My Journey to the Traditional Latin Mass

In the scene above, Mary Magdalene is a witness to the Risen Lord (John 20:15-18). This is the journey of Aloonsri Paokumhang who clings to the Lord even in exile.

February 11, 2026 by Aloonsri Paokumhang

“Our duty as Catholics is to know the truth; to live the truth; to defend the truth; to share the truth with others, and to suffer for the truth.”

— Father John Hardon, SJ

I am a parishioner in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina. Although I was baptized into the Catholic faith during college, I fell away for several decades to the lies of the Protestant movement. It is only after having lost my beloved mother that I returned to the Catholic Church. Covid was a scary and confusing time for many, but it was during this time that I was stripped of most of my material belongings by abusive and culturally insensitive people and the corrupt systems that supported them. I firmly believe that my mother and grandfather sent some beautiful saints of our faith to rescue me as I was trying so desperately to find my way back to Christ.

Initially, I connected with a parish of the Diocese of Charleston, SC that was led by a well respected, well published priest with a reputation for praying for those who had fallen away from their Catholic roots. After completing several months of RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults — now OCIA — the Catholic Church’s formation program for adults), I approached this priest multiple times with requests for him to hear my general confession so that I could be received back into full communion with Holy Mother Church at Easter. Each time, he flatly refused, and directed me to his deacon who had hardly bothered to learn my name during the entire time that I had attended RCIA. 

After much prayer and seeking, I reached out to a dear priest who had been my friend, confidant, and spiritual advisor during my earlier years.  He remembered me and was overjoyed to hear from me after so much time had passed.  He made himself available, even though I wasn’t a parishioner, and I drove a rented RV to see him because I couldn’t wait to meet Christ again in the Holy Eucharist! (This was still during the height of Covid, when public transportation was somewhat limited.)  He heard my almost 3-hour general confession and invited me to the next morning’s Holy Mass, allowing me to receive the Precious Body of Our Lord for the first time in decades.  I cannot express the joy and relief that I felt, to have the weight of years of sin and separation lifted by such a gift of love and mercy in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist!  I was home again! 

I was so elated during my drive home, and couldn’t wait to share my excitement with the priest of the church that I had been attending.  Imagine my embarrassment and shame when that same priest berated me in the narthex after Mass (in front of the entire church) for receiving Holy Communion, disobeying him and going to another priest for confession.  He even demanded to know the name of the priest who had “done this” so that he could investigate him “to be sure he is in good standing with the Church”. (I didn’t respond.) Furthermore, he screamed at me and told me to “get out of my church and don’t ever come back”.  (I have never returned.) Those venomous words of condemnation tore me to my very core, but God had a purpose.

Although I was confident that I was a child of God and still in good standing in the Catholic Church (because of the assurances of the priest who had granted me absolution), I couldn’t understand what had happened to the Church since I had been away.  Had Vatican II really changed everything the way that some people had suggested?  Was I still too much of a Protestant with weak catechesis?  Was Christ’s death on the Cross for everyone else but me?  I had these and so many other questions on my heart, but I still felt drawn to receive Christ in daily Mass.  It was during a morning Mass in another parish that I encountered a religious sister.  After a brief conversation, she invited me to a Holy Hour.  No questions, no judgment, no prerequisites whatsoever.  Just an open invitation to join her in Adoration in a sacred space before the Blessed Sacrament. 

