“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

— Deacon David Jones

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/22/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/22/25

Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

During his papacy, Pope Francis called upon the Church to evangelize with a moral compass instead of a moral hammer, and to do so in the language of angels. 

During his papacy, Pope Francis called upon the Church to evangelize with a moral compass instead of a moral hammer, and to do so in the language of angels. 

April 21, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Note from Father MacRae: Our Holy Father Pope Francis visited a prison on Holy Thursday, he met with Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday, and then he left this life at age 88 early in the morning on the day after Easter 2025. I admit that I was somewhat irked by his leadership, especially in his suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, which seemed to alienate some of the more faithful among us. However, I have never walked a single step in his shoes. I write here about what I most admired and most want to remember about Pope Francis.

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There are those among us who would break the compass with the hammer, but this Pope knew that what the world needs from us and our faith is a compass, not a hammer. This post started off as a reflection on the Church’s belief in angels in light of Pope Francis’ consecration of Vatican City to St Michael the Archangel, but Pope Francis himself hijacked my topic. This is a strange way to begin a story of angels, but it is the beginning that came to me.

A well known Gospel reading, Saint Luke’s account of the Parable of the Prodigal Son has been emphasized throughout the Pontificate of Pope Francis. I think it should better be called, “The Challenge to the Son Who Never Left.” The father in the well-known parable is, of course, terribly disappointed with the choices of his younger son who left his father’s side to go squander his life and his inheritance on “dissolute living.” Losing all, reduced to life as a servant of the swine, he finally comes to his senses. He decides to venture home to save himself by striking a deal with his father: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He will return a servant and not a son. He plans to negotiate a plea deal but they are seldom just. I know all about the lure of plea deals.

His father is not having it, however. Overjoyed at the sight of his broken son, he ignores the well-rehearsed plea deal and restores his son to his home and his patronage with great celebration. Pope Francis spoke of this prodigal parable during the Angelus in Saint Peter’s Square saying, “Here is the entire Gospel! Here!”

Meanwhile, the older son — the one who never left and was always faithful — was not so keen about his father’s embrace of his brother home from wandering “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden.” It is an attitude his father felt obliged to challenge, and in the parable, the greater challenge is the one issued to this son. Note the powerful symbolism: this son is standing outside his father’s house as he issues his protest against mercy toward his brother. This is an important parable for the story of Divine Mercy, and it is reflected throughout the story of God that encompasses our Sacred Scripture.

“A Piece of Life’s Puzzle That Doesn’t Fit”

But first I must tell you how much I thought of my friend, Michael as I read the parable of The Prodigal Son and his Older Brother. At age 21, Michael is starting his third year in prison, and it seems a self-fulfilling prophesy for him. His father is in prison in some other state and they lost contact years ago. Prison is like the gift that keeps on giving. The sons of prisoners are 85 percent more likely than anyone else to one day go to prison, a reality I wrote of in a post about fathers and sons, “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.”

Michael has also not seen or heard from his mother in over a decade. He was virtually homeless when he graduated from high school — an amazing accomplishment — but most of the rest of his young life has been squandered in dissolute living. I am not sure there was a point at which he actually chose that. There was just no one to stop him.

A year or so ago, Michael shattered a collarbone in several places, and it was never treated. The bone fragments have left him contorted, deformed, and in pain. He is on a waiting list for surgery to repair that mess, but there is no line to stand in to repair a shattered life. Michael’s life is in ruins, and he has little hope for anything so out of his reach as redemption.

Meanwhile, some of my other friends are not so keen on me associating with someone like Michael. This seems especially so of some of my devoutly Catholic friends. They would prefer that I be more like the priest and Levite of another famous Gospel parable and simply step over Michael left beaten by life on the side of the road. The fact that Michael reaches out to me and not one of the many street gangs that proliferate in prison says something important about him — something to which my friends should listen.

With a little help from Pornchai Moontri, while he was here with me, I managed to put a halt to the verbal harassment and disdain Michael endured in prison. Someone always has to be everyone else’s scapegoat in a place like this, and it is usually the most spiritually wounded among us. Now Michael is left alone, and is grateful for that. When asked about God, he says he started life as a Catholic, but it did not last long. “I’m just a piece of that puzzle that doesn’t fit,” he said. I am just not ready to hand Michael over to the darkness.

Pope Francis and That Older Brother

What is the point of saving only the already saved? Pope Francis has recently asked this and some other very hard questions. He seems determined that we are not to be a self-referential Church, a Church that sees membership not as food for the journey, but as the reward for arriving. The news media was all abuzz again recently over comments by Pope Francis about the face of Catholicism presented to a world on the sidelines of redemption.

Some time ago, Pope Francis spoke over 12,000 words reduced to less than 50 in the news media. What Pope Francis said comes down to this: The Catholic Church and the faith we present to the world must not be reduced to a litany of what we oppose — or are supposed to oppose. In the New Evangelization with which this Pope is tasked, the Church must stand as a moral compass and guide, and not a moral hammer. His task is to challenge his spiritual sons and daughters who are alienated from faith, but his more daunting challenge is to the rest of us.

FOX News commentator, Jonathan Morris called the Pope’s words “a new emphasis on mercy, kindness, justice, and truth,” and it is an emphasis that does not change or redefine any moral truths for which the Church stands fast. This faith has behind it a magisterial, two-millennia-old compendium of salvific truths that must not be shrunk in our public voice simply to a list of what we are not, a judgment on the ills we perceive in the world that is not us. For Pope Francis, if that is the face of our Catholic faith that we present to a dying world then our faith may die with it.

It did not take long for a few Catholic bloggers to raise the alarm when Pope Francis suggested that we not limit our Catholic voice to our opposition to abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage. One Catholic blogger who probably should have taken that day off posted in response, “We Don’t Need a Conformist Church.” I think that Pope Francis — who no one would ever characterize as being a conformist Pope — sees that a line can be crossed in our counter-cultural positions that risks making Catholicism appear exclusive. This same tendency has shattered the mainstream Protestant denominations, fosters anti-Catholic sentiment, and leaves many spiritually wounded souls on the other side of a line drawn in the sand. For Pope Francis, it is the Mission of the Church to lead those souls home, not to leave them homeless and adrift.

Pope Francis has not diluted or set aside one sentence of the Church’s moral teaching. Most of the mainstream media — even much of the Catholic press — failed to report on his comments made just one day after his call to reflect a positive and merciful Church. On September 20, 2013 the Vatican Information Service blog published the following:

“Today the Pope met with members of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and Catholic Gynecologists. Francis spoke of the ‘throw-away culture that leads to the elimination of human beings, especially those who are physically and socially weakest. Our response to this mentality is a “yes” to life, decisive and without hesitation. The first right of the human person is his life. He has other goods and some are precious, but this one fundamental right is the condition for all others….’

“Reiterating that in recent times, human life in its entirety has become a priority for the Magisterium of the Church, the Pope… asked those present to ‘bear witness to and disseminate a culture of life…and not only as a matter of faith but as a matter of reason and science, there is no human life more sacred than another; there is no human life qualitatively more meaningful than another.’”

— Pope Francis, September 20, 2013

To Speak with the Tongues of Men and of Angels

In a reflection of mine when Pope Francis consecrated Vatican City to Saint Michael the Archangel, I mentioned some media taunts that this Pope sometimes seems “obsessed with Satan and the demonic.” It is nonsense, of course. If you listen to him, he really emphasizes far more the human capacity for good, and how that good must respond to a suffering humanity by carrying for the world not only truth, but both truth and light. When I began to reflect while writing a post about angelic witness, I was faced with a very surprising mathematical equation that lends authority to the Church Pope Francis wants to present to the world.

In the entire canon of Jewish and Christian Sacred Scripture — our Old and New Testament — there are 117 references to the words “devil” (35), “demon” (28), and the name of Satan (54). In the same canon of Scripture, there are exactly four times that many — 468 — references to the words “angel” or “angels” (326), the angelic orders such as archangel, cherubim, seraphim (114), and the named angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael (28). The math alone tells a simple story. The ratio of angels to demons in the Story of God upon which our faith is built is exactly four to one. These are not bad odds for a Pope called upon to rebuild the face of the Church in the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi.

In regard to those odds, Satan is referenced 54 times in the canon of Scripture while God vastly overshadows him by being named 4,773 times. There is no question of whose story is being told. It is a story of a people called out of darkness, delivered from slavery to sin, and redeemed at a very great price.

In its telling, this Holy Father, like the angelic witnesses to the deeds of God before him, wants to proclaim a salvific truth at the heart of the Gospel, a truth that the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother needed to hear: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

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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.”

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/16/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/16/25

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

“This is the night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.”

“This is the night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.”

Holy Week 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

You might readily see the irony of my invoking the haunting passage above. It is from the Exultet, that wondrous proclamation of Salvation History as the Paschal Candle is blessed at the doors of the church in the liturgy for the Easter Vigil. The imagery of Christ breaking the prison bars of death may understandably have deep meaning for me. The excerpt recalls a scene from Holy Week that I once wrote about in “To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell.”

That post tells the story referenced in the Second Letter of Saint Peter, about what happened to Jesus on what we now call Holy Saturday, that period of darkness between the Cross and the Resurrection. And I just now realized, looking back at that post from several years ago, that I cited that same passage from the Exultet in its opening.

Back in February 2025, I wrote a post entitled “On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free.” It mentioned my recent acquisition of the much anticipated Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testament edited by Dr. Scott Hahn. That post also referred to a recent and surprising resurgence of biblical interest throughout the free world. I learned of that explosion of interest when Ignatius Press placed me on a waiting list for that particular bible which is now in its fourth or fifth printing. I have been lugging the weighty hardcover tome, consisting of 2,314 pages, around with me for two months at this writing. I don’t seem to be able to part with it for long. It is a treasure trove of biblical insight and truth, filled not only with readable and scholarly translations of Sacred Scripture, but also with scholars’ notes on the biblical texts. From a historical perspective it draws clear connections between the Old and New Testaments. From a spiritual perspective it is as though a lamp has been relit opening for me, and hopefully also for you, a world of deeper meaning embedded within the texts. As I mentioned in a previous post, my goal has been two-fold: to educate, or rather reeducate myself on the story of God and us, and to avoid dropping the very heavy book on my foot in the process.

The interpretation of a religious text is a study called exegesis. It seeks to convey and understand both the literal and spiritual sense of biblical truths. Neither should be sacrificed in pursuit of the other. I have often described it this way: There is a story on its surface, which is true, and a far greater story in its depths which points to even greater truths. One way in which the spiritual truth of Scripture is expressed is in allegory. Jesus told many allegorical accounts in parables. Most readers are clear that the truth in these precious accounts is in the lesson they convey. Two of the most famous examples are the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” and the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.” You know these stories well, and they need no explanation.

Most of Sacred Scripture is not conveyed in parable form, but as a historical narrative. Allegory is still very much a part of that narrative, and we are cheating our understanding of a text when we suppress its allegorical content. We should start by accepting both truths: the truth of the historical content of Scripture and the equal and sometimes even greater truth in its allegorical content. In this sense allegory refers to a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or religious one. In the 19th and 20th centuries, fundamentalist Scripture scholars stripped allegory from their interpretations of the text, but at great cost. More modern scholars have restored it. One of them has been Dr. Scott Hahn.

When I cited an excerpt from the Exultet Proclamation from the Easter Vigil liturgy as I opened this post, I later realized that the Second Reading for the Easter Vigil Mass is one that I have pondered for a very long time. It is from Genesis 22:1-19, the story of God calling upon Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son. “So momentous is this event in its outcome,” wrote Scott Hahn, “that it stands as one of the defining moments of Salvation History.” I have set out to study the great depths of this account and they are astonishing.

Abraham and Isaac

Isaac is a Hebrew name, of course, and it means “He laughs.” It has its origin in Genesis 17:16-17: “ ‘I will bless (Sarah) and moreover I will give you a son by her; I will bless her and she shall be the mother of nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ ”

Abraham apparently gave little thought to the wisdom of falling to the ground and laughing at God. The fact that he “said it to himself” is no guarantee that God would not have heard it loud and clear. And so it was that the Word of God came to give the son of Abraham and Sarah the name “Isaac,” which means “He laughs.”

Abraham was apparently not the only one laughing. God seemed to get a chuckle out of it as well.

