“Peter Lives in Rome Again”

In March, 2010 when Beyond These Stone Walls was a newborn blog, a post about Vatican scandal went viral. Fifteen years later it is still widely read and spread.

May 14, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

We have already published a post this week, though four days earlier than our usual. It has a rather blunt title, but if you missed it, you should at least indulge me. That post was, “Pope Leo XIV Is Certainly No Clone of Pope Francis.”

If you search in any search engine the term “scandal at the Vatican,” using quotes, you will immediately come across a post that technically gave birth to this blog. It was written in March, 2010 when Beyond These Stone Walls was literally nine months along. Its title is “Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican.” I had no idea when I wrote it that “Scandal at the Vatican” would become one of the most common searches on the Internet in regard to Catholic affairs thus making my post top the charts at various points along the way.

Vatican scandal was not at all what I had in mind when I wrote that post. It tells a fascinating story about overlapping layers of art history and we will link to it again at the end of this post.

Just days ago, worldwide attention was focused on the Sistine Chapel, the site at which Pope Leo XIV was recently elected. My post from fifteen years ago was focused upon that very same place but for different reasons. I am always a bit nervous when that post surfaces widely into view again as it did during and after the recent conclave. My post was about art, and Michelangelo, and a little-known event of art history. Rome is home to some of the world's most accomplished artists and art historians. I sometimes worry about whether and how something I wrote might measure up to their scrutiny. But the post in question has been making waves on the Internet for at least the last fifteen years. No one has yet complained or challenged my artistic interpretation. I won’t repeat that entire story here. You may read it for yourself linked again at the end of this post. Despite the fact that I wrote it, it is indeed an amazing story.

Landmarks

Among the vast media sources of published commentary about the results of the recent Vatican papal conclave, some have stood out far above the rest. One of these was published in The Wall Street Journal by Canadian priest and author of some reknown, Father Raymond de Souza entitled “Catholics Welcome an American Pope” (WSJ, May 9, 2025). I found a few of its paragraphs to be especially fascinating and moving. They gave me my title for this post:

“Twenty years ago, at the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, stood on the balcony of St. Peter’s and was caught staring off into the distance. He confessed later that he was marveling that the Church had elected yet another man to succeed Peter, while the great imperial Rome, the caput mundi, which put Peter to death on the Vatican hill, was no longer. Only ruins remained.

“In 1586, Pope Sixtus V had moved one of these ruins, a 350-ton granite obelisk, to the center of St. Peter’s Square, where it stands to this day. That obelisk could have been among the last landmarks St. Peter looked upon as he was crucified. It is the first thing a new pope sees when he lookes out over the assembled masses in the square below.

“On the top of that obelisk is a bronze cross, and place therein is a relic of the true Cross of Christ. There is in the Catholic calendar a feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It falls on September 14 — the new Pope Leo XIV’s birthday.”

“Peter lives in Rome again.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post, and our post about Pope Leo XIV for whom we hold high hopes which, if you saw the faces of the immense crowd in St. Peter’s Square last week, seemed to be contagious.

Please also read and share these related posts cited herein:

Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican

Conclave: Amid the Wind and the Waves, a Successor of Peter

Pope Leo XIV is No Clone of Pope Francis

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

South Park’s Bill Donohue Disgrace Was This Convert’s Amazing Grace

If ever there is an award for a Catholic who heroically goes above and beyond for others, Pornchai Moontri’s Nominee would be Catholic League President Bill Donohue.

April 30, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae and Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Earlier in April 2025, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in New York City sent out the following Media Alert to all Catholic League members:

“April 10, 2025
South Park's "Fantastic Easter Special," featuring the animated character of Bill Donohue, will air Friday morning, April 11, on Comedy Central at 4:00 a.m. ET. It can also be streamed on HBO's streaming service for those who have a subscription.”

I had the Alert sent by email to our friend Max Moontri in Pak Chong, Thailand. For those who are newer readers to this blog, Pornchai Max Moontri was my roommate for almost 16 years. His story, amazing in its own righ, was told in these pages just a week ago on Relevant Radio in an interview with The Drew Mariani Show.

Upon receipt of Bill Donohue’s Media Alert about South Park, Max wrote to me immediately to tell me that the date of the Catholic League Media Alert was also the anniversary of Max being received into the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. It is difficult to hear this entire story and still cling to any doubt about the truth and power of Divine Mercy. Pornchai Max filled in a lot of blanks so I will now turn this story over to him.

“I was a teenager when I went to prison [in 1992]. Over the next 13 years, I was sent to solitary confinement over and over, for up to three-and-a-half years at a time, because I was so hostile. The longer I was there each time, the more inhuman I felt and became. Living for years on end in solitary confinement joined with the guilt I felt for the life I took during a struggle when I was 18 years old.

“So I just gave up on myself as a human being. I sank to the very bottom of the prison I was in, and stayed there. Then, in the spring of 2005, after almost fourteen years in and out of solitary confinement in Maine’s Supermax Prison, I was told that I was to be shipped to another prison in another state. I sat for months alone in my cell wondering about whatever hell was coming next. Then one day, guards in riot gear came and chained me up….”

[Editor: You can see the solitary confinement unit that held Pornchai in PBS FRONTLINE “Solitary Nation.” If you have not seen this, you cannot begin to know what Pornchai has been through.]

While I was writing the above, I had already lived in a prison cell with Father Gordon MacRae (“Father G”) for almost five years. I shudder when I think of my life before then. It is hard to put together this series of events that seem to be disconnected from each other. It only seems that way. Going from years in brutal solitary confinement to life in a cell with a Catholic priest is something I never imagined.

When I look back, and see all the small steps in which our Blessed Mother inserted herself into my life leading me to Jesus, it seems miraculous to me. If someone else told me this story twenty years ago, I would not believe it. But there is a lot more to my story.

Most people I knew in my earlier prison were afraid of me. Most expected me to erupt in violence any minute. I liked having that reputation then. I could not see it at the time, but it protected me from ever again feeling the terror I felt from the time I was taken from Thailand at age 11 to the time I ended up a homeless teenager living alone on the streets of Bangor, Maine at age 14.

A Black Hole from Which No Light Could Escape

What happened in those three years upon my arrival in America was like a black hole from which no light could escape without Divine assistance. I kept it bottled up within me for many years in a seething rage of trauma and hurt. It became my prison within a prison. But it served a purpose. It kept everyone else away, everyone except Father G.

