Kamala Harris Has a Catholic Problem

Kamala Harris is the first Democrat presidential nominee in 40 years to refuse an invitation to the traditional Al Smith dinner hosted by the Archbishop of New York.

October 9, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae and Bill Donohue, PhD

[In the image above, the 2016 Al Smith Dinner featuring nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump making peace with Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP]

Pope Francis recently described the looming 2024 Presidential Election in the United States as a choice between two morally objectionable major candidates. He has urged U.S. Catholics to vote with a well-informed conscience for the candidate and party that represents “the lesser of evils.” The Holy Father did not indicate which of the major candidates he considers to be the least morally compromised and that is as it should be.

However, he did address the matter with news reporters on a flight to Singapore, and he did give a hint. He said that one nominee has an un-Christian position on illegal immigration. Pope Francis added that “not welcoming the migrant is a sin.” Pope Francis thenbadded bluntly that the other nominee “kills children,” which he characterized as an “assassination.” The Catholic Church regards the latter position to be “intrinsically evil.” He then reiterated his advice that Catholics should use their own conscience as their guide when voting.

I am also informed in this matter by a fellow priest, writer and highly respected theologian, The Reverend Peter M.J. Stravinskas of the Priestly Society of St. John Henry Newman. Fr Stravinskas is also Publisher of the fine Catholic theological and pastoral quarterly, The Catholic Response which I highly recommend. In the September/October 2024 edition, he addresses the subject of clergy having a voice in political matters. I cite him here:

“A cleric is never to engage in partisan politics. He is, however, to assist his people in bringing Gospel values to bear on the formation of public policy. In fact, failure to do so would be a gross abdication of his priestly office... . For the moment, I shall deal with only the most pressings issues. Although the GOP platform no longer calls for a constitutional ban on abortion, it does proclaim, ‘We proudly stand for families and life. We believe that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without due process, and that the States are free to pass laws protecting those rights.’ ”

The GOP Pro-Life platform continues: “After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose late term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to birth control, and IVF.”

Father Stravinskas states that those last two examples are what he earlier referred to as unfortunate, unnecessary compromises by the GOP, but ... “On the other hand, the [2024] Democrat platform is the most radical in history at every level. Most distressing is its commitment to press for a constitutional amendment to revive Roe v. Wade and enshrine it in perpetuity.” [And] “On a matter promoted by the Church for over a century, the Republican program supports parental freedom of choice in education, as well as religious freedom rights, while the Democrat goal calls for the suppression of both, as has been their consistent policy for decades.”

Father Stravinskas defers to St. John Paul II and his encyclical Evangelium Vitae in which he noted that when neither political party is ideal, one can vote for the one which inflicts the lesser harm. That position is echoed in the U.S. bishops’ 1998 document, Living the Gospel of Life. While no Catholic can support in good conscience the Democrat proposal for abortion on demand at any stage, one could, in good conscience, support the Republican platform which at least opposes late-term abortion and supports the right of a State to legislate in this matter.

The bishops of the United States have been unwavering in their support of the sanctity of life, the dignity of the family, parental rights in education, and the centrality of religious freedom. These are topics we also championed here at Beyond These Stone Walls, most especially in “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul.”

Kamala’s Catholic Conundrum

A few of my recent postings have raised questions about past anti-Catholic remarks and public positions of one of the two nominees for president representing the two major parties. Given that nearly thirty-percent of the U.S. voting public identifies as Catholic, a significant number of voters are potentially disenfranchised from their democracy in such a situation, forced to set aside their morally informed conscience to adhere to the demands of a secular platform. The post in which I raised this matter was “Kamala Harris, Knights of Columbus and Anti-Catholicism.”

There is much more to be said on the subject, but the latest manifestation of Kamala’s Catholic problem is a traditional political event hosted by the Archbishop of New York called, simply, the Al Smith Dinner. Al Smith was a native New Yorker and statesman who was prominent in both New York and national politics as a Democrat in the l920’s.

He served four terms as Governor of New York State from 1919 to 1929, and was noted for his strong advocacy for social reform, for equal pay for men and women in public school positions, and for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which provided for women’s suffrage.

Al Smith was highly influential in the U.S. Democratic Party when he ran unsuccessfully for President in 1920 and again in 1928, but won the electoral vote in only eight states. Analysts attributed his poor showing in the voting polls to the fact that he was openly committed to both Democratic ideals and his Roman Catholic Faith. It would be another four decades before the United States would elect its first Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy in 1960.

To honor Al Smith’s steadfast dedication to his country, his party, and his faith, the Archdiocese of New York established and hosts an annual event in his honor. The Al Smith Dinner, as it came to be called, has been for decades one of the most prominent and popular political events in this nation. It is a “roast” in the sense that other speakers get to present the two major party nominees in a more positive light than the usual political fare. All enmity is set aside for this one black-tie event hosted by the Archbishop of New York in deference to Al Smith’s faith. Its entire proceeds go to support social welfare programs for women and children under the auspices of Catholic Charities.

The Al Smith dinner has been recently described as the most important and sought out political event of the presidential election cycle. The last nominee to decline its invitation was former Vice President Walter Mondale who became the Democrat nominee in 1984, losing in a landslide vote to Ronald Reagan. The 2024 event is slated to be held in New York City on October 17, and will be the 39th event in this tradition, a tradition that began in 1960 when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon called for unity as Americans despite their political differences.

But without explanation or discussion, Kamala Harris is now the first nominee in forty years to decline to attend the Al Smith Dinner. This has been described by other politicians as a near terminal political mistake. It was described by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, as “a slap in the face of American Catholics.”

In 2020, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump were present for this event and both observed the tradition of unity of purpose. Despite the intensity of their respective campaigns, neither spoke a negative word about the other. The last Presidential nominee to address the Al Smith Dinner alone was Ronald Reagan in 1984. This year, as it now stands, GOP Nominee Donald Trump will do the same.

Others have made “off the record” remarks connecting Ms. Harris’s refusal to participate in this Al Smith event with her apparent disdain for “on the record” interviews to explain her policy positions. At worst, it was suggested “off the record” that she simply does not want to appear “before a room full of prolife Catholics.”

