2021 Saw Challenges to Life, Liberty, Even Laughter

The Year of Our Lord 2021 in review: a second pandemic wave worse than the first, wide political divisions, many losses, some regrets and even a few funny moments.

December 29, 2021

As I conducted a reality check over this “2021 Year End” post, I felt rather hard pressed to put the word “laughter” in its title. I don’t know about you, but I did not encounter much this past year that caused me to even smile let alone laugh out loud. I considered just reposting our first post of 2020, “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” It resonated with more readers than most subsequent posts, and not much has changed since then in the landscape of our lives. If anything, the climate feels worse.

But as the year wore on, I found myself laughing a little at life in spite of it all. Also in January 2021 I wrote, “Pandemic in Prison: When the Caged Bird Just Can't Sing.” It described how difficult it is to write a weekly post where I live, and how the seemingly never-ending pandemic turned “difficult” into a high-endurance obstacle course. That post's top image — created by our excellent volunteer graphic designer— made me laugh anew so I am using it to top this post about our year in review. It is also fitting, as you will read below, because this year two “Catholic” venues barred me from ever posting at their sites.

So given that I am the caged bird in question, the graphic above is a reminder that letdowns and obstacles should not suppress our ability to smile. However, canary yellow is not my color. I might have preferred a cardinal to a canary, but some might think that a bit pretentious. I also laughed when I proofread this post. I had mistyped “Year End” and referred in the first paragraph to my “Rear End” post. I want to put 2021 behind me, but I’m glad I caught the error.

Despite many obstacles, we published 52 posts in 2021. I wrote most of them while others were by our friends, Fr George David Byers in North Carolina, Fr Stuart MacDonald and Fr Tim Moyle in Ontario, Fr Andrew Pinsent in the U.K., Ryan MacDonald in New York, and two by Pornchai Moontri in Thailand.

My apologies in advance for all the links, but a year in review is just that. I want to profile the four posts you seemed to like the most. That short list will be interspersed with four others that I think deserve a second view. The criteria for your top choices will be an algorithm composed of the post's number of readers at the time it was posted, the number of times it was shared on social media, and the number of times it has been revisited during the course of the year.

My own choices have more to do with how much time was spent in reading, writing and research to produce some posts with limited resources made even more limited in this pandemic. By the way, at the expense of sounding political, have you noticed that “pandemic” is the word, “panic” with a “dem” inserted in the middle?

Life and Liberty Beyond These Stone Walls

By a wide margin, your choice for the most important post of 2021 was “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul” published on July 7. It remains the number one most widely read and revisited post of the year. The Catholic League e-blasted it to its members and hundreds of readers printed off a PDF of it to send to their bishops. Two U.S. bishops wrote to thank me for writing it. In twelve years of writing, that has never happened before.

I fear, however, that the major point of that post became shrouded in the heat of our bipolar politics. The U.S. bishops ended up avoiding any political fallout at their annual meeting in Baltimore by avoiding any real clarity on the subject after Pope Francis cautioned them not to politicize the Eucharist. But sidestepping the questions raised was also a political statement. The bottom line of that post is that our bishops have a sacred duty to care for the souls of all, including Catholic politicians who openly support a pro-abortion agenda.

Receiving the Eucharist while promoting abortion, sans repentance, places a soul in grave spiritual danger. On this, Scripture and Church law could not be clearer as laid out in that post and in Canon Law. In the aftermath of my post and the U.S. Bishops’ meeting, President Biden quoted Pope Francis claiming that he called Biden “a good Catholic” and told him to “keep receiving Communion.” That has not been verified, and whatever you think of Pope Francis, I do not believe it is accurate.

It is ironic that new state laws in Texas, Mississippi, and Arizona might now serve as a catalyst for a stronger defense of life from the U.S. Supreme Court while our bishops — who ought to be our collective guardians of morality on the right to life — shrunk from such an expectation. There was another pro-life post that I wrote earlier in 2021. It was widely acclaimed by many in the pro-life community who read it, but it was not otherwise widely read. Some may have been daunted by its detailed but important historical view. From my perspective, a nation that fails to understand history is doomed to repeat it. That post, published on May 19, 2021, was “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life.”

