Ezekiel 12:2)
Anyone familiar with all that remained hidden in this story might readily understand the hesitance of Auxiliary Bishop Francis Christian to be involved in that meeting with Leo Demers. It was Bishop Christian who penned a pre-trial press release of the Diocese which had the effect of stacking the jury against Father Gordon:
“The Church has also been a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae just as these individuals have been. It is clear that he will never again function as a priest.”
Editing out any mention of mere allegations serves to mask the complete lack of any evidence behind this case. This point was made in yet another affidavit, that of FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, now retired. He had one of the more spectacular FBI careers in the Bureau’s history. David F. Pierre, Jr., Moderator of The Media Report, performed a public service when he analyzed and summarized the vast documentation on this case available at the website of the National Center for Reason and Justice. David F. Pierre’s summary is available at The Media Report under the title, “Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest.” Among that evidence is an affidavit of Special Agent James Abbott who concluded:
“In the entirety of my three-year investigation of this matter, I found no evidence that MacRae committed these crimes or any crimes. Indeed, the only ‘evidence’ was [Thomas] Grover’s stories that have since been undermined by his family and others who surrounded him at the time he made his claims.”
There is a very necessary Part 2 to this post that will hopefully be forthcoming soon. There is much more to this story, and to the practice of omertà that fueled it. Fortunately — or perhaps not so much for those bent on blindly assuming this priest’s guilt — the Holy See has not seen fit to remove him from priesthood. At one point, officials there asked for copies of the affidavits contained herein. That speaks well of them. Perhaps omertà is not as widespread as some believe.
There has nonetheless been a grave injustice here. Whatever one might conclude about the case against Father Gordon MacRae, he has never been allowed a defense — not in his trial, not in any appeals, and not at all before the one person charged with the defense of truth: his bishop. Bishop John McCormack retired and now has passed away. Father Edward Arsenault became Monsignor Edward Arsenault, then went to prison for financial misdeeds. Now he has a new life and a new name, Edward J. Bolognini.
In 2011, Bishop Peter A. Libasci became Bishop of Manchester. Whatever story he might have inherited about this matter, he has never allowed himself to hear a single word from the imprisoned Father Gordon MacRae speaking in his own defense. Whether he has reviewed any of the vast evidence of fraud in this case is entirely unknown, but that would require an open mind.
In July, 2021, Bishop Libasci was himself accused of sexual abuse stemming from his ministry as a priest in the Diocese of Rockville Center, New York in 1983, the same year as the accusations against Father MacRae. Ironically, from his prison cell, Father MacRae has presented a spirited and rational defense, linked below, for why the case against his bishop is not “credible” at all.
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Editor’s Note: Next at Beyond These Stone Walls Father George David Byers will present Part 2 of this article. Father George David Byers holds a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem and Rome, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
Please share this post. You may also wish to read the following:
Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo
The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz, WSJ
A Catholic Priest 27 Years Wrongly in Prison in America
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.
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.’”
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.”
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
A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers
A global pandemic, a world in chaos, divisive politics, sheepish shepherds, misguiding lights, Catholic confusion. Even in a year from hell, there was hope.
A global pandemic, a world in chaos, divisive politics, sheepish shepherds, misguiding lights, Catholic confusion. Even in a year from hell, there was hope.
I offered Midnight Mass in my prison cell this Christmas. It was for the intentions of our readers beyond these stone walls. I much appreciate your presence here at this new site, and I hope you will subscribe. It makes things a lot easier for me.
The First Reading at Midnight Mass this year was from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was both familiar and comforting: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone” (Isaiah 9:2). Without a doubt it seemed as though Isaiah had walked through this year with me. He went on to bring some perspective to the present darkness: “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed ... For a child is born to us, a son is given us. Upon his shoulder dominion rests” (Isaiah 9:4,6).
I thought the Prophet had really nailed my experience of dwelling in the land of gloom that was 2020. Of course, if you have been a regular reader, then you know that I cannot let a cool word like “gloom” pass by without a little digging. It’s a fascinating word with origins both obscure and mysterious. It first came into use in English around the Twelfth Century in the period that we now call Middle English. Unlike about half the vocabulary of that era, gloom has no Latin root, however.
My digging took me to a much older term, “the gloaming,” which arose from Anglo-Saxon tribes in the Fifth Century in the period we call Olde English. The gloaming referred to the dark of night just before the dawn when the first glow of twilight could be seen on the eastern horizon. We in the 21st Century cannot fathom the darkness of the Fifth. The gloaming was a time of both dark and the promise of light. The words, “gloom” and “glow” both arose from it even though they are functionally opposites.
That Midnight Mass excerpt from the Prophet Isaiah was packed with hidden meaning. “Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shown.” The word “dwelt” (or dwelled) also comes from an Olde English term, “dwellan,” which originally meant “to be misled.” How and when it came to refer to a place in which you live is uncertain. It could thus be fair to reinterpret Isaiah’s Christmas prophecy in light of that original meaning: “Upon those misled in the land of gloom, a light has shown.”
Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo and the Bishop of the Diocese of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas J. Lucia
Misled by Earthly Powers
It is likely, however, that many or even most of you never got to hear that Midnight Mass proclamation from Isaiah because many civil authorities placed severe limits on the practice of your faith in 2020. The contradictions were staggering, but never explained. The coronavirus was extremely contagious in Catholic and other Christian churches, but only minimally during anti-police urban riots this year. Liquor stores (which in my State are all owned by the State) were deemed essential, along with abortion clinics, casinos, etc. Churches were deemed nonessential and saddled with draconian limits.
I believe that many have been misled in the current darkness of 2020, and fear has drawn some of us away from the light. The governors of New York and California, for example, imposed limits on Catholic Masses and other congregations that made no sense. In New York, a church that can accommodate 1,000 people was forced to limit Mass participation to ten, or 25 if the church was in a less infectious zone. Most of the news media has been complicit in furthering such propaganda. The pastor on one small Evangelical congregation began his Sunday service with strip club music while he loosened his tie and threw it into the pews. He explained that strip clubs are open in his state while churches were ordered closed.
I was encouraged recently when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an edict from New York Governor Cuomo declaring his limits on church attendance to be an unconstitutional infringement on the free exercise of religion as defined in the First Amendment. The Governor dismissed the SCOTUS ruling as “irrelevant and political.”
But then a bigger bomb dropped. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Bishop of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas Lucia, reinstated the very restrictions that the Court said the Governor could not impose. So Masses in churches that could hold 1,000 remained limited to 25. As in many areas, government imposed registration is also required. Even when some civil authorities did not demand this, some bishops imposed it anyway. This memo from the bishop of a large archdiocese was sent to his priests:
“Contact Tracing: Especially during the Christmas season, it is mandatory that each parish maintain a list of all persons attending services in the church including their contact information (i.e. phone number). Such lists shall be placed with parish financial records and maintained for a period of not less than six years.”
It is troubling, at best, that some bishops would confuse the care of souls with the exercise of their own Earthly powers as sheepish deputies of civil authority. I am by no means the first to recognize this troubling trend. I felt a glow of hope when Matthew Hennessey, the Deputy Editorial Features Editor for The Wall Street Journal, addressed this head-on in this OpEd, "No More Bishop Nice Guy" (December 9, 2020):
“We are told that lives have been saved by keeping churches half empty. Do we know how many souls have been lost? As a Catholic raising five children in the faith, I’m particularly concerned wit the future of my church ... It’s inspiring to see ordinary people stand up to bullies like (Governors) Cuomo an Newsom. But what are America’s bishops doing to inspire their flocks? What will they do? We are tired of watching our leaders kneel before junior varsity Caesars ... Show some backbone. Open the churches. Get rid of the sign-up sheets. No more roped off pews. No more 25% capacity ... Be the heroes we need you to be. The alternative is subservience. The alternative is empty pews forever. The pandemic generation may never return.”
AMEN!
With prophetic witness early in the pandemic, Father James Altman courageously preached his now famous homily, “Memo to the Bishops of the World.” It came as Catholic Masses across the nation were shutting down and, for many, the Eucharist became inaccessible. It alarmed Father Altman, just as it alarms me, that many of the shutdown orders came, not from governors, but from our bishops. I wrote of this in what I think is the most urgent post of 2020, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.”
From Fr. James Altman, “Memo to the Bishops of the World: The Faithful do not need you to look after their bodies. They need you to follow the supreme law of the Church and look after their souls.”
A Year of Pandemic in Prison
I just realized that I began this post with a description of my Christmas Eve Mass this year. Dorothy Rabinowitz did the same in a series in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Trials of Father MacRae.” Here is her first paragraph from seven years ago:
“Last Christmas Eve, his 19th behind bars, Catholic priest Gordon MacRae offered Mass in his cell at the New Hampshire state penitentiary. A quarter-ounce of unfermented wine and the host had been provided for the occasion, celebrated with the priest’s cellmate in attendance.”
The “cellmate in attendance” then was, of course, Pornchai Moontri. This year is the first time in 15 years that he has not been here with me at Christmas. It is during Mass that his absence is most deeply felt. It is a wound upon my heart that, despite all our valiant efforts, Pornchai remains in ICE detention soon to begin a fifth month beyond his sentence, which had been fully served. It is not too late to join me and Catholic League President Bill Donohue in our petition to the White House to “Help Pornchai Moontri.”
I know I am working backward in my description of the year spent in pandemic mode behind prison walls, but the last four months since Pornchai was taken away have been too busy to grieve.
