A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent

On Ash Wednesday 2025 Fr Gordon MacRae marks 11,120 days in wrongful imprisonment, imposed for crimes that never took place. What on Earth could he give up for Lent?

March 5, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I wrote a post much like this one for Ash Wednesday, 2017. I stumbled upon it 2,922 days later as I pondered what I should write for Ash Wednesday this year. It tells the story of my friend Martin, an 82-year-old amputee and United States Marine. I encountered him in prison when he was the unfortunate victim of a cruel and senseless act by a clueless young man. When I re-read that post, I decided that I cannot leave Martin’s story as I left it back then. Martin is mercifully gone now, from this prison and from this life, but he left behind for me a resolute plan for Lent.

I give up! I have long since stopped counting how often I say that out loud, and if I had a dollar for every time I think it, I would find myself in a whole other tax bracket. I thought it even as I was starting this post. I spent all of yesterday typing a post into the short-term memory of this old but irreplaceable typewriter, and when I turned it on to continue it this morning, all was lost. I had to start over, so I abandoned my entire not-so-inspiring Ash Wednesday post and wondered what I might write about. Then it came to me. I’m giving up giving up for Lent, and I invite you to join me.

Those two words — “giving up” — appear together only once in the entire canon of Sacred Scripture. I found them in Chapter Six of the Second Book of Maccabees. They are part of a story with elements that you might find familiar. The year is 167 BC, and the Greek conqueror-king, Antiochus Epiphanes has overrun Jerusalem and desecrated the Temple. He removed the Sacred Torah, the Divine Presence, and turned the Sanctuary over to the Greek cult of Zeus who sits in Greece on Mount Olympus. What had been voluntary adoption of Hellenistic religion for the occupation of Jerusalem was now obligatory. For Israel, all was lost, and the People of God were demoralized and without hope.

You may know some of this story because it is the origin of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. After a two-year struggle by a resistance movement launched by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers, the Temple was retaken and purified and the Divine Presence was restored in the Sanctuary. It happened on the 25th day of Chislev in the year 165 BC, exactly two years to the day after the Sanctuary was desecrated.

Restoring the Torah to the sanctuary required burning a lamp to honor the Divine Presence, but the resistance had oil for the lamp for just one day. Nonetheless, the lamp burned for eight days until the revolt of the Maccabees succeeded in re-taking all of Jerusalem. The city “decreed by public ordinance … that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year” (2 Maccabees 10:8). Hence the eight branches of the menorah which are lit at Hanukkah.

But back to “giving up.” Before all that happened — before the Maccabean revolt re-took the Temple — the two-year occupation by the Greeks was brutal. It started off seductively. Some among the Jews became collaborators in the gradual surrender. First to go were their religious liberties, and when that happened all the rest of their freedom was easy prey. We would do well to remember that.

Some surrendered their religious rights because they were sold a story that doing so was in their best interest under the rule of Antiochus who had no respect for their faith. Over time, invitations for reform and change turned into requirements — an agenda that started off looking like “social progress,” not unlike the one that hauled the Little Sisters of the Poor to the steps of the Supreme Court during the Obama and Biden administrations.

But I digress. Back to the story. Eleazar, “a scribe in a high position, a man now advanced in age and of noble presence” (2 Maccabees 6:18) was used by the Greek occupiers to demean the peoples’ faith and rob them of their will. In public view, the Greeks tried to force the revered Jew to eat the flesh of swine. Some of his fellow Jews took the respected Scribe aside and privately urged him to bring some other meat and just pretend that he was eating the swine, thus saving his own life while only appearing to cave to the demands of the oppressors. Eleazar said in reply:

“‘Such pretense is not worthy of our time, lest many of the young should presuppose that Eleazar, in his ninetieth year, has gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me while I defile and disgrace my old age. For even if for the present I should avoid the punishment of men, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example…’ When he said this, he went at once to the rack.”

— 2 Maccabees 6:24-28

By giving up his life, Eleazar helped keep his people from giving up their will, and their hope, and their faith, the very fabric of their existence. This is the sole use of the term “giving up” in all of sacred Scripture. So who am I to defile the example of Eleazar, and cave into the oppression of imprisonment? I am giving up giving up for Lent, and again, I invite you to join me.

