Pop Stars and Priests: Michael Jackson and the Credible Standard

The late Michael Jackson settled one abuse claim for $20 million but supporters maintain his innocence. A Catholic priest is ruined for life just for being accused.

April 24, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Daniel Kahneman died last month on March 27, 2024. Just as Beyond These Stone Walls was beginning, I was asked by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, to write an article for the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst. Published in July 2009, my article was “Due Process for Accused Priests.” It began with a revelation about the work of Daniel Kahneman, a noted psychologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in a phenomenon known as “availability bias.”

As a result of availability bias, humans tend to replace their beliefs with the crowd’s beliefs simply because a proposition has been repeated in the media and presented as widely believed. We are subjected to subtle cues of social pressure every day in marketing that convince many people to purchase things they don’t really need. We also face subtle cues and social pressure in the daily bombardment of news stories that cause many people to believe something based solely on its prevalence in the media. It is indeed possible that Michael Jackson and many Catholic priests became the subjects of classic, media-fueled availability bias.

In his 2011 bookThinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman laid out the foundations of what a stream of availability bias might look like:

“An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by ‘availability entrepreneurs,’ individuals or organizations who seek to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a ‘heinous cover-up’”

— Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p.142

Does this not sound like exactly what has taken place in the early days of the priesthood crisis? In that arena, the “availability entrepreneurs” were composed largely of contingency lawyers and groups like SNAP, which I once exposed in “David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

One of the conclusions of “availability bias” widely touted in the media is that statutes of limitation for lawsuits should be extended or discarded because it takes victims of sexual abuse many years or decades to come forward. The prison system in which I have spent the last 30 years houses nearly 3,000 prisoners. Estimates of those convicted of sexual offenses account for about 40 percent of them. This translates into a population of approximately 1,200 offenders in this one prison who stand convicted of sexual crimes, most true but some not. In addition to these 1,200 men, thousands more are currently on parole in New Hampshire as “registered” sexual offenders.

Only one among these thousands is a convicted Catholic priest, and if you have been paying attention at all, then you know that his conviction has been widely called into serious doubt. The thousands of other men convicted of sexual abuse are accused parents, grandparents, step-parents, foster parents, uncles, teachers, ministers, scout leaders, and so on, and for them the typical time lapse between abuse and the victim reporting it has been measured in weeks or months, not years — and certainly not decades.

My own diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, in just the last month has provided a six-figure settlement to the accuser of a long deceased priest accused in a claim from 52 years ago. Even the lawyer involved admitted in a press report that “No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but … it is important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process,” which in this case involves a whole lot of money, forty percent of which goes to that attorney. In their own statement, Church officials said, “The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when the abuse occurred.” I live in a place with men some of whom have taken lives for far less money than that provided by my diocese to those who falsely took my reputation and freedom.

A simultaneous press release came under the title “Diocese of Manchester Adds to List of Clergy Accused of Sexual Abuse of a Minor.” Accuracy in language is important here. The press release continued, “The Diocese of Manchester added three priests to its list of clergy accused of sexual abuse.” Note that the usual term “credibly accused” is missing from these reports. Even that weakest of standards seems to have been discarded in favor of discarding priests who are merely “accused.” Ryan A. MacDonald wrote of the risks that such published lists pose to priests. His eye-opening article was, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.”

Pop Stars and Priests

I kicked a hornets’ nest some years ago when I wrote an article in response to a quote from actress Marlo Thomas who suggested in some published forum that the best American role model for middle school age boys might be singer Michael Jackson. I scoffed in my own response why the suggestion was ridiculous for many reasons, not least being the taint of sexual abuse claims against him.

Despite being acquitted in a criminal trial, Michael Jackson settled a single claim of sexual abuse for a reported $20 million, and untold millions settled other claims against him. When Michael Jackson died, he was celebrated as a cultural icon of the entertainment industry. In contrast, an American bishop, under pressure from a victims’ group, reportedly ordered the remains of a posthumously accused priest exhumed from a diocesan cemetery and reinterred elsewhere.

My point was not that I thought Michael Jackson was guilty. It was that for many fans the claims and sett1ements did not destroy his name. He was acquitted at trial, so if there was any evidence at all a jury did not find it persuasive. Some people conclude that, despite acquittal in a criminal trial, Michael Jackson’s multi-million dollar settlement of civil lawsuits was itself evidence of guilt. I’ll get back to that point.

Catherine Coy, a fan and advocate of Michael Jackson, sent a shot across my bow back then for suggesting any connection between settlements and credible accusations. I knew I was in for it when Ms. Coy began her message with “You, of all people …!”  Actually, when Catherine Coy and I listened to each other, we came to a sort of detente if not agreement. In a 2005 article, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud” (Catalyst, Nov. 2005), I detailed the relationship between mediated settlements and claims against Catholic priests. Did Michael Jackson become vulnerable to the same media-generated shroud under which claims against priests were seen as “credible?”

Catherine Coy insisted that in spite of monetary settlements, Jackson had never had a “credible” claim of sexual abuse lodged against him. That statement might evoke a dismissive “Yeah, right!” in some corners, but not in mine.

Why did so many people presume the worst of Mr. Jackson? It certainly wasn’t evidence. It is more of a spontaneous response, and one that is very similar to what happens when priests are accused and maintain their innocence. This is the point predicted by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. The mere news media repetition of sordid stories about Michael Jackson and Catholic priests took on such prevalence in the news media that they became an unconscious bias against both. When the Catholic bishops of the United States refer to a 20-, or 30- or 40-year-old claim against a priest as “credible” they mean only that they have determined that both the priest and the accuser lived in the same community in the time period alleged.

Michael and I in The Wall Street Journal

Catherine Coy was right. I, of all people, should have seen the analogy instantly. Ms. Coy wrote “There isn’t a person alive who could have withstood the onslaught of lies, innuendo and slander that was heaped on Jackson for well over 20 years.” On that score, I beg to differ, but I see her point.

The very association of Michael Jackson’s name with the bizarre proclivity attributed to him may in fact be the result of media-fueled availability bias and not evidence. There is no doubt in my mind that I and many other priests have faced this same phenomenon. With no personal experience of the behaviors attributed to some accused priests, many Catholics simply adopted the point of view given them by the news media.

This does not mean that all the claims of sexual abuse by priests are false. The U.S. Bishops commissioned a formal study of the matter conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. There were really two waves in the scandal. The first was the revelations that priests were accused at the time alleged abuse happened in the 1960’s to the 1980’s, and then were quietly moved around to other parishes to avoid a public scandal. This was scandalous enough, and tragic.

The John Jay Report also revealed that a full seventy percent of the claims faced by bishops and dioceses in 2002 and following also alleged claims from the 1960’s to 1980’s, but those claims were not brought forward until 2002 when it became clear that Church institutions would settle because of the bludgeoning they took in the media. Those claims were propelled by the widely held belief that it takes victims decades to realize they were abused and report it. Lots of people now believe that, and entire states have passed legislation to accommodate that belief. However, as demonstrated in “Due Process for Accused Priests,” the “delayed reporting” principle is classic availability bias.

In June, 2005, just three months after Dorothy Rabinowitz published an explosive two-part analysis of the case against me in The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Daniel Henninger wrote a most interesting commentary as Michael Jackson’s criminal trial got underway (“Pushing the Envelope – Michael Jackson: A Freaky Culture’s Peter Pan,” June 3, 2005).