Besides, I do not want to grieve. I want to rejoice, but I have had to postpone it until he arrives safely in Bangkok. You know from reading these pages all that happened to Pornchai in life. You also know that in the fifteen years in which we lived in the same prison cell, Saint Maximilian Kolbe insinuated himself into our lives in profound and mysterious ways. Together, with the help of Mary, Undoer of Knots, St. Maximilian and I set course to reverse the damage life had inflicted upon my friend who wrote of our lives here in “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”
By the time Pornchai wrote those parting words to us, he and I had been through many trials together. Some have been recounted in these pages, but many others were not. One of them was our ordeal early in 2020 during which — we now both believe — we both contracted Covid 19.
It was late in January 2020. Everyone around us here had come down with a flu virus that moved among us like a wildfire. I went to work every day — even when I contracted it myself — because there seemed no cause to fear any contagion. Everyone with whom I had contact already had it. For some it seemed just a head cold. For others it was a more serious flu. For me and several others, it was devastating. I was fatigued to the point of collapse, chronically short of breath, and had frequent troubling episodes of cardiac arrhythmias — all what we later learned to be classic symptoms of Covid-19. I had this for all of February and well into March.
Pornchai also had it, but for only three weeks and not as severe. We just toughed it out, rested as much as we could, and looked after some others even worse off. By March, I had to seek medical intervention. I have a lifelong autoimmune disorder called sarcoidosis. It develops painful but otherwise benign tumors on the lymphnodes. The Covid — presumably Covid anyway — caused my immune system to go into overdrive. So I spent several weeks on prednizone to quiet the immune system. I was miserable, and I hope my posts at the time didn’t show it.
Pornchai and I both fully recovered, but I would not want to repeat the experience. To date, 231 prisoners here and 81 staff have tested positive with symptoms. Most went into quarantine, which in prison is quarantine from quarantine and it’s miserable. As the first and biggest wave traveled through the country, it had dire consequences for prisoners and equally so for you in the real world. For a time, my Sunday Mass in my cell was the only Mass offered in the entire state.
Beyond These Stone Walls
In the midst of all this misery, just as Covid was again rampaging, just as Pornchai was leaving, while separation loomed and life in prison became solitary for me, and filled with gloom, someone chose that moment to attack These Stone Walls and bring it down. There were some weeks of unclarity as we pondered what to do. It was also just as the elections in America were elevating to a state of frenzy.
At the end of October this year, we had serious decisions to make. I told Pornchai by telephone in ICE detention that These Stone Walls had come to an end. “It can’t end!” he said forcefully. He asked me, “What would Maximilian do?”
A proposal had been floated by a friend who announced that she had an inkling from some unknown grace to copy all the content from These Stone Walls and preserve it. I had no idea that she had done this. Then she proposed starting anew with a new name and blog format. Connecting with Father George David Byers and me, she chooses to remain in the background while rebuilding this Voice from the Wilderness. I have not yet seen it, but then again, I never saw These Stone Walls either.
Beyond TSW is a work in progress now, and is slowly being built. One feature of this new site format that I especially like is our “BTSW Library.” Instead of just chronologically listing posts by date, the Library displays them in multiple categories such as “Father Gordon MacRae Case,” “Mysteries of History,” “Science & Faith,” etc. like a real library’s card catalog where posts are sorted by subject. We have only a few categories up right now as the site is being rebuilt, but we expect to have at least twenty five. Our volunteer webmaster said that I “have written on so many topics that we could fill a library.” I think that is a polite way of saying that I have never had an unpublished thought!
Pornchai Moontri was thrilled and encouraged when I told him that he will have a category of his own. There was a time when he could not imagine a life beyond these stone walls. Now he cannot imagine life without it.
We have a new “ABOUT” page too, and bigger print! I still have a few things to write about so I hope you will stay, subscribe, and continue to walk in this land of gloom with us. Thank you for being here with us in this year of trials. You have been the glow that we see from beyond at twilight.
May the Lord Bless you and keep you in this New Year.
Father G.
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Editor's Note: Please share this post with others. You may also like to visit the related posts mentioned in this one:
The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass
The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ
Help Pornchai Moontri by Catholic League President Bill Donohue
Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind
Please share this post!
In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List
Citing “transparency” the Catholic Diocese of Manchester posted the names of 73 accused priests. Most are dead. The only one in prison is innocent, and they know it.
Citing “transparency” the Catholic Diocese of Manchester posted the names of 73 accused priests. Most are dead. The only one in prison is innocent, and they know it.
August 21, 2019 by Ryan A. MacDonald (last updated April 8, 2024)
Note: The following is a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald whose previous articles include “#MeToo & #HimToo” and “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester.”
Church officials in the Archdiocese of Detroit, in apparent disregard of canon law, published the name of a priest who had been accused of sexual misconduct. The priest is Father Eduard Perrone. Reportedly, the Archdiocese published his name and a statement that the claims against him are “credible” while failing to publicly acknowledge that Father Perrone maintains his innocence and has a right of defense. The original claim was forty years old and came from a claim of repressed memory, a highly dubious and dangerous source according to experts in the field of psychology.
