“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
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.
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
A Sex Abuse Cover-up in Boston Haunts the White House
With The Boston Globe Spotlight focused only on Catholic priests, sex abuse by a top Boston police union official was covered up all the way to the 2021 White House.
When The Boston Globe Spotlight focused only on Catholic priests, sex abuse by a top Boston police union official was covered up all the way to the 2021 White House.
Our Canadian guest writer, Father Stuart MacDonald, posted a thoughtful comment on my recent post, “Cardinal Sins in the Summer of Media Madness.” He pointed out a sobering fact. Former police officer Derek Chauvin, who now stands convicted in the murder of George Floyd, was sentenced to exactly one-third of the sentence I am serving for crimes that never took place. Father Stuart’s insightful comment was followed by one from another frequent guest writer, Ryan A. MacDonald, no relation to Father Stuart.
Their comments are very much worth a return visit to that post. The tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin in sight of three other officers launched a movement across America to defunct police. It also led to all of the events described in the post cited above.
You might think that in my current location, a movement like #DefundPolice would find lots of sympathy and even some vocal support. The truth is just the opposite. No one understands the need for police in our society more than a prisoner. As one friend here, an African American, put it: “Knowing the truth about some of the guys around me, the last thing I want to see is them and my family living in the same place without police.”
I reflected that same sentiment, and others like it, in my own response to the #DefundPolice movement that was spawned by the death of George Floyd. It was a post written in the heat of that awful riotous summer of 2020. It was “Don’t Defund Police! Defund Unions that Cover Up Corruption.”
As that post revealed, former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin had multiple excessive force complaints in his personnel file. Thanks to the so-called “Blue Wall” and the misguided advocacy of the local public sector police union, none of the prior complaints ever became public. Had they been known, George Floyd may be alive today and Derek Chauvin may not be facing prison.
Others among my friends have advised me not to overlook the fact that Mr. Floyd was alleged to have committed a crime that day — an attempt to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. Even if true, this is not relevant. Americans do not face death over a fake $20 bill. The George Floyd story unmasked racial prejudice in the way policing is sometimes done on the streets of America. We will be a stronger and better people for the hard soul-searching and policy building needed to address this.
I write all of the above to stress that I am not in any way against police. Like my friend mentioned above, knowing some of the men with whom I now live deepens my appreciation for the many dedicated police officers who serve and protect our communities.
The account I am about to present should not be understood as just another “dirty cop” story. It is better seen as a cautionary tale of public corruption that extends beyond police to infiltrate and compromise many of the once-respected institutions on which our culture is built. The corruption you will read about here is as much that of partisan politics and the news media as it is about police. It is a Boston story. It took place in my own home town.
While the Spotlight Was on Catholic Scandal
This account is unrelated to the sordid stories of Catholic scandal in which we have been immersed for two decades, but it must begin there with a July, 2010 post, “The Exile of Fr. Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe.”
I highly recommend that post for the back story of what was happening to many Catholic priests as the age of cancel culture was just taking shape. The story might infuriate you. It should. In 2010, Father Dominic Menna was a much beloved 80-year-old Boston priest who was suddenly accused of molesting a minor 51 years earlier when he was 29 years old in 1959. Like every accused priest since The Scandal first gripped Boston and spread from there across the land, the elderly Father Menna was put out into the street.
You could not tell from reading The Boston Globe accounts of the case that none of this story took place in the present. The Globe had a subtle way of presenting every decades-old claim as though it happened in the here and now. Father Menna just disappeared into the night with no recourse to protect himself or his priesthood. There were no groups forming such as “Stand with Father James Parker” or “Stand with Canceled Priests” when the stench of injustice was in any way related to suspicions of sexual abuse.
Even some Catholic entities have thanked The Boston Globe and its pernicious Spotlight Team for doggedly pursuing the files of priests accused and for publishing every lurid detail, true or not. The Globe helped create a mantra that impacted the civil rights of all priests who, since the Bishops’ Dallas Charter of 2002, have been considered “guilty for being accused.” The trajectory lent itself in 2010 to “The Exile of Fr. Dominic Menna” with few questions asked. The details in that post are staggering for any Catholic who still cares about justice. One of the truths exposed in that post is about all that is left in darkness when a spotlight is used on a topic that requires a floodlight. It is about something that was happening off-the-radar in Boston while The Boston Globe and its Spotlight Team celebrated an Academy Award for Best Picture in the category of Public Service.
