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priests

As The Year of the Priest Ends, Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on June 16, 2010 · 12 comments

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. . . Some people actually get angry with me when they hear of my 2002 statement to my Bishop. Some feel that I was foolish to make such an overture. “What if he took you up on it?” My response is simple. I was accused falsely, and in the context of being a Roman Catholic priest. If I was not a priest, I would not have been accused. To pretend that somehow the claims against me are not related to the context of my priesthood is false. This is something that most Church officials long recognized. but many have put aside the rights of priests in open disregard of Church law. . . .

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Pentecost in the Year of the Priest: Spirit of Truth, Wisdom, and Understanding

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on May 19, 2010 · 4 comments

Cardinal Avery Dulles, Catholic feast days, catholic priest, Council of Nicea, Deuteronomy, due process for priests, East of Eden, Easter, Father Clarence Murphy, First Things, Fr Gordon MacRae, Holy Spirit, Kill the Priest, Land of Nod, Orthodox Church, Passover, Pentecost, Richard John Neuhaus, Ryan A. MacDonald, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Shavuot, Sinai Covenant, Sukkot, the Long Lent, These Stone Walls, torah, TSW, vernal equinox, Year of the Priest, priests, pentecost, catholic priest, prison life, stone walls, cease, jewish feasts, division, prison cell, the year, the priest, christianity, easter, shavuot, liturgical year, mass, orthodox church

. . . Up to that point, I had no idea of a blog’s potential. They didn’t exist when I came to prison nearly sixteen years ago. I read about them, and heard them mentioned on the news, but I had no idea how blogs worked. I remember sitting in my cell last May, knowing that I made a commitment with a deadline, but I had no idea what to write. I thought of my first night in prison, of that maddening, foot stomping chant that went on for hours. So I wrote . . .

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Catholic Scandal and The Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on May 12, 2010 · 9 comments

Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Catalyst, Catholic Church, Catholic priests, Catholic scandal, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dr. Thomas Plante, Fr Gordon MacRae, Golda Meir, Jeffrey Anderson, Joseph Goebbels, Massimo Introvigne, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Mein Kampf, Mit brennender Sorge, Moral Panic, Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, Nazi regime, New York Times, Ph.D., Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, propaganda campaign, Richard Dawkins, Richard John Neuhaus, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, sexual abuse, The Third Reich, The Washington Post, TSW, witch hunt, World Jewish Congress, catholic priest, sexual abuse, catholic church, moral panic, third reich, catholic, adolf hitler, morals, priests, catholic clergy, scandal, rise and fall, panic, joseph goebbels, the new york times, politics, germany, antisemitism, chancellors of germany, nazi germany, pope pius xi, gauleiter, dietrich bonhoeffer, pope pius xii, nazism

. . . Go back just another thirty to forty years, I wrote, and you will find yourself right in the middle of the Nazi horror that engulfed Europe and claimed the lives of six million Jews and millions of others. I suggested that Catholics should not accept what some would now impose: that the Catholic Church is to be the moral scapegoat of the Twentieth Century.

A TSW reader responded to that insight by sending me a rather startling document. As I began to read it, I almost tossed it aside dismissing it as just another sensational headline. You might be tempted to do the same. Resist that temptation, please, and keep reading: . . .

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Pop Stars and Priests: Michael Jackson and the “Credible” Standard

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on March 9, 2010 · 5 comments

accused priests, availability bias, Catalyst, Catherine Coy, catholic, catholic priest, Catholic priests, catholic sexual abuse scandal in the united states, child sexual abuse, childhood, d.s., Daniel Henninger, Daniel Kahneman, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Father Edward Arsenault, Father Richard John Neuhaus, jackson, JoAnn Wypijewski, John Jay Report, michael, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson and sexual abuse, Michael Jackson fans, music, pedophilia, priests, roman catholic church sex abuse scandal, Ryan A. MacDonald, sex abuse, Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud, sexual abuse, sexual abuse scandal in the catholic archdiocese of boston, singers, The Catholic League, The Eighth Commandment, Truth in Justice

. . . 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. . . .

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Going My Way

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on February 24, 2010 · 10 comments

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. . . It’s clear how very much that world view is shaped by the media. Hollywood’s treatment of Catholics and the priesthood has sure changed since Bing Crosby donned a Roman collar. One of my friends watched The Bells of St. Mary’s, then stopped by my cell to comment. He loved it, but added that today Hollywood would have Father O’Malley on administrative leave for his interest in turning a street gang into a choir. . . . Some of my friends tend to see me as a sort of poster-priest for injustice, ill-treatment, and poor morale in the priesthood. When one friend read Bernadette’s comment, she asked point blank what I would do if I knew at ordination what I know today: Would I still become a priest if I knew what was in store for me? Would I still become a priest if I had any sense of the suffering to follow? Would I still become a priest if I had any sense at all? Bear with me. My answers are coming. . . .

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