Tom Clancy Gets Wet

The first time I ever heard the term, “giving up giving up” was from a fellow prisoner, an 82-year-old named Martin. I saw Martin here and there before we actually met. He stood out. Well, “stood” does not quite fit. Martin came to prison at age 80 as an amputee confined to a wheelchair, sort of a prison within a prison.

Most confined to wheelchairs here try to find younger prisoners to push them when they need to get from one point to another. Martin always got where he needed to go under his own power. At some point in his life, his left leg was amputated several inches above the knee. He used his remaining leg to propel his own chair, declining all help. People come and go constantly where we live, so when 82-year-old Martin and his wheelchair were assigned to one of the overflow bunks out in a recreation area, few people took notice. At least, the right ones didn’t notice. The wrong ones always notice, and sometimes they lurk in the shadows waiting for an opportunity.

I first noticed Martin when I saw him sitting at the edge of his bunk with his one remaining leg, but without his chair. I stopped and asked if he needed help. “I’m not sure,” he said warily. “I took a short nap, and when I woke up my chair was gone.” I went on a search for Martin’s wheelchair, and was furious when I found it. Some clueless punk — there is no shortage of them here — decided to steal the few possessions Martin had in a pocket in the back of his chair, and then hid the chair in a shower with the water running. It ruined the possessions he had left, including a book he was reading.

And it was a Tom Clancy book! That REALLY ticked me off! You might understand why from my recent post, In the Rearview Mirror: Tom Clancy and The Hunt for Red October. Such things happen here to vulnerable prisoners who appear isolated. When I brought the dripping chair back to Martin, the leering smirks nearby turned into scowls and downcast eyes as the local thugs avoided eye contact with me. Then I brought a towel and a fan which I plugged in to help dry the wheelchair. And I recruited a couple of the main suspects to help me dry the chair. I knew that Martin must be overdue for a bathroom trip so I said, “Just this one time, let someone help you.” I helped Martin into the chair and got him to where I knew he needed to go. I waited there to bring him back to his bunk, and then I pulled up a plastic chair and sat with Martin for awhile.

His greatest concern was for the Tom Clancy book, The Hunt for Red October, which was ruined. He told me that a friend got it from the library and now he will have to pay for it. “That’s not going to happen,” I said. I told Martin that I work in the Library where we have several copies of that book. I said I would be back that afternoon with another so he could finish it.

Then, to calm Martin’s wariness, I also brought him a copy of my Tom Clancy post linked above, which I first wrote on the occasion of Tom Clancy’s sudden death in October of 2013. Martin was shocked to learn that a prisoner had written such an article, and more so when I told him that Tom Clancy’s long time publisher, G.P. Putnam and Sons, posted it on Clancy’s official website.

Later that day, when I returned with the book, Martin was beaming. He said he loved the article and he was shocked yet again to learn from it that I am a Catholic priest. Martin told me that he is a convert to our faith, that his conversion came shortly after active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps some fifty years earlier during the Korean War. That was why he started reading Tom Clancy.

Semper Fidelis

From that day on, I made it a point to visit with Martin every day. So did our friend, Pornchai-Max Moontri. No one ever touched his chair again. From my post about Tom Clancy, Martin discovered that his book that ended up in the shower was but the first in a series of fourteen novels about Jack Ryan, a literary character and disabled Marine who has been part of my life and priesthood since 1985.

In these books, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan took us from the Marine Corps to the CIA in The Hunt for Red October, to the streets of Ulster in Patriot Games, to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in Cardinal of the Kremlin, to the assassination attempt of Saint John Paul II in Red Rabbit, and, in the end, to the White House and terrorism in Debt of Honor and Executive Orders.

I loved these books. By the time I met Martin I had read some 14,000 pages in the life of Tom Clancy’s fictional character, Jack Ryan. It was a joy for me to bring the installments in the series one by one to Martin. Each book was a heavy tome, most in excess of 700 pages, but Martin devoured them. He loved my afternoon visits after work in the Library as we discussed the latest adventure of Jack Ryan.

In one of these discussions, it was difficult for me to contain my fury. I never knew what sent Martin to prison at age 80. A lapse in judgment? A moment of human failure? It didn’t matter. This was a very good man who served his country as a U.S. Marine at the close of the Korean War in the same year that I was born. He had earned our nation’s respect.

