The Duty of a Priest: Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life

In a bombshell report, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and the most visible pro-life priest in America has been dismissed from the priesthood by Pope Francis.

December 18, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: In a bombshell report that I learned of only today it seems that Fr. Frank Pavone, Director of Priests for Life and the most visible pro-life cleric in North America has been dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis. At this juncture, the dismissal is both inconceivable and unexplained. Fr. George David Byers wrote of it with some attachments today.

I plan to postpone further comment on this troubling development for pro-life Catholics until there is further clarification from Rome, if ever. Of interest, I wrote this post about Fr. Frank Pavone and his struggles eleven years ago. Much that I described in this post has now come to pass. I have never been more sorrowful for being right. Please pray for Fr. Pavone and Priests for Life.

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For about a year now, Beyond These Stone Walls has had a link to Priests for Life, one of the strongest and most vocal pro-life organizations with oversight from the Catholic Church. So when news began to circulate that Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life since 1993, was “recalled” to his diocese — the Diocese of Amarillo — I paid attention, as did many.

Before commenting on the justice or injustice of what has occurred to date in this matter, however, I must comment on the context. It has become clear to me even from behind these stone walls that not all is as it seems. Generally, a matter such as this would generate some dialogue within the Church, perhaps even in the Catholic media, but that would be the extent of its interest. This matter between Father Frank Pavone and Amarillo Bishop Patrick Zurek, however, has also become fodder for comments in the secular media providing fuel for the speculation and controversy now surrounding Father Pavone.

What exactly is the controversy? Father Frank Pavone has been recalled to his diocese, the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, by his bishop. Father Pavone has been neither suspended nor disciplined for any cause. A Catholic News Service account included some clarification of this by Msgr. Harold Waldow, Vicar for Clergy in the Diocese of Amarillo:

“Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, remains a priest in good standing in the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas. … Msgr. Harold Waldow told CNS that Bishop Patrick J. Zurek only suspended Father Pavone’s ministry outside of the diocese because the well-known pro-life priest is needed for work in Amarillo.”

— Catholic News Service, Sept. 14, 2011

But there remains some taint upon Father Pavone. This matter between a priest and his bishop has become a matter of public dispute, and that itself is a violation of Father Pavone’s rights under Church law. After writing a letter to the nation’s bishops describing his suspension of Father Pavone’s ministry outside his own diocese, the bishop reportedly released the letter publicly. That seems to be what sparked their differences thrusting this matter into a public forum, but without any clear allegation of wrongdoing.

Brian Fraga wrote an informative article about this in Our Sunday Visitor (“Pro-life priest ‘baffled’ by bishop’s shutdown,” OSV, October 2, 2011). He cited the broad support that has emerged for Father Pavone including from the Priests for Life Board of Directors, from the National Pro-Life Council, and other corners. Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Rev. Martin Luther King and a staunch pro-life advocate, has released a powerfully supportive statement about Father Pavone and Priests for Life.

I have believed from the outset that the hype about all this has little to do with Father Frank Pavone and Bishop Zurek. It has to do with Priests for Life and its vocally Catholic pro-life stance. There is an agenda out there — an agenda with tentacles that have reached deeply into the arena of Catholic life — that would be encouraged by the diminishment or outright destruction of the Church’s pro-life ministry. In this entire matter, it is not only Father Pavone whose reputation is on the line. It is also the Church’s pro-life stance, consistently undermined by those who want compromise with a secular agenda in the culture war.

The demise of Priests for Life would be a great trophy for that agenda. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I can’t help notice that this story is unfolding nationally just as a Presidential Primary is taking shape, and the culture war is gearing up for battle.

Resisting Secular Sabotage

In a chapter entitled “Self-Sabotage: Catholicism” in his book, Secular Sabotage (Faith Words, 2009), Catholic League President Bill Donohue pointed out that dissent in the Church’s pro-life ministry is not as simple as some trendy left-wing Catholics promoting abortion. Very few people of even the remotest Christian persuasion actually promote abortion as a societal good. What Bill Donohue pointed out was something much more subtle. There is a growing consensus among left-wing Catholics that the Church has simply lost the battle for life and should just move on.

Please note here that I do not use the term “left-wing Catholics” in any derogatory sense. I spent much of my life and ministry squarely in that camp. So did Father Richard John Neuhaus and Cardinal Avery Dulles, two exemplary Churchmen to whose memory we have dedicated Beyond These Stone Walls. Their drift to the right is far more a story of their embracing the great adventure of orthodoxy to the Magisterial authority of the Church — an authority that took precedence for them above any trendy political ideology.

My own drift away from the left followed their same example. It marked the official end of my adolescence that the life of the Church took precedence over my own sometimes highly misinformed publicly dissenting points of view.

Part of the agenda among the more radical wing of the Catholic left has been to get about the business of removing any Magisterial authority from our faith experience. The goal is to  carve out a distinctly American Catholic church with identifiably American Catholic values that mirror the now disintegrating American wing of the Church of England, the Episcopal church. But that’s a whole other blog post for some other day — such as next week, perhaps.

It’s time for American Catholic liberals to see and admit that their own views and causes are being hijacked by this radical wing. For them, organizations like Priests for Life are seen as an anachronistic hindrance to social progress. A nice little scandal undermining Priests for Life would be most welcomed in some circles right about now, not least among them some purportedly Catholic circles.