Weeks later, attorneys for Father Perrone issued a statement that he has conclusively passed a series of expert polygraph examinations that support his innocence. To date, the Archdiocese has been unresponsive to that fact as well, and so has the Catholic news media commenting on the story while acting as little more than a public relations outlet for the Archdiocese. This all has a chilling ring of the familiar.
On Wednesday, July 31, 2019, for no apparent reason other than the fact that everyone else is doing it, Bishop Peter A. Libasci of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire published a list of 73 Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse of minors. Fully two-thirds of the priests named on the list are dead and thus in no position to defend themselves. The only one currently in prison is innocent. Officials of the diocese publicly suppress that fact after privately admitting it. So much for transparency.
The treatment of Father Eduard Perrone in the Archdiocese of Detroit pales next to the sabotage of justice and basic civil rights that took place in New Hampshire in the case of Father Gordon MacRae. Refusing multiple plea deals offering him a mere one year in prison in 1994, MacRae was asked by his lawyer to consider taking a series of polygraph tests with an expert.
Like Father Perrone in Detroit, MacRae agreed without hesitation.
He was scheduled for three polygraph exams with questions based on police reports itemizing the specific claims of each alleged victim. The third one was cancelled because MacRae passed the first two so conclusively. When that fact was made known to the Diocese of Manchester before jury selection in MacRae’s 1994 trial, the Diocese published a press release with this statement:
“The Diocese mourns with those who were victimized prior to the discovery of his problems… The Church has been a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae as well as these individuals.”
There was little left for a jury to do. Armed with that statement, Prosecutor Bruce Elliott Reynolds compared MacRae to Hitler in his closing arguments before a heavily manipulated jury. A decade after the trial, a second prosecutor took his own life.
In a case brought twelve years after the alleged crimes, with no evidence of guilt at all to review and weigh, the jury reached a verdict of “guilty” on all charges in only 90 minutes. This account has been vividly exposed by Dorothy Rabinowitz in a series in The Wall Street Journal concluding with “The Trials of Father MacRae.”
The Predecessor: Bishop John McCormack
After his 1994 trial, MacRae had languished in prison with little contact with or from the outside world for the next seven years. Five years after the trial, Bishop John McCormack arrived in Manchester after a stint as Auxiliary Bishop of Boston promoted by Cardinal Bernard Law.
In 2000, rumblings began to occur pointing to some troubling media interest in the case of Father Gordon MacRae — troubling, at least, to those who put him in prison and kept him there. The initial hints of inquiry came from The Wall Street Journal and PBS Frontline. The media interest ultimately resulted in the creation of two sworn affidavits by persons entirely unrelated and unaware of each other. The following is an excerpt from the affidavit of a New Hampshire attorney:
“Upon acting in a clerk capacity for [the 1994 trial] I became firmly convinced that the charges against Father MacRae were false and brought for financial gain… In June of 2000, I met with New Hampshire Bishop John McCormack at the Diocesan office in Manchester, New Hampshire. During this meeting with Bishop McCormack and [Auxiliary] Bishop Francis Christian, they both expressed to me their belief that Father MacRae was not guilty of the crimes for which he was incarcerated.”
Four months later in 2000, an official of WGBH-TV, the flagship PBS station and production house in Boston, arranged a meeting with Bishop John McCormack. In that four-month period, something happened that drove off auxiliary Bishop Christian who was — by the way — the author of the press release declaring MacRae guilty before jury selection in his trial. What follows are excerpts of a sworn affidavit from the WGBH official:
“The WGBH Educational Foundation wanted to produce a segment of Frontline. This production would have resulted in a national story about Father MacRae. I had contacted assistant Bishop Francis Christian from my office at WGBH to inquire about the story because he was the only person remaining in the Manchester Chancery Office who was present during the time of the accusations against Father MacRae. Bishop Christian wanted nothing to do with my inquiry regarding Father MacRae but did offer to arrange a meeting for me with Bishop McCormack.
“The [October 2000] meeting with Bishop McCormack began with him saying, ‘Understand, none of this is to leave this office. I believe Father MacRae is not guilty and his accusers likely lied. There is nothing I can do to change the verdict.’”
Far more telling, however, is a transcript of notes documented by the PBS official Leo Demers after his meeting with Bishop McCormack. The notes reveal a diocese compromised by the demands of lawyers and insurance companies and a Bishop struggling to retain his moral center in a time of moral panic. The transcript was compiled in 2000, but MacRae was unaware of it until 2009 when a former FBI agent began to investigate. Here are excerpts:
[Auxiliary] Bishop Christian: “This is not my responsibility. I have nothing to do with that. You’ll have to speak with Bishop McCormack.”
Leo Demers: “But you were part of what happened at that time and would have firsthand knowledge of all that occurred. Bishop McCormack was in Boston when all this happened… I would rather meet with you.”