Credit: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Bill Donohue: Harris Is Blowing It with Catholics

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to be president, but her utter lack of engagement with the media has led even her biggest supporters to criticize her public invisibility. This explains why she went on “60 Minutes.” That was a mistake — she could not answer pointed questions. She is better suited to attending what are really TV parties, which is why she is scheduled to go on “The View” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Today she will do an interview with Howard Stern on his radio show.  This is another mistake.  In doing so, she is granting legitimacy to a foul-mouthed anti-Catholic bigot.

We have been tracking Stern for decades.  He has a long history of mocking Jesus, bashing popes, slandering priests and attacking nuns.  Make no mistake, if the object of Stern’s “comedy” were blacks or Asians (Harris’ ancestry), it’s a sure bet she wouldn’t do his show.

A recent Pew Research Center survey has Harris losing to Trump among Catholics by a margin of 52-47.  Moreover, she blew off an invitation to the Al Smith Dinner, the big Catholic event held weeks before the election.  Now she is going on with the obscene Catholic basher, Howard Stern.

What is really strange about this is that Catholics and Independents are the two swing demographics who will decide the election.

Makes us wonder — does Harris realize what she is doing?  We know her boss has checked out, but now it seems she is doing the same, if only for different reasons.

Catholic League Press Release, October 8, 2024

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Here Kamala Harris single-handedly carved the Right to Life out of the Declaration of Independence.

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Note From Father Gordon MacRae: Beyond These Stone Walls has had an ever-increasing presence in the work of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. In the July/August, 2024, issue of Catalyst the “In the News” feature included two commendations for Bill Donohue and the Catholic League “for standing by Father Gordon MacRae when many others in the Church abandoned him.” In the September 2024 issue of Catalyst, Catholic League President Bill Donohue and the organization itself are cited by numerous media venues. Two of these citations were, surprisingly, for “the Catholic League’s role in helping Pornchai Moontri be released from ICE custody and returned to his home country of Thailand.” Our readers were deeply moved by these citations.

Also in the September issue of Catalyst Bill Donohue published an editorial which I have invited him to repeat here and he was very much in agreement. It is part two of this week’s post and is published at our Voices from Beyond entitled

“Catholic Assessment of Kamala Harris.”

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.”

Saint Michael the Archangel Contends with Satan Still

The innocent in prison live in an incubator of dark dreams and nightmares. A recent terror was a confrontation with an evil presence that evoked an Angelic Advocate.

September 25, 2024 by Fr Gordon J. MacRae

I have had my share of nightmares and dreamscapes as an unwilling guest of the State, but I have been hesitant to write about most of them. Our dreams reflect the reality of our conscious lives — both our hopes and our fears. Few of mine are worthy of note, but those few also feel a bit risky to write about. I am not certain that I want to let anyone wander willy-nilly into the chasms of my psyche, a place where even I do not wish to wander alone. It is not because there is anything nefarious to be found there. It is because people who do not have actual evidence to throw will weaponize just about anything to justify their causes. We have seen this at work most recently in the weaponized lawfare in our politics.

To wander “willy-nilly” is an interesting term. It comes from 17th Century New England, a time and place when concerns about the devil dominated the literature and thought of the period. The term is a derivative of “Will I, Nil I,” meaning, “whether I wish it or do not wish it.” That is really the essence of dreams. They enter our psyche through no conscious will of our own while everything in them reflects our perception of ourselves and our place in this world, “our hopes and fears o’er all the years.”

Most of our dreams are quickly forgotten. This has more to do with biology than the content of our dreams. They are experienced differently from other mental processes and are thus not encoded in memory in the same way as conscious experience. A minority of our dreams are frightening and unforgettable. I had one of those recently, and I cannot forget it despite wanting to. It haunts me still. So I will take the plunge and just narrate it without judging either its reality or its sanity. I can only assert that the dream is true.

What made this particular dream most unusual is that I was dreaming that I was asleep and having a dream within the dream. I know this is convoluted but bear with me. In the dream, I was awakened in the night by something unknown. I arose from my bunk and took a walk. I was walking through doors that my conscious mind knew to be always locked. This is, after all, a prison. Outside the locked doors on a walkway at the top of the four-story prison building where I live, I descended alone down the 52 stairs to the ground level. And it was night.

That last sentence is important, and I write it with foreboding. Those same words appeared in another post of mine that described the presence of the Evil One. In “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light,” I wrote of the Gospel account of the betrayal by Judas Iscariot that led to the Crucifixion: “After eating the morsel, he went out. And it was night” (John 13:30). My awareness of night reveals the spiritual setting of my dream. To live in wrongful imprisonment is to live in perpetual night.

At the bottom of the 52 stairs are a few steel doors that are storage areas. They are always locked, but in the dream one door was ajar. As I approached it in the night it opened, and I stepped in. Outside was a hot summer night, but in this room I could see my breath even in the dark. The door slammed shut behind me leaving me in pitch blackness. The room was filled with castoff debris, and lurking among it in the far left corner was what I can only describe as sheer terror. I could feel it more than I could see it.

I could not flee, so I prepared to fight. “I am stronger than you,” I said boldly, but stupidly. We do not own the stupid things we say in dreams. In this one, those were the only words spoken, but they were not the only thoughts. I felt panicked terror from the Presence I was in. I felt this unseen thing overtake me in the dark, and I feared that my soul would be ripped from me. I invoked Saint Michael in the dream, and then I passed out.

The Devil’s Best Trick

And then I was again in my bunk in my cell on the top floor of the building. I was awake. Was I awake then too? I do not know. It took awhile for the terror to leave me. I looked at my alarm clock. It was just a little after 3:00 AM. I did not sleep again that night, and I did not want to be in the dark. So I went out of the cell into a day room. There are four prisoners who sleep out there due to overcrowding and a shortage of cells .I sat there until sunrise.

For the rest of the day and for many days to follow, the dream shadowed over me like a dark cloud. At the other end of that day, at mail call around 6:00 PM, I received my copy of The Wall Street Journal. I usually turn first to the Journal’s Editorial Page, a habit likely born from the fact that I was in it several times. The Journal has a daily, and prominent, book review on the top right of its main Opinion Page. On this day (May 28,2024) the Review was by Micah Mattix entitled, “In Search of the Unseen Evil.” It was a review of a book by Randall Sullivan entitled, “The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared.”