It was Daniel Henninger who first put into print what I hoped someone out there might grasp:

“[Prosecutor] Tom Sneddon may lose this case. If so, it will be because Mr. Jackson, like Kobe Bryant [and O.J. Simpson], was able to mount a defense equal to the accusatory powers of the state. Not everyone can do that. If Michael walks, I’ll wonder if any of the many convicted Catholic priests similarly charged were in fact innocent but found guilty because they couldn’t push back against the state’s relentless steamroller.”

I do not at all begrudge Michael Jackson’s having had the means to mount a defense equal to the state’s prosecution of him. Whatever he spent defending himself, it was less than the state spent trying to put him in prison. At the same time, I thought Daniel Henninger’s comment about convicted priests was just and fair, but he missed an important point. I no longer have the letter, but I wrote to Mr. Henninger shortly after his 2005 editorial. This is the gist of what I wrote:

“As a priest without the means to push back in equal measure to Michael Jackson, I must point out some factors you overlooked:

“Imagine how steeply uphill Michael Jackson’s battle would have been if twenty years passed between the alleged crime and the state’s prosecutorial steamroller rumbling into action for a trial. Imagine the state having to prove nothing while Michael Jackson’s defense tried in vain to prove that something alleged to have happened two decades earlier never happened at all.

“Then imagine Michael Jackson struggling to proclaim his innocence while the institution he served denounced him and his attempts to defend himself, seeking only the path of least resistance to settle with his accusers and rid themselves of liability at the expense of due process.

“Imagine all of this, and you will have captured the scene faced by most similarly accused Catholic priests.”

The Wall Street Journal

The aftermath of those articles in April, 2005 was most interesting. The accusers in the case against me — anxious to talk to the news media before receiving settlements — suddenly had nothing to say. one of my prosecutors had nothing to say. The other took his own life. The judge was quoted in a local news article saying, vaguely, “Review is a positive thing.” Then he took early retirement from the bench. The police detective who choreographed the case, reportedly offering bribes to potential accusers, had nothing to say and has since been exposed on a previously secret list of ethically challenged police.

After those WSJ articles about me, I expected an onslaught of defensive rhetoric from victims’ groups, prosecutors, and contingency lawyers, but it never came. The sole protest came from the most unexpected source. Father Edward Arsenault, my Bishop’s delegate and the man most involved in settlement negotiations in these cases, declared that I was found guilty in a court of law by a jury of my peers, and nothing else needed to be said. Father Arsenault denounced The Wall Street Journal and its writer as biased. Incredible!

A few years later, Msgr. Edward Arsenault was convicted of multiple counts of embezzlement, including charges of forgery and fraud, and sentenced to prison. He was subsequently dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis but now inexplicably has a new life and a new name: Edward J. Bolognini.

In 2005 just as the Catholic scandal was building up steam to rumble full speed ahead for a national contingency lawyer windfall, I did not expect that the world’s largest secular newspaper would publish so openly against the tide — or tidal wave — of typical media coverage of claims against priests while most in the Catholic media remained silent. With the exception of Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things and The Catholic League in Catalyst, and the Catholic World Report, the Catholic media — on both the left and the right — continued to remain silent about false claims against priests brought for money, or, worse, they have used the clergy scandal for some agenda of their own.

And of Michael Jackson, writing in The Nation, (“The Love We Lost”), JoAnn Wypijewski wrote that

“Ordinary rules of judgment have been suspended” in this sound-bite culture of news that shapes most peoples’ views on sex and the accused:

“[I]t  cannot matter that Michael Jackson was acquitted of child molestation, since he was frequently remembered in death as a pedophile… just as it cannot matter whether others who plead guilty to a sex charge really did it, or whether evidence to convict was nonsense, or whether the guilty served their time. They can never ‘pay their debt to society.’ Guilt is the presumption, forever.”

JoAnn Wypijewski went on to describe the case of the priest convicted in a trial in which the sole “credible” evidence presented to the jury was the mere fact that he is a priest — that, and a claim of repressed and recovered memory, the legitimacy of which is always questioned when the accused is not a priest.  In an all-too familiar twist, that priest’s bishop added his own sound bite by administratively dismissing the priest from the priesthood just before the sham of a trial.

JoAnn Wypijewski also bravely wrote about me just as the fiasco film, “Spotlight” was receiving its Academy Award for Public Service. Her ground-shaking article was “Oscar Hangover Special: Why "Spotlight" Is a Terrible Film.”

After what has now exceeded $4 billion in total mediated settlements nationwide, the matter of false claims is the elephant in the sacristy that no one wants to talk about. At the same time, our beleaguered Catholic bishops present case after case as “credible” despite knowing exactly what that term means and does not mean.

The “credible” standard Catherine Coy applied to Michael Jackson is admirable and hopeful. Ms. Coy’s fair-minded attitude about Michael Jackson is the polar opposite of what is now applied to Catholic priests.

There is no mechanism whatsoever beyond preserved DNA or an admission of guilt that would serve as evidence that a priest accused from decades ago is guilty. There is no investigation technique that could determine the credibility of such claims. What makes most claims against priests “credible” is the fact that someone — not them — has paid money to an accuser. Nothing else. Catholics should take note of the efforts by Michael Jackson fans to revisit credibility despite financial settlements which, in the secular world, are merely designed to make the claim go away with no statement of culpability.

For my part, I can only remember the famous scene early in Michael’s trial during which he danced on the hood of an SUV outside the court to the wild cheers of fans. Michael sure was a strange guy, but the dance gave me pause. Having been through such a trial, I know its oppression. That dance was surely the act of a delusional man …

… or perhaps an innocent one.

Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Your comments are most welcome, but they are moderated, so they may not appear instantly. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.

Due Process for Accused Priests, Catalyst, July 2009

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme

The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr Gordon MacRae

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

The Acquittal of O.J. Simpson and the Conviction of Father MacRae

The trial of O.J. Simpson and the trial of Fr Gordon MacRae were parallel dramas playing out on opposite sides of the U.S. in the 1990s and with opposite results.

April 17, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: The above image depicts O.J. Simpson at the time of his arrest in 1994 and Father Gordon MacRae in 1983 at the time his accusations are alleged to have taken place.

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On the night of May 5, 1993, I entered into a nightmare from which I have not yet awakened. I had dinner that evening at a small Rio Rancho, New Mexico diner with two friends with whom I also shared a home and office, Father Michael Mack and Father Clyde Landry. I wrote of them once, and of the chasm of loss brought about by their sudden absence from my imprisoned life, in “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”

Minutes after arriving at home on that evening in 1993, the doorbell rang. I opened it to see two Rio Rancho police officers standing there. “We’re looking for a Gordon J. MacRae,” one said. “I am he,” I replied. “Please turn and face the wall,” said one of the officers as he placed me in handcuffs to escort me to his cruiser.

That scene, and the ones to follow that night, have replayed in my mind a thousand times since then. I was driven to the Rio Rancho Police Headquarters where Detective Arlan Norby showed me a warrant for my arrest issued weeks earlier 2,000 miles away in Keene, New Hampshire. The warrant described that I stand accused of numerous charges of sexual assault upon two adolescent males alleged to have occurred a dozen years earlier. It listed their identities only as “T.G.” and “J.G.” and I had no idea who they were.

It did not take long for the true nature of the case to surface. Detective Arlan Norby told me that he had numerous telephone conversations with Keene, NH, Detective James F. McLaughlin who was investigating these claims, and added, “This is all because your church has not been handling these cases very well.” From that moment on, I knew this would not be a simple case of truth and justice, and I was right. I was not to be the one on trial.