If not for the Globe’s hammering away at priests, the people of Boston might have been shocked in the summer of 2020 when Patrick Rose, a Boston police officer and former president of the Boston police union, was charged with 33 counts of molesting children. Bostonians might have been further shocked to learn that the behaviors which led to his arrest extended all the way back to 1995 and were known by officials in the Boston police, their public sector union, and others who helped to keep it all secret.
In 1995, just months after I was on trial in nearby New Hampshire, Patrick Rose was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse. He was placed on administrative leave by the Boston Police Department. The Boston Globe today reports that the charges were dropped in 1996 when the accuser recanted her account under pressure from Rose. Later in 1996, however, a Boston Police Internal Affairs investigation reported that the charge “was sustained” and relayed to supervisors.
Despite this, Patrick Rose remained on the police force. In 1997, an attorney for the police union wrote a letter to the police commissioner complaining that Rose had been kept on administrative duty for two years and demanding his full reinstatement. Rose was then reinstated. Prosecutors today allege that he went on to molest five additional child victims, including some after Rose himself became union president from 2014 to 2017.
White House Labor Secretary Marty Walsh
In the May 14, 2021 print edition of The Wall Street Journal, the Editorial Board published “A Police Union Coverup in Boston.” The WSJ reported that The Boston Globe filed requests for the Internal Affairs file on Patrick Rose. The administration of then Boston Mayor Marty Walsh denied the request citing that the record could not be released in a way that would satisfy privacy concerns.
Imagine the outcry if the late Cardinal Bernard Law said this when The Boston Globe demanded a file on any foreknowledge of sexual abuse by Father Dominic Menna. It turned out in that case that there was no such file because the 80-year-old priest had never previously been accused. The Boston Globe repeatedly dragged the Archdiocese of Boston into court in 2002 to demand public release of scores of files on Catholic priests and never rested until every detail — corroborated or not — ended up in newsprint.
It is hard to imagine today that The Globe would simply settle for the excuse Mayor Marty Walsh provided. It is hard to imagine that the “Blue Wall of Silence” was any real obstacle for The Boston Globe which, perhaps to cover for its own inaction, reported that it was “astonishing [the] lengths to which the [Boston Police] Department and the now departed Walsh administration went to keep those files under wraps.”
The file remained “under wraps” until after Senate confirmation hearings that vetted Mayor Walsh and confirmed him (68 to 29) for a Biden Administration cabinet position as Secretary of Labor in 2021. Walsh signed a contract with the Boston Police Union in 2017 while Patrick Rose was still union president. It remains unclear what Marty Walsh knew and when he knew it.
A Massachusetts state supervisor of public records refuted the Mayor’s reasoning for keeping the file secret. He called upon (then) Mayor Walsh to provide a better reason for denying the Internal Affairs file on Patrick Rose. Walsh ignored this for two months until his mayoral successor, Kim Janey, released a redacted version of the file after the Senate confirmation hearing approved Mr. Walsh as Secretary of Labor. The Wall Street Journal reported:
“Mr. Biden picked Mr. Walsh because he is a union man. He was president of a Laborers’ Union local, as well as head of the Boston Building Trades, until he ran for mayor in 2013. As mayor, he showered unions with taxpayer money, including a contract with Mr. Rose’s police union in 2017 that resulted in a pay increase of 16-percent over four years. City employees in unions donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. The Rose Coverup is relevant to Mr. Walsh’s duties at the Labor department.”
An Epilogue
Just as I was preparing to print and mail this post, someone sent me the July 2021 copy of Newsmax magazine containing an article by journalist Merisa Herman on this same story entitled, "Police Union Cover-Up Haunts Top Biden Official." [I chose my title long before seeing this]. Ms. Herman concluded:
“Rose had been given a pass from the media for what could be construed as a cover-up ... Someone in Congress might ask Mr. Walsh why Americans should believe he’ll fight union corruption when his city may have helped protect a union chief with a history of alleged predation against children.”
It is difficult to measure this story against what happened in 2010 to 80-year-old Father Dominic Menna whose life and priesthood were utterly obliterated by The Boston Globe spotlight for a half century-old claim that could never be corroborated.
It is difficult to measure this story against what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis when a history of previous excessive force complaints in a police file were kept under wraps until someone paid with his life.