The review was thoughtful and considerate, and perhaps only slightly skeptical of the subject matter. After my experience of the early morning hours of that same day, I was not skeptical at all. But there are many other factors that diminish my skepticism about the existence of personified evil. The image on our Home Page, reproduced atop this post, makes that as clear as it can be.

Randall Sullivan is no stranger to the Catholic mystical. A previous book, The Miracle Detective (2004) is reported to have profoundly changed him. His current book cited above, opens with a question: “Does the Devil exist, or is he a figment of our imagination?” The second question follows: “If he is real, who or what are we describing when we refer to ‘the Devil’”? Sullivan concludes his book with a statement of personal conviction: “There is a Devil, a force of evil that human beings can best comprehend by personifying it. To acknowledge this, he says, is to throw open the door “the Devil hides behind.”

That certainly got my attention. I was stunned to read this in the WSJ on the same day as my haunting dream. Replaying the dream in my mind, one of my first thoughts was to wonder whether the location of the Evil entity — a “far left” corner — was actually a metaphor for a present trend in our culture. It is a trend I wrote about in my recent post (published just a week before my dream) “Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age.” There is a lot there that I imagine the Devil would prefer you and I did not ponder.

Today many people no longer believe in the Devil — Randall Sullivan gives it an uppercase “D” throughout — and many of those also no longer believe in God. This is a cultural phenomenon that the Devil finds most promising. It’s the theme of a psychological masterpiece by C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. I wrote of it in Holy Week this year in a post that I am certain the Devil would also prefer that you did not see. In his book, C.S. Lewis laid out the long, subtle descent upon which humans travail a slippery slope away from God:

“It does not matter how small sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge a man away from the Light and out into the Nothing... . Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

— The Screwtape Letters, p. 60-61

Getting you to look away by altering your belief system to discard his very existence is, as Randall Sullivan entitled his book, The Devil’s Best Trick. Don’t fall for it. We have seen the face of evil many times as it overtakes human beings lured to act on its behalf. Two recent and vivid examples are “Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men Were Missing,” and Pornchai Moontri’s striking “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.”

Angelic Justice

I'm sorry if this gets a little weird, but at 3:00 AM on another dark night — this one in 2016 — I had a prequel to this mysterious dream. It was preceded by all manner of dark clouds gathering on the horizon of my life in a time of chaotic upheavals. It was early in the morning of October 2, 2016 the day the Church honors our Guardian Angels. Had I ever really believed in them? I do now.

In the dream, I found myself gazing out the small barred window in the prison cell in which I lived then with Pornchai “Max” Moontri. It was four years before his deportation to Thailand. A small stretch of sky was all that I could see beyond our cell window. There was an older man standing with me. I could see my friend, Max, fast asleep in his upper bunk. The older man was eerily familiar and someone I felt I knew, but in recalling the dream I could not recall what he looked like.

He pointed to the sky and asked,“What do you see?” I replied, “I see only the prison lights.” “Look beyond the prison lights,” said the Guardian. Then in the dream my vision suddenly changed. I was able to see far, far into the vast darkness, and there in the center of my field of view I saw a constellation, a triangle of three stars. Within the triangle, the stars were joined by streams of glowing light connecting them. “It looks like neon,” I said stupidly in the dream. And again, we do not own the stupid things we say in dreams. Then the Guardian said just one sentence before departing my dream: “Michael dwells within the light.”

I stood there for a long time, mesmerized by this vision. Then I awoke in my bunk. It was very dark. I got up and walked to the window wondering whether it was a dream or real. I saw only the invasive prison lights, but I have since learned to look beyond them. I could not forget the simple statement that “Michael dwells within the light.”

Later that morning, I called a friend. I was embarrassed to relate the dream, but I asked her to search an astronomy database to see if a triangular constellation actually exists. This was what was sent to me:

“1998 — The Most Distant Object Yet Discovered: Astronomers have stumbled upon the most distant galaxy ever found, an object 12.2 billion light-years from Earth. It was announced on March 12, 1998. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. A light year is thus a distance of 5. 6 trillion miles. [It’ s a difficult calculation, but the distance of this object in miles is 12.2 billion times 5.6 trillion. Good luck with the math!]

"A team of scientists led by astrophysicist Arjuna Dey of Johns Hopkins University was analyzing the light from a distant galaxy inside the Constellation Triangulum when the team noticed the spectral signature of a faint and far more distant galaxy at its center. By taking longer exposures with the Keck-II telescope they were able to identify the new galaxy as being 90 million light- years farther than the previous most distant galaxy ever before discovered. They dubbed this discovery, ‘RD1.’

“Based on knowledge that the universe is approximately 13 billion years old, [knowledge first discovered by famed physicist and mathematician, Father George Lemaitre] Galaxy RD1 was formed soon after the Big Bang gave birth to the Cosmos. By studying it, astronomers hope to learn how and when the earliest galaxies formed. Little is currently known about these early galaxies. A report on the discovery was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.”

This, of course, rocked my world. You might recall from our post, “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang,” co-written by me and Oxford priest-physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, that the Church and science are on the same page about the origin of the Universe born in an instant, “out of nothing.”

In the early Fifth Century, Saint Augustine proposed that in the Genesis account of Creation, God’s declaration, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) was the moment the angels were created. In the next verse (Genesis 1:4), “God separated the light from the darkness.” For Saint Augustine, this was the moment the angels fell and were driven from Heaven by Saint Michael in the battle of the Heavenly Hosts. Is this all metaphor or is it real? On a spiritual level it is very real.

This all left me with a profound sense that our stories are not just our own, nor are dreams or our struggles or pain. We are individuals, but we are also a collective part of an immense tapestry God has woven toward a specific end. And within the threads, we can find allies. I could no longer face the darkness without them.

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From The Prayer of Pope Leo XIII against Apostate Angels :

“Most Glorious Prince of the Heavenly armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness. Come to the aid of man whom God has created to His likeness, and who He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector. To you the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray therefore the God of peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer hold us captive and do injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us. Take hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent which is the devil and Satan. Bind him and cast him into the abyss so that he may no longer seduce the nations.”

— An Excerpt from the Prayer of Pope Leo XIII, 1878-1903

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We hope you will also visit these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls. And please subscribe if you have not already done so. It’s free, and we usually only haunt your inbox once per week.