Within three days, I was released from custody on a personal recognizance bond ordered by a New Mexico judge, and the long, slow process of obtaining information on the case against me began. It was weeks before I learned the identities of “T.G.” and “J.G.” and when I did, I had not thought it possible. I remembered Thomas Grover and his brother, Jonathan, two Native American young men who, years earlier, had been adopted in the Keene area by Patricia and Elmer Grover who divorced after adopting eight multi-racial children. Theirs was not an easy life, but it seemed they found an easy repository for their life’s woes — that and a road to easy money.

Thomas Grover, then age 27, had a criminal record of his own for fraud, forgery, theft, and drug charges, and had pending domestic violence and assault charges. His brother, Jonathan Grover, then age 25, had been discharged from the U.S. Navy after a drunk driving arrest. Jonathan Grover had by then also accused another priest. I could not fathom then how or why these brothers would concoct such a scheme, but the rest of this story — at least, the parts we know, for there are still mysteries yet to be uncovered here — has since been published by various writers including Dorothy Rabinowitz whose summation you may read for yourself as it unfolded in “The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr Gordon MacRae.”

It took a full 18 months, and the refusal of numerous lenient plea deal offers, before the case was scheduled for trial. At one point, in a highly unusual development, the prosecution requested a six-month delay because the principal accuser, Thomas Grover, had become uncooperative. It was later learned that he rebelled because he was told that I refused a one-year plea deal. He had apparently been assured that there would be no trial and he could just move on to the money.

It was an irony that I had not fully considered at the time, but I had been living in New Mexico for the previous five years because I was working in ministry as Director of Admissions for the Servants of the Paraclete center for priests. Over the previous two years, the center had become notorious in both local and national news media — including “60 Minutes” which did a shameless, one-sided “gotcha” segment over the treatment of Father James Porter some twenty-five years previously, a case that was ever in the background of my trial.

Thomas and Jonathan Grover’s older brother, David, was actually the first to accuse me. A police report documented that he heard on his truck radio about eighty blanket settlements in the notorious “Father Porter” case by the Diocese of Fall River in neighboring Massachusetts in 1993. He had to pull over, he later claimed, as a flood of repressed memories of abuse suddenly emerged.

David Grover was the first to attempt the scam, claiming that he was molested by me at my parish at age twelve. It somehow became known that I was never there until two weeks before he turned 18 and joined the U.S. Army. So the process of charging me with even a semblance of possibility fell to his two younger brothers. Blatant lies are no obstacle to settlement, however. My diocese still settled with David Grover for $185,000.

This pattern has not changed since then. Even as I write this post, I have learned that my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, provided a six-figure settlement last month, when a newly emerged accusation against a long deceased priest claimed that he molested a teenager more than 50 years earlier in 1972:

“No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but the attorney representing the John Doe who was involved said it’s important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process.”

“In a statement, the Diocese of Manchester said, in part: ‘The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when the abuse occurred, through a process utilizing independent trauma-informed consultants.’”

— WMUR News, March 26, 2024

The White Bronco

I had to take a leave from my ministry with the Servants of the Paraclete center as I awaited trial, but the superiors of the Order in New Mexico asked me to remain with them throughout my ordeal. It was a courageous gesture of mercy and support for which I have only gratitude, even after all these years.

It was while living with that community that I walked into our common room a few weeks later on June 17, 1994, to see the now famous televised spectacle of a white Ford Bronco being pursued at low speed on a Los Angeles freeway by a dozen police vehicles and TV news helicopters. Ever since then, the case of O.J. Simpson seems in my memory to be the backdrop against which my own nightmare played out.

My trial, from jury selection to conviction, was over in less than two weeks because there was zero evidence for a jury to review. I was pronounced guilty in less than two hours of jury deliberation, and then sent to prison with a 67-year sentence on September 23, 1994. Most of the local news media pounced on the “priest in prison” story while ignoring the fact that I had three times been offered a sentence of one year in prison if I would plead guilty.

The O.J. Simpson trial, by contrast, stretched on for nine months, dominating the background of my entire first year in prison. It was all other prisoners ever talked about. Because the trial was televised, it seemed the only thing every prisoner watched. I did not have a television then, but I was crammed into a cell with seven other men, and had a daily dose of the O.J. Trial whether I wanted it or not.

Still from KCLA News Los Angeles video

“If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit.”

Thanks to television, the entire nation had a front row seat to the rare drama of “The O.J. Trial.” The spectacle included the opening statements of L.A. prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden on January 24, 1995; the theatrical opening statement of defense attorney Johnny Cochran the next day, and some famous names among lawyers as F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, and Robert Shapiro joined him in O.J.’s million dollar Dream Team defense.

In the year-long spectacle, we heard L.A. Detective Mark Fuhrman grilled by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey for his suspected history of racist remarks only to later assert his Fifth Amendment right to refuse questions after tapes were played in open court. Then Attorney Robert Shapiro cross-examined Detective Vanatter about statements he allegedly made to mob informants that shed light on why the L.A. police went to the home of O.J. Simpson in the early days of the case.

We witnessed the heavily hyped scene of O.J. trying on the gloves obtained as prosecutorial evidence resulting in Johnny Cochran’s most famous sound bite to emerge from this trial “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” And we saw all of this entirely eclipse a mountain of physical and scientific forensic evidence against O.J. Simpson, including DNA evidence. But none of it mattered. None of it could defeat the theatrics.

In his closing argument before the jury, O.J. defense attorney, Johnny Cochran compared Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler. In his closing argument in my trial just a few months earlier, prosecutor Bruce Elliot Reynolds compared me to Adolf Hitler. However, my attorney had already left the trial and was not there to object.

On October 2, 1995, after a trial that presented mountainous evidence over the course of nine months, the O.J. Trial jury reached a verdict in just three hours. It was one of the most watched moments in American television history. From my prison cell, having served a year in prison with just sixty-six left to go for crimes that never took place and for which there was no evidence at all, I heard the O.J. verdict: “not guilty” on both counts of murder.

Book cover by Graymalkin Media. Photo by AFP

Now Comes Marcia Clark

Three years after the O.J. Trial ended, with me still in prison, I received a letter from the studios of Mark Phillips Films and Television in Los Angeles. Here’s the entire letter dated January 15, 1998:

“Dear Father MacRae: I work for former Los Angeles prosecutor Marcia Clark. She is doing a primetime special for FOX Broadcasting Network which will air at 9:00 PM on Monday, February 16, 1998. Through the National Justice Committee I heard about your story. I talked with Mark Phillips, the Executive Producer of the show, about your case. He in turn talked with the executives at FOX about profiling your story on our special, and they want to feature your story on our show.

“Basically what we are doing in this one-hour, one-on-one interview show with Marcia Clark is to send her wherever the story is. She would do a sit-down interview with you. The interview would end with you taking a polygraph test. I understand you have taken several polygraphs in this case, and have passed them.

“We want to profile your story in a more positive light. It is obvious to us that an injustice has occurred in your case, and through profiling your story we want to get the word out that justice has not been served, and that there is an innocent man sitting in prison who should be free. By getting your story out, people will think twice about blindly accepting charges brought by one person against another person in your situation.”