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Notes from Father Gordon MacRae:
Many thousands of readers have been circulating last week’s post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul.” Thousands in Washington, Chicago, New York and Boston have read that post. If you wish to send a printed copy to your bishop or anyone else, we have created a five-page pdf version that is printable.
We have also created a pdf with the name and address of every U.S. Catholic Bishop.
Learn more about The Boston Globe’ s Spotlight coverage of the Catholic Church and the Best Picture Academy Award for the film, Spotlight. You may never watch the Oscars again after reading “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film” by a courageous journalist, Joann Wypijewski, former Editor of The Nation. (It also sheds some much needed media light on my own travesty of justice.)
A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers
A global pandemic, a world in chaos, divisive politics, sheepish shepherds, misguiding lights, Catholic confusion. Even in a year from hell, there was hope.
A global pandemic, a world in chaos, divisive politics, sheepish shepherds, misguiding lights, Catholic confusion. Even in a year from hell, there was hope.
I offered Midnight Mass in my prison cell this Christmas. It was for the intentions of our readers beyond these stone walls. I much appreciate your presence here at this new site, and I hope you will subscribe. It makes things a lot easier for me.
The First Reading at Midnight Mass this year was from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was both familiar and comforting: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone” (Isaiah 9:2). Without a doubt it seemed as though Isaiah had walked through this year with me. He went on to bring some perspective to the present darkness: “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed ... For a child is born to us, a son is given us. Upon his shoulder dominion rests” (Isaiah 9:4,6).
I thought the Prophet had really nailed my experience of dwelling in the land of gloom that was 2020. Of course, if you have been a regular reader, then you know that I cannot let a cool word like “gloom” pass by without a little digging. It’s a fascinating word with origins both obscure and mysterious. It first came into use in English around the Twelfth Century in the period that we now call Middle English. Unlike about half the vocabulary of that era, gloom has no Latin root, however.
My digging took me to a much older term, “the gloaming,” which arose from Anglo-Saxon tribes in the Fifth Century in the period we call Olde English. The gloaming referred to the dark of night just before the dawn when the first glow of twilight could be seen on the eastern horizon. We in the 21st Century cannot fathom the darkness of the Fifth. The gloaming was a time of both dark and the promise of light. The words, “gloom” and “glow” both arose from it even though they are functionally opposites.
That Midnight Mass excerpt from the Prophet Isaiah was packed with hidden meaning. “Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shown.” The word “dwelt” (or dwelled) also comes from an Olde English term, “dwellan,” which originally meant “to be misled.” How and when it came to refer to a place in which you live is uncertain. It could thus be fair to reinterpret Isaiah’s Christmas prophecy in light of that original meaning: “Upon those misled in the land of gloom, a light has shown.”
Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo and the Bishop of the Diocese of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas J. Lucia
Misled by Earthly Powers
It is likely, however, that many or even most of you never got to hear that Midnight Mass proclamation from Isaiah because many civil authorities placed severe limits on the practice of your faith in 2020. The contradictions were staggering, but never explained. The coronavirus was extremely contagious in Catholic and other Christian churches, but only minimally during anti-police urban riots this year. Liquor stores (which in my State are all owned by the State) were deemed essential, along with abortion clinics, casinos, etc. Churches were deemed nonessential and saddled with draconian limits.
I believe that many have been misled in the current darkness of 2020, and fear has drawn some of us away from the light. The governors of New York and California, for example, imposed limits on Catholic Masses and other congregations that made no sense. In New York, a church that can accommodate 1,000 people was forced to limit Mass participation to ten, or 25 if the church was in a less infectious zone. Most of the news media has been complicit in furthering such propaganda. The pastor on one small Evangelical congregation began his Sunday service with strip club music while he loosened his tie and threw it into the pews. He explained that strip clubs are open in his state while churches were ordered closed.
I was encouraged recently when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an edict from New York Governor Cuomo declaring his limits on church attendance to be an unconstitutional infringement on the free exercise of religion as defined in the First Amendment. The Governor dismissed the SCOTUS ruling as “irrelevant and political.”