 Since that first encounter, I have moved to the Diocese of Charlotte. I have come to love and respect the priests and consecrated religious of our diocese, who demonstrate to me what loving reverence for Our Lord Jesus Christ truly looks like.  I visit many of the parishes, as each has its own unique charism and personality, and I learn how to pray specifically for the priests, consecrated religious and parishioners.  This variety also gives me many opportunities to serve as needs arise.  One of the greatest gifts that I’ve received from my time here is the Traditional Latin Mass.  Although I was baptized under the Novus Ordo in college, I have found sacred beauty and reverence in the Tridentine Mass.  Through God’s Providence, I learned of this Rite because it was offered in one of the parishes in Charlotte.  The parish offered plenty of teaching and encouragement for me, because I don’t understand Latin and needed to have a foundational knowledge of the Ancient Rite. In a beautiful display of liturgical unity (not uniformity), the parish offered both Novus Ordo and Latin Rite Masses on the same campus, as well as other rites from other Catholic orders and in languages other than English.  Since October 2025, Bishop Michael Martin (who has only been here since Spring 2024) has banished the Latin Mass to a small chapel that requires almost two hours’ travel time (one way) for most of the lay faithful.  Additionally, the only priest who has permission to offer the Latin Mass in the diocese is the chaplain of the TLM chapel.  My catechesis has fallen away, my weekly time to perform corporal works of mercy has been cut by the 4+ hours of travel time necessitated to get to the Chapel of the Little Flower, and my connections to my parish family have been strained to say the least.  I am so torn between staying faithful to my parish priest (who is no longer permitted to offer the TLM by our Bishop) and being loyal to learning more about the Latin Mass in a chapel that is two hours away.  For lack of a better phrase, this TLM crisis has created a “liturgical schizophrenia”, making me choose between my home parish and a beloved reverential Rite. For me, the Novus Ordo Mass suffices, but my heart finds its most powerful song in the smells, sights, sacred music and quiet reverence of the Tridentine Mass.  As a child of immigrant parents, I know how vitally important it is to maintain language, traditions and rituals. Because our priests and seminarians are no longer permitted to teach or learn the rituals and prayers of the Tridentine Mass, I am very concerned that this Ancient Rite may fade away, leaving us less able to defend ourselves against the evil and profanity that surround us. In my opinion, we have become so accustomed to the profane that we don’t know how to identify or behave in the presence of the holy and sacred. How is it that 20 Buddhist monks from all over the world can sense humanity’s desperation for hope, peace and compassion and Walk for Peace, while a Catholic Bishop banishes his own faithful sheep to a liturgical exile?

Holy Mother Church has so much to offer to our hurting and dying world, as I have personally experienced Christ’s healing graces against the abuses of my past. Our holy priests, our beautiful sacraments and our cherished traditions may be mysteries and “contradictions to the world”, but they are 100% efficacious against spiritual attacks and wounds. Does a lay person really need to audibly hear all of the prayers of the priest or understand Latin at all to know when their wounded soul has been healed? I trust a consecrated priest, who has been formed by thousands of years of teaching, to bring me to Christ and to sainthood, the full healing of my soul for all eternity.

In respectful obedience, the faithful have written to our Bishop to express our concerns and hurts.  In response, we have received form letters or no response at all.  Most recently, he has demanded the removal of altar rails, kneelers and prie-dieux. Additionally, while he is encouraging the resumption of distributing Holy Communion under both species, he is vocal about abandoning the practice of intinction. Bishop Martin has also interfered with the formation program with our local seminary, “adding a year to seminary formation”, as announced in our diocesan publication, The Catholic News Herald.

How does the removal of an altar rail remind me of the need for separation of the sacred from the secular? How does the absence of a kneeler or prie-dieux show charity to someone who is physically unable to kneel without an aid, yet wishes to demonstrate reverence to Our Lord? How does the absence of the practice of intinction permit the faithful reception under both species, yet avoid profanation, cross-contamination and support basic sanitation practices for the priest and the parishioners? Why would anyone want to initiate these changes at a time when attendance in our Catholic churches has been declining, and studies are showing that up to 70% of professing Catholics do not believe in transubstantiation? (“Wonder bread and grape juice,” as Father Chris Alar, MIC has coined.) Instead of adding a formation year in an academic environment, why wouldn’t the diocese encourage our seminarians to develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of the Tridentine Rite that has produced centuries of saints around the world? Or better still, why not trust St. Joseph to lead our seminarians as he has been doing faithfully through Father Matthew Kauth since the inception of St. Joseph’s College Seminary in 2016?

I don’t know any of the actual answers to these questions, as our Bishop has declined to attend a Latin Mass in our diocese or engage in any meaningful dialogue with those of us who have been exiled to the TLM ghetto. It would seem, from a lay perspective, that a future priest could learn more from total immersion in the richness of the Traditional Latin Mass than from teaching in a school, Catholic or otherwise. It would also seem that true synodality could be better achieved by intimate personal dialogue than by standardized form letter or dead silence. At a time when the sheep of the Charlotte Diocese are begging for opportunities to show reverence for the sacred, it appears that recent persecution of the Tridentine Mass and its exiled adherents is creating further division, confusion and anxiety — and that’s just within the Church. What does the world see?

We have generous and dedicated canonical experts working tirelessly to bring our dire situation to the attention of the Vatican. The stakes at hand could not be higher or more urgent. With all due respect, we have grandparents, parents, children and non-Catholics who don’t have time for the slow wheels of the Church to correct the spiritual abuses that have been inflicted on us by this Bishop under the guise of “obedience” and “submission”. Our nation, our very souls and the souls of next generations are depending on us to get this right, NOW. For such a time as this …..

Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!
Immaculate Heart of Mary, cause of our joy, pray for us!
St. Michael the Archangel, pray for us!
St. Joseph, pray for us!
St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us!
St. Veronica, pray for us!
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!
St. Agatha, pray for us!
St. Joan of Arc, pray for us!
St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
St. Francis Xavier, pray for us!
St. Padre Pio, pray for us!
St. Faustina, pray for us!
St. Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!
St. Carlo Acutis, pray for us!
St. Josephine Bakhita, pray for us!
All ye holy angels and saints of God, pray for us!

Introibo ad altare Dei,
ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Aloonsri Paokumhang is a Catholic convert, and a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Thailand. After learning of the Divine Mercy conversion of Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, a fellow Thai, she began to follow Beyond These Stone Walls and became an active reader.

Editor’s Note: To learn about the Traditional Latin Mass please visit the following website and watch the trilogy on the Mass of the Ages:

Traditional Latin Mass

The Mass of the Ages

• Episode 1: Discover the Truth of the Traditional Latin Mass

• Episode 2: A Perfect Storm: What happened to the Mass after Vatican II

• Episode 3: Guardians of Tradition
  

Give Thanks for Good and Holy Priests Who Are Willing to Suffer for the Truth!

Reflecting on things for which I’m thankful, the faces of good and holy priests passed through my mind. One living priest who I pray for often is Fr. Gordon MacRae.

By Mary Ann Kreitzer, November 30, 2024. Republished with permission from Les Femmes — The Truth.

As I was reflecting on the things for which I’m thankful this year, the faces of good and holy priests passed through my mind like a slideshow of sanctity. Some of them are gone now to their heavenly reward: Fr. John Hardon, Fr. James Buckley, Fr. Robert Bradley, Fr. Hugh Monmonier. I pray for them and to them. If they are in Purgatory they need my prayers and sacrifices. Whether they are in Purgatory or Heaven, I need their prayers. They were faithful spiritual guides here on earth. I need their continued guidance now more than ever.

One living priest who I pray for often is Fr. Gordon MacRae. I hope this Advent you will make him a companion on the journey by reading his blog and praying for him. I wrote this post last May. I repeat it here as a reminder that often adherence to the truth requires courageous suffering. Let us embrace sacrifices in Advent for the sake of our own souls and the conversion of our poor world.

Fr. Gordon MacRae and Beyond These Stone Walls

I received a letter yesterday from a very unusual priest, Fr. Gordon MacRae. I call him unusual because I doubt many priests would do what he did. Falsely accused of molesting a minor, the victim of trumped up “evidence” by a corrupt “justice” system in New Hampshire, he refused to be bribed by a plea deal. He could have been out of jail in one or two years if he took the plea. He refused because he was innocent. And now he is on the cusp of “celebrating” thirty years in prison. Read these quotes from the website, Beyond These Stone Walls:

“Fr Gordon MacRae is beyond innocent. It is a travesty that he is in jail. If you listened and read the evidence, transcripts, videos, audio tapes you would be horrified. The people who did this need to get on their knees and beg forgiveness from God. + If they don’t ... .”

— Cary Solomon, Writer, Producer and Director of “Unplanned”

“There is no segment of the American population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.”

— William Donohue, Ph.D., President of the Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights (NBC’s “TODAY,” 10/13/05)

“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

The story is horrifying but no surprise. In 2024 we have daily proof of our corrupt “justice” system. Consider the January 6ers many of whom are still in jail without trial after two years. Some who were released knew they weren't guilty, but also knew the administration, using the corrupt FBI and DOJ, was determined to punish them. After all, they wanted proof for their bogus “insurrection.” Jailing innocent citizens mattered little if it advanced the evil goal.

Pro-lifers have felt that poisonous sting for decades. Ask Joan Andrews Bell who spent years in jail for trying to protect little ones in the womb through peaceful direct action. See how the government is using the FACE Act today to manufacture stiff sentences against peaceful Red Rose witnesses demanding decades in jail for offering women help and roses in abortion center waiting rooms.

I don’t fault the January 6ers who accepted the bribes in order to get a short sentence despite the fact it enabled the government to play hero. “See ... these monsters really did plan an insurrection.” But what a difference we see in Fr. MacRae who stood up to Leviathan and entered the gulag, not to “rot in prison” but to continue to serve with courage and fidelity. His passion has brought life to many especially a former cell mate named Pornchai Maximilian Moontri. Wherever an apostle of God resides, in exile or in freedom, he can do God’s work.

Meet Fr. MacRae in the video below. Listen to his story, a sickening relation of corruption and deceit! Then pray for him that justice be done in his case. In the meantime, please pray for the good he has done and will continue to do behind bars. No evil doer can prevent the work of God who ordains all things, both good and evil. He never desires sin and malice but can use the sin and malice of others to perform His holy will.