One day I asked Martin what keeps him from giving up, and he said that there came a point when he had given up giving up. I asked what he meant, and he said that shortly after he came to prison two or three years earlier, his wife of 56 years died. He said that when he learned this, it seemed the end of the world for him. He sat alone in his wheelchair and was overcome with grief. Then, he said, a “counselor” on the prison payroll in the program he was in walked past him and stabbed at his pain. She said sarcastically — and it was heard by others — “Oh just suck it up, old man!” I had heard similar accounts from other prisoners there. None of us should ever overestimate the capacity for empathy from those burned out on a prison payroll.

Martin said that this made him so enraged that rage replaced grief. He decided that he would never again hand his emotional and spiritual well being over to an oppressor. He had to give up giving up. This made total sense to me, and I think that because of it — like the story of Eleazar — Martin inspired those who took the time to get to know him. He inspired me to endure the long Lent that my life had entered.

My heart sank one day a year later when I returned from the Library to see Martin and his chair gone, and an empty bunk. He was moved to another place, a very crowded dormitory. Martin had been paroled at least two years earlier, but could not be released because he no longer had a home. His condition was such that he needed handicapped housing for veterans, but the wait lists were long. This kept Martin in prison well past his parole, and also changed his custody level which was why he was moved.

It took me awhile to learn where he went. Once I did, I was able to continue to send him books each week. He finished the entire Tom Clancy “Jack Ryan” series, and I started sending him books about the Marine Corps by W.E.B. Griffin which he loved.

I could not see Martin, but I was able to find prisoners who lived in that dormitory and I got them to bring him books each week. I even convinced some of them to sit with him on occasion. I also sent him some of my posts which he loved and would send back his comments on them.

Then one day Martin was gone from there as well. I learned that he developed an infection that required the removal of his other leg. I was heartbroken for him. In all this time, he waited patiently in prison for a place to live, but I both feared and hoped that it may end up being in Heaven. Martin’s Purgatory was served right here.

I later learned Martin was housed in the prison medical unit, and there he had a visit from a Veterans Administration official who arranged housing for him. From that point on I lost contact with Martin. I understood some years later that he passed away.

Semper Fi, Martin. Thank you for facing your long Lent with faith and strength and dignity. Never give up! Never surrender!

— except to God Himself!

Semper Fidelis! — Always Faithful!

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Notes to Readers from Father Gordon MacRae: Please remember in your prayers our Holy Father Pope Francis as he is being treated for critical illness.

Beginning this week and throughout Lent and the Easter Season our newest menu item on the Home Page, From Ashes to Easter, will feature a series of Biblical posts comprising a walk through Salvation History. These posts were written, in the spirit of Saint Paul, from prison. We hope these Biblical reflections may enhance your Lenten journey as we walk with Our Lord toward Calvary. Please ponder and share our posts From Ashes to Easter.

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The Martyrdom of Eleazar the Scribe by Gustave Doré

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

On the 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.

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?

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Shining a Spotlight on Media Where Lies Thrive and Truth Suffers

Mary Ann Kreitzer takes on media corruption in this brilliant article that echoes the title of her blog: ‘Les Femmes, The Truth.’

February 19, 2025 by Mary Ann Kreitzer

[Note from Father Gordon MacRae: The following article by Mary Ann Kreitzer was originally published at Les Femmes, The Truth. It is reprinted here with her gracious permission. I highly recommend following Mary Ann at Les Femmes, The Truth.]

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The mainstream drive-by media is, for the most part comatose and dying. The Pulitzer committee helped deliver assisted euthanasia in 2018 with its shared award to the Washington Post and New York Times for the 20-article scam-fantasy about Russiagate. Mostly based on anonymous sources, rumors, and innuendo from Trump-hating liberals, the articles lied and lied and lied again leaving wounded truth tellers in their wake like Michael Flynn. A 2022 article in the New York Post summarized the damage caused by the series:

“The liberal media had “destabilized US democracy” more than Russia ever could, by feeding left-leaning Americans a constant, false narrative that their president was a sleeper agent. Whatever your feelings about Donald Trump, it should disturb you that political opponents and bureaucrats who hated him could so easily weaponize the press to undermine the government from within.

“This Pulitzer Prize makes a mockery of the idea that journalism speaks truth to power, as it shows how the press was manipulated by the powerful. “Our republic and its press will rise or fall together,” Joseph Pulitzer once said. For the sake of both, rescind this award given in his name.”

Amen to that!