I have read a little about exorcism since I became a Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. I understand it to be the spiritual casting out of evil. My exorcism at the hands of Jesus through His priest took a long time. It had to begin with my long, slow awakening to the fact that the evil within me was not planted there by me and it was not mine to keep. It was placed in my heart and soul by someone else.

On September 12, 2018, the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, Richard Alan Bailey, the man who violently raped and tortured me more than forty times when I was taken to America, was brought to justice. It was Father G and Beyond These Stone Walls that ultimately accomplished this. Father G wrote some articles about what happened to me. They circled the globe and eventually they found the right persons who would be instrumental in my redemption. One of those persons was Dr. Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights of which I am now a member.

Backing up a little, in Fall, 2005, I was shackled, chained, thrown into a prison van, and driven from solitary confinement in Maine to Concord, New Hampshire. I was handled like a dangerous animal, and thrown into a familiar place: another stint in solitary confinement. But it was brief. It was also in 2005 that The Wall Street Journal wrote its first articles about the injustices that happened to Father G. Not long after I first met him by “chance” one day, I read those articles.

Later in 2006, Father G and I landed in the same place. Our cells were two doors apart. I remember the first time I walked into his cell. I saw a photo on a card attached to a battered mirror on the cell wall, and the man on the card looked sort of like Father G. So I said, “Is this you?” This turned out to be the most important question of my life. Father G then told me about St. Maximilian Kolbe, about what he did in prison at Auschwitz, and about how this card came to be on his mirror. Father G wrote this story in “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”

Then one day came dreaded news. A U.S. Immigration Court ruled that I would be deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence. I never wanted to leave Thailand as a child. I was forcibly brought to America, and all I really knew in America was its prisons. In the meantime, my Mother — my only connection to Thailand — was murdered on the Island of Guam after she was brought there by Richard Alan Bailey. Her death remains classified there as a “cold case unsolved homicide.” It is not “unsolved” in the minds of either me or Father G.

When news of my eventual deportation came, I sank into deep depression. I knew that I had no future in Thailand. I had no future anywhere. Father G helped me appeal the deportation order, but like most such appeals, it was denied. So I just gave up again, and settled in my mind on my own “Plan B,” my eventual self-destruction. Father G confronted this setback with his own optimism that provided no hope or comfort at all. He said, “We are just going to have to build a bridge from here to Thailand.”

Who could take him seriously? I sure didn’t. We were in a prison cell thousands of miles away! All the things Father G tried to instill in me about hope and trust and surrender just felt empty again. But I had nothing else to hang onto. No hope at all. So I hung onto his.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue [l] and Pornchai Moontri at age 12 [r] just as he arrived in America and before the troubling events in this story took place.

Pornchai’s Story

Soon after this rejection from the Immigration Court, Father G came into our cell one day and told me that we have to get a summary of my life story on paper… So we talked for a long time. He asked me lots of questions and took notes. Then he helped me put it together in a four-page document. I could not see the point of it. I tried to type it on his typewriter, but my heart was not in it at all. Father G became impatient with my one-word-per-minute typing speed. So Father G took over and he typed it while I waited. He was not patient with my typing speed, but he was patient with me and my attitude of hopelessness and defeat.

After the story was typed, Father G said that he wanted my permission to send the short life story we typed to a few contacts in the outside world. He said that these were all people who had connections, and that he believed one of them would find connections for me in Thailand.

I thought this was hopeless, of course. No one is going to be interested in me. But I hate arguing so I just told him to go ahead. I believed it would come to nothing.

Dr Bill Donohue on South Park

I wrote that story with Father G’s help in 2007. When Father G said he wanted to send it out to others, I answered with a sarcastic “Whatever!” It was that word for which every parent of every adolescent wants to smack him for saying it. Father G sent my story to several people and he told me that it will come to good. Then I said it again, “Whatever!”

In coming weeks — to my shock and awe — I started receiving letters of support and encouragement. One was from Cardinal Kitbunchu, Archbishop Emeritus of Bangkok, Thailand. I nearly fell over when I saw the envelope with his return address and Thai stamps. Another came from Honorable Mary Ann Glendon, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Another was from Father Richard John Neuhaus, Editor of First Things magazine. They encouraged me to cling to hope even when I saw none. And then finally one came from Dr. Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Dr. Donohue shocked me. He asked my permission for the Catholic League to publish my story.

At first, I was excited. Then the inevitable gloom within me crept back in. I did not dare to hope. Hope is not for the beaten down. It is just too painful. I told Father G I did not want others to know that I was victimized in America. I also was consumed with shame. I told Father G that I did not want to publish the story. But this gets really strange from here on.

I used to sometimes come across a horrible cartoon called South Park on the Comedy Central TV channel. South Park spared no one. They would often take famous people and create a cartoon satire to ridicule them. On April 5, 2007, I was watching an episode of South Park. It was their Easter Special. Suddenly, there on my screen was a cartoon version of Dr. Bill Donohue.

I stuck my head down from my top bunk and told Father G to turn it on. The cartoon was very disrespectful, but my first reaction was to shout, “WOW! DR DONOHUE IS REALLY FAMOUS!”

I thought he must be really good because only good people are ridiculed on South Park. Dr. Donohue was ridiculed along with Jesus and Pope Benedict in the same episode. At one point, Jesus punched Dr. Donohue. I was horrified! But this is also what changed my mind. I thought that if Dr. Donohue is brave enough to endure this ridicule, I can be too. So I asked Father G to help me write to Dr. Donohue with permission for the Catholic League to publish my story. It was because of South Park!

Two years later, in 2009, Beyond These Stone Walls began our long adventure in what Father G calls “The Great Tapestry of God.” He told me that in this life, we live only in the back of the tapestry, unable to see what all our tangled threads are producing.

Over the next decade, we together confronted evil. It was not all at once. It was in slow steps because at points along the way whenever I felt overwhelmed, I would retreat and then give up and quit. But Father G never quit. He stayed the course, patiently waiting for a better day to pull me back onto what he called “our road to Emmaus.” And staying the course meant writing about me. What he wrote started to become noticed.

Strange things began to happen. Just weeks after I was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, I read that South Park editors cancelled an episode that ridiculed Mohammed after freely ridiculing Jesus, Pope Benedict and Dr. Bill Donohue. I never watched South Park again.

