Justice in the Tribunals of a Banana Republic

A writer from a self-described Third World country has some challenges for justice in both Church and State and the road ahead for a falsely accused priest in prison.

“The justice of New Hampshire found the priest guilty through a process no less infamous than those seen in the tribunals of any banana republic.”

— Carlos Caso-Rosendi in “Behold the Man!”

By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae — November 16, 2022

Carlos Caso-Rosendi, an accomplished author and translator in Buenos Aires, Argentina, published the fine article linked above in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. It is a superb commentary on the state of justice behind the years I have spent in prison. It challenges both Church and State to live up to the reasons for their existence. Here is a compelling excerpt:

“Many of us in the so-called ‘Third World’ look up to the United States of America as a model for what the administration of justice should be. While it is true that the United States has managed better than other countries to balance the interplay of state powers, we also must admit that those virtues have been shadowed by grievous errors such as justification of slavery, segregation, and lately of murder by abortion.

“Today I present the case of an innocent man, Fr. Gordon MacRae, who has spent the last twenty[-nine] years in prison unjustly condemned in circumstances that would cause any Stalinist magistrate of the former Soviet Union to blush. Someone with a well-known criminal record accused Fr. MacRae, an American citizen with full rights. The justice of New Hampshire found the priest guilty through a process no less infamous than those seen in the tribunals of any banana republic.”

— “Behold the Man!”

Mr. Carlos Caso-Rosendi’s use of the term, “Third World” has an interesting origin. In politics and sociology, it’s the accepted designation for an economically depressed or developing nation. The term arose during the Cold War when two opposing blocs — one led by the United States and the other by the Soviet Union — dominated world power. The Third World consisted of nations with less developed economies affiliated with neither bloc.

The term, Third World originated with Marxist psychiatrist and political theorist, Frantz Fanon, but it was perceived as negative and not always accepted by the nations on which the designation was imposed. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a political bloc in the early 1990s, “Third World” remains in use to refer to economically developing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

From the pillars of power in the United States, the justice systems of Third World countries are often chastised for being woefully unjust, but not a lot of self-reflection went into that perception. Even setting aside how I came to be where I have been for over 29 years, there is a Third World country existing just beneath my feet. It is the U.S. prison system.

I really don’t have another way to describe it. When it rains, the power goes out. When it snows, the power goes out, when it’s windy, the power goes out. The prisoner telephone system would not be the envy of any Third World country. Prisoners exist in an Internet vacuum, trapped behind an iron and concrete curtain of world ignorance. Citizens in the prison labor force earn the equivalent of about $2.00 per day. The people amassed at the U.S. Southern border are fleeing the political oppression and poverty of Third World nations, but none of them come here for our justice system.

I thank Carlos Caso-Rosendi for writing with candor and truth what he sees from beyond the borders of the United States. He is not alone in his assessment. The great theologian, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, also had a candid description of how I got here. In “A Kafkaesque Tale” he described it as the story of “a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.”

Voices Heard Round the World

I owe a debt of thanks to Pornchai Moontri for the moving post he sent us from Thailand. In 29 years in prison, I have barely ever shed a tear. I am stubborn. I just wouldn’t give the dark powers that sent me here the satisfaction of my grief. But when reading “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand” during a phone call with our editor, I had to pause three times to hold back tears so I could proceed. Pornchai’s post was sad, hopeful, deeply moving, and brilliant. Please pray for the people of Uthai Sawan, Thailand. I can only imagine their sorrow. And please pray for all the rest of us that in our divisions we may be given the grace of perspective from stories like the one Pornchai told us.

And I extend my gratitude to Attorney Harvey Silverglate whose Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae” is also seen around the world. He was joined in October by David F. Pierre, Jr of The Media Report. They published a series of riveting articles in the past month at Beyond These Stone Walls and elsewhere while I just sat back and let them do all the work. I cannot thank them enough. Catholic League President, Dr. Bill Donohue also stood with me in October to publish a press release about these developments. The timing of these guest writers stepping forward was providential.

Now I need to be candid with you. I began the year 2022 with a new ray of hope, but as this year wound down I saw some looming clouds of possible defeat on the horizon. A revelation in Harvey Silverglate’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae” revealed that a court hearing was held in secret in New Hampshire and a judge agreed in secret to allow Detective James McLaughlin to be removed from the public list of officers found to have engaged in misconduct. Secret proceedings are just not a good look for a justice system fending off suspicions of corruption. It is in fact the look of what Carlos Caso-Rosendi describes as “the justice of a Banana Republic.”

That designation refers to a small country economically dependent on a single crop or a single product, often governed by a cabal of like-minded conspirators operating for their own benefit. The misconduct for which former Detective James McLaughlin stands accused has been central in the case against me. As a result, a lot of attention is being paid to Mr.Silverglate’s WSJ op-ed. Among the many affronts to justice covered in that article, Mr. Silverglate wrote:

“In a May 1994 lawsuit, Father MacRae alleged that Detective McLaughlin accused the priest of having taken pornographic photographs of one of the alleged victims. No such photos were ever found.”

There is more to it. Not only were such photos never found, but they were also never looked for. There was no effort whatsoever on the part of the detective to confirm or refute this allegation which came only from McLaughlin himself. There was a reason for that. He already knew it was a lie, and it was his own lie. It floated out there among several news articles about me until 2005. It was even cited by Judge Arthur Brennan as his justification for imposing 67 years in prison. Eleven years after my trial, McLaughlin finally admitted to Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal that “there was never any evidence of pornography.”

Even that did not stop Damien Fisher, a biased New Hampshire reporter with an agenda, from repeating the claim just months ago as though demonstrably true. Ryan MacDonald wrote a truthful rebuttal in, “A Reporter’s Bias Taints the Defense of Fr Gordon MacRae.” When police can invent evidence that never existed, when the news media can further propagate it long after it has been credibly debunked, what chance does a falsely accused man have in a New Hampshire court?

This is the sort of thing that had me feeling so defeated and had Carlos Caso-Rosendi comparing justice here to that of a banana republic. The justice system has become an ominous and oppressive trap for anyone wrongly convicted. When that trap covers up for the good ole’ boy secrecy behind which justice is being carried out here, how does one proceed?

Justice Unmoored from Truth

In light of all that has transpired and all that has been written, I have hard decisions to make. One of them is about hiring a New Hampshire attorney to challenge my convictions based on newly discovered evidence that the investigating police detective had a secret record of misconduct. The claims about him are taking shape and growing in number. One claim reported in local news media is that former Detective McLaughlin has erased tape recordings of statements from witnesses that do not support his bias. This is exactly what I have accused him of for the last 29 years .