Seven years post Russiagate, we all know the lying liberal media acted as pawns in a cynical chess game to deep-six the candidacy of Donald Trump. They failed in 2016, but, with the help of election fraud, succeeded in 2020.  The on-going lies and manipulation of events led voters to stop listening to the talking heads on MSNBC, CNN, and the networks. The voters rejected them because they were lying, and anyone with half a brain knew it.

But Trump isn’t the only victim of the corrupt legacy media. Anyone can become the target. We’ve seen the media used against conservatives, the J6ers, pro-lifers, homeschoolers, and, with a special vengeance, Catholic priests. The clergy sex abuse scandals involved a fraction of priests, but the hysteria coupled with greed turned justice on its head. Every man in a Roman collar became the target of unscrupulous “victims” and ambulance-chasing lawyers who often chose dead priests to accuse with little or no evidence.

To this day, I have anti-Catholic readers who comment on my blog with vicious generalizations about priests. Obviously I don’t post their screeds.

Don’t get me wrong. There were certainly real and grim cases of abuse and disgraceful cover-ups by corrupt bishops who moved the guilty around allowing them to abuse again. Those priests and bishops should be in jail. But in the hysteria that accompanied the real evil, many innocent priests were accused including those long dead who could not defend themselves, a clever strategy by greedy liars for robbing the Church.

Which brings me to Fr. Gordon MacRae’s article last week at Beyond These Stone Walls.

A Cold Shower for a Spotlight Oscar Hangover

Father MacRae’s article links to several others that shine a real spotlight (unlike the media’s) on the money-hungry lawyers eager for prime rib from the cash cow of the Church. In one of the linked articles, “Due Process for Accused Priests,” Fr. MacRae wrote:

“A New Hampshire contingency lawyer recently brought forward his fifth round of mediated settlement demands. During his first round of mediated settlements in 2002 — in which 28 priests of the Diocese of Manchester were accused in claims alleging abuse between the 1950s and 1980s — the news media announced a $5.5 million settlement. The claimants’ lawyer, seemingly inviting his next round of plaintiffs, described the settlement process with the Manchester diocese: “During settlement negotiations, diocesan officials did not press for details such as dates and allegations for every claim. I’ve never seen anything like it.” (NH Union Leader, Nov. 27, 2002). “Some victims made claims in the last month, and because of the timing of negotiations, gained closure in just a matter of days.” (Nashua Telegraph, Nov. 27, 2002). 

“That lawyer’s contingency fee for the first of what would evolve into five rounds of mediated settlements was estimated to be in excess of $1.8 million. At the time this first mediated settlement was reached in 2002, New Hampshire newspapers reported that at the attorney’s and claimants’ request, the diocese agreed not to disclose their names, the details of abuse, or the amounts of individual settlements.

“In contrast, the names of the accused priests — many of whom were deceased — were publicized by the Diocese in a press release. Despite the contingency lawyer’s widely reported amazement that $5.5 million was handed over with no details or corroboration elicited by the diocese, the claims were labeled “credible” by virtue of being settled. Priests who declared the claims against them to be bogus — and who, in two cases, insisted that they never even met these newest accusers — were excluded from the settlement process and never informed that a settlement had taken place. The priests’ names were then submitted to the Vatican as the subjects of credible allegations of abuse. The possible penal actions — for which there is no opportunity for defense or appeal — include possible administrative dismissal from the priesthood, but without any of the usual vestiges of justice such as a discovery process, a presumption of innocence, or even a trial.”

Fr. MacRae remains in jail after 30 years because he refused to lie and take a plea bargain bribe to admit guilt in exchange for a drastically reduced sentence. He took the hard road of truth and remains in prison like so many of the saints. He never faced the beasts in the colosseum, just the vultures in the witness box.

Unfortunately, many journalists aren’t interested in the truth or in presenting an unbiased story — i.e., straight reporting. They happily feed convenient lies to the public or omit relevant facts to  uphold their personal agendas. And that’s the point of Father MacRae’s article last week linking to another article from 2016 that described why the Spotlight film about Paul Shanley and abuse in Boston was terrible. The journalist, JoAnn Wypijewski, described both Fr. Shanley’s case and Fr. MacRae’s. The differences were striking: a gay, rebel priest vs. a faithful, orthodox priest. The similar situation was that both were convicted at witch trials on no evidence but hysteria. Another similarity, neither would accept a plea deal. Fr. MacRae writes:

“Paul Shanley stood for and did all manner of things that on their face were seen by some as dishonorable and disrespectful of his priesthood and his faith. But he was not on trial for those things. He was on trial for very specific offenses for which there was no evidence whatsoever beyond his reputation. All objective observers who look past his personal morality long enough to see the facts conclude that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was then in prison at age 84. We don’t have to like him to see that the Shanley trial was a sham. 