But there are stranger things still. Because of what was being written about me, Clare and Malcolm Farr — husband and wife attorneys in Southwest Australia — offered to assist me pro bono. They are today among my dearest friends, but we have never actually even met in person. They performed miracles with contacts in Thailand, with an attempt to reopen the case of the murder of my Mother in Guam, and with helping Father G to bring my abuser to justice.

Then Father G received a letter from a group called Divine Mercy Thailand. The letter revealed that Marian Father Seraphim Michalenko had been in Thailand and he carried with him a copy of “Pornchai’s Story,” which he read from the Catholic League’s site to the Divine Mercy Thailand group. I learned only later from Father G that Father Seraphim Michalenko was the Vatican’s vicepostulator for the cause of sainthood of Maria Faustina Kowalska. It was Father Seraphim who smuggled Saint Faustina’s diary out of Communist Poland and assisted in its English translation. Father G wrote about this when Father Seraphim came to this prison to interview both of us. Father G’s post was “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare.”

Father Seraphim’s interest, triggered by Dr. Bill Donohue, then inspired Felix Carroll, who was then Editor of Marian Helper magazine, to contact Father G. Felix Carroll said that he posted my story from the Catholic League’s site and “it lit up our website like never before.” Felix asked that we allow him to include a chapter about me in his book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions.

The miracles continued. I was visited in prison by a representative of the Royal Thai Consulate in New York who offered help in restoring my Thai citizenship and preparing me for repatriation. Then one day I was called to the prison library. The library had received a donated set of Thai language CDs which were set up on a computer for me to study. Then Divine Mercy Thailand wrote again and offered me a home. The bridge to Thailand Father G had once promised was built and I was utterly amazed. Then, in 2020, just before the pandemic took hold, Father G filed a petition on my behalf revealing all that had happened that never made its way into my trial in 1992. I was to be set free within the coming months.

I will never say “Whatever!” to Father G again. He and Bill Donohue, and even the disgraceful South Park, became the keys to the locks that held me bound. If there is ever a book called Divine Mercy Miracles, I expect to find this story in it. I am free!

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Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Dearly Beloved Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: If you are not a member of the Catholic League, please consider lending your voice to this nation’s largest endeavor in protection of Religious Liberty: Catholic League Membership Subscription. Your membership fee also includes a one-year subscription to the Catholic League Journal Catalyst.

We also recommend these related posts:

Pornchai’s Story: The Catholic League Conversion Story for 2008

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Vatican Bans Publishing Lists of ‘Credibly’ Accused Priests

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts, two other Vatican Dicasteries, and Pope Francis himself have banned publishing lists of priests ‘credibly’ accused.

April 2, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: This post may not move hearts, but it should move minds and consciences. It is of utmost importance to me, to the priesthood and to the whole Church. So we should not be silent in the face of injustice. So please share this post.

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On February 22, 2025, the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, the Vatican office responsible for issuing authoritative legal interpretations and directives for the universal Church, published online a long awaited guidance to bishops impacting the due process rights of “credibly accused” Catholic priests.

The announcement underscores the Dicastery’s decision that bishops considering publication of lists of priests deemed credibly accused of sexual abuse are prohibited under Canon Law from doing so. This guidance is for a multitude of reasons connected to long established civil and canonical rights of due process. I will describe below some examples of how these rights have been impacted.

From the point of view of official Church positions, the problem is, and has always been, the bishops’ collective interpretation and use of the term “credible” in their response to the crisis. It is a standard applied nowhere else in the world of civil or criminal jurisprudence. It means only that a claim of abuse cannot be immediately dismissed on its face. If a claimant alleges abuse in a specific community 30 or 40 years ago, for example, and the named priest had once been assigned there, the claim is “credible” unless and until it is disproven.

There is no court in America that admits such a standard of evidence but it is routinely applied now to accused Catholic priests. Courts have long recognized that older memories are highly malleable, and misidentification of the accused is a frequent risk.

Before delving further into this, I want to present a reaction to the Vatican news from William A. Donohue, Ph.D., President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who has consistently defended the due process rights of priests.

From Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Vatican Finally Does Right by Accused Priests

Six years after Pope Francis rejected the practice of publishing the names of accused priests, the Vatican has finally codified his plea. Henceforth, dioceses are discouraged from publishing such a list. Among the reasons cited was the inability of deceased accused priests to defend themselves.

This should never have been an issue in the first place. But in the panic that ensued following the 2002 series in The Boston Globe detailing clergy sexual abuse, the bishops convened in Dallas in 2004 to adopt a charter that listed comprehensive reforms, some of which substantially weakened the rights of the accused.

At the time, I was highly critical of the way some bishops allowed a gay subculture to flourish, one that resulted in a massive cover-up of the sexual abuse of minors (homosexual priests — not pedophiles — were responsible for 8 in 10 cases of abuse). But I also said of the Dallas reforms, “There is a problem regarding the rights of the accused. It appears that the charter may short-circuit some due process rights.”

One of the problems was the desire to publish the names of accused priests. Egging the bishops on was Judge Anne Burke, the first person to head the National Review Board commissioned by the bishops to deal with the problem.

She made it clear that priests — and only priests — should be denied their constitutionally prescribed right to due process. “We understand that it is a violation of the priest’s due process rights — you’re innocent until proven guilty — but we’re talking about the most vulnerable people in our society and those are children,” she said. Such thinking allowed the bishops to make public the names of accused priests.

In an interview I had in my office with a female reporter from CNN, she became quite critical of the Church for not posting the names of accused priests on its diocesan websites. I picked up the phone and, holding it in my hand, asked her for the name and phone number of her boss. When she asked why, I said I was going to accuse her of sexual harassment. I added that I wanted to see if CNN would post her name on its website. She said, “I get it.” I put the phone down. (For more on this see my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse).

No organization in the United States, religious or secular, publishes the names of accused employees. That there should be an exception for priests is obscene.

The rights of accused priests need to be safeguarded, and the penalties for those found guilty need to be severe. The Church failed on the latter, which is why the scandal took place, and it failed on the former, which is why Pope Francis, and now the entire Church, had to act.

The sexual abuse of minors in the Church in America has long been checked — almost all the cases in the media are about old cases, and most of the bad guys are dead or out of ministry. Now that the rights of the accused have been given a much needed shot in the arm, we can say with confidence that the problem has been ameliorated.

Now back to Father MacRae............