I have recently been advised by a New Hampshire lawyer with expertise in this area. Her analysis was candid and I much appreciate it. The bottom line is that justice here will be yet another steep uphill and unpredictable climb. Detective McLaughlin has boasted of over 1,000 sexual assault arrests with a nearly 100 percent conviction rate due to his penchant for arranging lenient plea deals to boost his public persona. He has boasted of removing over 1,000 sexual offenders from the streets but the “removal” is only for a year or so. Guilty defendants gladly took his plea deals, but innocent defendants can only be conned or coerced into them.

Because of the extreme “success” of his actions and methods, Detective James McLaughlin has been widely hailed in some circles as a hero-cop. From the point of view of the justice department and judicial system, however, the growing evidence of his misconduct is a threat to the system itself. As a result — and it is a fact of the legal advice I have received — the entire system will be hell-bent on protecting the corrupt cop while sacrificing me. “They will flood you with motions and delays to bankrupt you,” I was told by a New Hampshire attorney, and that has indeed been my experience.

As a prisoner of 29 years (and counting) with no income beyond the $2.00 per day I earn in a Third World prison job, I do not have the resources for another legal challenge — and especially for another protracted and uncertain one. In 2012 when I raised funds for an appeal, New Hampshire judges simply declined to hear any new evidence or witnesses in the end. A past U.S. Supreme Court ruling left this to their discretion, but they did not seem to have any. The affidavit of the new investigator and the statements of the witnesses he uncovered are linked at the end of this post. You be the judge.

And then there is priesthood. I am likely the only imprisoned priest in the world who has not been simply discarded from the clerical state just for being deemed with the new designation of convenience for bishops, “unsuitable for ministry.” There is now in the U.S. a “Coalition for Canceled Priests” trying to assist priests who are thrown aside for far less cause than a prison sentence. I am innocent of the claims against me, but should I now be forced to trade priesthood for freedom? I cannot. Carlos Caso-Rosendi ended “Behold the Man!” with a burning question:

“Barabbas is gone,

Judas has received his thirty silver coins:

Behold the man, Gordon MacRae!

Bishops of the Church:

What do we do with him?”

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Editor’s Note: Read the affidavit of former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott and the statements of six witnesses from whom New Hampshire judges declined to hear.

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

There is a difference between the signs of the times and the sins of the times. It is required that priests are vigilant of the former but resistant of the latter.

Just days before sitting down to write this post, I was bestowed with the honor of membership in The Catholic Writers Guild. One of my first thoughts as I plugged in my typewriter today is that this might be the post that gets me kicked out. We are in one of the strangest times in the life of the Church and in the ministry of bishops and priests that we have seen in many centuries.

There have been times almost as strange, but the difference is that you were kept from knowing about them.

My priesthood ordination took place on June 5, 1982 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Hudson, New Hampshire. It did not start off well. There was another candidate for ordination that year, but he fled just days before. Someone then scrambled to revise and reprint the program for the Mass of Ordination. It was presided over by The Most Reverend Odore Gendron, Bishop of Manchester. That was four bishops ago.

Like most Catholic priests in America, I was ordained on a Saturday afternoon. Unlike most, I was ordained alone. Such a thing became a more prevalent phenomenon, however, as the signs of the times began to reflect the sins of the times. In the 1970s and 1980s, fewer men found the courage for such a counter-cultural commitment as the Catholic priesthood, a response I wrote of in a Pentecost Post, “Inherit the Wind: Pentecost and the Breath of God.”

That post described the story behind the story of the gathering of the Apostles at Pentecost. The Acts of the Apostles (1:13) reports that the Eleven — Judas had come to ruin — came to Jerusalem in the company of Mary, Mother of the Resurrected Jesus, to mark the Pilgrimage Feast of Weeks fifty days after the spring celebration described in the Book of Leviticus (23:15-16). Among the Greek-speaking Jews of the New Testament, it came to be called Pentecost for “fiftieth day.”

Pentecost became a Christian feast when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles in Jerusalem in the form of a mighty wind and tongues of fire. Then almost immediately, the newborn Church saw its first scandal as Peter rose to defend the Apostles against a false accusation that they were all drunk at 9:00 in the morning (Acts 2:15). I took a part of my title, “Inherit the Wind,” for that Pentecost post from a cryptic passage in the Book of Proverbs (11:29): “Those who trouble their household will inherit the wind, and the fool will become a servant to the wise.”

Seminary studies throughout the 1970s and priesthood ordination in 1982 were both such counter-cultural endeavors that I troubled my household greatly when I became a priest. The Proverb came true. Ever since that day, I have been a fool by the standards of this world, and a servant to the wise. Whether I have inherited the wind that so moved the Apostles to evangelize even in the face of martyrdom remains to be seen. I am still here writing.

Though my ordination was 38 years ago, I remember every moment as though it were yesterday. As I lay alone and prostrate on the floor before the altar, the Litany of the Saints was intoned. I had a fleeting thought that my sister, from a pew just 12 feet away, was mentally urging me, “Get up, you fool! Flee!” Later when I asked her about it she confirmed it. “Yes, that was me.”

Thirty-one years later in 2013 Dorothy Rabinowitz was writing “The Trials of Father MacRae,” her third in a series for The Wall Street Journal. She interviewed my sister who spoke candidly with a comment that never made its way into the articles. “The Catholic Church took my brother,” my sister said, “And now look what they have done to him.”

I have written of this in past Ordination Day posts, but many people have since asked me The Big Question. If I knew then what I know now, would I have joined John, the man who was to be ordained with me, in flight from this fate? I answer the question in one of the links at the end.

The Signs of the Times

Back in 2012, Anne Hendershott penned a research study for The Catholic World Report entitled, “Called by Name.” There were some interesting statistics analyzed in the study. In 2010 in the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, a region that is 79-percent Catholic, there were no priesthood ordinations.

In the same year in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, a region that is only 17-percent Catholic, there were seven ordinations to the priesthood. In Portland, Oregon, the population of which is only 16-percent Catholic, there were nine ordinations in 2010. Researchers suggested that areas with large Latino populations may have fewer candidates for priesthood.

That turned out to be untrue. In the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas in 2010 there were seven priesthood ordinations and most were Latino. But across the nation in 2010, the number of priesthood ordinations and their ratio to the Catholic population varied greatly. Something less obvious was driving this.

In 1996, then Omaha, Nebraska Archbishop Elden Curtis penned an article entitled “Crisis in Vocations? What Crisis?” He theorized with some compelling data to back it up, that the attitudes and strength of fidelity in Church leadership is the number one causal factor in reduced numbers of viable candidates for priesthood. Archbishop Curtis wrote:

“When dioceses and religious communities are unambiguous about the ordained priesthood and vowed religious life as the Church defines these calls; when there is strong support for vocations, and a minimum of dissent about the male celibate priesthood and religious life; when there is loyalty to the Magisterium; when the bishops, priests, religious and lay people are united in vocation ministry — then there are documented increases in vocations. Young people do not want to commit themselves to dioceses or communities that permit or simply ignore dissent from Church doctrine”

— Archbishop Elden Curtis

In her article for The Catholic World Report cited above, Anne Hendershott analyzed a study by Andrew Yuengert, a Pepperdine University sociologist, who tried to quantify the observations of Archbishop Curtis about the connection between priesthood vocations and the attitudes and fidelity of Church leaders. He discovered some fascinating corollaries.

