Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition

Jesus was mocked by the devil in the Gospel of Luke (4:1-13). Before his death, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was mocked by a commission of progressive German Catholics.

March 2, 2022 by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

“Aaron shall lay his hands upon the goat and confer upon it all the sins of the people ... The scapegoat shall bear their iniquities upon him into the wilderness ... to Azazel.”

— Leviticus 10:10,22

In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent (Luke 4:1-13), Jesus is tested by a devil in the desert. I wrote of the significance of this Gospel passage on Ash Wednesday. That important post is “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert.” Ironically, Pope Benedict XVI wrote of this same Gospel passage in his acclaimed book Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 2007). His analysis of the demonic testing of Jesus seems now to be an omen of Catholic division:

“[The Devil’s] temptations of Jesus ... address the question as to what really matters in human life. At the heart of all temptation is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material while setting God aside is an illusion.”

— Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 28

In the Gospel account from St. Luke above, Jesus thwarts the devil at every turn. We cannot thwart the devil at all without Him. In the end, the devil departs to wait for a more “opportune time.” For some of the Catholic leadership of Germany, it seems that opportune time is now. Fifteen years after writing the above reflection on the testing of Jesus in the desert, Pope Emeritus Benedict became a target of the very forces he cautioned the Church against.

Built entirely on a political agenda with obvious bias and ideological goals, a commission of lawyers launched by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising where Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger served as Archbishop 43 years ago accused him of dishonesty and a cover-up. It was because he could not immediately recall being present at a meeting 42 years earlier in which a specific priest was reportedly discussed. The equally progressive and partisan news media capitalized on this to embarrass the elderly Benedict whose painful response spoke volumes about his effort to satisfy his pernicious detractors. Here is an excerpt of Benedict’s response:

“In addition to responding to the questions posed ... this also demanded reading and analyzing almost 8,000 pages of documents ... and almost 2,000 pages of expert opinion. Amid the massive work, an oversight occurred regarding my participation in the chancery meeting of 15 January 1980. This error was not intentionally willed ... To me it has proved deeply hurtful that this oversight was used to cast doubt on my truthfulness and even to label me a liar.”

— Excerpt of Statement of Benedict XVI, 8 February 2022

The Moral Authority of a German Inquisition

In another post, “Stones for Pope Benedict and the Rusty Wheels of Justice,” I raised what I know to be an important historical context in defense of Benedict. Even if the allegations had substance, which they do not, I can only conclude that this archeological expedition was one-sided and deeply unjust. In my post linked above, I raised a pair of highly relevant but controversial questions. Germany’s historical inquiry into the protection of minors, which had taken on the tone and substance of a witch hunt, ventured back more than forty years to demand answers entirely out of context for the sole apparent purpose of isolating and demeaning Pope Benedict.

This is by no means the first time that Germany has launched such a destructive moral panic. I wrote of a very similar inquisition in “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic.” Why should this inquisition go back only to 1980? Go back just another forty years and you will find yourself in the Germany of 1940 when the vast atrocities visited upon the Children of Yahweh were amply documented and globally known. With what moral authority did Germany point a finger of blame at Joseph Ratzinger for being unable to recall a 42-year-old meeting?

It turned out, however, that the claims were not even true, but they were nonetheless nefarious. Pope Benedict added to his letter quoted above, “I have come to increasingly appreciate the repugnance and fear that Christ felt on the Mount of Olives when he saw all the dreadful things that he would have to endure inwardly.” A follow-up statement from Archbishop Georg Gänswein, longtime personal secretary of Pope Benedict, addressed the political, moral and spiritual depravity of those pointing fingers of blame. Here is an excerpt of Edward Pentin’s blog report, “Archbishop Gänswein: Movement Wants to Destroy Benedict XVI’s Life and Work”:

“Benedict denied personally mishandling abuse cases, each detailed in an appendix to [his] letter compiled by four lawyers acting on Benedict’s behalf. The three canonists and one attorney said that all four charges made against him ... were false. Benedict’s enemies nevertheless used the error to launch attacks on the Pope Emeritus with theologians and others accusing him of lying and perjury.”

— Statement of Archbishop Georg Gänswein

In all of this shameful debacle, Benedict was the only one talking about Jesus. None of these purportedly Catholic accusers ever even mention God, or Jesus, or fidelity to the Church as they prop up their own progressive agenda. It did not take long for the real agenda to become unmasked. These attacks on Benedict coincided with a plenary meeting of Germany’s “Synodal Path” which voted in the same weekend as the condemnation of Benedict to call for same-sex unions and blessings, sweeping revisions of Church teaching on homosexuality and priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, and lay involvement in the nomination and selection of bishops.

Constructing a World by Our Own Lights

In other words, while reviling Benedict, the German Synod demanded a transformation of German Catholicism into the 21st Century Episcopal church which had long since been torn from the Anglican Communion by these same demands. This is exactly what Benedict XVI cautioned against in his citation from Jesus of Nazareth above:

“Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material while setting God aside is an illusion.”

— Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 28

True to form, on February 4, 2022, the German Synod participants voted 163 to 42 to call on Pope Francis to loosen Church rules on priestly celibacy and to permit the ordination of women deacons two years after Francis declined to do either. This is evidence of something that I have witnessed and cautioned against. Elements in and outside the Church use a climate of fear and revilement around the topic of sexual abuse, not to protect the vulnerable, but as a cudgel to force an entirely secular path toward moral relativism.

The synod participants in Germany argued that obligatory celibacy for priests has impacted the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. This blindly ignores the setting in which the crisis emerged, the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1980s which now impacts all of Western Culture. One of its tentacles has been a push far beyond mere societal acceptance of homosexuality to promote and normalize it as a societal good. This requires a denial of any connection between homosexuality and the sex abuse crisis in the Church.

As a result, the crisis is blamed on sexual repression and the practice of obligatory priestly celibacy. It is a testament to the power of reaction formation that an entire institution would come to prefer the term “pedophile scandal” to “homosexual scandal” even when the facts say otherwise. And the facts do say otherwise. This is not a political statement. It is a factual one, amply documented. I defended this point in “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.”

In the place where I live, there are over 1,200 men convicted of sexual offenses who must complete a sexual offender program to be considered for parole. In the wider state there are thousands already in the community on parole or as registered criminal sex offenders. Only one of them is a Catholic priest, and he is widely considered to be innocent. The vast majority were married men at the time of their offenses. None were driven to predation by the practice of celibacy, though most strive to practice it now.

The Schismatic Agenda

What is really going on in the German Catholic church is very different from its stated agenda of inclusiveness. Each step in this inquiry is a subtle effort to drag the Church away from the Gospel and into a politically correct arena of moral relativism. The next step in the sexual revolution will tear the Church apart.

I have come to appreciate the candor and spiritual integrity of prison writing from the ranks of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr. Walter Ciszek, Fr. Alfred Delp, and more recently, Cardinal George Pell. Writing from prison with very limited opportunities for dialog and in-depth research means writing almost entirely from one’s own mind, heart and soul. The Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell has been a goldmine of unfiltered candor and spiritual integrity.

While reading his Prison Journal Volume Two (in which, for full disclosure, my own writing occupies several pages) Cardinal Pell wrote candidly of his concerns for the direction of the Church in Germany. In an entry from his prison cell on August 9, 2019, he wrote of Edith Stein, now known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who, like St. Maximilian Kolbe, was murdered in Auschwitz by the Nazi regime of 1940s Germany.

Cardinal Pell wrote that Edith Stein was German by birth, and he asked readers to pray for her intercession for the Catholic Church in Germany. He quoted German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position once held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:

“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 do not speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the Sacraments, faith, hope, or love.”

— Cardinal Gerhard Müller quoted in Prison Journal Vol. II, p. 75

It gets much worse. Later in Prison Journal Volume II, Cardinal Pell wrote of Vatican concerns about the growing possibility of a German Catholic schism over the very issues identified by Cardinal Müller. If such a progressive-driven schism were to occur, it would sweep much of the European Union where Catholic Mass attendance is at its historically lowest point. Cardinal Pell cited a September 17, 2019 Catholic Culture article by Phillip Lawler, “Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?”

Lawler argued that the prospect of a schism is remote, but becoming less so. He cited that Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect saying that he is not frightened by it, something that Lawler found to be frightening in and of itself.

Cardinal Pell added that The New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a German Catholic schism by “the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States, the Gospel Catholics.” He observed that Lawler’s diagnosis is correct in pointing out that,

“The most aggressive online defenders of Pope Francis realize 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 Vol. II. p. 214-215

In light of this, it comes as no surprise that progressive bishops have pushed Pope Francis into divisive restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass and other suppression of traditional expressions of the faith. These efforts, and the German Catholic steps taken to demean the late Pope Benedict, a stalwart of Catholic orthodoxy, should come as no surprise to faithful Catholics. Embracing and promoting fidelity at this juncture has never been more urgent. Faithful Catholics must never accede to the desired end that German progressives seek.

Handing the Church over to them would leave “Satan at the Last Supper” while Jesus is removed from the room.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this most important post. You may also be interested in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic

To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert

Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light

Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, A Year in Freedom

Pornchai Moontri marks one year since his return to Thailand after 36 years away, and one year in freedom after 29 years in prison. Divine Mercy has won this day!

February 23, 2022 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Sawasdee Kup, my friends. The photo that you see below is my first moment in freedom in Thailand after a 36-year absence and 29 years in prison since age 18. As many of you know, the last 16 of those years were in the company of Fr. Gordon MacRae. Without him, none of the rest of this post would ever have taken place.

In the photo, that’s me on the left. It was the 24th day of February in 2021. I think I was the only person in Thailand to wear a pair of western jeans that day. It was all I had, and it was a very hot 40-degrees Celsius which is about 104-degrees Fahrenheit and extremely humid. The three people with me are (L to R): Khun Chalathip, a supporter and benefactor of the Divine Word Missionary work in Thailand; Yela Smit, co-founder of Divine Mercy Thailand and the person who worked with Fr. Gordon to prepare for my return; and Fr. John Hung Le, SVD who you already know well. Father G is not in the picture, of course, but he was still very much present.

There are many others who made this picture possible. Because of Beyond These Stone Walls, an international effort formed to move a mountain. This included Yela Smit and Father John Le in Thailand, my legal advocate Clare Farr in Australia, Viktor Weyand in Michigan, Dilia E. Rodríguez in New York, Fr. George David Byers in North Carolina, Charlene Duline in Indiana, Bill Wendell in Ohio, Claire Dion, Carol Slade, Judith Freda, and Samantha McLaughlin in Maine, and Mr. Narongchai at the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington. All made a mighty effort to bring me home. Many of you contributed to my support in the great challenge of starting life over. I do not have adequate words to thank you all.

After the above photo was taken, I had my first meal in a Thai restaurant, and then we went shopping for clothes. Father John took me to the biggest, busiest shopping mall in Bangkok where I had to fight off a panic attack. It was a very long time since I was in the presence of so many people, and in a city as huge as Bangkok. It felt overwhelming.

Father G and I had talked a lot about what my first moments of freedom might be like, but living them was another matter. So many competing feelings rushed through my mind: excitement, terror, gratitude, terror, happiness, terror. It is not easy to describe how freedom feels after spending 60-percent of my life in a U.S. prison. Did I mention terror?

Samsung to the Rescue

The photo above was my first “selfie.” It was taken when I figured out how to use the camera on a smart phone. There is a little rosary and cross hanging from the mirror. That was made for me out of foil candy wrappers by a 19-year-old Honduran young man who I helped during five awful months in ICE detention. From the moment I arrived in Thailand, everything I did, saw, or touched that day and the days to follow was completely new to me. I feared that I will never be able to fit in. During these 14 days of quarantine in a hotel room alone for the first time in 29 years, Father G called me every day. For the rest of my life I will always remember that first phone call. It was the morning after my arrival.

We spoke about my first anxious night in that room. It was small, but still about three times bigger than the 60-squarefeet where I lived with Father G. I could not see anyone during my two weeks in quarantine, but our friend, Yela, left a Samsung Galaxy smart phone in the hotel for me. I looked at it like it was left behind by space aliens. It took me a while to figure it out, but I somehow managed to find Beyond These Stone Walls.

