. . . Actually, what fell apart was the credibility of DSK’s accuser. Writing for The Wall Street Journal Editorial Pages (”The DSK Lesson,” July 5, 2011) columnist Bret Stephens chastised his own industry, the news media, for the sheer delight it took in the DSK charges. He wrote of how disappointed reporters were at news that the accuser had squandered her credibility on previous false claims and her recorded expectations of a financial windfall in the DSK case. Bret Stephens described the central problem with the news media’s build-up of the DSK case, and what he wrote is something Catholics should pay attention to: “The media has too often been guilty of looking only for the evidence that fits a pre-existing story line. It doesn’t help that in journalism you can usually find the story you’re looking for . . .” Such writing is exactly why I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, and I believe it’s why the Journal is the sole American newspaper to actually expand its readership over the last few years while other papers are dying. It takes courage to take on big stories like the rape case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn or sexual abuse by Catholic priests. But it takes even greater courage to police your own industry, and to challenge your peers when the story they want takes precedence over the truth. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on June 15, 2011 · 4 comments
. . . dded to that uproar were the tactics of a now disgraced and disbarred state prosecutor. Former Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was more interested in throwing “gasoline on the fire,” according to USA Today, than gathering evidence. He ignored the complete lack of evidence, not to mention the accuser’s constantly changing story, and vowed to continue his prosecution even after the case fell apart. This prosecutor suppressed exculpatory evidence, hid it from defense lawyers, and held repeated news conferences to keep the momentum of judgment going in the court of public opinion. Co-opting some Duke faculty into pre-trial condemnation of the accused was a tactical advantage for prosecutor, Mike Nifong. The result was a trial-by-media that should sound hauntingly familiar to Catholics reeling from the Church’s own sex scandal. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on April 27, 2011 · 9 comments
. . . The break we are taking is due to several circumstances. Charlene is planning a journey to Rome in May, and I have no one else available to scan and forward my posts. Also, Suzanne is planning a blog design upgrade. This might mean that the site will look off kilter while she adjusts the graphics and HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL customizations to fit in with the new WordPress theme. Suzanne is on Australia time so midnight on the U.S. East Coast where I am a prisoner is 2:00 PM the next day in Australia. TSW’s hiatus reminds me of something I wrote about last year. Once during a Sunday Mass in my last parish, I had some sort of allergic reaction that constricted my larynx. As I finished reading the Gospel, I lost my voice completely. Only a squeak would come out. So I skipped my homily while the lector led parishioners in the Nicene Creed and Prayers of the Faithful. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on March 23, 2011 · 29 comments
. . . So, have I forgiven this man? It seems a moot point now. The baggage of resentment evaporated with my prayer. No matter how hard I try, I just cannot pray and hate in the same sentence.
So if there is someone out there you just can’t forgive, someone who hurt you so much that you are burdened with the sheer weight of it, and cannot put it down, then prepare for the moment when you will offer prayer for that person, and maybe even the sacrifice of some of the very suffering that person imposed. Offer it as a share in the suffering of Christ and the garment you wear – like Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s – will no longer be divided. You cannot both pray for a person and hate him at the same time. I’ve tried it, and it cannot be done. “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And they cast lots for his garments.” (Luke 23:34). . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on January 26, 2011 · 6 comments
. . . 20-year-old Cornelius Dupree was arrested for the crime in 1979, and sentenced to 75 years in prison. In 2004, he was set to be released on parole until he refused it again because it required that he submit to a sex offender treatment program which in turn required an admission of guilt. The 20-year-old turned 51 in prison before being exonerated and released. On a national scale, only two other exonerated men spent more time in prison than Cornelius Dupree. Jamie Bain was one of them. I wrote about Jamie in . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on January 12, 2011 · 5 comments
The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has been used for some troubling hidden agendas. We are all responsible for our practice of truth in justice.
Forgive me if it takes a moment or two to work your way around the full meaning of my title for this post. In “My New Year’s Resolution About [...]
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on April 14, 2010 · 9 comments
. . . Perhaps NBC sensed the line of decency was breached a few weeks ago when it apologized to The Catholic League and the world for a scandalous and libelous smear against Pope Benedict XVI on its affiliate news channel, MSNBC. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Donohue and The Catholic League for not letting this one pass. It is also no coincidence that the lurid stories of priestly sex abuse and papal complicity rose to a frenzy in the U.S. in the same weeks that tax-payer funded abortion was being argued in the Obama health care bill. Writer and art historian Elizabeth Lev made this same point in a brilliant essay on PoliticsDaily.com entitled “In Defense of Catholic Clergy (Or Do We Want Another Reign of Terror?)” Ms. Lev cited English statesman, Edmund Burke’s 1790 commentary on Catholic witch hunts during the French Revolution: “What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks …? In 1790, Burke answered … ‘It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those they are going to plunder.’ What would he think of the insistent attempt to tie [a] sexual abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links … as the present sales of Church property to pay settlements swell the coffers of contingent-fee lawyers and real estate speculators …?” . . .
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. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on January 27, 2010 · 9 comments
. . . On August 26th, I posted “Postcards from the Edges.” It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of western literature. Nonetheless, I thought it was a good post that addressed a timely topic: news media bias. It was barely noticed, and received few comments. Six weeks later on October 7th, I posted “To the Readers of These Stone Walls.” I didn’t think it was very interesting, but it generated more comments than any post before it, and was linked on a number of other blogs. Readers seemed interested in how These Stone Walls came into being, and in the obstacles we face. . . . A number of readers have posted comments and sent messages with pointed questions about prison, possible appeals, my weekly Mass, etc. I’d like to respond to some of them here. Some are direct questions from readers, and some are composites of questions asked by several readers. . . .
by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on July 25, 2009 · 8 comments
. . . There I was, a 41 –year-old Catholic priest strapped to a chair in a dank office surrounded by electronic equipment with sensors on my fingers, and probes monitoring my heart rate, respiration and blood pressure while a poker-faced examiner asked me graphic questions about sex. When it was over, he told me we would be repeating the test with “re-phrased” questions in a week’s time, and then again a week after that. “Don’t even think about it,” I was told. . . .
