by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on August 10, 2011 · 5 comments
. . . My posts over the last few weeks have been some of the longest I have written for These Stone Walls. I thank readers for their forbearance and patience, and especially for sticking with these long but important posts. But I think you need a break, and I cannot look the other way while something very important for These Stone Walls is occurring on the Church calendar. Though August 14 is a Sunday this year, and the Sunday celebration takes precedence, it is also the Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the inspiration behind These Stone Walls. August 9th is the Feast of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as Edith Stein, and a saint for whom I have great personal devotion. They died one year apart in prison at Auschwitz, but that is not the end of their story. It’s a story of the triumph of grace over great evil. Please read . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on April 13, 2011 · 6 comments
. . . In his 1948 book, The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote of a 1935 proposal to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suggesting that the Soviet Union should not suppress Catholicism, but should rather encourage it in order to gain favor with the Pope. Stalin famously responded, “The Pope? How many divisions has he got?” Ironically, that conversation took place on May 13, 1935, forty-six years to the day before the Soviet Union tried to kill Pope John Paul II because he was the most feared man in all of Europe. The Pope survived. Stalin’s successors in the Soviet Union learned the answer to his question far too late for their own survival. Karol Wojtyla has earned the place in history summarized by the title given to him by Father Richard John Neuhaus and other admirers. He helped rid the world of Satan’s most earthly Evil Empire. Without doubt, he was – and is – Pope John Paul the Great. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on August 11, 2010 · 8 comments
. . . Catholics in France, Belgium, Holland and throughout Europe organized to rescue tens of thousands of Jewish children from deportation to the Death Camps. Philip Friedman, in Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (The Jewish Publication Society, 1980) commended the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands for their public protest about the Nazi deportation of Jews from Holland. In retaliation for those bishops’ actions, however, even Jews who had converted to Catholicism were rounded up for deportation to Auschwitz. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on April 28, 2010 · 15 comments
. . . On Saturday, April 10, 2010, our friend, Pornchai Moontri was welcomed into the Church when he received the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. Father Anthony Kuzia, C.M., conferred the Sacraments in the prison Chapel. The Prison Chaplain, Deacon James Daly and I were witnesses. It was both a joyous and solemn event, but something very special occurred during the Sacrament of Confirmation. When Pornchai stated that “Maximilian” was to be his Confirmation name, Father Kuzia shared with us that just before his ordination to priesthood; he visited and prayed in the cell in Auschwitz where Saint Maximilian was martyred. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on April 21, 2010 · 7 comments
. . . William McGurn filled in an essential part of the story that Laurie Goodstein conveniently left out of the New York Times. Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer quoted at length by Ms. Goodstein isn’t just a lawyer “for five men who have brought four lawsuits” against the Church. He is a lawyer who has become ravenously wealthy suing Catholic institutions for decades. He is a lawyer who once boasted to a newspaper that he is “suing the sh– out of them everywhere.” . . . The information that Jeffrey Anderson has made a long career of suing the Catholic Church was well known to Goodstein and The New York Times. As far back as 1988, Mr. Anderson spoke of receiving referrals from other lawyers with clients interested in suing Catholic dioceses and religious orders. He appeared on the “Geraldo [Rivera] Show” on November 14, 1988 to speak of his representation of a man who had been in prison and was then suing a priest for sexual abuse. I wrote of this in . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on March 24, 2010 · 6 comments
. . . “Calendar with frontal nudity – Not Allowed.” I received that notice from the prison mail room several years ago instructing me that I had two choices: have the pornographic contraband destroyed or sent out. I had no idea what it was, but the sender was my younger brother, Scott. I was furious with Scott. I thought his judgment had fallen off a cliff somewhere and he tried to send me a Playboy calendar – or worse. “He should know better!” I thought. “What on earth would make him think I would want a nude calendar?” The next day I received a letter from Scott: “I hope you like the calendar!” he wrote. That confirmed it! My brother had gone mad! When I finally reached him by telephone . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on November 18, 2009 · 15 comments
. . . In the end, what was meant to be a sign of unity in the Church was transformed into an open battle in our seminary. The rector, a Sulpician, was a priest from my diocese. He was particularly incensed when I – the only seminarian from our diocese there – signed a petition challenging his authority to bar Catholic seminarians from attending a Mass with the Pope. On October 7, 1979, more than 200,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC to welcome the Holy Father and celebrate the Eucharist with him. . . . I was horrified at the way they were singled out and ostracized, and I wasn’t having it. On that day, I parted ways with the “trendy dissent” crowd. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on August 15, 2009 · 3 comments
. . . I thought you might want to know that Priests in Crisis just published my article, “From Crisis to Hope” on the occasion of their first anniversary. You can read it here . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on August 11, 2009 · 5 comments
. . . In his stunning and deeply moving book, People of Auschwitz, published in association with the United States Holocaust Museum, Auschwitz survivor and historian Hermann Langbein wrote:
“The best known act of resistance was that of Maximilian Rajmund Kolbe, who deprived the camp administration of the power to make arbitrary decisions about life and death.” In June, 1979, Pope John Paul II knelt on the floor of Cell 18 . . .