Andrew Yuengert found that dioceses with bishops ordained in the 1970s had significantly lower numbers of priesthood vocations than those with bishops ordained before or later. He found that corollary to be most prominent in the ordination statistics of bishops who were characterized as orthodox or progressive. Of interest, he discovered that bishops who regularly published articles in America magazine — considered to be more liberal — fostered fewer vocations than bishops who were more likely to publish articles in The Catholic Answer, considered to be more orthodox.

There was another interesting corollary in the Yuengert study. You may remember the great controversy at the University of Notre Dame in 2009 when then President Barack Obama was invited to give the Commencement Address and was bestowed with an honorary degree.

At the time, eighty-three U.S. bishops signed a formal statement disapproving of the University administration’s decision to bestow an honorary degree on the openly pro-abortion President Obama who worked to expand access to abortion throughout the U.S. and the world. Yuengert discovered in this another unexpected corollary: Many of the 83 bishops who signed that statement led dioceses with the highest percentages of priesthood ordinations in the country.

The Sins of the Times

I have heard many horror stories from priests ordained in the 1970s and 1980s that the seminaries they were sent to were anything but loyal to the Magisterium and supportive of priestly vocations. I have a horror story of my own that I wrote about a decade ago. It is worth repeating because it was typical of the sins of the times in the 1970s and 1980s, the era in which the decline of priesthood was set in motion.

I had requested to go to St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, MA, but was sent instead to Baltimore. This story took place in the fall of 1979 in my second year of theological studies at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore. St. Mary’s was at the time considered to be the most academically challenging and most theologically liberal of U.S. seminaries. It was called “The Harvard of seminaries,” but it also had a reputation for fostering — even demanding — dissent.

There were about 160 seminarians from some 40 U.S. dioceses studying for priesthood at St. Mary’s then. It had a capacity for more than twice that number, a reality that created an atmosphere of competition among national seminaries (as opposed to local seminaries like St. John’s in Boston). Though St. Mary’s has undergone a complete revision of its direction since then, in the 1970s and 1980s it was known as a birthplace of theological dissent among priests.

The atmosphere reflected that. Seminarians never wore any form of clerical attire, and would have been laughed out the door if they did. The beautiful main chapel was used for Mass only once per week — on Wednesday nights where a weekly seminary-wide liturgy took place, often hosting clown masses, experimental music (“Dust in the Wind” by Kansas was once the Communion hymn).

There were many liturgical abuses, and any refutation earned the commenter a notation of “theologically rigid” in his file. Other weekday masses were held in small groups in faculty quarters. On Sundays, seminarians were on their own, encouraged to attend Mass at one of several Baltimore parishes. Some rarely ever attended Mass at all.

In 1979, a rift of sorts formed between the seminary rector and those planning for a U.S. visit by Pope John Paul II at the end of the first year of his pontificate. In October, 1979, Pope John Paul II spent six eventful days in the United States, visiting Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Iowa, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

One of the highlights of the visit was Pope John Paul’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on October 2, 1979. He stressed the theme of human rights and the dignity of the person, deploring violations of religious freedoms. However, most of the 67 addresses given by the pope during his visit were directed to Catholics and stressed their responsibilities as believing members of the Church.

The messages were conservative in tone and contained unqualified condemnations of abortion, artificial birth control, homosexual practice, and premarital and extramarital sex. The pope reminded priests of the permanency of their ordination vows and also ruled out the possibility of ordination for women, bringing protests from a number of Catholic feminists.

Little of Pope John Paul’s vision for the Church in the modern world was received with any enthusiasm by the administration and faculty of St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. It was in the weeks before this momentous visit that all hell broke loose at St. Mary’s. The seminary rector, now deceased, was a priest of my diocese and a member of the Order of St. Sulpice — aka The Sulpicians — which ran the nation’s oldest seminary since its founding some 200 years earlier.

Just weeks before Pope John Paul’s planned visit, it was somehow learned that all seminarians from several major seminaries in the region were invited by the Holy Father to take part in a Mass for seminarians on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Upwards of a thousand seminarians were to have special seating with an expected crowd of 100,000.

Seminarians at St. Mary’s, however, were never told of the invitation, nor were we told that the Seminary Rector had declined it on our behalf for reasons that he refused to divulge. The resultant furor was shocking; not only for the majority liberal seminarians, but for the administration and faculty who just assumed that we would disdain the theology and vision of Pope John Paul II just as much as they did. A line had been crossed that threatened to sever our identity as future priests.

A letter of protest was quickly drafted and signed by more than half of the 160 seminarians representing some forty dioceses across the land. I was one of the signatories of that letter, a fact that the Rector took very personally because we represented the same diocese. As a result, I was labeled a disobedient rebel.

A seminary-wide meeting was held, and the Rector doubled down on his rejection of the papal invitation. He warned that anyone who attempted to attend the Pope’s Mass one hour away in Washington would not receive permission to do so, and would receive failing grades for any course work assigned for that day. He also said that several crucial exams would be held that day and failing grades would be reported back to the diocese of each seminarian along with a report of disobedience to his legitimate authority.

Needless to say, we went anyway. No one has a vocation to the seminary.

The Priest Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

The graphic above is not a real book, so please don’t try to order it on Amazon. It was created by the TSW publisher in response to a post of mine that stirred an uproar when first posted in November, 2013. It was “Stay of Execution: Catholic Conscience and the Death Penalty.”

That post publicly refuted another priest who published a letter in Our Sunday Visitor calling for expanded use of the death penalty in the United States. As a prisoner-priest, I wrote in favor of mercy. But it was I, and not he, who kicked the hornet’s nest.

Back to the seminary: One factor that struck me at St. Mary’s in the 1970s was the unwillingness of some bishops to become involved in — or even aware of — the training of their future priests. Formal complaints from seminarians about the blatant disregard for Pope John Paul II by seminary administration were ignored by most of the bishops who received them.

Some of the more traditional seminarians survived only because they were academically brilliant. They became the priests who kicked the hornets’ nest merely for refusing to either bend in their fidelity or be driven out as candidates for priesthood.

In the years since my ordination, I have heard many stories from priests whose priestly spirits were wounded in a kind of spiritual abuse that characterized their seminary years. Perhaps some will comment here.

But the last word on this goes to Father James Altman, whose recorded homily has mesmerized those Catholics who still value religious freedom, the hardest won of our freedoms, and the most fragile under any hint of a totalitarian regime. Father Altman has kicked the hornet’s nest, too, in a prophetic and much-needed plea to our bishops who have allowed Caesar to rule in the place of Christ. Here is Father James Altman whose brilliant and moving homily has moved many Catholics with the authority of truth. Don’t miss this “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.”