I wish you could have felt my heart thumping with excitement. This blog that had been so much a part of our lives, reaching out from a tiny prison cell to the whole world, was now right in front of me. I realized with deep emotion that I am now seeing it while Father G never has. It struck me that almost everyone I will meet in Thailand in coming days will already know about me. Then I found Father G’s Documentary Interview and listened for the next two hours as he talked while I fell asleep. “Just like old times,” I thought, but don’t tell him I said that.

One year ago, on February 24, 2021, Father G wrote about that first night in Thailand and my embarrassing encounter with a 21st Century toilet. It was “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” I remember thinking that this Samsung smart phone that now connects me to the world is a miracle, and that BTSW was an even greater miracle. I felt for the first time that I am not among strangers. I am home, and Father G came with me.

Pictures of Freedom

Father G and I still speak by telephone each day. He calls me with his GTL tablet from the same prison cell where we both lived. Sometimes it is for just ten minutes and sometimes longer. Every time I tell him about what is going on in my life now, he says the same thing: “Send me photos! We need photos.” Now I can see the reason for that. He suggested that the best way to tell the story of my first year in freedom is with photographs and links to what he and I have both written. So here goes!

Free at Last Thanks to God and You

I wrote this post just a few weeks after my arrival. I was living then in the Divine Word Community House with Fr. John Le and some members of his Order in Nontha Buri. Father G and Father John spoke often. It is with deep gratitude that I thank both of them. No one knows how difficult it is to re-enter society after almost thirty years in isolation. On the day I arrived at Father John’s home, he and Yela had a photo taken with me in the presence of the One most responsible for bringing me there. So that photo is posted above.

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Just a week later, Father Gordon wrote this amazing post after talking with me. It turned out that the headquarters for Father John’s Community in Thailand were located in the Province of Nong Bua Lamphu in the Northeast of Thailand, about a nine hour drive from Bangkok. That was the place of my birth and the place from where I was taken at age eleven. Just a few kilometers from a special home and clinic operated by Father John’s Order for Thai children, the Aunt and cousins I lived with as a child were still there. It was a most painful but also joyful reunion.

I spent my first night there in the unfinished home my mother was building before she was killed on the Island of Guam in 2000. All her things were still there. The next morning, I visited and prayed at her tomb for the first time. I was so thankful that Father John was with me. Though most of Thailand practices Buddhism, and so did I as a child, I am now a Catholic, and I asked Father John to bless my mother’s tomb. I will be going there again in April for Chakri, the annual Buddhist Water Festival when family members clean and honor the tombs of their loved ones.

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

Father Gordon has told me many times that this was his favorite post of my first year in freedom. He told my story combined with the story of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael from the Book of Tobit. There is a mysterious dog in the Tobit story, and during this same journey my dog, Hill, adopted me. This was a very special post. Hill and I have had similar lives in which we both got battered around a bit. He started following me as soon as I first arrived in the village of Phu Wiang (Poo-vee-ANG) just as a dog followed Tobias in the company of Raphael in the Book of Tobit. Whenever I return there, Hill comes running and howling as I give him a special treat. Then he never leaves my side.

Beyond These Stone Walls in Thailand

Father G helped me to write this post which describes my long and difficult adjustment. In the photo above, Father John and Khun Chalathip, who took on the task of helping me to learn Thai again, brought me to a day of prayer at an Oblate retreat in Bangkok. Much of this post was written while I was there. Back at the New Hampshire State Prison, the Lieutenant of the unit where I lived saw it and had it posted on the wall outside his office. He asked the 300 prisoners there to all read it and he included it in a prison newsletter. Father G says that they especially liked this last paragraph and wanted other prisoners to read it:

“Sometimes I get impatient with myself. I wish I could 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 go anywhere or do anything. After 29 years “inside” I am now out of prison but I still have to get prison out of me. The name, Thailand, after all, means ‘Land of the Free’.”

Pornchai Moontri: Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand

Every Thai citizen is presented with a Thai National ID at the age of 16. But I was not in Thailand then and never received it. So returning at age 48 with my citizenship not yet fully established was a burden for me. There have been times in my life when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I made multiple trips up to the village of my birth to visit with my family and my dog, Hill. Each time, I applied for my Thai ID and each time I was told that it is still pending.

In late October, much to my relief and Father G’s as well, I was summoned to Phu Wiang. I told Father G that I was buying a new dress shirt for the ID photo. Surely they could not turn me away with this beautiful new yellow shirt. Father G scoffed, but I had faith. (Now that’s a twist!) But this time I was successful and I wanted all of you to see my Thai ID. So Father G had my ID number blocked out and posted it.

This was my birthday reunion with my cousin and his family. He was eight years old and I was eleven when we lived as brothers. Now he is an officer in the Royal Thai Navy. While being with him and his family at the Gulf of Thailand, the struggles of the past just evaporated for a time.

A Year in Photos

One of the things that I looked forward to was swimming. I had not been immersed in water for thirty years. I lived with my cousins as a child, but 36 years had passed before I saw them again. On my first visit with them, they took me to a lake. I was not sure I even still knew how to swim so they put some little flotation devices on me. I did not even know how to get into the water the first time. When Father G saw the picture of me floating he wrote, “This is what freedom looks like.”

Visiting with my Aunt and cousins during the rice harvest was humbling for me. I am no stranger to hard work, but they feared I would be too unaccustomed to the relentless Thai heat so they gave me the easy job of collecting bundles. It was a great blessing to be with them during this most important time.

When Father G wrote about our Advent project with Father Tim Moyle and Saint Anne’s Parish in Mattawa, Ontario, and Father John Le here in Thailand, I got to experience first hand what it means to take part in a Corporal Work of Mercy. Visiting the Vietnamese refugee families with Father John and helping to distribute food is an unforgettable experience for which I am most thankful. I greatly admire Father John’s ministry in Thailand, which Father G has described at our Special Events page.

Here in Thailand, far beyond those stone walls, my heart aches that Father G is still behind them. I thank you for continuing to visit him in prison by reading these posts. I will always be indebted to you all for your acceptance of me, your kindnesses toward me, and the support of your prayers. I know that I would not have experienced this year in freedom without you. Father G will always be a part of my life and so will this wonderful blog.

May God bless you. With love to you all from me and Father G and from Hill too!

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri with his dog Hill. The tattoo on his arm is from a portrait of his Mother etched on his arm by an artistic prisoner after Pornchai learned of her death. It was his only means to memorialize and mourn her.

The Measure By Which You Measure: Prisoners of a Captive Past

The Gospel of Luke issues a difficult challenge before Lent. The mother of a murdered young man heeded it and rose to become an advocate for her son’s former enemy.

February 16, 2022

Like most human beings, and entirely unlike Jesus, I have enemies. This needs some clarification. There were some who made themselves enemies of Jesus, but never did Jesus perceive them as such. I have as of yet been unable to rise to that Gospel challenge. That much became clear in our recent posts, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell,” and its sequel, “Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest.” That latter post, by Ryan MacDonald, took a surprising turn. Several days after it was posted, it had been shared only about 200 times on social media. Then, on Monday, January 31st, it suddenly exploded, gathering 2,300 shares on Facebook, thus placing that post before hundreds of thousands.

In recent weeks and months, there have been many assaults and other attacks on police officers. The vast majority of police are couragous and honest men and women who do their jobs heroically. The posts linked above are not at all about them. They are about a deceitful and self-righteous crusader who used sleazy and dishonest tactics to frame and entrap people, including me. Now, just weeks after those posts were published, I am confronted with a Gospel passage two weeks before Lent that I would rather not hear. But I did hear it.

Should a priest have enemies? It is not exactly a good look, but priests are human beings and most humans do not respond well to being hated or hunted, or falsely accused. The words “enemy” and “enemies” (for those who sadly have amassed more than one) occur in Sacred Scripture 526 times. What would the opposite word be to contrast it in Scripture? It isn’t “friend.” I know many people who are neither friends nor enemies to me. I even have some ex-friends who are certainly not my enemies. There is no word for an ex-enemy. But as I pondered all this, the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time smacked me:

“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘To you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.’”

— Luke 6:27

I started splitting hairs upon reading this. Jesus said “To you who hear,” so what if I simply pretend I didn’t hear it? I could not handle the dishonesty that would entail, but I just don’t know what to do with what I heard. I tried praying for my enemy, but my prayer became corrupted: “I pray that my enemy will one day stand in the Presence of the Lord. Sooner rather than later might be nice!”

It isn’t a good prayer. I will have to try harder. The whole passage for this coming Sunday’s Mass ends, however, on a more reachable note. It is a statement that now haunts me with a call to arms. In this case, however, I am taking up arms not against my enemy, but against myself. It seems on first reading to be a lot easier than deciding to love my enemy and pray for him. Maybe that will come some day. Not today. But this final statement of Jesus concludes the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time. Let it sink in. It's not for my enemy. It is for me:

“The measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you.”

— Luke 6:38

Way to go, Jesus! Please pass the Tylenol.

Divine Mercy Calls Forth Unexpected Role Models

I wrote a post back in 2012 that was one of a few that contained the photograph above. That post was “Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being.” It has been on our list of posts from the older version of this blog that had to be restored for you to read them anew. I asked that it be moved to the top of the list so you could read it for this post. No need to do so now. I will add a link to it at the end. It’s very important.

The young men in the photo above all graduated from high school in this prison after putting in years of hard work and even more years of struggle with themselves. The obstacles against learning the right things in this environment are very great. With the right kind of support, each one of them overcame these obstacles. The result was this triumphant photograph above. I am very proud of it, and the men who are in it — all gawking at me on the other side of the camera. With their diplomas in hand, they are victorious.

In the photo, my friend Alberto is hunched down just behind and to the right of Pornchai Moontri. For the previous two years, he had been a student of mine in a pilot program for exceptional prisoners to enroll in courses for college credit even while working on their high school diplomas. I was recruited for the program by a local community college to teach two courses in which I had earned degrees before prison in Philosophy and Behavioral Science.

Alberto was my student for four semesters, taking one course at a time. He failed both courses in the first two semesters. Alberto hinted that, with the stroke of a pen, I could rescue him with a “C.” But I did not. So he re-registered to take both courses again. He passed both the second time around with a respectable “B+.” I was very proud of him both when he failed, because he made an effort, and when he came back and excelled because he would not accept yet another defeat in life.

Alberto became a good friend to me and to Pornchai. When he wasn’t in trouble and hauled off for a stint in the hole, he lived where we lived. I mentioned him long ago in a 2010 post, “Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed.” Alberto read a hard copy of it because he was in it, and it became a turning point in his life. I cannot take credit for that because credit is rightly owed in equal measure to Pornchai Moontri and St. Michael.

In the Absence of Fathers

Alberto was 14 years old when the gun in his hand fired severing the artery of an 19-year-old with whom he struggled. It was a vicious end to a late night drug deal gone very bad in a dark Manchester, New Hampshire alley. It happened in 1994, the same year that I was sent to prison. It seemed a flip of a coin which combatant would die that night and which would survive only to wake up in prison. At 14, Alberto had lost himself. Sentenced to a prison term of 30 years to life, he spent his first years in solitary confinement. The experience extracted from him, as it also did from Pornchai, any light in his heart, any spark of optimism or hope in his eyes.

Then, when finally age 18, Alberto was allowed to live in the prison’s general population where the art of war is honed in daily spiritual and sometimes physical battle. It is a rare week that a City of Concord Fire Department ambulance doesn’t enter these prison walls shutting down all activity while some young man is taken to a local hospital after a beating or a stabbing or a headlong flight down some concrete stairs. The catalyst for such events is the same here as it was in the alley that sent Alberto here. There is no honor in any of it. It is just about drugs and gangs and money.

Alberto’s path to prison seemed inevitable. Abandoned by a father he never met, he was raised by a single mother who lost all control over him by age 12. Drugs and money and avoiding the law were the dominant themes of his childhood. By age 14, he was a child of the streets and nowhere else, but the streets make for the worst possible parents. Alberto became a textbook example of a phenomenon that I once wrote about to much public fanfare, but little public action: “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.”

In “Big Prison” it was discovered that there is more to Alberto than the violence of his past. He was 32 when he earned his high school diploma here. He will one day soon be released after having spent more than two-thirds of his life behind bars.