A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ

Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light

Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed

Michael, Gabriel, Raphael: Allies in Spiritual Battle

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A Special Note to Our Readers :

Thank you for your readership and support of this blog. As annual fees become due, Father Gordon could use your help if willing and able. Additionally, we have been notified that the National Center for Reason and Justice is ceasing operations after over two decades of sponsorship of the defense of Father MacRae and other wrongfully convicted.

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Thank you. May the Lord Bless you and keep you .

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.”

Unjustly in Prison for 30 Years: A Collision of Fury and Faith

From opposite ends of the world Pornchai Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae share thoughts on a dark milestone: Thirty years wrongly in prison on the Day of Padre Pio.

September 18, 2024 by Pornchai ‘Max’ Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae

HERE’S MAX

On September 8, 2020, I left my best friend, Father-G, inside the walls of New Hampshire State Prison where we spent the previous 15 years as cell mates. The term, “cell mates” might seem foreign to you. Having to share a space of about 60 square feet around the clock with another human being can be like torture. The daily drama of cell mates thrown together but never able to live together was the all-day every-day prime time drama of our prison.

I was an angry young man with a very short fuse which caused me to spend most of my prior years in prison in solitary confinement beginning at age 18. I was not very sociable. I trusted no one, and least of all could I trust a priest convicted of the very crimes that tormented my life and set me on a road to destruction. We went through a lot in those years, and over time I came to know with total certainty that this priest was a victim of false witness and a Catholic witch hunt. He became my best friend and the person I trust most in this world. We became each other’s family.

I know in my heart that I would not be free today — physically, mentally, or spiritually — if Father-G had not been present in my life. I wake up each day now on the other side of those stone walls of prison and on the other side of the world from where Father-G lives in captivity still. I now live in Thailand, a land I was taken from at age 11 for someone else’s dark agenda. It is a land I thought I would never see again. I am here today, and free, only because of God and His servant, Father-G.

The day this little introduction appears with Father-G’s post is September 18. It anticipates the September 23rd date on which he was sent to prison thirty years ago in 1994. There was no truth or justice in it. None at all! That is also the date that one of our Patron Saints was freed from another kind of bondage — a bondage that has been a grace for millions of souls. Father-G once described the heroic virtue of the life Padre Pio lived ...

“A half century bearing the wounds of Jesus — all of them, including false witness, rejection, ridicule, public shaming, and the crucifixion of his body and his priesthood, sometimes even by the very Church he served.”

With some help from Dilia, our Editor, I wrote a whole post about this day, about Father-G, and about the sacrifices he made that restored my life and freedom, and saved my soul. I would trade them back to restore his freedom, but he will have none of that. He said that sacrifice is sacred and it is not refundable. I hope you will read my post for it is very important to me. It is my tribute to hope from a time when all mine was stolen from me so Father-G sacrificed his. It is “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Now here, from our prison cell thousands of miles away from where I wake up each day in freedom, is Father-G:

Parallax Views and Inflection Points

On the night before starting my part of this post, I called my friend, Pornchai-Max in Thailand. He asked me how I feel about approaching a 30th year in prison for crimes that never took place. I spent much of that night rehearsing in my mind a long angry rant. How could intense anger not be part of the equation of how I face the injustice, corruption, a cover-up by police and prosecutors and lawyers and judges who heard and ruled on their corruption in secret? How could I feel anything but fury for the people who profited from it all? In the fictitious case against me alone, a million dollars changed hands.

If you have been following publications by Dorothy Rabinowitz, Claire Best, Ryan MacDonald, and a few others over recent years then you are already familiar with all this and there is no need for me to waste your time ranting about it. It would indeed be a waste of my time and yours.

I thank my friend, Max, for his part in this post, and in this story. He and our editor, Dilia E. Rodríguez, have conspired to point me toward a parallax view. That’s a scientific term for what happens when an event or series of events is observed from a new position or angle with insights that were limited or unavailable before. In his introduction, Max mentioned a post he wrote with Dilia’s help just after his return to Thailand in 2020. It is linked at the very end of his Introduction and again at the end of this post. It is very important, and it is my parallax view.

And in recent weeks in these pages, Dilia E. Rodríguez wrote “From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor.” It, too, presents a parallax view, a summary of these 30 painful years in this abomination of unjust imprisonment. Dilia’s conclusion was in part about the mystical connections between me and Max now living on opposite sides of the planet, and the introductions of two Patron Saints into our world. Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe are inflection points in both our lives in and beyond these stone walls.

In science and history, an inflection point is a point at which, usually only in hindsight, an event becomes pivotal, and, once experienced, all perceptions about it change. When I could bring myself, through grace, to look beyond my fury over wrongful imprisonment, our Patron Saints became inflection points and the powers that bind us. Even my language describing this needs a background explanation. To “look beyond my fury over wrongful imprisonment” recalls vividly another “inflection point” that occurred in a dream.

I know I risk sounding a little pretentious here, but in that dream I was instructed by a nighttime visitor on October 2, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, to “look beyond the prison lights,” and when I did, my eyes were opened. I hope to return to this in a week or so in these pages when I write about the Great Patron of Justice, Saint Michael the Archangel.

Prison is not a good place. Let me put that differently. Prison is not a place where much good happens. But what good DOES happen in prison is often spectacular and it accomplishes spectacular things. One could easily dismiss those things as mere coincidence. I did just that for a long time. But a steady stream of graceful events in a place where grace seems otherwise to be entirely absent brings us back to seeing the ordinary as extraordinary. Saint Paul described such a place permeated by the light of faith: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

Convergence : St Maximilian Kolbe Lets Himself In

In my twelfth year of priesthood, I was convicted in a sham trial after refusing multiple plea deals to serve only a year or two in prison. My refusals were met with fury by Judge Arthur Brennan who ridiculed and mocked me before imposing on me a sentence that would live longer than I would live.

The numbers are important. In my twelfth year of priesthood I went to prison, and in my twelfth year in prison, I came as close as I ever had or ever will to despair. The year was 2006. The series of “accidents” leading up to this point are, in hindsight, astonishing. From seemingly out of nowhere, I was contacted by a priest who arranged with this prison’s Catholic chaplain, a deacon, to visit me, though I never understood why. In the previous 12 years, not a single priest had ventured behind these prison walls. Father James McCurry is a Conventual Franciscan priest who said only vaguely that he heard or read about me somewhere and felt compelled to reach out (or in) to me.