— Father James Altman

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Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood

Pope Francis issued 2019 guidelines for preserving a right of defense for accused priests and limits on publishing their names. Many U.S. bishops just ignored them.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald is an important sequel to his previous post, In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.

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In the above-captioned article at These Stone Walls, I wrote about a decision of The Most Rev. Peter Libasci, Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, to publish a list of the names of priests “credibly” accused in that state over the past fifty years. At the time the list was published in August 2019, the Bishop and Diocese issued a press release citing ‘transparency” as the reason for publishing it.

The list contained the names of 73 accused priests. More than half are deceased. Only five of the 73 ever had a case for prosecution before any New Hampshire court. None of the claims were current. Most alleged misconduct from three to five decades ago. Virtually all were brought with a financial demand that resulted in a monetary settlement from the diocese.

Bishop Peter Libasci’s published list was generated, not by any semblance of due process, but rather by a one-sided grand jury investigation of the diocese launched in 2002. That investigation treated all claims in civil lawsuits and other demands for settlement as demonstrably true with no standard of evidence whatsoever.

Bishop Libasci’s press release revealed that the claims against all 73 priests were determined to be “credible.” This is a standard that the United States bishops adopted at their Dallas meeting in 2002. “Credible,” as the bishops are applying it, means only “possible.” If it could have happened, it’s credible.

A 2003 grand jury investigation of the Diocese was the source for the recently published list. In that investigation, none of the accused — the few who were still living, anyway — were permitted to appear to offer any defense. That is the nature of a grand jury investigation. It is a strictly prosecutorial affair that is supposed to determine whether indictments and trials should follow. None of the subjects on Bishop Libasci’s list were indicted after the 2003 grand jury report became public.

My article cited above was followed by a related and stunning article by Fr. Gordon MacRae, one of the priests whose name appears on the bishop’s list. His category was unique on the list. It was simply, “convicted.” It was published without nuance by a diocese whose previous bishop told others in secret that he knows Father MacRae to be innocent and unjustly imprisoned. “Transparency,” however, has its limits.

Father MacRae’s article is “A Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester.” Amazingly, from reports I have seen generated by These Stone Walls, the article was heavily read around the world, most notably in Washington D.C., at the Holy See, and throughout Rome. In New Hampshire, it was the most-read article of the year at These Stone Walls.

My article, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List,” focused on injustices behind the scenes in a decision of the Bishop and Diocese to publish that list anew. Father MacRae’s remarkable sequel contrasts the 2003 grand jury investigation of his Diocese with a similar 2018 investigation of a nationally known Concord, New Hampshire academy, St. Paul’s School, with historic ties to the Episcopal church. Fr. MacRae brought to light a judicial ruling that publishing these grand jury reports — and by extension the Bishop’s list of names — is actually forbidden under New Hampshire law.

Grave Injustice in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State

Father MacRae’s article revealed a grave injustice in the Diocese of Manchester and multiple other U.S. dioceses. Fifteen years after the Diocese and Attorney General signed a deal in secret to publish a grand jury report in 2003, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara ruled that the report, and one involving a 2018 St Paul’s School grand jury investigation, cannot legally be published.

New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald pressed to allow publication of the St. Paul’s School report. He cited the 2003 Diocese of Manchester precedent in which a report and files were published — the source for the names on Bishop Libasci’s list.

Father MacRae revealed that in 2003, the current N.H. Attorney General was part of a legal team representing the Diocese when release of the report was agreed upon in secret. It was the Attorney General’s citing the precedent that triggered Judge McNamara’s 23-page Order dated August 12, 2019, ten days after Bishop Libasci published his list.

Given the various one-sided grand jury investigations of Catholic dioceses across the U.S., Judge McNamara’s Court Order should give Catholics pause. The judicial findings summarized below cast doubt on the U.S. bishops’ collective decisions to publish lists of names arising from grand jury investigations:

• The OAG [Office of the Attorney General] argues that a common law precedent for such a report does in fact exist because the Hillsborough County [NH] Superior Court [in 2003] authorized an agreement between the OAG and the Diocese of Manchester to waive the secrecy of a grand jury investigation …

• The Hillsborough County Superior Court endorsed the Diocese-OAG Agreement without explanation and without any written Order. This Court respectfully disagrees with the decision to approve the Diocese-OAG Agreement [in 2003].

• The Diocese-OAG Agreement fulfilled none of the traditional purposes of the common law grand jury.

• The Court cannot find that the use of grand jury materials and the breach of grand jury secrecy in order to prepare a report is a practice authorized by New Hampshire common law.

• Rather than investigation of crime, the report is a post hoc summary of information the grand jury considered, but did not indict on. It did not protect the privacy interests of those witnesses and subjects that were never charged with a crime by the grand jury.

• The deficiency of the Diocese-OAG Agreement is cast in bold relief by [a] December 2018 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Pennsylvania has a statute that specifically authorizes investigative grand juries and investigative reports. However, as in most states, the statute contains statutory procedures to provide individuals with due process protections for their reputational rights … the petitioners were entitled to have a report published with redactions of their names in order to protect their right to reputation. [emphasis added]

• A grand jury is not an adversary hearing in which guilt or innocence is established. Rather, it is an ex parte investigation to determine whether a crime has been committed and whether criminal proceedings should be instituted against any person.

• Grand jury testimony can involve all sorts of false, damaging, and one-sided information and New Hampshire has no historical or legal basis for releasing such information.

• An allegation of wrongdoing or impropriety, based on half-truths, illegally seized evidence, or rumor, innuendo or hearsay may blight a person’s life indefinitely.

• Mark Twain famously said that a lie is half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In an internet age, he might have added that the lie will forever outrun the truth as search engines become more efficient.

• Accordingly, the Court DENIES the OAG Motion to Produce and Disclose. The OAG may not produce any report that contains any material characterized as a “Grand Jury Report.”

[Source Order of Judge Richard B. McNamara In Re: Grand Jury No. 217-2018-CV-00382, August 12, 2019.]

Now Comes the Pope

The Court Order should have applied to the Bishop of Manchester as well. He took it upon himself to do what the law forbids the State to do: to prosecute and convict in the public square those who were not indicted, were not tried or convicted, but were merely accused. I find it a disturbing coincidence that Bishop Peter Libasci’s decision to publish a list of the names of 73 accused priests — the vast majority of whom are merely accused — took place just days before the Order by Judge McNamara was issued.

This is ironic, at best, and at worst highly suspect. Had the Order preceded the release of names, the priests involved — those still living, anyway — may have had legal standing to challenge it. But this all pales next to published guidelines of another authority the bishops should be heeding.

On November 12, 2019, Archbishop Christoph Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, addressed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. His address emphasized that “The pastoral thrust of this pontificate must reach the American people.” The bishops can fulfill this, he said, with “tangible signs of their communion with the Holy Father.”