But there isn’t a scandal. Father Frank Pavone has not been accused of anything, though I do worry about his extreme vulnerability. There are agendas at work even in our Church that would be bolstered by the destruction of Father Pavone, his career, and his reputation. That fact must be a part of the equation as Catholics evaluate this story. Father Frank Pavone first was a target long before he was a suspect.

I have a personal example of how this works right here at Beyond These Stone Walls. For over two years now, BTSW has presented the views of a priest claiming to be falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned. So much of what I have written has been in direct confrontation with the agendas and claims of victim groups like SNAP and Catholic “reform” groups like Voice of the Faithful. Some of my postings about the Catholic League report, “SNAP Exposed” have been confrontational. My three-part series, “When Priests Are Falsely Accused” made a very controversial case for why accusers should be named. Nothing flies in the face of the cult of victimhood like that particular point of view.

But very few people disagreed with me or attacked these statements and positions. At first, I wondered if these controversial posts were even noticed, but then I learned they were widely disseminated. Even the Spanish-language news network, Univision, posted links to “When Priests Are Falsely Accused” on their website, as did National Public Radio and many international secular sites. Very few people disagreed with me or attacked these posts.

The very worst attack — though a rather wimpy one — was a one-line comment from SNAP director, David Clohessy. Commenting on the Spero News version of my BTSW post, “Due Process for Accused Priests?” David Clohessy called me “a dangerous and demented man.” Maybe he didn’t read “Sticks and Stones: My Incendiary Blog Post on Catholic Civil Discourse.”

But in contrast to the lack of any real attacks on Beyond These Stone Walls was a barrage of nasty e-mail attacks when I posted a clearly pro-life article, “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life” last January. I got clobbered. Some of the messages called me all sorts of names, denounced Beyond These Stone Walls, and denigrated those who assist me as its editors. It was perfectly okay with these people if I remind Catholics that some priests are falsely accused and some Americans are wrongly imprisoned. But how dare I use a Catholic blog to post a reasoned and thoughtful defense of the Catholic Church’s pro-life position and why it should not be compromised?

So that’s it then. I can write that a lot of men and women have committed fraud by falsely accusing Catholic priests of decades-old abuses. I can write that some of our bishops have been unwittingly complicit in this fraud and have left their priests vulnerable by blindly settling virtually every claim. I can even write that some of the purported “victims” are in fact criminals who should have their names and their claims exposed before any real due process and justice can take place. Not many on the left or right had much to say in response to any of that. But when I wrote about why abortion is a basic civil rights issue, some Catholics called me a “predator priest who should be silenced by the Church.” One writer called for prison officials to confiscate my typewriter.

It all reminded me of a troubling conversation I had with a prisoner two years ago. He was a career criminal; a gangster, a thief and a thug, who came to my  door one day. “I have a question,” he said:

“Can you explain to me why all these Catholics can say they are protecting children when they scream about 30 or 40 year old claims of child abuse, but then have nothing to say about the fourteen million American babies sacrificed in abortions in just the last decade?”

It’s a hard question for which I have no answer. But I explained to him that no one in our Church will call him a gangster, a thief, or a thug unless he asks a question like that too loudly.

This was when I really came to admire Father Frank Pavone. I became aware of how visible the target on his back really is. As I wrote two weeks ago at the end of “Thy Brother’s Keeper,” I bow to Father Pavone’s faithful witness to both the truth and to his duty as a priest which is to preserve both his obligations and his rights under Church law. The bottom line is that anyone who thinks his bishop is going to protect his rights has not been paying attention in the last ten years.

Bishops as Prosecutors

I cannot speak to the internal disagreements between Father Frank Pavone and Bishop Patrick Zurek. I know none of the details. But I can speak in a broader sense of the necessity for any priest in the current climate to preserve his rights under Church law. I can only relate some of what transpired with my own bishop in a canonical proceeding to shed light on some of what may be happening behind the scenes in the Diocese of Amarillo.

Father Pavone came under recent attack in some circles because his bishop scheduled a personal meeting which Father Pavone declined to attend. There were some people — some very well intentioned — who saw in this some shades of culpability on the part of Father Pavone, using it to cast suspicion on his own transparency and desire to cooperate with his bishop.

It is likely, however, that Bishop Zurek has declined to allow a meeting to take place with Father Pavone’s Canonical Advocate present. I do not know this for certain, but I have read that Father Pavone’s Canonical Advocate has requested mediation in this matter between Father Pavone and his bishop. It was apparently on the advice of the Advocate that Father Pavone declined to meet without his Advocate or a mediator present. Both Father Pavone and his Canonical Advocate, Father David Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. have come under some public fire for this.

Church Law insists that any priest in a canonical forum has a right to advocacy. I stand by what I wrote in “Thy Brother’s Keeper’:

“I bow also to Father Pavone’s resolve to protect his rights under the higher authority of the law of the Church, for the [Dallas] Charter makes one thing clear now: Some bishops will neither protect nor respect those rights.”

I speak from experience. Throughout the last decade of attempting to defend myself before both a court of law and a court of public opinion, I have also had to simultaneously defend myself against a one-sided effort by my bishop to bring about a canonical dismissal from the priesthood with no defense whatsoever offered by me. Throughout this process, my bishop has steadfastly refused to meet or even converse with my Canonical Advocate regarding the matter of preserving my rights under Church law.