But My Diocese Employs “Trauma-Informed” Consultants

On July 31, 2019, Bishop Peter A. Libasci, Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire proactively published a list of the names and assignment histories of 73 priests in his diocese who had been “credibly” accused of sexual abuse of minors and removed from ministry. Most of the claims deemed “credible” are decades old. The majority of the priests on Bishop Libasci’s list are long deceased. In most cases, the sole condition making the claims “credible” was the fact that money — lots of it — changed hands.

Bishop Libasci’s stated goal for publishing his list was “transparency.” In 2024, long after Pope Francis discouraged bishops from doing so, Bishop Libasci republished the list with the names of additional accused but deceased priests.

Weeks after Bishop Libasci’s original list was publicized in 2019, Ryan A. MacDonald penned and published a contentious objection: “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.” It was contentious because it represented well my disagreement with this action of the bishop of my diocese, something I otherwise hoped to avoid. Plaintiff attorneys and activist groups like SNAP pressured bishops to publish such lists for the purpose of “assuring victims they are not alone and that they are heard.”

The real reason for pushing for published lists, however, was to provide a forum and online database for false “copycat” claims, a lucrative business for contingency lawyers and claimants alike with little or no court oversight. In May 2024, Ryan A. MacDonald published a report on how and why this happens in “To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.” Here is an excerpt from an official statement of my Diocese:

“The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when abuse occurred, through a process utilizing independent trauma-informed consultants.”

A basic problem with handling the matter of due process for the accused and outcomes for the Diocese by abdicating judgment to “trauma-informed consultants” is that the term is widely noted and critiqued by professionals as highly biased. It has a documented negative impact on judicial fairness and due process of law in claims of sexual abuse and assault.

The Center for Prosecutor Integrity (CPI ) is an organization that seeks to strengthen prosecutorial ethics, promote due process, and end wrongful convictions. Victim-centered investigations, also known in the sex abuse contingency lawyer industry as “trauma-informed,” presume the guilt of all accused and lead to wrongful convictions.

According to the Center’s website, “The most destructive types of victim-centered investigations are known as “Start by Believing,” and “Trauma-Informed.” The Center exhibits a professional bibliography documenting the “junk science” behind such investigations creating an epidemic of false witness and police and prosecutorial misconduct. Given the well-founded caution about false claims and financial scammers, it was alarming to read the following in a recent news article, “Diocese of Manchester Settles Sexual Abuse Claims from the 1970s.” Here’s an excerpt:

“No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but the attorney representing the ‘John Doe’ who was involved said it’s important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process, … thus announcing a six-figure settlement outside the Diocese of Manchester office.”

Has it never dawned on anyone in Church leadership that there are those in our midst who would find a “six-figure settlement” an enticement for false accusations? This is especially so when there is no court oversight for such claims. The process has been made very simple. A lawyer writes a letter and a bishop writes a check.

In addition to these trauma-informed consultants retained by the Diocese of Manchester and other dioceses,”it seems that civil lawyers and risk managers, not bishops, are often running the show.” So wrote prominent canon lawyer, Michael Mazza, JD, JCD, in a recent First Things article (February 24, 2025): “Who’s Really Calling the Shots at U.S. Diocesan Chanceries?” Mazza concludes:

“ln the wake of the clerical abuse crisis, church leaders may have surrendered too much authority to risk managers focused on eliminating every threat. Seasoned entrepreneurs understand that the moment lawyers run the show, adopting a zero-risk strategy as the business model, the company grinds to a halt. While the surest way for a car company to avoid getting sued is to stop making cars, that strategy is not an option for an institution that has received a divine call to preach the Gospel to all nations. Bishops must recognize this truth and seize the helm with the resolve their office demands.”

The Perspective of a Not-So-Credibly Convicted Priest

My name was on Bishop Libasci’s published list under the unique category, “convicted,” but that was not at all my point of contention with his list. Unlike most of the priests named on that ongoing list, I at least had public charges in a public forum — a 1994 criminal trial — no matter how jaded and unjust it was. The details of those charges and that trial have emerged over time and are also now in public view. They have raised awareness about the absence of truth and the aura of injustice in the forum in which I was condemned and sentenced.

As Ryan A. MacDonald’s article, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List” points out, Bishop Libasci’s predecessor, the late Bishop John B. McCormack, went on record in an unpublished media interview in the aftermath of my trial stating his informed belief that I was falsely accused, wrongly convicted, and should not be in prison. He insisted, however, that this information should never leave his office. These details were exposed in a 2021 post, “Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Affidavits Expanded.”

Going back even further in this history of neglected due process, Bishop McCormack’s predecessor, the late Bishop Leo O’Neil, chose not to wait for the outcome of a trial. Before my trial commenced, he published an official diocesan press release declaring that I victimized not only my accusers but the entire Catholic Church. After that, a trial seemed just a formality.

The most visible post-trial analysis of due process in the case, however, was that of Dorothy Rabinowitz, awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her courageous exposure of “accusation, false witness, and other terrors of our time.” Her series of articles in The Wall Street Journal culminated in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in 2013, six years before Bishop Libasci published his list.

In a compelling five-minute video interview produced by The Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz saw through all the smoke and mirrors and got to the heart of the matter. It is a brief but bold exposé of unassailable truth that ties the two-decade outbreak of clergy abuse claims to the very unquestioned settlements money promised by my Diocese in its statements above.

I give the last word to “A Video Interview with Dorothy Rabinowitz.”

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Note from Father Gordon Mac Rae: I thank Catholic League President Bill Donohue for his contribution to this post. His outstanding book on this subject is The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse (2021) published by Ignatius Press.

I also thank Michael J. Mazza, JD, JCD for letting us reprint a segment of an article that I highly recommend: Who’s Really Calling the Shots at U.S. Diocesan Chanceries? First Things, February 24, 2025.

During Lent this year I created a list of our Scriptural posts and published them together under the title “From Ashes to Easter.” We shared the list on several Facebook Catholic groups. In response, Facebook dismissed it as “SPAM,” and then froze our account. (Again!) So we cannot share this post on Facebook, but you can. Thank you for doing so.

You may also like these related and eye-opening posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo

Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Affidavits Expanded

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Finding Your Peace: Job and the Mystery of Suffering

The problem of evil and the pain of suffering plagued humanity from our beginning. How do we reconcile grace and hope in a loving God in the midst of suffering?