Video Documentary with Father Gordon MacRae

Pornchai’s Story

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was so moved by this account that he published it as ‘The Conversion Story of 2008.’

January 1, 2008 by Pornchai Moontri

From Dr. Bill Donohue: “As we begin the New Year, we’d like to share with you this moving account of one young man’s conversion story.”

My name is Pornchai Moontri, and as I write this I am prisoner #77948 in the New Hampshire State Prison. I come to the Catholic faith after a painful journey in darkness that my friend, Father Gordon MacRae, has asked me to write candidly. This is not something I do easily, but I trust my friend.

I was born in Bua Nong Lamphu, a small village in the north of Thailand near Khon Kaen on September 10, 1973. At the age of two, I was abandoned by my mother and a stranger tried to sell me. A distant teenaged relative rescued me. He walked many miles to carry me away to his family farm where I worked throughout my childhood raising water buffalo, rice, and sugar cane. I never attended school, however, and never learned to read and write in Thai. Though my childhood involved hard work, I was safe and happy.

When I was 11 years old, my mother re-emerged in Thailand with a new husband — an American air traffic controller from Bangor, Maine. I was taken from Thailand by them against my will, and brought to the United States. This transition was a trauma to be endured. A month after my arrival in Bangor, my new stepfather’s motive for importing a ready-made Thai family became clear. I was forcibly raped by him at age 11, an event that was to be repeated with regularity over the next three years. I was a prisoner in his house, and resistance was only met with violence against me and against my mother. I was all of 100 pounds. I cannot describe this further. Welcome to America!

Being one of only three Asians in 1985 Bangor, and speaking little English, I did not readily comprehend my new names. “Gook,” “V.C.” and “Charlie” meant nothing to me, but I could sense the scorn with which such names were delivered. Because my English was poor, I was treated as though I was stupid. Part of my humiliation was that I had to get a paper route at age 12, and my earnings were taken from me to pay for the “privilege” of living in my captor’s house. Stephen King’s home was on my paper route. Mr. King once gave me a Christmas bonus of 25¢ for delivering his newspaper all year. The horror stories he wrote about Maine are all true. Remember the one with the evil clown? It’s true.

When I was 14, my English was better. I was a little bigger, and a lot stronger — and nothing but angry. Anger was all I had. So with it I fled that house and became a homeless teenager in and around Bangor. One day the Bangor police actually picked me up and forced me to go “home.” I would rather have gone to one of the ones Stephen King wrote about. I just fled again and again, and ended up at the Good Will Hinckley School for people like me. I was there for a year and got kicked out for fighting. I was always fighting. I fought everyone.

Back on the streets of Bangor, I began to carry a knife. At 17 and 18, a lot of people were after me. I lived under a bridge for a while and sometimes my mother would bring me things. I tried to climb out of the deep hole I was in by signing up for night classes at age 18 to finish my high school diploma. I was kicked out of Bangor High School for punching the principal.

One night, at age 18, something that lived in me got out. I got very drunk with friends, and we walked into a Bangor Shop & Save supermarket to buy cigarettes. I barely remember this. In my drunken state, I opened a bottle of beer from a case and started to drink it. The manager confronted me and ordered me to leave. I tried to flee the store, but the manager and other employees then tried to keep me there. I tried to fight them off to flee. When I got outside, a manager from another Shop & Save had witnessed the incident and pounced on me. I was 130 pounds and was pinned to the ground by this 190-pound man. I think something snapped in my mind. IT was happening again. I fought, but his dead weight was suffocating me. The newspapers would later tell a different story, but this was the truth, and it is all I remember.

In jail that night, I was questioned for three hours. I was told that I had stabbed a man and was charged with attempted murder. I have no memory, to this day, of stabbing the man. The next morning, I awoke in a jail cell and was told that I was charged with Class A murder. The man had died during the night. I was told that I blew a .25 on the Breathalyzer, but the result was so high it was discarded as an error.

My stepfather could have hired expert counsel, but it was clearly not in his best interest that my life be evaluated so I was left in the care of a public defender who wanted this high profile case off his desk. There was talk about the Breathalyzer, and “level of culpability,” and things like “defensive vs. offensive wounds,” but in the end there were no theories, no experts and no defense. I was terrified of being abandoned. My mother came to me in jail and pleaded with me to protect her and “the family” by not revealing what happened in my life. So I remained silent. I offered no defense at all. My co-defendant told the truth of my being pinned down, but he was not believed. I was convicted of “Class A murder with deliberate indifference” and sentenced, at age 18, to 45 years in a Maine Prison. Maine has no parole.

