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 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 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. . . .
