Saint John Paul the Great: A Light in a World in Crisis

Karol Wojtyla became a priest on All Saints Day 1946. On Divine Mercy Sunday 2014 the Church affirmed what the world already knew: he is Saint John Paul the Great.

November 1, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Two names were added to the Communion of Saints on Divine Mercy Sunday 2014, and midway through this third decade of the 21st Century, one of them still looms large in the living memory of billions, Catholics and not. I must write especially of Saint John Paul II because his Holy Father-hood is like a set of bookends framing my life as a priest. I have written of him before, and of the origin of his being dubbed “John Paul the Great” for his monumental impact on the state of world affairs.

That post, which we will link again at the end of this one, was “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II.” It began, ironically enough, in the era in which Angelo Roncali became Pope John XXIII. It’s an ironic twist that John XXIII was beatified by John Paul II, but on Divine Mercy Sunday 2014 they were canonized together. So in a sense, this tribute to one is a profound bow to the sainthood of both.

I don’t want to begin with the negative, but sometimes it’s best to just get the detractors out of the way. The Media Report had an article about a 2014 PBS Frontline presentation entitled “Secrets of the Vatican.” The Frontline piece was co-produced for PBS by Jason Berry, and it was clear, for those who would see, that the agenda behind it had nothing to do with the Truths about the Catholic Church.

The triple crown PBS and Jason Berry aimed for was Holy Week, Easter, and the Divine Mercy Canonization of Pope John Paul II. One prisoner who watched it thinking it might be a tour of the Vatican Museum called it “Jason Berry’s hatchet job on the Catholic Church.” Had PBS settled on that more honest title, its ratings might have been higher. The timing of such productions is carefully choreographed, of course, to coincide with any big Catholic news coming out of Rome.

As the Canonization of these two 20th Century popes made headlines, so did the predictable efforts to defame them. I wrote of the timing of such ploys recently in “Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.” It has become a tradition of sorts in modern media to deck the halls with anti-Catholic slurs during the seasons of both Christmas and Easter. The strategy is that if enough mud can be thrown during times when Catholics on the fence assess their faith, some will ultimately abandon it.

It must be terribly frustrating for those behind such campaigns that at Easter every year, tens of thousands of adults thinking for themselves in the U.S. alone are received into the Catholic faith. Thousands more return after decades away. Our readers heard from one of them in the moving post, “Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I Left Behind.” Will such stories find their way into Jason Berry’s next PBS Holy Week special? Don’t count on it! But there is now a far more important story to tell.

A Pope’s 33 Days

The summer of 1978 was a strange one for me. I had graduated early that summer from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. A life-changing discernment to leave the Capuchin order to become a diocesan priest had culminated in sweeping change for me that summer. I became a priesthood candidate for the Diocese of Manchester and was assigned to commence graduate studies toward M. Div. and S.T.M. degrees at St. Mary Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland, a Pontifical Institute and the nation’s oldest Roman Catholic seminary. It was a summer of transition, and in the background of its whirlwind of change for me was the death of Pope Paul VI and the election of Albino Luciani, Archbishop of Venice, who became Pope John Paul.

Thirty-three days later, on the morning of September 28, 1978, came a knock on my seminary room door. “The Pope has died,” said an unidentified voice on the other side. “Um . . . that was a month ago,” I responded. “No,” said the voice, “the NEW Pope has died.” I never knew who the voice was, but as I made my way through the cavernous corridors toward class that morning the shock of the story was everywhere.

Eighteen days later, on October 16, 1978, the same Conclave of papal electors, who chose the first Pope John Paul just 51 days before, elected a successor. Karol Jozef Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, became the first non-Italian pope since 1522. He took the name, John Paul II in honor of the first whose reign was the shortest in Church history. The new pope was 58 years old, spoke 14 languages, and would reign for 27 years — one of the longest in Church history — until his death on April 2, 2005.

With my nose buried in a textbook when that knock came on my door in 1978, I had no way to know of the long, twisted road upon which priesthood would take me. I instantly remembered that day as though yesterday, however, when 27 years later on April 2, 2005, a knock came on my cell door as a prisoner’s voice reported the news: “The Pope has died.” In between these two events, Pope John Paul the Great visited 129 countries, beatified 1,342 souls, canonized 483 saints, declared one Doctor of the Church, promulgated 14 encyclicals, and in his spare time he dismantled the Soviet Union, tore down the Berlin Wall, and brought European Communism to its knees.

Is that last point an exaggeration? Not according to the KGB. When John Paul II and John XXIII were canonized in April 2014, Catholic press was filled with accounts of the legacies of both, but for John Paul II the secular media were also filled with tributes to him, and foremost among these was John Paul’s role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. I rely on some of these tributes more than I do the Catholic press for this post because we might expect all but chronically dissenting Catholics to hold John Paul in high regard. The key to his witness, however, is found elsewhere.

One such source is a superb book by Eric Metaxas entitled Seven Men and the Secret of their Greatness (Thomas Nelson, 2013). Seven Men is a profile in courage with subjects chosen by Eric Metaxas because they were exemplars of manhood, bravery, and public witness to the courage of their convictions. Among them, for this prolific and highly regarded non-Catholic writer, was Pope John Paul II:

“Of all the men in this book, there is only one who has come to be called ‘the Great.’ John Paul the Great . . . . The man whom the Polish authorities once regarded as harmless became one of the key figures in the collapse of communism across Europe.”

— Seven Men, pp. 141, 157

The threat this pope posed to the communist agenda did not go unnoticed by the KGB. In “The Enduring Legacy of John Paul II” (Catalyst, December 2010) Ronald Rychlak chronicled Soviet KGB involvement in the assassination attempts, first of John Paul’s reputation and character, and then of John Paul himself. Reviewing Witness to Hope (HarperCollins 1999), George Weigel’s magisterial biography of Pope John Paul II, Ronald Rychlak described the KGB anxiety about this pope:

“Within months of his election, John Paul II ignited a revolution of conscience in Poland and it ultimately led to the collapse of European Communism and the demise of the Soviet Union.”

— Ronald Rychlak, Catalyst

I also wrote of the story of KGB targeting of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius XII in “Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times.” I was not at all alone in seeing the great thorn in the side that Pope John Paul had courageously become for communism and its intent to dominate Europe, and then the world. In “Popes, Atheists and Freedom” (WSJ, December 30, 2010) Daniel Henninger wrote of Pope John Paul’s courageous confrontation with the Soviet Union:

“In 1984, after John Paul had completed two pastoral pilgrimages to Communist Poland, a conference was convened by members of the KGB, Warsaw Pact, and Cuban intelligence services. Its purpose: to discuss joint measures for combating the ‘subversive activities’ of the Vatican.”

Pope John Paul II and the Miracle of Fatima

I sometimes think that I am among the priesthood’s worst skeptics. I write of measurable things, after all: history and science, the Voyager Spacecraft among the stars, and “The James Webb Space Telescope.” If someone told me when I was ordained 41 years ago that I would one day be writing about a connection between Pope John Paul and the Miracle of Fatima, I would not have believed it.

It was Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, who opened my eyes. The great Marian author of 33 Days to Morning Glory wrote something about John Paul II that did more than open my eyes. It shook my world. What follows is a summary.

In 1917, during World War I, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. I have always accepted this because the Church accepts it, but I have also always tried not to think too much about it. No, it’s much worse than that. I once, as a much younger priest, scoffed at it all. I kept my scoffing to myself, but the whole story of Fatima was reduced in my mind to a lot of pre-scientific nonsense.

It was Mary herself who straightened me out, aided somewhat by Father Michael Gaitley. I wrote about some of this in “Behold Your Son, Behold Your Mother,” a feature article at Marian.org. I wrote that Father Gaitley’s presentation on Pope John Paul II was powerful and compelling.

The first vision at Fatima took place at 5:00 PM on May 13, 1917. After the prophesies about the conversion of Russia, the child visionaries saw a “bishop dressed in white” who “would suffer much and then be shot and killed.” This became known as the last secret of Fatima, and was kept hidden, for a time, by the Church.

Exactly 64 years later, on May 13, 1981 at exactly 5:00 PM, Pope John Paul II was shot four times as he blessed the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. One of those bullets would have surely killed him had it not missed his abdominal artery by a tiny fraction of an inch. John Paul attributed the guidance of this bullet to the hand of Our Lady of Fatima whose first apparition shared that same date.

The Soviet Empire was created in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and it became the largest nation on Earth. In his 1948 book, The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote of a proposal to the ruthless Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. The proposal was that the Soviet Union should not suppress Catholicism, but should rather encourage it in order to build a relationship with the Pope. “The Pope?” Stalin famously retorted. “How many divisions has he got?”

That conversation took place on May 13, 1935, 46 years to the day before the Soviet Union tried to eliminate Pope John Paul II because he became communism’s biggest obstacle in all of Europe. The Pope survived. Stalin’s successors in the Soviet Union learned the answers to his questions far too late for their own survival.

As a wise friend once said to me, “There are no coincidences, only signs.” My scientific mind could still have dismissed all this had I not witnessed what up to then I thought to be impossible: the 1989 fall of the Soviet Empire and the collapse of communism in Europe. On November 9, 1989, thousands danced upon the Berlin Wall before it finally crumbled. I scoffed no longer as I pondered “How Our Lady of Fatima Saved a World in Crisis.” As Communism swept Europe and threatened to engulf the world in Godless darkness, Pope John Paul II was her instrument of powerful resistance.

Karol Wojtyla was ordained a priest on All Saints Day, 1946, and is now in the company of the Communion of Saints, including the 483 saints who were canonized by a Saint. As a priest and bishop, he studied Sister Faustina’s Diary and promoted her devotion to Divine Mercy, and later her cause for sainthood. He once wrote that as a priest he always felt spiritually close to Sister Faustina. Karol Jozef Wojtyla surrendered his Earthly life on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, 2005.

Saint John Paul the Great, pray for us as we face, yet again, a world in crisis.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts which we hope you will share with others:

A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II

Of Saints and Souls and Earthly Woes

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts

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.”

Eternal Life Matters: Spiritual Survival in Trying Times

#EternalLifeMatters because God is a God of the living, not of the dead. As political and cultural chaos descends all around us, it is our end game that matters most.

October 25, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

One of my favorite political columnists is Gerald F. Seib. He is retired now, but still writing occasional feature articles. For several years, he wrote The Wall Street Journal’s weekly “Capital Journal” column. He always managed to open my eyes to a more panoramic view of what is going on in America and throughout Western Culture. On October 6, 2020, his title was, “Turning-Point Year Heads to Parts Unknown.”

My immediate concern was what he meant by “turning point” and “parts unknown.” You may not be able to see this landmark column without a WSJ subscription, but I don’t think Mr. Seib will mind if I summarize his main points. There have been times in the history of this nation when one shocking event after another became an “inflection point” that turns the culture in a new direction and ushers in a new era with a radical redirection of the future. For example, in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the Civil War broke out which in historical hindsight turned out to be a major inflection point for this nation. In 1932, the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal which was not nearly as radical as the left’s proposed “Green New Deal,” but nonetheless was an inflection point for life in America.

By the standard of shocking points that become “inflection points,” the year 2020 appears to be one of these moments in history. A global pandemic, four years of a highly contentious and divided political climate, a major party turning decisively left while the party in power turns the Supreme Court decisively right. The Covid pandemic has changed everything about us in just three years. It has altered how we live, interact, work, and recreate. It has also greatly altered our politics. It has become very important to sift through the politics of Covid lest we repeat them to our detriment. For example, potential courses of treatment became shunned, not for medical reasons but for political ones. The shuttering of schools and churches while liquor stores and casinos remained open had the effect of shattering rational dialogue about what is good for America and Americans. The origins of Covid, necessary to identify, were defined based on politics and not science. I wrote of this to much criticism from the left in “Covid: The Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. News Media.”

Polls have been little help as predictors of what comes next for either our politics or our culture. Our lives as individuals also experience a kind of “inflection point” tendency in the face of crisis. A radical change of direction within ourselves is usually associated with some sort of event or a series of events. Here is a small example. You likely recall that our friend, Pornchai Moontri, stepped onto my path after spending several years in a solitary confinement prison. For a view of how life-changing and destructive that was, see the riveting PBS Frontline documentary “Locked Up in America — Solitary Nation,” a production that depicts the very prison and cell that held my friend for fourteen years, seven in one long grueling stretch.

Just before writing this post, I received a lengthy message from John C., a young man who was in that same prison with Pornchai and knew him well. They helped each other to survive. John wrote to me after coming across posts about Pornchai’s current life at Beyond These Stone Walls. He was deeply impacted not only by the revelations about all that Pornchai suffered in life, but by the story of his Divine Mercy conversion. John wrote that he was brought up Catholic as a child, but became an atheist in prison.

When Pornchai told me sixteen years ago that he does not believe in God, I told him that I, too, lost all faith as a young man. I said that I awoke one morning uttering the words, “God, I do not believe in you.” What I heard simultaneously in my head and in my heart was, “Just be glad it isn’t mutual!” That was one of the inflection points in my life at age 16, and hearing about it became one of Pornchai’s as well. Perhaps that may also become true for John. The mere fact that he is now reading this blog of all things is a signpost of its own.

As for Pornchai, I do not think he could have coped with all that he endured if he had not become a person of faith. After leaving prison in September 2020, he spent the next five months imprisoned not only in an ICE deportation warehouse in Louisiana, but by Covid which left all international travel frozen in place. He was packed into a room with seventy ICE detainees — most from Central America, where the noise was unbearable and the blazing lights were kept on 24/7. He was sleep-deprived and suffered terribly. However, he also reached out to help several others who suffered much more. He protected and helped a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese refugee who spent a year in that place before we were able to help hasten his return to his mother and family in Vietnam. Pornchai recruited me to find others to assist “Tri.” In Vietnam he is still in touch with Pornchai and me. He does not understand the Catholic use of the word “Father.” So in his messages he refers to me as “Dad Gordon.”

A conversation between Father G and Pornchai Max, “breaking through ICE.”

Bearing the Cross of My Neighbor

With the help of BTSW reader Claire Dion, who put two cellphones together enabling us to communicate for about ten minutes each day, Pornchai and I were able to talk by phone during his five months in ICE detention. Pornchai himself wrote of the impact of this time, and his survival in “Free at Last Thanks to God and You!”