By a wide margin, your choice for one of the most important posts of 2021 was a boost to my spirit. Posted on September 22, 2021 it was, “A Catholic Priest 27 Years Wrongly in Prison in America.” That post was shared over 5,000 times on social media and became a featured post at the National Catholic Register news aggregator, The Big Pulpit. It was also one of several of our posts this year chosen for promotion by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. If you are not yet a member, please subscribe to this much needed effort. More than any other Catholic organization in the cause of Religious Liberty, the Catholic League has our backs.

But alas, that September 22 post was followed just two weeks later with my being “permanently banned” from posting or commenting by the unnamed Moderator of the r/Catholicism community at Reddit which boasts nearly 130,000 members none of whom even know of the ban. Then, just another week later, the Catholic Media Association declined this blog’s membership after inviting Catholic blogs to apply. Writer and media critic, Ryan MacDonald wrote of this at our new “Voices from Beyond” menu item under the not-so-subtle title, “At the Catholic Media Association, Bias and a Double Standard.”

Should a Vocation to Priesthood Be Perilous?

The state of Catholic priesthood was the focus of twelve of my posts in 2021, and two more by our Canon Law advisor, Fr Stuart MacDonald. Now a doctoral candidate in Canon Law, Father Stuart’s expertise shined brightly in “Bishops, Priests, and Weapons of Mass Destruction” published to wide acclaim on May 26. Just two weeks later, we published my post about a controversial priest in “Catholics to Fr. James Altman: ‘We Are Starving Out Here.’”

Father Altman brought some much needed prophetic witness to the assault on priesthood that has emerged not only in our culture, but, sadly, also in some corners of our Church. The Internet footprint of that post was as broad as that of Father Altman himself. The post was read by thousands and shared on social media nearly 4,000 times.

Father Altman was set aside with his priestly faculties withdrawn by his bishop, not because of any moral failure or impediment, but because of his tone. He never spoke a word contrary to Church teaching. Since then, removing priests from ministry without just cause seems to have become fashionable and has taken a bizarre and tyrannical turn. In some dioceses, bishops are suspending priests who decline to be vaccinated on legitimate moral and conscience grounds — even those who have natural immunity from already having and recovering from Covid.

This all highlights something that Catholic League President Bill Donohue asserted in an appearance on NBC’s Today Show in 2005 in a discussion about my own case: “There is no segment of the U.S. population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.”

A twist in the matter of the rights of accused priests came up near the end of July when I wrote, “Fr Stuart MacDonald and Our Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests.” Once accused of virtually anything, a priest has a very steep climb to restore his life and priesthood. Ryan MacDonald reframed the “Catholic Abuse Crisis” this year as the “Catholic Accuse Crisis.” I think it is a much more accurate term. Anyone who wants to be rid of any priest for any reason has found a potent weapon of Mass destruction. In no other venue in America can a person lose his good name, his housing, his livelihood based solely on an unproven 30-year-old claim brought for financial gain.

The bigger twist came this year, however, with my post, "Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo." I have no doubt that Bishop Libasci, Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire, is entirely innocent. Unlike any accused priest, however, he remains in office with his rights and priestly faculties intact.

A Long Farewell, but Not Goodbye

The first five months of 2021 were overshadowed by the immense trial of ICE detention for Pornchai Moontri. He was trapped in a huge, overcrowded warehouse filled with detainees who had illegally crossed the U.S. southern border. Sleeping seventy to a room, with overhead lights blazing around the clock and unbearable noise, Pornchai’s spirit was fraying while I did all I could to get him out of there. Finally, in early February, five months after leaving this prison, Pornchai was flown to Thailand. I wrote of this ordeal, and the triumph of his trust in Divine Mercy in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”

This was the closing of one long chapter in our story and the beginning of another. All our carefully crafted plans for support and housing for Pornchai fell apart in the eleventh hour just a day before he boarded his deportation flight. My own trust in Divine Mercy and Divine Providence were heavily taxed by that point. Then, mysteriously from seemingly out of nowhere, in stepped Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, a Vietnamese missionary from the Society of the Divine Word. On the morning of Pornchai’s flight, Father John contacted me with an offer to provide support and a home for Pornchai upon arrival in Bangkok.