Among the “pastoral thrusts” of the pontificate of Pope Francis that might require communion with his bishops was a February 21, 2019 issuance of a set of guidelines that bishops should follow on how allegations of sexual abuse by priests are to be handled. The list included 21 points that Pope Francis asked the bishops to observe. Point Number 14 is as follows:

“The right to defense: the principle of natural and canon law of a presumption of innocence must also be safeguarded until the guilt of the accused is proven. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the lists of the accused being published, even by dioceses, before the preliminary investigation and a definitive condemnation.”

— Guidelines of Pope Francis, February 19, 2019

Rev. Msgr. Thomas G. Guarino, Professor of Systematic Theology and a prolific author, has published what I consider to be a landmark article entitled “The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter (First Things, October 2, 2019). Father Guarino characterized the 2002 Dallas Charter — the operable document under which accused priests are removed from all ministry:

“The harried bishops, with their Dallas Charter of 2002… passed Draconian norms that come close to venturing beyond Catholic teaching. The American bishops decreed ‘zero tolerance’ for priests accused of sexual abuse, a norm that, as Cardinal Avery Dulles acknowledged in 2002, violates equitable treatment for priests. Dulles added, ‘Having been so severely criticized for exercising poor judgment in the past, the bishops apparently wanted to avoid making any judgments in these cases’”

Father Guarino’s article points out that Pope Francis has been reluctant to invoke the term “zero-tolerance.”  The Wall Street Journal  reported that of the twenty countries in the world with the largest Catholic populations, only the Bishops of the United States have invoked a policy of “zero tolerance.”

In 2000, the U.S. bishops issued a pastoral document critical of the American criminal justice system. The bishops rejected terms such as “zero tolerance” and “three-strikes” in the application of punishments in the criminal justice system. They urged lawmakers to focus on rehabilitation and restorative justice while imposing sentences.

But two years later, at Dallas in 2002, under the harsh glare of the news media and victim advocates such as S.N.A.P. (who were directly invited by the bishops) the U.S. bishops inflicted the same panic-driven one-size-fits-all policy on their priests that they asked the justice system NOT to inflict on all other U.S. citizens. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in rebuttal in 2004:

“The Church must protect the community from harm, but it must also protect the human rights of each individual who may face an accusation… Some of the measures adopted [at Dallas] went far beyond the protection of children… [Bishops] undermined the morale of their priests and inflicted a serious blow to the credibility of the Church as a mirror of justice.”

— Avery Cardinal Dulles, “The Rights of Accused Priests,” America 2004

The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter

As Father Gordon MacRae exposed in “A Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester,” the late Father Richard John Neuhaus interviewed an American prelate who was one of the unnamed principal architects of the U.S. Bishops’ Dallas Charter. Father Neuhaus quoted him in a First Things  article: “It may be necessary for some innocent priests to suffer for the good of the Church.” That prelate, according to Father MacRae, was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

As Father Guarino points out in “The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter,” a significant problem with the Bishops’ policy is that most accused priests have not actually been found guilty of abuse. Of the 73 priests, both living and deceased, on Bishop Peter Libasci’s published list, only five ever had due process in any court of law. Three of those were by plea deals, and one, as Bishop Libasci’s predecessor has acknowledged in secret, is wrongfully convicted.

For all the other names on the Diocese of Manchester list — and for the vast majority of the hundreds of American priests who have been removed from ministry, the allegations against them were only considered “credible,” meaning only that it is possible that they happened. If any other American citizens from any walk of life were subjected to such a standard before being shamed in the public square, libel and slander lawsuits would flood the courts.

Perhaps the greatest insult to Catholics in the pews is the statement of Bishop Libasci — and other bishops who have published lists of names of the accused — that this is done for the purpose of “transparency.” I have personally attempted to review the required canonical investigations of Father MacRae that a previous official of the Diocese of Manchester insisted were carried out. I was told that these investigations are confidential.

I have requested to see the list of settlements meted out to the accusers in his case which have been called into question by The Wall Street Journal  and other interested parties. I was told that these settlements are confidential.

Father MacRae himself requested of a previous bishop, the Most Rev. John McCormack, that he be permitted to see the canonical investigation that the bishop claimed was forwarded to the Holy See. Father MacRae was reportedly told that this, too, is confidential. He was later told by another official of the Diocese that no required canonical investigation ever took place. This was before MacRae learned from a New Hampshire attorney and a PBS producer that Bishop McCormack revealed, after requesting secrecy, that “I firmly believe Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison.”

“Zero Tolerance” is an insult to Catholic theology and to our priests who are disenfranchised from their priesthood, and from their civil rights as citizens, on the whim of a bishop after being accused.

“Transparency,” however, is an insult to all the rest of us who have waited under shrouds of duplicity for our bishops to reflect the mirror of justice that this world needs the Church to be.

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post with the priests and Catholic laity you know. You are also invited to Subscribe to These Stone Walls  and to Follow on Facebook some inspiring related graphic presentations of these posts.

You may learn more on the story of Catholic priests falsely accused from these relevant articles:

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

• The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence by Ryan A. MacDonald

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

• The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal

The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests

Sixteen years after the Dallas Charter set a ‘credible’ standard to suspend hundreds of accused priests, bishops are only now trying to define what ‘credible’ means.

“Credibly accused’ is being worked out in terms of our lawyers even now as we speak.”

— Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President, U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I chose the image atop this post because it presents such a startling contrast. The untitled and uncredited image was sent to me and I was so moved by it I asked to have it posted on Christmas Eve on LinkedIn, an entirely secular social network. If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one speaks volumes. Within days, it garnered 3,000 views and a multitude of comments. Readers found it to be remarkably inspiring.

I wanted to include it here because it reflects the reality in which I live. It also reflects the true mission of priesthood, “a heroic vocation” as described by Matthew Hennessey, an editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote in 2017 that, despite all the bad press...

“One thing hasn’t changed. Young men still want lives of heroic virtue and the priesthood offers that in abundance.”

The Priesthood is a Heroic Vocation,” August 17, 2017

Both the photo above and Matthew Hennessey’s WSJ op-ed stand in stark contrast to how most in the news media — often predators in their own right — are portraying Catholic priests. A typical example was analyzed in these pages in a post about the one-sided hysteria masked as journalism that has dogged Catholic leaders in the sexual abuse moral panic of the last two decades. That post is “USA Today’s Tim Roemer on How to Save the Catholic Church.”

I owe some thanks to USA Today and former Democratic Congressman Tim Roemer for at least being transparent in their real agenda for Catholics in America. Their moral outrage has goals: abandon civil rights for priests, allow priests to marry, ordain women, and appoint lay leaders to replace bishops in supervising clergy and screening seminarians. In other words, make bishops obsolete.