[A few days later I received a phone call from a Chancery Office secretary regarding a meeting schedule. I explained that I would be in the Middle East and Rome for the next two weeks. The meeting was scheduled for Friday, October 13, 2000. I arrived at the Chancery Office and was escorted to the Bishop’s office… The first words out of his mouth were…]
Bishop McCormack: “I do not want this to leave this office because I have struggles with some people within the Chancery office that are not consistent with my thoughts, but I firmly believe that Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison… I do not believe the Grovers [accusers at trial] were truthful.”
Leo Demers: The Grover brothers viewed this Chancery Office as an ATM machine, and why shouldn’t they? They’ll likely be back to make another withdrawal.”
Bishop McCormack: “You know that I cannot discuss any settlement agreements.”
Leo Demers: “The specifics of settlements are of no concern to me. What concerns me is the ease with which such settlements are reached.”
Bishop McCormack: “I mentioned to you that I believe he is innocent.”
Leo Demers: “You said that your hands were tied because of your belief in his innocence. How can you help him?”
Bishop McCormack: “I want to do what I can to make his life more bearable under the circumstances of prison life. I cannot reverse the decision of the court system. What can I do?”
Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault
It is striking who is not on the newly released list of accused Manchester priests. Former Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault is not found there. At the time he was elevated to “Monsignor” in 2009, Arsenault landed a $170,000 per year position as Executive Director of St. Luke Institute in Maryland. Simultaneously, Arsenault billed for over $100,000.00 in “consultation” services for Catholic Medical Center in New Hampshire. Bishop John McCormack was the sole U.S. bishop serving on the St. Luke Institute Board of Directors at that time.
Most of those who are today involved in an investigation of the case against Father MacRae believe that Arsenault was the person referred to in Bishop McCormack’s statement to the PBS Executive above:
“I do not want this to leave this office because I have struggles with some people within the Chancery office that are not consistent with my thoughts, but I firmly believe that Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison.”
Over the previous two years, Arsenault had risen to become McCormack’s right-hand man and the hub of all diocesan administration and finances. By 2001, Father Arsenault had effectively become the power behind the diocesan throne. In that capacity, according to his resume published online (but since removed), Arsenault personally negotiated mediated settlements in over 250 claims of sexual abuse alleged against priests of the Diocese of Manchester.
The newly published list of these accused priests is deceiving. Most claims were never brought before any court of law, but were simply demands made by letters from lawyers representing the claimants whose claims were often thirty or forty years old. In 2002, Plaintiffs’ attorney Peter Hutchins, who later claimed to have received 250 such settlements — a curious coincidence — revealed the climate in which these settlements were made. The following newspaper excerpts are from “NH Diocese Will Pay $5 Million to 62 Victims,” (Mark Hayward, NH Union Leader, Nov. 27, 2002):
“The Catholic Diocese of Manchester will pay more than $5 million to 62 people who claim they were abused by priests… The incidents took place as long ago as the 1950s and as recently as the 1980s and involved 28 priests… The Diocese disclosed the names of the priests.
“None of these men will exercise any pastoral ministry in the Church ever again,” said the Rev. Edward J. Arsenault, delegate of the Bishop for Sexual Misconduct.
“‘It shows good faith on the part of the diocese that victims of abuse will be treated and that their needs will be met,’ said Donna Sytek, Chairman of the Diocesan Task Force on Sexual Abuse Policy [and now Chairperson of the New Hampshire Parole Board].
“‘During settlement negotiations, diocesan officials did not press for details such as dates and allegations for every claim’ [Attorney Peter] Hutchins said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’
“[N]o one will receive more than $500,000… but at the request of Hutchins’ clients, the diocese will not disclose their names, the details of the abuse or the amounts of individual settlements.”
Simultaneous to his positions and role in negotiating settlements in the Diocese, Rev. Edward J. Arsenault also served as Chairman of the Board of The National Catholic Risk Retention Group, an oversight conglomerate of insurance providers for a multitude of Catholic dioceses and institutions across the United States that covered the settlements.
Hypocrisy and a Double Life Unmasked
On April 23, 2014, Monsignor Arsenault was convicted in a plea deal that would prevent full public disclosure of the facts of his case and make them anything but transparent. The above handshake with his prosecutor became for some a symbol of the closed-door justice behind the deal.
Charged with embezzlement of $288,000 from the Diocese of Manchester and the estate of a deceased priest — funds used to groom and support a homosexual relationship with a young musician — Arsenault was sentenced to a prison term of four to twenty years. However someone had a vested interest in keeping Father MacRae from asking too many questions.
After a brief initial stay in the Concord prison receiving area, someone took the highly unusual step of arranging for Arsenault to be moved to a county jail to serve out his sentence. It was a move that some believe was orchestrated to prevent MacRae from learning anything about Arsenault’s handling of his own case.
Arsenault served only two years of his four-to-twenty year sentence before his prison term was commuted to home confinement. Somehow, even while in prison without income, his entire $288,000 restitution bill was paid in full. In February of 2019, Arsenault’s remaining twenty year sentence was mysteriously and quietly vacated and commuted. Many in the State and the Diocese of Manchester, though no one would go on the record, state their belief that Monsignor Arsenault received very special treatment in the Justice System. This was less true in the Church at higher levels. Before his sentence was terminated, Arsenault was dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis. Today, as “Mr. Arsenault,” he is managing a multimillion dollar contract for the City of New York.