In the prison visiting room, his first words after shaking my hand were, “Have you ever heard of St. Maximilian Kolbe?” Fr McCurry told me that he had been the Vice Postulator for the cause of sainthood leading up to St. Maximilian’s canonization in Rome in 1982, the year I was ordained. On the twelfth anniversary of that canonization, and my ordination, Father McCurry felt compelled to visit me. The visit had to be brief.

The year was 2006. One week later, I received in the mail a letter from Father McCurry along with something that I should not have received. It was a laminated holy card depicting Maximilian in both his prison garb from Auschwitz and his Franciscan habit. I should not have received it because laminated cards had been strictly banned for security reasons then. This one, however, mysteriously made its way from the prison mail room to my cell. I was mesmerized by the image on the card. On the backside was “A Prisoner’s Prayer to St. Maximilian Kolbe.” It was about despair.

I taped the card to the top of the battered steel mirror in my cell. It was December 23, 2006. Then I realized with near despair that on that very day, I was a priest in prison one day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. I was losing myself. There is nothing here that supports in any way an identity of priesthood. The image on the mirror impacted me greatly, and painfully. It was three years before Beyond These Stone Walls would begin with my first post, “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror.”

Months earlier, unknown to me at that time, another prisoner was dragged in chains out of years in solitary confinement in a Maine prison and shipped against his will to New Hampshire. After several weeks in “the hole” in high security housing, he arrived on the pod where I live. Walking around the pod to stake out his new turf, a very tough-looking Thai fighter stuck his head in my cell door. Upon seeing the image of Maximilian on my mirror, he stared at it for a time, and then he stared at me asking, “Is this you?”

This man had been through a lot, and was a little rough around the edges. The only part of that he might disagree with today is “a little.” He wore the wounds life had inflicted on him like a shield of armor to keep everyone else away. Everything about him spoke “dangerous,” and indeed he was at times. He had a short fuse, and that kept everyone else at a safe distance — except me.

We somehow became friends. He paid rapturous attention to the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s life and especially how his earthly life ended as he gave it over to the Nazis, his false accusers, to spare the life of a despairing young man. My inflection point with Saint Maximilian was this: The image on my mirror was not about all that I had lost. It was about all that I was called to become. Like Maximilian, I could not change my prison. Not one bit. I could only place it in service to my priesthood.

Saint Maximilian, in turn, led both Max and me to the Immaculata. Through his Divine Mercy Sunday conversion and his consecration to the Lord through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pornchai Moontri took the name Maximilian. Like many in Sacred Scripture, a new name also came with a new life.

Over at our Voices from Beyond section this week, we are featuring “Mary is at Work Here” by Felix Carroll first published in Marian Helper magazine (Spring 2014). It tells the story of Mary, Maximilian, Pornchai-Max, and me, and the wonder of Divine Mercy we embraced as it also embraced us.

Out of Time and Space, Padre Pio

Our second inflection point — the point at which our spiritual fortunes changed — was Saint Padre Pio who is venerated in the Church calendar on the same date on which I was wrongly convicted and sent to prison. It is also the date Padre Pio died. This was briefly alluded to by Max in his part of this post, but I would like to expand on it a bit because I know that Max will be reading this from half a world away.

Because of the connection between Padre Pio and the date of my imprisonment, I decided to write a post about this mysterious saint. Padre Pio died in 1968 when I was fifteen years old and had just begun my return to a long neglected Catholic identity. I today cannot articulate what exactly called me to that change in such a tumultuous time as 1968. I wrote a story about the calumny and false witness Padre Pio suffered in his priesthood. It was that which I could initially most connect with. The post was titled, “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial.” It was published in the early days of this blog.

After I wrote it, I received a rather frantic letter from the late Pierre Matthews in Belgium. Pierre learned about me from a lengthy 2005 article by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal. He and I exchanged several letters back in the few years after those articles first appeared in 2005. Pierre was alarmed about my Padre Pio post. He urgently wanted me to know that he had a personal encounter with Padre Pio when he was 15 years old.

Like many in Europe at that time, Pierre’s father had sent him to a boarding school. The school was sponsoring a train trip to a few points in Italy. When Pierre’s father learned of this, he sent Pierre a letter instructing him to take a train to a place called San Giovanni Rotondo, and go to a Capuchin Friary. Pierre was instructed to ask for a blessing from Padre Pio.

Pierre was skeptical, but did as his father asked. He took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo, and rang the bell. A friar answered the door and led young, nervous Pierre to a foyer. Pierre asked to see Padre Pio. “Impossibile!” the friar snapped back. He gave Pierre a prayer card and started to usher him back toward the door.

Just then, from a wide staircase leading to the foyer, a bearded Capuchin with bandaged hands came slowly down the stairs with eyes focused on Pierre. Padre Pio approached him while the astonished friar at the door whispered in Italian, “Do not touch his hands.” Padre Pio then placed his bandaged hands on Pierre’s head and spoke a blessing, making the Sign of the Cross.

Sixty years later, when Pierre read at Beyond These Stone Walls that Pornchai Moontri had decided to become Catholic and would enter the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, Pierre pleaded with me to ask Pornchai to allow him to act as Godfather to sponsor his reception into the Church. Then, again, things that should not have happened did happen. Pierre could not attend a Baptism in the prison chapel so I acted as proxy. But he could arrange to visit either me or Max in the prison visiting room a few days before. Under the rules, he could be on the visiting list of only one of us. That rule was impenetrable, firmly embedded in stone.

“The worst they can say is no,” Pornchai said. So I wrote to the prison warden and explained the details. The request came back miraculously just in time. It was approved that Mr. Matthews could visit with both of us on the same day, but separately. This was, and still is, unheard of. Pierre told us both the story I told above — the story of his strange encounter with Padre Pio many years earlier.

In his visit with me, 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.

I do not fully understand the mystery of what happened to the angry priest who pondered prison and the fate of his priesthood, or the angry young man who pondered the deep wounds life had inflicted upon his body, mind and spirit. We are both still here, and on opposite sides of the planet now, but we are both also changed. As I am typing this, a friend sent me a letter with a brief prayer at the top. It is a parody of the Serenity Prayer, and it could now be the prayer of my priesthood:

“God, grant me
Serenity to accept the people
I cannot change,
Courage to change
the only one I can, and the
Wisdom to know
that it’s me!”