— Letter of January 15, 1998 from Mark Phillips Films & Television

I accepted Marcia Clark’s invitation immediately, though I added that my accusers should also cooperate with polygraph (lie detector) tests. This had been proposed a number of times, but none of my accusers or their attorneys would even acknowledge similar invitations to take a polygraph or respond to questions. When a former FBI agent investigating the case found and approached accuser Thomas Grover at the Hualapai Tribal Reservation in Arizona where he is hiding, all he would say is “I want a lawyer.” Where I live, pretty much everyone knows what “I want a lawyer” means.

But to make a long story shorter, the 1998 Marcia Clark program was a dead end. New Hampshire officials blocked the plan and would not allow FOX to conduct an on-camera interview, nor would they allow the polygraph expert to test me. Fox executives sent an appeal to then Governor Jeanne Shaheen (now U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH) who responded in a letter dated January 31, 1998:

“I understand your company’s interest in an on-camera interview with Gordon J MacRae, who is currently an inmate in the New Hampshire State Prison, however I will not interfere with the decision not to allow media access to Mr. MacRae.”

So the Constitution, the First Amendment, and Freedom of the Press all took a back seat to some hidden agenda. The interest of Marcia Clark, however, is the real reason I am writing of this today. Perhaps the overture would have been different after the fall of the priesthood in the revelations of 2002 and 2003 which managed to squash all other media courage — except that of Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal — in seeing both sides of this story.

In the trial of O.J. Simpson, Marcia Clark saw justice fail in a very big way as a prosecutor trying to bring justice to two murdered victims in Los Angeles. Just three years later, for her to even attempt to bring justice to another high profile story when the rest of the media world was just spitting on it is, for me, a sign of real courage and integrity that is sorely lacking in most of the news media today.

In 2016, twenty one years after the O.J. Trial, the FX cable television network broadcast American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, a dramatic presentation of the trial. The series was built upon a factual publication of CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin entitled, The Run of His Life. It was a serious effort with an impressive cast including Academy Award-winning actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, Sarah Paulson as prosecutor Marcia Clark, and John Travolta, Nathan Lane, and Courtney B. Vance as defense attorneys Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, and Johnny Cochran respectively.

Executive Producer Nina Jacobson promised that “looking back at O.J. helps us understand the world we live in now — 20 years later.” Well, Nina, the world I live in now 30 years later makes me want to turn the channel and run for cover. Justice is not served, then or now.

So my first thought was that I’d rather have a root canal than relive the O.J. Trial! But in a saner, quieter moment, I came to the only conclusion possible. How could I NOT watch? Maybe someone else in the media will catch the example of the likes of Marcia Clark and Dorothy Rabinowitz and grow a spinal column.

O.J. Simpson passed away from cancer at the age of 76 on April 10, 2024, the day after my 71st birthday in my 30th year in prison.

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

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List

Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam

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 Mirror Image in the Devil’s Masterpiece

Inspired by Bishop Robert Barron’s acclaimed Letter to a Suffering Church, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls was moved to write and publish this inspired reply.

April 10, 2024 by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD with an Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae

Introduction

I will always owe a debt of gratitude to Suzanne Sadler of Australia. After following the sordid story that entangled many Catholic priests in false witness, Suzanne came upon an article I was invited to write for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The article, which appeared in the July, 2009 issue of Catalyst, was “Due Process for Accused Priests.”

Immediately upon reading it, Suzanne wrote to me from Australia with a suggestion that I permit her to establish a blog that would feature my writing. I was highly dubious, believing that I had nothing of interest or value that anyone would want to read. It was Pornchai Max Moontri, my friend and roommate of many years in prison who encouraged me to try. He reminded me of a letter from Cardinal Avery Dulles urging me to add a new chapter to the literature of Christians wrongly imprisoned. It was also Max who suggested this blog’s first title, “These Stone Walls.” Then Pornchai’s Godmother, Charlene C. Duline, a retired U.S. State Department official jumped aboard with an offer to help with logistics. I ran out of excuses, and in August of 2009 These Stone Walls was born with my first of hundreds of posts “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror.”

Over the course of the next nine years, These Stone Walls published some 500 original posts written mostly by me but some by far more distinguished guest writers. Then, in 2019, Covid struck and grew into a global pandemic affecting every tenet of our lives, including our lives of faith. Much that we had come to cherish began to desintegrate before our eyes. In the course of a single week in 2020, my voice in this wilderness of prison and false witness was silenced. These Stone Walls had collapsed.

Then, seemingly from out of the blue came a letter from Dilia E. Rodríguez in New York. She wrote that she was so enamored by a post she stumbled upon about Pope Benedict XVI and Saint Joseph that she felt compelled to read more. Just before my blog was taken offline she downloaded its entire contents onto her own computer.

So the end that I thought was upon us turned out not to be an end at all, but a new beginning. It was in September 2020 that this news came to me. It was just as my longtime friend Pornchai Max Moontri was departing for deportation to Thailand. Just as I was immersed in loss and sadness, Dilia was quietly in the background resurrecting this blog with new life and a new name, “Beyond These Stone Walls.” Dilia has now been our Editor for going on four years.

As we faced the terminal illness of Claire Dion, the subject of my Divine Mercy post last week, Dilia accepted the necessity of stepping out of the shadows and into the light to also take over all that Claire had managed.

Dilia E. Rodriguez, PhD retired in 2022 from a career in U.S. Government service as a civilian scientist for the United States Air Force. Holding advanced degrees in both Physics and Computer Science, Dilia is also a daily communicant and a strong supporter and participant in Eucharistic Adoration. In recent weeks she has also stepped up to take on the logistics of support services for me and this blog as described at our Contact and Support Page.

To mark this occasion and further introduce Dilia, I want to restore and repost something she had written on the Feast of the Holy Innocents in December 2019. Her post is a brilliant response to a small book by Bishop Robert Barron entitled, “Letter to a Suffering Church.”

Here is Dilia E. Rodriguez with

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A Mirror Image in the Devil’s Masterpiece

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and to me it offers symbols for the crisis in the Church.

First, let me say that, as so many others, I am moved by the impassioned efforts of Bishop Robert Barron to stop Catholics from leaving the Church. His heart and soul are on fire with the love of Jesus, of His Church and of His People.

I never thought of leaving, and it is not just “to whom shall we go?” It is that God is LOVE, and as one saint, whose name I cannot recall, said, “LOVE is not loved.” I see the current scandal as stark evidence that LOVE is not loved. So my reaction is that I want to love God, I want to love Jesus with my whole being, as I have never loved Him before.

I want to consider (… think aloud … pray aloud …) three points: the devil’s masterpiece, evangelization at this time, and the call for saints.

Bishop Barron convincingly describes the sexual abuse scandal as exquisitely designed by the devil. He shows the horror that attends the sexual abuse of young people by priests, and the cover-up of these abuses by bishops. Whether or not it is seen as the devil’s masterpiece, this is what is described almost universally as the entirety of the sexual abuse scandal, by the mainstream media, by the Catholic media, by attorneys general and others.

But there is more to the devil’s masterpiece. There is a mirror image that remains invisible to most. The Father of Lies surely can use lies in this masterpiece of masterpieces. In this mirror image the accused priests are innocent, and the ones who claim to have been abused are the abusers. In this mirror image bishops abuse innocent priests by publishing their names in lists of “credibly” accused. This requires no corroboration or evidence of the accusation. It replaces “innocent until proven guilty” with “guilty until proven innocent” or even “guilty even if proven innocent.” This “credible” accusation standard is neither a legal nor a biblical standard.