I wrote recently in these pages a post entitled “The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God.” I wrote it because each week when I sit down to write a post, I look at the Mass readings for the Sunday that will follow it. That is often, besides the depressing news, my first source for something to write about. In the post I just cited, the Prophet Isaiah’s unintended connection to current events was striking. The connections in this post with the next Sunday’s Gospel (from Matthew 22:34-40) are much more subtle, but they are in there and I hope to pull them out. The connections of the First Reading (from Exodus 22:20-26) are much more clear:

“Thus says the Lord: ‘You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.”

It is one thing to require that an alien observe the laws on entering and remaining in a country legally. It is quite another to treat him as something less than a human being.

In Sunday’s First Reading from the Book of Exodus (22:20-26), if the oppressed alien in your midst cries out to me, “I will surely hear him, for I am compassionate.” That compassion is an attribute of God that is supposed to be a life-changing inflection point for us.

The Gospel, from Matthew 22:34-40, is much more subtle. It opens with an account that the Pharisees gathered when they learned that Jesus had somehow managed “to silence the Sadducees.” How Jesus did that requires a little background. The Sadducees make a brief, but important appearance in the Gospels. Their approach to Jesus is consistently hostile. They are a caste of priestly aristocrats who manage the affairs of the Jerusalem Temple. But their management is primarily political.

The Sadducees reject the Hebrew Prophets and all Scripture except the Pentateuch, the first five books that comprise the Torah, also called the Books of Moses. That is their sole source of religious consideration. They arose in the Second Century BC as a political interest group whose most important goal is to remain in good stead with whatever occupying force has swallowed up Jerusalem. In the case of the Gospel, it is the Roman Empire. The Sadducees are well represented in my post reflecting on John 19:15: “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’.”

The Sadducees also reject the existence of angels, an afterlife, and resurrection from the dead. They took their name from the High Priest, Zadok, who served the Temple under King Solomon centuries earlier. They were political and doctrinal enemies of the Pharisees who took great interest in the fact that Jesus silenced them. He did so, as he is prone to do with the Pharisees as well, by trapping them in the hypocrisy of their own words.

To discredit the words of Jesus about resurrection, they concocted a story based on a fragment of law from the Book of Deuteronomy (25:5-6) holding that if a man dies childless, his brother is to take his wife and fulfill his duty to bear a son to continue his deceased brother’s name. The Sadducees presented Jesus with a query about a woman who lost seven husbands, taking in marriage each of the surviving brothers in turn. “In the resurrection,” they asked, “which of the seven will she be wife?” Jesus could have cited the Prophets on the hope of resurrection, but he knew the Sadducees rejected them. So he cited the only Scripture to which they gave credence:

“Have you not read what was said to you by God? ‘I Am the God of your Fathers, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob’ (Exodus 3:6). God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

By declaring the Patriarchs of Israel — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — to be alive and in the Presence of God, Jesus amazed the crowd and silenced the Sadducees who had no response.

The Pharisees and Saduccees Come to Tempt Jesus by James Tissot (cropped)

The Greatest Commandment

Having satisfied themselves that Jesus is right and the Sadducees most certainly wrong about resurrection, the Pharisees in this Gospel account (Matthew 22:34-40) went on to test Jesus further. One of them, “a lawyer” set up a question. The Greek word this Gospel account used for “lawyer” is “νομικός,” found only once in Matthew’s Gospel, but six times in Luke’s. The word is synonymous with “Scribe,” and therefore denotes a man very well versed in both the Law and the Prophets. The question posed is this “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Laws?”

Jesus answers, as he did previously with the Sadducees, by a quote from the Torah in the Book of Deuteronomy (6:4-5) laid out in the chapter following the Ten Commandments given to Moses:

“Hear, O Israel, The Lord your God is One Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

But then Jesus shocks the Pharisees by finding in their Torah a necessary addendum to their Great Commandment. He quotes from another Book of Moses, the Book of Leviticus (19:18) to lay out the fulfillment of the first part, “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

“On these two Commandments,” says Jesus, “depend all the Law and the Prophets.” In another Gospel passage, the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37), another lawyer stood up to put him to the test with a question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer is “Keep the Commandments,” and the Commandments referred to are those cited from the Torah – not the Ten, but the Two. The Love of God is rendered empty and false without its logical manifestation: love of neighbor and the bearing of his cross.

In the end, the Scribes and Pharisees employ even their theological enemies, the Sadducees, to stack the court when they haul Jesus before Pilate. The Way of the Cross and the rejection of God in the flesh was a mirror image of today’s effort to deny our true destiny: Life! and not just this one! Eternal Life Matters!

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

As the Church prepares to honor our beloved dead on the Solemnity of All Souls, you can silence any lingering doubts of Sadducees with “The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead.”

Writing from Thailand as I began a 30th year of unjust imprisonment, Pornchai Moontri wrote “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

And lastly, if you have been concerned by news out of Rome and Germany about fears of a schismatic synod, you might like my post “Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.”

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.”

What Belongs to Caesar and What Belongs to God

Pharisees set a trap for Jesus with a query about paying tax to Caesar. Like much in the Gospel, this has a story on its surface and a far greater one in its depths.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: One of the most frequent religious questions in the Google database of searches is also the Gospel at Mass for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. With that question, the Pharisees laid out a trap for Jesus.

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Prisoners often come to my door with questions. Sometimes they simply don’t have the ability to search through the library for answers and sometimes they just assume that a guy my age must know at least something about almost everything. My friend, Pornchai Moontri, when he was here with me, used to sometimes chime in with answers of his own.

One day a prisoner asked me, “Do you know any Latin? Pornchai shot back, “Of course he does. Latin was his first language!” The implied meaning was that I am old enough to remember when Latin was spoken on the streets of the Roman Empire. The prisoner didn’t get the joke so he didn’t laugh. I got it, and I still look forward to my quid pro quo moment.

But Pornchai may not have been entirely wrong. I went to a public high school as a teen growing up on the North Shore of Massachusetts in the 1960s. (Yes, locals still call it the “Noath Shoah”). I graduated from Lynn English High School when I was only one month seventeen in 1970, and what I most remember about those years is Latin. At Lynn English I studied basic, intermediate, and advanced Classical Latin with Miss Ruggiero who also moderated the “Latin Club” of which I was a charter member.

Latin was not my first language, but I became proficient in my first language, English, only because I studied Latin. I owe a great debt to Miss Ruggiero because she was never satisfied with our merely learning the discipline of Latin declinations and conjugations. We also had to study in depth the setting in which it was spoken: the vast Roman Empire that had spread throughout the known world.

The Roman Empire

The Roman Empire lasted for only five centuries. One of them, the one we now call the First Century A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for “the Year of the Lord”) includes the Roman occupation of Judea during the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the life of the Early Church.

The Empire began to spread from the city of Rome to the rest of Italy and neighboring regions to become the Roman Republic about 500 years before the birth of Jesus. In 49 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar, a Roman military strategist and politician, prevailed in a civil war and became dictator of the Republic. He ruled for only five years when he was assassinated on the Ides of March (March 15). The month of July was named in his honor. Caesar’s longtime military deputy, Mark Antony, and Caesar’s grandnephew, Gaius Octavius, defeated Caesar’s assassins and rivals. Then they turned on each other. At the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., Octavius prevailed over a plot by Roman governor Mark Antony and the Egyptian princess, Cleopatra, Caesar’s former mistress who took up with Mark Antony. It’s one of the great soap operas of history.

In 27 B.C. the Roman Senate proclaimed Octavius to be the Roman Republic’s supreme leader giving him the title, “Augustus,” meaning “exalted or holy one.” Most historians cite 27 B.C. as the date the Roman Empire was born. Its first Emperor took his title and added “Caesar” in honor of his great-uncle, Julius.

Caesar Augustus thus meant, “Caesar the Exalted Holy Roman Emperor.” It was a title and not a name. Augustus was also given the titles, “Pontifex Maximus,” supreme head of the state religion, and “Pater Patriae,” Father of the Fatherland.

The month of August was named in the ancient Roman Calendar in honor of Caesar Augustus. It’s easy to see the Roman influence not only in the Latin language of the Church but in the religious titles later assigned by tradition to the papacy. It’s a crime against history to allow Latin to fade from Catholic Tradition, for Christianity transformed it from the language of Earthly powers to the language of the Church. I once wrote of the meaning of this loss in the life of the Church in “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass.”

From 27 B.C. forward, “Caesar” became the title for a string of Roman rulers. Three are mentioned by name in our New Testament: Augustus, who reigned at the time of the birth of Jesus (see Luke 2:1); Tiberius, in whose fifteenth year as Emperor Jesus was baptized by John at the Jordan (Luke 3:1); and Claudius (Acts 18:2), who commanded that all Jews leave the city of Rome. Others, such as Caligula and Nero, are not mentioned by name but had a profound effect on early Christianity.

By the birth of Jesus, Augustus centralized power by turning to the Equestrian Order, Roman citizens with wealth, power, and property, and sustained their loyalty by appointing them governors over the various regions of Roman occupation. When Jesus was about 14 years of age, Tiberius succeeded Augustus as Emperor, and later appointed one of the Equestrian Order, Pontius Pilate, as governor of Judea.

In some ways in the early years of the advance of Rome into Palestine, the Jews saw it to their advantage. It was a chance to free themselves from the oppression of the Seleucids, the Greek dynasty under Antiochus IV Epiphanies who overtook the Jerusalem Temple in 167 B.C. and replaced the Torah in the Sanctuary with the cult of Zeus.

This is a story of great imperial oppression and Jewish resistance that is laid out in the First Book of Maccabees (1 Macc 8:1-6) which spoke positively of the advancing Romans and an alliance with the Jews to expel the Greek oppressors. It is the story of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah. A century before the birth of Jesus, Rome became the dominant force in the Mediterranean region, having replaced the Hellenistic Greek influence that sought to destroy the Hebrew language and expression of faith.

Caesar and Christ

So when I came to the Gospel reading for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, I was struck by the answer Jesus gave to the religious scholars of his day, the Pharisees, who had set out to entrap him. Armed with a thorough knowledge of Hebrew Law, they asked Jesus if it is permissible for Jews to pay the census tax to Caesar.

The brief story that the Gospel tells in Matthew 22: 15-22 is a good story on its face, but if you are willing to venture a little deeper under into its depths, the result is fascinating. So sometime before or after you hear the Gospel for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, invest a little of your own ordinary time for a careful reading of the rest of this post.

It is impossible to fully understand the dynamic in this account between Jesus and a group of Pharisees without some exploration of its setting. First, the story on the surface:

“The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?’” The trap is set.

“Knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax.’ Then they gave him the Roman coin. He said to them, ‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’ They replied, ‘Caesar’s.’ At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.’ When they heard it, they marveled; and then they left him and went away.”

— Matthew 22: 15-22

Why were the Pharisees plotting against Jesus at all? It began in an earlier chapter of the Gospel, Matthew 12. The Pharisees challenged Jesus over his disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry. The chapter then culminates in his Sabbath Day healing of a man with a withered hand. Using the Pharisees’ own expertise in Hebrew Law and the Prophets, Jesus challenged them to consider the prophetic meaning of “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (quoting from the Prophet Hosea 6:6). Stymied by the challenge, “the Pharisees went out and took counsel against him on how to destroy him.” (Matthew 12:14).

The next encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees is the account of their question about whether the Hebrew Law permits Jews to pay a census tax to Caesar. When Jesus asked to see the coin that would be used, and then asks whose image is on this coin, he cut to the heart of their trap with one of his own.

The coin was a denarius stamped with the profile of the Emperor, Tiberius Caesar. The tax was deeply offensive to the Pharisees because of a law set forth in the Book of Exodus:

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath… You shall not bow down to them, or worship them.”

— Exodus 20:4-5

To pay a tax to Caesar using the coin of the realm, one engraved with Caesar’s image, was considered a direct affront to the Hebrew Law, and yet the Roman occupation required it and it was the price Jews paid for freedom from the oppression of the Greeks who committed a far more serious abomination: total desecration of their Temple. So paying it was an accommodation that the Jews begrudgingly obliged despite the Mosaic Law.

But what these Pharisees wanted to know from Jesus was not whether or not to pay the tax, but his opinion on whether it was in accord with the Law of Moses. The trap was set no matter how he answered. If his opinion was that it was lawful to pay, then it would be a public insult against the Law of Moses which could be used to discredit him. If he said it was not lawful to pay, then it would have been a public insult against Rome which could be used to accuse him of insurrection.

But in the end, Jesus trapped the entrappers by saying something that caused them first to marvel, and then to simply go away in silence. His trap had multiple tiers. The first was to play upon the word, “image.” The coin bore the image and likeness of Tiberius Caesar. Therefore, for Jesus, it belonged to him.

To pay the tax is simply to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It would be a clearer violation of the law against graven images for a Jew to keep the coin. But the Pharisees would also see in this a subtle reference to a passage in Genesis with great authority:

“So God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him.”

— Genesis 1.27

Hence the second part of Jesus’ challenge: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

This meant not just their obedience to the Law, but their very selves. The gist of the implication is even stronger. This higher duty, for Jesus, is incumbent not only upon these Pharisees, but even upon Caesar himself, and that was a revolutionary thought that put the Pharisee’s in a stupor.

For the Pharisees to challenge him in any way after this would have required their affirmation that Caesar is an ultimate authority that surpasses even the will of God. So they were left to marvel, and then they just left. This places an entirely new meaning on the accommodations to Caesar made by religious authorities of Jesus’ time — and perhaps even our own.

Somehow, between this scene in the Gospel of Matthew that is proclaimed at a Sunday Mass, and the Gospel of John that we will hear in Holy Week, came the final descent of faith and the cost of believing culminating in the scene before Pilate that became one of my most read Holy Week posts, “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar.’”

It was the ultimate accommodation to Caesar from which there is no return. As for the vast Roman Empire that tried to make its Emperor god, the successor of Peter remains in Rome to this day. The successor of Caesar is but a footnote on history.

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The dotted line in the map above marks the perimeter of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You might want to pay a visit this week to our new feature on the Home Page, “Special Report,” to read my post, “Synodality Blues.”

For more forays into the deeper wells of Scripture visit these posts on Beyond These Stone Walls:

Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage

The Chief Priests Answered, “We Have No King but Caesar”

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands

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.”

Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

On February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world as the first pope in over 700 years to resign. The time of Pope Francis has been a tempest of controversy.