I wrote about Alberto’s life in “Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being.” Now I want to challenge you to go read it because at the end of it at the very top of its many comments is one by the mother of the young man Alberto killed. She read it too. In just a few short sentences, Mrs. Rose Emerson became a role model for pondering what Jesus says in the Gospel on the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time:

“The measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you.”

Luke 6:38

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: The post that I suggested above — “Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being” — is now posted under the “Prison Journal” category of our BTSW Library. I would like to leave Mrs. Emerson’s comment as the final word on that post. If you wish to comment further, and I hope you will, please return here to place your comment on this post. In coming weeks or months we hope to present other powerful stories of hope and Divine Mercy encountered in prison.

Please share this post.

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Jesus calls forth Lazarus from his tomb.

Stones for Pope Benedict and the Rusty Wheels of Justice

Following revelations about possible deliverance after 28 years of wrongful imprisonment, hope is hard to come by, but it was not so for Saint Maximilian Kolbe.

February 9, 2022

“This prisoner of the State remains, against all probability, staunch in spirit, strong in the faith that the wheels of justice turn, however slowly.”

— Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Trials of Father MacRae,” The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013

When this blog was but a year old back in 2010, my friend and prison roommate, Pornchai Moontri, was received into the Catholic faith. He was 36 years old and it was his 18th year in prison. Everyone who knew him, except me, thought his conversion seemed quite impossible. Pornchai does not have an evil bone in his body, but his traumatic life had a profound effect on his outlook on life and his capacity for hope. There is simply no point in embracing faith without cultivating hope. The two go hand in hand. We cannot have one without the other.

To sow the seeds of hope in Pornchai, I had to first reawaken hope from its long dormant state in my own life as a prisoner. I am not entirely sure that I have completed that task. It seems a work in progress, but Pornchai’s last words to me as he walked through the prison gates toward freedom on September 8, 2020 were, “Thank you for giving me hope.” I wrote of that day in “Padre Pio Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

A decade earlier, back in April of 2010, Pornchai entered into Communion with the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday. On the night before, he asked me a haunting question. It was what I call one of his “upside down” questions. As he pondered what was to come, his head popped down from his upper bunk so he appeared upside down as he asked it. “Is it okay for us to hope for a happy ending when Saint Maximilian didn’t have one?” Pornchai had a knack for knocking me off the rails with questions like that.

Before responding, I had to do some pondering of my own. Our Patron Saint lost his earthly life at age 41 in a Nazi concentration camp starvation bunker. His death was followed by his rapid incineration. All that Maximilian Kolbe was in his earthly existence went up in smoke and ash to drift in the skies above Auschwitz, the most hopeless place in modern human history.

Retroactive Guilt and Shame

What I am about to write may seem horribly unpopular with those harboring an agenda against Catholic priests, but popularity has never been an important goal for me. In recent weeks, the news media has trumpeted a charge launched by a commission empowered by some Catholic officials in Germany. The commission’s much-hyped conclusion was that Pope Benedict was negligent when he did not remove four priests quickly enough after suspicions of abuse forty-one years ago in 1981. Some of my friends have cautioned me to stay out of this. Perhaps I should listen.

But I won’t. At what point do we cease judging men of the past for not living up to the ideals and politically correct sensitivities of the present? Merely asking that question puts me in the crosshairs of our victim culture, but it also forces me to ask another. Go back just another forty-one years and you will find yourself amid the hopelessness of 1941 as the children of Yahweh suffered unspeakable crimes in Germany and Poland. Where do we draw the line of historic condemnation? Should the German Church stop with Joseph Ratzinger in 1981?

The condemnation of Pope Benedict called for by some media and German officials today should be seen through the lens of history. It is a part of our hope as Catholics and as human beings that neither Pope Benedict nor the German people would act today as they did — or allowed to be done — forty or eighty years ago. The real target of such pointless inquiry and blame was not Pope Benedict, but rather hope itself.

I think we have to be clear in our response which should include something about the splinters in our eyes and the planks in the eyes of those pointing misplaced fingers of blame. Perhaps the moral authority that chastises Pope Benedict today in Germany doth protesteth too much. A new book by historian Harald Jähner, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 marshals a plethora of facts and critical skills of historical writing to portray the postwar “country’s stubborn inclination toward willful delusion.”

Thank you for indulging my brief tirade. Catholic League President Bill Donohue also came to the defense of Pope Benedict by shedding some light of historical context on the matter.

Hope Is Its Own Fulfillment

But back to Father Maximilian Kolbe. On the day of Pornchai’s Baptism, I responded to his question. I told him, “YOU are Maximilian’s happy ending!” Eighty-one years after his martyrdom at Auschwitz, the world honors him while the names of those who destroyed him have simply faded into oblivion. No one honors them. No one remembers them. God remembers. Their footprint on the Earth left only sorrow.

St. Maximilian Kolbe is the reason why I was compelled to set aside my own quest for freedom — which seemed utterly hopeless the last time I looked — in order to do what Maximilian did: to save another.

In all the anguish of the last two years as deliverance and freedom slowly came to Pornchai Moontri, the clouds of the past that overshadowed him began to lift. My prayer had been constant, and of a consistently singular nature: “I ask for freedom for Pornchai; I ask for nothing for myself.”

I am no saint, but that is what St. Maximilian did, and it seemed to be my only path. But since then that 2013 quote atop this post from The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz has once again become my reality. As you know if you have been reading these pages in recent weeks, a frenzy of action and high anxiety has surrounded the recent release of the New Hampshire ‘Laurie List,’ known more formally as the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule. If you somehow missed the earthquake that struck from Beyond These Stone Walls in January, I wrote about it in Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell. 

I am most grateful to readers for making the extra effort to share that post. It was emailed by Dr. Bill Donohue to the entire membership of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It indeed came as a bombshell to me and to many. Just as the frenzy began to subside, Ryan MacDonald stirred it up again in his brilliant analysis with a very pointed title: “Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest.”

I am not entirely sure that “destroys” is the right term to use, but I understand where he is coming from. To survive twenty-eight years of wrongful imprisonment means relegating a lot of one’s sense of self to the ash heap of someone else’s oppression. Many of those who spend decades in prison for crimes they did not commit lose their minds. Many also lose their faith, and along with it, all hope.

I have to remind myself multiple times a day that nothing is a sure thing anymore — neither prison nor freedom. I keep asking myself how much I dare to trust hope again. To quote the late Baseball Hall of Famer, Yogi Berra, this all feels “like deja vu all over again.”

Deja vu is a French term which literally means “to have seen before.” It is the strange sensation of having been somewhere before, or having previously experienced a current situation even though you know you have not. It is a phenomenon of neuropsychology that I have experienced all my life. About 15 percent of the population has that experience on occasion.

A possible explanation of deja vu is that aspects of the current situation act as retrieval cues in the psyche that unconsciously evoke an earlier experience long since receded from conscious memory, but resulting in an eerie sense of the familiar. It feels more strange than troublesome. I have a lifelong condition called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) which makes me prone to the experience of deja vu, but no one knows exactly why.

When Disappointments of the Past Haunt the Present

This time, my deja vu is connected to real events of the past, and the origin of my caution about current hope is found there. If you have read an important post of mine entitled “Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester,” then you may recall this story. In 2003 and 2004, the New Hampshire Attorney General conducted an intense one-sided investigation of my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester. When it was over, the former Bishop of Manchester signed a blanket release disposing of the privacy rights of priests of his diocese.

In 2021, when I wrote the above post, New Hampshire Judge Richard B. McNamara ruled that the 2003 public release of one-sided documents should have been barred under New Hampshire law because it was an abuse of the grand jury system and it denied basic rights of due process to those involved.

At the time this all happened in 2003, a Tennessee lawyer and law firm cited in a press statement that what happened in this diocese was unconstitutional. I contacted the lawyer who subsequently took a strong interest in my own case. He flew to New Hampshire twice to visit me in prison. I sent him a vast amount of documentation which he found most compelling. After many months of cultivated hope, he sent me a letter indicating that he would soon send a Memorandum of Understanding that I was to sign laying out the parameters under which he would represent me pro bono because I have not had an income for decades.

I waited. I waited a long time, but the Memorandum never came. Without explanation or communication of any kind, the lawyer and the hope he brought simply faded away. Letter after letter remained unanswered. It was inexplicable. It was at this same time that Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal published a two-part exposé, A Priest’s Story, on the perversion of justice that became apparent in their independent review of this matter. Those articles were actually published a few years after they were first planned. This was because the reams of supporting documents requested and collected by the newspaper were destroyed in the collateral damage of the terrorist attacks in New York of September 11, 2001.

Then in 2012, new lawyers filed an extensive case for Habeas Corpus review of my trial and imprisonment. It is still available at the National Center for Reason and Justice which mercifully still advocates for justice for me. However that effort failed when both State and Federal judges declined to allow any hearing that would give new witnesses a chance to testify under oath.

Now, in 2022 in light of this new ray of hope, some of the people involved in Beyond These Stone Walls have expressed frustration with my caution and apparent pessimism. I have not been as enthused as they have been over the hope arising from the current situation. Hope for me has been like investing in the stock market. Having lost everything twice, I am hesitant to wade too far into the waters of hope again.

I know only too well, however, that hope at times such as these is like that which both Pornchai Moontri and I once found in our Patron Saint. I wrote about it in “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

So in spite of myself, I am now aboard this new train of hope and must go where it takes me. That, for now, is the best that I can do. My prayer has not changed. I ask for nothing for myself, but I will take whatever comes.

I thank you, as I have in the past, for your support and prayers and for being here with me again at this turning of the tide. I will keep you posted, but it won’t be quick. Real hope never is.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please visit our newest addition to the BTSW menu: The Wall Street Journal. You may also wish to visit these relevant posts cited herein:

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Padre Pio Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

February Tales and a Corporal Work of Mercy in Thailand

This tapestry by Fr Gordon MacRae links the Roman origin of February, a Gospel account of the Presentation of Jesus, and the grace of a mission of mercy in Thailand.

I was sixteen years old for almost all of my senior year in high school growing up on the North Shore (aka, “Nawth Shoah”) of Boston in 1969. I was a full year younger than most of my class. There are many events that stand out about that year, but one that I remember most was an adventure in British literature that I found in The Once and Future King, the classic novel of the Arthurian legend by T.H. White first published in 1939.

In my inner city public high school, The Once and Future King was required senior year reading. Most of my older peers groaned at its 640 pages, but I devoured it. The famed novel is the story of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, the Knights of the Round Table, and the quest for the Holy Grail — all based on the 16th medieval Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory in the 16th Century. By the time I was half way through it at 16, I had completely forgotten that I was forced to read it and obliged to resent it.

I found a worn and tattered copy over 40 years later in the prison law library where I am the legal clerk. I took it back to my cell for a weekend to see if it held up against the test of time. It did so admirably, and I devoured it for the second time in my life. I was astonished by how well I remembered the plot and every character. I was reunited with my favorites, the Scottish knights and brothers from the Orkney Islands, Gawaine, Agravaine, Gareth and Gaheris. A few days after I began to read it anew, I came upon one of the popular Marvel X-Men movies and noted that the evil Magneto was also reading that same book in his prison cell.

The backdrop of my first reading of the book at age 16 in 1969 was the chaos of my teenage life in a troubled inner city high school. Protests and riots against the Vietnam War were daily fare. I was just then beginning to take seriously the Catholic heritage to which I previously gave only Christmas and Easter acknowledgment. The Once and Future King was set in a time when the Church and the agrarian society of our roots lived in rhythmic harmony.

The Church’s liturgical year is itself a character always lurking in the background of the story. Too many of its signs and wonders have since been sadly set aside. I don’t think we are better off for that experiment and I remember wondering at sixteen whether we might one day regret it. That day is today.

In the story, Arthur was crowned king on the Solemnity of Pentecost. But it was on February 2nd, the Feast of Candlemas that Arthur drew the sword from the stone to become King Arthur. We don’t call it Candlemas any longer, but the day has a fascinating history. The Mass of Blessing of Candles takes place on the 2nd of February. Today we call it the Presentation of the Lord recalling the Purification of Mary forty days after Christmas as she brought the newborn Christ to Simeon in the Gospel (Luke 2:22-35). It was the fulfillment of a ritual law set down in the Book of Leviticus (12:1-8). The purification was strictly a faithful fulfillment of the law and had no connection to moral failures or guilt:

“And his father and mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, 'Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed!”