January 31, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

On the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, ten days before Ash Wednesday this year, the assigned First Reading at Mass is from the Book of Job. It is Job’s lament against suffering, and the reading ends on a dismal note: “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind. I shall not see happiness again.” Job 7:6-7

In the Book of Job, you will have to suffer along with him through a lot more of his lament until you come to God’s response many chapters later. As I read the lament I marveled at how much of it I can relate to. As I wrote in a post just a week ago, my days are often faced without obvious hope. But I also marvel at how much I can relate to God’s response to Job.

I wrote a science post in 2022 entitled “The James Webb Space Telescope and an Encore from Hubble.” Longtime readers of this blog know of my enthusiasm for Astronomy and Cosmology. If I were God — and thank God I am not — I would have framed my answer to Job just as God did:

“Who is this that obscures divine plans with such words of ignorance? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or shown the dawn its place? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?”

— Job 38: 2,4,12,31

Job got the message. So did I, and it isn’t trite at all. The response of God was twofold: Number 1: I have a plan; Number 2: Trust in Number 1. It’s the trust part that I find difficult. His broader answer is found in all of Sacred Scripture as a whole. The Biblical characters are believers who take upon themselves the plan of God. They all suffer. Many suffer a lot. Their very lives are our evidence that there is a divine plan.

God takes the suffering of humankind seriously and personally. When He took our form, He suffered in every way we do, including the humiliation of rejection to the point of crucifixion and death. Remember His trial before Pontius Pilate when “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’.”

Like me, many of you have, at one time or another in your life, found yourself upon the dung heap of Job.

The Most Dangerous Thing in Prison

While writing this post, I stumbled upon a scene in a TV drama. I’m not sure which one it was, but the scene was in a prison. A rough looking character had spent 20 years in prison on death row for a crime he did not commit. A younger man was telling him that his friends on the outside want to take up the death row prisoner’s case. “Tell them to stop!” the older man said. “Please don’t give me hope. The most dangerous thing in prison is hope.”

No doubt, that statement was perplexing for most viewers, but I readily understood it. It recalled some dismal feelings from a time when hope emerged in prison only to be cruelly shattered. The shattering of hope often feels worse than no hope at all. That’s the danger the prisoner was talking about.

For me, the shattering of hope began on September 11, 2001. Early that year, Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal took an interest in my trial and imprisonment, and the evidence of fraud and misconduct behind them. For my part, gathering and photocopying documents from prison is a very difficult task, but over the course of that year, I labored to send reams of requested documentation to Ms. Rabinowitz. Then, just as the story grew into real interest, the forces of evil struck hard.

As you know well, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Their collapse damaged many of the surrounding buildings including the editorial offices of The Wall Street Journal on Liberty Street just across the World Trade Center Plaza.

Months passed while The Wall Street Journal relocated its offices to 1211 Avenue of the Americas. In early January 2002, a letter came from a member of the WSJ Editorial Board. All was lost. We had to start over. But I believed at the time that I could not start over. It seemed an overwhelming task. Hope was crushed along with the towers themselves.

The loss of thousands of lives added great weight to that sense of hopelessness. I could not possibly confront my personal loss in the face of so much human tragedy caused by so much human evil. I will never forget the nightmare I had after receiving that letter. I was inside World Trade Center Tower One when the first plane struck. It was collapsing all around me. The nightmare was long, real, and horrifying. At the end of the dream I was still alive, but regretfully so. I have never been a person who sees the world in terms of himself. I tried to convey that in a post about the horrors of that day, “The Despair of Towers Falling, The Courage of Men Rising.”

I just had to wait a bit before my own courage would rise again. By the time I recovered the resolve to start over in 2002, the Catholic clergy abuse scandal erupted in Boston just a few months after 9/11 to become another New England witch hunt that swept the nation. This made my hope, and The Wall Street Journal’s effort toward justice a much steeper climb. It has always struck me that the two stories — the hijacking of the planes that attacked Manhattan and the Pentagon on 9/11, and the collapse of the dignity and morale of Catholic priests — both began in my hometown of Boston just weeks apart.

Sorrow Needs a Panoramic View

I cannot tell you how to suffer. I do not even know how myself. I can only tell you that, along with most of you, I do suffer. Perhaps that means something as a starting point. Maybe those who know sorrow feel at some fundamental level that reflection on the experience from someone who also suffers means more than a smug and smiling Gospel of prosperity from some TV evangelist.

I don’t mean to pick on TV evangelists and God help me if I judge them harshly, but I have a hard time reconciling the trenches of suffering with the Gospel of prosperity that some of them proclaim. No one in prison listens to Joel Osteen. His word is for the brokers, not the broken; not the broken-hearted.

A sanitized TV version of grace and glory feels nothing but empty and shallow against the real deep sorrow of the trenches. I found myself in one of those trenches, and, like Job on his dung heap, I was dragged there kicking and screaming at God for its injustice. For a long time, I have wondered what I did to deserve this trashing of my freedom, my name, and worst of all, my priesthood. I do, after all, have a King other than Caesar!

So does Peggy Noonan. She was a White House speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and now she writes the “Declarations” column for The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Edition. She is neck deep in the affairs of New York City and Washington, but she also has her finger on the pulse of that vast expanse of America that stretches from there to the Pacific.

Peggy Noonan’s January 27, 2018 column was entitled, “Who’s Afraid of Jordan Peterson?” Formerly associate professor of psychology at Harvard, Jordan Peterson has taught psychology at the University of Toronto for 20 years. Ms. Noonan wrote about a British TV report on his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

She was intrigued because the interviewer was critical of Professor Peterson for his resistance to adopting the new orthodoxy of political correctness. Ms. Noonan summarized that the interviewer tried to silence his …

“… scholarly respect for the stories and insights into human behavior — into the meaning of things — in the Old and New Testaments. Their stories exist for a reason, he says, and have lasted for a reason: They are powerful indicators of reality, and their great figures point to pathways.”

Those Biblical pathways, it turns out, are always through the dark woods of sorrow. As I have written before, Sacred Scripture — the story of God and us — is filled with irony. The characters that populate the Biblical stories experience transformations born of suffering and sorrow.

Why we suffer is a cosmic mystery, but it is so even for God. As Saint Paul wrote, “He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). With trust, suffering takes on a meaning far greater than itself.