As a teenager in the 1970s, Father John was himself a stranded refugee, one of the infamous “Boat People” forced to flee Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Today he is a priest of heroic virtue, selflessly providing food and sustenance to Vietnamese migrant worker families scattered across Thailand with no ability to earn an income during the global pandemic. But the threads of the Tapestry of God kept intertwining beyond these stone walls.

As Advent began, Fr. Tim Moyle and the people of St. Anne Parish, one of the poorest Catholic parishes in Canada, reached out to me with an Advent project to assist Father John and his people half a world away. I wrote of this profound example of the Gospel of the Widow’s Mite (Luke 21:1-4) in “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.” The good people of Mattawa, Ontario made a great difference. There are many other parishes that are struggling less, and many other opportunities to make such a difference. Lent is coming. Just sayin’.

That post above was not the most read of the year, but for me it was one of the most important posts. It came into being because Fr. Tim Moyle in Ontario had been following Beyond These Stone Walls all year. He was deeply moved by our stories about Pornchai’s progress and his good fortune, brought about by Divine Providence, to become connected to the refugee work of Fr. John Hung Le, SVD.

We devoted nine posts in 2021 to Pornchai’s odyssey. Two of them were written by Pornchai himself who now merits his own Category under “Pornchai Moontri” in the BTSW Public Library. The several posts about him tell a deeply moving and magnificent story of suffering and Divine Providence that has gained notice all over the world. My own favorite among these posts is one I wrote on April 14. It was a real-life version of the Book of Tobit entitled "Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri." And there is a dog involved, and the story is beautiful.

+ + +

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: It is with profound thanks and admiration that I commend Fr. Tim Moyle and the good people of St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, Ontario for their sacrifice and mission of mercy this past Advent. And I hold in equal measure our readers who also responded to this Corporal Work of Mercy. It is not too late to visit our SPECIAL EVENTS page.

I just received this message from Fr. Tim Moyle writing from Mattawa, Ontario:

“Dear Father Gordon and Father John: I just wanted to drop you both a note to tell you that we have reached the $5000 mark in contributions from our parishioners in support of John’s missionary work in Thailand. We will forward the funds shortly after the start of the New Year to allow for any last minute contributions that have yet to be received.

My deepest appreciation to both of you for being so instrumental in focusing my parishioners needs on something beyond our local concerns. It has served as an excellent opportunity for them to appreciate the world-wide reach of our Church, as well as our obligation to support those areas in the world most in need of our assistance. I cannot think of a better Christmas gift to have presented to my community than to have their eyes opened to the realities of our universal ministry as Catholics so that they can truly live out their obligations to the least among us… a requirement for salvation for all who carry the names Christian and Catholic. Thank you so very much for becoming such effective ministers of God’s mercy and love. Wishing you both all the blessings of this festive season of hope.”

Many of our BTSW Readers also took part in this effort and added over $4,500 to the sacrifices of the people of Mattawa. $2,500 of this was earmarked by donors to be added to what was raised for Father John’s Refugee Assistance Foundation, and $2,000 was earmarked to assist with the special challenges faced by Pornchai Moontri while assimilating into his homeland after 30 years in a U.S. prison, 15 of them with me. I am beyond thankful for the response to this effort.

With Blessings for the New Year, Father Gordon MacRae

(Clockwise from upper left in the photos above: Saint Anne Church in Mattawa Ontario, Father Tim Moyle in Mattawa, Father Gordon MacRae in Concord NH, and Father John Hung Le SVD in Bangkok. All collaborating this season for an Advent of the Heart.)

From the Grip of Earthly Powers to the Gates of Hell

At the dawn of 2021, Covid-19 wreaks havoc in prison, Pornchai Moontri remains in unjust ICE detention, the free press and free world seem less so, and our politics exploded.

Many writers have expressed concern that this Christmas must have been especially painful for me given that it was my first in 15 years without my friend, Pornchai, present with me. I can only respond with the words of Red, Andy Dufresne’s friend in the great prison film, “The Shawshank Redemption,” “This empty place just seems all the more empty in his absence.”