So two abuses coexist: the visible one, the sexual abuse of young people by priests; and the invisible one, the abuse of innocent priests by those who falsely claim to have been abused and profit from it.

In the accused innocent priests Jesus is living His Passion. Pilate said, “I find no guilt in him.” There is no evidence against many of the accused priests. Jesus stood wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. The chief priests and the guards cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him.” Pilate tried to release him, but the crowd insisted, “Crucify him!” Bishops may want to do the right thing, but they cave in to the pressure and they crucify innocent priests; they remove them from the ministry to which God called them. Bishops cave in to the pressure of those who ask cynically “What is truth?”, and do not listen to the One Who is TRUTH.

Holy Innocents: Double Symbol for the Crisis

The massacre of the holy innocents captures in symbol the two coexisting abuses. Herod’s killing of the innocent children represents the killing of innocent faith of the young who have been abused by priests. The way of Herod — to kill the many to ensure killing the One — is the way that has been adopted to assuage the anger and fears of the crowd and the media. So Herod’s killing of the innocent children also represents the destruction of the lives of innocent priests without having to prove any claim against them. Both are very grievous abuses.

A mirror adds much light where there is light. The mirror-image abuse deceptively intensifies the dark evil of the abusive priests.

What can I do, … we do, … the bishops do, in response to the devil’s masterpiece of masterpieces? Absolutely nothing. Jesus said it, “Without Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) But He said, “Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit.” Only Jesus can respond to the devil’s masterpiece of masterpieces.

This time of great scandal is the Olympics of Evangelization. The Gospel is not just for intellectual discussions or for run-of-the-mill problems. It is only the full power of the Gospel that can cope with the immensity of this scandal.

The response of Jesus cannot be implemented by the weekend Catholic “athletes.” After a recent EWTN / Real Clear poll, Professor Robert George of Princeton University noted: “So even if you take the most devout Catholics — those who believe all of what the Church teaches or most of what the Church teaches — only 66% of those believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.” Clearly, an overwhelming majority of the laity can in no way be part of the response of Jesus. They are way out of shape.

The response of Jesus is the response of His Olympic team, the living saints, whom Bishop Barron and Benedict XVI point out as the great evangelizers; those who remain in Him, and He in them.

God is LOVE. Jesus said, “I am the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE.” In the mystery of Jesus, LOVE, TRUTH, and LIFE are synonyms. There can be no love without truth. There can be no life without love. Only Jesus can love both the abused and the abuser. Only Jesus can restore their lives. Only Jesus, the WAY, can reject the way of Herod. Only Jesus … through those who remain in Him and He in them.

Bishop Barron wrote (p. 97): “Above all, we need saints, marked by holiness of course, but also by intelligence, an understanding of the culture, and the willingness to try something new.”

Under “intelligence” and “understanding of the culture” should come a realization that the moral relativism of this age, the pervasive misinformation in the news (e.g. huge pro-life marches become invisible), the readiness to attack the Church, etc., do not foster an accurate portrayal of the scandal in the Church.

Conditioned by the Media

If in trying to solve a problem, or to understand a phenomenon, we ignore whole classes of facts and observations, we have no possibility of success: we will not solve the problem or understand the phenomenon.

Even though way back I realized that the real abuses of minors by priests could be exploited by others against the Church, I was still conditioned by the media. When the Pennsylvania Attorney General report came out, my knee-jerk reaction was “Here we go again.” But there was almost nothing new in it, and truth and fairness may not necessarily be its hallmark.

Jesus said: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” (Matthew 10:16). Saints marked by intelligence and understanding of the culture eagerly and persistently seek the truth in this age that so fiercely rejects it. Their messages and their lives are a bright light in this very dark period. Consider the following examples: “A Weapon of Mass Destruction: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused”; Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast; Men of Melchizedek; A Ram in the Thicket; The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights ; Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories.

I began to see the magnitude of the mirror-image scandal when I accidentally discovered the blog “These Stone Walls.” It is the blog, published with the help of some friends, of Father Gordon J. MacRae, a falsely accused priest who has been in prison for 30 years. When the “hour had come,” Jesus prayed to the Father for those the Father had given to Him, “Consecrate them in the truth.” With a plea deal, Father MacRae could have been out of prison after one year. But he is consecrated to the Truth, and did not lie. For that, he got a life sentence.

Of his case Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote: “You may want to pray for Father MacRae, and for a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.”

The scandal of the Church is a colossal problem. The Dallas Charter of 2002 got some things right, but it also helped create the mirror-image scandal. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in 2004:

“The church must protect the community from harm, but it must also protect the human rights of each individual who may face an accusation. The supposed good of the totality must not override the rights of individual persons. Some of the measures adopted [at Dallas] went far beyond the protection of children from abuse … [By their actions, the bishops] undermined the morale of their priests and inflicted a serious blow to the credibility of the church as a mirror of justice.”

He also added:

“having been so severely criticized for exercising poor judgment in the past, the bishops apparently wanted to avoid having to make any judgments in these cases.”

If the priesthood is to be renewed, Jesus must be the foundation of this renewal. It must be His Way, His Love, and His Truth that renews the priesthood. The Church cannot be divided. It cannot call for saintly priests, while at the same time depriving some saintly priests of their civil and canonical rights when falsely accused.

Jesus, train me in Your ways. May I not utter empty words, and cry out “Lord, Lord.” May I love all the abused, all the abusers, and as Bishop Barron says, all fellow sinners. You have redeemed me through a Very Great Sacrifice. May I constantly beg You to make me Totally Yours.

Amen.

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Encoded Message from God

I got the idea that I wanted to find in the awful number the prison assigned to Father Gordon a comforting message from God. Maybe somehow the numbers could be mapped to some verse in the Bible. My starting point was to associate with each of the digits in 67546 the letters that phones assign to digits:

6 -> m n o; 7 -> p q r s; 5 -> j k l; 4 -> g h i; 6 -> m n o.

It really didn’t make much sense. I wanted to find some verse whose first word started with m or n or o, and whose second word started with p or r or q or s, and so on. I wasn’t finding such a five-word verse. I have as my desktop background the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. So I asked her for help. After a while I considered my favorite Bible verse:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”

— John 15:5

There was no direct connection, but it was possible to see a loose one.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever REMAINs IN ME and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”

At first I thought that it would have been better if “Jesus” had been the second word. But then I realized that Jesus being in the middle, at the heart of the prayer, was perfect.

With the help of Our Blessed Mother we can see that in the number the prison system uses to demean Father Gordon, God encoded the prayer he is living, and attests that he is bearing much fruit.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: I am deeply grateful to Dilia for the ways she has saved my voice in the wilderness from being drowned out in the scandals of this age. I believe the Lord has in fact sent her just in the nick of time.

You may also like these other posts about our quest for Jesus and for justice:

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

A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ

St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Our Salvation

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell

Please consult our “Contact and Support” Page for new information on how to support this blog and our cause for justice.

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.”

In a Mirror Dimly: Divine Mercy in Our Darker Days

Your friends behind and Beyond These Stone Walls have endured many trials. Divine Mercy has been for them like a lighthouse guiding them through their darkest days.

April 3, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: In 2018, Mrs. Claire Dion visited Pornchai Moontri in prison and wrote a special post about the experience which we will link to at the end of this one. In the years leading up to that visit, the grace of Divine Mercy became for them both like a shining star illuminating a journey upon a turbulent sea. Divine Mercy is now their guiding light.