Far worse, when my bishop learned that I am seeking an opportunity to bring forward a new appeal of my conviction, my bishop hired his own lawyers to conduct a secret evaluation of my trial to present in Rome and circumvent my own efforts to defend myself. He has repeatedly refused to share with me or my Canonical Advocate the findings of that secret assessment.

My bishop has acted throughout in the role of a prosecutor, but it’s even worse than that.  In America, prosecutors are required to turn over to the defense the nature of charges and any evidence that supports them.  When I tried to assert my rights under Church law in this matter, my bishop responded with silence and has remained silent ever since.

I believe I could safely say that every organization formed on behalf of priests to assist in protecting their rights under Canon Law would now state that no priest in even a hint of an adversarial circumstance with his bishop should ever agree to a one-on-one meeting without his Canonical Advocate present. It would not only be foolish, it could be destructive. It would be akin to a prosecutor demanding to meet privately with a defendant without his lawyer present.

As the priesthood crisis became critical in 2002, Cardinal Avery Dulles gave bishops and priests a clear reminder of their rights and obligations under Church law.  His fine article, “The Rights of Accused Priests” is reprinted under “Articles” on Beyond These Stone Walls. Given these rights and obligations, I admire that Father Pavone is determined to resolve this matter in unity with his bishop. No bishop can in justice order him or any priest to set aside his rights under Church law.

Complicating my own comments on this matter is the fact that Father Frank Pavone and I have the same Canonical Advocate in the person of Father David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. who has broad training and experience in both civil and Church law. He, of course, has not discussed the Father Pavone matter with me at all. He is an accomplished professional motivated by the law and an impeccable set of ethics.

But Father Deibel has come under some highly unjust fire because of his advocacy for me. Some have used this to try to impugn his reputation and undermine Father Pavone’s own canonical defense. In truth, Father David Deibel was the sole Church official to appear at my trial and sentencing over seventeen years ago. He traveled from California at his own expense to do this. At the time I was sentenced by Judge Arthur Brennan to 67 years in prison, Father David Deibel was one of only two people in that courtroom with the moral courage and personal integrity to speak the truth, despite knowing that there was a price to pay for it. Father David Deibel was one of the heroes in my case, and the extent to which this is true will very soon be placed into public view. There is a lot more to come in this regard, and it is indeed coming.

Meanwhile, the Church owes Father Frank Pavone the right of defense — and respect, support, and encouragement for his tireless voice on behalf of those who have been denied one. Click here for Father Frank Pavone updates.

Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marked forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?

June 1, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

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“When you were young, you fastened your belt and walked where you would; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten them and take you where you do not wish to go.”

The Resurrected Christ to Peter (John 21:18)

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The few lines just below the top image on many blog posts are sometimes called a “meta-description.” Its purpose is to provide search engines like Google a summary of a post’s content in 164 characters or less (including spaces). Our meta-descriptions are not very useful in that regard because they are written with actual readers in mind and not search engines.

Our Editor’s meta-description atop this post ends with a question: What would I have done forty years ago on June 5, 1982 if I had before me then a vision of my future life as a priest? When I was unjustly sent to prison in 1994, I was asked that question often. I never had an easy answer.

After I began writing from prison at the invitation of Cardinal Avery Dulles fourteen years later in 2008, most people had stopped asking me that question. I think most just assumed that my life as a priest was over, or that whatever was left would just collapse and vanish under the weight of prison. Some thought the Vatican would throw me overboard without evidence simply because I am in prison. After 40 years as a priest, and 28 of them as a prisoner, none of those things has happened. I am now asked a different question: What sustains an identity of priesthood in such a place?

Also atop this post is a haunting quote from the Gospel of John (21:18). It’s from an appearance of the Risen Christ to Simon Peter and the disciples at the Sea of Tiberius. Jesus sought restitution from Peter whose courage gave way to a lie days earlier at Calvary. Peter had an opportunity to live up to his own words declared on the day before the Crucifixion, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:23). At Calvary, as the accusing mob pressed in, Peter’s courage failed. To appease the mob, he three times denied knowing Jesus.

I wrote in a post just weeks ago, “Shaming Benedict XVI, Catholic Schism, Cardinal Zen Arrested,” that we saw faith falter when only 92 of the world’s Catholic bishops signed a letter confronting a threat of Catholic schism in Germany while most others remained silent. We saw this again as prelates in the largest Christian denomination on Earth remained strangely silent after the Chinese Communist government’s unjust arrest of Hong Kong’s 90-year-old Joseph Cardinal Zen.

And we saw it yet again when only 15 U.S. bishops spoke out in support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who courageously barred U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Communion until she repents for decades of abject promotion of abortion. He acted as he must in pastoral care for her soul.

But I have no legitimate judgment of Peter at Calvary. It is not easy to stand up to a mob. In the verse that immediately follows the one I quote from Saint John atop this post, the Lord told Peter what would happen when he finds his faith and it informs his strength. He did find it, and Tradition tells us that he was crucified for it in A.D. 67. The flaws of bishops, which only the spiritually blind deny sharing with them in abundance, need not preclude the courage that Christ summons forth.

An Anniversary of Priesthood

A good friend, Fr. Stuart MacDonald, just celebrated his 25th anniversary of priesthood ordination. This is usually a joyful event for a priest, for his family, and for his parish. Father Stuart sent me a wonderful photograph of the Mass of Thanksgiving at his diocesan cathedral. The recently renovated church is beautiful, and the hundreds of Father Stuart’s family, friends and parishioners could not have been prouder, or happier.