But nothing Tim Roemer has said or written alarms me as much as the quote atop this post from Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Gospel could be the measure of how the bishops respond to the crisis. Church law could provide a framework for formulating policy. Bypassing all of that for the U.S. bishops, “Credibly accused is being worked out in terms of our lawyers even now as we speak.”

“Even now as we speak.” Sixteen years after adopting “credible” as the standard by which accused priests — “from however long ago” — are measured and discarded, the bishops are only now discerning what “credible” should mean, and only because there is a movement afoot to apply the same standard to bishops. A little history is in order.

In 2002, the bishops meeting in Dallas under the harsh glare of the news media adopted a policy in a time of crisis. Having invited David Clohessy, Barbara Blane and others from SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) to address the conference, the bishops adopted the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

Known simply as the “Dallas Charter,” its main promoter was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Cardinal Avery Dulles lobbied against it, and published a stinging rebuke in “The Rights of Accused Priests.” The bishops, however, sided with Cardinal McCarrick.

Zero Tolerance Is Not a Gift of the Holy Spirit

In 2000, the U. S. bishops published a pastoral document entitled “Responsibility and Rehabilitation.” It criticized the American criminal justice system for adopting one-size-fits-all concepts of justice and mantra-based policies such as “zero tolerance” and “three strikes and you’re out” that enhanced penalties while discounting paths to rehabilitation. The bishops urged that justice should be restorative, and not only punitive.

Just two years later, those same bishops signed the Dallas Charter inflicting upon their own priests what they condemned in the criminal justice system. The bishops’ draconian new policy for priests negated restorative justice.

“One strike and you’re out — forever!” Among those paying attention, even hardcore law and order types scratched their heads at the abolition of due process by which this would be implemented.

An accusation — whether from this year or fifty years ago — need not be proven or even true. It need only be ‘‘credible.” The accepted interpretation of “credible” was that it could have happened. In other words, the priest and the accuser were both present in the same general locale 30, 40, or 50 years ago. This new zero-tolerance policy held that any priest so accused, from however long ago, is to be removed and barred from any ministry unless and until proven to be innocent.The cases, many of which skipped the preliminary investigations required by canon law, were then submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican for finality. The CDF had every reason to conclude that canon law was being followed and legitimate investigations were carried out. Writing in First Things (Aug.-Sept. 2002) Father Richard John Neuhaus described the scene in which the “Dallas Charter” was created:

“Almost 300 bishops sat in mandatory docility as they were sternly reproached by knowing psychologists, angry spokespersons for millions of presumably angrier laypeople, and above all, by those whom the bishops learned to call, with almost cringing deference, the ‘victim/survivors’... Tears earned a gold star and welling eyes an honorable mention from the media... Like schoolboys, the bishops anxiously awaited the evening news to find out their grades.”

“Scandal Time III”

The resultant process was described in these pages in a courageous post by priest and canon lawyer, Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.” It was a timely and soul-searching post for the whole Church about the rights of accused priests and the real-world failure of the hierarchy to secure and respect those rights.

Since the Dallas Charter was enacted by the bishops in 2002, that “real-world failure” has resulted in scenes far more reminiscent of the American McCarthy era than the American Catholic church. In the months to follow that Dallas meeting, thousands of files were scoured and hundreds of priests were rounded up. Priests merely accused, many of whom had ministered without incident for years or decades, were summarily expelled from Church ministry and property. Again, Father Neuhaus:

“The bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, unCatholic approach to sin and grace... They ended up adopting a policy that was sans repentance, sans conversion, sans forbearance, sans prudential judgment, sans forgiveness, sans almost everything one might have hoped for from the bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, “Scandal Time III,” 2002

Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault and Bishop John McCormack released to the news media the names of “credibly accused” priests of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H.

When the Church Defames Her Priests

Back in July of 2011 I wrote with exasperation about the result of all this by profiling the case of Boston priest, Father F. Dominic Menna. “Father Dom” ministered as a senior priest well into his late seventies in a parish where he was beloved and respected. Then the 2002 moral panic came. An easy target, Father Menna found himself among dozens to face a vague claim from the distant past, an incident alleged to have occurred over forty years earlier.

It was unsubstantiated and could never be substantiated. By what magic could a 40-year-old claim of fondling be substantiated? But it “could” have happened, and that rendered it “credible.” Father Dom was dragged before the Archdiocesan Sanhedrin, stripped of his faculties as a priest, and put out into the street. The next day, The Boston Globe ran his name and photo and identified the vague details of his “offense” forgetting to mention that it was both unproven and up to a half-century old.

Of course the purpose of all that is to invite new accusers to cash in. This claim came through the usual contingency lawyers who became quick millionaires by holding press conferences to shame bishops into quick settlements. I wrote about the sad Father Dom story in 2011 in, “If Night Befalls Your Father, You Don’t Discard Him. You Just Don’t!”

Ah, but we do discard them! Or at least most of us keep silent while someone else does. This is the “zero tolerance” that our bishops have embraced and that even Pope Francis now touts as a centerpiece of the Church’s response. So why am I protesting all this anew? In a December 19 issue of CRUX, Correspondent Christopher White published “Two Decades into Crisis, No Consensus on What ‘Credibly Accused’ Means.”

After sixteen years of compiling scarlet letter lists of the accused — some living, but most dead, some guilty but many not — the question has arisen anew about whether names of accused priests — merely accused, mind you — should be published by their bishops. The demand to do so comes from lawyers, the news media, and SNAP, but as Father Richard John Neuhaus warned in 2002, the “victim advocates are not satisfied and, sadly, may never be satisfied.”

It is not enough that the bishops release these lists of names. The newest wave of SNAP leaders (the previous wave disappeared after being implicated in an alleged lawyer kickback scheme) want the bishops to also include in these lists descriptions of the alleged abuse so that others who want to contact the same contingency lawyers can concoct consistent stories. If you balk at the plausibility of such a concern, it is only because you have not yet read the evidence for it in “A Weapon of Mass Destruction: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.”

But there are other concerns, the most important of which is fundamental civil liberty and due process. After fallout from the now infamous Pennsylvania grand jury report on accused priests, bishops in multiple states have conceded on the issue of publishing the names of the “credibly” accused, living or dead, guilty or not. This has been going on for years, but now, the sound of screeching voices has risen to a scarlet letter crescendo.

Taking Rights from Some Descends a Slippery Slope

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo told CRUX that among the next steps in the bishops’ collective response to the crisis would be “studying national guidelines for the publication of lists of names of those clerics facing substantiated claims of abuse.”

It did not go without notice among the lawyers, the news media, and SNAP that the parameter has suddenly been altered. After two decades with “credible” as the standard for dismissing priests and releasing their names, “substantiated” is now the operative word and it is a far different standard. Why it took the bishops nearly two decades to ask themselves what “credible” means — not to mention whether it ever reflected justice or the Gospel — is unclear. A lot is unclear.