But then a bigger bomb dropped. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Bishop of Syracuse, Bishop Douglas Lucia, reinstated the very restrictions that the Court said the Governor could not impose. So Masses in churches that could hold 1,000 remained limited to 25. As in many areas, government imposed registration is also required. Even when some civil authorities did not demand this, some bishops imposed it anyway. This memo from the bishop of a large archdiocese was sent to his priests:
“Contact Tracing: Especially during the Christmas season, it is mandatory that each parish maintain a list of all persons attending services in the church including their contact information (i.e. phone number). Such lists shall be placed with parish financial records and maintained for a period of not less than six years.”
It is troubling, at best, that some bishops would confuse the care of souls with the exercise of their own Earthly powers as sheepish deputies of civil authority. I am by no means the first to recognize this troubling trend. I felt a glow of hope when Matthew Hennessey, the Deputy Editorial Features Editor for The Wall Street Journal, addressed this head-on in this OpEd, "No More Bishop Nice Guy" (December 9, 2020):
“We are told that lives have been saved by keeping churches half empty. Do we know how many souls have been lost? As a Catholic raising five children in the faith, I’m particularly concerned wit the future of my church ... It’s inspiring to see ordinary people stand up to bullies like (Governors) Cuomo an Newsom. But what are America’s bishops doing to inspire their flocks? What will they do? We are tired of watching our leaders kneel before junior varsity Caesars ... Show some backbone. Open the churches. Get rid of the sign-up sheets. No more roped off pews. No more 25% capacity ... Be the heroes we need you to be. The alternative is subservience. The alternative is empty pews forever. The pandemic generation may never return.”
AMEN!
With prophetic witness early in the pandemic, Father James Altman courageously preached his now famous homily, “Memo to the Bishops of the World.” It came as Catholic Masses across the nation were shutting down and, for many, the Eucharist became inaccessible. It alarmed Father Altman, just as it alarms me, that many of the shutdown orders came, not from governors, but from our bishops. I wrote of this in what I think is the most urgent post of 2020, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.”
From Fr. James Altman, “Memo to the Bishops of the World: The Faithful do not need you to look after their bodies. They need you to follow the supreme law of the Church and look after their souls.”
A Year of Pandemic in Prison
I just realized that I began this post with a description of my Christmas Eve Mass this year. Dorothy Rabinowitz did the same in a series in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Trials of Father MacRae.” Here is her first paragraph from seven years ago:
“Last Christmas Eve, his 19th behind bars, Catholic priest Gordon MacRae offered Mass in his cell at the New Hampshire state penitentiary. A quarter-ounce of unfermented wine and the host had been provided for the occasion, celebrated with the priest’s cellmate in attendance.”
The “cellmate in attendance” then was, of course, Pornchai Moontri. This year is the first time in 15 years that he has not been here with me at Christmas. It is during Mass that his absence is most deeply felt. It is a wound upon my heart that, despite all our valiant efforts, Pornchai remains in ICE detention soon to begin a fifth month beyond his sentence, which had been fully served. It is not too late to join me and Catholic League President Bill Donohue in our petition to the White House to “Help Pornchai Moontri.”
I know I am working backward in my description of the year spent in pandemic mode behind prison walls, but the last four months since Pornchai was taken away have been too busy to grieve.
Besides, I do not want to grieve. I want to rejoice, but I have had to postpone it until he arrives safely in Bangkok. You know from reading these pages all that happened to Pornchai in life. You also know that in the fifteen years in which we lived in the same prison cell, Saint Maximilian Kolbe insinuated himself into our lives in profound and mysterious ways. Together, with the help of Mary, Undoer of Knots, St. Maximilian and I set course to reverse the damage life had inflicted upon my friend who wrote of our lives here in “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”
By the time Pornchai wrote those parting words to us, he and I had been through many trials together. Some have been recounted in these pages, but many others were not. One of them was our ordeal early in 2020 during which — we now both believe — we both contracted Covid 19.
It was late in January 2020. Everyone around us here had come down with a flu virus that moved among us like a wildfire. I went to work every day — even when I contracted it myself — because there seemed no cause to fear any contagion. Everyone with whom I had contact already had it. For some it seemed just a head cold. For others it was a more serious flu. For me and several others, it was devastating. I was fatigued to the point of collapse, chronically short of breath, and had frequent troubling episodes of cardiac arrhythmias — all what we later learned to be classic symptoms of Covid-19. I had this for all of February and well into March.