But I am far more painfully troubled, not by Pornchai’s absence, but by the deeply unjust continuation of his imprisonment. I am not a person who tends to see all things in respect to myself.

A few years back, I was asked to write a review of Stephen King’s novella-turned-prison-classic (linked above). Its focus was on the highly unusual redemptive friendship between Andy and Red (portrayed in the film by Tim Robbins and the great Morgan Freeman). I reflected in the review that one day my own friend will depart from prison while I remain in its emptiness. Of that, I wrote, “Still, I revel in the very idea of my friend’s freedom.”

I stand solidly by that. I do revel in Pornchai’s freedom as it is very important to me. I worked long and hard to help bring it about. So the insult and injustice of Pornchai’s ongoing ICE detention months after his prison sentence has been fully served is as painful for me to bear as it is for Pornchai. I very much appreciate the selfless efforts made by Bill Donohue and others to call attention to this injustice (see our “Special Events” section) and we hope you will take part in this effort, but to date the hoped-for justice remains out of reach.

It was a central tenet of President Trump’s bold initiative for criminal justice reform — the First Step Act — that when a prison sentence is fully served and paid in full, it should not continue on in ways that are unjust such as unemployment, the denial of housing, or the restoration of a person’s freedom and good name. I respect and support President Trump in this. But now, after paying in full his debt to society, Pornchai is now entering a fifth month beyond his sentence in the worst prison conditions he has ever known. He is still an ICE detainee in a grossly overcrowded for-profit ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana.

The factors that contributed to this are a combination of Covid-19 (which has been more of an excuse, really), bureaucratic ineptness, greed and corruption, and no small dose of something that plagues too many public sector employees: abuses of power and a lack of transparency and accountability to the very public sector that pays the bills. That post must be written and it will be written. In the meantime, please support and pray for the rapid repatriation of Pornchai Moontri.

Our Crisis of Partisan Politics

One of the factors that made me feel the most bleak about the hopes for justice for either Pornchai or me came just after I wrote “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.” That was my first glimpse of the folly of hoping for justice in an election year. That post mentioned truthfully the pressure I had been receiving to present what was happening to Pornchai as President Trump’s fault. I pointed out with honesty and candor that this had nothing to do with Trump.

Pornchai was first ordered deported in 2007 during the last year of the administration of President George W. Bush. The State of Maine nonetheless felt it necessary to extract from Pornchai every day of the sentence imposed on him when he was 18 years old. He is now 47. That post went on to quote an article by the left-leaning Human Rights Defense Center which bestowed on President Barack Obama the title of “Deporter in Chief.” These are factual elements that were not contrived by me, but unless I became willing to publicly blame President Trump, there would be no help from anyone on the left.

That fact was driven home when I was contacted by a political activist in Pennsylvania who represented an endeavor to combat human trafficking. The person urged me to “take a giant step away” from helping Pornchai because “your name is already sullied in the public square” and “your posting on this cut the legs from democrats who might help him and you.” Needless to say, I did not take her up on the offer of “help.” It came with conditions reflecting a whole other layer of dishonesty.

I hope it is not lost on readers, on human rights activists, and, if he ever sees any of this, on the President himself, that I ask for no consideration at all for myself. What happened to Pornchai in America is a giant stain on America’s claim to be a mirror and champion of human rights for the the world. Thailand as a nation has been dragged before United Nations panels for the exploitation of children, but everything that happened to Pornchai happened in America, and now America only expels him.

As events of recent days made clear, there will be no political help for either me or Pornchai. It is not yet time for me to comment on everything that happened in Washington on January 6. The intransigence of all the players is still too heated for any comment of mine to do anything but erupt it again. Much more will be written of this, by me and others, but for now I just want to raise one point about the grave danger we are in as a society builds upon respectful human rights and civil liberties.

As a result of our political differences, Facebook and Twitter have permanently suspended the accounts of the current President and others of his mindset. Who will they come for next? What are we in for? As John Derbyshire wrote in a recent issue of Chronicles, “While low-level grumbling by persons of no importance may be tolerated, only opinions compliant with the state ideology will be allowed to air in the public forum.” This will be the most frightening outcome of the events of January 6, 2021.