— Luke 2:33-35

Midwinter Light

In ancient Rome in the time before Christ, February marked the old Roman feast of Lupercalia in honor of the mythological god of flocks and shepherds. The legend began with the mythical founders of Rome, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus. Abandoned at birth and left — with shades of the story of Moses — to float in a basket down the Tiber River, Romulus and Remus were discovered and raised by a wolf, according to legend.

The Latin word for wolf is “lupus” and the Feast of Lupercalia is derived from it. The Lupercalia celebration began with a parade of torches. Two boys, representing Romulus and Remus, would be smeared with the blood of a goat and then chase people through the streets with a sheath of the sacrificial goat’s skin. It was a symbol of purification of the flocks and fields and the village itself. The goat skin was called, in Latin, a “februa.” The month of February takes its name from that word.

The torch festival marking Lupercalia was absorbed into the Christian liturgical celebration of Candlemas honoring the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. It was first celebrated by the Byzantines over 1,500 years ago. February 2nd also marked the center of the seasons in an ancient agrarian culture. Sitting halfway between the December solstice and the spring equinox, it is the exact astronomical midpoint of winter. That is also, by the way, why it became Groundhog Day. In older times it was believed to be the day the forest awakened and hibernating animals rose to rejoin the land of the living. An old Scottish verse links Groundhog Day to Candlemas:

“If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,

The half o'winter's come and mair.

If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,

The half o'winter was gone at Youl.”

At Candlemas, the liturgical celebration included the blessing of candles for use in the liturgy for the rest of the year. The symbolism of the emergence of light in the mid-point of winter is clear. On February 3rd, the day after Candlemas, the Church honors Saint Blaise with a tradition of blessing throats using the newly blessed candles. According to tradition, Saint Blaise saved a child from choking on that day in the 3rd Century AD.

The Candles We Lit in Thailand

I struggled a lot in 2021. I struggled with sickness. I struggled with faith. A review of my post titles for 2021 is evidence for how much I struggled with priesthood, prison, people, the pandemic, and even the Pope. From what I have been hearing and reading all this past year, many of you struggled with these very same things. I hope and pray that you are all spared from prison among your struggles, but I also know that prison can take many forms.

We began 2021 with a post about struggling entitled “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” Toward the very end of the year, I wrote what I believe was the most important post of 2021 at the start of Advent. Posted on December 1, 2021, it was “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.”

Father Tim Moyle and the people of St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, Ontario surprised me with a haunting proposition. From one of the smallest, most financially struggling parishes in an outpost of the timberlands of Catholic Canada, Father Tim and some of his parishioners had been reading Beyond These Stone Walls over the course of 2021. They were deeply moved by the plight of our friend, Pornchai Moontri and especially by Father John Hung Le, SVD from the Missionary Society of the Divine Word who, despite his own pressing needs, gave a home and welcome to Pornchai.

Father John and Father Tim are selfless and courageous men of deep faith. Their example made me proud to have become, through Pornchai, a part of their respective worlds. The grace of the threads of connection that grew out of our struggles behind these prison walls is truly amazing when I step back to see the whole of the tapestry that has been forming. This started with a November 2021 email message from Father Tim to Father John. I get chills just reminiscing that I was a part of this:

“To Fr. John: I am following up the email that Fr. Gordon MacRae sent you regarding my desire to connect my parish with your ongoing ministry in Thailand. It has been my conviction that parishes like the one I pastor here in Mattawa, Canada should connect with a ministry like yours by offering financial and spiritual support for your good efforts. Fr. Gordon writes glowingly of your work with the Vietnamese refugees of Thailand and of course your support of Pornchai Moontri speaks volumes of the evident goodness of your character.

“St. Anne’s Parish in Mattawa, Ontario where I currently minister isn’t wealthy by any standard and our own needs are great. So I cannot promise a great deal of money for your efforts, but I will be asking my parishioners this Advent to step forward and work with me to collect funds for your ministry among some of the poorest of the poor. I will point out to the parish that if we expect God to bless our fundraising effort to save our church, we need to be acting in helping others who are far worse off than we are.”

This just blew me away! It also silenced my Litany of Rumination over my own struggles for they pale by comparison. At Christmas, I received this message from Fr. Tim Moyle:

“Dear Fr. Gordon: The people of St. Anne’s Parish have been deeply involved with various fundraising efforts throughout Advent to support the Refugee Assistance Foundation managed by Father John Hung Le, SVD in Thailand. We have raised $5,100 which represents four times the usual support we receive for the upkeep of our parish. We will forward this amount to Father John’s ministry after the first of the New Year. I thank you for your assistance with this opportunity for my parish to connect with the real needs of the wider Church.”

Many of the Vietnamese people of Thailand are migrant workers living there legally but stranded and barred from employment throughout this long pandemic. They have nothing, and there is no social net to catch them. Father John’s tireless effort IS the social net.

Through the Special Events page that we set up at Beyond These Stone Walls, our readers contributed an additional $4,200 which we have added to the amount raised by Father Tim Moyle’s parish. Father John is surprised and deeply moved by this outreach. This combined amount in U.S. dollars equals nearly 300,000 Thai baht, the unit of currency in Thailand. With this amount, Father John has been able to purchase and distribute much needed food and medical supplies to a large number of families struggling far more than most of us can or should ever imagine. I just received this message from Father John: “We plan to provide each refugee community a medicine cabinet. There are 15 communities that we are serving. Each community has around 20 to 30 families. This would help them in time of common illness.”

Thanks to these funds, Father John has also been able to provide a memorable Christmas to the Thai children in his Order’s HIV clinic in Nong Bua Lamphu Province evident in the photo atop this section.

We will end this post with several photos of Father John Le and Pornchai working with other volunteers to gather and distribute food to these refugee families. Thanks to you and the people of St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, these images speak volumes about the mercy you have shown and the grace that is given back in return.

Thank you for stepping up to the plate. You and Father Tim and his parish have together hit a home run. I wonder now if there is a somewhat less struggling parish out there in need of a Lenten project. Hope springs eternal!

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: On February 2, 2021, I had to tell Pornchai Moontri that his long awaited flight to freedom was cancelled for the third time by ICE officials. This news was devastating, and I had no news to give him hope except the Light of Christ and Truth of Divine Mercy. One week later, on February 8, 2021, after five grueling months in ICE detention, Pornchai boarded a flight to South Korea and then from there to Bangkok. I wrote about his traumatic departure and merciful arrival in a post that is very much worth visiting anew. It is “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.”

I also want to thank readers who have read and shared our hopeful “Bombshell” posts of the last two weeks. I do not yet know how or when this hopeful news will develop further, but it won’t be quick and it won’t be without a struggle. I have a little experience with struggles.

Here are our last two posts in case you missed them:

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest by Ryan A. MacDonald

May the Lord Bless you and keep you. Fr. G

David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme

David Clohessy, activist director of the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), resigned after a SNAP employee sued citing a lawyer kickback scheme.

We do not have many headlines like this one at Beyond These Stone Walls. It has the look and feel of descending into tabloid journalism, but when the headline is true, there is just no higher road to take. This is a story that must be told.

And I am not the first to tell it. David F. Pierre, Jr., author of several books including Sins of the Press and host of TheMediaReport.com published a report entitled, “Lawsuit by Ex-SNAP Insider Exposes Lawyer Kickback Schemes.” And to the surprise of many, the left-leaning, usually SNAP-friendly National Catholic Reporter broke the story first in an by NCR Editor Dennis Coday, “Sex Abuse Advocacy Group SNAP Sued by Former Employee.”

One day later, The National Catholic Register carried the story by Catholic News Agency writer, Kevin Jones entitled, “Did SNAP Receive Kickbacks for Suing the Church?” All three versions of the story have been sent to me by multiple BTSW  readers who asked me to write about it. A week after these accounts emerged, SNAP’s longtime Executive Director, David Clohessy, has mysteriously resigned. This is a development of immense importance in the arena of Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, one of David F. Pierre, Jr.’s most revealing books.

I have an angle on this story that none of the other accounts have, and I’ll get back to that, but first the story itself. In a lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Gretchen Rachel Hammond, SNAP’s former Director of Development, charged that she was terminated from her position after discovering what many have long suspected. The lawsuit alleges…

“… that SNAP routinely accepts financial kickbacks from attorneys, and in exchange for the kickbacks, SNAP refers survivors as potential clients to [these] attorneys, who then file lawsuits … against the Catholic Church. These cases often settle, to the financial benefit of the attorneys and, at times, to the benefit of SNAP, which has received direct payments from survivors’ settlements.”

The named defendants in the lawsuit are [the now-resigned] SNAP President Barbara Blaine, the now-resigned Executive Director David Clohessy, and “Outreach Director” Barbara Dorris who declined to comment for the NCR article. The lawsuit alleges that SNAP claims non-profit federal tax exempt status as an organization with the purpose of providing “support for men and women who have been sexually victimized by members of the clergy [with] moral support, information and advocacy,” while in reality it is a commercial operation “motivated by its directors’ and officers’ personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church.”

Follow the Money

The lawsuit alleges that SNAP and its directors received substantial ‘contributions’ from the same attorneys to whom they refer clients, as much as 81 percent of SNAP’s annual budget in some years. In 2007, a full 38 percent of SNAP’s income for that year came from one “prominent Minnesota attorney who represents clergy abuse survivors.” That attorney is alleged to have provided $169,716 in kickbacks to SNAP in 2007, and $415,000 in 2008. The lawsuit claims that lawyers in California, Chicago, Seattle and Delaware also made major “donations,” some of them in six figures.

Former SNAP official Gretchen Rachel Hammond concludes in her lawsuit that “SNAP does not focus on protecting or helping survivors — it exploits them.” She alleges that SNAP leaders ordered her “not to reveal to anybody that SNAP received donations from attorneys.” She also alleges that in 2011 and 2012, SNAP leaders “concocted a scheme to have attorneys make donations to a front foundation” to conceal “attorneys’ kickbacks” to the organization.

The lawsuit alleges a pattern of collusion between plaintiff lawyers and SNAP officials to maximize publicity for the purpose of fueling bigger payouts while SNAP “callously disregards the real interests of survivors.” It claims that attorneys gave SNAP the drafts of plaintiff claims and other privileged information to generate sensational press releases.

In 2009, at the invitation of Bill Donohue, I wrote a feature article for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights entitled “Due Process for Accused Priests.” The article researched and exposed the practice of mediated settlements and SNAP’s demands to eliminate statutes of limitations for suing Catholic institutions — and only Catholic institutions — decades after civil laws allowed.

Up until that time, I had been spared SNAP’s pattern of public attack and character assassination, but my Catalyst article put me squarely on SNAP’s radar screen. Catholic writer Ryan A MacDonald — in “Why Do SNAP and VOTF Fear the Father Gordon MacRae Case” — quoted a comment by SNAP Director David Clohessy describing me as “a dangerous and demented man.”

On August 6, 2009, RenewAmerica.com writer Matt C. Abbott gave David Clohessy a soapbox for a rebuttal to my article which Mr. Abbott titled, “Imprisoned Priest, Clergy Abuse Survivor Clash.” Seeming to be in fear of the very exposure that the present lawsuit against SNAP now brings, Mr. Clohessy laid out a wildly false set of defensive statements and accusations: “The burden is on the victims, not the accused priests to prove these cases,” he wrote.

At the same time, Clohessy was well aware, and went on to describe, that the vast majority of the claims brought against priests are settled out of court with no findings of fact at all. Clohessy blamed this practice on the bishops who, he wrote, “insist on group settlements” because “they are scared to defend themselves in court.”

Clohessy knew very well that the machinery of making decades-old claims followed by financial compensation depended on asking few questions before writing lucrative checks. Still, he claimed that “many victims desperately want and could benefit from having their ‘day in court’ to expose not just their predator, but those who shielded and protected him.”