Pornchai also had it, but for only three weeks and not as severe. We just toughed it out, rested as much as we could, and looked after some others even worse off. By March, I had to seek medical intervention. I have a lifelong autoimmune disorder called sarcoidosis. It develops painful but otherwise benign tumors on the lymphnodes. The Covid — presumably Covid anyway — caused my immune system to go into overdrive. So I spent several weeks on prednizone to quiet the immune system. I was miserable, and I hope my posts at the time didn’t show it.
Pornchai and I both fully recovered, but I would not want to repeat the experience. To date, 231 prisoners here and 81 staff have tested positive with symptoms. Most went into quarantine, which in prison is quarantine from quarantine and it’s miserable. As the first and biggest wave traveled through the country, it had dire consequences for prisoners and equally so for you in the real world. For a time, my Sunday Mass in my cell was the only Mass offered in the entire state.
Beyond These Stone Walls
In the midst of all this misery, just as Covid was again rampaging, just as Pornchai was leaving, while separation loomed and life in prison became solitary for me, and filled with gloom, someone chose that moment to attack These Stone Walls and bring it down. There were some weeks of unclarity as we pondered what to do. It was also just as the elections in America were elevating to a state of frenzy.
At the end of October this year, we had serious decisions to make. I told Pornchai by telephone in ICE detention that These Stone Walls had come to an end. “It can’t end!” he said forcefully. He asked me, “What would Maximilian do?”
A proposal had been floated by a friend who announced that she had an inkling from some unknown grace to copy all the content from These Stone Walls and preserve it. I had no idea that she had done this. Then she proposed starting anew with a new name and blog format. Connecting with Father George David Byers and me, she chooses to remain in the background while rebuilding this Voice from the Wilderness. I have not yet seen it, but then again, I never saw These Stone Walls either.
Beyond TSW is a work in progress now, and is slowly being built. One feature of this new site format that I especially like is our “BTSW Library.” Instead of just chronologically listing posts by date, the Library displays them in multiple categories such as “Father Gordon MacRae Case,” “Mysteries of History,” “Science & Faith,” etc. like a real library’s card catalog where posts are sorted by subject. We have only a few categories up right now as the site is being rebuilt, but we expect to have at least twenty five. Our volunteer webmaster said that I “have written on so many topics that we could fill a library.” I think that is a polite way of saying that I have never had an unpublished thought!
Pornchai Moontri was thrilled and encouraged when I told him that he will have a category of his own. There was a time when he could not imagine a life beyond these stone walls. Now he cannot imagine life without it.
We have a new “ABOUT” page too, and bigger print! I still have a few things to write about so I hope you will stay, subscribe, and continue to walk in this land of gloom with us. Thank you for being here with us in this year of trials. You have been the glow that we see from beyond at twilight.
May the Lord Bless you and keep you in this New Year.
Father G.
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Editor's Note: Please share this post with others. You may also like to visit the related posts mentioned in this one:
The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass
The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ
Help Pornchai Moontri by Catholic League President Bill Donohue
Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind
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A Criminal Defense Expert Unfurls Father MacRae Case
Criminal Defense Attorney, Vincent James Sanzone, explains why the case of Father Gordon MacRae has been no measure of justice for either Church or State.
Criminal Defense Attorney, Vincent James Sanzone, explains why the case of Father Gordon MacRae has been no measure of justice for either Church or State.
The unjust imprisonment and suffering of Catholic priests at the hands of communist, fascist and other evil despots has and will unfortunately never end. And let’s not forget that Jesus Christ himself told his apostles that the world will hate them as they hated him. Christ was falsely accused and condemned because one man, Pontius Pilate, like most of us, did not have the courage to stand up against the hysterical crowd which did not know, or want to know the truth. As our Lord taught, “The Son of Man came … not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mt 20:28)
When such persecutions occur there is little if anything that the Church can do. Could even our Holy Father, Pope Francis do anything to stop the daily killing of Christians throughout the world today?
Such unjust punishments are not limited to these regimes, and one such travesty of injustice which has been occurring for the last 30 years right here in the United States is the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae. In 1994 this young and dedicated priest was sentenced by a New Hampshire state judge to the draconian sentence of 33 ½ to 67 years, effectively a life sentence. Because Father MacRae refused to admit to a crime which he did not commit so as to take a plea offer before trial, nor will he do so now, he will not be paroled from prison, and is likely to die in jail.