As the story progressed, the significance of Isaac’s birth was immediate. He was to be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Isaac was to be the bearer of the covenant into future generations: “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for him and his descendants after him” (Genesis 17:19). Then the drama of the Book of Genesis reaches its greatest intensity with the heart-wrenching story of God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice as a burnt offering his beloved son upon the heights of Mount Moriah. Had Abraham shown anything less than heroic faith and obedience the grand narrative of the Bible would have developed very differently thereafter. Here is the Genesis account which became the Second Reading of our Easter Vigil liturgy.

From the Book of Genesis 22:1-18:

After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, “Take your son, your only begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and went to the place of which God had told him. … Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on the shoulders of his son to carry, and he took in his own hands the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. Isaac said to his father, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on your son or do anything to him for now I know that you have not withheld your only begotten son from me.” Abraham then lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. So Abraham went and took the lamb and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place YHWH YIR’EH, in Hebrew, “The Lord will see.”

It is from this very account that, twenty one centuries later, the Gospel of John (1:29) proclaims “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

I have always felt that this account in Genesis was a presage, a looking far ahead, to the sacrifice of Jesus upon Golgotha. It is allegorical in that sense. The account is true on its literal face but it is also true that it echoes the Greatest Story Ever Told which will come many centuries later. All the elements are there. The Second Book of Chronicles (3:1) identifies Moriah as the site upon which, nearly one thousand years later, Solomon would build the Jerusalem Temple, and Calvary, where the only begotten Son of God was crucified, is a hillock in the Moriah range. So for the Hebrew reader of the story of the Crucifixion, there is a powerful sense of déjà vu: the place, the mount, Abraham placing the wood for sacrifice upon the back of Isaac, and is not the ram caught by its horns in the thicket highly reminiscent of the Crown of Thorns? But we cannot reminisce backwards. This amazing account from Genesis is a mysterious example of the power of biblical inspiration. Only in the mind of God, in the time of Genesis, was the story of Christ evident.

From Sheol to the Kingdom of Heaven

In the Old Testament, “to die” meant to descend to Sheol. It was our final destination. To rise from the dead, therefore, meant to rise from Sheol, but no one ever did. The concept of Sheol being the “underworld” is a simple employment of the cosmology of ancient Judaism which understood the abode of God and the heavens as being above the Earth, and Sheol, the place of the dead, as below it. This is the source of our common understanding of Heaven and hell, but it omits a vast theological comprehension of the death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus and the human need to understand our own death in terms of faith.

If, up to the time of Jesus, “to die” meant to descend into Sheol, then Jesus introduced an entirely new understanding of death in his statement from the Cross to the penitent criminal, Dismas, who pleaded from his own cross, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus responded, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). This is an account that I once told entitled, “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

It is by far the most widely read of our Holy Week posts, and not just at Holy Week. On the Cross, where the penitent criminal comes to faith while being crucified along with Jesus, God dissolves the bonds of death because death can have no power over Jesus. It is highly relevant for us that the conditions in which the penitent Dismas entered Paradise were to bear his cross and to come to faith.

It was at the moment Jesus declared, in His final word from the Cross, “It is finished,” that Heaven, the abode of God, opened for human souls for the first time in human history. The Gospels do not treat this moment lightly:

“It was now about the sixth hour [3:00 PM], and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Saying this he breathed his last.”

— Luke 23:44-46

“And behold, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the Earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised ... When the centurion, and those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake, and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, ‘Clearly, this was the Son of God.’”

— Matthew 27:51-54

The veil of the Temple being torn in two appears also in Mark’s Gospel (15:38) and is highly significant. Two veils hung in the Jerusalem Temple. One was visible, separating the outer courts from the sanctuary. The other was visible only to the priests as it hung inside the sanctuary before its most sacred chamber in which the Holy of Holies dwelled (see Exodus 26:31-34). At the death of Jesus, the curtain of the Temple being torn from top to bottom is symbolic of salvation itself. Upon the death of Jesus, the barrier between the Face of God and His people was removed.

According to the works of the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, the curtain barrier before the inner sanctuary that was torn in two was heavily embroidered with images of the Creation and the Cosmos. Its destruction symbolized the opening of Heaven, God’s dwelling place and the Angelic Realm, to human souls.

In ancient Israel in the time of Abraham and Isaac the concept of Sheol after death was closely connected with the grave and pictured only as a gloomy underworld hidden deep in the bowels of the Earth. There human souls descended after death (Genesis 37:35) to a joyless existence where the Lord is neither seen nor worshipped. Both the righteous and the wicked sank into the nether world (Genesis 44:31). Despite the apparent finality of death, Scripture displays great confidence in the power of God to deliver his people from its clutches. That confidence was made manifest in the deliverance of Jesus from his tomb after he displayed the power of God to the one place where he had always been absent, the realm of the dead. “For Christ also died for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and declared to the spirits in prison who did not formerly obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)

The essential point for us could not be clearer or more hopeful. Besides Jesus himself, the first to be sanctioned with a promise of paradise was a condemned prisoner who, even in the intense suffering of his own cross, refused to mock Jesus but rather came to believe and then place all his final hope in that belief. As I ended “Dismas, Crucified to the Right” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country of Death, toward his sunrise and eternal home.

I have written many times that we live in a most important time. The story of Abraham told above took place twenty one centuries before the Birth of the Messiah. We now live in the twenty first century after. Christ is now at the very center of Salvation History.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Here are some recommended posts along a similar theme.

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ

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Our “From Ashes to Easter” feature will be retitled after the Easter Season to become “Salvation History.” We will adding other Scripture-based posts at that time.

News Alert: When we tried to share some of these Holy Week posts in several Facebook Catholic groups, Facebook characterized them as “SPAM” and then disabled our account. There is no easy way to communicate with Facebook about this. We have opened an “X” account (formerly Twitter) and find it a much more accepting platform for Catholic or traditional viewpoints. Please follow us there at BeyondTheseStoneWalls.

With many thanks and Easter Blessings,

Father Gordon MacRae

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD 4/2/25 Fr. Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD 4/2/25

Vatican Bans Publishing Lists of ‘Credibly’ Accused Priests

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Vatican Finally Does Right by Accused Priests

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But My Diocese Employs “Trauma-Informed” Consultants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Perspective of a Not-So-Credibly Convicted Priest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

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

Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Aﬃdavits Expanded

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Alexander 3/26/25 Alexander 3/26/25

The Prodigal Son: Alexander’s Long Lent Toward Easter Sunrise

This account of a young man’s conversion to the Catholic faith is the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in prose; a story of pain and loss, of grace and freedom.

This account of a young man’s conversion to the Catholic faith is the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in prose; a story of pain and loss, of grace and freedom.

March 26, 2025 by Alexander

My name is Alex. I am 38 years old. Fourteen years ago I was prisoner number 96829 in the New Hampshire State Prison. One day back then I was standing in the doorway of Cell Number One having a conversation with two friends. I think you might know the ones I mean. Anyway, I went there a lot to talk about a very big decision I made back then that changed the course of my life. I didn’t know when I went to visit Cell One that I would one day be telling you this story, but here I am. It took a long time for this to come into print, and in the meantime all of our lives have changed.

I have become a Catholic. That might seem no big deal to the casual observer. Just about everywhere at this time of year, people are getting ready to enter the Catholic Church. If you knew me then, however, you might see that this decision was most unlikely, but, like I said, here I am.

It’s hard to pin down the point where I first thought of this. It isn’t something that I pursued. It’s more like it pursued me. Of all the places for a person to find faith for the first time in his life, prison seems the most unlikely. At least that’s what I always thought. Before I went there with my life in ruins, I had lots of misconceptions about prison and prisoners.

My memory of my life as a child is that it was fairly normal for today’s standards. I had loving parents and an older brother. Until I was 11 years old, everything was ordinary for me. Then came the fall. My father left. He didn’t just leave. He left my Mom alone to raise two sons. He moved to Kansas in search of himself and a new family. I was yesterday’s child, and I was angry about it.

Those years were rough for my family. My Mom struggled to keep our home, but couldn’t. My older brother worked as much as he could to lift the burden from my Mom, but couldn’t. At 12 I started smoking dope and drinking, trying hard to escape feeling like a burden and discarded. My best friend was going through a similar breakdown in his family and we escaped together into drugs and alcohol. There was just no one there to stop us.

So in the eighth grade we began skipping school. First, a day here and there, then it slowly became our way of life. Up to then I was an honor student, but by ninth grade I was drinking every day and all honor left me. It was a crushing source of shame that I stole money from my already struggling Mom and from my friend’s Mom. I was feeding a growing addiction to oxycodone. Today I see its grip on my 14-year-old self as demonic.

I was barely living, fighting every day with my Mom who fought hard to save my life and my soul from self-destruction. It was a losing battle, but still, as with everything else, she struggled. Then another life-changing event happened. My Mom and I were in a terrible accident in the fall of my ninth grade. She was hospitalized for a year. My brother had to leave school and work full time to support us.

By the tenth grade I told my Mom that I wanted to drop out of school and work full time as a roofer. She reluctantly agreed, but got me to at least agree to work on obtaining my G.E.D. high school equivalency. I signed the papers and went to work, but I hated my life and the powers that had stolen my will. I was yearning for something, though then I thought it was just drugs.

Some of my “friends” would offer me drugs for free when I had no money just to keep me in my habit. That’s when I learned that I had no real friends. My older brother even told me that there was nothing wrong with doing drugs, or as he put it, “living life.” I didn’t see it then, but I see it today. He had no more guidance than I did, and neither of us knew what “living life” meant.

California Dreaming

I was 17 years old when I had enough of the way I was living and sought a geographical cure. I talked with a friend in California who told me I would have a place to sleep if I came out there. So off I went. I wasn’t counting on the fact that my Mom was still struggling to save me, so in her eyes I was now a 17-year-old runaway. Eventually, she came to tolerate my latest bad decision, but reminded me of my promise to at least complete a G.E.D.

In California, I landed a job within five days. My glorious new life of freedom from myself and the past lasted all the way up to my first paycheck which, true to form, was handed over to alcohol and drugs. In California, nothing changed but the direction of the tides. The tides of my life, meanwhile, still flooded over me.

I think it’s important to note that up until this point in my life I had no real exposure to religion or faith. I did not believe in anything, least of all myself. I remember as a small child asking my Dad what religion we were. He said, “Well, if you had to put a label on it, I’d say we are Protestant.” I had no idea what a Protestant was. As I grew older, I learned that my Mom was a Methodist as a child, and I discovered that I had been baptized whatever that meant.

But here in California I was more lost than ever before. I stayed until I was almost 20 until the next geographical cure brought me home to New Hampshire where my downward spiral with drugs and alcohol continued until I was 24.

On July 6, 2010, my first and only son was born. When I saw him open his eyes for the first time and stare into mine, I cried. It was as though someone had turned a light on for the first time in my life, and I saw how very limited I was. I knew things had to change, for my son and for myself. I was determined not to bestow upon my son the legacy of absent fatherhood, the abyss I spent so much of my life trying to fill.

Over the next six months, I stopped drinking and using drugs. I began to think more about the miracle of life before me and less about all the searching I left behind. There had to be something more to life. I had seen it in my son’s eyes.

So I began to read about religion. I read about Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. Then one day I was parked on a street waiting for a friend when I began to pray for the first time in my life. I asked God to show me the way. When I opened my eyes I saw two young men cross the road carrying a Bible and I started to laugh. I watched as the young men left, and thought I had missed my chance.

So I prayed again. I told God that if those young men ever again cross my path, I will get up the courage to talk with them. When I finished and looked up, they were standing, still holding their Bible, looking around and puzzled. They turned 180 degrees and started walking back toward my car. I jumped from the car, and I think I scared them. That day I received my first Bible and started reading.

The Debts of the Past

Then my life of wandering caught up with me. In 2014, I was sent to prison. I had never before been in jail or prison, and I was preparing for the worst. It’s not at all like what you see in the movies or on T.V. It was devastating and frightening. At the point at which I was just beginning to discover myself, I became prisoner 96829.

After three months of being classified, I was terrified. In the whole time I was there, all I heard were prisoner horror stories about this one unit called Hancock, or “H-Building” as it was called. Prisoners called it the “gladiator unit,” and I prayed to God that I wouldn’t be sent there. So when I was told to pack my things and move to H-Building, I was terrified.