Behind the main altar in the photo above is a glorious stained glass window depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is difficult to look at that sanctuary and see anything else. And yet Father Stuart stands out incensing the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, his appearance one of faithful witness inspired by the salvific scene of divine restitution enacted in glory just behind him.

I pondered the scene for a long time, taking in the beauty of the restored sanctuary’s art and architecture. It is all focused on that one place where priestly hands would soon raise in sacrifice the very Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world — even the sins of a three times denial of Him by Peter who would then become the First Bishop of Rome.

I tend not to look at such scenes and think about myself. I was so proud of Father Stuart because he, too, has endured the suffering of the Cross in his years as a priest. Like so many, he suffered bouts of depression and anxiety during the long bludgeoning of the priesthood over the last twenty-five years. It has come from all sides, even lately from some of our bishops. Father Stuart is fortunate to have one who supports him. In an age of cancelled priests, it is not always so.

It was some time before I contrasted the photograph sent by Father Stuart with the scene in my prison cell late at night on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost, as I offer my own Mass of Thanksgiving for 40 years of priesthood. Able to obtain elements for Mass only once per week, I join in that sacrificial offering in a 60-square-foot prison cell in the dark. The chair upon which I offer Mass is a 5-gallon plastic trash bucket emptied and turned upside down for the occasion.

There is something vaguely prophetic in that. Like the bucket, I, too, have to be emptied before Mass of all the harmful refuse of prison. At 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, after the last of the chaos and noise that fills this place subsides, I remove my hard-earned Mass kit from a hidden shelf in a corner. The plastic storage box relinquishes a small stole, a corporal and purificator, a sturdy plastic coffee cup. It is all I have for this purpose, but never used for any other.

Lastly comes a host and a quarter-ounce vial of sacramental wine. From a shelf at the foot of my concrete bunk comes a Sacramentary and a small battery powered book light. A concrete slab protrudes from the cinder block wall at the base of the sole, heavily barred cell window. The otherwise torturous prison lights beyond provide just enough light for Mass.

The Mass is always Ad Orientam, facing East, because that is the direction toward which my window faces. I am grateful for this despite it being of no design of my own. My little booklight illuminates the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which affords an opportunity to name the living and the dead who accompany me in this Mass. You are always remembered there.

There is no one else physically in attendance except my non-Catholic roommate who begins snoring up a storm in his upper bunk about an hour before my Mass begins. It is not exactly the hymn of a Heavenly choir, but, like most of the harsh sounds of prison, I have learned to tune it out.

So there, sitting on my bucket — ummm, I mean the big upside-down plastic one — Heaven reaches into a place where God often seems absent, but it only seems that way. When I elevate the host for the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, it is in equal measure just as glorious as the Cathedral altar scene where Father Stuart made that same offering. After 40 years, this may seem to some to be all that remains of the visible manifestation of my priesthood. It is a miracle in its own right, one that I described on an earlier anniversary of ordination in “Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence.”

In the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

But there is another manifestation of priesthood less visible than my weekly offer of Mass, but just as mysterious and powerful. It has to do with the day on which my 40th anniversary of priesthood falls. It has to do with Pentecost, a Greek term meaning “fiftieth.” In Jewish tradition, it is called “Shavuot,” the Feast of Weeks. It falls on the sixth day of the Hebrew month, Savon, the concluding day of the Omer, the 49 days (seven weeks) from the Passover commanded in Leviticus (23:15-16).

In the Book of Exodus (23:16), it became the Harvest Feast. In Rabbinic legend, it was also the day Yahweh gave the Law — the Torah — to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. It is the second of three annual feasts requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was the reason that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Peter, and the disciples were in Jerusalem with so many others. A seminary professor once told me that “salvation comes from the Jews. They are our spiritual ancestors, and we must honor them.” I do.

It is because they were Jews that they were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, it is celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter and closes the Easter season. Technically, it is the day after 49 days (or seven weeks) following the final Passover meal of Jesus and the Apostles, the point through which the Jewish and Christian traditions are intimately connected. It was also the day that Jesus was betrayed, the point at which Salvation History begins its fulfillment. For a deeper understanding of this, see my post, “Satan at the Last Supper, Hours of Darkness and Light.”

In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 2), the disciples of Jesus are gathered in Jerusalem in one house: then suddenly ...

“A sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, coming to rest upon each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

— Acts 2: 1-4”

The scene recalls the fiery descent of the Spirit of God at Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 19:16-19).

As that driving wind filled the room where the Apostles were gathered, “men of every race and tongue, of every people and nation” emptied into the street at the strange and powerful sound. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began to address the bewildered crowd, each person hearing them speak in his own native tongue. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit filled not only the Apostles, but some of the crowd as well, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).

That day in Catholic understanding is the birth of the Church, and by the time it was only an hour old, its first scandal broke out. Those in the crowd who did not inherit the wind immediately accused the Apostles of being drunk at 9:00 AM on a major holy day that required a fast. Their pharisaical claim caused Peter, now the leader of the Twelve, into the first papal defense of the Church:

“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day.”