God Sees Facebook Too

If I were Job this is how I could frame my own lament:

“I spent the last 29 years in a dark periphery of my own called unjust imprisonment. Such a plight can cause a man to focus entirely on himself and his own bizarre fate. Those without hope here live in a prison inside a prison.”

I want to tell you about something that happened after I wrote a post entitled “Left Behind: In Prison for the Apocalypse.” It was about my friend, Skooter, who left this prison eleven years ago to face a life alone. Saint Mother Teresa once wrote that poverty does not mean just a lack of money, or food, or housing. The deepest poverty on Earth, she wrote, is to live life with no one who cares about us, no one to walk with us in suffering or sorrow.

I will always remember the day Skooter left us. From a distance, Pornchai Moontri and I watched him walk out the door carrying his life in two trash bags, but with no idea where, or to whom he would go. His life was missing the infrastructure that so many in Joel Osteen’s audience might take for granted.

Skooter was a young prisoner whom I taught to read and write. When he left prison, I never heard from him again except through a cryptic third party “thank you” from another young man who found himself back inside.

I did not know what happened to Skooter, nor did I know what exactly prompted me to write that post about him five years after he fell into silence. The silence was not his choice. When prisoners leave here, they are barred from contacting anyone left behind.

I do not know what prompted me to do this, but months after I wrote that post about him, I decided to try to find Skooter to see if he might like to read it. I called a friend, Charlene Duline in Indiana, a retired State Department official who became Pornchai Moontri’s Godmother in his Divine Mercy conversion. Charlene looked for Skooter on Facebook (using his given name), but the search yielded no result. A few days later, for reasons I do not know, I asked her to try again.

Now obviously, I have no access to Facebook but a past editor started a page for Beyond These Stone Walls. I have never even seen it so I don’t have a clue how Facebook works. I only know that my posts are shared there and that about 4,000 people “follow” them there. So while I was on the telephone with Charlene, she did the search again, but this time it yielded one result. I asked her to send a “connect request” from me. Within seconds, the acceptance came back with this message:

“G, is this really you? Is this possible?”

It seemed so bizarre that we were actually communicating in real time. Charlene sent Skooter a short reply telling him that she was on the telephone with me at that moment. Skooter sent back a number and asked me to call it. All the telephones in this prison are outside. So in the frigid cold, I called that number.

Skooter answered, and what he told me was astonishing. Skooter had been through a terrible dark night. After leaving prison at age 25, he struggled to build the life that he never had. He was alone, but he worked hard. Life was looking just a little promising and hopeful, then a cascade of dominoes began to fall.

Months before my sudden Facebook message reached Skooter, he lost his job. His boss in a small construction company was charged with some sort of corruption that Skooter had nothing to do with, but he was the collateral damage. Losing his job with no ability to plan was catastrophic. Paying rent by the week in substandard housing — a plight faced by so many former prisoners — Skooter then lost his place to live.

Everything he owned, which wasn’t much, ended up in storage. Then, unable to pay his storage bill, he lost even that. Living in a homeless shelter, Skooter went to a Christian food pantry for some help. He was asked for an address and he said he did not have one. He was told that he needs an address before they can give him food. Skooter roamed the streets and despaired.

Early in the morning after a sleepless night in the cold, he walked into the woods feeling totally defeated. He brought a rope. I’m sorry, but there is just no comfortable way to tell this. Skooter hanged himself from a tree. A hunter came upon the scene and cut down Skooter’s unconscious body, but he was still alive.

The hunter left Skooter on the ground and called the police from a highway rest area pay phone. Skooter was taken to a hospital where he had a 48-hour emergency commitment in the psychiatric ward. This is all dismal, but the rest shook me to the core. When Skooter emerged from this nightmare, he went to a city library to keep warm. He learned that he can use a computer there for free.

Feeling alone and discarded, the very poverty that Saint Mother Teresa described above, something compelled him to open a Facebook account. It was at that moment that I was on a phone from prison talking with Charlene when we searched for Skooter for the second time and there he was. Skooter told me that as he sat there wondering what to do next, my “friend request” appeared on his screen.

The photo of Skooter (above) was taken at a friend’s home at Christmas before his dark night brought him into a dark forest. I have been where Skooter was. I wrote of “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night.” Now I have entered Skooter’s darkest night, and from inside these prison walls I walk with him through his pathways of suffering and sorrow. No one could today convince Skooter that God has no plan.

So, where were you when God laid the foundations of the Earth? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or showed the dawn its place?

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Editor’s Note: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You might like these other posts cited herein:

The James Webb Space Telescope and an Encore from Hubble

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’

The Despair of Towers Falling, The Courage of Men Rising

Left Behind: In Prison for the Apocalypse

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List

The NH ‘Laurie List’ is a once secret list of police misconduct. Ex-Detective James F McLaughlin was recently removed from the list in a secret ‘John Doe’ hearing.

Editor’s Note: Ryan A. MacDonald has published numerous articles on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church including, “Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest.” This is a necessary sequel.

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January 17, 2024 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Are you in favor of destroying the lives of Catholic priests under false pretense? If not, please read on. Catholic priest Gordon J MacRae is now in his thirtieth year of wrongful imprisonment after rejecting a 1994 plea deal offer to serve one to two years. I previously wrote at the link cited above about newly emerging evidence in the case. The Wall Street Journal boldly took up this matter in a series of articles by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz and noted civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate. Their work exposing this wrongful prosecution and police misconduct is collected at “The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr Gordon MacRae.”

Newly emerging evidence came to light with a revelation that the police detective who investigated and testified against Father Mac Rae was added to a previously secret list of officers with dishonesty or police misconduct issues. The list was held in secret by the New Hampshire Attorney General until a court ordered publication of the list in 2022. Detective James McLaughlin was added to the list for “Falsification of Records,” an incident or incidents that occurred in 1985, nine years before the 1994 MacRae trial. Because the behavior was known to state prosecutors at the time of the trial, they were obligated by Supreme Court precedent to report this to Father MacRae’s legal counsel before trial. They failed to do so.

This bombshell was first reported by someone at the New Hampshire Office of the American Civil Liberties Union which had been a plaintiff in a lawsuit that eventually made the “Laurie List” public. Father MacRae himself wrote of this development in “Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.”