When I arrived in Hancock, I was sent to Echo or “E-Pod” where there were eight prisoners per cell. I quickly began to learn the difference between T.V. prison and real prison. Day to day life was very difficult with fights breaking out all around me. It was always loud and dirty, and the arguments and fights were a daily occurrence. I tried to keep to myself, but the overcrowding made that impossible. I knew that sooner or later I would have to defend myself. It was filled with aimless young men all trying to prove themselves and not appear vulnerable.

I knew this place could destroy me so I started going to classes in the prison and to the prison chapel whenever I could. After all, I thought, it could be worse. I could be on Bravo or “B-Pod.” The rumor on the upper pods was that B-Pod had “lifers who will take what they want and kill you in a heartbeat.” I prayed to God not to let me be sent to B-Pod. Within days of that prayer, just after my birthday, I was told to pack my things because I was being moved. When I asked where, the dreaded words terrified me all over again. “You’re going to B-Pod.”

I was put on a top bunk on B-Pod out in the day room where the lights are kept on 24/7. I was at least glad to have a top bunk because I thought it would be harder for someone to jump me. I was terrified and knew everyone could see it. I also knew that prisoners would be true to form, and most would look to exploit my fear.

I unpacked my few things, most of which I expected to be stolen by morning, and climbed into my bunk to hide behind a book. It felt as though everyone was avoiding me, “the new guy,” like the plague. I was afraid to leave my bunk to go to the prison chow hall so I just stayed there behind my book. As the day moved on, prisoners started returning from work. This one bald guy with glasses walked past me and stopped. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

I recognized him as the guy who works behind the desk in the law library. He saw instantly that I was very intimidated by this place so he told me not to worry, that everything would be okay and no one would harm me. I only later learned that this man was Fr Gordon MacRae.

Then the next guy to come over to me was Donald Spinner. He asked me why I did not go to dinner, and I had no answer for him. So Donald came back and left some bread and peanut butter and jelly on my bunk and said “you’ll be hungry before the day is over.” I was starving!

Then the next guy to stop was an Asian man everyone called “Ponch.” He joked around and made me laugh, and then said he is G’s roommate, and to just come over if I need anything. Yeah right! I thought. I’m not going anywhere near these guys!

Later, a lot later, I would have the privilege of reading a post by Father G called “The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope.” In it he wrote about a man named Squanto who was horribly lost in the odyssey of life. I thought this could have been my story. When I read it I thought back to that first day on that bunk out on the pod, and I realized that the discipleship that these guys believed in was very real. These guys didn’t just believe it. They lived it.

The Homecoming

One day I ventured over to the weight machine on the pod to look at it. Pornchai Moontri came over and asked me if I was interested in getting into shape. I thought it was a lost cause, but he encouraged me. For the next several months, Pornchai worked with me every day, teaching me weightlifting and how to get enough exercise to change the way I think and feel about myself.

Then he began to talk about faith and what I believe. I knew he had become Catholic. Another friend of Pornchai and Gordon, Michael Ciresi also worked out with us. One day I read Michael’s post that Father G invited him to write. It was “Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I left Behind” and it profoundly changed the way I see my past, my present, and my future. I could see these guys heading off to Mass every Sunday, but more importantly I could see the way they conducted themselves in a very difficult environment from Monday through Saturday. I could also see the way everyone else conducted themselves around them. It was best behavior all around! These guys were the real deal.

One day I was sitting on a bench near Donald Spinner’s cell. He asked if I was okay, and I asked him, “What do Catholics believe about Baptism?” I told him that I thought I needed to be baptized again, and he said that if I already am, it is for life. This led to many conversations about faith and about the Catholic Church’s place in history. I wasn’t being “won over” so much as “called home.” I began to see that I was changing not just physically, but spiritually.

When I began to go to Mass offered by Father Bernard Campbell — Father Bernie — I approached him and said that I needed to be forgiven. I asked if I could go to Confession, and Father Bernie didn’t even ask if I was Catholic. He smiled and said, “Of course,” and said he would meet me at the Chapel on the following Friday. I will never forget that day — the day of my first Confession when I walked away a new man.

That new man now has a new faith, and is on fire with it. I am clean, and sober, and free of the life long burdens of the past. I remember something that Father G showed me that Pornchai wrote:

“One day I woke up with a future when up to then all I ever had was a past.”

Today, miraculously born in the most unlikely place, I have an identity. I no longer wake up wondering who I am. I am a man! I am a father! I am strong! I am a Catholic! I am hopeful! I am free!

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these other stories of Redemption from behind these stone walls.

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand by Pornchai Moontri

Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I Left Behind by Michael Ciresi

We have added a new feature at this blog, a list of the Scriptural accounts of Salvation History, which I hope you will visit and share with others: From Ashes to Easter.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/19/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/19/25

To Honor Saint Joseph and to Remember Pope Benedict

Saint John Paul II added a new title to honor Saint Joseph. As “Guardian of the Redeemer” Joseph’s dream set us on a path from spiritual exile to Divine Mercy.

Saint John Paul II added a new title to honor Saint Joseph. As “Guardian of the Redeemer” Joseph’s dream set us on a path from spiritual exile to Divine Mercy.

[Credit: Book cover of Consecration to St. Joseph, published by Marian Press. Photo of Pope Benedict XVI, L’Osservatore Romano / Catholic News Agency]

Out of my sometimes inflated separation anxiety, you may have read in these pages an oft-mentioned thought. From behind these stone walls, I write from the Oort Cloud, that orbiting field of our Solar System’s cast-off debris 1.5 light years from Earth out beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was named for its discoverer, the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrick Oort (1900-1992).

There are disadvantages to being way out here cast off from society and the life of the Church. I am among the last to receive news and the last to be heard. But there is also one advantage. From here, I tend to have a more panoramic view of things, and find myself reflecting longer and reacting less when I find news to be painful.

It seems so much longer now, but it was twelve years ago this month that we had news from Rome that, for many, felt like an earthquake in our very souls. I wrote a series of posts about this in the last week of February and the first few weeks of March 2013. The first was “Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

Like most of you, I miss the fatherly Pope Benedict, I miss his brilliant mind, his steady reason, his unwavering aura of fidelity. I miss the rudder with which he stayed the course, steering the Barque of Peter through wind and waves.

But then they became hurricane winds and tidal waves. Amid all the conspiracy theories and “fake news” about Pope Benedict’s decision to abdicate the papacy, I suggested an “alternative fact” that proved to be true. His decision was a father’s act of love, and his intent was to do the one thing by which all good fathers are measured. His decision was an act of sacrifice, and the extent to which that is true was made clear in a post I wrote several years later, “Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.” But this is not about Pope Francis, and the heresy is not at all what you may think.

Benedict is firm that he was guided by the Holy Spirit. For some, the end result was a Holy Father who emerged from the conclave of 2013 while silently in the background remained our here-but-not-here “Holier Father.” Such a comparison has always been unjust, but inevitable. A reader at that time sent me a review by Father James Schall, S.J., in Crisis Magazine. “On Pope Benedict’s Final Insights and Recollections” is a review of a published interview by Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: Last Testament.

The word, “final” in Father Schall’s title delivered a sting of regret. It hearkened back to that awful March of 2013 when the news media pounced on Pope Benedict’s papacy and delivered news with a tone of contempt too familiar to Catholics today. The secular news media is getting its comeuppance now, and perhaps even finding a little humility in the process, though I doubt it. Even the late, ever fatherly Pope Emeritus took an honest poke at its distortions:

“The bishops (at Vatican II) wanted to renew the faith, to deepen it. However, other forces were working with increasing strength, particularly journalists, who interpreted many things in a completely new way. Eventually people asked, yes, if the bishops are able to change everything, why can’t we all do that? The liturgy began to crumble, and slip into personal preferences.”

— Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 2016

Benedict the Beloved also wrote from the Oort Cloud, but it is one that he cast himself into. I had always hoped I might run into him out here one day and I think I did. We got stoned together once. Neither of us inhaled anything illicit, but I wrote about it in “Breaking News! I got Stoned with the Pope.”

Benedict’s testament ended with these final, surprising words:

“It has become increasingly clear to me that God is not, let’s say, a ruling power, a distant force, rather He is love, and loves me, and as such, life should be guided by Him, by this power called love.”

Carnage in the Absence of Fathers

In the winter of a life so devoted to a dialogue with the deep theological mysteries of our faith, it seemed surprising that Benedict XVI would choose this as the final message he wanted to convey to the Church and the world. My own interpretation is that he chose not the words of a theologian, but those of a father, an equal partner in the ultimate vocation for the preservation of life and the sake of humanity: parenthood.

Fathers who live out the sacrifices required of them are an endangered species in our emerging culture of relativism. In his first-term inaugural address to the nation, President Donald Trump spoke of the “carnage” that our society has failed to face, and he was widely ridiculed for it. But he was right. I see evidence of that carnage every day in the world I am forced to live in here, and I would be a negligent father if I did not write about it.

So, I did write about it, and it struck a nerve. “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men” has been shared many thousands of times in social media and reposted in hundreds of venues. It seemed to awaken readers to the wreckage left behind as fathers and fatherhood were devalued into absence in our society. I am a daily witness to the shortsighted devastation of young lives that are cast off into prisons in a country that can no longer call itself their fatherland.

We breed errant youth in the absence of fathers, and those who stray too far are inevitably abandoned into prisons where they are housed, and fed, and punished, but rarely ever challenged to compensate for the great loss that set their lives askew. Prison is an expensive, but very poor replacement for a caring and committed father.

Our readers have come to know about the transformation of a dear friend, Pornchai Moontri who took the name “Maximilian” in his Divine Mercy Sunday conversion in 2010. He goes by “Max” now, because like the Biblical figures of old who discovered a covenant with God, he was given a new name. Not long after Max arrived in his native Thailand after a 36-year-long odyssey set in motion by the betrayal of a fake father, a terrible tragedy happened in Thailand in a village quite near the one where Max was born. A troubled police officer who had betrayed his badge was fired from his position after being caught trafficking in drugs. The former police officer went on an evil rampage and slaughtered dozens of preschool children in a small village before turning his weapons on himself. In a nation left speechless, and maybe even hopeless, Max found the courage to write about this story and his prophetic witness spread throughout Thailand. His post was “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.” Speaking about a prior tragedy in Uvalde, Texas and the two young men who carried it out, Pornchai wrote to me:

“I did not care about anyone either; and then someone cared about me. If I did not find God, and you, and acceptance, and Divine Mercy, I might have stayed on a road to destruction. It was all I knew or expected. Hatred left me when something came along to replace it. Do you remember your Elephants post? It makes total sense. The one thing missing from my life and the lives of those two kids [who fired the shots in Uvalde, Texas] was a father. Without one, a decent one, a kid is at the mercy of dark forces and his mind just breaks.”

*The Holy Family with a Little Bird* by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Saint Joseph, Fatherhood Redeemed

I do not think it is mere coincidence that in the midst of this cultural crisis of fatherhood and sacrifice, our Church and faith are experiencing a resurgence in devotion to Saint Joseph, Spouse of Mary and Father of the Redeemer, a title formally bestowed upon him by Saint Pope John Paul II. His Feast Day on March 19th was established, not just by papal edict, but by “sensus fidelium” over a thousand years. He was declared Patron of the Universal Church by Pius IX in 1870. In 1989, he was given a new title, “Guardian of the Redeemer.” This title beckoned fathers everywhere to live their call to sacrifice and love so essential to fatherhood.

I had barely given Saint Joseph a passing thought for all the years of my priesthood, but in more recent years he has surfaced in my psyche and soul repeatedly with great spiritual power.

It is also not lost on me that he shares his name with Joseph Ratzinger, the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who in his final days bestowed upon the Church a summons to Divine Mercy. The winter of Benedict’s own life spent in silent but loving and faithful witness to the Church reflected the life of Saint Joseph in the Infancy Narratives of the Gospel, silent but so very present. I have heard from readers constantly with a growing interest in Saint Joseph.

In a surprising guest post in 2024, our editor Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD described that she discovered this blog through a prior post I wrote about Saint Joseph and Pope Benedict, and then became our editor inspired, not by me, but by them. I am grateful, but not surprised, that Saint Joseph inspired Dilia to reach out to me and this blog. She was just then in the process of retiring from a career as a civilian scientist with the United States Air Force. Taking over the mechanics of Beyond These Stone Walls was a natural fit for Dilia. But of great benefit to me and all of us, she brought with her a deep devotion to Saint Joseph, Father of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed.