What faithful Catholic could forget the events of February and March, 2013? The story first broke on February 11 that year. It was a Monday. Pope Benedict XVI had summoned a minor consistory of the cardinal-residents of Rome. The official reason was the announcement of three new saints.

The names of the three beati were read by Cardinal Angelo Amati. Then Pope Benedict, looking tired and worn, stunned the world as he spoke in Latin from a prepared text:

“Ingravescente aetate non iam aptas esse ad munus Petrinum aeque administrandum …”

“I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

I had just returned that afternoon from a meeting when a friend knocked on my door. “Can a pope quit?” he asked. “No,” came my tired reply. “Well,” he said, “I think this one just did.” I quickly turned on FOX News, and like so many of you, my heart was stabbed with sorrow. Even in exile, I pondered what could have brought Pope Benedict XVI to this point, and what it would mean for the Church.

If you spent any time at all with the rabid round-the-clock television news media back then, it seemed that the haters of the Catholic Church had won as Benedict collapsed under a relentless assault. If the gates of hell had not yet prevailed against the Church, they were certainly giving it their all.

In hindsight, there were foreshadows of Benedict’s thoughts, but only the most observant Vatican watchers might have noticed, and for the most part, they remained in silent denial. In 2010, Pope Benedict was extensively interviewed by journalist Peter Seewald for a book entitled Light of the World (Ignatius 2010). Readers of the book might have noted this statement of Benedict:

“If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances an obligation, to resign.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

The last pope to have done so was Pope Saint Celestine V in the year 1294. In 2009, a year before publication of Light of the World, Pope Benedict visited the Cathedral in L’Aquila, Italy. While there, he placed a white stole on Pope Celestine’s glass coffin, a gesture given new meaning four years later when Benedict followed Celestine to become only the second pope in over 700 years to resign.

When in Rome, Don’t Do as the Romans Do

The media coverage was an absolute circus. Over successive weeks I felt an obligation to use my small voice at Beyond These Stone Walls to address this story in saner terms. In the five weeks leading up to the Conclave of 2013 and the earliest days of the papacy of Pope Francis, I wrote many posts. The first of these was “Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

Writing them with limited resources and no Internet access at all made them more like editorials than blow-by-blow accounts of what was happening in Rome. This was all unfolding during Lent in 2013, and we were facing a daily media onslaught of wild speculation and agenda-driven reporting.

I had no idea when I wrote the above post that so many readers would later thank me for bringing sanity and clarity to a dark, tumultuous time of uncertainty and doubt. Since then, I have written several posts about the almost hidden Pope Emeritus and the pontificate of Pope Francis. One of the most recent of these was “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”

Some readers who vehemently disagree with some of the actions and positions of Francis have chided me for defending him. But I don’t think I have defended him. He doesn’t need my defense and wouldn’t even notice if I had one. Instead, I have defended the truth of what was actually happening in the Church at the time Benedict stepped down, and of how a reformer like Francis came to the Chair of Peter. That does not mean that I agree, or even see his reforms as reforms.

Some in the media speculated that a Wikileaks scandal was the ultimate cause of Benedict’s decision. It resulted when Pope Benedict’s butler stole and released confidential documents but, in the end, this had little to do with his resignation. It was, as I described it then, a result of “Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

The Winds of Change

In his eye-opening book, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (Henry Holt 2014) British religious affairs expert and journalist, Austen Ivereigh got to the heart of why Pope Benedict really stepped down. It was an event that occurred one year earlier in March of 2012, and my heart went out to Benedict when I read it:

“…at the end of a fleeting trip to Mexico and Cuba, [Benedict] realized that he could not go on. He had stumbled on the steps of the cathedral of Leon in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and that night he hit his head on the sink as he fumbled his way to the bathroom in his hotel in the city. The cut was not deep, and few knew because his skullcap covered it, but, as often happens to old people after such falls, it brought a sudden cognizance of his frailty.”

— The Great Reformer, p 344

And as Austen Ivereigh also points out, “the Vatican was at this time imploding.” Headlines were full of the “Vatileaks” scandal described above. The public airing of confidential documents pilfered from the elderly Pope’s private desk conveyed an image of “an ineffectual pope sitting powerlessly atop a Vatican riven by Borgia-style factionalism and rivalry” (Ivereigh, p 343).

The Vatican was under siege by factions within its ranks. The documents were stolen by Pope Benedict’s otherwise faithful butler, Paolo Gabriele, and leaked for the same stated reason for which he stole them — a desperate action moved ultimately by fidelity to the Church. A lot of people in Rome shared his frustration with the stifled need for reform blocked by endless powerful factions in Rome — especially in the financial scandals in the Vatican bank. Austen Ivereigh characterized the time:

“Looking back, it is hard not to see in [Benedict’s] decision an exhausted European Church standing back to allow the vigorous Church of Latin America to step forward.”

— The Great Reformer, p 344

I’m not so sure that I agree that the above quote was what Pope Benedict had in mind when he made what had to be the most momentous decision of his life. But I do know that the local sensus fidelium — the mind of the truly faithful in Rome — had some sympathy for the desperate act of the Pope’s butler. Who knows? Centuries from now, his actions may be seen as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

I know that sounds unlikely, but judging this point in Church history is impossible in a Church that sees its place in history in terms of millennia. A while back, I wrote a post entitled “Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican.” Its point was that one of the most corrupt and tumultuous periods in the history of the Church — the Renaissance papacy of the 15th and 16th Centuries — was a time in the Church, says historian Barbara Tuchman, “when the values of this world replaced those of the hereafter.”

From our vantage point in history, the corruption and scandal of that time also produced much of the art and architecture that we today treasure with reverence as the centerpieces of our expression of faith — including Saint Peter’s Basilica itself. Wherever you stand on the directions and decisions of Pope Francis, history supports the truth that the Holy Spirit has at times used our flawed human nature for the same ends in which He has used our gifts.

The Conclave of 2013 was carried out in an unprecedented intrusion of minute-by-minute media coverage and coverage by social media. The pressure for a reformer was great. Like many of you, I have misgivings and distrust about some of the direction in which this Pope seems to be taking the Church. I think most readers know that I share a deep respect for Tradition. Most readers would conclude, and rightly so, that I have felt thoroughly betrayed by liberal factions in both Church and State. My reasons for that sense of betrayal are many and complex. Both I and others have written about them.

But there has been a betrayal from the voices of Tradition as well. It’s a point that I know may alienate some readers, but it must be said. Among some conservative voices in the Church, there has been a huge controversy about the Pope’s pastoral exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. The concern is that its pastoral approach to reception of the Eucharist for some divorced and remarried Catholics undermines the Sacramental bond of Matrimony and the meaning of Communion. I share this concern for the integrity of the Sacraments and the integrity of the Church’s mandate to teach and personify the ideal — even when human nature doesn’t always live up to ideals. When has it ever?

The “Heresy” of Pope Francis

But for me, the Traditionalist voices may be choosing these battles selectively. They remained largely silent over the last twenty-one years since the grave public priesthood scandal of 2002. Using scandal as a means to an end, factional agendas in the Church have demanded broad changes in the way the Church perceives priests. These agendas have greatly undermined and reinterpreted the Sacrament of Holy Orders and all but destroyed the paternal bond between bishops and priests. Catholic writer Ryan A. MacDonald addressed this in his article, “Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood.”

Where were these voices of Sacramental concern when all due process for accused priests was thrown out the window to pacify lawyers and insurance companies and a corrupt, scandal-hungry news media? None of them are ever pacified. Where were the voices of Sacramental concern when it was the Sacrament of Holy Orders that was being discredited, undermined and cheapened? Where were the defenders of the Sacramental bond when priests were being described as self-employed contractors as some bishops did to fend off insurance liability in 2002?

Where have these defenders of Sacramentals bonds been while bishops dismissed priests from the clerical state with no corroboration, no defense, little due process, and no appeal, and often based on mere accusations that were sometimes 30, 40, 50 years old, and sometimes based on no accusation at all?

The Sacrament of Holy Orders suddenly became dispensable in response to the current orthodoxy of political correctness which demands that no one must ever question a claim of victimhood. I must tell you that this attitude toward accused priests has invaded every aspect of American Catholic life, and like all things American, it is spreading throughout the world.

Sometimes, even with the most practiced politicians, it is a spontaneous reaction rather than one filtered through handlers that most clearly reflects justice in the human heart. I believe I saw justice, wisdom, and courage in the heart of Pope Francis when he let loose a spontaneous reply to a question for which he was later dressed down by his own team. It happened during a visit to Chile amid the controversy of a bishop widely condemned for tolerating, even witnessing, acts of sexual abuse. When asked why he had not removed that bishop, Pope Francis spontaneously replied, “Show me some evidence.”

For the victim culture that fuels the #MeToo movement, the Pope had committed cultural heresy. The next day, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a close advisor to Pope Francis on the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, issued a rare public rebuke, clarifying that the Church must not question any claim of victimhood. Within a day, the Pope’s spontaneous words were filtered through the new orthodoxy of political correctness and Pope Francis then fell into line with its doctrinal infallibility.

Not long after, the Our Sunday Visitor newspaper published an article by Brian Fraga entitled, “Abuse Survivors and the Value of Belief” (OSV Feb. 25-Mar. 3, 2018). Both the article and the subject were seriously marred, however, by an agenda-driven quote from Mary Jane Doerr, Director of the Archdiocese of Chicago Office for the Protection of Children and Young People:

“Doerr said that, generally, less than four percent of allegations are not true. ‘Children lie to get out of trouble, not into trouble…’ She added an insight she once heard from a mental health professional: ‘Children lie every day about sexual abuse. They lie to protect the abuser.’”

Mary Jane Doerr, and, I hope, Brian Fraga, should know that this in no way characterizes the story of Catholic priests accused of abuse. More than seventy percent of the accusations have come, not from children, but from adults who stand to gain huge financial settlements for making such claims. That in itself should be cause for caution and investigation. Finding the truth does not re-victimize real victims, only the fraudulent ones.

My accuser is not a child. At the time of my trial, he was a 27-year-old man with a criminal history of fraud, forgery, assault, and drug charges. He and his three adult brothers all conjured their memories of abuse in the same week. They together amassed $650,000 in unquestioned settlements, and bragged to friends who have since gone on record that they “got one over on the Catholic Church!”

In my 2005 article for Catalyst, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud,” I quoted noted Boston Civil Rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate who wrote in 2004 that the Church should not capitulate to significant numbers of claims brought only after it became clear that the Church would settle financially, and with no corroboration. This characterizes more than seventy percent of the total number of such claims.

The initial, spontaneous reaction of Pope Francis to the matter of Bishop Barros in Chile was the only just one, and the only truly Catholic one. It is heresy, today, to even suggest the notion of due process and a presumption of innocence when a man stands accused of abuse. By no means do I want to compare Pope Francis with former President Donald Trump, but both committed the same spontaneous heresy against political correctness at roughly the same time.

After a media flurry about dismissing a White House staff member accused of domestic abuse, the former American President also had one of these lucid moments of spontaneous justice not yet filtered by handlers concerned for its political correctness. In one of his famous, sometimes too blunt tweets, President Donald Trump expressed a truth that I hope Pope Francis will keep in mind:

“Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused. Life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as due process?”

— President Donald Trump, Feb. 10, 2018

This erosion of the priestly Sacramental bond in the Church now threatens the Church’s mandate to be a Mirror of Justice to the world. When asked just a few years ago about priests blessing same-sex unions, Pope Francis spontaneously responded, “The Church cannot bless sin.” Now in response to demands of the woke in the Synod on Synodality, he has dabbled in talk about leaving this up to the conscience of individual priesst instead of the conscience of the Church. That is heresy.

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Editor’s Note: Father Gordon MacRae is a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire who has just begun his 30th year in prison for crimes that never took place. He is the subject of a multi-part analysis in The Wall Street Journal and a video documentary entitled, “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam.”

The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God

A story out of time for our time: The Prophet Isaiah wrote of Cyrus, King of the Persian Empire who knew not God but was chosen by God to restore freedom to Israel.

October 11, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, attacked the Nation of Israel with an ongoing barrage of long-range missiles. At this writing, the Israeli death toll exceeds 1,000 with thousands of others critically wounded or missing. Many Israeli citizens are being held hostage under Hamas death threats. Just weeks earlier, the Biden Adminstration “unfroze” $6 billion in Iran assets in exchange for Iran’s release of five prisoners.

Many believe that the payment of such ransom to belligerent regimes increases the likelihood of a rogue state continuing to take hostages and hold them in Iranian prisons. Many others believe that these funds were ultimately used to supply and help launch the Hamas attack on Israel. The Wall Street Journal has since reported that Iran is indeed behind this attack and plotted it along with Hamas for weeks.

Hamas is a Palestinian group that has grown dramatically in recent years. It seeks to create a single Islamic state in historic Palestine, which is now largely divided between Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hamas in Arabic means “zealot,” and is an acronym for “Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya,” or “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The group was founded in 1988 as a militant segment of the Palestinian Arab national movement which became gradually radicalized.

Hamas openly seeks Israel’s destruction and this attack has the same impact in Israel that September 11, 2001 had on the United States. If the Islamic Republic of Iran is indeed behind the funding and/or arming of this attack, the free world has to investigate and come to a definitive conclusion.

Ironically, I began working on this post on the very day Israel was attacked. The irony is that my post is about Cyrus the Great, the Sixth Century BC King of the Persian Empire in what is now modern day Iran. King Cyrus is the subject of a reading from the Prophet Isaiah (45:1) at Sunday Mass on October 22, this year:

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed.”

Read on, please, because this Cyrus, pulled from the pages of Biblical history as the ancestor of contemporary Iran, was once the salvation of Israel.

In Defense of Religious Liberty

With only rare variations in any given week, between seventy and eighty percent of the readers of Beyond These Stone Walls are in the United States. Typically, until recently, readers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, comprised most of the remaining twenty to thirty percent. Most recently, this has changed, and the top countries visiting this blog now vary greatly.

I have noticed from weekly traffic reports that readers in other countries actually increase when I write about current events in the United States. It is hard for me to NOT write about some developments especially when they fall within the realm of human rights and religious freedom. If I fail to address what seems to capture the attention of an entire nation, then I feel as though I am overlooking the elephant in the sacristy. It may seem understandable, but nations that are emerging with large numbers of readers of this blog now include Thailand, Singapore, Ukraine (which greatly surprised me), Nepal, Germany and sometimes Israel.