“Ms. Wypijewski’s CounterPunch juxtaposition of all this with the story of my own trial and imprisonment was jarring at best, but only because I have lived under the cloud of false witness for so long that to see it again in print assails me. The author’s revelation that this was all driven by the hysteria of moral panic surrounding the very idea of priestly abusers, and not evidence — for there was no evidence — drove the accusations, drove the trial, drove the media coverage, and drove me into prison. “MacRae got sixty-seven years for refusing to lie,” she wrote. “Let that sink in.”

True journalism is hard to find these days. Some students say they choose journalism because they want to “change things.” That, however is not the purpose of journalism. It’s to seek the truth through unbiased reporting of events that look at all sides without prejudice. We aren’t seeing much of that these days which means it’s incumbent on us to uphold the truth and avoid leaping to conclusions or rash judgments. 

I hope you will read Father MacRae’s article and the others to which he links. His story is truly a lesson in the value of truth and the obligation to do the research. Our mind is called the seat of judgment. We would do well to remember that making clear and lucid judgments requires us to demand facts and not make decisions based on hysteria and moral panic. There are too many examples of that. I’ll offer just one. Remember Nick Sandman and the Covington students at the Lincoln Memorial after the March for Life in 2019.  Remember the false accusations of their abuse of Native American grifter and liar, Nathan Phillips. The Kentucky bishops with no evidence at all leaped on the guilty bandwagon as did right-to-life groups and many in Catholic media. We should never forget that lesson!

I’m offering the Litany of the Holy Spirit today that Paul Shanley used his time in prison to examine his life, repent of his true sins, and embrace the fullness of the Catholic faith. Prison has a way of focusing the mind. Perhaps for Shanley, his cell became a haven of grace. And I will especially pray for Fr. Gordon MacRae, a faithful priest of God, whose prison cell has been a source of grace for many. 

Holy Spirit Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, enter our hearts.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: I thank Mary Ann Kreitzer for her fine writing and fidelity to Truth. I again hope you will check out her outstanding Catholic blog, Les Femmes, The Truth.

I am also pleased to report that our story has been growing legs of late. We appear in a segment of the Australian site, Wrongful Convictions Report.

You may also like these related articles from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe

To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights

Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

A Cold Shower for a Spotlight Oscar Hangover

The film "Spotlight" won the Academy Award for Best Picture on February 28, 2016. Since then journalist JoAnn Wypijewski has debunked it as a script for moral panic.

February 12, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

[ Note from Father MacRae: I should have been more attentive in explaining this post this week.  It is not so much a reprint as a restoration.  A noted journalist had written a wonderful piece about the "Spotlight" film's Academy Award for Best Picture nine years ago.  The writer, JoAnn Wypijewski, heralded an entirely new view of the film, which caused me to want to rewrite this post. ]

For some purveyors of journalism in America, the standard for modern news media seems to come down to “whoever screams longest and loudest is telling the truth.” Taking a position against a tidal wave of “availability bias” — a phenomenon I once described in a Catalyst article, “Due Process for Accused Priests” — might get a writer shouted down in a blast of hysteria masked as journalism.

But that may be changing. A post I wrote a few years ago, “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek,” a story that exposes a Catholic sex abuse fraud, has generated an unexpected response. At this writing, it has been shared thousands of times on social media, and has drawn readers by the thousands every day since it was posted.

There is nothing in that post, however, that screams out drama from the rooftops. If anything, it is subtle, reasoned, and unemotional. I am sometimes criticized for telling important stories without much emotional hype. Sometimes my friends become irritated with my lack of ranting and raving, but I must come down on the side of rational discourse when I write.

That lesson in the difference between responsible journalism and moral panic has been driven home again. I have had to add a few names to my short list of “News Media Spinal Columns.” Some writers exemplify courage and integrity by rationally exposing important stories despite a scandal-hungry news media that prefers moral panic to moral truths. Some have pushed back against that tide admirably, and though the list is short, today I have to add the name of another journalist with a spinal column.