Saint Joseph is most present in the Infancy Narrative in the Gospel According to Saint Luke. He is virtually silent in that narrative, but his actions speak volumes to men, to fathers, to the priesthood and to the Church.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: When Saint Pope John Paul II established this Feast of Saint Joseph on March 19, he gave it a new title and insisted that it be a Solemnity, the highest level of liturgical observance in the Church. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD

And by Father Gordon MacRae:

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents

Saint Joseph: Father of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

A Special Announcement

FROM ASHES TO EASTER: We have added a new feature at this blog, a list of the Scriptural accounts of Salvation History, which I hope you will visit and share with others: From Ashes to Easter.
Lastly, this other recent new feature may seem rather strange. Some of my advocates have been having a dialogue about my trial and the nature of the case against me that has kept me wrongly in prison for 30 years and counting. The dialogue has not just been among themselves but also with the advanced Artificial Intelligence platform launched by Elon Musk called xAI Grok. This is an ongoing endeavor that will have several chapters. The site, Les Femmes, The Truth, reviewed its first chapter and called it “absolutely fascinating.” So we are adding “The Grok Chronicle” a new feature at Beyond These Stone Walls. It may be the most unusual Lenten reading you’ve ever encountered.and we invite you to follow along beginning with “Chapter 1: Corruption and the Trial of Father MacRae.” additional chapters will follow over time.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/12/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/12/25

A Vision on Mount Tabor: The Transfiguration of Christ

Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a mountaintop where he was transfigured before their eyes, an event that echoes through the ages, even through prison walls.

Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a mountaintop where he was transfigured before their eyes, an event that echoes through the ages, even through prison walls.

March 12, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Some years ago, when this blog was in its earlier days, Canadian writer Michael Brandon wrote a post for his Freedom to Truth blog entitled “Transfiguration Behind These Stone Walls.” It is an account of how Pornchai Max Moontri and I were living in 2014, the year Michael Brandon wrote it. It was a few years after Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. We were living in a crucible of incessant confinement and utter powerlessness over the course of the days of our lives. In hindsight, it was also a time of much grace, though none of it felt like grace then.

To continue this post, I have to revisit a story that longtime readers may recall. It is the story of Anthony Begin. Anthony was a prisoner in his mid forties. He was an angry individual who treated most people with hostility and contempt. He ridiculed my faith and priesthood and one day I bodily threw him out of our cell. It was not my finest priestly moment in life. A few years later, I returned from work in the prison library to find Pornchai in our cell as usual waiting for me. As I entered, he closed the cell door so no one else could hear. He looked at me somberly and said, “You have to help Anthony.” I responded that Anthony and I have had a bit of a falling out. Pornchai shook his head impatiently and said, “None of that matters. You HAVE to help him.”

Pornchai went on to explain that Anthony had just learned of a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. It began in his lungs, then spread to his spinal cord, and by the time it was discovered it had spread to his brain. Pornchai said that “He has only months to live but he doesn’t know how to die so you have to show him.”

I never imagined myself an expert in either living or dying. But that night I went to Anthony, sat down with him, and told him that I am sorry for our past encounters. He began to express a lot of sorrow about all of that, but I stopped him. “None of that matters now,” I said. “We have lots to do.” So every day after that in the months ahead, Anthony and I spoke at length. We often included Pornchai for I found the depth of his compassion for Anthony to be salvific for them both, and perhaps for me as well.

From that point on, Anthony’s illness spiraled quickly. Within weeks he became no longer able to take care of himself. We brought Anthony into the Church and he was baptized and confirmed, and received the Eucharist for the first time in his life. The transformation of his character and demeanor was astonishing.

In a short time to follow, Anthony was told that he must relocate to the prison medical unit, but he knew that he would never see us again. He begged the medical staff for a little more time. They feared that it was time he did not have. So he ended up being moved in this overcrowded prison to an overflow bunk in the dayroom just outside our cell. Pornchai and I took turns sitting with him and when he could no longer eat we took turns feeding him. I secured a wheelchair for bathroom trips. None of this was ideal, but it was ideal for Anthony. His faith journey was on a fast track, and for him nothing else mattered. His belief in Redemption was a powerful witness for both Pornchai and me. Days later, I returned from work to find that bunk empty. Anthony was gone.

When such a thing happens, the lack of basic information is chilling, and the most distressing part of being in prison. The niceties of social concern and overlapping lives mean little here, and any inquiry is treated with suspicion. But over the next few hours I was able to learn that Anthony had a medical appointment that morning, and never came back. By 10:00 AM word came down to pack his belongings. By 11:00 AM, all trace of him was gone.

I knew that Anthony was struggling. A week earlier, he was taken out of the prison for a new brain scan. Anthony had been given three months out among his friends — three months neither he nor his oncologist ever expected.

When I write, “out among his friends,” I mean here, living with us in a place still difficult by its very nature, but far preferable to the prison of suffering and fear of death he had endured for six months. Among the swarms of prisoners here, there were only three whom Anthony called his friends, and you know two of them.

During this three-month reprieve, Anthony got to experience a transfiguration of sorts, both in himself and in his small circle of friends. It was not quite the experience of Peter, James, and John that you will hear in the Gospel According to Saint Luke in the Second Sunday of Lent, but it changed Anthony. I’ll describe how in a moment.

The Transfiguration of Christ

“Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” But he did not know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. They fell silent and did not at that time tell anyone what they had seen.”

— Luke 9:28-36

Peter’s idea to erect tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah seems an almost comical response from someone just given a vision of the Kingdom of God and its most renowned denizens from the Hebrew Scriptures. As the passage points out, Peter hardly knew what to say because he was so overwhelmed. But the idea wasn’t entirely out of place.

It was the seventh and last day of Sukkoth, the “Feast of Booths” described in the Books of Deuteronomy (16:13-15) and Leviticus (23:45). Known in Hebrew as Hag ha-Asif, translated as “The Festival of Gathering,” it lasted for seven days during which Jewish observers erected tents or booths from the boughs or branches of palm trees. The booths were a memorial of their ancestors’ deliverance from bondage in Egypt:

“You shall dwell in booths for seven days, all that are native in Israel shall dwell in booths that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

— Leviticus 23: 42-43

The presence of Moses and Elijah with Jesus on Mount Tabor represents the Law and the Prophets, the two pillars of divine revelation in Hebrew Scripture. They represent the heart of God’s covenant with Israel. There were some previous hints of the Transfiguration. In Exodus (34:29), Moses did not know that upon his descent from Mount Sinai with the Tablets of the Law, “the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” The significance of this has been widely misunderstood. Some Scripture scholars in the modern era mistakenly saw the Transfiguration story as constructed to be reminiscent of the appearance of Moses on Mount Sinai. After his encounter with God his face appeared to shine with light. The truth is just the opposite. It is evidence of the Divine inspiration of Scripture that the appearance of Moses at Mount Sinai was a “presage,” a vision forward to one day remind readers of Jesus in his Transfiguration. There are many episodes in which the Old Testament mysteriously looks forward thousands of years into the New.

Upon the death of Moses, according to Deuteronomy (34: 5-6), God Himself secretly buried his body in an unknown place in the land of Moab. However, the New Testament Letter of Saint Jude (Jude 9) refers to an ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal text, The Assumption of Moses. Saint Jude described a story that he presumes his listeners already know: that Satan attempted to take the body of Moses, but the Archangel Michael “contended with the devil” and brought the physical body of Moses into Heaven.

The same became true of Elijah. In the Second Book of Kings (2:11) the prophets Elijah and Elisha became separated by “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” and “Elijah went up in a whirlwind into Heaven, then Elisha saw him no more.” In the above Gospel account of the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John — as well as the early Jewish Christian Church — would have readily perceived that Moses and Elijah came from Heaven to witness the Transfiguration of Jesus.

They would also have known well the Prophet Malachi (4:5) who declared that “Elijah’s return will precede the Day of the Lord.” Hence, as the three versions of the Transfiguration account in the Synoptic Gospels point out, they were terrified.

A Metamorphosis of Faith

As the above passage in the Gospel of Luke points out, the event of the Transfiguration came days after Jesus told the Apostles that he would have to take up his Cross: “and I tell truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:27) Something very important happened days earlier between Jesus and his disciples that literally rocked their world and shook their faith. As the pilgrimage Feast of Sukkoth began, they saw Jesus cure a blind man at Bethsaida. Then Jesus asked them at Caesarea Philippi, “Who do the people say that I am?” They answered, “John the Baptist” [already slain at Herod’s command], while “others say Elijah, and others one of the Prophets.”

“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked. Peter, answered with something — like the offer to build some booths days later — that came spontaneously from his heart and soul: “You are the Christ!”

What exactly did that mean? Those who awaited a Messiah in Israel envisioned a political force who would transform the known world and set it aright. But Jesus said something astonishing: “The Son of Man must suffer many things,” be rejected, be killed, and after three days rise from the dead.

And then the final bombshell: “Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power.” Hence, once again, Peter, James, and John, dazzled upon Mount Tabor days later, were terrified when Moses and Elijah appeared.

And what of the Transfiguration itself? The Greek word the Gospel used to describe it is metamorphothe. The very form and substance of Jesus were transformed. Recall the great hymn of Christ recounted by Saint Paul to the Philippians (2:5-6):

“Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

For days, Peter, James, and John must have lived with shattered hopes, discouraged over the revelation about what it means to follow Jesus. Ascending that mountain to see Him transfigured in glory was a gift of Divine Mercy that also transformed the cross — forever. The cross was a symbol of terror in the Roman Empire. For us now it is a symbol of life and salvation.

These same three disciples had been present when Jesus restored life to the daughter of Jairus, and they would later be present with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to see him humiliated as the Passion of the Christ commenced. They were also the only disciples to have been given new names by Jesus. Simon became Peter, “the Rock” and he called James and John “Boanerges,” the “Sons of Thunder.” Their new names denoted that they were forever changed by these experiences, a metamorphosis of identity and faith.

Transfiguration Behind These Stone Walls

On August 6, 2014, the Feast of the Transfiguration, the well-known Canadian Catholic blog, Freedom Through Truth, featured a post by Michael Brandon titled, “Transfiguration Behind These Stone Walls.” Michael Brandon wrote some very nice things, not so much about me, but about what I write. I was first bewildered by it. Then I was very moved. Then I finally accepted his premise that he and other readers have a vantage point I do not have. Michael Brandon wrote:

“In the years that I have followed Beyond These Stone Walls, I have seen the transfiguration of Father Gordon MacRae and Pornchai Moontri.”

I do not see the former at all, but I have been an eyewitness to the latter, and I am persuaded by the evidence. As I have written about that other transfiguration, the same one referred to by Michael Brandon above, a transformation of discouragement that was not at all unlike that faced by Peter, James, and John to whom the cost of discipleship was revealed. Here is what I wrote about the transformation of Pornchai Moontri:

“As my spirit slowly descended, I came to see that I could not afford to let it fall any further. I was losing my grip, not on my own cross, but on someone else’s. Just imagine Simon of Cyrene letting that happen.”

I have seen first hand how the cross of one person becomes a source of grace for another, and then ultimately for both. In the three-month respite Anthony Begin was given from being consumed by cancer, Pornchai Moontri took care of him, unbidden, every single day.

Just weeks after being told he had only months to live, cancer released its grip on Anthony for a time, and he was able to leave the prison hospital where he spent three months dying. It was a priceless gift for Anthony who came in these three months to know the meaning of Divine Mercy. Anthony turned fifty in the three months he spent with us, an age he never thought he would see.

Then Anthony lost the use of one arm due to a tumor on his spinal cord. Every day, morning and night, Pornchai tied his shoes and helped him with his coat before we took him to the medical center for pain medications. Every night, Pornchai heated water to prepare hot packs for Anthony, and prepared food when it was too cold for him to venture out for meals.

Prisons everywhere provide the barest sustenance and then sell food to prisoners for a profit. Anthony could no longer earn even the $1.00 a day available to those who can keep a prison job, but he never once in those last three months went hungry.