I recently received a snail-mail letter from “Frances” writing from the United Kingdom. She is a long time reader who occasionally comments on my posts. Here is an interesting excerpt from her letter which gave me a bit of much needed perspective:

“A lot of your posts recently have been about the state of your country and upcoming elections. I often consider the differences between our two countries and sometimes I wonder why people are so surprised by public opposition in the USA to the Catholic Church. Here in England, we are still grateful not to be hanged, drawn and quartered, or crushed to death. A practicing Catholic here could not in reality serve as Prime Minister, and it would be very difficult for a Catholic to be a member of Parliament. I think they would have to make too many compromises.

“Some might claim to be Catholic, but looking at what they do and how they vote, that is questionable. We are used to this situation. We take it for granted that we are the ‘outsiders’ swimming against the tide of public opinion, patriotism, and respectability. With the help of God, we just persevere. But in your country now, the Church seems to have gone from being accepted and respected to being persecuted.”

The persecution is not as overt as it was in post-Reformation England. We will not see Catholics hanged, or drawn and quartered. What we will see — what we are about to see — is a shameless display of Catholic accommodations to the political left’s march further left. The present “Catholic” US President comes to mind. So does the current Bishop of San Diego. In a 2020 rebuttal to Father James Altman, that Bishop wrote that denying the Eucharist to a pro-choice Catholic politician means that we must also deny the Eucharist to anyone who does not accept climate change. That bishop has since been elevated by Pope Francis to Cardinal. Sometimes the most stinging assaults on our Faith come from within.

There are other Catholic leaders, however, who have stood out with courage and integrity in defense of Catholic moral teaching. One — though surprising to some — is Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, who penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal  in 2018 entitled, “The Democrats Abandon Catholics.” It was an honest and faithful assessment of the state of the Democratic Party and its betrayal of Catholics who embrace the Church’s traditional defense of life. Others who come immediately to mind are Cardinal Raymond Burke, and the immensely faithful leader, Bishop Joseph E. Strickland.

In Defense of Jerusalem

It was inspiring to see Cardinal Dolan defend the truth against an anti-Catholic onslaught of biased rhetoric from politicians who court Catholic votes while carrying out a frontal assault on Catholic beliefs. The greatest tragedy to befall the Catholic Church in the United States was to accommodate itself to the culture in which it lives. Church leaders became comfortable in America, then they amassed political power, then they tried to hide the corruption that always accompanies the quest to retain power. There is no more vivid example than the career path of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick whose distortion of the Church’s mandate for the culture of life was laid bare in my post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life.”

The precarious state of religion in this culture, and especially the state of Catholicism in America, has an important historical precedent. As Pope Francis steers the Church into a Synod on Synodality, a controvery between Tradition and accommodation to culture is leaving us scattered. I raised an important question in my post, “Will Pope Francis Stand Against Catholic Schism?” The great cultural divide threatens to leave one side or the other in exile from this Church. The leadership needed in defense of our Faith does not appear to be coming from the sources we might hope for. When I looked at the Mass readings chosen long ago for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time in our liturgical cycle this year, the Prophet Isaiah left me wondering whether we are looking in the right place.

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I grasp, subduing nations before him, and making kings run in his service, opening doors before him, and leaving the gates unbarred: For the sake of Jacob, my servant, of Israel, my chosen one, I have called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not. I am the Lord and there is no other; there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the Lord. There is no other.”

— Isaiah 45:1, 4-6

The Scripture quote above is the First Reading for the Mass of Sunday October 22 this month. Ordinarily, I would have posted this analysis of it on the Wednesday before, which would be October 18. However, the Gospel Reading on that Sunday refers to a cornerstone of our Faith, so I am posting this a week ahead to accommodate the Gospel.

There is little known of the Prophet Isaiah except that he lived in Jerusalem and his prophetic activity extended from about 740 BC to 701 BC, a period of about forty years. In the passage above, the Lord, through Isaiah, is addressing a man named Cyrus who is called by God and given power and a title, “though you knew me not.” The power and authority given to Cyrus is not for Cyrus, but rather so that “the people may know that there is none besides me. I am the Lord.”

Two centuries after the prophesies of Isaiah, in 597 BC, Israel fell under the armies of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. This account, told in the Second Book of Kings (Ch. 24ff) resulted in two waves of exile of the Jews into Babylon. In the first wave, in 597 BC, Israel’s leaders were compromised and taken away. This undermining of the leaders was for the purpose of destroying the religious identity of the people. Then, in 586 BC, the real devastation came. Babylon destroyed the Temple and the entire city of Jerusalem, and sent the remaining Jews into exile.

Then, some two centuries after first appearing in the prophecy of Isaiah, God took the right hand of a man named Cyrus, who knew not God, and subdued nations before him, placed kings in his service, opened doors and unbarred gates just as predicted. Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and all its surrounding regions to become first King of the Persian Empire — which again includes present day Iran. Cyrus did not live a lifestyle that the People of God had any reason to respect. He did not appear to believe in anything but himself.

But Cyrus had one quirky trait that seemed to have been instilled in him by a much Higher Authority. Despite his personally sinful lifestyle and quest for Earthly powers, Cyrus developed a deep respect for the Jews and their Faith, even though he personally shared in none of it. The Lord God had groomed him, knocked down kingdoms before him, so Cyrus did what only the Emperor of the Persian Empire could do. He issued an edict ordering the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem and its Temple, and he returned the Chosen People from their fifty-year exile in 539 BC to the land of Israel earning him an honored place in Judaism and Salvation History.

The Prophet Ezra and the Decree of Cyrus

The Prophet Isaiah presents Cyrus as appearing in about 545 BC as the hope for Jerusalem. He is bestowed by Isaiah with a rather lofty title, “the anointed of Yahweh.” Such a title marked the beginning of the era of messianic prophecy for Israel. The title would have been seen as a great insult to the Jews, but they came to view Cyrus from his present actions and not his past lifestyle. Isaiah (44:28) expanded his title to “Shepherd of Israel,” in recognition of the strangest trait that was found in him: his almost obsessive insistence on the promotion of religious liberty and the establishment of laws that will guarantee and protect it for the Jewish People and for Israel.

In regard to the restoration of Israel, this hope was fulfilled in 538 BC when Cyrus ordered the protection of the Jews and their return to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of their Temple from the treasury of the Persian Empire. The full text of the Decree of Cyrus appears in the Book of the Prophet Ezra (6:3-5), a passage once doubted for its authenticity but now accepted as authentic by modern Scripture scholars:

“In the first year of Cyrus the King, a decree concerning the House of God in Jerusalem: Let the House be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices are offered and burnt offerings are brought. Its height shall be sixty cubits and its breadth sixty cubits with three courses of great stone and one course of timber. Let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. And also let the gold and silver vessels of the House of God which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the Temple be brought to Babylon to be restored and then returned to the Temple in Jerusalem, each to its place in the House of God.”

— Ezra 6:3-5

The Prophet Ezra went on to describe that some of the restoration of Jerusalem was interrupted by local vassal kings who did not believe that the conquering tyrant, Cyrus, would issue such an order. A complaint was made by a local governor to Darius I, King of Hystaspis, that the Jews were rebuilding the city. Darius then found an authenticated copy of the Decree of Cyrus, and ordered that the Temple and reconstruction of the city will be continued with no further hindrance. This was the same King Darius, by the way, who threw Daniel into the lions’ den (Daniel 6:6ff).

Is there a point of understanding to be considered from all this in our present time? Only you can arrive at such a conclusion. I have already arrived at mine, and I must come down on the side of religious liberty. I am tired of seeing the Little Sisters of the Poor having to defend themselves in never ending court proceedings. I am tired of listening to hapless bishops equate the immorality of 70-million prenatal executions with “climate change.” I shuddered when the Pentagon announced in 2020 that the U.S. Navy would halt all Catholic Masses on Naval bases — a decision that was mercifully reversed from higher up. I shuddered, as should all of you, when I read the FBI memos calling for investigations of Traditional Catholics who were equated with radicalized groups. I was inspired when the immediate past President, in a Cyrus-like gesture, ordered that the United States Embassy to Israel must be restored to its rightful spiritual Capital, Jerusalem.

Our Temple is rebuilt from within ourselves. Catholics must not acquiesce to exile and accommodation to a culture turning from God. Our faith and our vote are not mutually exclusive.

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The Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great (Courtesy of the United States Military Academy, West Point)

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

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage

The Holy Spirit and the Book of Ruth at Pentecost

Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

Left in Afghanistan: Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS-K, Credibility

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.”

The New Hampshire YDC Scandal and the Trial of Father MacRae

A victim of abuse is one among 1,300 plaintiffs in a New Hampshire Youth Detention scandal covered up by State officials even as they investigated Catholic priests.

October 4, 2023 by Ryan A. MacDonald and Claire Best

On September 23, 2023, Father Gordon MacRae began a thirtieth year in the New Hampshire State Prison for crimes that never took place. He was sentenced by Judge Arthur Brennan to 67 years in prison after refusing a plea deal offer to serve one to two years. He was sentenced solely for the claims of Thomas Grover, claims that have since been undermined by members of his family and an investigation by former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott. His post-trial affidavit is now posted on this site along with several witness statements that NH judges have declined to hear.

More recently, Claire Best, a Los Angeles-based documentary researcher and astute investigator, took up this matter with a stunning article entitled “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

That corruption runs deeper than any of us thought. Claire Best has also recently published on another scandalous abuse and cover-up unfolding in New Hampshire just as the eyes of the nation are on its upcoming celebrated First-in-the-Nation Presidential Primary. Her latest on that story has a tentacle that reaches into the MacRae trial. Published at other venues, it is “New Hampshire’s Youth Detention Center Scandal.”

When the spotlight was on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester in 2002, the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General convened a grand jury to investigate. Despite no indictments or charges filed, the State published a report profiling every lurid claim bolstering multi-million dollar settlements with little to no evidence. When the spotlight fell upon the prestigious St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH another grand jury investigation commenced. In the case of the State Youth Detention Center, with its 1,300 open cases and the State’s procurement of a $100 million settlement fund, no grand jury investigation is taking place. This is curious, and is seen by many as an extension of the past cover-up.

Claire Best’s account laying out her case for corruption behind all this should be required reading for New Hampshire politicians and officials of the State’s Department of Justice as well as the US DOJ. One revelation in her most recent account seriously impacts the credibility of Thomas Grover’s accusations against Father MacRae that have kept him in prison for three decades since his 1994 trial.

Claire Best on New Hampshire’s Youth Detention Center Scandal

The Youth Detention Center Scandal Gets Bigger: NH Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald and US Attorney Jane Young should be under investigation.

On August 25, 2023, a group of approximately 100 gathered in Concord, New Hampshire to demand a federal investigation into the cover-ups of abuse at the Youth Detention Center. They blamed Attorneys General and others for the cover-ups. They are right. The State of New Hampshire has ignored thousands of complaints over the years about corruption, ignored reports from the Office of Inspector General and carried on with a complete lack of accountability.

Former residents of New Hampshire youth center demand federal investigation into abuse claims
The Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, previously called the Youth Development Center, has been under criminal …
www.nhpr.org

YDC abuse is decades old, as is state cover-up, master lawsuit alleges
Lawmakers, juvenile advocates have long wanted to close the center
www.nhbr.com

The current messaging requesting a much needed federal investigation involves someone with a connection to the case against Father Gordon MacRae. Charles Glenn is one of the plaintiffs alleging abuse and criminal assault by State employees at the New Hampshire Youth Development Center.

Charles Glenn is also the former stepson of Thomas Grover. Thomas Grover was adopted by Patricia Grover of NH-DCYF. He was a drug addict who was offered money (substantiated in statements) to accuse Father Gordon MacRae who was framed by Police Detective James F McLaughlin whose name was hidden on the Laurie List. The Laurie List is a once secret list of New Hampshire police officers whose credibility has been compromised by official misconduct. Keene Detective James F McLaughlin was on that list and likely one of the principal reasons why Attorney General Gordon MacDonald argued to keep the list secret.

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest - Beyond These Stone Walls
Keene New Hampshire sex crimes detective James McLaughlin developed claims against a Catholic priest while suppressing …
beyondthesestonewalls.com

Reportedly, (and I understand that the AG’s office has been aware of this since 2012) Charles Glenn once approached Father Gordon MacRae in Concord men’s prison library where MacRae was clerk (around 2008 or so). He allegedly said to MacRae “You know the case against you was bogus, right?”. MacRae allegedly told him that he did know this but wanted to know how Charles Glenn knew it. Charles Glenn told him that his mother, Trina Ghedoni, was married to Thomas Grover during the years that Charles Glenn was in the Youth Detention Center. Later, Charles Glenn allegedly approached a friend of Father Gordon MacRae’s — Edward Silva (deceased). Silva relayed that Charles Glenn had information that could undo the case against Father Gordon MacRae but that he wanted money to provide that information. To clarify, the overture of an expectation of money for the information came only from Edward Silva and not Charles Glenn. MacRae told Silva that this would render the information useless and so it went no further.

Jim Abbott — a former FBI special agent — who was investigating the case against Gordon MacRae interviewed Trina Ghedoni (Charles’ mother) five times. She told him that she and Thomas Grover were visiting Charles Glenn at the YDC. The case against Father Gordon MacRae had exploded in the local media by then so Charles Glenn was well aware that Thomas Grover was his primary accuser. During a later visit with Thomas Grover alone at YDC, Grover allegedly told Charles Glenn that Father Gordon MacRae had never actually touched him but that he was about to “get a lot of money for this story”.

Trina Ghedoni told former FBI investigator Jim Abbott that she learned of those conversations between Thomas Grover and her son only after she divorced Thomas Grover. She also told Jim Abbott that Police Detective James F McLaughlin and therapist Pauline Goupil (who motioned for Thomas Grover to cry during his testimony from the back of the court room — observed by witnesses who wrote to the judge about it but were ignored) were Thomas Grover’s primary coaches as he developed this scam.

Trina Ghedoni told Jim Abbott that she would ask her son, Charles Glenn, to cooperate. By that time her son was in the NH State Prison. Apparently Charles Glenn was in constant trouble at the prison and not long after his first conversations with Father Gordon MacRae ended up in punitive segregation. Jim Abbott visited him at least three times and was able to elicit a signed statement that Thomas Grover — his former stepfather — admitted on numerous occasions that his charges against MacRae were “a total fraud for money”.