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I had clear plans for the day I began writing this post, one of many at this blog about Divine Mercy. But, as often happens here, my best laid plans fall easily apart. The prison Library where I have been the Legal Clerk for the last dozen years has been open only one day per week for several months due to staff shortages. During down times in the Law Library, I am able to use a typewriter that is in better condition than my own. So this day was to be a work day, and I had lots to catch up on, including writing this post.

I kept myself awake during the night before, mapping out in my mind all that I had to accomplish when morning came and how I would approach this post. Divine Mercy is, after all, central to my life and to the lives of many who visit this blog. But such plans are often disrupted here because control over the course of my day in prison is but an illusion.

Awake in my cell at 6:00 AM, I had just finished stirring a cup of instant coffee. Before I could even take a sip, I heard my name echoing off these stone walls as it was blasted on the prison P.A. system. It is always a jarring experience, especially upon awakening. I was being summoned to report immediately to a holding tank to await transport to God knows where. I knew that I might sit for hours for whatever ordeal awaited me. My first dismayed thought was that I could not bring my coffee.

It turned out that my summons was for transportation to a local hospital for an “urgent care” eye exam with an ophthalmologist. For strict security reasons I was not to know the date, time, or destination. Months ago, I developed a massive migraine headache and double vision. The double vision was alarming because I must climb and descend hundreds of stairs here each day. Descending long flights of stairs was tricky because I could not tell which were real and which would send me plummeting down a steel and concrete chasm.

So I submitted a request for a vision exam. My double vision lasted about six weeks, then in mid-February it disappeared as suddenly as it came. I then forgot that I had requested the consult. So two months later I made my way through the morning cold in the dark to a holding area where a guard pointed to an empty cell where I would sit in silence upon a cold concrete slab to await what is called here “a med run.”

Over the course of 30 years here, I have had five such medical “field trips.” That is an average of one every six years so there has been no accumulated familiarity with the experience. The guards follow strict protocols, as they must, requiring that I be chained in leg irons with hands cuffed and bound tightly at my waist. It is not a good look for a Catholic priest, but one which has likely become more prevalent in recent decades in America. During each of my “med runs” over 30 years, my nose began to itch intensely the moment my hands were tightly bound at my waist.

The ride to one of this State’s largest hospitals, Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, was rather nice, even while chained up in the back of a prison van. The two armed guards were silent but professional. My chains clinked loudly as they led me through the crowded hospital lobby. The large room fell silent. Amid whispers and furtive glances, I was just trying hard not to look like Jack the Ripper.

I was led to a bank of elevators where I was gently but firmly turned around to face an opposite wall lest I frighten any citizens emerging from one. As I stared at the wall, I made a slight gasp that caught the attention of one of the guards. Staring back at me on that wall opposite the elevators was a large framed portrait of my Bishop who I last saw too long ago to recall. I smiled at this moment of irony. He did not smile back.

A Consecration of Souls

The best part of this day was gone by the time I returned from my field trip to my prison cell. I was hungry, thirsty, and needed to deprogram from the humiliation of being paraded in chains before Pilate and the High Priests. My first thought was that I must telephone two people who had been expecting a call from me earlier that day. One of them was Dilia, our excellent volunteer editor in New York. The other was Claire Dion, and I felt compelled to call her first. Let me tell you about Claire.

As I finally made my way up 52 stairs to my cell that day, I reached for my tablet — which can place inexpensive internet-based phone calls. I immediately felt small and selfish. My focus the entire day up to this point was my discomfort and humiliation. Then my thoughts finally turned to Claire and all that she was enduring, a matter of life and death.

I mentioned in a post some years back that I grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, a rather rugged industrial city on the North Shore of Boston. There is a notorious poem about the City but I never knew its origin: “Lynn, Lynn, the City of Sin. You never go out the way you come in.” After writing all those years ago about growing up there, I received a letter from Claire in West Central Maine who also hails from Lynn. She stumbled upon this blog and read a lot, then felt compelled to write to me.

I dearly, DEARLY wish that I could answer every letter I receive from readers moved by something they read here. I cannot write for long by hand due to carpal tunnel surgery on both my hands many years ago. And I do not have enough typewriter time to type a lot of letters — but please don’t get me wrong. Letters are the life in the Spirit for every prisoner. Claire’s letter told me of her career as a registered nurse in obstetrics at Lynn Hospital back in the 1970s and 1980s. It turned out that she taught prenatal care to my sister and assisted in the delivery of my oldest niece, Melanie, who is herself now a mother of four.

There were so many points at which my life intersected with Claire’s that I had a sense I had always known her. In that first letter, she asked me to allow her to help us. My initial thought was to ask her to help Pornchai Moontri whose case arose in Maine. The year was late 2012. I had given up on my own future, and my quest to find and build one for Pornchai had collapsed against these walls.

Just one month prior to my receipt of that letter from Claire, Pornchai and I had professed Marian Consecration, after completing a program written by Father Michael Gaitley called 33 Days to Morning Glory. It was the point at which our lives and futures began to change.

Claire later told me that after reading about our Consecration, she felt compelled to follow, and also found it over time to be a life-changing event. She wanted to visit me, but this prison allows outsiders to visit only one prisoner so I asked her to visit Pornchai. He needed some contacts in Maine. The photo atop this post depicts that visit which resulted in her guest post, “My Visit with Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.”

The Divine Mercy Phone Calls

From that point onward, Claire became a dauntless advocate for us both and was deeply devoted to our cause for justice. In 2020, Pornchai was held for five months in ICE detention at an overcrowded, for-profit facility in Louisiana. It was the height of the global Covid pandemic, and we were completely cut off from contact with each other. But Claire could receive calls from either of us. I guess raising five daughters made her critically aware of the urgent necessity of telephones and the importance of perceiving in advance every attempt to circumvent the rules.

Claire devised an ingenious plan using two cell phones placed facing each other with their speakers in opposite positions. On a daily basis during the pandemic of 2020, I could talk with Pornchai in ICE detention in Louisiana and he could talk with me in Concord, New Hampshire. These brief daily phone calls were like a life preserver for Pornchai and became crucial for us both. Through them, I was able to convey information to Pornchai that gave him daily hope in a long, seemingly hopeless situation.

Each step of the way, Claire conveyed to me the growing depth of her devotion to Divine Mercy and the characters who propagated it, characters who became our Patron Saints and upon whom we were modeling our lives. Saints John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, Padre Pio, Faustina Kowalska, Therese of Lisieux, all became household names for us. They were, and are, our spiritual guides, and became Claire’s as well by sheer osmosis.

Each year at Christmas before the global Covid pandemic began, we were permitted to each invite two guests to attend a Christmas gathering in the prison gymnasium. We could invite either family or friends. It was the one time of the year in which we could meet each other’s families or friends. Pornchai Moontri and I had the same list so between us we could invite four persons besides ourselves.

The pandemic ended this wonderful event after 2019. However, for the previous two years at Christmas our guests were Claire Dion from Maine, Viktor Weyand, an emissary from Divine Mercy Thailand who, along with his late wife Alice became wonderful friends to me and Pornchai. My friend Michael Fazzino from New York, and Samantha McLaughlin from Maine were also a part of these Christmas visits. They all became like family to me and Pornchai. Having them meet each other strengthened the bond of connection between them that helped us so much. Claire was at the heart of that bond, and it was based upon a passage of the Gospel called “The Judgment of the Nations.” I wrote of it while Pornchai was in ICE Detention in 2020 in a post entitled, “A Not-So-Subtle Wake-Up Call from Christ the King.”