Acts 2:14-15

Inspired by the Spirit, Peter went on to preach the Church’s first homily, relying on the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) to explain that God has poured out His Spirit because the Messianic Age had begun. The meaning of the Passion of the Christ was unveiled.

It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is “ruah,” and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is “ruah ha-Qodesh.” It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2):

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.”

— Genesis 1:1-2

And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and yet again in a Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)

The Wind of God did just as Jesus predicted it would do to Peter in the Gospel quote that began this post. It bound my hands and took me to a place where I did not wish to go. What am I to make of this? What should I have done while laying face down on the floor before an altar as the Litany of Saints offered me up in priestly sacrifice forty years ago? What would I have done then had a vision of my future life as a priest been before me?

When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.

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Editor’s Note: Please share this post and please also visit our updated Special Events page. You may also like these related posts.

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence

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

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

Resistance: A Birthday in the Shadow of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On April 9, 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred for his resistance to tyranny. On April 9, 1953 another life began and resistance to tyranny has been its measure.

“When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

April 6, 2022 by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

This story has to begin with a recent event. On its face, it may not at first seem connected to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famed Lutheran pastor and theologian who was executed on the personal order of Adolf Hitler in 1945. The connection is subtle but real so bear with me. This, too, is about tyranny.

Many readers have reacted to a LinkedIn article I wrote in early March, 2022, entitled, “Banned by Facebook for a True Story of Anti-Catholic Oppression.” The anti-Catholic oppression I wrote about was a well-documented true account that took place in Hitler’s Germany in 1937. I entitled it, “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic.”

But that was not the only anti-Catholic oppression. I shared that story with the 4,500 Facebook followers of Beyond These Stone Walls and in fourteen Catholic groups there such as the Knights of Columbus and The Catholic Writers Guild, both in which I have active membership.

Just as the post began to be widely shared by others in those groups, it was suddenly removed by Facebook with a statement that it, and the 14 copies I shared among Catholic groups, “violates Facebook Community Standards.” Minutes later, we received another message informing us that our account is now suspended and will be offline until a review takes place.

With the help of an editor, I immediately reviewed all of Facebook’s “Community Standards” and could not locate a single one that I had in any way violated. We then completed an extensive appeal using Facebook’s own format. Catholic League President Bill Donohue weighed in on this with a statement, sent to tens of thousands of Catholic League members, that this suspension was without cause and should be reversed. One week later, on March 14, we received this message from Facebook:

“Gordon J MacRae’s post is back on Facebook. We’re sorry we got this wrong. We reviewed your post again and it does follow our Community Standards. We appreciate you taking the time to request a review. Your feedback helps us do better.”

However, Facebook did not lift any of the restrictions imposed because of its staff’s alarming misreading of the post. We filed yet another appeal, but to date Facebook has remained unresponsive. I was thus barred from posting anything for the last month on my account and from sharing to any of the Catholic and Pro-Life groups to which we have contributed content over the last several years.

Mark Zuckerberg has testified before Congress that Facebook does not suppress conservative viewpoints. It has not suppressed the accounts of the Taliban, but it did suppress mine. Facebook recently suspended its “Community Standards” so that the people of Ukraine may express their honest thoughts about Vladimir Putin. In what world should Ukraine need Facebook’s permission to do that?

Facebook has stated that some of the restrictions on my account would remain in place until June 5, 2022. Ironically, June 5, 2022 is also the 40th anniversary of my priesthood ordination.

In the Shadow of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I will be 69 years old on April 9, 2022. I am not certain at what point in my life I learned that I was born on the same date on which Dietrich Bonhoeffer died. I was young, likely in middle school when I learned about the great Lutheran pastor-theologian and the fact that I came into this world eight years to the day after he left it. I have long known that Bonhoeffer was hanged on April 9, 1945 on the personal order of Adolf Hitler just as Allied Forces descended upon Berlin. This order was one of Hitler’s last acts before taking his own life.

Many years later, I was sent to prison on trumped up charges. It was the same sort of charges that Hitler tried to falsely pin on 300 Catholic priests in Germany in 1937. It was the story I told in “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich,” the post that got me banned from Facebook. Ironically, it began with a quote that Facebook hated, but that we should never forget:

“The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, (trans. “My Struggle”) 1937.

In prison, I developed a friendship, through correspondence, with Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, publisher and editor of First Things magazine to which I had long subscribed. Father Richard had been a celebrated Lutheran Pastor and theologian when he “crossed the Tiber” and was ordained a Catholic priest on September 7, 1991. His life was richly informed and influenced by two great men: Saint Pope John Paul II — who had become a friend to Father Neuhaus in this life — and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

In his famous monthly First Things column, “The Public Square” in 2008 in the June/July issue, Father Neuhaus wrote “Lives Lived Greatly.” It was, among other things, a tribute to some of the most influential persons in his life:

“This April was a time of remembering and gratitude. April 2 [2008] was the third anniversary of the death, on the Eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, of John Paul the Great. On April 4, forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. ... And on April 9, 1945, just days before the end of the war, Dietrich Bonboeffer was hanged on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer’s writings and witness were a formative influence in my life, as in the lives of innumerable others .... Those were extraordinary April days. They were days of sorrow and gratitude. I count it a gift beyond measure to have known two of them as friends. The life of each awakens us to the possibilities of life lived greatly.”