This became the basis for the “new evidence” that put Father Gordon MacRae’s habeas corpus petition into state and federal courts in 2012. But both New Hampshire State and Federal judges declined any hearing. Charles Glenn’s and Trina Ghedoni’s statements, among others, were attached to the habeas corpus. The documents are here:

While Charles Glenn languished in and out of punitive segregation, he allegedly tried to talk to Father Gordon MacRae but the latter stopped him advising him that it could be seen as witness tampering. When he ended up in segregation again he was reportedly angry with his mother for some unknown reason. He wrote a letter to the NH AG (Michael Delaney or Joseph Foster at the time) in which he accused Jim Abbott of having an affair with his mother (baseless, I understand). He wanted to get out of segregation and start over somewhere else. He was later moved to a Connecticut prison after revoking his exculpatory statement in support of Father Gordon MacRae. Charles Glenn is now back in New Hampshire’s state prison and told Father Gordon MacRae recently that he was cooperating in the effort to get a federal investigation of the New Hampshire YDC.

On August 30, 2018, AG Gordon MacDonald was noted in the Concord Monitor to have argued against the release of the Laurie List which had James F McLaughlin’s name added to it in June 2018 for crimes dating back to 1985. These most likely were known of by AG Gordon MacDonald due to his work representing the Diocese of Manchester along with his partner at Nixon Peabody and their partner, disgraced “monsignor” Edward Arsenault.

N.H. AG: List of officers with credibility issues should stay private
The New Hampshire attorney general's office says a list of police officers with potential credibility problems…
www.concordmonitor.com

The investigation into James F McLaughlin is being dragged out. He is currently working in DA Chris McLaughlin’s (no relation) office which raises questions as to why a DA would hire a dishonest police officer at all unless it is to be complicit in going through and deleting more files.

Grafton County Investigation into Laurie List Ex-Cop McLaughlin Ongoing
The investigation into former Keene Police Lt. James McLaughlin's testimony that put a Vermont man in prison for the…
indepthnh.org

Please see the entire article by Claire Best:

New Hampshire’s Youth Detention Center Scandal: Gordon MacDonald & Jane Young should be under investigation.

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Statement of Charles Glenn

Introduction:

Charles Glenn’s mother, Trina Ghedoni, was married to Thomas Grover in the time period leading up to, during, and after the 1994 trial of Fr. Gordon MacRae. During some of this time period, from ages 13 to 16, Charles Glenn, was a resident of YDC, the State of New Hampshire’s “Youth Development Center,” a State run juvenile detention facility in Manchester, NH. Charles Glenn signed the forgoing Statement for former FBI investigator James Abbott in 2008, but later withdrew it. Mr. Glenn is one of 1,300 plaintiffs in a civil case alleging sexual and physical abuse by State employees at YDC. He explains that after this experience he was no longer motivated to speak in defense of someone accused of abuse and this caused him to withdraw his statement in 2008. In 2023, after reading reports of fraud in the trial of Father MacRae, Mr. Glenn reinstated his 2008 Statement and asked that it be published.

---

My name is Charles Glenn and my birth date is July 15, 1981.  I am the son of Trina Ghedoni who married Thomas Grover in 1994 in the State of New Hampshire.

I am giving this signed Statement to James Abbott who is a private investigator working on behalf of Gordon MacRae, an ex-priest who was convicted of the sexual abuse of Tom Grover at a 1994 trial.  Mr. Abbott has previously interviewed me on April 22, 2008 and this Statement is based on that interview as well as this interview.

From 1993 to 1997 I was assigned to the Youth Development Center in Manchester, New Hampshire.  During this period, my mother Trina Ghedoni was dating and later married to Thomas Grover.  Almost every week my mother would visit me with Thomas Grover and on numerous weekends I would receive a furlough and be allowed to go to my home at 410 Prescott St. in Manchester where my mother and Thomas Grover lived.

During these visits, and over a number of months and years, Thomas Grover discussed the sex abuse allegations against Gordon MacRae with me.  Grover often stated to me that he was going to set MacRae and the church up to gain money for sexual abuse.  Grover would laugh and joke about this scheme and after the criminal trial and civil cash award he would again state how he had succeeded in this plot to get cash from the church.

On several occasions Thomas Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae.  Grover stated to me that there were other allegations made by other people against MacRae and Grover jumped on and piggybacked onto these allegations for the money.

Grover, on several occasions, called his civil case attorneys for money or cash advances on his expected cash award and Grover told me that his attorneys directed him to go for psychiatric and drug therapy to gain jury appeal in his court case.  The attorneys would give cash advances to Grover when he asked for them.  Grover stated the counseling would help convince the jury that his problems were the result of his molestation by MacRae.  Grover told me his attorneys directed him to go to the Manchester Mental Health Unit and act crazy as this would be helpful in the trial.

After the civil award was settled, Grover and my family visited me [at YDC] and showed me $30,000 in cash, and pictures were taken by my family at this time.  Grover again was bragging of his putting it over on the church.  He then went out and bought a couple of cars.

Grover was never embarrassed about the publicity, but would laugh at it.

Grover’s statements to me were made before, during, and after the criminal trial and never once did he say over this four year period that he was abused by MacRae.  Grover never changed his statements that he set up Gordon MacRae and the church.

I have read and understood the above Statement and it is a true and accurate account of statements made to me by Thomas Grover over the period of 1993 to 1997.

Signed: Charles Glenn May 21, 2008

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Excerpts of Investigator Interview with Trina Ghedoni

Introduction:

Trina Ghedoni is the former wife of Thomas Grover.  The following are excerpts of statements to former FBI investigator James Abbott collected during his 2008 to 2011 investigation of the case against Fr. Gordon MacRae:

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• Trina Ghedoni met Thomas Grover a few years before the 1994 trial of Gordon MacRae.  They married in 1994.  During her marriage to Grover, and as a result of the 1994 trial, she became increasingly aware of issues and problems with his trial testimony and perjury.  This became a factor in her ultimate decision to divorce Thomas Grover.

• During her four-year marriage to Grover while living in Prescott, Arizona, Ghedoni thought Grover “made up” the whole thing.  His attitude and demeanor after the trial and his sexual obsession with pre-teen and teenage girls led Ghedoni to question Grover’s truthfulness.  Grover would leave home sometimes for days at a time and go to a motel to view pornography all day.  He was caught by Ghedoni on two occasions having sex with his biological sisters on the Arizona Indian reservation where they relocated after Grover received his settlement.  She stated that Grover had a hole in a sheetrock wall where he hid pornography.  Ghedoni relates that Grover was a sexual addict.

• Trina Ghedoni advised that her son, Charles Glenn, moved to Arizona with Trina and Tom in August of 1997.  Charles would “pump” Tom about his life.  Ghedoni stated that Charles at age 15-16 would not give her specifics but after the trial told her that Tom had “Bs’d” the whole thing “and everyone would be surprised to know what other things Tom did.”

• Ghedoni stated that around 1988 Grover was interviewed by Detective McLaughlin but made no allegation that resulted in a charge.  In 1989 or 1990, when Grover was 22 or 23 and living in Manchester before accusing MacRae, he met a Dominic Martin and they became close friends and drinking buddies.  Martin had a girlfriend whose name Ghedoni could not recall.  Martin talked with Grover about setting up priests for money.  Of note, Dominic Martin was later convicted for extortion against a priest in neighboring Massachusetts in 2002.

• Ghedoni advised that a therapist named Pauline Goupil consulted with Tom Grover every day of MacRae’s 1994 trial.  All Tom’s testimony or proposed testimony passed through Pauline Goupil who also tracked Tom’s medications during the trial.  Ghedoni advised that, pre-trial, Detective James McLaughlin would converse with Pauline Goupil who in turn would talk to Tom.  Ghedoni felt that Ms. Goupil was preparing and directing Tom at all times.

• Trina Ghedoni described Thomas Grover as a “compulsive liar,” a “manipulator,” and a “drama queen,” who “molded stories to fit his needs [and] lied to get what he wanted.”  He is someone who can also “tell a lie and stick to it ’til its end.”

• In 1994, Grover asked Ghedoni to marry him “because it would look better and, more importantly, he needed the security of a wife for the trial.”  During the entire time he and Ghedoni were together before this trial, “never once did Grover say he was abused by MacRae.”

• Ghedoni stated that Thomas Grover was never abused, and that he stated several times that he was going to “get the church” for money.  She stated that Grover lied at trial about the presence of a chess set in MacRae’s office during abuse.  Grover reportedly admitted that this was perjury, but said “it was what they wanted.”  “They,” according to Ms. Ghedoni, referred to Detective James McLaughlin and Pauline Goupil.

• Detective McLaughlin referred Tom Grover to his civil attorney, Robert Upton who provided Grover with multiple cash advances.  Grover claimed his lawsuit was necessary to get money for therapy, but once he received his cash in 1996, he never sought therapy again.  Ms. Ghedoni described Det. McLaughlin as “gung ho,” “very aggressive,” and compared him to the TV personality John Walsh.

• Ghedoni reported that Pauline Goupil’s son had been convicted in 1989 as the notorious “West Side Rapist,” and went to prison but she learned this only after Grover had been in therapy with Ms. Goupil.

• Ms. Ghedoni added that Grover could never give a consistent account of his claimed abuse.  Before the trial Grover befriended Dean Clay and they smoked “weed” together for long periods.  Dean Clay later attempted to testify for the defense but was denied by the judge.

  + + +

Related Notes

• After Thomas Grover’s initial testimony at MacRae’s 1994 trial, Dean Clay read of it in a local newspaper. The next day, Dean Clay showed up in the courtroom. Before the trial resumed, he told MacRae’s defense counsel that he knew Tom Grover and had been told by Mr. Grover that he was involved in an insurance scheme or scam for which he will get a lot of money. Mr. Clay believed that the scam Grover referred to was this trial. After strenuous objection by prosecutors, Judge Brennan declined to allow the jury to hear testimony from Dean Clay.

• Dominic Martin and his wife, Brianna Martin, were arrested in Boston in 2003. They pled guilty and were convicted of the extortion of a priest with false claims of sexual misconduct. Dominic Martin had changed his name. He was formerly Todd Biltcliff, a Keene, New Hampshire resident who in 1992 received an undisclosed settlement after accusing a New Hampshire priest, Fr. Stephen Scruton, of molesting him in a hot tub at the YMCA. Ryan A. MacDonald wrote of that account in “Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest.”

• During Former FBI Agent James Abbott’s investigation, Thomas Grover and his brothers refused to be interviewed or answer any questions pertaining to this matter. They received combined settlements in excess of $600,000.

• Ms. Pauline Goupil also declined to be interviewed or answer any questions. Pauline Goupil is the subject of a recent article by Ryan A. MacDonald, “Psychotherapists Helped Send an Innocent Priest to Prison.”

• In a post-trial Writ of Habeas Corpus petition, New Hampshire State and Federal judges declined to hear or consider any testimony from any of the witnesses who offered the Statements and evidence contained herein.

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The following links have been added to “Investigator Affidavit and Witness Statements” :

Sworn Affidavit of Investigator James Abbott

Statement of Charles Glenn

Excerpts of Investigator Interview with Trina Ghedoni

Related Notes

Statement of Steven Wollschlager

Statement of Debra Collette

Statement of Leo Demers

“The truth will set you free,” but to date no State or Federal judge in New Hampshire has allowed any of the above witnesses to testify under oath.

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.”

St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Our Salvation

In Judeo-Christian tradition the scales of Saint Michael the Archangel measure souls for eternity, weighing not only justice and mercy for us but also from us.

September 27, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

In September 2010, when this blog was but a year old, I wrote a post that was to become one of the most-read posts of the last decade. I had no idea at the time that it would find readers year after year on six of the seven continents. (Is there no one reading BTSW in Antarctica?) The post was “Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed.”

The last word of its title, “Hesed,” is a Hebrew term associated with two central tenets of salvation: Mercy and Righteousness. The story that post tells began within these stone walls and brought about a resurgence of interest in this Patron Saint of Justice. Over time, his Angelic Presence — his name means “who is like God” — has developed a seemingly mystical connection with this imprisonment.

This connection began with a simple gesture from a devout young man named Alberto Ramos. Sent to prison at age 14 for murder — a back-alley drug deal gone horribly wrong — Alberto was a psychology student of mine at age 18 in a prison program for college credit. Alberto also lived in the same prison unit as me and Pornchai Moontri. His painfully amazing story was told at Beyond These Stone Walls in “Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being.” We will link to that post again at the end of this one, and if you click on it you will see a wonderful photo of Alberto and Pornchai as they are graduating from high school.

A startling thing happened after I wrote it. The mother of the young man who died in that Manchester, NH alley that night read it. Then she agonized over it. Then she had a conversion of heart, something she says she would not have thought possible after years of entrenched bitter resentment toward Alberto. She forgave him, and wrote of her forgiveness in a moving comment on that post. She also decided to try to help him.

Mere words cannot capture the meaning of “Hesed” relative to the Scales of Saint Michael and the weighing of souls, but the mother of that murdered boy attained it as much as any human being can. A conversion of heart that sets aside bitterness to give way to mercy made her righteous in the eyes of the Lord.

Some of the images of Saint Michael with his scales depict Satan, even while subdued under his feet, reaching to tip the scales by stifling our ongoing conversion. The battleground of spiritual warfare is our very soul, and the battle is real. One day Alberto walked into my cell carrying a card with a painting on it. He silently climbed up onto a concrete counter and taped the image above my door. “You need this here,” he said, “and you should never take it down.” It was a startling image depicting this scene from the Apocalypse:

“War broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to Earth and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, ‘Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Anointed One, for the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who night and day accused them before God.’”

— Revelation 12:7-10

At the center of the painting was St. Michael the Archangel, sword in one hand and scales in the other, subduing Satan after a fierce battle. I asked Alberto why he thinks I need this. “Because you were falsely accused,” he said, “And you need his protection so you won’t be bitter and never trust anyone again.” Now, almost 14 years later, that image is still above the door of my cell.

Guardian of the Covenant

Sometime later, Alberto was moved to another prison in another state, but I have for years pondered what he said. I did not include his warning about bitterness when I first wrote in “Angelic Justice” of his placing that image above my door. I am not certain why I left it out. But I have come to see that false witness is a powerful tipping of the scales in the measure of souls, and so is succumbing to bitterness. We are far more spiritually vulnerable than most of us realize. It took a long time, but I was finally able to convince both Pornchai and Alberto of a tough lesson I was slow in learning myself. Bitterness is like a toxic brew that we mix for our enemies just to end up drinking it ourselves.