Any reasonable person examining the trial with any degree of fairness can come to no other conclusion: the prosecution and continuing imprisonment of Father Gordon is not only a tragedy for this good and holy priest, for all clergy and the faithful, but is also a blight on our criminal justice system. The machine of the criminal justice system of the State of New Hampshire is not attempting to re-examine this case and rectify it.
It is without dispute that our society in general is quick to condemn someone accused of committing a crime, especially when there is an allegation of a sexual crime, and more so when the accuser claims involvement of a Catholic priest. Even one with the most conservative law enforcement mindset would deny that for the last 25 years the deck has been stacked against any priest charged with a sexual offense, and that it is almost impossible for a Catholic priest to be processed fairly by jury and judge.
At the time of Father Gordon’s prosecution there was a climate of media-fueled national hysteria regarding any allegation of sexual offenses on anyone under 18 years of age, whether true or false, especially if a Catholic priest was purportedly involved. Such a climate almost entirely preempted juries from fairly applying the reasonable doubt standard, as they were and are prone to believe any allegation of sexual misconduct no matter how bizarre. Many legal scholars have examined the hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s, and equate this period to the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century. The prosecution of Father MacRae was also fueled by sensationalistic media hype with little concern for civil liberties and the presumption of innocence. As one court put it at that time:
“[A] series of highly questionable child sex abuse prosecutions … were fueled by a vast moral panic … a period in which allegations of outrageously bizarre and often ritualistic child abuse spread like wildfire across the country and garnered world-wide media attention.” “[T]remendous emotion [was] generated by the public” as a result of which “the criminal process often fail[ed]”
The genesis of the criminal prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae is no different than what is to be found in most other wrongful convictions. The convergence of factors in this case was a perfect storm for this wrongful conviction. In the wake of these factors, Father Gordon had zero chance of receiving a fair trial and being acquitted of the false charges at trial. As a practicing criminal defense attorney involved in many such cases over the last 25 years, any defendant charged with such a crime must actually attempt to prove his or her innocence. The jury has a sacred duty when charged with deliberating a criminal case: they are to respect that the defendant is innocent and has no burden to prove that innocence, with the burden of proving guilt beyond any reasonable doubt belonging to the prosecution. All of this is often ignored by juries.
In Father Gordon’s case, the evidence is overwhelming that false criminal allegations were brought by a manipulative man with a financial motive to lie. The accuser was trained and coached during the entire process by his attorney, who was seeking a large payout from the diocese of Manchester. The accuser had a long history of alcohol and drug abuse and involvement in the criminal justice system as well as a long history of opportunistic and manipulative lying. Years after the verdict, it was discovered that he bragged to friends and family members how he manipulated the justice system and the diocese. The entire prosecution of Father MacRae hinged upon the inconsistent, contradictory, and incredulous testimony of this one accuser. Father Gordon’s only “crime” had been to try to help this young man who had no family support and was heading down the path to destruction.
In the early 1990s it was common knowledge in New Hampshire that the Diocese of Manchester, as other dioceses in the United States, was paying huge sums of money to anyone claiming to have been abused by a priest. The Diocese was making these payments while conducting little or no investigation to determine the validity of the claims. It was a windfall for predatory personal injury attorneys making money off the backs of faithful parishioners, and a dream come true for scammers and fraudsters looking to cash in. Such was Thomas Grover, a foster child of the Grover family, which sought the help of Father Gordon to counsel and help Thomas. His foster parents struggled with their son’s alcohol and drug abuse, as well as with his mental health problems and frequent run-ins with the law. Years later, when Thomas Grover became aware of the large amounts of money that the Diocese was paying out to accusers, saw his opportunity to make a large amount of money. This was the way he “thanked” Father Gordon for all that he had done for him, weaving a string of lies impossible to refute.
There was not a single witness except Grover himself, which makes his story absurd, since he claimed that he was assaulted by Father Gordon in very public areas. Yet, Manchester Diocese paid him nearly $200,000.00.