What made that tribute so extraordinary for me was that one of those men, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, died as a prisoner. In an earlier April — April of 1943 — Bonhoeffer was arrested by the German Gestapo after informants tipped them off to a plan in which Bonhoeffer was involved to save the lives of Jews by smuggling them out of Germany to Switzerland. He was taken to the infamous Tegel prison where he wrote much of his classic prison journal entitled Letters and Papers from Prison (1953).

On July 24, 1944, the famous “Valkyrie” plot to assassinate Hitler went into action. That account later became a riveting film of the same name. The Valkyrie plot was the last of several such attempts on Hitler’s life, but the first in which the planted bomb actually exploded. Hitler lived, but a vast conspiracy to end his tyranny by ending his life was exposed. He ordered the arrest and torture of thousands, and one of those exposed by informants as a leader in another plot against his tyranny was the imprisoned pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The Last Station on the Road to Freedom

In February of 1945, Allied planes relentlessly began an aerial bombardment of Berlin in an effort to stop Hitler’s forces from overwhelming Europe. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was transferred from Tegel prison to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he remained for two months, and then to Flossenburg prison. As the Allied forces were advancing on Berlin to end Hitler’s tyranny, the unmoored fascist dictator issued an order for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s immediate death by hanging. It was the morning of April 9, 1945, the Monday after Holy Week and Easter.

Bonhoeffer’s remains, like those of St. Maximilian Kolbe four years earlier, went up in smoke, his ashes mingled with those of the many Jews he once tried to save. But his writing — most of it from prison — survived him and survived death. When his writings were published they had a profound effect on the faith of the world. In the words of Eric Metaxas whose biography, Bonhoeffer, met wide acclaim,

“Bonhoeffer called death ‘the last station on the road to freedom.’ Bonhoeffer worshipped a God who had emphatically conquered death in Jesus Christ through the Crucifixion and Resurrection.” In Bonhoeffer’s own words ...

“How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether in our human fear and anguish, we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly blessed event in the world? Death is hell and night and cold if not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”

Though a Lutheran pastor and brilliant theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a most profound regard and respect for the Catholic faith. In a February 23, 1944 letter to his friend, Eberhard Bethge written from Tegel prison, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“If you have the chance of going to Rome during Holy Week, I advise you to attend the afternoon Maundy Thursday service at St. Peter’s Basilica. The twelve candles are lit on the altar and put out as a symbol of the disciples’ flight, till in the vast space there is only one candle left burning in the middle — for Christ. After that comes the cleansing of the altar in preparation for Good Friday and Holy Saturday.”

“Lives Lived Greatly” was the last substantive piece of writing by Father Richard John Neuhaus before he succumbed to cancer in January, 2009. Besides Dietrich Bonhoefer and Saint Pope John Paul II, the life and witness of fellow Catholic convert, Cardinal Avery Dulles, a Jesuit and theologian at Fordham University, had a major influence on his life and mine. Cardinal Dulles preceded Father Neuhaus in death by just three weeks. A few months before his death, Cardinal Dulles wrote to me with a request that I “Take up a new chapter in the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison.” He cited Dietrich Bonhoeffer as one whose life my own suffering in prison might emulate. I was shocked and filled with doubt.

In an earlier 2008 issue of First Things, Father Neuhaus wrote about me in an op-ed entitled, “A Kafkaesque Tale.” His urging, and that of Cardinal Dulles, became the catalyst for my own letters from prison in the form of this blog which began six months after their deaths. A decade later, in a review of Beyond These Stone Walls, another writer wrote a brief review that our editor published atop our Posts Page. I was shocked again, and again filled with doubt.

Whatever resistance I have to the tyranny of false witness, unjust imprisonment, and even being one of Facebook’s cancelled priests, is lived in the shadow of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But if I ever stepped into his shoes, it could only be to shine them. I could never be worthy to walk — or write — in such company.

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Notes from Father Gordon MacRae:

#Meta: A lot of Catholics, both the devout and the struggling, are among the two billion users of Facebook, but they cannot read this post unless you share it in my stead. Thank you.

#Consecration: After my post, “The Annunciation and the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine,” we posted the beautifully composed Act of Consecration Prayer at our Library Category page, “Behold Your Mother.”

#HolyWeek: In preparation for Holy Week, please walk the Way of the Cross with us through these special posts, From Ashes to Easter.

The State of Our Freedom, The Content of Our Character

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington, D.C., August 28,1963

Character matters, so may it not come up short as the world watches what America does with our hard-won freedoms in this age of discontent. What becomes of them determines what becomes of us. Character matters for me, too, but sometimes there is just no way to retain it except by writing the bare-knuckled truth. I admit that, like most priests in America, I fear the repercussions, but there is just no safe, politically correct way to write what I must now write.

There had been a decades-long progression of examples reflecting patently dishonest character and leadership in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. When Archbishop Wilton Gregory succeeded Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who in turn succeeded Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of Archbishop Gregory’s first messages to his people was, “I will always tell you the truth.”

In light of that promise of transparency, what a disappointment the downward slide has been. In “The Death of George Floyd: Breaking News and Broken Trust,” I wrote of a visit by President Donald Trump to the Saint John Paul II Shrine in Washington. After the visit, Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory stated that he learned of the visit only on the night before, adding:

“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree… Saint John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth.”