I was also sentenced with the soul of the innocent man whose life I took — despite my being unable to remember taking it. The mix of remorse and anger was toxic in prison, and I gave up. Prison became just an extension of where I had already been. My anger raged on and on, and I spent 13 of my 15 years in prison in Maine’s “supermax” facility for those who can’t be trusted in the light of day.

Five years into my imprisonment, I learned one night in my supermax cell that my mother and stepfather had relocated to the Island of Guam where my mother was murdered. She was pushed from a cliff. The only suspect was her husband but there was no evidence. I was now alone in my rage.

After 14 years of this, the Maine prison decided to send me to an out-of-state prison. I had no idea where I was to be sent. I arrived in the New Hampshire State Prison on October 18, 2005 dragging behind me the Titanic in which I stored all my anger and hurt and loss and loss and loss — and guilt.

I started my time in a new prison by getting into a fight and ended up in the same old place — the hole. When some months went by, I was given another chance. I was sent to H-Building where I met my friend JJ, an Indonesian who was waiting to be deported. JJ introduced me one day to Gordon, who he said was helping him and some others with appealing their INS removal orders or with preparing themselves to be deported. He seemed to be the only person who even cared. JJ trusted Gordon, so I had several conversations with him. A few months later, I was moved to the same unit in which he lives in this prison. We became friends.

By patience and especially by example, Gordon helped me change the course of my life. He is my best friend, and the person I trust most in this world. It is the strangest irony that he has been in prison for 13 years accused fictionally of the same behaviors visited upon me in the real world by the man who took me from Thailand. I read the articles about Gordon in The Wall Street Journal  last year. I know him better, I think, than just about anyone. I know only too well the person who does what Gordon is wrongly accused of. Gordon is not that person. Far from it. It is hard for me to accept that laws and public sentiment allow men to demand and receive huge financial settlements from the Catholic Church years or decades after claimed abuse while all that happened to me has gone without even casual notice by anyone — except, ironically, Gordon MacRae.

On September 10, I will be 34 years old. I have been in prison now for nearly half of my life, but in the last year I have begun to know what freedom is. My anger is still with me and it always lurks just below the surface, but my friend is also with me. We both recently signed up for an intense 15-week course in personal violence. He is doing this for me. I spend my days in school instead of in lock-up now, and I will soon complete my High School diploma. Gordon helped me obtain a scholarship for a series of non-credit courses in Catholic studies at Catholic Distance University. In the last year, with help and understanding, I have completed programs offered in the New Hampshire prison. One day I felt strangely light so I looked behind me, and the Titanic was not there. I parked it somewhere along the way. I have put my childhood aside. Now I am a man.

In March of this year, after 15 years in prison, I was ordered by an INS court to be removed from the United States and deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence in 17 to 20 years or so. Gordon hopes that I can seek a sentence reduction so that I can return to Thailand at an age at which I may still build a life. There are many obstacles. The largest is that I do not speak Thai any longer and I never had an opportunity to learn and to read and write in Thai. We are working hard to prepare me for this. Though years away, it is a very frightening thing to go to a country only vaguely familiar. I have not heard Thai spoken since age 11, 23 years ago. There is no one I know there and no place for me to go. I have no home anywhere.

Along this steep path, I have made a decision to become Catholic. The priest in my friend has not been extinguished by 13 years in prison. It is still the part of him that shines the brightest. Gordon never asked me to become Catholic. He never even brought it up. It is the path he is on and I was pulled to it by the force of grace, and the hope that one day I could do good for others. Gordon showed me a book, Jesus of Nazareth, in which Pope Benedict wrote: “The true ‘exodus’…consists in this: Among all the paths of history, the path to God is the true direction that we must seek and find.”

I am taking a correspondence course in Catholic studies through the Knights of Columbus and I look forward to the studies through Catholic Distance University. I go to Mass with Gordon when it is offered in the prison, and our faith is always a part of every day. When I return to the place I haven’t seen since age 11, I want to go there as a committed Catholic open to God’s call to live a life in service to others. It is what someone very special to me has done for me, and I must do the same.

My friend asked me to sit down today and type the story of my life and where I am now. He asked me to let him send this to a few friends who he says may play some role — directly or indirectly — in my life some day. The account is my own. What Gordon added was hope, and somehow faith has also taken root. In prison, hope and faith are everything. Everything!

On April 10, 2010, Divine Mercy Sunday, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri was received into the Catholic Church and has found his home.