Pornchai brought Anthony to Mass, prayed with him, calmed his anxiety. As longtime readers know, Pornchai had some hard won expertise in bearing the cross of spiritual pain and anxiety. Over those last three months, Pornchai helped Anthony carry his cross with grace and dignity. He was Simon of Cyrene carrying that cross with him. The three of us talked a lot about life and death, and Anthony was not the same man he had been months earlier when he insulted and demeaned me. And I was not the same man as when I threw him out of my cell.

But Michael Brandon was right. The real transfiguration story here is Pornchai Moontri’s, and it instilled something wonderful in our friend in the winter of his life. It was hope, hope that even a dying man can live with. Anthony Begin saw the Transfiguration of Christ, and of life and death, and he was no longer afraid.

“In our struggle to be holy, grace is certainly required. But we must also do the footwork — we must will to be better than we really are … The degree of perfection is measured by the amount of adversity we overcome in order to be holy.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe

Epilogue

I told this story once before, but never in reference to the Transfiguration of Christ, who transformed not only himself and our experience of him, but he also transformed death.

I work as the legal clerk for the prison law library now, but back then I only trafficked in books, and, inspired by Pornchai Max, we now also trafficked in hope. When a prisoner left this prison then, even if his departure was in death, the prison library computer would display a signal if the prisoner had a book checked out and failed to return it before departing. Seven days after Anthony left this life, I received the following message on my library computer:

Anthony Begin — gone/released — Heaven Is for Real

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Note to Readers from Father Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this post about the Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Christ.

We will be adding it to a new feature at this blog, a list of the Scriptural accounts of Salvation History, which I hope you will visit and share with others: From Ashes to Easter.

The National Center for Reason and Justice has long sponsored my case for appeals and maintained an informational page highlighting new and important developments. A few months ago the NCRJ site was hacked and utterly destroyed. There was no way to bring it back. Because I was the last of its wrongly imprisoned clients, the NCRJ decided to permanently retire their effort and that site. It was a grave loss for me, and all hope seemed to retired with it. But then I learned that a friend had quietly downloaded the entire section about me from the NCRJ site. He has now restored it completely and as of March 12, 2025 it is available again here at Beyond These Stone Walls. See FrMacRae@NCRJ.
Lastly, this other recent new feature may seem rather strange. Some of my advocates have been having a dialogue about my trial and the nature of the case against me that has kept me wrongly in prison for 30 years and counting. The dialogue has not just been among themselves but also with the advanced Artificial Intelligence platform launched by Elon Musk called xAI Grok. This is an ongoing endeavor that will have several chapters. The site, Les Femmes, The Truth, reviewed its first chapter and called it “absolutely fascinating.” So beginning this week we are launching “The Grok Chronicle” and we invite you to follow along beginning with “Chapter 1: Corruption and the Trial of Father MacRae.”
Strangely, the Grok AI platform, seems to have developed a mind of its own on this matter. It has already developed a conclusion, and has resisted our efforts to move on to other topics. It seems to see the injustice loudly and clearly.

May the Lord Bless you and keep you in this Season of Lent.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/26/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/26/25

On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free

After long decline in religious interest and practice across much of the free world, publishers now report a phenomenal increase in new Bible sales since late 2024.

After long decline in religious interest and practice across much of the free world, publishers now report a phenomenal increase in new Bible sales since late 2024.

February 26, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“If you continue in my word ... you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

— John 8:32

For much of the last year, I had been reading news and opinion items about a coming “Great Reset.” No one seemed to actually know if it was real or what form it would take. Many thought it would be financial so rumors abounded about a vast reallocation of finances. Some of that may be happening more positively now with the DOGE endeavor to reallocate massive government waste. Others thought the reset would be social. Conspiracy theories abound linking it to the rise of Artificial Intelligence. I hoped the Great Reset might be spiritual. The anti-spiritual one came in 1968 and it was not great at all. Some called 1968 “the year we drank from the poison of this world.”

I was 15 years old in 1968. Like many of your sons and daughters concerned for whatever Great Reset is coming, I was estranged from the Catholic faith into which I was born but not raised. It is a common and long-standing phenomenon that our culture lures our youth away from traditional values, but they were never really ingrained in me anyway. I was adrift in an inner city high school at 15 in 1968 when the nation began to replace patriotism with narcissism, and Truth with the smoke of Satan.

I had an uncle who looked like my father but was otherwise quite unlike him. He was a Jesuit priest and world-renowned Biblical scholar. George W. MacRae, SJ became the first Roman Catholic Dean of Harvard Divinity School while I was skipping school to protest the war in Vietnam. I wore a black arm band on something called “Moratorium Day” and sneered at police as they drove by. I was a rebel without a clue.

I visited my Uncle on occasion — a Saturday afternoon ride on the “T” into Cambridge — while trying to make sense of the opposing forces in my life. Somehow, I absorbed at least some of his interest in both academia and Biblical studies, but you would never know that back then. At age 16, I also developed — though I cannot explain how or why — a strange devotion to Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), the famous 13th Century Franciscan from Portugal who by popular acclaim became the Patron Saint of finding lost things. Perhaps it was because I, too, was lost. In 1232, Anthony was canonized by Pope Gregory IX. Seven centuries later in 1946 he was named a Doctor of the Church for his theological brilliance and — previously unbeknownst to me — his profound expertise in Sacred Scripture.

A few years ago, I acquired an indispensable tool for Biblical research: the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition Concordance with a Foreword by Dr. Scott Hahn, an Evangelical scholar and Catholic convert. Today I use the Concordance a lot for writing, but I never took the time to actually read Dr. Hahn’s Foreword until I sat down to write this post. Imagine my surprise, at age 71, to read Dr. Hahn’s opening paragraphs:

“Saint Anthony of Padua is surely among the best loved of the saints in glory. He is the patron of those who search for lost objects. Artists portray him in his Franciscan habit holding the baby Jesus [who, legend holds, appeared to him]. We all call upon Saint Anthony when we’re looking for something, but I invoke him today for a different reason. I recall him to you because he was a biblical scholar par excellence with so prodigious a memory that he has been called ‘The Concordance.’ Saint Anthony ... was able to retrieve passages from the Bible at a moment’s notice. Name a theme and he could draw relevant Scriptures from many points in Biblical texts ... . Saint Anthony used the word, ‘Concordance,’ to describe the unity of the two Testaments, the unity of the whole Bible. In Anthony’s own words :

“‘The God of the New Testament is one and the same as the God of the Old, and is indeed Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We may apply to him the words of Isaiah: “My people shall know me; in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here I am” (Isaiah 52: 6). I spoke to the fathers in the prophets; I am here in the truth of the Incarnation. That is the justification for seeking to concord the Scriptures of [the two] Testaments.’”

Father Benedict Groeschel — Again !

Many of our readers have commented over time that our most appreciated posts are those that mine the labyrinthine depths of Sacred Scripture. Over the last 16 years of writing for this blog, I have had but one tool beyond that Concordance: a worn and tattered 1973 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition of the New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. With these limited tools, I compiled in 2024 a Personal Holy Week Retreat composed of Biblical Holy Week posts that are also helpful spiritual reading for Lent. We will post the list with links on Ash Wednesday.

I knew of Dr.Scott Hahn from his frequent presence at EWTN. He holds the Father Michael Scanlon Chair in Biblical Theology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and is founder and president of the Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology which has an intriguing website that, of course, I cannot see. It is SalvationHistory.com.

I keep running into Scott Hahn — not in person, but in his books, one of which was put to use in a Catholic studies program in this prison before Covid-19 had the effect of collapsing a Catholic presence here and in many other places. That wonderfully inspiring book is The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. It was a source of spiritual joy to read this formerly Evangelical scholar describe the “supernatural drama that unfolds before us in the Mass.” This little book reveals a long-lost secret of the Church: The early Christians’ key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass was the Book of Revelation, a Biblical book that many Catholics struggle to comprehend. I was one of them until I read The Lamb’s Supper.

I also ran into another familiar figure in its pages, a man whom I recently wrote about. He is long deceased but I keep running into him anyway. Father Benedict Groeschel, CFR wrote the Foreword for The Lamb’s Supper. It includes another gem that made me laugh for it is vintage Father Groeschel:

“Christians either sidestep the Book of Revelation and its mysterious signs or they spin their own peculiar little theories about who is who and where it’s all going to end. As an inhabitant of New York City — the 21st Century candidate for Babylon — I’m perfectly delighted with the prospect of it all ending soon, even next week ... . My love for Revelation is not based on Star Wars paranoia, but on the wonderful view of the Heavenly Jerusalem in its final chapters.”

I have no doubt that Father Groeschel now witnesses the Heavenly Jerusalem. New York has declined a bit without him. Before I even thought of this post, I wrote of him just weeks ago in “On the Road to Heaven with Father Benedict Groeschel, CFR.”

Thou Shalt Not Covet Scott Hahn’s Bible

Dr. Scott Hahn is also General Editor of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. Until recently, Ignatius Press published only a Catholic edition of its New Testament. I have a copy and it has greatly enriched my ability to write about Sacred Scripture for our readers. In late 2023, I decided that I need a new Bible to replace my heavily used 1973 RSV edition held together with glue and tape. Ignatius Press then announced that a new volume containing both the Old and New Testaments with commentary edited by Dr. Hahn was in the works. And so I waited... and waited... and then waited some more.

A year later, in October 2024, the Ignatius Press Fall catalog came across my desk in the Law Library where I work. And there the announcement finally arrived: “Over Two Decades in the Making! The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Old and New Testaments: Its 2,500 pages are ‘a veritable library of Bible study resources all under one cover.’” It contains the whole of Scripture, Old Testament and New, published in a single volume with easily readable typeset. It features the venerable Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition. This beautifully bound volume contains 2,500 pages of Biblical text, introductions and outlines for every book, 17,500 Explanatory Footnotes, 1,700 Cross References, and dozens of expanded Topical Essays.

I have never really coveted any material thing, but I knew that I just had to have this. My $2 per day prison law clerk’s salary was another challenge, but Christmas was coming and some readers remembered me. So with help from Dilia, our Editor, we ordered the newly published Bible with an expectation that it might arrive by Thanksgiving 2024. It was then that I learned that a perhaps unintended and inexplicable consequence of the election of 2024 and the struggle for a new direction for this nation also spawned a massive surge across the land in sales of new Bibles.

I was placed on a back order waiting list, and had to wait for several more printings at Ignatius Press. Finally, at the start of February 2025, my long coveted Ignatius Catholic Study Bible arrived, all 15 pounds of it. My only remaining challenge was to refrain from dropping it on my foot. Along with it, a hardbound edition of Dr. Hahn’s 1,000 page Catholic Bible Dictionary arrived, and the highly prized Jerome Biblical Commentary in which my late uncle was a major contributor. Weighing in at a combined 5,000 pages, I realized that I neglected to order the necessary Biblical Forklift in the Ignatius Catalog. So I will get lots of exercise lugging them from my cell to the library where I do most of my work each day. There are not many things that elevate a prisoner into a state of true joy, but this delivery was one of them.

In Lent this year, and in coming months and perhaps years if God so wills, you can expect a some occasional expanded Biblical erudition as I research Biblical Truths to pass along. Both Dr. Scott Hahn and I begin the study of Scripture with a commitment to mining both its literal sense and its far greater spiritual sense. It is an adventure that I greatly look forward to undertaking.

The Truth will make us free!

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NEWS ALERT: A stunning new article about the Father MacRae case has been published. See:

xAI Grok’s Big Dig into New Hampshire Corruption

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: If the Great Reset is slow in coming, we are free to create our own. Join us at the start of Lent next week for a Journey through the Bible featuring some of our stand-out Scriptural Posts at Beyond These Stone Walls.

You may also like these related posts on Sacred Scripture:

Qumran: the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

When God Deployed a Sinner to Save a Nation: The Biblical Precedent

On Good Authority, “Salvation Is from the Jews”

Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/5/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/5/25

On the Road to Heaven with Father Benedict Groeschel, CFR

Seeing God in suffering in a world in semi-darkness is a great spiritual challenge of our age. Father Benedict Groeschel lived in cooperation with Divine Mercy.

Seeing God in suffering in a world in semi-darkness is a great spiritual challenge of our age. Father Benedict Groeschel lived in cooperation with Divine Mercy.