Based on legal papers submitted in federal court, credible witnesses have now been located and have come forward, willing to testify that Grover admitted committing perjury at trial, and bragged about how he scammed the diocese and the justice system. Grover’s former wife, Trina Ghedoni, and stepson, Charles Glenn, have admitted that he was a “compulsive liar”, “manipulator”, “drama queen” and “hustler” who had a long history of lying to get what he wanted. When confronted with his lies, he “would lose his temper”, and would then admit himself into the psychiatric unit at Elliot Hospital. While seeking “help”, he would accuse others of molesting him. He accused another unnamed clergyman as well as his foster father and baby sitters when he was a child. In addition to his psychological state and alcohol and drug addition, he had an extensive criminal history prior to making his false allegations against Father Gordon. Grover was arrested and convicted for two burglaries, two forgeries, two thefts, theft by deception, assault on a police officer, and aggravated assault on his former wife when he broke her nose during one of many such beatings. His former wife considered him to be a sexual predator, and never left her two daughters from another relationship alone with him while they were living together, as he would eye and grope them.
In April of 2005, the lead detective James F. McLaughlin was confronted with these sobering facts about Grover in The Wall Street Journal articles by Dorothy Rabinowitz about the unjust conviction of Father Gordon. In response to his botched and incompetent investigation, McLaughlin made himself a self-appointed psychologist and responded remarkably by saying: “So we had all these elevated activities with our male victims, so in a sense, when you have a victim present that has this baggage, it’s corroborative of their victimization” (“Story of Jailed Priest Retold”, The Union Leader: Manchester NH, April 28, 2005).
At trial, Grover lied and told the jury that he needed money from his lawsuit with the Diocese for therapy because of the “abuse.” However, after his $200,000.00 payout, and after the trial was over, Grover did not attend one therapy session but took his former wife to Arizona, where he blew it all on alcohol, drugs, cars, pornography and gambling. In fact on that trip he lost about $70,000.00 on a Las Vegas gambling spree. In addition, he stiffed the casino another $50.000.00 on a credit line which he fraudulently applied for by providing false information about his job and income. A collection action initiated by the casino was unsuccessful. His wife finally left him in 1998 when the money was gone, and Grover was caught in bed with his biological sister.
Grover’s testimony at trial did not border on the absurd; it was absurd. His shifty testimony was fantastic, nonsensical and contradictory. When he was spoon-fed by the direct questioning of prosecutor Bruce Elliot Reynolds, he was able to recite his rehearsed testimony. However, on cross-examination it was far different. Every time he was trapped in a lie or inconsistent statement he fell back on his rehearsed line, saying that question “overloads my mind and… leaves me more or less in shock for days after…”
When Grover was confronted as to why he did not report the abuse for 10 years he claimed that he repressed the memory of the abuse, and it was “difficult to talk [about it] in front of people” until he spoke to his attorneys.
The fundamental question must be asked about our justice system; how could any reasonable jury, having the sworn duty to acquit Father Gordon unless the prosecution proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, find him guilty under this type of incredulous testimony? The State had the burden of proof. How could they have gotten it so wrong? Before a jury could find him guilty they would have to have found Grover’s testimony completely credible. Under our criminal justice system no competent and reasonable jury should have found this type of testimony sufficient to convict a Catholic priest who, previous to these series of false allegations, had never been convicted of anything.
Not unlike other unjust convictions, the law enforcement investigation of Father Gordon was both overzealous and intentionally unfair. The lead detective, James F. McLaughlin, was not interested in a fair and impartial investigation, but only in creating and spinning the facts to support his — and eventually the prosecution’s — theory of the case. McLaughlin also suppressed any facts which clearly pointed out that Father Gordon was innocent of the false allegations made by the accuser. McLaughlin engaged in investigating this matter in a way that was patently unfair and used his power as a law enforcement officer to suppress witnesses who were willing to testify for Father Gordon MacRae.
To make matters worse, Father Gordon’s bishop at the time of his trial did not support him, but in fact allowed his office to issue a press release prior to trial which literally condemned the accused priest. This misstatement by the bishop helped fuel media hysteria, and it unquestionably tainted the potential jury pool, insuring the prosecution of a conviction. The bishop did not stand up for one of his priests with courage, but rather retreated to bureaucratic-clericalism, more worried about pleasing his lawyers, insurance carrier and insulating the diocese from potential civil liability. This abandonment by the diocese has continued for 30 years. The bishop’s technique accomplished nothing because the diocese paid out monetary awards to any and all accusers. The greater cost, of course, was the loss of any trust of the priests of the diocese for the bishop and chancery. Not only was Father Gordon not able to count on his bishop for support, but the bishop negligently or intentionally acted in such a way as to let the public be given the message that Father Gordon was guilty. The bishop needs to answer questions about sacrificing priests on the altar of insurance considerations. To date it is conservatively estimated that the Church in the United States has paid over $4 billion in claims because of the sexual abuse scandal. How many of these claims were outright false can only be guessed. In any case, the bishop distanced himself from Father MacRae and left him on his own.