Police officers placed on the Attorney General’s list have the ability to challenge its publication by petitioning the courts to remove their names for cause. Former Detective McLaughlin filed such a petition so, pending a court hearing, his name was blacked out from the public list just hours after it appeared. New Hampshire courts have allowed officers on the list to file their petitions using “John Doe” pseudonyms. A hearing for McLaughlin — though not a public one — is likely to be scheduled early in 2024.

Not everyone is on board with the notion of a judicial system operating in secret. One judge, a former Senior Assistant Attorney General, has objected to the secret forum in which these removal petitions are being heard. (See “Judge: Laurie List Police Lawsuits Are Being Improperly Sealed”). Judge Will Delker’s published objection cites a fundamental precept of democracy that public officials must be accountable to citizens: “Court records are presumptively open to the public absent some overriding consideration or special circumstance. The party seeking to maintain court records under seal must demonstrate a sufficiently compelling interest that outweighs the public’s right to access.”

New Hampshire reporter Damien Fisher has managed to obtain, through Freedom of Information Act requests, some limited, heavily redacted evidence of the matters before the court in former Detective McLaughlin’s petition. He documented them in a December 18, 2023 article, “Laurie List Lawsuit Matches Former Well-Known Keene Cop’s Record.” To force a reporter to such lengths to obtain public information in public records turns the court system into a sham.

Covering Up for Police Corruption

There is a good deal more in the problematic and unconstitutional practices of Detective James F. McLaughlin than what is currently before the Court in his petition to be removed from the public accountability list, but the public is kept in the dark. Citizens should have an opportunity to address concerns about why his name should remain on that published list, but that is circumvented by secrecy. The public cannot learn the identity of the “John Doe” before the Court. Reporter Damien Fisher was only able to discern this from a careful examination of this particular “John Doe’s” petition.

Additionally, the public cannot obtain a Court date or docket number to have their concerns heard. As a result, pertinent evidence is prevented from coming before the Court. The court of public opinion is a different matter, but no citizen should have to appeal to it in order to obtain justice.

Though not a resident and citizen of the State of New Hampshire, I have researched its laws in regard to the conduct of police. The violations alleged against McLaughlin in the case of Father MacRae alone are many and great. No public entity has investigated these and judges hearing MacRae’s two appeals — a direct State appeal in 1996 and a Writ of Habeas Corpus in 2012 — resulted in rejection without hearing from any witnesses privy to said misconduct.

So if we cannot place it before the Court, we place it before you in the form of official excerpts of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated, the very State laws that Detective McLaughlin has broken and for which he should be censured. Each is followed by signed Statements given to a former FBI official investigating this case, but in each case no judge has allowed the Statements or witnesses thereof to be heard under oath and on the record in any New Hampshire court.

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RSA 105 : 19 — Reports of Misconduct by Law Enforcement Officers

For the purposes of this section, ‘misconduct’ means assault, sexual assault, bribery, fraud, theft, tampering with evidence, tampering with a witness, use of a choke hold, or excessive and illegal use of force.

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1. STATEMENT OF STEVEN WOLLSCHLAGER (Alleging Attempted Bribery)

Introduction: Steven Wollschlager was a friend of accuser Thomas Grover. During Detective James McLaughlin’s investigations in 1988 and 1994, Mr. Wollschlager was interviewed. It is unknown whether the interviews were recorded. Wollschlager states that the interview reports misrepresented statements attributed to him that he never made. In a 1994 pre-trial interview, McLaughlin is alleged to have attempted to suborn Wollschlager to commit perjury before a grand jury with the suggestion of “a large sum of money.” Wollschlager reported being lured into agreement, but later recanted, refusing to testify before a grand jury:

“My name is Steven Wollschlager, DOB 12-7-1973. I give this signed statement at my own free will to Investigator James Abbott with no promises or bribes. I am willing to testify to the following statement to proceed in a court of law or otherwise under oath that I am giving facts and details to the best of my memory.

“I have had opportunities during several periods of my life to know Gordon McCrea (sic). Never in all our meetings or conversations was there any inappropriate talk of sex, sex for money, favors, or any other thing related to such.

“My first encounters with Gordon came when I was age 15 and using drugs. Gordon counseled me through Monadnock Family Counseling, maybe three sessions. During this time he also introduced me to some persons in the AA program. At this time there was never anything inappropriate going on, nor did I ever feel uncomfortable for any reason around Gordon.

“In 1988 while in rehab (which Gordon helped my parents get me into), I was interviewed by [Keene] Detective McLaughlin about Gordon. This detective did most of the talking — Did he ever do this or that? — asking me many questions as to whether or not anything inappropriate ever happened with Gordon against me. Never during this time did I say anything to any police officer that Gordon had done anything wrong towards me.

“Years passed and in 1994, before Gordon was to go on trial, I was contacted again by Keene police detectives McLaughlin and Collingworth. I was aware at the time of Gordon’s trial, knowing full well that it was bogus and having heard of the lawsuits and money involved, also the reputations of those who were making accusations. I agreed to meet with the above detectives after being told that I would be reimbursed for my time and gas money.

“Again during this meeting I mostly just listened to scenarios and statements being spoken to me by the police. The lawsuits and money were of greatest discussion and I was left feeling that if I would go along with the story I could reap the rewards as well.

“McLaughlin asked me many times if Gordon ever tried to come onto me sexually or offered me money for any sexual favors. He had me believing that all I had to do was make up a story about Gordon and I could receive a large sum of money as others already had. McLaughlin reminded me of the young child and girlfriend I had and referenced that life could be easier for us with a large amount of money.

“I knew the Grovers’ reputation as well as others involved, many of whom I went to school with. It seemed as though it would be easy money if I would also accuse Gordon of wrongdoing. I left that meeting after being given, I believe, $50, easy money like what would come from lawsuits against McCrae (sic). I was at the time using drugs and could have been influenced to say anything they wanted for money .

“A short time later after being subpoenaed to Court, I had a different feeling about the situation. I did not want to lie or make up stories. After speaking with the Clerk of Courts I was approached by another person. After telling this person that I did not want to be there and I stated Gordon had never done anything wrong towards me sexually or otherwise, I was told I could leave. This person seemed visibly upset that I had nothing to say.”