Father Michael Gaitley also wrote of it in a book titled You Did It to Me (Marian Press 2014). We were surprised to find a photo of Pornchai and me at the top of page 86. Both my post above and Father Gaitley’s book were based on the Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46). It includes the famous question posed in a parable by Jesus: “Lord, when did we see you in prison and visit you? And the King answered, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:39-40)

That passage unveils the very heart of Divine Mercy, and as Father Gaitley wrote so eloquently, it is part of a road map to the Kingdom of Heaven. It was Claire who pointed out to me that she was not alone on that road. She told me, “Every reader who comes from beyond these stone walls to visit your blog is given that same road map.”

The God of the Living

In Winter, 2023 Claire suffered a horrific auto accident. While returning home from Mass on a dark and rainy night a truck hit her destroying her vehicle and causing massive painful tissue damage to her body, but no permanent injury. I have been walking with her daily ever since. Miraculously, no life-threatening injuries were discovered in CT or MRI scans. However, the scans also revealed what appeared to possibly be tumors on her lung and spinal cord.

At first, the scans and everyone who read them, interpreted the tumors to be tissue damage related to the accident that should heal over time. They did not. In the months to follow, Claire learned that she has Stage Four Metastatic Lung Cancer which had spread to her spinal cord. The disruptions in her life came quickly after that diagnosis. I feared that she may not be with us for much longer. This has been devastating for all of us who have known and loved Claire. I was fortunate to have had a brief prison visit with her just before all this was set in motion.

Claire told me that on the night of the accident, she had an overwhelming sense of peace and surrender as she lay in a semi-conscious state awaiting first responders to extricate her from her crushed car. Once the cancer was discovered months later, she began radiation treatments and specialized chemotherapy in the hopes of shrinking and slowing the tumors. She is clear, however, that there is no cure. Claire dearly hoped to return to her home and enjoy her remaining days in the company of her family and all that was familiar.

As I write this, Claire has just learned that this will not be possible. Jesus told us (in Matthew 25:13) to always be ready for we know not the day or the hour when the Son of Man will come. I hope and pray that Claire will be with us for a while longer, but I asked her not to call this the last chapter of her life, for there is another and it is glorious. Just a week ago, Christ conquered death for all who believe and follow Him.

In all this time, Claire has been concerned for me and Pornchai, fearing that we may be left stranded. I made her laugh in my most recent call to her. I said, “Claire, I am not comfortable with the idea of you being in Heaven before me. God knows what you will tell them about me!” I will treasure the laughter this inspired for all the rest of my days.

This courageous and faith-filled woman told me in that phone call that she looks forward to my Divine Mercy post this year because Divine Mercy is her favorite Catholic Feast Day. I did not tell her that she IS my Divine Mercy post this year. Now, I suspect, she knows.

“Now we see dimly as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part, but then I shall understand fully even as I am fully understood.”

— St Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please pray for Claire Dion in this time of great trial. I hope you will find solace in sharing her faith and in these related posts:

My Visit with Pornchai Maximilian Moontri by Claire Dion

A Not-So-Subtle Wake-Up Call from Christ the King

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

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

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ

The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of Biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: At Beyond These Stone Walls, I try to present many important matters of faith, but I also try not to overlook the most important of all: Salvation. In 2023 we began what I hope will be an annual Holy Week and Easter Season tradition by composing past Holy Week posts into a personal Easter retreat. The posts follow a Scriptural Way of the Cross. You are invited to ponder, pray and share them in our season of Highest Hope. They are linked again at the end of today’s post.

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Holy Week, March 27, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I had been 17 years old for only one month when I graduated from high school in May, 1970. Unlike most of my peers, I was too young to go to war in Southeast Asia. Some of my friends who went never came back. On my 17th birthday in April,1970, President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops into Cambodia while the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam began. Across this nation, college campuses erupted into violence and walkouts. At Kent State in Ohio, four students were killed by national guardsmen sent to prevent rioting. In response to the protests, Congress passed an amendment to block U.S. troop incursions beyond South Vietnam.

The measure did not forbid bombing, however, so U.S. air strikes continued and increased in Cambodia until 1973. The combined effects of the incursion and bombings completely disrupted Cambodian life, driving millions of peasants from their ancestral lands into civil war. The Khmer Rouge was formed and then became one of the deadliest regimes of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the United States was yet again in a state of rage. Satan loves rage.

This was the setting of my life at seventeen. It seemed that evil was all around me then, but not yet in me. As 1970 gave way to 1971 and I turned eighteen, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty was published by Harper and Row. I do not today recall how or why I came to have a copy of it so hot off the presses, but I read The Exorcist within weeks of its publication. I cannot say that I devoured it. At one point, I feared it might devour me.

The book left a vivid imprint on me, so much so that halfway through it I had to set it aside for a month. In its pages I came face to face with the personification of evil, accepting that it was a catalyst behind so much of this world’s agony. But I also had no delusion that I was any match for it. William Peter Blatty’s disturbing story of demonic possession seemed to be an allegory for what was happening in the world in which I lived.

Two years later, in 1973, the film version of The Exorcist was produced to scare the hell out of (or into) the rest of the nation that had not yet read the book. Because I did read the book, I was somewhat steeled against the traumatic impact that so many felt from the film. Its influence was evident in its awards. The Exorcist won the Academy Award for Best Writing and Screenplay for William Peter Blatty, and Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor.

An Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress went to Linda Blair for her unforgettable portrayal of Regan, the possessed and tormented young target of an unnamed demon. The film’s producers hired a priest, Father William O’Malley, to portray “Father Dyer,” one of the priest-characters in the book and film. That lent itself to an aura of realism present throughout the book.

Ultimately, The Exorcist also set in motion my resolve to find something meaningful to embrace in life. I began to explore more deeply the Catholic faith that my family previously gave only a Christmas and Easter nod to. I felt called to a journey of faith just as most of my peers were abandoning theirs, but it did not last long. At the same time, my family was disintegrating and I was powerless to stem that tide and the void it left behind.

I was haunted by a sense that even as I embraced the Sacraments of Salvation, evil and its relentless pursuit of souls was never far behind in this or any age. Both seemed in pursuit of me. I was living in a verse reminiscent of Francis Thompson’s epic poem, “The Hound of Heaven” which begins:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days ;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years ;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him.

Not even Satan can hide from God. I wrote the previously untold story of my path to priesthood on the 41st anniversary of my ordination. It was “Priesthood Has Never Been Going My Way.”

While pursuing a degree in psychology in the later l970’s, I had an interest in the work of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson and his stages of human development. Erikson predicted that in the latter years of our lives — the years I am in now — we enter a crisis of “generativity versus despair.” Many of us begin recalling and recalibrating the past, especially at “inflection points,” the points at which we changed. At this writing, I am 70 years old and counting. I realized only in later years that The Exorcist was an unexpected inflection point in my life, a point at which I turned from one path onto another.

The Betrayer Judas Iscariot

Even at age seventeen, the Catholic experience of Holy Week became a most important time for me. I began then to see clearly that the events of Holy Week were a nexus between the promises of Heaven and the pursuits of hell. The sneakiest thing Satan has ever done in the modern world was to get so many in this world to cease believing in him, and then to marginalize God. Many in the current generation calling itself “woke” now believe that Satan, if even real at all, has just been misunderstood.