If the cards were not already stacked against Father Gordon, his defense attorney at trial was no help. Father Gordon was represented by Ron Koch, an attorney from New Mexico, who died in the year 2000 at the age of 49. Although this attorney did his best to defend Father Gordon, he nevertheless made critical trial errors which hurt the defense and opened the door for the prosecutor to introduce prejudicial evidence which the trial judge had already ruled was inadmissible and not relevant. Mr. Koch was forced to split his time between his active criminal practice in New Mexico and preparing for Father’s Gordon’s trial, which Mr. Koch was unable to do. Mr. Koch failed to conduct important pretrial discovery and inadequately prepared the case for trial. Father Gordon trial counsel was unprepared and out matched, and therefore constitutionally ineffective. Father Gordon’s constitutional rights to procedural due process and a fair trial were eviscerated. Mr. Koch failed to interview and subpoena critical witnesses for the defense, failed to go to the scene in which Grover alleged that he had been touched, and lastly, failed to preserve attorney-client privileged documents which Koch turned over to the prosecution.
Many people unfamiliar with the criminal justice system in the United States believe that the criminal justice system eventually corrects an unjust conviction. This sadly is the exception and not the rule. Under our judicial system the jury verdict is final, and most appeals, regardless as to the justice of the verdict are denied. Father Gordon is going on 30 years of imprisonment. Every appeal has been rejected without hearing. No judge in New Hampshire would agree to hear new evidence or new witnesses in this matter. On March 17, 2015, federal district court Judge Joseph Laplante, who many had high hopes would grant Father MacRae’s writ of habeas corpus, instead, granted the State of New Hampshire’s motion to dismiss on the pleadings. The judge did not even grant Father Gordon an evidentiary hearing.
The Catholic Church cannot proclaim the fullness of the truth without its priests. Every priest has been called by God for this mission. The Church has no alternative but to pursue and fight for authentic justice, and it must start with Father Gordon MacRae. No pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, or anyone among the laity can sit by and permit this injustice to continue. Diabolic advocacy and persecution of the Church has prevailed and will continue. Satan knows his enemy, and his enemy is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, in particular its clergy. Satan’s relentless pursuit is against the only institutional defender of natural law and of life in the world, from the moment of conception to natural death, the Catholic Church.
St. John Vianney, the patron of parish priests, understood this all too well. He was also subjected to outrageous lies about his character when he made this profound statement over 150 years ago:
“When people wish to destroy religion, they begin by attacking the priest, because where there is no longer any priest, there is no sacrifice, and where there is no longer any sacrifice, there is no religion.”
At the end of our brief temporal life all of us will be judged for what we “did and failed to do”; did we all do what is right and just?
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Vincent James Sanzone, Jr., Esq., loves his Catholic faith, and has been a practicing criminal defense attorney in New Jersey for the last 35 years. Attorney Sanzone is a member of the New Jersey Bar Association, of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, and of the Legal Center for Defense of Life. He is admitted to the bar in the State of New Jersey and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey as well as Federal Appeals Courts for the Third and Fourth Circuits. In addition, he has been admitted to practice pro hac vice in the Southern District of New York, and in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Attorney Sanzone has argued successfully before the New Jersey Supreme Court, and has tried hundreds of criminal trials. Many of his clients were minority young men and women who were acquitted of all charges at trial and went on to live exemplary lives.
New In The Wall Street Journal: The Father Gordon MacRae Case
Editors Note: In a major development in the case of wrongly imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae, the nation’s largest newspaper has once again taken up this story. Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist on The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, published a riveting article on the Father MacRae case on May 11/12, 2013 entitled, “The Trials of Father MacRae.” Dorothy Rabinowitz analyzed Father MacRae’s 1994 trial as well as the issues and newer evidence in the current appeal effort now underway. Her article also presents due process concerns for both the Church and the justice system. Her interview video is a must watch! This is an important story, not only for Father Gordon MacRae and the readers of These Stone Walls, but for all falsely accused priests. We invite These Stone Walls readers to
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Thank you for your prayers and support for Father MacRae!
The TSW Editors