On Sunday evening, February 28, 2016 I opted for Downton Abbey on PBS instead of the Academy Awards. Like most PBS productions, Downton Abbey had no commercial breaks so I did not switch over for even a peek at that annual diversity-challenged nod to Hollywood narcissism known as the Oscars.

I was not at all surprised to learn that “Spotlight” won the Oscar for Best Picture, its sole award out of six nominations. It is a sign of Oscar’s elitist finger on the pulse of common humanity that only two percent of viewers thought this was “Best Picture” in a USA Today study of exit interviews.

JoAnn Wypijewski has a very different take, not so much on the film itself, but on the integrity, of the story behind it and its damage to the art of journalism as rational reporting gave way to emotion. I cannot tell you how disappointing it was to read a review by Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online who surrendered reasoned journalism right in paragraph one:

“I cried watching that movie. I looked around and saw sorrow. I couldn’t help wondering if someone around me had been hurt by someone who professed to be a man of God.”

“But, hey, lighten up. It’s just a movie,” wrote two reviewers in the The New York Times (which, by the way, owned The Boston Globe during its 2002 Spotlight Team investigation). “And they don’t give an Oscar for telling the truth.”

CounterPunch

On the day after the Oscars, at least five people sent me messages with a link foreboding, “You Need to See This!” Each warned that I am mentioned extensively in a controversial article by JoAnn Wypijewski at CounterPunch, a left-leaning news site that lives up to its name. Entirely unaccustomed to being treated justly by the media of the left in all this, my first thoughts on the article were not happy ones. Then the final message we checked was from the author herself with a link to “Oscar Hangover Special: Why’ ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film”:

“Fr. MacRae, I suspect you will think this intemperate… but then being in prison has given you an expansive view of polite company. I wrote this [see link] on the heels of the Oscars. I think you will like some of it, at least.”

I had no input into this article and no prior awareness of it. It does not represent my point of view at all, but rather is written solely from the point of view of the public record, seen through a fair and just set of journalistic eyes. The article was read once to me via telephone, and my knee jerk reaction was to keep it to myself. Then it was printed and sent to me, and I have since read it carefully twice. It’s tough stuff, and it made me grimace more than once, but mostly for its brutal honesty.

On first hearing the article, I have to admit that I didn’t much like being thrown together with the story of Father Paul Shanley, a notorious Boston priest with a long history of ecclesiastical rebellion. I suspect this is what the author meant by prison giving me “an expansive view of polite company.” I guess she understands that in some other circumstance, I may not choose to stand next to a lightning rod in a perfect storm.

But I know and admit that my gag reflex of umbrage was unjust, as I know that the case against Paul Shanley was unjust. He was tried not based on evidence of a real crime, but solely on the basis of his reputation. That was the only vehicle in which an utterly unbelievable, scientifically unsupportable claim of repressed and recovered memory could have been sold to an otherwise rational set of jurors.

First, throughout the 1970s, The Boston Globe, celebrated Paul Shanley as a notorious, pro-gay, in-the-Church’s-face “Street Priest.” Then, when it better suited the agenda of editors, the Globe turned on him. Shanley was tried in the pages of the Globe before he set foot in any court of law. He was sacrificed to a story that is not even plausible, and in its telling, journalistic integrity was sacrificed as well.

“Let That Sink In”

Paul Shanley stood for and did all manner of things that on their face were seen by some as dishonorable and disrespectful of his priesthood and his faith. But he was not on trial for those things. He was on trial for very specific offenses for which there was no evidence whatsoever beyond his reputation. All objective observers who look past his personal morality long enough to see the facts conclude that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was then in prison at age 84. We don’t have to like him to see that the Shanley trial was a sham.

Ms. Wypijewski’s CounterPunch juxtaposition of all this with the story of my own trial and imprisonment was jarring at best, but only because I have lived under the cloud of false witness for so long that to see it again in print assails me. The author’s revelation that this was all driven by the hysteria of moral panic surrounding the very idea of priestly abusers, and not evidence — for there was no evidence — drove the accusations, drove the trial, drove the media coverage, and drove me into prison. “MacRae got sixty-seven years for refusing to lie,” she wrote. “Let that sink in.”

The truth is that most of you now reading this have already let that sink in while others, including others in the Church, have settled for moral panic. This is why the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, Publisher and Editor of First Things magazine, wrote that my imprisonment “reflects a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.” This is why I need you to share this post and the CounterPunch article linked at the end.