The nightmarish story of The Exorcist was like a battleground. I was deeply impacted by a scene near the end of the book and film when the Exorcist, Father Damien Karras, tricked the demon into leaving young Regan and entering himself. He then leapt through a high window to his death on the Georgetown streets of Washington, DC down below. The scene set off a national debate. Had Father Karras despaired and committed suicide? Or had he heroically saved the devil’s victim by sacrificing himself?

Just as I was recently pondering this idea, I was struck by the photo atop this section of my post. It is my friend, Pornchai Moontri standing against a map of Southeast Asia which, I just now realized, is also where this post began. I had seen the photo previously in his January 2024 post, “A New Year of Hope Begins in Thailand,” but I failed to look more closely at it then.

Look closely at the T-shirt Pornchai is wearing in the photo. It quotes another inflection point in both his life and mine. His T-shirt bears a quote from St. Maximilian Kolbe who became a Patron Saint for us and who deeply impacted our lives. Maximilian also sacrificed his life to save another. His simple but profound quote on Pornchai’s T-shirt is, “Without Sacrifice,There Is No Love.”

That is how Father Damien Karras defeated the devil. Pornchai today says it is also how he was released from the prison of his past. And it is how Jesus conquered death and opened for us a path to Heaven. Sacrifice is the “Narrow Gate” He spoke of, the passage to our true home.

Earlier this Lent, I wrote “A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ.” It was about how Satan first set his demonic sights in pursuit of Jesus Himself. What utter arrogance! At the end of that account, having given it his all, the devil in the desert “departed from him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:13)

By his very nature, the betrayer Judas Iscariot provided this opportune time. The Gospel gives many hints about his greed and ambition, traits that leave many open to the subtle infiltration of evil. Satan plays the long game, not only in human history, but also in a person’s life and soul. In the allegorical book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis laid out the long, subtle trail upon which we humans risk the slippery slope toward evil:

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

— The Screwtape Letters, Letter #12, p. 60-61

Judas Iscariot gave Satan a lot to work with. He served as a treasurer for the Apostles but he embezzled from the treasury. The Gospel of John described him as “a devil” (6:70-71), “a thief” (12:6), “a son of destruction” (17:12).

The Gospel makes clear that Jesus was betrayed because “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot” (Luke 22:3). At the Passover meal (John 13:26-30), Jesus gave a morsel of bread to Judas. When Judas consumed it, “Satan entered into him.” That would not have been possible had Judas truly believed in the Christ. The Gospel of John then ends this passage with a chilling account of the state of Judas’ life and soul: “He immediately went out, and it was night.” (John 13:30).

In the scene laid out in the Gospel of John above, Satan finds his opportune time when Judas let him in. I wrote of a deeper meaning in this account in one of our most-read posts of Holy Week, “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”

The Turning of Simon Peter

The Eucharist had just been instituted and shared by Jesus among his Apostles. All the Gospels capture these moments. All are inspired, but Luke is my personally most inspiring source. The Evangelist cites at the very end of the meal its true purpose: “This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 23:20). Jesus adds that “The Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.”

The others at the Table of the Lord are alarmed by all this talk of Jesus being betrayed. They launch immediately into a dispute about who among them would do such a thing, who among them would never do such a thing, and finally who among them is the greatest (Luke 22:26). Simon Peter leads that last charge, but first we need to look at what has come before. How and why did Simon come to be called Peter? The answer opens some fascinating doors leading to events to come.

On a hillside in Bethsaida, a fishing village on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, a vast crowd gathered to hear Jesus. They numbered about 5,000 men. This was Simon’s hometown so he likely knew many of them. After a time, the disciples asked Jesus to send the crowd away to find food. Jesus instructed the disciples to give them something to eat. They protested that they had only seven loaves of bread and a few meager fish.

In a presage of the Eucharistic Feast, Jesus blessed and broke the bread, and with the few fish, a symbol of Christ Himself, the disciples fed the entire multitude on the hillside (Luke 9:10-17). Immediately following this, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Simon is thus given a new and transformative name and mission:

“You are Peter (in Greek, Petra and in Aramaic, Cephas — both meaning “rock”) and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

This is more than a figurative gesture. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Hades is the abode of the dead, the place where souls descend through its gates to an eternal Godless realm of the dead (Psalm 9:13, 17 and Isaiah 38:10) where they are held until the Last Judgment. It is the precursor to our traditional concept of hell being under the Earth, the place of the habitation of evil forces that bring about death.

In Hebrew tradition, the Foundation Stone of the Temple at Jerusalem, called in Hebrew “eben shetiyyah,” was a massive stone believed since ancient times to seal and cap off a long shaft leading to the netherworld (Revelation 9:1-2 and 20:1-3). It is this particular stone that the Evangelist seems to refer to as the rock upon which Jesus will build His Church. The Jerusalem Temple, resting securely on this impenetrable rock, was thus conceived to be the very center of the Cosmos and the junction between Heaven and Hell.

Jesus assures Peter, from the Biblical Greek meaning “rock,” that Peter and his successors will have the figurative keys to these gates and the power to hold error and evil at bay. By being equated with the very Foundation Stone itself, Peter is given the unique status of a prime minister, a position to be held for as long as the Kingdom stands.

Later in Luke’s Gospel, Simon Peter insists that he is “ready to go to prison and even death” with Jesus. Jesus corrects him saying, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” (Luke 22 : 31-32)

We all know, now, that Peter’s faith did fail. It gave way to fear and led him to three times deny being with, or even knowing, Jesus. But there is a lot more packed within that brief statement of Jesus above. The word “you” appears three times in the short verse. Like the rest of Luke’s Gospel, it is written in Biblical Greek. The word used for the first two occasions of “you” is plural. It refers to all of the Apostles, except Judas who had already gone out into the night.

The third use of the word “you” in that passage is singular, however, referring only to Peter himself. Jesus knew he would fall because his human nature had already fallen. But, “When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” Peter’s three-time denial of Jesus pales next to the betrayal of Judas from which there is no return. The story of Peter’s denial is remedied, and he “turns again” in the post Resurrection appearance at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:15-19).

Jesus brings restorative justice to Peter’s three-time denial by asking him three times to “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” “feed my sheep.” Then Jesus tells Peter what to expect of his unique apostolate:

“Truly, truly I say to you, when you were young, you fastened your own belt and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will fasten your belt for you and carry you where you do not wish to go”

— John 21:18

This was to foretell the assaults from beyond the Gates of Hell to which the Church will be subjected. And then, in John 21:19, He spoke His last words to Peter which, in Matthew 4:19, were also His first words to Peter. Through them, He speaks now also to us in this Holy Week of trials, assailed from all sides:

“Follow me.”

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“Stay sober and alert for your opponent the devil prowls about the world like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith knowing that your brethren throughout the world are undergoing the same trials.”

— First Letter of Peter 5:8-9

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Photo by Nicolas Grevet (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You are invited to make our Holy Week posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter Season observance. I cannot claim that they are bound in Earth or Heaven, but we will retain them at our “Special Report” feature until the conclusion of the Easter Season at Pentecost:

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage (2020)

Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.

Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light (2020)

The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.

Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane (2019)

The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.

The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ (2024)

The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands (2014)

‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ (2017)

The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.

Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross (2023)

Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found (2012)

Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.

To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell (2022)

The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, what happened to Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection, is a mystery to be unveiled.

Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb (2015)

History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.

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.”