Now, according to Ms. Hammond’s lawsuit, it seems that David Clohessy’s annual salary and SNAP’s annual bottom line depended on keeping the machinery of blanket settlements going. In his landmark book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused  David F. Pierre, Jr. described the quality of due process and distinguishing true from false claims in my own diocese:

“In 2002, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, faced allegations from 62 individuals. Rather than spending the time and resources looking into the merits of the accusations ‘Diocesan officials did not even ask for specifics such as the dates and specific allegations for the claims,’ New Hampshire’s Union Leader reported. ‘Some victims made claims in the past month, and because of the timing of the negotiations, gained closure in just a matter of days.’ ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ a pleased and much richer plaintiff attorney admitted.”

— Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, p. 80

Two of the reporters covering this story — Dennis Coday for the National Catholic Reporter  and Kevin Jones for Catholic News Agency — do a disservice to the cause of truth and justice in their reporting of it. They both refer repeatedly to SNAP’s (and the lawyers’) clients as “sex abuse victims” or “sex abuse survivors.”

It is true in some cases, of course, but it is true in most cases only if one accepts SNAP’s and the lawyers’ mythology that the claims against priests for which clients received blanket settlements were demonstrably true, and were measured and tested in some form of investigation. Most were not. Simply throwing money at an accuser does not constitute due process or a determination of truth. Some have been victims of little more than their own greed.

Pope Benedict’s ‘Crimes against Humanity’

SNAP successfully generated and manipulated a climate of outrage to fuel accusations and keep the money flowing. It was a climate few Catholic leaders had the courage to challenge, but one did. In his series of columns entitled “Scandal Time” in First Things magazine, Father Richard John Neuhaus tried to call upon American Catholics to put the brakes on the outrage fueled by SNAP:

“Priests, too, are to be deemed innocent until proven guilty. In the current climate of outrage, we need to be reminded of that truth again. … News reports claiming that a certain number of priests have been charged with abuse and that the claims were settled out of court must not be interpreted to mean that the priests are guilty. Some of them insisted and insist that they are innocent, but bishops were advised by lawyers and insurance companies that a legal defense against the charges would cost much more than settlement out of court.”

Scandal Time, by Richard John Neuhaus, April 2002

After Father Richard John Neuhaus published this cautionary statement, the bishops of the United States met in Dallas in 2002. Under the watchful eyes of a scandal hungry media, the bishops invited two “victim-activists” to address the conference that resulted in the Dallas Charter and the undoing of any priest accused. They were David Clohessy and SNAP president, Barbara Blaine.

SNAP’s national director, David Clohessy previously worked for over a decade for ACORN (Association of Community Organization for Reform Now), a group with aggressive, manipulative, and confrontational activism modeled after the tactics of 1960’s radical Saul Alinsky. Keeping the money flowing depended on creating and maintaining sufficient moral panic.

In August, 2011, the Catholic League published what should have been an explosive document if it had been given fair treatment in the news media. “SNAP Exposed” described in detail the ways David Clohessy and SNAP coached accusers in framing claims in order to maximize and manipulate media coverage.

One of the many egregious examples was SNAP’S recommendation for accusers and their lawyers to “display holy childhood photos” before news cameras adding, “If you don’t have holy childhood photos, we can provide you with photos of other kids that can be held up for the cameras.”

A month later, seemingly in retaliation for exposing the truth, SNAP co-opted a radically left legal activist group, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, to file a “Crimes Against Humanity” charge against Pope Benedict XVI with the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

And in seeming retaliation for my 2009 article, “Due Process for Accused Priests,” I became an unwitting pawn in the attack on the Pope. David Clohessy and the Center for Constitutional Rights used an untrue and thoroughly debunked claim against me to bolster the charge against Pope Benedict. In her courageous article “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film,” journalist JoAnn Wypijewski unmasked the shame of this tactic in her in-depth coverage of the film, “Spotlight”:

“The film’s advertisement for SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, … elides SNAP’s belief that wrongful prosecutions are a minor price to pay in pursuit of its larger mission, something the newspaper didn’t much concern itself with either as it collected its Pulitzer for service in the public interest; something even the Center for Constitutional Rights disregarded in 2011 when it joined with SNAP to file a grotesque brief to the International Criminal Court demanding “investigation and prosecution” of the Vatican for crimes against humanity.

“The CCR brief failed, but its unchallenged acceptance of accusations, anonymous complaints, prosecution arguments, grand jury reports, commission findings with no benefit of cross examination and no recognized rights of the accused is breathtaking, especially when one considers that CCR was simultaneously and courageously arguing on behalf of Guantanamo detainees …

“To CCR’s shame, Father MacRae is specifically mentioned in that brief, with respect to allegations of videotape (that is, child porn), which prosecutors threw in at sentencing but for which there is no evidence, according to the lead detective in the case cited by [The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy] Rabinowitz.”

When I learned of this grave injustice, I tried to write to the Center for Constitutional Rights — It seemed a prophetic sign that its headquarters is located at 666 Broadway in Manhattan — but there was never a response. I wrote of the final outcome of CCR’s shameful complicity with SNAP in a BTSW  post, “The International Criminal Court has Dismissed SNAP’s Last Gasp.”

Perhaps I was premature. SNAP’S last gasp now seems to be the current lawsuit by one of its own directors. David Clohessy has claimed that his resignation has nothing to do with the current lawsuit exposing SNAP’s alleged financial kickbacks from clients’ lawyers.

It now remains to be seen whether David Clohessy and SNAP will follow their own advice about out-of-court settlements, and allow this lawsuit to go to a full and open trial before a civil jury.

And perhaps a RICO investigation — the government’s acronym for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations — might also now be in order.

As I come to the end of this post, it has just been announced that SNAP founder, Barbara Blaine, has also tendered her resignation. In her brief statement she insists that it has nothing to do with the lawsuit which she says has no merit “like all the other lawsuits” against SNAP. [See the report on David F. Pierre, Jr.’s TheMediaReport.com: SNAP Founder and President Barbara Blaine Now Resigns As Pressure Mounts From Multiple Lawsuits.]

Editor’s Note: David Clohessy and Barbara Blaine ultimately settled the lawsuit by Gretchen Rachel Hammond for an undisclosed amount after demanding and receiving a signed nondisclosure agreement.

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Keene New Hampshire sex crimes Detective James McLaughlin developed claims against a Catholic priest while suppressing exculpatory evidence and coercing witnesses.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald is a response to Fr. Gordon MacRae’s recent, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire Laurie List Bombshell.”

January 26, 2022 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Last week, Fr. Gordon MacRae wrote here about the manipulation of facts and witnesses in his 1994 trial on charges brought forward by former Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin. This manipulation included allegations that he coerced and threatened a witness, Debra Collett, to alter her first-hand testimony because it did not agree with his bias. Another witness, a former accuser of Father MacRae who recanted, alleged that McLaughlin presented him with a proffered bribe to concoct a false claim against MacRae and conspired to attempt perjured testimony before a grand jury.

These are very serious allegations. They were uncovered years after the trial by former FBI Special Agent James Abbott who conducted a three year investigation of this case. Mr. Abbott obtained signed statements from these witnesses and others that became part of a habeas corpus petition seeking to free Father MacRae from an unjust imprisonment.

As MacRae’s post linked above points out, New Hampshire judges at both state and federal levels overlooked these allegations, and declined to allow an evidentiary hearing to permit these witnesses to testify under oath. From a political standpoint, this may be business as usual in New Hampshire. From a justice standpoint, it is most disturbing.

At the start of 2022, advocates for Father MacRae learned that former Detective James McLaughlin appears on a newly published list of police officers with professional misconduct or credibility issues previously held in secret personnel files. The list had been held in secret for years by the NH Attorney General, but a recent legal decision required its public release. Formally called the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule,” the list is also known as the “Laurie List” for the NH Supreme Court case that initiated it.

It came as no surprise to discover Detective McLaughlin on this list for a 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records.” That was nine years before MacRae’s trial. Over fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brady v. Maryland that state and federal prosecutors are required under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution to reveal to defendants and legal counsel all exculpatory evidence uncovered in the investigation of a case.

The failure of prosecutors to reveal the “falsification of records” charge against Detective McLaughlin was a violation of what is known as the “Brady Rule” that can and should overturn a conviction. As a minimum, it constitutes new evidence that can reopen a case for judicial review of the entire case.

Advocates first learned of this Brady violation from an article published at InDepthNH.org by Damien Fisher entitled, “AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release.” The article, though largely accurate, contained some misinformation. It described MacRae as a “former” Catholic priest which is not accurate. It also cited that MacRae “claimed that McLaughlin offered to pay cash to one of his accusers.” That claim was not made by MacRae, but by the accuser himself who recanted in a signed statement obtained by former FBI Agent James Abbott.

Politics and Prosecution

The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, which publishes InDepthNH.org, is continuing its lawsuit seeking full and unredacted disclosure of the “Laurie List” in its entirety. A more recent article by Damien Fisher, “Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment” (January 11, 2022) detailed a clear case of entrapment by McLaughlin. The article describes the original “Laurie List” charge of “Falsification of Records” by McLaughlin as “Falsification of Evidence.”

Noted Boston lawyers Harvey Silverglate and Alan Dershowitz are long-time associates in the cause of preservation of our civil rights and civil liberties. Mr. Dershowitz wrote the Forward for Silverglate’s acclaimed 2009 book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. The following is an excerpt:

“Our system of investigation and prosecution is unique in the world. We [in America] have politicized the role of prosecutor, not only at the federal level but in all of our states and counties as well. Nowhere else are prosecutors (or judges) elected. Indeed, it is unthinkable in most parts of the world to have prosecutors run for office, make campaign promises and solicit contributions. In the United States, prosecutors are not only elected but the job is a stepping stone to higher office as evidenced by the fact that nearly every congressman or senator who ever practiced law once served as a prosecutor. Winning becomes more important than doing justice.” (p. xxv)

There were two prosecutors at Father Gordon MacRae’s 1994 trial. One inexplicably took his own life several years later after the first articles challenging this case appeared in The Wall Street Journal and were published along with the items in our Documents page at a site that preceded MacRae’s blog. The lead prosecutor was Bruce Elliot Reynolds. At the time of the high profile trial, he used its notoriety to campaign for another Assistant County Attorney in his office who was running to unseat the incumbent. In New Hampshire, a County Attorney is equivalent to a District Attorney in other states.

There was a lot that went on behind the scenes of this trial. The lead prosecutor was reined in by the judge for sensational media statements about the trial which could (and did) taint the jury pool. The trial drew lots of local news coverage. As it got under way, Mr. Reynolds was chastised by Judge Arthur Brennan for wearing his campaign button before news cameras.

On the day after the trial, for reasons unknown, Reynolds was fired by the winner of the election, the incumbent against whom he was campaigning. Sometime later, Reynolds decided to run for County Attorney himself. His campaign cited his “vigorous” prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae as his most significant “tough on crime” career achievement. Mr. Reynolds was then exposed for some sort of tax matter, dropped out of the race, and left the state. He relocated to the State of Wisconsin.

Prior to the trial, Reynolds sent a letter to MacRae’s defense counsel which laid out terms for a strikingly lenient plea deal for a sentence of one to three years in prison if MacRae would simply plead guilty. He refused this offer because he is not guilty. He refused a similar offer in the middle of trial when the offer was reduced to one-to-two years. The prosecutor asked what it would take to get MacRae to take the deal. His lawyer’s answer: “The dismissal of charges because he is innocent.”

It seemed clear throughout pretrial motion hearings and the trial itself that the real prosecution of this case was carried out by Detective James McLaughlin, the sole sex crimes detective among the 25 or so officers in the Keene, NH Police Department. An account of how Detective McLaughlin investigated this matter is laid out in “Wrongful Convictions: the Other Police Misconduct.”

A Conspiracy of Fraud

This trial was a classic example of why the blending of politics and the justice system often defeats justice. The trial was not about arriving at the truth. It was all about winning, at any cost, because political aspirations and careers were at stake. In no other arena but the political could a prosecution accept without question testimony from a grown man who claimed that he was sexually assaulted five times by a Catholic priest a dozen years earlier at age 15, but returned to be assaulted again and again for a total of five times because he repressed all memory of the vicious assaults from week to week.

Only political blindness could deny and obfuscate the fact that a $200,000 settlement from a Catholic diocese is a possible enticement for perjury and fraud. As Alan Dershowitz observed above, “Winning becomes more important than doing justice.” Such an arena requires the work of an unethical crusader to mold and shape a case toward that end. In Detective James McLaughlin, the State had just such a crusader.