Many now find it far more baffling and reprehensible that Archbishop Gregory would so blatantly mischaracterize the long-planned purpose of the President’s visit and snub it with both his absence and his disdain. It turns out that the Archbishop did know of the visit. He was invited by the White House to participate in it, but declined the invitation to be with the President due to a “previous commitment.”

Archbishop Gregory should also have been well aware of what took place before and during the President’s appearance at the Saint John Paul II Shrine on the 2nd of June, 2020. Its significance was spelled out in “A Big Step for Religious Freedom,” (June 12, 2020) a Wall Street Journal  editorial by Nina Shea, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom:

“[I]n a rare ray of light this dark spring, America’s defining right has been recognized at the highest level as a ‘moral and national security imperative.’ This is more than a symbolic gesture. On June 2, President Trump signed an executive order that declares support for religious freedom a foreign policy ‘priority.’ It mandates that ‘the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom’ abroad… The Trump administration has elevated the cause of religious freedom since the president came into office.”

Ms. Shea refers to Religious Liberty as “America’s defining right,” highlighting its importance as the most fundamental of our freedoms. It is President Trump’s emphasis on this right that Archbishop Wilton Gregory dismissed as “reprehensible,” and denigrated its culmination in a presidential visit to the Saint John Paul II Shrine as a “Catholic facility [that] would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated” for a partisan political purpose.

Nina Shea writes in the WSJ  that the President’s executive order puts teeth in the International Religious Freedom Act’s listing of severe religious persecution in countries like Nigeria and China, notorious for their suppression of religious freedoms. The order allocates funding for programs that protect religious rights in communities abroad through economic sanctions and other measures against oppressive governments.

Wading in the Washington Swamp

It would be informative to know whether Archbishop Gregory objected when President Barack Obama received an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame ignoring his global promotion of abortion. To dismiss President Trump’s visit to the Saint John Paul II Shrine as “reprehensible” is… well… reprehensible. In a recent comment on These Stone Walls, a reader from Texas expressed a widely felt dismay:

“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. Archbishop Gregory denigrated the visit by President Trump to the Saint John Paul II Shrine. Turns out the Archbishop was invited to be with Trump but declined. This after he claimed to not have known about the visit. What an embarrassment!”

The drama in Washington became more mysterious six days later. At a time when the Archdiocese was still under a ban from public Masses and an order to maintain social distancing, priests of the Archdiocese received a highly unusual June 8 email from the Chancery Office. They were asked to participate in a protest in front of the White House.

The email specifically asked that the priests wear a cassock or black clerical clothing along with a mask. It instructed them to bring protest placards. Several priests of the Archdiocese said they were surprised by this given the volatile atmosphere of the protests descending into riots at that time and the fact that priests of the Archdiocese were still under a conflicting order to maintain social distancing and refrain from any gatherings related to their ministry.

Two priests spoke with the Catholic News Agency  on condition of anonymity because they, too, feared repercussions from the Archdiocese. So much for religious freedom and freedom of speech. The priests told the Catholic News Agency:

“We have been told for weeks that we cannot meet in groups of the faithful, open our churches, serve in our parishes. Now they want us to take to the streets.”

Other priests objected that media photographs of them in clerical garb protesting in front of the White House had the appearance of doing exactly what Archbishop Gregory accused President Trump of doing: creating a photo opportunity for partisan political purposes “manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.”

Was there any reason to believe that the rights of priests would be protected against media criticism of such a clerical protest? Archbishop Wilton Gregory was no champion for the rights of his priests. As President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002, Archbishop Gregory extended invitations to SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, to address the Bishops’ Dallas conference representing the voices of victims.

SNAP director, David Clohessy, and founder, Barbara Blame offered emotional, but highly contrived testimony while bishops tripped over each other to get their tears on camera. There was no rebuttal except that propounded by Cardinal Avery Dulles who opposed the Dallas Charter in “The Rights of Accused Priests.”

The objections of Cardinal Dulles were ignored. Under the leadership and direction of Archbishop Gregory, the standard employed for removing accused priests from ministry was the lowest standard possible. If an accusation is “credible” on it’s face — meaning only that it cannot be immediately disproven — then the cleric is out forever or until he is indisputably able to prove his innocence. In First Things magazine, a shocked Father Richard John Neuhaus described the end result:

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“Zero Tolerance. One strike and you’re out. Boot them out of ministry. Our bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting in the Dallas Charter a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, and 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.”

Scandal Time, 2002

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“Will No One Rid Me of This Turbulent Priest?”

One of the main developers and proponents of that standard was also one of Archbishop Gregory’s predecessors in Washington, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick whose own history is about to be published in a soon-to-be-released Vatican report. SNAP and its director, David Clohessy, were also later accused of extensive corruption in a lawsuit from a SNAP employee reported by Bill Donohue and the Catholic League in “SNAP Exposed” and by me in “David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

In the 12 Century, Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of the King, excommunicated some of the corrupt barons of King Henry II after they summarily executed two accused priests. The King raged at Becket’s affront to his authority saying, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Four of the King’s men, taking that as a directive, murdered the archbishop at Mass in his cathedral on December 29, 1170. In the end, King Henry had to accede to canon law and the jurisdiction of church courts over clergy. As for Becket, he became a saint and martyr canonized in 1173.