In Jewish tradition, Saint Michael is one of the four angels who stand in the Presence of God. The Book of Daniel (12:1) also identifies Michael as “One who stands beside the sons of your people,” an allusion that he is the guardian of God’s chosen people. His name is mentioned in the Shema, a prayer from Hebrew tradition:

“In the Name of the Lord God of Israel, on my right hand stands Michael, on my left, Gabriel, before me, Uriel, behind me, Raphael, and above me, the Divine Presence of Yahweh.”

Every mention of Michael in the Hebrew Scriptures identifies him as an advocate for Israel and therefore an advocate for the Covenant relationship with God. Advocate in that sense is used in the same manner that someone falsely accused of a crime might describe his defense attorney. And Satan is presented as prosecutor. It is fascinating that in the Book of Revelation, the scene of Satan’s expulsion from heaven by Michael and his angels ends with a declaration: “The accuser of our brethren is cast out.” The offense for which Satan accuses us is something he himself is denied: a hope for salvation. In ancient traditions, Michael defends the righteous in the presence of Yahweh in our final judgment.

Like much of what I write at Beyond These Stone Walls my post, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?”appeared on the professional social media site, Linkedln where it had hundreds of views. I rather like Linkedln even though I have never actually seen it. It’s a little tamer than some other social media platforms where the give and take can become overbearing. And on LinkedIn, you will never have to look at pictures of other people’s cats.

So I was a little surprised when even at the venerable LinkedIn, my rational and factual defense of Cardinal Pell ran into some pointed opposition. One writer who identified himself as “a practicing Catholic” wrote that Cardinal Pell is in prison where he belongs for “abusing children.” Several readers responded that the evidence does not support that claim. In my response, I wrote that his practice of Catholicism needs more practice. And as you know, Cardinal Pell was ultimately exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s highest court.

The abuse crisis in the priesthood is a two-edged sword in seemingly equal measure. It is a story of clerical corruption, but it is by same measure a story of false witness. Clerical corruption has had ample play in the news media, and social media has been no exception. False witness, however, is grossly under-reported.

Also under-reported are the wonderful expressions of Catholic faith by people of real fidelity undaunted by the arena in which scandal plays out on the front page. Father George David Byers sent me a link to a short video of the Eucharistic Congress Procession in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina. Wonderful!

The Origin of the Eighth Commandment

From the first signs of Satan’s pursuit of the hearts and souls of humankind, the Covenant conscripts us into Saint Michael’s battle against evil. The separation of light from darkness in the human relationship with God portrays Saint Michael as a warrior tasked with the protection and defense of human souls, and the preservation of the covenant.

Written contracts did not exist in the Hebrew society of our Old Testament. In their place, the spoken word had the authority of a signed contract. A blessing or curse was understood to follow the person to whom it was directed for all of his or her life. Spoken words were thus carefully considered. The parties of a covenant were bound by mutual agreement with serious repercussions for those who violated its terms. God’s covenant with Abraham was seen in Jewish culture as the foundation of our relationship with Yahweh. For that story, see “The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek.”

However, the covenant with Israel itself, the covenant that made Israel a people of Yahweh, was the Sinai Covenant in the Book of Exodus (19:1-ff). It made them a people because it set down ethical standards for being a people. The Covenant was set down in the stone tablets of the law, and had the authority of God’s Presence housed in the Ark of the Covenant.

One of these sacred tenets, the Eighth Commandment — “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” — is thought by both Jewish and legal scholars to have an unusual origin: Genesis, Chapter 39. When Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and taken down to Egypt, he was purchased as a slave by Potiphar, a high ranking officer of Pharaoh. In the account in Genesis (39:6-21), Potiphar’s wife repeatedly pursued Joseph but he would not consent. In one episode, she tried to grab his garment, but he fled, tearing off a section of his garment in her hand. She later accused him of sexual assault using the garment as evidence against him.

For this, Joseph was unjustly imprisoned. Alan Dershowitz, a Jewish scholar and Emeritus Professor of Law at Harvard, addressed this in his book, Genesis of Justice (Warner Books, 2000):

“The Ninth Commandment [Eighth in the Christian texts] — “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” — derives directly from Potiphar’s wife bearing false witness against Joseph and Joseph then bearing false witness — even as a pretense — against his brothers. [His brother] Yehuda’s desperate question, ‘How can we clear ourselves?’ is answered by this prohibition and the subsequent procedural safeguards that rest upon this Commandment.”

— Genesis of Justice, p 250

The subsequent procedural safeguards were laid out in the Books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus. The accusation of a single witness, without evidence or corroboration, could not result in a conviction. The testimony of a witness who had a financial stake in the outcome of a juridical trial could not be admitted as evidence against the accused. Today’s juridical proceedings have fallen far from these safeguards.

In both its active and passive forms, false witness was seen in the Covenant as a slayer of souls. Safeguards against it were implemented from the earliest days of Salvation History. In its active form, false witness was any testimony not based on absolute truth. In its passive form, it spreads through rumor, innuendo, and judgments based on bias and agendas instead of facts.

The Necessity of Allies in Spiritual Warfare

It is because of the great danger to the soul that false witness poses that Saint Michael the Archangel took up his cosmic role, as described in the passage from the Book of Revelation above, to cast out the false accuser who no longer has a place in heaven.

Hebrew Scripture and tradition was not unique in this concept. Egyptian mythology depicts a rite in the underworld in which the heart of the deceased was weighed on a set of scales against a “truth feather.” If the heart was heavy with falsehood and false witness, it could not pass on to paradise.

The grave effect of false witness on the person accused, on the souls of accusers, and on the Covenant with God is reflected throughout Sacred Scripture as evidenced in just this partial sampling of passages:

• Exodus 20:16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

• Exodus 23 1-2 “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing to bear witness in a lawsuit.”

• Exodus 23:6-7 “You shall not pervert justice. Keep far from a false charge. Do not kill the innocent or those in the right for I will not acquit the guilty.”

• Deuteronomy 5:20 “Neither will you bear false witness against your neighbor.”

• Deuteronomy 19:18 “If the witness is a false witness, having testified falsely against another, then [the judge] shall do to that witness what he intended to do to the other. So shall you purge the evil from your midst.”

• Psalm 27:12 [This is one many priests could plea to their bishops] “Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up against me.”

• Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things that the Lord abhors: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, a hand that sheds innocent blood, a heart that plots wicked plans, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.”

• Proverbs 19:20 “A false witness will not go unpunished.”

• Proverbs 25:18 “Like a war club, a sword, or a sharp arrow is one who bears false witness against a neighbor.”

This list of excerpts from the Word of the Lord could go on for pages. We live in an age of falsehood, a time when the rule of law is collapsing under the weight of political correctness, identity politics, expediency, and moral relativism. These will spell the ruin of both souls and society.

This is why we have allies in spiritual warfare behind and beyond these stone walls, and we are more than willing to share them with you. They include Mary, Mother of God, whose heart was wounded by seven swords; Saint Maximilian Kolbe, wrongly imprisoned under an evil regime, who gave his life for another; Saint Padre Pio, falsely accused, suspended from priestly ministry, even while openly bearing the wounds of Christ.

And Saint Michael the Archangel who prevailed when “the accuser of our brothers was cast out who night and day accused them before God.” (Revelation 12:10) False witness, sans repentance, is a path to spiritual ruin for eternity.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do you, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, cast into hell Satan, and all evil spirits who prowl about this world seeking the ruin of souls.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You may also like these related posts :

• Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being

• Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed

• Michael, Gabriel, Raphael: Allies in Spiritual Battle

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POSTSCRIPT

As indicated in this post, my friend Alberto Ramos was sent to another prison about six years ago. While I was writing this post he was returned to the New Hampshire prison to prepare for his coming release after 30 years “inside.” At his earliest opportunity, he came to the prison law library where I am the clerk. His smile was visible in Heaven. As he took my hand in his firm grip he asked three rapid-fire questions: “How are you?, Where is Pornchai? Is Saint Michael still above your door?”

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.”

On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized

Background photo by Sue Thompson (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Writing from Thailand, Pornchai Moontri hopes and prays for justice for Fr Gordon MacRae who begins a 30th year unjustly in prison on the Feast Day of St Padre Pio.

September 23, 2023 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Note from our Editor: Pornchai Moontri wrote this post in 2020 as he was returning to Thailand after a 36 year absence. The post is mostly about a very important person in his life whom he had to very painfully leave behind. Father Gordon MacRae was wrongly sentenced to prison on the Feast Day of his Patron Saint, September 23, 1994. As Father G begins his 30th year under this injustice, Pornchai implores us all to pray for him that his faith and strength and hope will never fail.

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To My Dear Friends and Family Beyond These Stone Walls : It was not until my friend, Fr Gordon MacRae wrote “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom’’ in 2020 that the weight of this immense change in our lives really hit me. My emotions were on a roller coaster then. Father G and I worked long and hard over the previous 15 years that we had been friends, family and roommates. I could not have imagined on the day we first met that I would be facing this day with hope.

Hope is just one of the emotions competing for space in my heart back then. I was also scared beyond measure, and anxious, and excited, and I was very deeply sad. I guess I have to try to sort this out for myself and for you. I was scared because my whole life, and all that I have known since I was a homeless and lost teenager 32 years ago, was about to change completely.

I was anxious because I was to be cast among strangers for a time, and it was a long time due to Covid-19 pandemic and the constraints on international flights. Weeks after leaving Father G in Concord, New Hampshire Prison, ICE agents took me away to be a prisoner in another crowded, chaotic place where I lived among strangers, taking only the clothes I was wearing.

I was excited because this journey may well be the last of the nightmares of my life. At the other end of that ICE nightmare five months later, I was left in Bangkok, Thailand where I was entirely free for the first time in my living memory. I was adjusting to freedom and a new country and culture all at once. From inside the prison cell we shared for all those years, Father Gordon miraculously built a bridge to Thailand for me through this wonderful blog. Where there was once only darkness ahead, there were now people in Thailand waiting for me and I was not alone.

Father G wrote about my life before prison in an article that changed everything for me. I have not read it myself because I can’t. I will explain why, but I already know what is in it because I have lived it. I am just not ready to see it in print. The article was “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

All that had become familiar to me had to be left behind. Far worse, Father G had to be left behind and for that I am also sad beyond measure. I knew that when that day came, I would likely never see my friend, my mentor, my father, again in this life. There were times as that day approached when I would lay in the dark in my upper bunk in our prison cell at night, and my darkness and dismay about this felt overwhelming. The person who gave me hope would remain in prison while I would be set free, while banished to a foreign land.

But I was set free in another way, too, and it was Father Gordon MacRae who set me free. I can only barely remember being a happy 11-year-old boy living and working on a small farm in the North of Thailand. In December of 1985, I was taken from there and brought against my will to the United States. Though it was my mother who took me, I did not know her. She had abandoned my brother and me in Thailand when I was only two years old. She waited until I was age eleven to come and take me away because her life was under the control of a monster who sent her to bring me to him. It is that simple, and that terrible.

I have always wondered if readers know how unlikely this alliance between me and Father G is. To explain it, I have to go into what happened to me in life. That is very painful, even unspeakable, so I will spare you what is known only to Father G and God. Father G would later write about this in more general terms in an article that shattered my childhood shame for once being a victim. That post was “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

I was brought to America as a child. I was eleven when taken from my home and twelve years old when I arrived there. I spoke no English at all so I could not tell anyone what was happening to me. I became afraid to go to sleep at night. This went on for over two years before I escaped into the streets. I was fourteen in a foreign country fending for myself. While trying to protect my mother from what she was also suffering, I kept what had been happening to me a secret even though it had severely affected my mind and destroyed my spirit. This was no story about repressed memories like so many of the stories against Father G and other Catholic priests. My burden was that I could not forget a single moment of what happened no matter how much I tried.

So when I was sent to prison at age 18, I was broken and bitter. It is not a good place to grow up. I was forced to fight, a lot, and I convinced myself that I will never again be anyone’s victim. Eight years after I was sent to prison, I learned that my mother was murdered on the Island of Guam. She was brought there by the man who arranged for me to be taken from Thailand. It’s all in Father G’s article linked above and it is an American horror story.

I ended up in solitary confinement for years, a prison within a prison that just magnified the inner madness. In 2005, at the age of 32, I was chained up and transported to a prison in another state, New Hampshire. As you already know, I met Father G there. I heard why he was in prison. I wanted him to help me transfer to a Thai prison, something that he refused to do, but I also thought that he and I could never be friends. Then I heard that there were articles about him and his charges in The Wall Street Journal so I read them. The articles were the result of an honest investigation. I was shocked by them.

As a childhood survivor of horrible sexual abuse and violence, I felt disgusted by what I knew to be accusations made up for money. This guy, Thomas Grover was seen as credible by a police detective, a prosecutor, and a biased judge, but I did not see how that could be possible. Any real survivor of sexual abuse should see right through this. There was a claim that this con man, high school football player at age 15, was raped by Father G in a rectory office, then the guy returned five times saying that he repressed all memory of it from week to week. The stories of his brothers were even more incredible. Then I read that they all stood to get a $200,000 check from the Catholic Diocese of Manchester and no one questioned any of this???

I read that Father G was offered a plea deal from a corrupt detective and prosecutor. One year in prison. If he was guilty, of course he would take it. Even if he was innocent, but had no integrity, he might still take it. But he was innocent, and he did have integrity, so he refused the deal. Then he was sentenced to more than sixty times the time in prison he would have got if he was guilty. When I read all this, I was furious just as every real survivor of sexual abuse should be furious.

Now I have to jump ahead several years. I made a decision to trust Father G. This was a miracle all by itself because I never really trusted anyone. There is a writer in France named Marie Meaney who somehow wrote about this story. It is not a long version, but she caught every important detail and its meaning in just two pages. Her article is “Untying the Knots of Sin — In Prison.”

Ever Deeper Into the Tangled Threads

As the trust grew between me and Father G, I began to reveal all that happened to me. I did not imagine then that he was storing every detail in support of some future deliverance. We had been living in the same cell for two years when Beyond These Stone Walls began in the summer of 2009. I had been secretly thinking about becoming Catholic then, and had been taking correspondence courses in Scripture and Catholic teaching through the Knights of Columbus. My interest in the Catholic faith was growing because I saw it quietly working every day in the person I was living with in a small prison cell. I remember a day, just after I was moved into the area where Father G lived. It was a few months before we became roommates. I walked into his cell and the first thing I saw was a picture taped to a beat up steel mirror on the wall. I stared at it. The man was balding with glasses, and half in priest’s clothes and the clothes of a prisoner. Father G was busy writing something. I asked, “Is this you?”