At the “Documents” section on this site is a three-part case history which was the result of substantial research. It includes a most telling document entitled, “United States District Court: Gordon J. MacRae v. James F. McLaughlin, et al.” It requires a little background. Prior to the 1994 MacRae trial, the suppression of evidence and one-sided media coverage was so great that Father MacRae felt his only recourse was to file a lawsuit of his own. It lays out the bold but simple truth of this matter. No one refuted even one of its many claims.

The lawsuit was upheld and survived several attempts to have it thrown out, but in the end it had to be dismissed without prejudice — meaning without a judicial ruling — when MacRae was convicted at trial. He could only bring the lawsuit again if the underlying convictions were resolved. This document lays out perhaps the most chilling factual abuse of police power in this or virtually any other case. It is well worth a review.

Prior to this trial MacRae voluntarily took, and conclusively passed, two polygraph examinations with a noted expert. Some of Detective McLaughlin police reports made allusions to the possible creation of child pornography by MacRae. At the time of his sentencing, Judge Arthur Brennan cited this, claiming that “This Court has heard clear and compelling evidence that you created pornography of your victims.” This never surfaced at all during the trial, but the ugly accusation at sentencing was later used for a purely evil endeavor. It was used by SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, to bolster a crimes against humanity charge targetting Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Mercifully the effort failed. Eleven years later in 2005 Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal questioned Detective McLaughlin about the nature and substance of that evidence. “There was never any evidence of child pornography,” he admitted. In this entire matter, that was the only time McLaughlin told the truth.

During the trial, two court observers reported spotting a woman in the gallery giving hand signals to Thomas Grover to begin crying during his testimony. It came after he testified that he was unaware of any plan to sue the Catholic Church. He was asked by MacRae’s counsel to reveal to whom he went first with his accusations: the police or a lawyer. At this point, Ms. Pauline Goupil (now Pauline Goupil Vachon) was observed from the gallery signalling Grover to cry. He was riveted upon her for his entire testimony. At that point she was seen placing her fingers below her eye and then down her cheek in a pantomime of crying. In response, 27-year-old Grover wept loudly and at length. The two witnesses who observed it reported it to the defense counsel who then approached the bench. Judge Brennan cleared the jury from the court and called Ms. Goupil to the stand. She identified herself as a therapist retained by Thomas Grover at the behest of his attorney. All treatment records of Mr. Grover were to be reviewed by the defense pretrial, but neither Pauline Goupil’s records nor the fact of her treatment of Grover were revealed.

Hard evidence surfaced pretrial that Detective McLaughlin conducted some of his one-sided investigation, not from his Keene police office, but from 60 miles away in the law office of Robert Upton, the personal injury lawyer who brought a lawsuit on behalf of Thomas Grover and obtained a $200,000 settlement from the Diocese of Manchester. Family members of Grover revealed years later that Grover was coached to “act crazy” before the jury, to appear vulnerable, and to commit perjury in regard to some of his testimony. When asked who did this coaching, their answer was Pauline Goupil and Detective McLaughlin. These family members, the former wife and stepson of Thomas Grover, were also barred from giving testimony under oath. The two people who observed Pauline Goupil’s courtroom witness tampering were also barred from testifying.

A public debt is owed to the NH Center for Public Interest Journalism which publishes InDepthNH.org. The Center continues an open lawsuit contending that the new law that only partially released the “Laurie List” does not protect the public right to know its extent.

In a 2003 Concord Monitor article — now apparently removed from the Internet — fellow Keene, NH officer Sgt. Hal Brown defended McLaughlin’s shady tactics and actions:

“It’s our job to ferret the criminal element out of society.”

I believe Father MacRae would today agree with me that those are very scary words!

Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post on your social media.

You may also be interested in these related articles:

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest

A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph LaPlante’s Court

Several years after sentencing Father Gordon MacRae to life in prison, Judge Arthur Brennan was arrested in Washington, DC in 2011 during a protest in which he tried to occupy the US Capitol Building.

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Detective James McLaughlin shows up on a previously secret list of dishonest police for falsifying records. In 1994 he falsified the case against Fr Gordon MacRae.

January 19, 2022

I was hoping to find someone else to write this, but information happened fast and time is critical. So I will write it myself even though I have an obvious conflict of interest. At this writing I am in my 28th year of unjust imprisonment. In that time, every avenue of appeal has been exhausted with no hope for justice. All resources for further appeals are also exhausted. And, frankly, so am I.

Many well-meaning friends and readers have nonetheless urged me in recent years to continue to explore and pursue any means to address what seems for most a clear injustice. My 67-year prison sentence — after rejecting plea deal offers to serve one year — just doesn’t sit well with fair-minded, rational people. That seems especially so given that if I were in fact guilty or at least willing to pretend so in 1994, I would have left prison 26 years ago.

From seemingly out of nowhere, a new development has arisen at the start of 2022. I am told that it has the potential to either right a wrong and set me free or simply fade away like all previous endeavors that left me to die in prison. I had come to accept that latter reality. My focus in the last two years, like that of my friend and patron, St. Maximilian Kolbe, was to set someone else free. I am proud of that accomplishment. It is all I have to show for this injustice. Then, at the very close of 2021, a bombshell exploded on New Year’s Eve.

The New Hampshire LEACT Commission

I received a message that day from an old friend, Joseph Lascaze. Like Pornchai Moontri, Joseph went to prison at age 18. Also like Pornchai, he accomplished something extraordinary in that time. After a few aimless years lost in an aimless prison system, Joseph fought against many obstacles to educate himself. Over those years, he became a close friend to both me and Pornchai. Prison is not a good place to grow up, but Joseph did, and in spite of all obstacles he became an exemplary citizen and gifted young man.

Joseph was released in 2019 and is today the “Smart Justice Campaign Manager” for the New Hampshire Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He also serves by invitation of NH Governor Christopher Sununu on the Governor’s LEACT Commission (Law Enforcement Accountability, Community, and Transparency). Joseph has been well received and even honored by New Hampshire law enforcement for his candor and unprecedented contributions to this Commission.

Among many other projects, Joseph has worked with LEACT to make public a previously secret document held by the NH Attorney General entitled the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule.” It is more popularly known as the “Laurie List” named for the judicial ruling that created it. The ACLU, along with several NH media outlets, sued the state under the Freedom of Information Act to make the list public.

Joseph’s New Year’s Eve message was read to me by another friend who noted that Joseph attached an article he urgently wanted me to see. The article, by Damien Fisher at InDepthNH.org, was “AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release.” In short, the ACLU lawsuit settlement dictates that the secret ‘Laurie List’ is now to be a public list.

The potential bombshell for me is this: It turns out that Keene, NH Detective James F. McLaughlin, who choreographed the case against me in 1994, was sanctioned and placed on the list for “Falsification of Records” in 1985, nine years before my trial. Another recent InDepthNH article by Nancy West,entitled “AG Removes 28 Names From ‘Laurie List’ of Dishonest Police Outside the Law,” describes what this development potentially means:

“Officers placed on the list sustained discipline for dishonesty, excessive force, or mental illness in confidential personnel files .... If a criminal defendant finds out that such evidence existed, even many years later, he or she can petition the court for a new trial or try to have the charges dropped altogether.”

InDepthNH, November 24, 2021

More than a half century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in ‘Brady v. Maryland’ that criminal defendants must receive all exculpatory evidence or their conviction could be overturned or vacated entirely.

The Suppression of Exculpatory Evidence

Needless to say, neither I nor my defense were made aware of the 1985 falsification of records infraction against Detective McLaughlin before my trial. But that was certainly not the only suppression of exculpatory evidence. In multiple police reports prepared by McLaughlin before trial — reports which steered the prosecutor’s case — McLaughlin made repeated references to tape recorded phone calls and interviews from which he made specific claims.

Some of the subjects on those tapes claimed that McLaughlin grossly misquoted them or included statements that they never made at all. Despite a court order to turn those recordings over to my defense, every one of them disappeared before trial. McLaughlin claimed, for example, that a specific tape was “recycled” and a transcript that his report referred to was never made due to a “clerical error.” Years later, McLaughlin sent that same tape to The Wall Street Journal despite the fact that it contained none of what he said it contained. Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2005, Dorothy Rabinowitz addressed this:

“On the police tape, an otherwise bewildered-sounding Fr. MacRae is consistently clear about one thing — that he in no way solicited [anyone] ... for sex or anything else. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says more than once, his tone that of a man who feels that there must, indeed, be something for him to understand about the charge and its causes that eludes him. . . . He listens as the police assure him that he can save all the bad publicity. ‘Our concern is, let’s get it taken care of, let’s not blow it out of proportion. You know what the media does,’ they warned. He could avoid all the stories, protect the church, let it all go away quietly.”

A Priest’s Story Part 1: The trial, April 27, 2005

There was no evidence at all in the case brought against me in 1994. In New Hampshire — as in many states since the 1980s — no evidence is needed to convict someone accused of a sexual offense. No evidence was admitted at my trial beyond the word of 27-year old accuser, Thomas Grover, a man with a criminal record who stood to gain $200,000 for making the claim.

The story of how that trial unfolded has received much attention over the years. Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer-prize winning member of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, published two major articles on my trial and its back story in 2005 and a third in 2013 entitled “The Trials of Father MacRae.”

These articles sparked some national interest, but no one could have predicted the tidal wave of accusations against Catholic priests that arose in 2002 and continued until the present day. Other media — including most in the Catholic media — decided to look the other way in any case of injustice against a priest.

Seeking justice has been a steep uphill battle. In 2009, at about the same time this blog began, a new investigator began a fresh look at the case. A decorated career FBI Special Agent Supervisor, he ended his investigation in 2012 concluding, bluntly:

“In my three year investigation of this matter, I found no evidence that MacRae committed these crimes or any crimes. Indeed, the only ‘evidence’ was the statements of Thomas Grover which have been discredited by those who were around him at the time including members of his own family.”

Affidavit of former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, Ret.

Alarming New Evidence Alarmingly Ignored

When no evidence is needed to put a man in prison there is no evidence to dismantle or challenge. Nonetheless, Mr. Abbott’s investigation uncovered many things, including allegations of misconduct by Detective James McLaughlin. New witnesses were interviewed and they bravely came forward to write and sign statements in the case. Their evidence is profiled by David F. Pierre at The Media Report under the title, “Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest.”

Among the many statements described and quoted there is one from Steven Wollschlager obtained by the Investigator. Steven, facing a drug charge, described being summoned to the office of Detective McLaughlin where, he alleges, he was offered a direct monetary bribe in exchange for a fabricated accusation against me. He was given $50 in cash and told that “a large sum of money” could be obtained in a civil suit. “Life could go a lot easier for you with a large sum of money,” McLaughlin allegedly said.

Steven wrote that the detective “knew I was using drugs at the time and could have been influenced to say anything for money.” Enticed by the prospect, Steven agreed to come up with a fabricated claim. He then received a summons to appear before a Grand Jury to help bring a new indictment. It was a testament to his integrity that his conscience, instead of the proffered bribe, became his guide. He decided that he could not do this “to someone who only tried to help me.” He was then told to go away because “we won’t be needing anything more from you.”

I write that these witnesses “bravely” decided to come forward because some of them were threatened by Detective McLaughlin before my trial. One witness, former drug abuse counselor Debra Collett who treated Thomas Grover, denied that he accused me during therapy sessions as he alleged. She described being “bullied,” “coerced,” “overtly threatened” by this detective when she would not say what he wanted to hear. “I will come to your house and physically drag you out of it,” she was told.

Ms. Collett described that the entire interview was recorded, but that tape, like other exculpatory evidence, “disappeared” before my trial. It is shocking that judges reviewing my appeals declined to even hear from these witnesses. Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld described how such misconduct by police was sometimes covered up by judges. From their acclaimed book, Actual Innocence:

“For 64 percent of DNA exonerations analyzed by the Innocence Project, misconduct by police or prosecutors played an important role in the convictions. Lies, cheating, distortions at the lower levels of the system are excused at the higher ones.”

Barry Scheck, Actual Innocence, p. 225

That is exactly what happened when my habeas corpus appeal and its accompanying memorandum of Law was filed in 2012. One judge after another summarily declined to hold any hearing that would give these witnesses a chance to go on record. One possible reason for this is that Detective McLaughlin has brought forward hundreds of cases with an almost 100-percent conviction record through offers of lenient plea deals.