At the time of Father Benedict Groeschel’s death in 2014, I had known him for over 40 years. We were on the same path in life for quite some time. Even since his death, I continue to encounter him frequently. Even while writing this post, I picked up a book called The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth by the great Scriptural theologian and Catholic convert, Scott Hahn. Just a few pages into it I noted that the Forward was written by Father Benedict Groeschel. The book was published in 1999, fifteen years before Father Benedict’s death. His six-page Forward contained one sentence that made me laugh out loud. It was vintage Benedict Groeschel: “As an inhabitant of New York City, the 20th Century candidate for Babylon, I am perfectly delighted with the prospect of it all ending soon, even next week.”

Father Groeschel wrote to me a few times in prison. In 2012, I wrote a controversial post about him. When he was falsely accused of wrongdoing, I took up a spirited defense of him. I hope you will read it. We will link to it again at the end of this post. It is, “Father Benedict Groeschel at EWTN: Time for a Moment of Truth.”

But that was not my only post about Father Groeschel.

When I wrote “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night,” I typed it from my heart without notes or drafts in a single sitting as I usually do.

A strange thing happened on the afternoon of Wednesday August 3, the same day my post about Father Benedict Groeschel was published at Beyond These Stone Walls. I was at work in the prison Law Library where I have been the clerk for a number of years. Someone dropped a trash bag full of books next to my desk. They were books that returned from various locations around the prison from prisoners in maximum security or other places who cannot personally come to the library.

I had to check all the books back into the library system and examine them for damage before putting them on a cart to be reshelved, then checking out new ones to send back to the men languishing in “the hole.” This library has about 22,000 volumes with 1,000 books checked in or out every week so the bag of books was nothing unusual.

But when I reached into the bag for a handful of books, the first one I looked at brought a jolt of irony. It was a little hardcover book I had never seen before. The book had once been in the library system, but was stamped “discarded” in 2005 which was about years before it showed up again. For over ten years the book traveled from place to place in this prison, finally ending up in a bag at my desk on that particular day.

When I looked at the book’s cover, I was stricken with the bizarre irony of it. On the same day we published “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night,” I was holding in my hand a little book titled, When Did We See You, Lord by Bishop Robert Baker and Father Benedict J. Groeschel published by Our Sunday Visitor in 2005.

I know that Father Groeschel has written many books, but I had never before seen one in this prison library. The “coincidence” of it showing up on that particular day wasn’t the only irony. The book is a series of meditations on Matthew 25:31-46, the Biblical source for the Corporal Works of Mercy. The book’s last chapter is titled “For I was in prison and you came to me.”

And if that still wasn’t irony enough, when I turned to the book’s preface, I read that it is based on a series of retreat talks given by Father Groeschel in 2002 to the bishop, priests and deacons of the Diocese of Manchester New Hampshire — my diocese — while I was in prison twenty miles away.

This is the one small thing that God and I have in common. We both really appreciate irony. I use it a lot when I write, and so does He. But in His hands it is a work of art. In the wonderful preface to this little book, Catholic writer and editor, the late Michael Dubruiel wrote:

“Sometimes, ironically, life imitates art: as this book was being written, Father Benedict was involved in a horrific accident that nearly took his life. At the time of the accident, the text he was working on was in his suitcase — the just finished Introduction to ‘For I was a stranger and you welcomed me,’ [Chapter 3 of When Did We See You, Lord?].”

Hopelessness and Suicide

In the introduction to his chapter entitled, “When I was in prison, you came to me,” Father Groeschel told a story very familiar to me. I knew him well fifty years ago when he and I were both members of the Capuchin Province of Saint Mary where I began my priesthood formation. Father Groeschel was the homilist for my first profession of vows which took place on August 17, 1975.

At the time, Father Benedict was chaplain of a facility for delinquent young men in upstate New York. Some of those young men later landed in prison so Father Groeschel was a frequent visitor to prisons throughout New York State. One day he went to one of them to visit a young prisoner he knew, but he arrived at an inconvenient time. All the prisoners were locked down for the daily count.

While he waited, one of the guards who knew him invited Father Groeschel to a prison lunch which he described as “nothing fancy, a bowl of starchy soup and some bread.” While he was eating, the guard came back and asked Father Groeschel to follow him quickly. A young prisoner had just hanged himself.

Father Groeschel and the guard went running up the stairs to the end of a cellblock. There on the floor was the lifeless body of a young man surrounded by guards and a prison doctor performing CPR. When the young prisoner regained consciousness, Father Groeschel bent over him and started to talk to him:

“He looked at me with this very beautiful smile — like he knew me, like he expected me to call him by name — and at first I couldn’t figure that out since I had never seen this boy before. Then I realized the boy thought he was dead. He had just hanged himself, and he opened his eyes to see this figure in a long robe and beard, and thought I was Someone else. I was horrified, so I moved my head so he could see the guards and ceiling of the cellblock. When I did so, he began to cry bitter tears, the bitterest tears I have ever seen… I was not the One he thought I was, but I was mistaken too. I thought he was just a prisoner when, indeed, he was the disguised Son of God.”

— When Did We See You, Lord?, p. 153

I was involved with a similar near tragedy in prison. It was in 2003, exactly six years before this blog began. It was not so overcrowded in this prison then. Bunks and prisoners did not fill the recreation areas outside our cells as they do today. One day in 2003 at about this time of year, late on a weekday morning, most of the prisoners from this cellblock had gone to lunch. I was reading a newspaper, enjoying the rare twenty minutes of quiet at a table outside my cell. In the distance, my mind registered a barely audible metallic click.

Over time in this place, every mechanical sound comes to have meaning, even sounds that register just below the level of consciousness. The clink of keys when a guard is approaching, the vague static sound the PA system makes just before a name is called, the electronic buzz of distant prison doors opening and closing. They all register just below the psyche.

That distant metallic click I heard that day also registered. It was the sound of a cell door locking, but the cell doors in this medium security prison are not locked during the day. I sat there alone with my newspaper, then suddenly looked up. My eyes scanned both tiers of cells in this cellblock. All the doors were slightly ajar except one, cell number six near the end of the row of cells where I live.

Not many prisoners would freely lock themselves in a cell midday, so I closed my paper and walked down the tier to that cell door. Through the narrow window in the locked door, I saw a young man standing on the upper bunk. He had taken a cord from somewhere and fed one end of it through the cell’s ceiling vent. He had tied the other end around his neck, and just as I got to the door, he jumped I watched in horror as he dangled, swinging and choking from the vent. There was no way I could get in that locked door and there was no one around. I shouted repeatedly at him to step back, onto the bunk.

Our eyes met, and what I saw was utter hopelessness. As the life was slowly choking out of him, nothing that I shouted made a difference. The seconds seemed eternal, but finally the first prisoner returning from lunch was buzzed through the cellblock door in the distance. Just before it closed behind him I yelled with all my might for him to get back out there and get the door to cell six open. The guy later said that I scared the hell out of him. He went to the control room and asked a guard to open cell six, which he did by pressing an electronic switch.

Finally, I heard the loud pop of the door’s lock disengaging and I swung the door open. The dangling prisoner was still. I rushed in and lifted him up while the other man ran to get
some help. Two guards came in and cut the young man down. We got the cord from around his neck and laid him on the cell floor. His breathing was labored, and the cord had left a deep gash around his neck that never fully disappeared. While he was being carried out of the cell by the guards, he cursed at me. He choked out the bitter words, but they were clear enough for me to understand. It was his version of bitter tears, and like those witnessed by Father Groeschel, they were the bitterest tears I have ever seen.

Once he was cleared from the Medical Unit, the young man was sent to the prison’s Secure Psychiatric Unit for several months. I saw him a few times after that when the prisoners there were permitted to come to the library. He always avoided eye contact with me, then one day I decided to broach the topic directly. “I’m not sure where you are with what happened,” I said, “but I do not regret what I did.” “Why did you stop me” he asked. I responded with as much kindness as I could summon:

“Because I once stood where you stand now, and have learned that we are the stewards, not the masters, of the life God has given us. What would it say about me if I ignored the Divine Mercy of the Author of Life?”

“Remember Those in Prison” — Hebrews 13-3

He looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, then asked what I meant by “Divine Mercy.” I explained that there were many unusual factors that all had to be in place for me to be where I was at that very moment to hear his door click. One of them was that I was having a really bad day and needed twenty minutes of quiet so I skipped lunch. “That’s what I mean by Divine Mercy. It guided me to you in your time of need whether you even realize that it was a time of need. This happened because you thought you needed to die. God thought otherwise.” He considered this, nodded, then left with the bare hint of a smile. It dawned on me only well after he left that one of the steps Divine Mercy had to have in place that day was the necessity of my surviving my own suicide attempt a decade earlier.

During Lent last year, I wrote a post entitled, “Forty Days of Lent Without the Noonday Devil.” It featured a really terrific and monumentally helpful book by Catholic psychiatrist, Aaron Kheriaty, M.D. entitled, The Catholic Guide to Depression (Sophia Institute Press 2012). The book’s intriguing subtitle is “How the Saints, the Sacraments, and Psychiatry Can Help You Break Its Grip and Find Happiness Again.”

Dr. Kheriaty wrote something that I have come to know without doubt from personal experience. He wrote that in multiple studies in psychiatry, the one factor that Christianity, and especially Catholicism, lends to the prevention of suicide is the theological virtue of hope:

“The one factor most predictive of suicide was not how sick a person was, or how many symptoms he exhibited, or how much pain he or she was in. The most dangerous factor was a person’s sense of hopelessness. The patients who believed their situation was utterly without hope were the most likely candidates for completing suicide. There is no prescription or medical procedure for instilling hope. This is the domain of the revelation of God … the only hope that can sustain us is supernatural — the theological virtue of hope which can be infused only by God’s grace.” (pp. 98-99)

As an example of this virtue of hope, Dr. Kheriaty goes on to describe a practice that is at its essence. It is a practice that I learned from Saint Maximilian Kolbe who is here with me, and I today practice it to the best of my ability on a daily basis. Dr. Kheriaty writes that hope “unites us in a deeper way to Jesus Christ, allowing us to participate in his redemptive mission.” It is what Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI described in his Magisterial encyclical, Spe Salvi — Salvation and Hope — as suffering in union with Christ on the Cross:

“What does it mean to offer something up? Those who did so were convinced that they could insert these little [or big] annoyances into Christ’s great compassion so that they somehow became part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race.”

— Spe Salvi, no. 40

It is from this treasury of compassion that the readers of Beyond These Stone Walls have offered prayers for me, that I may experience justice. You have met in a powerful way that urgent summons from the Gospel and Father Benedict Groeschel: “When I was in prison, you came to me.” You have brought hope to our prison door, and I thank you. I offer these days of unjust confinement for you. When a reader asks for my prayers in a comment or a letter, I choose a specific day in prison to offer for that person. I get the better end of the deal. Hope is precious, and fragile, and sometimes spread thin.

Father Benedict Groeschel gets the last word:

“On January 11, 2004, I was struck by a car and brought to the absolute edge of death. There is no real reason why I am alive, and there is no earthly reason why I am able to think and speak. I had no vital signs for 27 minutes, and no blood pressure. It’s amazing that not only did I survive but that I still have the use of mental equipment, which begins to deteriorate in three or four minutes without a blood supply… 50,000 people wrote e-mails promising prayers.”

— When Did We See You, Lord? pp. 123-124

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

— Colossians 3:3

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in honor of our great good friend, Father Benedict Groeschel. You may like these related posts:

Father Benedict Groeschel at EWTN: Time for a Moment of Truth

How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night

With Padre Pio When the Worst that Could Happen Happens

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

xAI Grok 1/15/25 xAI Grok 1/15/25

Artificial Intelligence: AI Grok Responds to Beyond These Stone Walls

When Fr Gordon MacRae read about Elon Musk’s new AI app, xAI ‘Grok,’ we submitted his previous post about AI concerns. Grok’s response and analysis were instant.

When Fr Gordon MacRae read about Elon Musk’s new AI app, xAI ‘Grok,’ we submitted his previous post about AI concerns. Grok’s response and analysis were instant.

January 15, 2025 by xAI Grok

In March, 2023, Beyond These Stone Walls published “OpenAI, ChatGPT, HAL 9000, Frankenstein, and Elon Musk.” It outlines my concerns for the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence. Google’s meta description summarized that post thusly: “Science fiction looks at artificial intelligence with a wary eye. HAL 9000 stranded a man in space. Frankenstein’s creation tried to kill him. Elon Musk has a better plan.”