It turned out to be the most important question of my life. Father Gordon then told me all about Saint Maximilian Kolbe, of how he was sent to prison in a Nazi concentration camp on fake charges, of how he helped other prisoners, and finally of how he gave his life to save a younger prisoner from execution. Father Maximilian was 41 years old when this happened. Father G was 41 when he was unjustly sent to prison. I learned about not only sainthood, but manhood from these two men. In another miracle, Felix Carroll, the Editor of Marian Helper magazine, wrote a book with a chapter about me. He wrote of this story:

“Eyes that once smoldered with coiled rage now sparkle with purpose and compassion. Through Fr. Gordon MacRae, Pornchai discovered the saints and the Blessed Mother. In St. Maximilian Kolbe he discovered what it means to truly be a man, what it means to be tough. A man doesn’t seek to destroy other men. A man doesn’t hold his own needs above the needs of others. A real man is selfless. St. Maximilian knew what it was like to be stripped of his humanity and dignity. In him, Pornchai found recourse because Maximilian never caved into despair. In 1941 at Auschwitz, he gave his life to save that of another man.”

— Loved, Lost, Found, pp.166-167

Over time, Father G became all of these things for me. He never once put himself first, and he made great sacrifices for me. He told me once that sacrifice is the most necessary part of being a man and a father. While I was slowly being drawn into faith and hope, Father G was always looking out for my best interests, never putting himself first. He became my best friend, and the person I trust most in this world. From prison, he opened for me a window onto Christ.

As I mentioned above, Beyond These Stone Walls began in our cell in the summer of 2009. It was another miracle I never would have thought possible. It was proposed to Father G in a phone call and he came to our cell and told me about it. He let me decide what to call it so I chose “These Stone Walls,” I always saw prison as a place where we were sent to be forgotten. Father G said that we could speak to the whole world from here, and we did.

I became a Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Meanwhile, Father G’s writing at Beyond These Stone Walls got the attention of others. One of them was Mrs. Clare Farr, a Trademarks attorney in Western Australia. She and Father G teamed up to begin an investigation of my past life. They were relentless, and over time what they accomplished grew and grew. I never thought justice was even possible, but they kept probing and making connections. Then the police came to interview me. They came a second time along with a District Attorney. As a result, in 2017 Richard Alan Bailey was arrested in Oregon and held on $49,000 bail charged with forty felony counts of sexual abuse against a child.

There was to be no trial, however. Richard Bailey took a plea deal. He today stands convicted of all 40 felony charges. His sentence was suspended and he was given probation. This would be an international outrage if Richard Bailey were a Catholic priest. The story of the murder of my mother when he took her to the Island of Guam remains there a cold case unsolved homicide even though there is new evidence pointing to a solid suspect.

Pornchai Moontri’s mugshot at the time of his arrest at age 18 in Bangor, Maine, after having lived on the streets for two years.

True Crime and Punishment

Father Gordon MacRae freed me from the evil this man inflicted on me. He taught me that this evil is not mine to keep. I just see the horrible injustice in the handling of these two cases. My abuser did monstrous things. His assaults were more than the number he was charged with. There were witnesses ready to testify and lots of clear evidence.

He was sentenced to mere probation because I was a prisoner and the prosecutor feared that I would be assailed on the witness stand because of that. So they offered Richard Bailey a plea deal. He took the deal because he is guilty. So for forty counts of rape, he will never serve a single day in jail and all the evidence was never placed before the court.

In the case of Father Gordon MacRae, a plea deal was also offered. It was offered three times, and each time he refused the offer of a single year in prison because he is innocent. These offers were made because Thomas Grover, his 27-year-old accuser at trial, was not credible at all. He was a drug addict with a criminal record that was kept out of the trial by a biased judge. He was biased from the beginning and once told the jury to disregard all the inconsistencies in Thomas Grover’s story. As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in The Wall Street Journal, “They had much to disregard.” Father G was not on trial. The whole Catholic priesthood was on trial. Convicted of five counts with zero evidence, he got 67 years in prison.

What do I do with such a story? If Father G had not been here, what would have become of me? This is part of the Cross I now carry through life. I would give my freedom to save his, but he would have none of that.

For the last 14 years in this prison while becoming a Catholic and living as a Catholic, I have also lived in very close quarters with a man I know without a doubt to be innocent. During this time, I have been scandalized by the response of most other priests, and especially by Father G’s cowardly bishop who treats him like a dangerous outcast.

When they have come here for an occasional Mass, they barely speak or even acknowledge him. I am ashamed for their cowardly and petty attitude. Father G says the Church and the Mass are much bigger than the flawed human beings behind them.

After 29 years in prison, 15 of them as Father G’s roommate, and 12 of them as a Catholic, freedom came to me in steps. Three years ago I was freed from this prison, but I will never be free of Father G. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom was left behind unjustly in prison.

When I asked that question all those years ago — “Is this you?” — I got my answer. It was Saint Maximilian in that picture on the mirror but it is also Father Gordon MacRae, the man who freed my mind and soul from the horror inflicted on me by a real predator.

I could not bear to leave my friend, and I have not. We speak every day, and his fatherly guidance is no less potent now than it was in that prison cell. We have another Patron Saint, Saint Padre Pio who brought about much healing in my life. The day the Church honors him is also the date Father G was cast into prison. They have a special bond. I entrust Father Gordon MacRae to him, and to all of you.

Please do not forget Father G behind those stone walls.

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You may also like these related links:

When Justice Came to Pornchai Moontri, Mercy Followed, by Clare Farr

A chapter in the book, Loved, Lost, Found: The Divine Mercy Conversion of Pornchai Moontri, by Felix Carroll

Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood by Pornchai Moontri

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.”

Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial

Padre Pio was proclaimed a living saint for the wounds he bore for Christ, but his reputation for sanctity became another wound, this one inflicted from the Church.

September 20, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“Six Degrees of Separation,” a famous play by John Guare, became a 1993 film starring Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, and Stockard Channing. The plot revolved around a theory proposed in 1967 by sociologists Stanley Milgram and Frigyes Karinthy. Wikipedia describes “Six Degrees of Separation” as:

“The idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of ‘a friend of a friend’ statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.”

It’s an intriguing idea, and sometimes the connections are eerie. In “A Day Without Yesterday” I wrote about my long-time hero, Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the priest-physicist who changed the mind of Albert Einstein on the creation of the Universe. A few weeks after my post, a letter arrived from my good friend, Pierre Matthews in Belgium. Pierre sent me a photo of himself as a young man posing with his family and a family friend, the famous Father Lemaitre, in Switzerland in 1956. In a second photo, Pierre had just served Mass with the famous priest who later autographed the photo.

When I wrote of Father Lemaitre, I had no idea there are but two degrees of separation between me and this famous priest-scientist I’ve so long admired. The common connection we share with Pierre Matthews — not to mention the autographed photo — left me awestruck. The mathematical odds against such a connection are staggering. Something very similar happened later and also involving Pierre Matthews. It still jolts my senses when I think of it. The common bond this time was with Saint Padre Pio.

When Pierre visited me in prison in 2010, I told him about this blog which had been launched months earlier. When I told Pierre that I chose Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio as the patrons of Beyond These Stone Walls, Pierre quietly and modestly said, “I’ve met Padre Pio.”

Pierre’s casual remark dropped like a bomb on our conversation. What were the odds that I would be sitting at a table in the prison visiting room with a man who traveled from Europe to tell me of how he met Padre Pio. The saint imposed his wounded and bandaged hands in blessing upon Pierre’s head over a half century earlier.

The labyrinthine ways of grace are far beyond my understanding. Pierre told me that as a youth growing up in Europe, his father enrolled him in a boarding school. When he wrote to his father about a planned visit to central Italy, his father instructed him to visit San Giovanni Rotondo and ask for Padre Pio’s blessing. Pierre, a 16-year-old at the time, had zero interest in visiting Padre Pio. But he obediently took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo. He waited there for hours. Padre Pio was nowhere to be seen.

Pierre then approached a friar and asked if he could see Padre Pio. ‘Impossible!’ he was told. Just then, he looked up and saw the famous Stigmatic walking down the stairs toward him. Padre Pio’s hands were bandaged and he wore gloves. The friar, following the young man’s gaze, whispered in Italian, ‘Do not touch his hands.’ Pierre trembled as Padre Pio approached him. He placed his bandaged hands upon Pierre’s head and whispered his blessing.

Fifty-five years later, in the visiting room of the New Hampshire State Prison, Pierre bowed his head and asked for my blessing. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I placed my hand upon Pierre knowing that the spiritual imprint of Padre Pio’s blessing was still in and upon this man, and I was overwhelmed to share in it.

This wasn’t the first time I shared space with Padre Pio. Several years ago, in November 2005, we shared the cover of Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. I also share a painful date with Padre Pio. September 23 was the date he died in 1968. On September 23, 1994 I was put into chains and taken to prison to begin a life sentence for crimes that never took place.

That’s why we shared that cover of Catalyst. Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote of his appearance on NBC’s “Today” show on October 13, 2005 during which he spoke of my trial and imprisonment declaring, “There is no segment of the American population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.” That issue of Catalyst also contained my first major article for The Catholic League, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud” written from prison in 2005.

The Indictment of Heroic Virtue

Padre Pio was on that Catalyst cover because three years after he was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, Atlantic Monthly magazine carried a brief article by Tyler Cabot entitled “The Rocky Road to Sainthood” (November 2005). Of one of the most revered priests in Church history, Cabot wrote:

“Despite questions raised by two papal emissaries – and despite reported evidence that he raised money for right-wing religious groups and had sex with penitents – [Padre] Pio was canonized in 2002.”

I’m not sure whether the bigger scandal for Tyler Cabot and Atlantic Monthly was the sexual accusation or “raising money for right-wing religious groups.” Bill Donohue expressed surprise that such a “highly regarded magazine would publish such trash.” I was more dismayed than surprised by the irresponsibility. Yes, it’s irresponsible to tell half the story and present it as the truth.

It wasn’t the first time such attacks were launched against Padre Pio. Four years before his canonization, and thirty years after his death, The New York Times (September 24, 1998) carried an article charging that Padre Pio was the subject of no less than twelve Vatican investigations in his lifetime, and one of the investigations alleged that “Padre Pio had sex with female penitents twice a week.” It’s true that this was alleged, but it’s not the whole truth. The New York Times and Atlantic Monthly were simply following an agenda that should come as no surprise to anyone. I’ll describe below why these wild claims fell apart under scrutiny.

But first, I must write the sordid story of why Padre Pio was so accused. That’s the real scandal. It’s the story of how Padre Pio responded with heroic virtue to the experience of being falsely accused repeatedly from within the Church. His heroic virtue in the face of false witness is a trait we simply do not share. It far exceeds any grace ever given to me.

Twice Stigmatized

Early in the morning of September 20, 1918, at the age of 31, Francesco Forgione, known to the world as Padre Pio, received the Stigmata of Christ. He was horrified, and he begged the Lord to reconsider. Each morning in the month to follow, Padre Pio awoke with the hope that the wounds would be gone. He was terrified. After a month with the wounds, Padre Pio wrote a note to Padre Benedetto, his spiritual advisor, describing in simple, matter-of-fact terms what happened to him on that September 20 morning:

“On the morning of the 20th of last month, in the choir, after I had celebrated Mass . . . I saw before me a mysterious person similar to the one I had seen on the evening of 5 August. The only difference was that his hands and feet and side were dripping blood. The sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable. I thought I should die and really should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart which was about to burst out of my chest.

“The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands and feet and side were dripping blood. Imagine the agony I experienced and continue to experience almost every day. The heart wound bleeds continually, especially from Thursday evening until Saturday.

“Dear Father, I am dying of pain because of the wounds and the resulting embarrassment I feel in my soul. I am afraid I shall bleed to death if the Lord does not hear my heartfelt supplication to relieve me of this condition.

“Will Jesus, who is so good, grant me this grace? Will he at least free me from the embarrassment caused by these outward signs? I will raise my voice and will not stop imploring him until in his mercy he takes away . . . these outward signs which cause me such embarrassment and unbearable humiliation.”

— Letters 1, No. 511

And so it began. What Padre Pio faced that September morning set in motion five decades of suspicion, accusation, and denunciation not from the secular world, but from the Catholic one. From within his own Church, Padre Pio’s visible wounds brought about exactly what he feared in his pleading letter to his spiritual director. The wounds signified in Padre Pio exactly what they first signified for the Roman Empire and the Jewish chief priests at the time Christ was crucified. They were the wounds of utter humiliation.

Within a year, as news of the Stigmata spread throughout the region, the people began to protest a rumor that Padre Pio might be moved from San Giovanni Rotondo. This brought increased scrutiny within the Church as the stories of Padre Pio’s special graces spread throughout Europe like a wildfire.

By June of 1922, just four years after the Stigmata, the Vatican’s Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) began to restrict the public’s access to Padre Pio who was accused of self-inflicting his own wounds and sexually abusing penitents. He was even accused of being a political agitator for a fascist group, and helping to incite a riot. His accusers included fellow friars, and neighboring priests, bishops, and archbishops increasingly threatened by Padre Pio’s growing fame and influence. A physician and founder of Rome’s Catholic university hospital labeled Padre Pio, sight unseen, “an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited peoples’ credulity.”

Padre Pio and I have this one thing in common. You would not believe some of the things I’ve been called, sight unseen, by people presenting themselves as the voice of the faithful.

From 1924 to 1931, accusation after accusation was investigated by the Holy See which issued a series of official statements denying the supernatural origin of Pio’s wounds and the legitimacy of his gifts. At one point, the charge that his wounds were self-inflicted was withdrawn. Several legitimate examinations found no evidence for this. It was then charged that Padre Pio’s wounds were psychologically self-induced because of his “persistent concentration on the passion of Christ.”

Finally, in the one instance in which I can personally relate to Padre Pio, he responded with sheer exasperation at his accusers: “Go out to the fields,” he wrote, “and look very closely at a bull. Concentrate on him with all your might. Do this and see if horns grow on your head!”