I believe judges are reluctant to deal with the “Pandora’s Box” of challenged convictions if this officer’s challenged integrity becomes public. I wrote more about this in a March 2021 post, “Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct.”

I was entirely demoralized by the judicial lack of regard for truth and due process in this story. A witness, who directly accused a sworn officer of offering a bribe to suborn perjury before a grand jury has been simply ignored and silenced. I saw no further path if judges can willfully decline to hear such testimony.

So my attention turned then to assisting my friend, Pornchai Moontri, whose plight was even more brutally unjust than my own. I made a promise to him, to myself, and to God that I would use whatever time I had left in life to do all I could to bring forward the truth of his situation and free him.

With help from readers, I did just that. The person who arranged for him to be brought here from Thailand at age 11 — only to be horrendously exploited and sexually abused — was found and brought to justice in 2018. He pled “no contest” to forty felony charges of sexual assault of a minor in Penobscot (Maine) Superior Court in September 2018, but was sentenced (are you sitting down?) to zero prison time and 18 years probation.

I had no reason left to expect anything even remotely resembling justice from our justice system. But then, yet another ray of hope surfaced just at the dawn of a new year.

I do not know what to do. The prospect of possibly emerging as a free man after over 27 years unjustly in prison is daunting. The very infrastructure of my life has long since disintegrated. Even in prison I remain a priest, but in freedom I doubt that my bishop would do anything to help me. I will be 69 years old in April, 2022. At the age at which most people plan for retirement, I would be faced with starting life anew. But how? Where? Would I now be required to sacrifice priesthood for freedom?

It will be many months before there is clear direction on what comes next. I will keep you posted ... .

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ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Please visit our new “Documents” section in the Navigation Bar for more information about this story. Please also share this post. You may be interested in the following relevant posts:

Wrongful Conviction: The Other Police Misconduct

The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz

The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud by Ryan MacDonald

LEACT commissioners include, from left, Rep. David Welch, Joseph Lascaze, John Scippa, Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis, and Lt. Mark Morrison of Londonderry.

For The Lovely Bones Author Alice Sebold, Justice Hurts

Acclaimed author Alice Sebold was traumatized by a violent rape at age 18 and then again 40 years later when she learned that an innocent man went to prison for it.

January 12, 2022

Some years back, in an earlier version of this blog, I had a practice of honoring writers whose works carried me through long holiday weekends of extended confinement. I called it “The Stuck Inside Literary Award.”

Among the great writers I cited were Graham Greene for The Power and the Glory, J.R.R. Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings, Patrick O’Brian for Master and Commander (and 21 other titles in his Aubrey-Maturin Series), Taylor Caldwell for Dear and Glorious Physician, Fr. Michael Gaitley for The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, Tom Clancy for The Hunt for Red October (and 22 other titles in his Jack Ryan Series), and Alice Sebold for The Lovely Bones.

These books and writers took me out of prison for journeys into history, adventure, espionage, mythology, Sacred Scripture, and, in that last on my list, a journey into a traumatized writer’s soul. I cannot fathom today what exactly brought me to read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. A New York Times Book Review described it as the story of a 14-year-old girl, a victim of rape and murder, who narrates the tale from Heaven while pondering the fate of her family, her friends, and her killer.

I was in equal measure horrified and hopeful. I suppose that was partly out of empathy. I was living in prison with someone who had been such a victim. For 15 years I prayed and hoped to restore for my friend some of the humanity, safety, trust, and well being that had been taken from him. He did not die, but sometimes he wished he had. His soul had nonetheless been nearly slain and I was his last hope to restore that too. But it was ultimately this review by Ron Charles in the Christian Science Monitor that caused me to take up The Lovely Bones:

“Don’t start The Lovely Bones unless you can finish it. The book begins with more horror than you can imagine, but closes with more beauty than you could hope for ... Alice Sebold has done something miraculous here.”

I was skeptical, but at the time I was also seeking a breakthrough for my friend. How could any writer take such a story and turn it into something redemptive? I had friends whose life experiences included sexual trauma and some of them also read The Lovely Bones on my recommendation. One described it as “mesmerizing.” Katherine Bouton at the New York Times Book Review wrote that Alice Sebold treated an “almost unthinkable subject with a kind of mysterious grace.” One friend told me that she found healing and peace in it.

So I brought it back from the prison library one day and read it, stunned and mesmerized, over one long weekend in 2017. I could not put it down. Then I wrote this brief review of it in a 2017 post:

“During the seemingly endless Independence Day week in July, we were all trapped in an eight-man cell and locked in with no outside at all for several days. And they were very hot days. Suffice it to say, it was an ordeal.

“But it was made far less so by a riveting book that took me far beyond my own woes. The book is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I have since suggested this novel to some who could not read it — at least, not yet. I have never before come across an author who can take a topic as spiritually brutal as the loss of a child and turn it into an awe-inspiring tale of redemption.

“It’s a tough story about the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl who narrates the account from Heaven. It is not easy to read — at least, not in its beginning, and it was made more difficult still by my knowledge that the author is herself a survivor of rape as a young adult.

“From the sheer depths of such pain and loss, Alice Sebold has crafted an astonishing novel that finds light in the darkest of places. I don’t want to say more. The recipient of my ‘These Stone Walls annual Stuck Inside Literary Award’ is Alice Sebold for The Lovely Bones. I bow in humble awe of both her burden and her gift.”

Alice Sebold’s “Lucky” Memoir

But now I must say more, for Alice Sebold’s story has taken turns even darker still. After reading The Lovely Bones, I ordered a copy of Sebold’s acclaimed memoir, Lucky (Little, Brown & Company, 1999). I had already known, from the jacket of her novel about her trauma at age 18. I wanted to understand the writer who could create that fictitious tormented teenage girl in The Lovely Bones and place her in a state of redemption while leading her readers there as well.

“Lucky” did not spare me at all. The first dozen pages were a courageous but horrific account of the brutality suffered by Sebold in real life during one night on an innocent walk in a Syracuse, New York park. I shook with rage as I forced myself to read what she had endured and somehow survived. She chose “Lucky” as her title for the memoir because that was what police said to her as she recounted the crime. She was “lucky” because a previous rape victim had been murdered.

Just days earlier, I had spent an all-nighter in my cell with my friend and roommate as he articulated through sobs, for the first time in his life, the horror inflicted on him as a 12-13 year-old child brought to America from Thailand against his will. The degrading humiliation of violent sexual assault occurred as many as 40 times before he escaped to a life of homeless despair at age 14.

Because I wrote about that story, his abuser was finally brought to justice in 2018, but one could hardly call it “justice.” After a plea of “no contest” to forty felony counts of rape, that man was sentenced to zero time in prison and eighteen years probation. Then he returned to his lakeside Oregon home. Let that sink in.

I shook with rage then too. Though my friend was not murdered, his mother was. It happened on the Island of Guam when she learned of what he suffered and resolved to expose the perpetrator. You have read this story. I wrote it myself in “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.”

Ms. Sebold was a freshman at Syracuse University when her brutal attack took place. Perhaps the most chilling scene in Lucky came six months later when she spotted her rapist walking happily along a downtown Syracuse street. They made eye-contact, and he smiled as he walked toward her. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he said. As I read, I found myself willing her to run and scream. There was a police officer nearby, but Alice was silently frozen in time and space before fleeing. Of this scene, she wrote:

“I knew him but I could not make myself speak. I needed all my energy to focus on believing that I was not under his control again. . . He had no fear. It had been nearly six months... since I lay under him in a tunnel on a bed of broken glass. He was laughing because he had gotten away with it, because he had raped before me, and because he would rape again. My devastation was a pleasure for him.”

Lucky, p. 103

She turned a corner as she quickly walked away, then she looked over her shoulder to see him nonchalantly chatting with the police officer. She was to have a seminar that afternoon with the famous author, Tobias Wolff. She fled toward the school to tell him that she could not attend. When she explained that she was going to the police, he wisely advised her to “Remember everything!” Recounting this, she wrote that she had read Wolff’s own story in This Boy’s Life, and learned from it. I read it too, and learned the same lesson Alice learned . . .

“ That memory could save, that it had power, that it was often the only recourse of the powerless, the oppressed, or the brutalized.”

Lucky, p. 106

I was stricken by this. After over 27 years as a wrongly convicted prisoner, I felt a strange solidarity with Alice as I read of her ordeal. I was willing her to not shrink from that awful night, not to suppress its pain, but rather to imprint upon her memory every detail. As our readers know, another famous writer once impressed the same upon me as she wrote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” (Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013):

“MacRae has no difficulty imagining any possibility, fitting for a man with encyclopedic command of the process that brought him to this pass: every detail, every date, every hard fact. Still, after two decades this prisoner of the State remains, against all probability, staunch in spirit, strong in the faith that the wheels of justice turn, however slowly.”

When Justice Itself Is Raped

The year was 1981. After talking with Tobias Wolff, Alice went immediately to the campus library where she laid out in writing and a sketch every detail of what she experienced and saw on the street that day. University and City of Syracuse Police arrived. There was a quick dispute about jurisdiction, then Syracuse police headed to the location of the sighting to effect an arrest. “We’re gonna get this puke,” vowed one of the officers.

In her memoir, Lucky, Alice Sebold gave the suspect — soon to be a defendant — a pseudonym, Gregory Madison. His real name was Anthony Broadwater, an African American man. He was 21 then and is 62 today. Charged with rape, robbery and assault after eyewitness identification by Sebold, Broadwater entered a plea of not guilty and maintained his innocence throughout the hasty two-day trial but was convicted by a judge. He had waived his right to a jury trial. Beyond the eyewitness identification, the only other evidence against him was a hair sample taken from the crime scene. After conviction, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

By the time the case went to trial, Sebold was 19 and Broadwater was 22. As he was led off to prison, Alice was finally paroled from her own prison. She was finally free of the post-traumatic reaction when approached by any young black man. She could finally walk the streets of Syracuse without constantly checking over her shoulder. Anthony Broadwater spent the next 16 years in the notorious New York State Prison system serving brutal time in Attica and Sing Sing. A convicted sex offender, it was now his turn to look over his shoulder, every moment fearing the harsh reprisals that often come to those in prison deemed guilty of such crimes. It was now Anthony’s turn to be traumatized.

There was just one problem: Anthony Broadwater was entirely innocent of this crime, or any crime. He had no connection at all with the vicious rape of Alice Sebold. As a young african American man, a population grossly over-represented in America’s prisons, Broadwater lacked the resources to successfully fight a wrongful conviction. His only asset was his own inner integrity. He was denied parole five times because he would not admit guilt.

Decades after the horrible crime that now had two victims, forensic science formally rejected the legitimacy of hair analysis as evidence of guilt. The only other evidence was Alice Sebold’s eyewitness identification, but a big red flag was ignored by police. After the chilling scene of spotting the man she believed to be her rapist from twenty feet away on the street that day, Alice later picked the wrong man out of a police lineup from just ten feet away. The police, believing that they had their suspect, simply ignored the lineup snafu.

The scene on the street, recounted from Sebold’s memoir cited above, turned out to be a grave misunderstanding that required a parallax view — a view of the same scene from another angle. It turned out that Mr. Broadwater was not looking at or calling out to Alice Sebold, but rather was looking past her calling to the young police officer standing about twelve feet behind her. He was the officer she saw him chatting with as she fled down a side street in terror. When this case was revisited forty years later, the officer, long since retired, verified that he knew Mr. Broadwater and recalled that conversation with him.

The unjust tragedy to befall Anthony Broadwater was not only sixteen years of unjust imprisonment, but rather the twenty-two years that followed. He lived those years in another kind of prison, victimized yet again by having his name and identifying information on the draconian public sex offender registry. This prevented him from ever securing meaningful employment, public acceptance, or even secure housing. He was turned away from every job he applied for, and worked only odd jobs and hauling debris. Desperate, he registered for vocational classes in HVAC but was barred from campus. Mr Broadwater recounted those years:

“It’s hard to have that stigma on your back. Hard and shameful. You don’t want to be introduced to anybody. To this day, I can count on two hands how many people have invited me into their house.”