Signed: Steven Wollschlager October 27, 2008

2. STATEMENT OF DEBRA COLLETT (Alleging Witness Tampering and Tampering with Evidence)

Introduction: Ms. Debra Collett was Thomas Grover’s primary counselor in 1987 at Derby Lodge, a residential drug addiction treatment center located in Berlin, NH. In police interviews with Detective McLaughlin pretrial in 1993/94, Grover claimed to have revealed to Debra Collett that Fr. Gordon MacRae molested him in his teen years. Grover had previously been treated for addiction at Beech Hill Hospital in Dublin, NH in 1985, but his treatment was terminated when he was caught smuggling drugs to sell to other patients. Ms.Collett here reveals that Detective McLaughlin recorded his interviews with her, but neither a report nor the recordings were ever turned over to MacRae’s defense as required.

“I am Debra Collett, DOB 6-17-1952. I am making this Statement to James Abbott, Investigator for Gordon MacRae. My involvement leading to speaking with James Abbott was as Clinical Director at Derby’s Lodge in Berlin, NH. I was individual counselor for Tom Grover when he was a client at Derby Lodge.

“Thomas Grover never revealed to me that Gordon MacRae perpetrated against him. Mr Grover spent a great deal of time being confronted in treatment for his dishonesty, misrepresentation, and unwillingness to be honest about his problems. Thomas Grover did reveal that he had been perpetrated against sexually, but named no specific person except to say that his “step father” or “foster father” molested him. When asked if Thomas meant, “Mr. Grover,” Thomas replied, “yes, among others.”

“Thomas Grover presented as unwilling to join a group of other people who like himself experienced similar difficulties. Instead, he became angry, punched walls, flicked things, and slammed doors to evade and not address his issues.

“When it became evident that [the MacRae case] was going to trial, I was contacted by Keene Police Detectives Clarke and McLaughlin. They questioned me and I had several contacts with them.

“My experience was that neither presented as an investigator looking for what information I had to contribute, but rather presented as having made up their minds and sought to substantiate their belief in Gordon MacRae’s guilt. I experienced Detective Clark as the primary questioner. I was uncomfortable with his repeated stopping and starting the tape recorder when he did not agree with my answers to his questions and his repeated statements that he wanted to put this individual where he belonged, behind bars, that a priest of all people should be punished.

“I confronted Det. Clark about his statements and his stopping and starting the recording of my statement, and his attitude and treatment of me which seemed to include coercion, intimidation, veiled and more forward threats as well as being disrespectful. At that point, and in later dealings, I was overtly threatened concerning my reluctance to continue to subject myself to their treatment with threats of arrest. McLaughlin told me he would personally come to my home, drag me out of it bodily if necessary, and force me to appear in court and testify despite my information to him.

“My overall experience in interacting with these detectives was one of being bullied with their attitude of animosity, anger, and preconception of guilt regarding Gordon MacRae. They presented as argumentative, manipulative, and threatening via use of police power in an attempt to get me to say what they wanted to hear.”

Signed: Debra Collett 05-20-2008

3. STATEMENT OF LEO DEMERS IN A LETTER TO JUDGE ARTHUR BRENNAN (Alleging Witness Tampering and Suppression of Evidence)

Letter dated October 24, 2013:

“My wife, Penny, and I were present in the courtroom throughout most of the trial of Fr. Gordon MacRae. For all these years, I have had many questions about this trial and much that I’ve wanted to clarify for my own peace of mind. I learned recently that both a superior court judge here in New Hampshire and the NH Supreme Court declined to hold a hearing on the evidence and merits of a habeas corpus petition in this case. Now that state courts seem no longer to be involved, I feel more inclined to approach you on what has been bothering me, as you were the presiding judge.

“We saw something in your courtroom during the MacRae trial that I don’t think you ever saw. My wife nudged me and pointed to a woman, Ms. Pauline Goupil, who was engaged in what appeared to be clear witness tampering. During questioning by the defense attorney, Thomas Grover seemed to feel trapped a few times. On some of those occasions, we witnessed Pauline Goupil make a distinct sad expression with a downturned mouth and gesturing with her finger from the corner of her eye down her cheek at which point Mr. Grover would begin to cry and sob on the stand. The lawyer’s questions were never answered.

“I have been troubled about this for all these years. I know what I saw, and what I saw was a clear attempt to dupe the court and the jury. If the sobbing and crying were not truthful, then I cannot help but wonder what else was not truthful on the part of Mr. Grover. If he was really a victim who wanted to tell the simple truth, why was it necessary for him and Ms. Goupil to have what clearly appeared to be a set of prearranged signals to alter his testimony? The jury was privy to none of this, to the best of my knowledge.

“Secondly, I was struck by the difference in Thomas Grover’s demeanor on the witness stand in your court and his demeanor just moments before and after outside the courtroom. On the stand, he wept and appeared to be a vulnerable victim. Moments later, during court recess, in the parking lot he was loud, boisterous and aggressive. One time he even confronted me in a threatening attempt to alter my own testimony during sentencing. …

“I simply believe that, like so many others, Mr. Grover and those coaching him have misled you and your court. You also seemed to rely heavily in your sentencing of MacRae on the investigation and findings of Det. McLaughlin. My wife and I had some firsthand experience with him and his tactics during his investigation. He was not at all interested in the facts or the truth. He attempted to use coercion and bullying tactics to get my wife and me to change the facts we presented to him, facts that did not support any of his preconceived ideas.

“We are not the only persons to have had this experience with him. I have read that Debbie Collett, Thomas Grover’s counselor, outlined in detail how she was threatened and coerced into altering her testimony. Another witness alleges that he was overtly bribed by this detective to accuse MacRae during that investigation.”

Signed: Leo Demers, August 24, 2013

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There is much more alleged of this detective that should come before a Court deciding on his public exposure on the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule or ‘Laurie List.’ As long as the Court allows Mr. James McLaughlin to appear as “John Doe” in any hearing regarding his appearance on the police misconduct list which is meant to be public, citizens are prevented from witnessing to the truth in this regard. None of the people mentioned here have ever been allowed to testify under oath about this detective. Now we know why.

This necessitates a Part 2 of this post, hopefully coming next week.

Meanwhile, please share this article. There is nothing more destructive of the cause of justice and the common good than the noise of too few and the silence of too many.

Pray for justice, and for the integrity of our justice system.

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Editor’s Note: We thank Ryan A. MacDonald for this newest chapter in a continuing struggle for justice. You may also be interested in these related posts:

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr Gordon MacRae Case

Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Priest

The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr Gordon MacRae

Keene, NH Det. James McLaughlin celebrates his 350th arrest as a sex-crimes crusader.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”