Of interest, one of the charges against Monsignor Arsenault was that he had forged Bishop McCormack’s signature on travel and hotel vouchers for himself and his “guest” to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Arsenault also created and forged phony invoices from a psychologist for $15,000.
It seems that Arsenault developed his forgery technique directly from the case of Father MacRae. Between 2002 and 2005, Arsenault is alleged to have forged Bishop McCormack’s signature on official letters sent to MacRae in prison and on documents sent to the Vatican seeking canonical dismissal of Father MacRae from the priesthood. This commenced two to four years after Bishop McCormack stated his informed belief that MacRae is innocent and unjustly imprisoned.
It seems clear who Bishop McCormack’s “struggle” was with. It was in the interest of Arsenault’s ties and commitments with insurance companies that all claims against the diocese be settled. MacRae’s obstinacy in refusing to accept plea deals and settlements proved an obstacle that had to be removed. From 2001 to 2005, Father Arsenault carried out a pattern of misinformation to the Vatican and collusion with attorneys to summarily deprive the imprisoned priest of his rights to canonical, civil, and criminal due process. The manipulation against MacRae is its own scandal.
In 2002, Arsenault had Prisoner MacRae summoned to a prison office to engage him in a telephone conversation for a proffered deal. If MacRae would sever all communications with Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal, Arsenault reportedly said, the diocese would retain counsel on his behalf for a new appeal.
Having just learned that all documentation sent to The Wall Street Journal was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, MacRae felt he had no other options. In March of 2002, Arsenault asked MacRae to send to his office all his defense files used at trial for the purpose of consultation with Attorney David Vicinanzo, a lawyer Arsenault claimed was retained to review MacRae’s case.
Six months later, MacRae learned that his legal files were never given to Attorney Vicinanzo, but were instead turned over to the NH Attorney General’s Office. Multiple letters to Arsenault and Attorney Vicinanzo for an explanation were never answered.
In January, 2003, MacRae was informed by other lawyers hired by Arsenault that a vast public release of files would take place as part of a diocese-wide settlement with the Attorney General in March of that year. MacRae was assured that he would be given a ten-day notice to review files in his regard and to challenge their release. Among all 73 priests on the list of the “credibly” accused newly published by Bishop Peter Libasci, MacRae was the only one never provided with the ten-day notice or any opportunity to review and challenge the release of his own privileged files.
Father MacRae’s letters of protest to Arsenault were never answered. His letter to Bishop McCormack resulted in a claim that the Attorney General issued a subpoena on the Diocese and walked off with priests’ files without regard for their source or for legal confidentiality.
In contrast, the Attorney General wrote to MacRae stating that, over the course of a week, the Diocese provided unfettered access to its files with no attempt at oversight. Further, the Attorney General wrote that all the files were reviewed as a result of a Grand Jury subpoena and were to remain confidential by law. However Bishop McCormack had signed a waiver surrendering the rights of all the priests involved. It is unclear, given the history above, who actually signed that waiver.
To their great credit, Vatican officials have not seen fit to move with a canonical process against this wrongly imprisoned priest. They have, however, administratively dismissed Monsignor Arsenault from the clerical state. He has since changed his name and is now known as Edward J. Bolognini.
To release a list of names of the accused today under the guise of transparency with Father Gordon MacRae identified solely as “convicted” is anything but transparent. It only further obscures this travesty of justice and turns it into just another kind of cover-up.
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Editor’s Note: Ryan A. MacDonald has published on the abuse crisis in multiple Catholic and secular publications. Please share this important post. You may also wish to read these related posts:
Grand Jury, St Paul’s School and the Diocese of Manchester
Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo
Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?
Striking similarities exist between claims of Cardinal George Pell’s accuser and those in a discredited case hyped by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in Rolling Stone magazine.
Striking similarities exist between claims of Cardinal George Pell’s accuser and those in a discredited case hyped by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in Rolling Stone magazine.
Back in 2016, before the American presidential election that shook our politics, Catholic League President Bill Donohue was quoted in a NewsMax article entitled “Trump Taps into Mass Distrust.” Dr. Donohue, who happens to be a well-published sociologist, cited a poll by the Media Insight Project and the American Press Institute that measured the confidence voters have in American institutions.
Topping the list of those earning the public’s trust were, in order: The U.S. military, the scientific community, the U.S. Supreme Court, organized religion (yes, even still!), and America’s financial institutions. At the bottom of the list were the institutions Americans trust least. The last two came as no surprise. Only six percent of Americans reported having trust in the news media. Only four percent reported having trust in members of Congress.