Anthony Broadwater went to prison in 1981 and was exonerated at the end of November 2021. The story was first reported in The Post Standard at Syracuse.com by staff reporter Douglass Dowty. His moving article, “Behind the ‘Lucky’ exoneration: 2 lives filled with pain and a man’s 40-year fight for justice” swept the country in the weeks before Christmas.

My Own Parallax View

What am I to make of this story? As a wrongfully convicted man who has served over 27 years in prison for a crime that never took place, I am torn in my empathy for both victims of this tragedy. I am horrified by what happened to Anthony Broadwater, but we are losing our humanity if we are not at least equally horrified by what happened to Alice Sebold.

None of this was her fault and I do not see what she could have done differently. It is not up to a traumatized 18-year-old to solve and investigate crime. This egregious failure of the justice system is not her’s to grieve. But grieve she does. Putting the now discredited junk science of hair analysis before the jury was not her fault. The wrongful eyewitness identification was not her fault. In cases that have resulted in irrefutable DNA exoneration, some 70-percent involved convictions based upon faulty eyewitness identification. This was — or should have been — well known to police in 1981. In “U.S. v. Wade,” a 1967 case, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote:

“The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.”

A part of my own grief over this story is that Alice Sebold has been victimized once by the unknown rapist who so devastated her life; once by the false notion over 40 years that she has been safe from this evil attacker only to learn that he could have been lurking in the near distance for all that time; and finally a third victimization from living with the knowledge that her testimony so grievously harmed an innocent man because all investigation ended when she pointed in her trauma at the wrong guy.

I have also been where Anthony Broadwater has been. I am, in fact, there right now. I know from his grueling experience that the same fate would befall me if I ever left prison without being exonerated. At age 69, I too would be forced onto a lifelong public registry of shame. As such, I would never be allowed to serve, or even identify, as a priest. My bishop and the wider Church would exercise their one-size-fits-all solution, and simply discard me forty years after my own claimed offenses which never actually happened at all. Even when prison is over, it is never truly over. This is why our “ABOUT” page proclaims:

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”

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Urgent note to readers: Next at Beyond These Stone Walls we will unveil a bombshell revelation that could deeply impact Father Gordon MacRae and the remainder of his life and priesthood.

You may also like to visit these relevant posts at Beyond These Stone Walls:

Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct

Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment

NEW: Documents in the Father Gordon MacRae Case

In 2022: Epiphany, Pro-Life Progress, Papal Paradox

If you are burdened by the affairs of Church and State in this age, take a knee and prepare for an epiphany. The Way of the Lord calls forth life and liberty.

January 5, 2022

Instead of yet another failed New Year resolution, I am planning on having another epiphany in 2022. I admit that I have had the same plan at the start of every New Year leading up to this one since about 1994, but my expectation that this will be “the” year of my epiphany is simply what we call “hope.” Despite the struggles all around us, there were little glimmers of that hope in recent years, but the politics of this age are oppressive and heavy. Like most of us who struggle today, my spirit is occupied with many heavy things.

The word, Epiphany comes from the Greek, “epiphaneia” meaning, “appearance” or “manifestation.” When used as a noun, it usually refers to a spiritual enlightenment, an understanding that comes about through a sudden intuitive realization. I once wrote of such an epiphany that was especially popular with Star Trek fans. You need not be one to appreciate it, and it might even surprise you. I wrote it as a Linkedin article entitled, “Gene Roddenberry and Captain Kirk’s Star Trek Epiphany.”

Used in the upper case, however, Epiphany refers to an event: the revelation to the Magi, led by a star to Bethlehem, that Jesus Christ is Savior. It is an event described in the Gospel According to Matthew (2:1-12). In the Eastern Church the event of Epiphany recalls instead the Baptism of Jesus and God’s revelation about Him (Matthew 3:13-17). Epiphany has been observed in the Roman Rite on the Sixth of January since A.D. 194. This year it has been dislodged by its proximity to the Sunday obligation. It marks the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas. I wrote of its history and meaning in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.”

The world we live in has changed dramatically since the dawn of the Twentieth Century. I was shocked to read recently that the average life span of a man in 1900 was between 35 and 40 years of age. In the decades to follow, despite two world wars and a number of plagues, the average life span has been slowly extending. I wonder if there is a corollary between our longer life span today and our tendency to drift away from God under the pressures of this culture.

In a recent post, I wrote of an event in my life that occurred in March of 1992. In that post, I called it my “Great Comeuppance.” In looking back over the three decades since, I realize that the event, though only a moment in time, had an enormous impact on my life and my priorities for living. The post was life-changing and important — important to me, anyway. I hope you will read it if you missed it. It was “To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

If and when you read that post, please read to the end. The 1992 event it describes connects to another chapter in my life decades later. It took me some time to put this together, but that event was an awakening of sorts and that is why I now refer to it as an epiphany. Over the ensuing years, I can see in hindsight how that event had a power that altered many things in my life, including my perception of my cross of unjust imprisonment which commenced just two years later. Those who read that post found the connection between its beginning and its end to be remarkable.

In Support of the Cause of Life

I had been a priest for ten years when the event described in that post took place in the back seat of a car. One of the most evident changes that came as a result was my activism in the Catholic pro-life cause. It was another epiphany, a Great Awakening that many are now seeing despite the narcissistic tendencies of our time.

During all of my seminary training, and in the first ten years of my priesthood, I had little regard for the pro-life cause. I was not antagonistic to it, but it never had a place on my inner radar. I remember blocking dedicated pro-life activists from placing their literature in my parish vestibule because I believed that it had nothing to do with what was happening in the liturgy of the Church. When I look back on that now, I cannot make sense of how I could not have seen the importance of their mission and message. It has everything to do with what is happening in the liturgy of the Church.

When the lights finally came on, I saw the truth stripped of all its politics and self-serving rhetoric about “reproductive rights.” I saw the folly of Roe v. Wade and it struck me like lightning. Our interference in the development of human life was captured in an eye-opening op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The Obsolete Science behind Roe v. Wade” by Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, diagnostic radiologist and policy advisor for the Catholic Association.

Dr. Christie lent scientific justification to the conclusion of conscience which my epiphany had set in motion. She pointed out that the development of medical knowledge has reached a heightened awareness since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Ultrasound technology was in its own infancy then.

“Today, three-dimensional ultrasound images have put a human face on the person once dehumanized as a mere clump of cells. Perfectly apparent now, to the justices sitting on today’s court as well as the public, are the liveliness and humanity of babies at 15 weeks of gestation. They have proportions of a newborn. The major organs are formed and functioning, and although the child receives nutrients and oxygen through the mother’s umbilical cord, the baby swallows and even breathes, filling the lungs with amniotic fluid and expelling it. The heart is fully formed, its four chambers working hard with the delicate valves opening and closing.”

— Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, WSJ.com

No one can read Dr. Christie’s brief article and not also see the great spiritual decline that Roe v. Wade has set in motion in our culture. Several years ago, as a direct result of my own epiphany that opened my eyes to the truth, I wrote of how this decline has blinded us to the horror that Roe v. Wade produced.

That post, though only about five years old now, will seem a bit dated. It analyzed several television series that were most popular among young adults then. In each of these shows, the protection of life was a central theme while in reality abortion became disconnected from our personal and collective conscience.

In Support of Authentic Catholic Identity

As a Catholic priest, even one in the most difficult of trials, I never saw myself as being in rebellion with Rome, and I am not so now. But I am perplexed. Not long ago, I wrote a post entitled, “The Once and Future Catholic Church.” Its intention was to bring hope to faithful Catholics who feel alienated by the trends of today that seem to suppress what were once authentic and deeply held expressions of faith for many. Fidelity to the tenets of our faith, and to the Chair of Peter, is central to both faith and priesthood.

I am not “more Catholic than the Pope,” and do not presume to question him on orthodoxy. But sometimes timing is most important. I cannot help but wonder what was behind Pope Francis using the backdrop of Christmas to further alienate traditional Catholics with new and more divisive restrictions on an expression of faith that many hold dear, the Sacrifice of the Mass in the language that served the Church for two millennia: Latin.

In 1947, after two years of rebuilding following World War II, the Catholic population of the world was between 340 and 380 million. Today it stands at nearly 1.2 billion, and certainly the suppression of the Latin Mass is a concern for only a small percentage. But the largest percentage — upwards of seventy percent — is not concerned with the Mass at all because they are not at all practicing their faith. So why suppress what for centuries was seen as a valid expression of that faith?

In 1947, Pope Pius XII published the 15,000 word encyclical, Mediator Dei, in which he warned against false mysticism, quietism, naturalism, and adherence to exaggerated notions about the liturgy. He opposed using the vernacular in the Mass in place of Latin. In a 1947 radio address, he warned Catholics against “uniformity that seeks to regiment all apostolic works into one kind.”

In January, 1975, well after the Second Vatican Council concluded, the Congregation for Divine Worship sent notice to the world’s bishops that the celebration of the Mass, whether in the vernacular or in Latin, must adhere to the rites set forth in the New Order of Mass authorized by Pope Paul in 1969. Clearly, the point of Rome’s contention was not the use of Latin, but rather the extraordinary form of the Mass.

Today in Germany, a progressive expression of Catholicism has taken hold to the point of being virtually unrecognizable as Catholic. There has been much ink spilled on the necessity and hope of avoiding a liberal-progressive Catholic schism in Europe. I have read that this looming threat weighs heavily upon Pope Francis. I am not a rebel, but I am still perplexed. Despite this looming threat of a progressive schism in Europe, it seems that all the efforts of Pope Francis at suppressing rebellion and promoting conformity are aimed at Traditional Catholics.

A Great Schism v. A Great Awakening

This leaves many priests who care in a state of conflict. We are in solidarity, not only with the authority of the Pope, but also with the thousands of devout Catholics who feel wounded and alienated by this inexplicable suppression. A few priests have privately corrected me saying that Pope Francis has the authority to determine rubrics for the sacrifice of the Mass. Of that, I have no doubt nor do I have a challenge.

This is not about authority, however. It is about the Church’s need for a Chief Shepherd with the heart of a shepherd. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prior to his pontificate taught us that the Holy Spirit does not choose the Pope so much as guides the conclave that makes that choice. Pope Francis began his pontificate with a summons to seek out the alienated along the periphery of the Church, not to create more of them. Where did that go?

There have been other periods of Church history in far worse sin and error pining. What is known as the “Great Schism” in the Western Church began with the contested election of Pope Urban VI in 1378. The cardinal electors, dismayed by his erratic behavior, withdrew their obedience and declared Urban’s election invalid because it was made under the duress of rioting in Rome. They then elected a new pope, Clement VII. Urban retaliated by excommunicating Clement and his followers and by creating a college of cardinals of his own. Now there were two popes.

Then Clement moved to Avignon under the protection of the King of France. This elevated the schism to a frenzy of political alliance determined by the political preferences of the secular rulers concerned. It was impossible to distinguish between the Church in the modern world and the modern world in the Church. During the half-century the schism lasted, a number of solutions were proposed including the resignations of both popes, but both refused. In 1409, Cardinals from both sides held a convocation at Pisa only to elect yet a third pope in contention with the other two.

Finally, the Council of Constance (1414-18) resulted in the resignation or deposition of the three contending popes and the election of Pope Martin V — who reigned from 1417 to 1431 — receiving universal recognition. The scandal of the schism gave temporary impetus to a conciliar theory of church government based on consensus regarding the politics of the day. This intensified calls for reform that eventually led to the Protestant Reformation.

What does all this have to do with my hoped-for epiphany in 2022? It is pointless to allow the politics of our time to stand between us and the source and summit of faith — the true Presence of Christ in our midst. We have just passed through yet another Christmas season of alienation between opposing political factions, and it sometimes appears that governance in the Church embraces one faction over another.

When Christ returns will He find faith on Earth? The answer to that will have a lot more to do with our individual and collective epiphany than our politics.

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Announcements:

This post will be placed in our “Catholic Spiritual Life” and “Catholic Pro-Life” Categories in the BTSW Public Library. Please visit there for past titles of interest. We also invite you to visit our “Voices from Beyond” page for the latest addition.

You may be interested in reading and sharing some of the following titles linked in this week’s post:

Gene Roddenberry and Captain Kirk’s Star Trek Epiphany

Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Once and Future Catholic Church