by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on October 20, 2010 · 13 comments
. . . How does a priest accused from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago defend himself or ever restore his name when a diocese simply writes a check with no other evidence of guilt than the claim itself? And unlike the lawsuits filed by the accusers of Bishop Eddie Long, the lawyer who was given a $5.2 million check by my diocese – the first of several rounds of mediated settlements with the same lawyer who proclaimed,
“I’ve never seen anything like it!” – didn’t even file the claims in a court of law. He simply wrote a letter demanding settlement, and got it. Last month, the Concord Monitor reported on another case handled by that same lawyer with amazing result. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on October 13, 2010 · 24 comments
. . . False accusations are rare? Tell that to Mike Gallagher and the falsely accused men I described in “The Eighth Commandment.” Tell that to the twelve falsely accused men who appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” with Innocence Project attorney Barry Scheck on October 6, after they each were exonerated following an average of 20 years in prison accused of sexual assaults they had nothing to do with. Their stories, and the hundreds like them, will be the subject of a landmark film, Conviction, opening this Friday. Justice has turned on its head when men who stand to gain hundreds of thousands of dollars for making a false claim are automatically called “victims” by Church leaders now, while priests accused without evidence from decades ago are just as quickly called “priests-offenders” and “slayers of souls.” . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on September 22, 2010 · 17 comments
. . . The New York Times (September 24, 1998) carried an article charging that Padre Pio was the subject of no less than twelve Vatican investigations in his lifetime, and one of the investigations alleged that “Padre Pio had sex with female penitents twice a week.” It’s true that this was alleged, but it’s not the whole truth. The New York Times and Atlantic Monthly are simply following an agenda I’ve described before. That should come as no surprise to anyone. I’ll describe below why these wild claims fell apart under scrutiny. But first, I must write the sordid story of why Padre Pio was so accused. That’s the real scandal. It’s the story of how Padre Pio responded with heroic virtue to the experience of being falsely accused repeatedly from within the Church. This heroic virtue in the face of accusation is a space we simply do not share. It far exceeds any grace ever given to me. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on September 8, 2010 · 12 comments
. . . The art of woodcarving and model shipbuilding were honed in Pornchai during his years in a Maine prison. Pornchai was 18 years old when sent to prison with a sentence of 45 years. The first five were a blur of despair, violence, and trouble for Pornchai. Then he met Mike Tribou, a fellow prisoner and carpenter who offered to teach Pornchai his skills with woodworking. Mike is out of prison now, with a new family and a new life, but he and Pornchai remain friends. I am proud to say that Mike is also a TSW reader. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on June 9, 2010 · 5 comments
. . . Are men in general like that? I sure hope not, though lots of prisoners are. Add to the mix a bit of prison paranoia and they make for a challenging population. A twenty-six year old came to my cell door last week with a worried look on his face. He had been to sick call that morning with a sore throat, nagging cough, runny nose, and headache. He seemed perplexed that he wasn’t hospitalized immediately. Instead, he said, they gave him some Tylenol and cough syrup and told him to wash his hands a lot. . . I told him it sounds like he has a common cold, and washing his hands helps keep it from spreading to everyone else. He looked at me as though I was delusional, and walked away alarmed that I would share the medical staff’s utter ignorance of the severity of his condition. He’s still alive, but I’ve never seen him wash his hands. I washed mine twice while typing this post! . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on May 11, 2010 · 2 comments
These Stone Walls and the case of Father Gordon MacRae have been noticed by publications and individuals concerned for the state of due process, justice, and liberty in America. Here are some of their comments:
Dennis Collins: Ontario, Canada
“These Stone Walls is reaching countless people from all parts of the world not only with powerful words [...]
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 . . .
. . . Pornchai started his 19th year in prison just before Easter, and now he is entering a life of faith through the narrowest gate, an open and honest witness to redemptive grace.
Pornchai has asked Charlene Duline to be his Godmother. They share an interesting bond that Charlene describes in a new post entitled “Pornchai Moontri is Worth Saving” on the Prodigal Catholic Writer blog. Pierre, the visitor I described in my post, “Stigmatized,” has graciously assented to be Pornchai’s Godfather. Because this event is happening in a prison, however, neither one of them will be allowed to be present. I will act as proxy for them both because of the unusual circumstances.
I call upon the Church to recognize the transformation that has led Pornchai to Her Sacraments. In “Pornchai’s Story,” the powerful autobiographical essay The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Pornchai described his transformation: . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on March 17, 2010 · 6 comments
. . . The part of St. Patrick’s story about being carried off by marauders and forced into six years of slavery is seen through the eyes of Irish history as part of the “lucky charm” of St. Patrick’s life. Think about that! I doubt very much that it felt that way at age sixteen. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time – or the right place at the right time depending on your point of view.
Would Patrick be Saint Patrick without that awful six years of his life? I doubt it. We’re in an unholy quagmire if we’re hell-bent on shedding where we are in life, or where we’ve been. God’s pursuit of us calls not just our halo, but our shadow as well. We can leave neither behind, and there’s no point in running. Just as with “that look” my Irish mother mastered, resistance is futile. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on March 9, 2010 · 5 comments
. . . 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. . . .