Bill Donohue also cited another study. In 1985, a Pew Research Center poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans trust the news media to report facts truthfully. By 2011, that figure dropped to 25 percent. In the same poll in 1985, 45 percent of Americans thought the media was biased. By 2011, it jumped to 63 percent.
Bill Donohue gleaned from the fine print of these polls that the two most cited reasons for wide-spread mistrust of news media were inaccurate reporting and media bias. There is another reason, but it may not be so evident to casual consumers of the news. The media has abandoned skepticism in favor of quick and easy “gotcha” news.
The most articulate analysis of media bias comes from journalist JoAnn Wypijewski in a news-busting CounterPunch article about the Catholic priesthood scandal. Her against-the-tide article is “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film” (For full disclosure my own charges are examined therein).
“I don’t believe the personal injury lawyers … I don’t believe the prosecutors who pursued tainted cases, or the therapists who revived junk science or the juries that sided with them or the judges who failed to act justly or the people who made money off any of this …
“I don’t believe the claims of all who say they are victims or who prefer the tough-minded label, survivor — because ready belief is not part of a journalist’s mental kit, but also because what happened in 2002 makes it difficult to distinguish real claims from fraudulent or opportunistic ones without independent research.”
This article would never win recognition for public service from the news media because it goes so vividly against the current tide of political correctness. The news media has abandoned the necessary skepticism that was once “part of a journalist’s mental kit.” To be merely accused today is to be guilty.
Manipulating the Court of Public Opinion
This, says JoAnn Wypijewski, is “the legacy of the courtroom of panic that made ‘the pedophile priest’ a cultural bogeyman, a devil, who need not be real but only named to light the fires of wrath.” I became a target of that courtroom of panic and those fires of wrath, and so, it now seems, did Cardinal George Pell.
In a time of moral panic, convictions happen in the public eye long before they happen in a court of law. For many prosecutors, arriving at the truth is now less important than winning. The necessary “independent research” cited by Ms. Wypijewski happens only when the smoke of an unjust trial clears, if at all.
The case against Cardinal Pell had already raised concerns for real justice even before it ended in a courtroom. One of the best commentaries on this has come from David F. Pierre, Jr., host of The Media Report, in “The Witch Hunt Against Australia’s Cardinal George Pell: Five Facts You Need to Know.” The five facts summarized by David Pierre are these:
The Australian government began investigating Cardinal Pell over five years ago even though there had been no crime reported against him.
Pell’s publicly known accusers include career criminals, admitted drug addicts, and others who have lodged similar complaints before.
Even secular observers have admitted that Pell was not treated fairly.
Accusations against Pell were widely circulated in a 2017 book that has been thoroughly discredited.
Cardinal Pell vehemently and consistently denies the accusations against him.
Before the trial, some of the charges were withdrawn by prosecutors. Now there is a new source of grave doubt about the justice meted out to Cardinal Pell. An alert reader of These Stone Walls first spotted this story in an account at LifeSite News by Dorothy Cummings McLean entitled, “Cardinal Pell’s Accuser Copied Testimony from Old Rolling Stone Report, Journalist Claims.”
The writer who first uncovered this is Keith Windschuttle, an Australian journalist and historian. He used the professional skepticism and deep-sourcing that were once mainstays of the news media but have sadly been abandoned in favor of quick sound bites and the strip-mining of news.
Mr. Windschuttle discovered some eerie similarities between the claims brought against Cardinal Pell and a lurid story of abuse by American Catholic priests that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in 2011. His findings listed a series of identical, sometimes verbatim, allegations seemingly lifted from the pages of Rolling Stone.
The magazine and that article would have been readily available to Pell’s accuser when he first described his “abuse” to police in 2015. The LifeSite News summary of the article lists the similarities, and they leave little doubt, according to Windschuttle:
“What is the difference between this account of child sex abuse in a Catholic church in Philadelphia and the evidence given by a sole accuser in the Victorian [AU] court case that convicted Cardinal George Pell? … Not much. The two stories were so close to being identical that the likelihood of the Australian version being original is most implausible. There were too many similarities for the likeness to be dismissed as ‘coincidence.’”
Sabrina Rubin Erdely & the Predatory News Media
You may read for yourselves in the LifeSite News article the striking similarities that raise a specter of plagiarism in the charges against Cardinal Pell. The 2011 Rolling Stone article from which Pell’s accuser seems to have copied his claims was “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex Crime Files” written by a now disgraced and discredited former journalist, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.
Readers may remember that name from “A Rape on Campus,” an explosive story in the November 2014 issue of Rolling Stone. Sabrina Rubin Erdely profiled the story of “Jackie,” a student at the University of Virginia who claimed to be a victim of gang rape at a UVA fraternity party in 2012. Rolling Stone’s front page cried out:
“A RAPE ON CAMPUS: Jackie was just starting her freshman year at the University of Virginia when she was brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party. When she tried to hold them accountable, a whole new kind of abuse began.”
Erdely’s account depicted UVA administrators as having callous disregard for the pain and suffering of the anonymous “Jackie” and, by extension, for the plight of other victims of sexual assault on campus. The story helped launch a national debate about rape on college campuses across the nation.