Otherwise very reasonable Catholics on both the left and right have used the scandal of accused priests for their own agendas and ends with no regard for evidence, for justice, or for the most fundamental rights of their priests. The blind, self-righteous judgment of this “voice of the faithful” was the soil in which moral panic grew. Let that sink in, too.

The news media has done the same, and JoAnn Wypijewski has documented this masterfully. What The Boston Globe did was not journalism. It came as no surprise, in the years to follow the Spotlight revelations, that the Globe’s owner, The New York Times, became desperate to sell it. Several years ago the Globe was purchased by John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox. The New York Times let the Globe go for less than seven cents on the dollar on their original purchase price of $1.1 billion. It was sold by the Times for $70 million. Bottom line: The Boston Globe is dying. The Catholic Church is not.

Globe to shutter Crux site, shift BetaBoston
by Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, Casting the Second Stone2016

The Boston Globe said Friday that it will shut down Crux, the newspaper’s online publication devoted to news and commentary on the Roman Catholic Church. Crux will halt publication on April 1, and several employees will be laid off.

In a memo sent to Globe employees Friday, Globe editor Brian McGrory wrote “we’re beyond proud of the journalism and the journalists who have produced it, day after day, month over month, for the past year and a half.” But McGrory added, “We simply haven’t been able to develop the financial model of big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers that was envisioned when we launched Crux back in September 2014.”

McGrory said that the Crux site will be handed over to associate editor and columnist John Allen, a veteran reporter on Catholic affairs. McGrory said that Allen “is exploring the possibility of continuing it in some modified form, absent any contribution from the Globe.” Crux editor Teresa Hanafin will stay in the newsroom, probably at bostonglobe.com, the paper’s online home.

Casting the Second Stone

In “Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?,” I described the limits that the Hebrew Scriptures imposed on the process of accusing, judging, and destroying our fellow human beings. Only with evidence and witnesses, and there had to be at least two, could the first stone be cast according to the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 17:17). Only then could the mob be justified in joining in.

But in the creation of a moral panic, such as that which Hollywood recently endorsed at the Academy Awards, no such limits on public stoning by the mob are deemed necessary. The Laws of God are not to be found in the credits of a Hollywood production, and for many in modern Western Culture, Hollywood is now the final arbiter of truth and justice. Are you really prepared to accept a lecture on morality and justice taught by the news media with an endorsement from Hollywood? Some — even among Catholic priests and bishops — have learned that the best way to avoid being targeted by a witch hunt is to join in with its inevitable stoning.

Regarding the CounterPunch article taken as a whole, JoAnn Wypjewski is wrong about one thing. I did not “like some of it, at least.” I liked all of it! I liked it not because it is comfortable to read — it is not — but because it is the truth, because it is written by a person whose integrity as a journalist took precedence over what those on her ideological side of the fence demand from her. I like it because very early on in the article she risked making herself a lightning rod for the media left by challenging its availability bias:

“I am astonished that, across the past few months, ever since ‘Spotlight’ hit theaters, otherwise serious left-of center people have peppered their party conversation with effusions that the film reflects a heroic journalism, the kind we all need more of… What editor Marty Baron and the Globe sparked with their 600 stories and their confidential tip line for grievances was not laudatory journalism but a moral panic, and unfortunately for those who are telling the truth, truth was its casualty.”

Writing for The Wall Street Journal recently, author Carol Tavris described the devastation typically left in the wake of a moral panic:

“How do you convey to the next generation the stupidity, the rush to judgment, the breathtaking cruelty, the self-righteousness, the ruined lives, that every hysterical epidemic generates? On the other hand, understanding a moral panic requires perspective-distance from the emotional heat of anger and anxiety.”

— “A Very Model Moral Panic,” WSJ.com, August 7, 2015

To date the CounterPunch article has been shared thousands of times on social media. This is of utmost importance because it lets all media know that this is an important story that has been neglected by the mainstream media.

I therefore implore you to share this post, and to read and share this important article by JoAnn Wypijewski: “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film.”

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NOTE TO READERS: Father Gordon MacRae is now publishing an occasional article on X (formerly Twitter). His first article there is linked below. We invite our readers to follow him on X @TSWBeyond.

xAI Grok and Fr. Gordon MacRae on the True Origin of Covid-19

You may also like these recommended posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Anatomy of a Sex Abuse Fraud

The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul

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

Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

On the 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.

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

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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