But some clarity on this came forth from another source “When the Church Defames Her Priests” was published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review in 2017 by Opus Bono founder and president, Joe Maher, and David A. Shaneyfelt, an attorney in private practice in California and an Opus Bono adviser. The article addresses the destructive and ill-advised practice adopted to date by some two dozen dioceses in the United States to create and publish lists of priests who have been merely accused. The Opus Bono authors wrote:

“We take special issue with those dioceses who think that publishing a list of names of clerics who have been ‘credibly’ accused of sexual misconduct is warranted. We disagree for many reasons — canonical, theological, pastoral, and legal. It is this latter reason we wish to address here.”

The article goes on to present a transparent but chilling explanation of what “credible” means in this context, and a compelling case for protecting the due process rights of priests who are merely accused. After reading, I could not help but agree with its urgency. The article captured the flagrant injustice in this practice:

“How ironic that a bishop, who aims to demonstrate his concern for one victim of abuse, will thereby create another victim of abuse — and end up paying large amounts of damages to each in the process. How doubly ironic that a bishop who initiates such a policy may someday find himself on the list.”

Lest any bishop thought that suggestion implausible, it has now come to pass. In “Giving Due Process Its Due,” an excellent article at The Catholic Thing, Stephen P. White (no relation to CRUX writer, Christopher White) wrote that at the November meeting of bishops, Bishop Donald Trautman (Emeritus of Erie, PA), spoke against plans to have a similar reporting system for allegations against bishops.

In response to the idea that allegations against bishops be reported to the Nuncio, and thus to Rome, Bishop Trautman objected: “I think this proposal is very dangerous and unjust. It calls for the reporting to the Apostolic Nunciature accusations not investigated, not substantiated, not proven. That’s unjust.” I agree with Bishop Trautman, however, as Stephen White reported, it raised a few eyebrows among bishops for it is precisely what US bishops have been doing to hundreds of priests since the Dallas Charter was enacted in 2002.

The growing demand — to which the bishops of some seventy U.S. dioceses have already capitulated — is to bypass the legal system standard of a criminal conviction as the impetus for requiring registration of sexual offenders. Some bishops have created their own private version of “Megan’s Law,” but without the law’s built-in respect for basic civil rights. In American courts, only those convicted in a court of law can end up on such a published list.

Dozens of U.S. bishops and dioceses have already published these lists with no legal entity requiring them, and with little recourse on the part of the priests, many of whom are innocent. These lists replace justice with capitulation to a lynch mob.

The November-December issue of Annals Australasia: Journal of Catholic Culture reprinted the following excerpt, an eye-opener from Peter Hitchens in the (UK) Daily Mail, 17 December 2017, entitled “We have forgotten what justice means”:

“Accusations of long-ago sexual crime have become a sort of industry in this country. People are so horrified by them that they almost always believe them. Because the crime is so foul, we stop thinking.... Police and prosecutors use our horror to get easy convictions when they must know that their cases are weak. The less actual evidence that they have, the more they stress the disgusting nature of the alleged crime. And they forget to remind us that it is alleged, not proved.

“Equally shamefully, judges do not stop these trials, and juries leave their brains at the door. They convict not because they are sure the case has been proved beyond reasonable doubt, but because they are angry and revolted. I am miserably sure there are disturbing numbers of people in prisons now, prosecuted on such charges, who are innocent of the accusations against them. It is our fault, because we have forgotten what justice is supposed to be like, and that, if we do not guard it in our hearts, it will perish in our country.”

If Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro’s one-sided, untested grand jury report is to be the standard by which we execute justice and formulate policy — without evidence, without trials, without a defense — then justice has already perished in our country. If our bishops publish lists of names of priests merely accused, but without substantiation, their credibility will perish with it.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this important post and visit these related posts from These Stone Walls:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

That Grand Jury Report on Abusive Catholic Priests

Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked

Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence

A new Manual for Eucharistic Adoration from the Poor Clares and Saint Benedict Press has found a captive audience in Fr Gordon MacRae as he marks 34 years of priesthood.

June 1, 2016 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“You have GOT to be joking!” That was my first reaction. In early April this year, I was summoned to a prison office to sign for “personal property.” I had no idea what it could be. I hadn’t ordered anything recently from the place where we in prison must purchase shoes, clothing, toiletries. So it had to be a book, but receiving books here also requires that I know in advance that the book is coming. I knew of nothing.

I signed for the mysterious item and returned to my cell where I sat down on a concrete stump — the same one I am typing upon at this moment. “You have GOT to be joking’” I said to myself as I perused the book in my hand and its cover letter. It was from Christian Tappe, Director of Marketing at Saint Benedict Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. The letter began:

“I am pleased to enclose this review copy of TAN Books’ Manual for Eucharistic Adoration… written by the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. If you would like more information, or to schedule an interview…”

I was more bewildered than ever. It was the fourth time in the last year that a Catholic publisher has sent me a book to review on These Stone Walls. Are people actually reading TSW? But this particular book was a complete mystery. First off, I should not have received it at all. The shipment and cover letter were addressed to “Father” Gordon MacRae with no prison number (67546) as required on anything sent to me. In the ordinary course, either the use of a title or the absence of a number would cause the book to be rejected and returned to sender without my even knowing about it. But here it was, in my hand nonetheless.

My first impulse was to toss the book aside as useless, at least for me. My apologies to the Poor Clares who so lovingly wrote it, and to the publisher who so kindly sent it to me. I am a slow learner, so the nicely adorned book sat unopened in a corner of my cell for a month. I was simply too caught up in the glaring irony of it. There is no True Presence here to adore. There is only the present absence.

To make matters worse, and more mysterious, on the same day I received the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration  I learned from lawyers that we had lost yet another effort at appeal of my wrongful conviction and imprisonment. It took one full year for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to notify us that they will not review an earlier decision to dismiss my appeal with no hearing on its merits or evidence. This has made the road to justice ever steeper and more treacherous. I am told that others will be taking this up to write about it.

In the Nighttime

So it was in the dim and murky light of continued injustice that I tossed aside the good sisters’ book about Eucharistic Adoration, and shrugged it off. But appearances can be deceiving, and you never know what apparently “useless” thing might have a profound influence on your view of the world — not only the world you live in, but the world that lives in you. Who you are is in large part a collision of these two worlds, and a person of faith risks great loss if the interior life is forfeited to live only in that other, more calamitous world. We have to live in and with both worlds, and we have to keep them in balance.

One day recently, I saw a vocation ad in Our Sunday Visitor for a community of sisters. The ad described them as a “monastic, cloistered and contemplative community,” and then added, “Find us on Facebook!” That, to me, seemed a collision of two worlds, but it works if the sisters can reflect in the latter world the light that shines in the former.