It pains me greatly that an organization I deeply respect, the Becket Law firm, defenders of religious liberty taking its name from the legacy of Saint Thomas à Becket, published a defense of “credibly accused” as sufficient for denying the civil rights of Catholic priests, but no one else. Maria Montserrat Alvarado wrote on behalf of the Becket Law firm:

“In ‘Diocese of Lubbock v. Guerrero,’ the plaintiff, a Catholic clergyman, sued for defamation after the Diocese of Lubbock included him on a list of credibly accused clergy. The lower courts sided with Guerrero [saying] that because the Diocese published the information that could be seen… outside the confines of the church [it] could be used to sue the Church… The lower court’s strange view runs counter to Pope Francis and USCCB’s specific call for greater transparency”

The above was posted by Becket Law on Twitter, but These Stone Walls does not have the reach that the Becket Law firm has. My rebuttal was but a mere whisper, posted nonetheless, so maybe you can make it a bit louder by sharing this post:

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“I must register my objection and grave disappointment with Becket Law for statements about the defamation lawsuit by a priest whose name appears on his bishop’s list of the ‘credibly accused.’ Becket’s website cites Pope Francis in a call for transparency. Pope Francis also said in 2019 that the names of accused priests should only be published if the accusations are proven. The U.S. bishops adopted a ‘credible’ standard that does not even come close to that. It is of deep concern that Becket Law appears to either not know this or not care… for the great damage done by this practice.” (See “The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests”)

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For over a decade on These Stone Walls, I have warned against the practice of bishops citing a false and unjust “transparency” as justification for publishing lists of priests who have been merely accused with little to no effort at real substantiation. This is the legacy of the Dallas Charter and “credibly accused.”

It is for good reason that Catholic League President Bill Donohue, reflecting on my own case on NBC’s “Today” show on October 13, 2005 said:

“There is no segment of the American population which has less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.”

— Catholic League President Bill Donohue

A Dire Threat to Freedom of the Press — from Within

Another grave threat to our freedoms is the diminishment of Freedom of the Press by stewards not quite up to the task. Most people who read newspapers have seen the term, “op-ed,” but few know its true origin. It began as a feature of The New York Times  once America’s most respected flagship newspaper but now slowly collapsing under the weight of its own hubris. “Op-ed” was newspeak for “Opposite the Editorial Page.”

Its meaning was both literal and figurative. It was a feature by a guest writer invited by the Times for an opinion piece that would appear on the page opposite the newspaper’s own main editorial page. Over time, it also came to be symbolic of the Times’ commitment to integrity in journalism. The “op-ed” also provided a forum in which writers could reflect positions that were opposite of those the editors propounded on their editorial page. Thus, “op-ed” came to have a double meaning.

The old liberal order for which The New York Times  and other newspapers became a sometimes honorable mouthpiece has given way to a more radical form of liberalism and what today is manipulated as news coverage. Along with its rise, two of America’s signature freedoms, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech, have fallen.

The most recent evidence for that is something that just happened in the editorial offices of two formerly liberal newspapers, The New York Times  and the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the Times, a revolution has occurred in the newsroom when Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, wrote an op-ed defending President Donald Trump’s statement that the 1807 Insurrection Act could be invoked to call upon the military to quell rioting and massive destruction in our cities.

Senator Cotton alluded (as did I in these pages in recent weeks) that Democrat President Lyndon Johnson summoned the military to quell riots following the 1968 assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King. And Republican President George H.W. Bush also invoked the Insurrection Act to call for military intervention against 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four L.A.P.D. officers who brutally beat Rodney King. Today, the progressively manipulated media wants us to believe that this was an original but unconstitutional idea of President Trump.

A Wall Street Journal  editorial referred to the Times  reporters as “social justice warriors” who ransacked an opinion piece by Senator Cotton because it expressed a view that “millions of Americans support if the police cannot handle the rioting and violence.” As a result of the Times  reporters’ rebellion and rage over allowing such views in public view, The New York Times  demurred and accepted its Editorial Page editor’s resignation.

The once honorable concept of the “op-ed” is now dead, murdered by activist reporters whose politics now take precedence over the news. The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer  was also pushed out because that newspapers’ own activist reporters revolted over an opinion piece headline, “Buildings Matter, Too” by Architecture Critic, Inga Saffron. It was seen by the reporters as an affront to the “Black Lives Matter” movement and a demand was made to remove it, and remove its author.

This all began unchecked in America’s universities where sensitive ears cannot bear to hear opposing views and college administrators cave as militant protesters scream down conservative voices. I recently had a headline posted on Facebook and Google along with a link to my post, “The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek.” The headline was “Eternal Life Matters.” It was seen and “liked” by several readers before being silenced by both Facebook and Google, both of which deny placing limits on conservative viewpoints.

In “I Have a Dream,” The Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous ode to liberty, he included the moving sentence:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

— Rev. Martin Luther King

The great irony for Martin is that his much needed voice would not be heard today had not his very life been forfeit. And the irony for me is that I could not be free to write today had not freedom itself been taken from me.

It is the content of our character that determines the state of our freedom. America is at a tipping point, but it is not too late to save our freedoms from madness. The content of our character is what unites us, not as Black Americans, or White Americans, or Native Americans, but as Americans.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: My late friend, father Richard John Neuhaus, said there are only three things required to address the madness of our time: Fidelity, Fidelity, and Fidelity. I thank you for yours. Please Subscribe to BeyondThese Stone Walls and Follow us on Facebook. You may also like to read and share these related eye-openers:

Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

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