Thank you for reading these stories of our lives. May the Lord Bless you always, and keep you.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We hope you will subscribe if you haven’t already. It’s free, and we will usually haunt your Inbox only once per week. You might also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

‘Mary Is at Work Here’ — a Marian Helper presentation

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

The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

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

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor

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.”

September 11, 2001, Freedom, Terrorism and Kamala Harris

The world was a dangerous place on September 11, 2001 and is now even more so. Freedom is shaken by terrorism and terrorism neither fears nor respects complacent joy.

September 11, 2024 by Fr Gordon J. MacRae

Eleanor Hodgman Porter was born in Littleton, New Hampshire in 1868. She wrote several novels with little notice, but at the start of World War One she wrote a blockbuster, Pollyanna. It became a world-wide bestseller that commonly came to be known as the Glad Book. It sparked a cultural phenomenon. It was about a girl, Pollyanna, whose ebullient personality met every evil and setback with a sense of glee and giddy happiness.

In the dismal years after World War I, “Glad Clubs” were inspired by it to reprogram young people into a perpetually happy state of mind no matter what ill confronted them. By the start of World War II, according to one reviewer, readers tired of Pollyanna’s laughing ‘hysterically,’ breathing ‘rapturously,’ and smiling ‘eagerly’ in the face of grave concern.

I watched much of the recent Democratic National Convention and was intrigued by it. I thought of Pollyanna all the way through it. It struck me as a half-time show in a Super Bowl game which had no connection to the battle at hand except to entertain. A state of perpetual joy cannot possibly reflect the realities of the dangerous world in which we live. Pollyanna and the Glad Book have mercifully vanished from our culture.

At Christmas in 1985, a young parishioner gifted me with a copy of Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October. I was put off by its sheer volume and had no time to read it then. So I stuck it on a shelf in my parish office where it remained for months. Every time I saw the high school kid who gave it to me he asked me if I had read it yet. “You have to,” the young prophet insisted.

Then I read that President Ronald Reagan was reading that same book and described it as “unputdownable.” Many years and thousands of pages of Tom Clancy novels later, I wrote a tribute to the book and its author on the occasion of his untimely death in 2013. It was “Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and the Hunt for Red October.”

Most of my reading is done — even now — at the end of a busy day while lying flat on my back in bed with a book light. At this writing, nearly four decades after that first Clancy novel, I have devoured some 17,000 pages of his techno-thriller in the widely acclaimed “Jack Ryan” series. As time went on they got ever longer and more detailed, but I found each to be fascinating.

Clancy did a lot of research to bring realism to his novels. At times he would introduce a high tech fighter jet, for example, and devote 20 pages analyzing its technology. That drove some readers away, but it was what I loved most about his books. I made the big mistake once of referring to Clancy’s novels as “guy books.” Whoa, did I ever receive a thrashing from his many “non-guy” readers!

In 1994, I devoured 900 pages of Debt of Honor, Clancy’s eighth novel in the series. More than once, the big hardcover nearly broke my nose as I would read in bed until I could stay awake no longer. Then I would drop the book on my face.

By then, Jack Ryan had progressed through a distinguished and exciting career in the Central Intelligence Agency as a brilliant analyst and eventually as National Security Advisor. The riveting Debt of Honor ended with a spellbinding scene in Washington, DC as a Korean Airlines passenger jet was hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists and flown at high speed by suicide bombers into the United States Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress wiping out most of the sitting U.S. government just as a new president was being sworn in.

History Repeats

Seven years later, on September 11, 2001, I relived that same scene with an intense sensation of déjà vu. Right before my eyes on national television, I watched live as the terrorist assault that came to be referred to simply as “9/11” unfolded before a shocked and unprepared free world. My first thought was to wonder whether the Clancy novel might have sparked such a framework of real terror into the minds of al Qaeda, but there was no such connection. I wrote of that day, its aftermath, and its challenges for the free world in “The Despair of Towers Falling, the Courage of Men Rising.”

Twenty-three years have now passed since that day, but everyone who was alive then, and at or near the age of reason, remembers it vividly. It became one of those iconic events of history in which everyone recalls not only the terror, but also a clear snapshot of where we were and what we were doing as that event unfolded. Tom Clancy instilled in me a high regard for history as a lens to the present. I have since digested 23 of Tom Clancy’s novels about foreign policy, its impact on history, or history’s impact on it.

It was a sequel to The Hunt for Red October that first drew me to the necessity of seeing the present with eyes that have gazed upon the past. September 11, 2001 did not happen in a vacuum. Clancy’s sequel, Cardinal of the Kremlin (Putnam, 1988) opened my eyes about Afghanistan. It was set toward the end of the Soviet Union’s decade-long occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and the struggle of the Afghan people to be rid of that occupying force. The Taliban were never mentioned there, nor were al Qaeda, Islamic State, or ISIS-K. None of them existed yet, but the seeds of all of them were firmly planted and flourishing in Afghanistan as a result of that decade and all that followed. It is important to know this.

On Christmas Day, 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. They quickly won control of the capital, Kabul, and other important cities. The Soviets executed the Afghan political leader and installed in his place a puppet government led by a faction more amenable to Soviet control. Wide rejection of that government by the Afghan people led to civil war. A Saudi Arabian multimillionaire named Osama bin Laden established a training camp in the mountains of Afghanistan for rebels fighting the Soviet forces.

The 1980s also saw increased friction between the United States and the Soviet Union resulting from the 1979 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. President Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, greatly increased American military capabilities. The Soviets viewed him as a formidable foe committed to subverting the Soviet system. In his 1985 State of the Union address, President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” and vowed to root out and destroy any political movements that supported it.

In the mid-l980s, resistance to the Communist government and the Soviet invaders grew throughout Afghanistan. Some ninety regions in the country were commanded by guerrilla leaders who called themselves “mujahideen,” meaning “Muslim holy warriors.” The mujahideen resented the Soviet presence and its puppet government. By the mid-1980s the U.S. was spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to aid these Afghan rebels based in Pakistan in a war to expel the Soviet occupation which took the lives of some 1.3 million Afghanis in their struggle.

Then in 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan leaving in their wake a leadership vacuum in a country wracked by civil war. From a distance over the decade to follow, the United States continued to provide funds and weapons to the mujahideen rebels. Afghanistan was now without solidifying leadership, and nature abhors a vacuum.