On June 5th I mark thirty-four years of priesthood. Twenty-two of them have been in a place where presence before the Blessed Sacrament is unavailable and simply impossible. It can only be imagined. It has been a long time since I wrote of the power of the True Presence in a place where it seems absent. In 2010 I wrote a post entitled “The Sacrifice of the Mass” (Part I and Part II), and it seemed a pivotal point not only for These Stone Walls, but for my life as a priest in extraordinary circumstances.

The two-part post described the utter deprivation of something many readers simply took for granted in their world. For my first seven years in this prison, Mass was unavailable to me, and without it I found myself growing ever more distant from my life as a priest. That post described the extreme efforts it took to gain the ability to offer Mass, beginning with what I today call a “spiritual offering.”

It wasn’t what you might think. It was along the lines of a “Spiritual Communion,” and I got the idea from reading Father Walter Ciszek’s book, He Leadeth Me. During twenty years in a Siberian prison accused of being a Vatican spy, Father Ciszek could only imagine the Mass. Sitting in the pitch dark at night on his bunk, he began to recite The Roman Canon in his mind, and to imagine himself present before the Blessed Sacrament. After reading this, I began to do the same, and my post, “The Sacrifice of the Mass” evolved from that. After I wrote that two-part post, a TSW reader sent me a letter, an excerpt of which follows:

“I cannot imagine what sustains your identity as a priest in that prison. There is nothing in that environment that in any way supports your priesthood. You are not ever in the company of other priests. Your diocese and fellow priests have cast you off. You see yourself each day in the mirror wearing the uniform of a prisoner, and you know in your mind, heart and soul that there has been no justice in your being forced to wear this role.

“And yet when I read your writings, your priesthood is always at the forefront, the part of you that shines the brightest, that speaks the loudest, that sustains not only you but apparently many of those around you in that place. Can you explain, Father MacRae, what exactly allows you to retain a priestly identity?”

Come Be My Light

I do not have an answer for this. After I wrote my recent post, “Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Pentecost Illumines the Night,” some readers wrote in comments that they are moved by my faith. It is not so obvious. At least, it is not obvious to me. I struggle with faith on a daily basis, and I found a kindred spirit in Saint Mother Teresa when I learned that she struggled as well. The truth is that it was the Poor Clares’ Manual of Eucharistic Adoration that caused me to look more deeply into the faith life of soon-to-be Saint Mother Teresa. The Manual includes an admonition from her, and it was this quote that prompted me to write “Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Pentecost Illumines the Night.”

“The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about everlasting peace on earth.”

Manual, p. 111

It was from writing that post that I fathomed the necessity of Eucharistic Adoration. It is not for us to be present to Him. It is for Him to be present to us in a way that “will deepen your union with Him.” That is the very purpose of the interior life, that other world that we must balance with our other foot in this world.

While writing my Pentecost post, I learned of the spiritual deprivation often experienced by Mother Teresa, but that deprivation never seemed able to diminish her commitment to serve the poor. Rather, the opposite happened. It was her service to the poor that brought her to the Paschal Mystery and kept her there, ever providing the beckoning of Christ that compelled her spiritual life. Mother Teresa sought union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and brought Christ from there to the poor. It was never the other way around.

Eucharistic Adoration

So how could I, as a priest wrongly imprisoned for decades, possibly bring my interior life into this world where the True Presence is so overshadowed by the present absence? No matter what the source of the sense of emptiness is in your life, if you are reading this you know what I mean by “the present absence.” That is why God allowed Mother Teresa and others among our patron saints to suffer spiritual deprivation, and to endure it. It was so that we might emulate them as they serve as beacons in spiritual darkness. Their witness inspires hope in the dark, not just our rescue from it.

As has happened on so many nights in prison, I awoke one night recently, filled with an anxiety that has no name. It’s not related to anything I can identify. It’s just there, a natural side effect of the stifling nature of an American prison. I have a little battery-powered book light purchased from the same prison vendor from which we purchase clothing and other needs. Waking often in the night, I have gotten hundreds of times my money’s worth from that small light.

I switched on the light in that anxious night, and reached for my glasses and a book on a small shelf at the end of my iron bunk. I thought I had grabbed another book, but my hand landed on the previously untouched Manual for Eucharistic Adoration by the Poor Clares. It has a ribbon page marker so I opened to the ribbon and was struck by this admonition from Saint John Vianney, the Curé of Ars and the patron saint of priests:

“When you awake in the night, transport yourself quickly in spirit before the tabernacle, saying, ‘Behold, my God, I come to adore you, to praise, thank, and love you, and to keep you company with the angels.’”

Manual, p. 116

So that night I tried to imagine a time and a place in which being before the Blessed Sacrament was most meaningful to me. Sadly, it was long ago. It wasn’t during my years as a parish priest when time and again I passed by the sanctuary and tabernacle barely noticing, blindly going from one pastoral task to another, not even genuflecting, not even knowing that I failed to bring Christ with me because I failed to stop and enter into His Presence. At some point in my life as a priest, this world collided with that one, and demolished it. This has been the real priesthood scandal. Action somehow overshadowed contemplation to our priestly peril.

It was only years later, after year upon year of absence, that I became aware of this deprivation of the Presence of God. So in that night of prison anxiety my mind fled down the nights and down the days, past the parishes where I served, and the seminary I attended, to a Benedictine Abbey just twenty miles from this prison. The journey in my mind took me to 1977. I was a Capuchin then, attending school at Saint Anselm College, and my most special place on campus was a tiny alcove built into the Abbey Church.

There, before a magnificent granite tabernacle, I spent many hours in the Presence of the Lord. Last year, a reader found a photograph of the interior of the Saint Anselm Abbey Church and printed it for me. It is the opening graphic for this post. Then our Missionary of Mercy Friend, Father George David Byers, found a photo of the Blessed Sacrament alcove to the right of the main sanctuary. This is where I went back then, before the world shook lose the Holy Longing to be in His Presence. This is where I go now when I awaken in the night. Sometimes, now, I don’t think I awaken with anxiety and then go there. I think I now awaken just to go there.

In just a few months, These Stone Walls will mark seven years in publication, just one third the time that I have been in this prison. During that seven years, many readers have sent me letters and comments informing me that they have devoted an hour before the Blessed Sacrament to be in His Presence in my stead. You have bestowed upon me a most priceless gift, and for this I have much gratitude.

Now the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, along with author Paul Thigpen and Saint Benedict Press, have provided a road map to the interior life, and a tool to converse with the Living Christ among us. I most highly recommend the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration and, if you are not there already, the restoration of the Lord’s Presence in your interior life.

I humbly thank you for thirty-four years of priesthood, even out here on the dark peripheries from which I write. Without you, I might have forgotten how to be a priest, and might today be just a prisoner. There are two kneelers before the Blessed Sacrament at Saint Anselm Abbey Church in Manchester, New Hampshire. Some night when anxiety awakens you in the dark, join me there. I’ll have the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration in my hands.