It contributed to a moral panic that went all the way to the Obama White House where legislation was promoted to drastically curtail the due process rights of accused college students. In the fallout from the story, UVA administrators called for resignations and expulsions even before all the facts were in. Like most such media events, the story was accepted as Gospel truth once it appeared in print.
But then someone began to do some of the independent research that journalist JoAnn Wypijewski calls for above. “Jackie’s” account turned out to be a massive lie, and Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s coverage of it a massive betrayal of journalistic standards. No one could corroborate any of “Jackie’s” story and Erdely never even bothered to try. She did no fact checking. She just ran with the story, riding a wave of public hysteria about sexual assault and abuse.
A civil trial took place just before the 2016 presidential election. From the witness stand, Sabrina Rubin Erdely cited the same tactic that countless contingency lawyers have used against the Catholic Church: “It takes trauma victims some time to come forward with all the details,” she testified to excuse her disregard for journalistic standards.
“It is not unusual,” Erdely testified to explain away “Jackie’s” ever-changing details of her story. In the end, with streaming tears, Erdely blamed it all on “Jackie,” saying, “It was a mistake to rely on someone whose intent was to deceive me.”
The bar for proving defamation and negligence against a journalist is steep. A jury must conclude, as it did in this case, that a journalist or media venue published what it knew to be false, or did so with reckless disregard for truth. In the end, when the entire account was heard, a jury found Rolling Stone guilty of negligence and defamation, and imposed a $7.5 million dollar jury award to the falsely accused fraternity students.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely was found liable for actual malice in the writing and publication of this story. By the December 2016 edition of Rolling Stone, her name was removed from the masthead of contributing editors, and she disappeared from the world of journalism.
That Lying Scheming Altar Boy Again!
But there is another reason readers of these pages may recall Ms Erdely and Rolling Stone. A news media in pursuit of the whole truth instead of its own agenda would have scoured Ms Erdely’s previous work, but they did not. They did not because doing so would have required delving into another story by Ms Erdely that raises the same hard questions. It is a story that I have written about in multiple posts, including “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek.”
Three years before “A Rape on Campus,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone launched another moral panic by exploding a story of a Pennsylvania Catholic sex-abuse ring among priests in “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files.” It is a story, as I have written elsewhere in These Stone Walls, that turned Father Charles Engelhardt into a martyr and Daniel Gallagher into a millionaire.
And lest you have questions about media influence on judges, Father Engelhardt’s judge, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, objected to a defense question posed to jurors:
“Anybody that doesn’t think there is widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is living on another planet.”
Before falling for “Jackie’s” fraud, Ms. Erdely fell for a much larger one brought by Daniel Gallagher, assured anonymity by Ms. Erdely as “Billy Doe” in the pages of Rolling Stone. It is this story, and Rolling Stone’s presentation of it, that is now the apparent source of copycat testimony in the case against Cardinal George Pell.
But, like Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus,” this story was also a fraud. It was written with the same malice and disregard for truth as Erdely’s other story, but it nonetheless launched a witch hunt in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with tentacles extending into the present day. Now it seems that some of those tentacles washed up in Australia as well.
The facts in this story are staggering, and though I have written extensively of them, the best source for a succinct summary is by journalist Ralph Cipriano writing for the January-February issue of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst in “The Legacy of Billy Doe.”
It is ironic that Cardinal Pell’s accuser picked this story to serve as a model to concoct false charges. Of course, this happened long before the story of Daniel Gallagher was exposed as a fraud. Up until last year it was a great success for the newly minted millionaire, Daniel Gallagher, who is yet to be brought to justice because it would be greatly embarrassing for Pennsylvania justice officials to do so.
I highly recommend Ralph Cipriano’s “The Legacy of Billy Doe.” In only two pages, he blew apart the narrative that has prevailed in the media to date. It is a narrative that now raises questions about the character of the case against Cardinal Pell as well. We owe it to him to make this known. There is a reason why no other news media figure has taken up this story as Mr. Cipriano has, and as I have here at These Stone Walls.
And it is a frightening reason, frightening for anyone concerned with the integrity of our news media and the tyranny it can create through false witness. No one has articulated this better than The Wall Street Journal' s Pulitzer Prize-winning expositor of truth in justice, Dorothy Rabinowitz, in her 2005 book, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times:
“Arguing for due process on behalf of a person charged with child sex abuse violated the progressive views held by many toward crimes involving special categories of victims like women and children. [T]here [is] a school of advanced political opinion of the view that to take up for those falsely accused of sex abuse charges was to undermine the battle. It was to betray all other victims of sexual predators. Where advanced reasoning of this sort prevailed, the facts of a case were simply irrelevant.”
And that, my friends — for anyone who has counted on the news media to champion truth and justice — may be the cruelest tyranny of all.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please help share this story with others. I believe we owe that much to Cardinal Pell.