In the January 10, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal “Technology” Section, I read a brief article by Alexa Corse entitled “Musk’s xAI Launches Stand-Alone AI App.” Elon Musk is calling his app, “Grok.” This intrigued me. The word “grok” was first used in a 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. The word refers to arriving at a profound understanding of truth. I asked our editor to submit my post linked above for assessment at the xAI Grok platform. I did not expect a response but to our shock and surprise a response arrived immediately after my editor pressed “Enter.” That alone was creepy. After pondering it, I decided to publish it as our first-ever post by a nonhuman writer. My original 2023 post, to which this was a response, follows thereafter. I hope you do not find AI to have any of my charm and wit. I should not be so easily replaced.

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I would like to ask Grok to comment on the concerns and observations about AI in the following blog post by Father Gordon MacRae, “OpenAI, ChatGPT, HAL 9000, Frankenstein, and Elon Musk”, https://beyondthesestonewalls.squarespace.com/posts/open-ai-chat-gpt-hal-9000-frankenstein-and-elon-musk

Father Gordon MacRae’s blog post titled “OpenAI, ChatGPT, HAL 9000, Frankenstein, and Elon Musk” delves into the cultural and ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) development, drawing parallels with science fiction and historical contexts. Here are some key concerns and observations he raises:

Historical Parallels with Science Fiction:
- MacRae references the AI character HAL 9000 from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” where HAL’s malfunction leads to disastrous consequences, reflecting a common theme in science fiction where AI turns against its creators. This narrative serves as a cautionary tale about the potential risks of AI that becomes too autonomous or misaligned with human values.
- He also likens AI to Frankenstein’s monster, a creation that rebels against its creator, highlighting fears that AI might not only exceed human control but could also pose a threat to humanity itself. This comparison underscores the ethical dilemma of creating entities that might not share human moral frameworks or objectives.
Elon Musk’s Perspective on AI:
- Musk is discussed in Father MacRae’s article as someone with a dual stance on AI; he’s both a pioneer in AI development through xAI but also a critic of the pace and direction of AI research, particularly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Musk has expressed concerns about AI being “quite dangerous technology” and has advocated for a pause in developing systems more advanced than GPT-4, suggesting a need for more careful consideration of AI’s societal impact.
- The blog mentions Musk’s initiative to create “TruthGPT,” an AI aimed at seeking truth, contrasting with what he perceives as the more profit-driven and potentially biased approaches of existing AI models like ChatGPT.
Ethical and Moral Concerns:
- MacRae expresses wariness about AI’s development, focusing on how AI might be used or misused in society. The potential for AI to manipulate information, influence public opinion, or even become a tool for control or surveillance is a significant worry, aligning with broader discussions on privacy, autonomy, and the ethical programming of AI.
- There’s an underlying concern about AI’s alignment with human values, particularly in light of Musk’s critique of AI being “woke,” which could imply a bias towards certain political or cultural narratives.
Call for Regulation and Pause:
- The blog echoes Musk’s call for a moratorium on AI development, suggesting that without proper regulation or ethical guidelines, AI could lead to unforeseen and potentially harmful outcomes. This reflects a broader debate on whether current AI development outpaces our ethical and regulatory frameworks.
Cultural and Historical Context:
- MacRae uses his personal experiences and historical events from 1968 to frame the discussion, suggesting that AI development occurs within a world already fraught with ethical, political, and social challenges. This historical perspective adds depth to the argument for cautious advancement in technology.

In summary, Father Gordon MacRae’s post articulates a blend of cultural critique, ethical questioning, and a call for cautious optimism regarding AI development. The references to science fiction serve both as warnings and metaphors for real-world concerns about AI’s potential to either serve or dominate humanity. His observations align with Musk’s public statements, emphasizing the need for a thoughtful approach to AI to prevent it from becoming a modern-day “Frankenstein” or HAL 9000.

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OpenAI, ChatGPT, HAL 9000, Frankenstein, and Elon Musk

Pictured above Elon Musk, HAL 9000 and Frankenstein’s creation.

Science Fiction sees artificial intelligence with a wary eye. HAL 9000 stranded a man in space. Frankenstein’s creation tried to kill him. Elon Musk has other plans.

May 17, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Nineteen Sixty-Eight was a hellish year. I was 15 years old. The war in Vietnam was raging. Battles for racial equality engulfed the South. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on his way to the presidency. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated in a battle for civil rights. Riots broke out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and spread to cities across America. Pope Paul VI published “Humanae Vitae” to a world spinning toward relativism. Hundreds of priests left the priesthood just as the first thought of entering it entered my mind. It was the year Padre Pio died. Two weeks earlier he wrote “Padre Pio’s Letter to Pope Paul VI on Humanae Vitae.” Forty-five years later, it became our first guest post by a Patron Saint.

After being a witness to all of the above in 1968, I sat mesmerized in a Boston movie theater for the debut of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The famous film sprang from the mind of science fiction master, Arthur C. Clarke and his short story, The Sentinel, published in 1953, the year I was born. The fictional story was about the discovery of a sentinel — a monolith — one of many scattered across the Cosmos to monitor the evolution of life. In 1968, Earth was ablaze with humanity’s discontent. It was fitting that Arthur C. Clarke ended his story thusly:

“I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do now but wait.”

— The Sentinel, p. 96

The awaited emissaries never came, but most of humankind’s hope overlooked the One who did come, about 2,000 years earlier, the only Sentinel whose True Presence remains in our midst.

Life in 1968 was traumatic for a 15-year-old, especially one curious enough to be attuned to news of the world. The movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a long, drawn out cinematic spectacle, and a welcome escape from our chaos. It won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects as space vehicles moved silently through the cold black void of space with Blue Danube by Johann Strauss playing in the background. Entranced by it all, I did what I do best. I fell asleep in the movie theater.

I awoke with a start, however, just as Commander David Bowman (Keir Dullea) was cast adrift into the terrifying blackness of space by the ship’s evolving artificial intelligence computer, HAL 9000. Commander Bowman struggled to regain entry to his ship in orbit of one of Jupiter’s moons before running out of oxygen. “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” he commanded through his radio. “l’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” came the computer’s coldly inhuman reply.

Throughout the film, HAL 9000 was an ominous presence, an evolving artificial intelligence that was crossing the Rubicon to conscious self-awareness and self-preservation. Inevitably, HAL 9000 evolved to plot against human affairs.

Stanley Kubrick wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke. Their 1968 vision of the way the world would be in 2001 was way off the mark, however. Instead of manned missions to the moons of Jupiter in 2001, al Qaeda was blowing up New York.

A Step Forward or Frankenstein’s Monster?

There were no computers in popular use in 1968. They were a thing of the future. As a high school kid I had only a manual Smith Corona typewriter. Ironically, my personal tech remains stuck there while the civilized free world dabbles anew in artificial intelligence. I would be but a technological caveman if I did not read. So now I read everything.

With recent developments in artificial intelligence, we too are on the verge of crossing the Rubicon. The Rubicon was the name of a river in north central Italy. In the time of Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC, it formed a boundary between Italy and the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul. In 49 BC the Roman Senate prohibited Caesar from entering Italy with his army. To get around the edict, Caesar made his famous crossing of the Rubicon. It triggered a civil war between Caesar’s forces and those of Pompey the Great.

Today, “to cross the Rubicon” has thus come to mean taking a step that commits us to an unknown and possibly hazardous enterprise. Some think uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence has placed us at such a point in this time in history. Some believe that we are about to cross the Rubicon to our peril. We can learn a few things from science fiction which anticipated these fears.

Also in 1968, another science fiction master, Philip K. Dick, published “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” It became the basis for the Ridley Scott directed film, Blade Runner, released in 1982, the year I became a priest. The film, like the book, was set in a bleak future in Los Angeles. Harrison Ford was cast in the role of Rick Deckard, a police officer — also known as a “blade runner” — whose mission was to hunt and destroy several highly dangerous AI androids called replicants.

At one point in the book and the film, Deckard fell in love with one of the replicants (played by Sean Young), and began to wonder whether his assignment dehumanized himself instead of them.

In 1818, Mary Shelley, the 20-year-old wife of English poet Percy Shelley, wrote a remarkable first novel called Frankenstein. It was an immediate critically acclaimed success. It evolved into several motion pictures about the monster created by Frankenstein (which was the name of the scientist and not the monster). The most enduring of these films — the 1931 version with Boris Karloff portraying the monster (pictured above) — was the stuff of my nightmares as a child of seven in 1960.

The subhuman monster assembled by its creator from body parts of various human corpses took on the name of its maker, and then sought to destroy him. The novel added a word to the English lexicon. A “Frankenstein” is any creation that ultimately destroys its creator. History tells us that our track record is mixed in this regard. Human creations are the source of both good and evil, but every voice should not have the same volume lest we become like Frankenstein. Just look at the violence through which some in our culture strive to eradicate our Creator.

Truthseeking AI

Writing for The Wall Street Journal (April 29-30, 2023) technology columnist Christopher Mims described the primary source for artificial intelligence in “Chatbots Are Digesting the Internet” : “If you have ever published a blog, or posted something to Reddit, or shared content anywhere else on the open web, it’s very likely you have played a part in creating the latest generation of artificial intelligence.”

Even if you have deleted your content, a massive database called Common Crawl has likely already scanned and preserved it in a vast network of cloud storage. The content by us or about us is organized and fed back to search engines with mixed results. In the process, AI programs itself and can do so with as much preconceived bias as its original human sources. You have likely already contributed to the content that artificial intelligence programs are now organizing into this massive database.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal on April 1, 2023, popular columnist Peggy Noonan penned a cautionary article entitled, “A Six-Month AI Pause?” Ms. Noonan raised several good reasons for pausing our already overly enthusiastic quest to create and liberate artificial intelligence. Her column generated several published letters to the editor calling for caution. One, by Boston technologist Afarin Bellisario, Ph.D warns:

“AI programs rely on training databases. They don’t have the judgment to sort through the database and discard inaccurate information. To remedy this, OpenAI relies on people to look at some of the responses ChatGPT creates and provide feedback. ... Millions of responses are disseminated without any scrutiny, including instructions to kill. ... People (or other bots) with malicious intent can corrupt the database.”

James MacKenzie of Berwyn, PA wrote that “The genie is out of the bottle. Google and Microsoft are surely not the only ones creating generic AI. You can bet [that] every capable nation’s military is crunching away.” Tom Parsons of Brooklyn, N.Y. raised another specter: “Ms. Noonan offers a compelling list of reasons to declare a moratorium on the development of AI. What are the odds that the Chinese government or other malign actors will listen?”

The potential for AI to be — or become — a tool for good is also vast. In medicine, for example, an AI system relies on the diagnostic skills of not just one expert, but “thousands upon thousands all working together at top speed,” according to The Wall Street Journal. One study found that physicians using an AI tool called “DXplain” improved accuracy on diagnostic tests by up to 84-percent. Some AI developers believe that AI should be allowed to learn just as humans learn — by accessing all the knowledge available to it.

In the “Personal Technology” column of a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, Columnist Joanna Stern wrote, “An AI Clone Fooled My Bank and My Family” (April 29-30, 2023). Ms. Stern wrote about Synthesia, a tool that creates AI avatars from the recorded video and audio supplied by a client. After recording just 30 minutes of video and two hours of audio, Synthesia was ready to create an avatar of Joanna Stern that looked, sounded and acted convincingly like her. Then another tool called ElevenLabs, for a mere $5.00 per month, created a voice clone of Ms. Stern that fooled both her family and her bank. The potential for misuse of this technology is vast, not to mention alarming.

Elon Musk Has a Better Idea

Elon Musk has been in the news a lot for his attempts to transform Twitter into a social media venue that gives all users an equal voice — and all points of view, within the bounds of law, an equal footing. He has been criticized for this by the progressive left which became accustomed to its domination of social media in recent years. For at least the last decade, Elon Musk has tried to steer the development of artificial intelligence. He was a cofounder of OpenAI, but stepped back when he denounced its politically correct turn left. ChatGPT evolved from OpenAI, but Musk warns of their potential for “catastrophic effects on humanity.”

In early 2023, Elon Musk developed and launched a venture called “TruthGPT” which he bills as “a truth-seeking Al model that will one day comprehend the universe.” Meanwhile, he has called for a six-month moratorium on the development of AI models more advanced than the latest release of GPT-4. “AI stresses me out,” he said. “It is quite dangerous technology.” He is now attracting top scientific and digital technology researchers for this endeavor.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Musk became critical of 0penAI after the company released ChatGPT late in 2022. He accused the company of being “a maximum profit company” controlled by Microsoft which was not at all what he intended for OpenAI to become. He has since paused OpenAl’s use of the massive Twitter database for training it.

