Upon the Death of a Great, Good Friend: Fr David L. Deibel

Fr David L. Deibel, JCL, JD entered eternal life on June 16, 2025, a courageous canonical advocate for Fr Gordon MacRae and Fr Frank Pavone at Priests for Life.

June 20, 2025 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Canonist, Fr. David Deibel had endured unjust criticism as an advocate for Fr. Gordon MacRae at Beyond These Stone Walls and Fr. Frank Pavone at Priests for Life.

The Rev. David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. was a respected and deeply committed Catholic priest with training and expertise in both civil and canon law. As such, he had proven to be a great asset to the U.S. Catholic Church throughout the last few decades of scandal and cultural upheaval.

Many Catholic priests accused of wrongdoing had found themselves without the benefit of solid canonical advice and advocacy to their own detriment and the detriment of the entire Church.  Some canon lawyers with whom I have spoken were reticent to advocate for priests accused in decades-old sexual abuse claims because they say some U.S. bishops have themselves discarded observance of many of the tenets of canon law that provided for due process for priests accused. This has been especially so since the enactment of the Dallas Charter adopted by the United States Conference of Bishops in 2002.

The Charter and its much nuanced “zero tolerance” policy came as a result of the bishops’ invitation to SNAP members to address the conference in the company of the news media in 2002. It was, in effect, the sole voice the bishops heard as they embraced what many now believe to be a panic-driven policy that summarily discarded the rights of priests and inflicted great harm on the relationship of trust between priests and their bishops.

For the moment, however, the American Catholic church has to live with this policy. Let me be clear here that the concerns I raise for both its efficacy and its fairness are mine and were not necessarily Father David Deibel’s. But he had been left with some of its wreckage, and a part of that had been his unqualified and courageous canonical defense of a Catholic priest who I and many others have determined was falsely accused.  For many years, Father Deibel helped to preserve this man’s rights under Church law when far too many in our Church were prepared to discard those rights.

A number of prominent writers have drawn that same conclusion, not least among them Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal who authored a series of articles about this falsely accused and wrongfully convicted priest. Her gripping series blew open the doors of judicial and prosecutorial tyranny that resulted in the 1994 witch hunt trial and conviction of Father Gordon MacRae. In that series, Dorothy Rabinowitz commended Father David Deibel, the sole Catholic official to tell the truth when the rest of the Church and court system was willing to settle for “a negotiated lie” in their condemnation of a priest, but with no evidence or corroboration whatsoever.

This is why the late Father Richard John Neuhaus referred to the MacRae case as reflecting “a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.” The problem for nearly everyone involved in that debacle of a trial is that Father MacRae did not just go quietly into the night. He has been writing, and what he writes has captured the attention of fair-minded Catholics everywhere, and others willing to hear another side of the sordid story of sex abuse and unquestioned monetary settlements that have been its driving force in more recent decades. In an article for Catholic Exchange, I wrote of Beyond These Stone Walls:

“Sitting in his cell on an empty plastic bucket in front of an old Smith-Corona typewriter, Father MacRae has produced some remarkable writing about the scandal for which the Church and priesthood have been unjustly stoned in the public square. He writes about moral panic, about the Church in Western culture, about fidelity, false witness, and prison itself... The amazing result is Beyond These Stone Walls, an eye-catching, conscience-grabbing blog that is both riveting and spiritually uplifting. This blog’s fidelity to the Church, and to the truth, has been deemed by many to be the finest example of priestly witness the last decades of scandal have produced.”

If that is the truth — and I believe it is — then Father David Deibel’s advocacy for Father Gordon MacRae, and his advocacy for Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life is the second finest example of priestly witness the last decades of scandal have produced. It takes great courage to stand up for the truth, but even greater courage to stand up to an institution grown complacent about compromising truth and justice.

The Wall Street Journal publicly commended Father David Deibel for his advocacy for a falsely accused and wrongfully convicted priest. It is an advocacy echoed by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and The National Center for Reason and Justice.

Father David Deibel was also a friend and chaplain of sorts to the advocacy group Men of Melchizedek, which provides moral and spiritual support to accused priests.

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