The Taliban

From the rubble of war, chaos, and a rudderless nation, the Taliban were born. The Taliban movement was created in 1994 in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar by Mohammed Omar, a senior Muslim cleric (called a mullah) . The name, “Taliban” simply means “student.” It refers to the movement’s roots in the fundamentalist Islamic religious schools in Pakistan. For many youth in this war-torn nation, religious indoctrination was the only education they received.

Even that limited education was available only to young men. As the Taliban rose to power in 1994 imposing strict Islamic fundamentalism on the nation, secondary schools for girls were closed and girls were barred from receiving any education beyond a grade school level. Music and dancing were banned outright. Public works of art were destroyed. I once wrote in these pages of an infamous example. In 2001, just as Osama bin Laden was deep into a plot against the United States, the Taliban drew attention away by blowing up a 180 foot stone statue of Buddha that had been carved into an Afghan mountainside 1500 years earlier.

Many of the Taliban laws alarmed human rights groups and provoked worldwide condemnation. The Taliban strictly enforced ancient customs of purdah, the forced separation of men and women in public. Men were required to grow full beards. Those who did not comply, or could not, were subjected to public beatings. Women were required to be covered entirely from head to toe in burkas while in public view. Those who violated this were often beaten or executed on the spot by Taliban religious police. Women were also forbidden from working outside the home. With thousands of men lost to war, many widows and orphans lived in dire poverty.

As the Taliban movement grew in size and strength, it recruited heavily from the mujahideen, the anti-Soviet freedom fighters who were funded and armed in part by the United States. The Taliban gave a new national identity to the thousands of war orphans who were educated in only two fields of study: strict fundamentalist Islamic interpretation of the Quran, and war. The young men of Afghanistan became radicalized.

The Rise of Al Qaeda

Most other countries did not recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government, thus further isolating Afghanistan and its people from oversight and connection in the world community. From their pinnacle of power, the Taliban provided safe harbor to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, formed in 1980s Afghanistan to help repel the Soviet invasion and incite a global holy war called, in Arabic, a jihad. The term, al Qaeda is Arabic for “base camp.” For its founder and adherents, it would become the base from which worldwide Islamic revolution and domination would be launched. We entered Afghanistan after 9/11 for that reason. It had become the host and incubator for terrorist actions against the United States. When we withdrew suddenly in 2021 we left behind that incubator, still festering with hatred from Islamic extremists.

Over the course of the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda trained, equipped, and financed 50,000 mujahideen warriors from 50 countries. Saudi Arabian nationals comprised more than fifty percent of the recruits. Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam motivated many young men to come to the defense of Afghanistan and the Muslim world against Western “infidel” influences.

When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to his original goal for al Qaeda: to overthrow Muslim or Arab regimes that he considered too weak and tolerant of Western influence. Bin Laden envisioned replacing these regimes with a single Muslim empire organized around Islamic “Sharia” law. He targeted the United States and other Western nations because he saw them as obstacles to his cause by becoming political allies with Muslim nations he considered to be corrupt.

From 1991 to 1996, with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, bin Laden quietly built al Qaeda into a formidable international terrorist network with cells and operations in 45 countries. Training camps were established in Sudan, and by 1992 most of al Qaeda’s operations were relocated there. From that base, attacks on U.S. troops and U.S. interests were launched in Yemen and Somalia and at a joint U.S.-Saudi military training base in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was especially angered by the mere existence of that base.

Bowing to pressure from the Saudi and U.S. governments, al Qaeda and bin Laden were expelled from Sudan in 1996 and returned to Afghanistan where they were free to plot. He formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Taliban while plans for a direct assault on the United States took shape. The September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed over 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil, thus came together while the world was not watching.

In response, the United States declared war on terrorism, the first declaration of war against a concept instead of a country. While Taliban leaders rejected U.S. demands to surrender bin Laden, the U.S. began aerial bombings of terrorist training camps and Taliban military positions in October, 2001. Ground troops of the Northern Rebel Alliance in Afghanistan rebelled and maintained a front-line offensive against Taliban forces with help in the form of funds and weapons from the United States.

Al Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon began on September 11, but it was not September 11, 2001. This is where failures of national intelligence and readiness are crucial factors. The September 11 date for terrorist assaults on the United States was not random. For extremists in the Muslim world, the next day, September 12, was a day of infamy, a day of reckoning for a 17th Century Islamic assault on Europe.

The Muslim command captured and slaughtered 30,000 hostages. This caused Polish King Jan Sobieski to meet the assault with the largest volunteer infantry army ever assembled. The Muslim push for control of Eastern Europe was stopped in its tracks on September 12, 1683. What we call 9/11 was the result of an Islamic grudge held for over 300 years.

Jesus said (Luke 10:3) “Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” Lambs in the midst of wolves are ever vigilant, and they count on a shepherd who will not lead them into slaughter. The last four years have seen a disastrous policy that left the U.S. southern border open with little oversight. I would want my country to welcome refugees and care for them. That is clearly called for in the Gospel. But among the nearly 11 million who have crossed that border undetected are al Qaeda and ISIS-K operatives lying in wait to unleash their terror upon the United States. In a world at the cusp of war, the threats have never been more dire.

As much as we might like Pollyanna, and revel in her smile, are we really prepared to make her Commander in Chief of U.S. Armed Forces?

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

Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and the Hunt for Red October

The Despair of Towers Falling, the Courage of Men Rising

No Child Left Behind — Except in Afghanistan

Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age

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 First and Last Labor Day Pandemic Games

Long holiday weekends have always been a scourge behind prison walls, but a Covid shutdown over Labor Day 2020 spawned the Corn Hole Pandemic Games. Guess who won …

August 31, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

In the image above, Max Moontri and friends tackle the construction of Corn Hole stations for the Labor Day Pandemic Games in September 2020.

Note: Over fifteen years in the life of this blog, a post before the long Labor Day weekend has always been a challenge to write — not least because few people really want to read it. Any post on Labor Day competes with the end of summer, a last day at the beach, or the annual back-to-school frenzy. The Labor Day weekend of 2020 was a special challenge for your friends behind these walls, so I decided to revisit a post first published back then. Though only four years ago, it was the week a global pandemic descended on us all to change the world, and this prison world especially.