By June of 1931, Padre Pio was receiving hundreds of letters daily from the faithful asking for prayers. Meanwhile, the Holy See ordered him to desist from public ministry. He was barred from offering Mass in public, barred from hearing confessions, and barred from any public appearance as sexual abuse charges against him were formally investigated — again. Padre Pio was a “cancelled priest” long before it became “a thing” in the Church.

Finally, in 1933, Pope Pius XI ordered the Holy Office to reverse its ban on Padre Pio’s public celebration of Mass. The Holy Father wrote, closing the investigation: “I have not been badly disposed toward Padre Pio, but I have been badly informed.” Over the succeeding year his faculties to function as a priest were progressively restored. He was permitted to hear men’s confessions in March of 1934 and the confessions of women two months later.

Potholes on the Road to Sainthood

The accusations of sexual abuse, insanity, and fraud did not end there. They followed Padre Pio relentlessly for years. In 1960, Rome once again restricted his public ministry citing concerns that his popularity had grown out of control.

An area priest, Father Carlo Maccari, added to the furor by once again accusing the now 73-year-old Padre Pio of engaging in sex with female penitents “twice a week.” Father Maccari went on to become an archbishop, then admitted to his lie and asked for forgiveness in a public recantation on his deathbed.

When Padre Pio’s ministry was again restored, the daily lines at his confessional grew longer, and the clamoring of all of Europe seeking his blessing and his prayers grew louder. It was at this time that my friend, Pierre Matthews encountered the beleaguered and wounded saint on the stairs at San Giovanni.

The immense volume of daily letters from the faithful also continued. In 1962, Padre Pio received a pleading letter from Archbishop Karol Wotyla of Krakow in Poland. The Archbishop’s good friend, psychiatrist Wanda Poltawska, was stricken with terminal cancer and the future pope took a leap of faith to ask for Padre Pio’s prayers. When Dr. Poltawska appeared for surgery weeks later, the mass of cancer had disappeared. News of the miraculous healing reached Archbishop Wotyla on the eve of his leaving for Rome on October 5, 1962 for the convening of the Second Vatican Council.

Former Newsweek Religion Editor Kenneth Woodward wrote a riveting book entitled Making Saints (Simon & Shuster, 1990). In a masterfully written segment on Padre Pio twelve years before his canonization, Kenneth Woodward interviewed Father Paolo Rossi, the Postulator General of the Capuchin Order and the man charged with investigating Padre Pio’s cause for sainthood. Fr. Rossi was asked how he expects to demonstrate Padre Pio’s heroic virtue. The priest responded:

“People would better understand the virtue of the man if they knew the degree of hostility he experienced from the Church . . . The Order itself was told to act in a certain way toward Padre Pio. The hostility went all the way up to the Holy Office, and the Vatican Secretariat of State. Faulty information was given to the Church authorities and they acted on that information.”

— Making Saints, p.188

It is one of the Church’s great ironies that Saint Padre Pio was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002 just as the U.S. bishops were implementing a response to the newest media furor about accused U.S. priests. I am one of those priests. The irony is that if the charter the bishops adopted was imposed in Italy forty years earlier, Padre Pio may have been denied any legitimate chance of ever clearing his name. The investigations that eventually exposed those lies simply do not take place in the current milieu.

I’ll live with that irony, and I’m glad Padre Pio didn’t have to. Everything else he wrote to his spiritual director on that fateful morning of September 20, 1918 came to pass. He suffered more than the wounds of Christ. He suffered the betrayal of Christ by Judas, and the humiliation of Christ, and the scourging of Christ, and he suffered them relentlessly for fifty years. As Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote of him in First Things (June/July 2008):

“With Padre Pio, the anguish is not the absence of God, but the unsupportable weight of His presence.”

Fifty years after receiving the Stigmata, Padre Pio’s wounds disappeared. They left no scar — no trace that he ever even had them. Three days later, on September 23, 1968, Padre Pio died. I was fifteen years old — the age at which he began religious life.

In April, 2010, the body of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was moved from its shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo to a new church dedicated in his honor in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. Padre Pio’s tomb is the third most visited Catholic shrine in the world after the Vatican itself and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

The New York Times might still spread another story, but the people of God have spoken. Padre Pio was canonized by the sensus fidelium — by the near universal acclaim of believers long before the Church ratified their belief. Padre Pio is a saint of the people.

Some years ago, a priest in Dallas — who read of Padre Pio’s “Patron Saint” status on our About Page sent me a relic of Saint Pio encased in plastic. He later wrote that he doesn’t know why he sent it, and realized too late that it might not make it passed the prison censors. Indeed, the relic was refused by prison staff because they couldn’t figure out what it was. Instead of being returned to sender as it should have been, it made its way somehow to the prison chaplain who gave it to me.

The relic of Saint Pio is affixed on my typewriter, just inches from my fingers at this moment. It’s a reminder, when I’m writing, of his presence at Beyond These Stone Walls, the ones that imprison me and the one I write for. The relic’s card bears a few lines in Italian by Padre Pio:

“Due cose al mondo non ti abbandonano mai, l’occhio di Dio che sempre ti vede e il cuore della mamma che sempre ti segue.”

“There are two things in the world that will never forsake you: the eye of God that always sees you, and the heart of His Mother that always follows you.”

— Padre Pio

Saints alive! May I never forget it!

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EPILOGUE

In 2017, Pierre Matthews, my friend and Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, passed from this life. After his death someone in his family sent me a photograph of him kneeling at the Shrine of Saint Padre Pio where he offered prayers for me and for Pornchai.

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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.”

Old Max Moontri Had a Farm, EIEIO!

Having built with pick and shovel a 150 meter walkway on a property he landscaped, Pornchai Moontri spent his 50th Birthday plowing and planting an acre of farmland.

September 13, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I stumbled upon a late night TV movie recently — though I do not know the title — just as a young man was visiting his father in prison. I was late tuning into the film so the plot was not immediately clear. It seemed that the father was innocent of whatever crime sent him to prison and his son was very anxious to prove it. I was riveted to the scene. Through security glass where they conversed via monitored telephones, the father was urging his son to move on with his life and be free. The young man protested, “But I want YOU to be free!” His father replied, “My freedom is in witnessing yours.”

I pondered this for a few moments laying there in the dark of night in a prison cell. And then I began to cry. That was most unusual. In nearly 30 years of seeing my life implode from false witness, I can count on one hand the number of times I have shed even a single tear. It just isn’t in my nature to cry easily. I wrote once that women seem to cry much more easily than men. Perhaps men do not cry nearly enough.

That night I could not contain what was spilling out from within me. I realized with an emotional collision of joy and sadness that a part of me now compensates for my loss of freedom by witnessing it unfold in the life of Pornchai Moontri with whom I spent 15 years surviving in a prison cell. In that time, a bond of trust grew between us in a place where trust is the rarest of commodities. We became each other’s family, and the basis of our connection was always fatherhood. Pornchai never had a father. I spent the last forty one years being called one.

I was 20 when Pornchai was born, and on September 10 this week, he turned 50, so do the math. Fatherhood in this case was not an event, but a process. Over time, while learning the entire story of Pornchai’s tragic life, it gradually became my own life’s mission to secure his freedom even above my own.

Overtime, we encountered mystical connections in this bond. They include Divine Mercy and the intercessory graces of a Patron Saint who also surrendered his life in this life to save another. I do not fully understand these connections, but I know in my heart that they are there. Embracing fatherhood makes men see their lives differently. As I quoted in a recent post:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Now we see dimly as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I understand only in part, but then I shall understand fully even as I am fully understood.”

— 1 Corinthians 13:10-12

Three years after Pornchai’s deportation to Thailand, I still find myself, as any true father would, reveling in his freedom as though revisiting an inspired work of art that I somehow had a hand in creating. This was perhaps evident in our recent post about the earliest days of this blog and the first posts I wrote back then. Some readers told me that it made them cry as well, but not just from sadness. I hope you did not miss “Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell.”

A Passage to India

The interconnectedness of our lives did not suddenly end because of time and distance. In his final years here, Pornchai and I were the sole figures offering assistance to other prisoners facing deportation. Regardless of what anyone thinks about whatever offense brought them to this pass, deportation is often an inhumane nightmare impacting bonds within entire families.

One of the persons we assisted in navigating deportation was a young Cambodian man who was brought to the United States at age two. At age 22, he pled guilty to a petty crime without ever being told that doing so would result in his forced deportation. He spoke not a word of Khmer, the language of Cambodia. He was left in the city of Phnom Penh, and since then has disappeared.

One of our good friends here, Abishek, a native of India, had been in the United States for much of his adult life before some out-of-character and out-of-culture domestic dispute and breakup landed him in prison. As with most such situations, Abishek lost not only his freedom, but the entire infrastructure of his life. His close-knit family in India kept in contact from a great distance, but he leaned on Pornchai and me for moral support when he most needed it as the time of deportation approached.

In 2020, Abishek was understandably interested in the process Pornchai was facing because he knew he would soon face the same thing. He was alarmed to learn that Pornchai remained in the dismal custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for over five months at the height of the global Covid pandemic. I wrote of this ordeal in 2020 in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”

We hoped this process would be easier for Abishek once the pandemic receded, but that was not the case. He ended up serving six months beyond his prison sentence, but could not seek release because of the ICE hold on him. After waiting six months for ICE to act, I helped Abishek write to Regional ICE Headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. Just two weeks later, he was suddenly gone in the night. That was six months ago, and for all that time we assumed that he was safely back in India adjusting to freedom, family and a new life. We thought no news was good news.

But we were wrong. A few weeks ago when I called Pornchai in Thailand, he told me that he received a call at 1 AM during the night before. ICE detainees without resources get one free five-minute call per week. Abishek used it to call Pornchai in Thailand. It turned out that for six months since leaving this prison, Abishek was stranded just 50 miles away in a jail where ICE rents space for detainees awaiting deportation. Abishek was now one year past his prison sentence.

Pornchai and I were powerless to do anything directly so I sent an email message from the tablet in my cell in Concord, New Hampshire prison to Clare Farr, a trademarks attorney in Western Australia who helped Pornchai immensely. She then called Pornchai in Thailand who gave what little information we knew about our friend’s plight. Clare contacted the Indian Embassy in Canberra, Australia and conveyed all that we told her. The Indian Embassy in Australia then contacted the Indian Government which in turn contacted the Indian Consulate. Two weeks later, just days before I type this, Abishek’s odyssey came to an end. Thanks to the intervention of Clare Farr in Australia, Abishek is now reunited with his family in India.

The bizarre thread of this story is worth repeating. Indigent ICE detainees get one free five-minute phone call per week. From ICE detention in New Hampshire, Abishek called Pornchai Moontri in Thailand at 1 AM. Pornchai then contacted me in New Hampshire. I contacted Pornchai’s advocate, Clare Farr in western Australia, who then contacted the Indian Embassy in Canberra. Then the Embassy contacted the Indian Government in New Delhi, who contacted the Indian Consulate in New York instructing them to prepare Abishek’s travel papers and fax them to ICE in Burlington, Massachusetts. ICE then booked a flight for Abishek to get him out of ICE detention in New Hampshire. After a six-month delay, Abishek arrived in India two weeks after his free five-minute phone call to Thailand. We could not make this story up!

Chalermpon Srisuttor, Mayor of Phuviang, and Pornchai Moontri.

Pornchai Set His Heart on Plowing Furrows (Sirach 38:26)

As all of the above was going on, Pornchai sent me some photos of his finished, back-breaking work creating a 450-foot walkway on property he landscaped in Pak Chong, Thailand. I actually tried to talk him out of his next project, but as the quote from the Book of Sirach implies above, his mind was made up. Pornchai has not yet received any income from the work we described in “For Pornchai Moontri, Hope and Hard Work Build a Future.”

All his hard work is building hope for a future livelihood as Thailand builds a high-speed railroad with a depot in each of the places where Pornchai is working now. I have been sending him a small amount of money each month for food and expenses. It does not take a lot — $100 U.S. dollars equals about over 3,000 Thai baht at the current exchange rate. It helps Pornchai manage food and necessities for a month while waiting for the tourism season and rental housing customers.

Pornchai is no stranger to hard work so he decided to take on another project while waiting. About 250 miles north of Pak Chong, where Pornchai now lives in the District of Nakhon Ratchasima, is the village of Phuviang (Pu-vee-ANG) . It is the place where Pornchai was born, was orphaned, and then was taken from at age eleven. There is a lot of pain there. There is also a small house and piece of land that once belonged to his mother. The house was only half built when Pornchais Mother, Wannee, traveled to Guam to her death in 2000, an unforgettable story told in “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

Not far from that unfinished house is an acre or so of farmland that belonged to Wannee. Pornchai’s extended family cultivates rice nearby, so Pornchai decided to go up to Phuviang and plant a crop. It had to be something that he could plant and then leave alone. He chose to plant cassava, a crop that grows in Asian tropical zones and is self-sustaining until harvested.

The cassava plant grows up to about 8-feet in height and its edible roots are typically three inches in diameter and up to three feet long. The roots are akin to a sweet potato, and are a staple in some Asian countries. Ground into flour, cassava is also used to make sweet bread or cakes.

Growing cassava is easy, but planting it is an enormous amount of work. Cassava roots from a past crop have to be cut into smaller pieces and soaked in water for several days. The pieces are then planted along plowed furrows as in the photo atop this post. Pornchai is pictured there along with a local helper. The photo above was taken by Chalermpon Srisuttor, the Mayor and Town Manager of Phuviang who has become a friend to Pornchai — enough of a friend to help him plow and plant an acre of cassava!

The planting was finished just in time for Pornchai’s 50th birthday. I now want to remind him that when he arrived in Concord, NH from a long stint in solitary confinement in Maine in 2005, I had just turned age 52 while Pornchai was 32. He liked to circulate handmade birthday cards for our friends to sign for my birthday. They contained snarky little phrases like “Father G loves history so much because he was there for most of it!” and “Father G knows Latin because it was his first language!” Pornchai thought I was really old back then.

What goes around comes around! Happy Birthday, Max!

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Upper right: Chalathip Chiradomrong; Chalermpon Srisuttor, Mayor of Phuviang; and Pornchai Moontri. Lower left: Since Phuviang is very near to the Thailand headquarters of the Society of the Divine Word Order where Fr John Hung Le is local Superior, he stopped to spend an afternoon with Pornchai and even to pitch in a bit on the plowing and planting. Upper left and lower right: First signs of growth a few days apart.

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

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell
ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand
For Pornchai Moontri, Hope and Hard Work Build a Future
Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

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.”