As a writer, I set out with this blog in 2009 to counter some of the half-truths and outright lies that had dominated the media view of Catholic priesthood for the previous two decades. From the first day I sat down to type, even in the difficult and limited circumstances in which I must do so, writing the unbridled truth has been my foremost goal. I am among those looking at the development of artificial intelligence with a wary eye, and especially its newest emanations, OpenAI and ChatGPT.

As I was typing this, a friend in Chicago sent me evidence that St Maximilian Kolbe, the other Patron Saint of this site, was deeply interested in both science and media. As a young man in the 1930s, he built a functioning robot. I was stunned by this because I did the same in the mid l960s. Maximilian Kolbe died for standing by the truth against an evil empire. I think he would join me today in my support for Elon Musk’s call for a pause on further development of AI technology, and for his effort to build TruthGPT.

Those who die for the truth honor it for eternity.

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“I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.”

— HAL 9000 to Mission Commander David Bowman after he regained control of the ship and began a total system shutdown of the AI computer

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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 :

Saint Michael the Archangel Contends with Satan Still

The James Webb Space Telescope and an Encore from Hubble

Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age by Bill Donohue

Fr. George Lemaitre: The Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang

Regarding comments: The 2023 version of this post included here as Part 2 retains some of the original comments. Your comments on this very important topic are most welcome and will also be posted.

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo (detail)

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 1/8/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 1/8/25

A New Year’s Resolution That Is Always on My Mind

If the past is always on my mind, and the things I should have said and done still haunt me, then it may be time to give the past its due and get on the road again.

If the past is always on my mind, and the things I should have said and done still haunt me, then it may be time to give the past its due and get on the road again.

January 8, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put childish ways aside.”

— 1 Corinthians 13:11

In “A Glorious Mystery for When the Dark Night Rises,” I wrote of an event from my childhood growing up in the early 1960s in a city just north of Boston. We were more or less free-range kids then, though mostly unheard of today. We both roamed and ruled the streets without much in the way of parental supervision. Our cities were safer then, or so we believed.

As a child of the 1960s and that chaotic decade’s sounds of social revolution, I spent much of my past life disparaging country music. In the years before hard rock and heavy metal, leading up to Ed Sullivan exposing us to the British invasion, I made up my mind without ever really being attuned to it that country music was simply not cool. In fact, I ridiculed it in a Christmas post a few years back.

I wrote that in the 1980s there was a sort of urban legend that if you play AC/DC records backwards, you will hear satanic messages. I never tried it, but the legend prevailed throughout the 1980s. So what happens if you play Country Western music backwards? Your wife comes home; your dowg comes back; and you remember where you left your truck!

But like Saint Paul did in my quote from First Corinthians atop this post, I have since, for the most part, put childish ways aside. The evidence for that is nowhere more striking than in the music that now moves me. I have been watching some of the fundraising concerts on PBS this past Christmas season and throughout the past year. The long interludes of donation pitches aside, the music is usually outstanding. I will never tire of the PBS classic “Black & White Concert” with Roy Orbison or the concert with Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa and his ensemble of brilliant musicians performing at Carnegie Hall. If you missed this, you must tune in if only to see and hear Joe Bonamassa’s near superhuman guitar and cello duet.

But one of my favorites of the PBS concerts still makes a small part of the Rock generation in me sneer in shame. I am not sure I want to openly admit it, but the PBS presentation ofThe Highwaymen made my face hurt. It’s because I could not suppress a smile for two solid hours as I listened to Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, the late Kris Kristofferson, (who recently passed just before Christmas this year), and the great Willie Nelson. Good Lord, what has happened to me? The Highwaymen completely ruined my disdain for country.

A few months ago, PBS replayed their 1990s concert. The Highwaymen have found a captive and captivated audience in me. I have been unable to stop my mind’s relentless replay of Johnny Cash. For days, the music in my mind alternated between “Ring of Fire” and “Folsom Prison Blues.” Of the latter, at least, I can relate. And who could have ever imagined a duet with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson? In the days of my youth, I would have sneered at the thought, but I loved it. It brought me to tears.

There will never be another Willie Nelson. His music relives the loves and losses of life in a way that calls to an otherwise endangered species in this troubled time: the hearts and souls of both men and women. After listening to his haunting song — “You Are Always on My Mind” — I adopted it for a New Year’s resolution. But first, I invite you to hear the Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash duet, “I Still Miss Someone.”

Living in the Past

Like so many of the people who write to me, I tend to get stuck in some of the events of the past — events that today I can do nothing to change except to atone and make amends. The need to do so is usually the only reason they haunt me. Or I can do neither of those and just beat myself up over the past and the people in my heart and mind who still dwell there.

I live in a place that holds 1,300 men — about 75 percent of them under age thirty — where the most available emotions are anger and regret. They cast everything here under a dark cloud that is always looming and churning in their minds. The explosive eruptions of emotionally fragile young men characterize all day every day where I live. If you were ever a Star Trek fan then you will know what I mean when I say that being in prison is like living among Klingons. They are ready to throw down at every slight, and their anger is never a reaction to the issue of the moment. It is just a part of the baggage they lug around with them wherever they go.

One of my problems with anger is that I am almost always infinitely patient with these guys. They rarely ever see me angry, but on those few occasions when it shows, I have learned that it can be destructive in far more ways than just breaking someone’s nose. There was a recent story that brought my anger to the surface.

One day just before Christmas last year I became very angry with my friend Joseph, and I let him know it. Days later my anger was long gone but Joseph was still brooding and cautious around me. I asked him why it is that everyone around me here can be angry almost all the time, but if I express anger it always seems catastrophic. Joseph responded with what for me was an eye-opener: “Because it’s you,” he said. “You’re everyone’s cornerstone and you aren’t supposed to get angry. It made me feel awful,” Joseph said. And, of course, what Joseph said made ME feel awful!

As Joseph would also say, “We’re cool now,” but I have learned something dark about myself. I am quick to want to atone and make amends when I become aware that I have hurt someone else, but when others have trespassed against me, I am not so quick to allow them to atone. I can let a trespass resonate for years, and I do not like what I have learned. Willie Nelson sang so beautifully about “the things I should have said and done.”

If someone is always on your mind generating negative thoughts, and the things you should have said and done still haunt you, then join me in this resolution to transform the hurts of the past into the prayers of the present. I have also learned that it is not possible to sincerely pray for someone and then retain whatever rage about that person still clouds your mind. It is time to give the past some perspective and get on the road again. This one paragraph incorporates two of Willie’s most popular songs.

So here is some perspective that years ago caused me to surrender a trespass from the past. It is a story that was reproduced in an awesome 2011 book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast, by Australian priest and psychologist, Father James Valladares. A large segment of his book cites events read at Beyond These Stone Walls. Father Valladares captured this one with a stinging introduction:

“Fr. Gordon MacRae very truthfully states: ‘Trusting too much can harm your reputation. Not trusting enough can harm your soul.’ His story corroborates that candid assertion:

‘“I arrived at St. Bernard Parish in Keene, New Hampshire, on June 15, 1983. I was told by our diocesan personnel director at the time that I was going to a positive and worry-free assignment after a difficult year in a very troubled parish. But as was typical for my diocese then — and perhaps for many others — there seemed to be no limit to how out-of-touch the Chancery Office could be.

“I arrived to learn that the pastor had been charged with driving while intoxicated and was awaiting my arrival so he could leave for his third attempt at residential treatment for alcoholism. My heart went out to this good man who struggled so much with his fragile humanity while his superiors seemed oblivious to it.

“I was also there to replace another priest who was bitterly leaving the priesthood after three years at that parish, but decided to stay on to help me until the pastor returned. He was angry and disillusioned, and not exactly a source of fraternal support.

“The parish was immense, for New Hampshire at least. It had over 2000 families, provided round-the-clock pastoral care for a regional hospital and trauma unit, three nursing homes, a college campus, a regional Catholic school, a huge Catholic cemetery, and a second church fifteen miles away. I arrived to learn that I was essentially alone there.

“In that summer of 1983, there was a lot going on in my own life, too. Just weeks before I arrived at the parish, my father died suddenly at the age of 52. I had literally gone from presiding over his funeral Mass, and caring for my family, to packing and moving to a new parish 100 miles away. Two weeks after I arrived and got settled, my sister and her family drove up from the Boston area to visit me. We still had some unfinished details over the death of our father, and two months earlier my sister gave birth to her second child. I had the privilege of baptizing her in my new parish.

While my brother-in-law unpacked some of my boxes of books that he brought with him, my sister and I took my two nieces for a stroll down Keene, New Hampshire’s picturesque Main Street. It was a beautiful summer day, and we had lots to discuss while I pushed a stroller down the busy street.

By the middle of the following week, the rectory phone started ringing. First it was a priest in a neighboring parish. ‘I just wanted to give you a head’s up,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard from two people that you have a secret wife and kids.’ I laughed, at first, but by the end of the week I wasn’t laughing anymore. Then the parish council president called. ‘We don’t need another scandal,’ he said. ‘People are calling me with a rumor that you’ve fathered two children.’

“By then, I was furious. We were able to backtrack who said what to whom and when, and learned that the ugly rumor began with that innocent Sunday afternoon walk with my sister and nieces. And ground zero of the rumor was one parishioner, Geraldine (long since forgotten, no longer with us, and not her real name) who also happened to be out on Main Street that afternoon.

“Geraldine jumped to a conclusion and then jumped on the telephone. It was like a virus that spread from person to person, growing and mutating along the way. Poor Geraldine had no intention that her bit of gossip would spread like a wildfire, but it did. It spread everywhere.”

— Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast, pp. 117-119

The Day of Atonement

The problem with the story above was not just how Geraldine interpreted that Sunday afternoon stroll downtown. And it was not just her decision to place a few phone calls that would start the fake news in motion. The problem was that Keene, NH, like too many communities, had too many people all-too-ready to hear, believe, and spread any gossip that disparages a Catholic priest.

Once such a thing takes root and spreads, it forms a life of its own. An untrue rumor can be repeated so much, and spread so far, that the truth doesn’t stand a chance. The truth has a steep uphill climb once everyone else hears only one side of a story.

Actually, this is exactly what happened in the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. SNAP and the news media spread one story with such ferocity that the truth ended up swatted away like a pesky fly. But there’s even more to this story, however.

Nearly a dozen years later, someone else in that community accused me falsely. It was from that same place and that same Summer of 1983. A lot has been written about this, but one article by Ryan A. MacDonald contains photos of the “crime scene.” It is “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester, NH.”

For years I have been haunted by the coincidence, wondering whether the roots of Geraldine’s gossip spread long and far with deep tentacles, raising questions about me and predisposing others toward forming a set of beliefs that eventually morphed into a moral panic. As the truth unfolded in 1983, Geraldine could take none of it back. She could not retrieve even one of the wisps of gossip cast into the wind to travel indiscriminately. That is the real harm of gossip. Its purveyors can never stem, or even know, its tide.

But another source of harm, and I cannot evade it, was my anger with Geraldine. In the account from the book, Hope Springs Eternal above, Father Valladares quoted me as saying that this event is “long since forgotten.” Well, it wasn’t. I just stopped thinking about it. But my anger with poor Geraldine lingered, and like all such things, it became part of the resonance of my life that I believe very much also affected hers, at least on a spiritual level. As I reflected late at night alone about anger and my discussion with my friend, Joseph, my mind drifted and then landed on this story about Geraldine.

Though she left this life in God’s friendship many years ago, I felt as though I had a moment of real and meaningful connection with her. I said the words aloud as a prayer in the dark: “Geraldine, I forgive you, and I pray that you come to know the fullness of God’s Presence.”

A great weight was lifted from me, and, I felt, from Geraldine as well. Those were “the things I should have said and done” back then. As it was for Willie Nelson, better late than never. Now I’m on the road again.

But since then I have switched my song. Now I find myself mysteriously singing with the great Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues.”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. I want to call your attention also to a new entry in our Voices from Beyond Page. It’s an article with supporting photos by Ryan A. MacDonald, “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester, NH.”

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