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The origin of Labor Day is attributed to Peter J. McGuire, a New York carpenter and union leader who lobbied for a holiday to honor workers in 1882. He chose the first Monday in September to give workers a holiday between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. The first Labor Day observance was held with a parade in New York City on September 5, 1882. Thousands of workers marched from City Hall to Union Square, and then gathered in Central Park for speeches and family picnics.

In 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed into law a bill to make Labor Day a federal holiday. That same year, railway workers in Pullman, Illinois went on strike to protest wage cuts. President Cleveland sent federal troops to end it. Some strikers were killed and their leaders jailed. So Congress and the President hoped a new holiday might pacify the union rank and file. A holiday contrived to calm the masses, however, has little such effect in prison.

In 2020, at the outset of the Covid pandemic, social distancing and other precautions was a real challenge in an overcrowded prison. Life here was already in a state of perpetual pandemic anxiety and lockdown with some prisoners living eight to a cell or in overcrowded dormitory settings. So a holiday weekend here is quite different from what you may experience. Once it became clear that all activities here would cease operation during the pandemic — including all visits, programs, religious services, all but essential employment, library and recreational access, and access to all but essential work sites — some ingenuity was required to keep an already agitated population from descending into Covid-induced chaos.

So in stepped the current prison warden with a dubious plan. She asked my friend, Pornchai “Max” Moontri and a few other woodcraft workers to design and build six “Corn Hole” stations for each of the three medium security prison units here. Each station consists of a pair of wooden platforms, each about 48 by 24 inches, with retractable legs on one end to elevate the platform 30 degrees off the ground. A 6 inch-hole was cut into the middle of the higher end of each platform. In the scene above, Max Moontri and a few of our woodworking friends were hard at work on the project.

Corn Hole? … Really?

Max showed me the design his crew came up with. Each Corn Hole unit would be placed 25-feet away from its mate. Contestants would then toss one-pound sewn cloth sacks of dry corn the 25-foot distance with a goal of getting them through the hole. I scoffed at this plan: “Give me a break!” I said. “No one will want to play this!”

Most prisoners here are under age 30 and grew up staring at video games. I dismissed Corn Hole as a monumental bust, but I went along and helped out anyway. Three sets of two Corn Hole units each were set up in the asphalt-covered prison yard in each of the three housing units here. In the one we lived in, most of the nearly 300 prisoners had already been subjected to weeks locked into the unit with no access to activities beyond its menacing high walls.

Younger prisoners approached the Corn Hole stations cautiously at first, many smirking just as I had predicted. Some wondered what their friends might think of them if they were seen actually trying it. A few did, and discovered that landing the one-pound sack in a 6-inch hole 25 feet away was a lot harder than it looked. Then, as though right on cue, local news carried a segment about the Boston Red Sox having to postpone playoff games due to Covid. One of the Red Sox pitchers had set up in his yard something identical to Pornchai’s Corn Hole units and was videoed trying to land his fast ball through the hole from 25 feet away. That was all it took. Competition for the Pandemic World Series of Corn Hole was on!

This went on for an entire week leading up to Labor Day, with teams taking turns practicing all day long. Max patiently explained the game to me. Each player was given four one-pound red or black cloth-covered sacks. The woodworking crew careful measured out the dried corn for each then meticulously weighed and sewed the sacks.

A player would get one point for landing the sack on the platform 25 feet away. However, an opposing player could steal the point by knocking the other players’ sacks off the platform with some of his own. Getting the sacks through the hole was much more difficult, and worth three points each. On the Sunday afternoon before Labor Day, Max dragged me out there for some practice. Having shown me all the intricate maneuvers for landing a sack near or in the hole, my first throw caught the corner of my shirt and went straight up. It smacked Max on the head on its way back down. He just rolled his eyes and patiently told me that we are supposed to throw the sacks at the platform and not at each other.

By then, news that I had condescended to play Corn Hole spread throughout the entire building. Picture the South Unit as a giant motel with four floors, each with a long railed concrete walkway. Along the levels of walkways are doors to individual pods each housing 24 men in small 60-square-foot rooms around its interior perimeter. From our vantage point from the courtyard down below, men were pouring out those doors like the mobs at Nero’s Circus Maximus in ancient Rome to watch me and Pornchai introduce the fine art of Corn Hole to gladiator school. To raucous cheers from the abhorring crowd, I actually managed to score a point with my very first throw. My second throw landed nicely on a platform near the hole, but it was the platform for the game underway next to us. I was mortified!

On Labor Day, a Corn Hole Tournament was underway with players vying for wins in 2-out-3 game sessions. One by one over the day players were eliminated only to become critical spectators. By late in the afternoon on Labor Day, only two finalists were left: Max Moontri and one of our friends, Jeff. I was selected by wide acclaim to be scorekeeper because no one trusted anyone else to do it. The competition rose to a frenzy. Dozens of raucous spectators lined the court while a hundred other watched, with cheers and catcalls, from the walkways above.

Since I was the scorekeeper, and the roommate of one of the contestants, I had a box seat just feet away from the action. The tension was brutal. Max lost the first game. Then he won the second. The third game ended in a tie (no pun intended). So now we were in Corn Hole Overtime Play and I was at the edge of my seat in the heat of nerve-wracking competition. The finalists were both very good and almost evenly matched. Every throw was met with a chorus of cheers or groans from the multitude.

The game was for 21 points. In the final playoff game, Max was losing 20 to 16. Jeff was one point away from the Grand Championship when Max, with a single masterful throw eliminated every sack Jeff had positioned around the hole on the platform. The crowd became silent as Max tossed his final sack high in the air. It went through the hole 25 feet away without even touching the wood for a decisive and spectacular win.

Before a cheering and adoring crowd, Max Moontri became the first (and last) Prison Corn Hole Pandemic Games Champion. I was beaming with pride!

But then, as the crowd calmed down, I advised Max against adding “Corn Hole Pandemic Games Champion” to his resume. Some things are just better left unsaid.

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Epilogue

The above story took place on Labor Day, September 7, 2020. On the next day, September 8, after 30 years in prison since age 18 and fifteen years as my roommate, Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed up to take Max away for forced deportation to his native Thailand which he had not seen since he was taken from there at age 11. The rest is not a feel-good Labor Day story, but it does have a somewhat hopeful and happy ending. You can read both the story and its continuation in the following posts (If you don’t have time to read all three, we especially urge you to read number 3.):

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

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.”