A Catholic Parting of the Ways

Like so many people I know, as I look back over my investments of the last year, I come up feeling a little empty. I am not talking about financial investments for I don’t have any. I earn all of two dollars per day helping prisoners traverse the legal system. My “investments” refer to the places where I have invested my time, my energy, and most especially my mind and heart.

Being where I am, you might think that I am immune from the empty social media quest for “likes” and other signs of acceptability. It never sits well with me that my posts could be subjected to such artificial approval. I cannot even see Facebook or other social media, but I know without doubt that it blocks and distorts conservative political and religious viewpoints.

But social media is also where the world lives out its arena of civil discourse. It is not all evil, and some of it presents an under-utilized opportunity for evangelization. So, with the help of friends, I have a social media presence carefully presenting the Gospel in a minefield of otherwise twisted ideas. To garner some help in this effort, I have found dozens of faithful Catholic public and private Facebook groups that promote positive discourse about our faith. Many of these groups have welcomed me, and routinely post what I present.

Then I decided to risk digging a little deeper. I sought out a Facebook group for priests. My friends and I found only one, and it had several hundred members. So the first post I submitted was one I wrote in 2020 entitled, “Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times.”

It was only hours before I found myself faced with one of the sins of the times: hypocrisy. A message came from the unnamed moderator of the priests’ group: “Given your situation, we do not think it is prudent for us to post anything you write.” Like so many untreated wounds, this one festered. It started off as anger, then humiliation, then hurt, then anger again.

This presented me with a full frontal experience of a phenomenon I have encountered in so many others. All the positive regard in the world cannot match the power of one unjust rejection from someone whom I would otherwise have respected. I have challenged penitents and counseling clients on this question for decades. Why does the negative so outweigh all the good that is said of some of us? Why do our psyches empower the negative?

There are lots of answers to this almost universal phenomenon, but they are too many for a single blog post. One of the answers, and perhaps the most important one, is a long neglected New Year’s resolution to identify where my treasure lies. This inquiry comes from a single, haunting line in the Gospel: “Wherever your treasure lies, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:21 & Luke 12:34) Saint Luke especially framed this in a way that requires insight:

“He began to say to his disciples, ‘Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed upon the rooftops.’”

— Luke 12:1-3

That is what I walk away with in this story. My only response to the priest who passed such harsh judgment on me is to never be that priest. My only response to the priest who walks by the man left for dead in the famous parable (Luke 10:25-31) is to never be that priest.

Which brings me back to my friend, Pornchai Moontri. Catholicism in America is a vast apostolic network of faith in action. I am so very proud of all of you who have sent in Bill Donohue’s Petition to the White House on our “Special Events” page. And I am immensely proud of Bill Donohue for taking this up. The response from our ranks should be thunderous. If the leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy, then the leaven of the righteous is faith found in selfless action.

The Trials of a Year in a Global Pandemic

All of the trials of 2020 in prison were lived in the shadows of the global pandemic of Covid-19. Amazingly, as prison systems across America became giant super transmitters of the coronavirus, this one managed most of the year with but a single case among prisoners and only a manageable handful among prison staff. The price for such an almost Amish removal from the mainstream was costly. Prisoners here have had to surrender all contacts with loved ones as the facility embraced a massive lockdown last March.

All visits, chapel activities, volunteer programs, most education, and virtually anything from outside these walls was curtailed. The limits on our lives became more severe as the year progressed. Since September, starting just at the time Pornchai Moontri was taken away on September 8, we have been in a state of near-total lockdown and isolation. Even this could not halt the virus from spreading. In just the last few months, even with all the lockdown measures, 81 prison staff and hundreds of prisoners here have contracted the virus. Due to contact tracing, the numbers placed in quarantine have been vastly greater.

Present1y, I live in the only housing unit that is not yet fully engulfed in quarantine. Currently eight of the twelve units here are fully locked down in quarantine. Presently, three dormitories, the weight room and the gymnasium have all been cleared out to make room for quarantine bunks. The wave of fear that has moved through the prison seems worse than the wave of Covid cases. Presently, I cannot leave my cell without a mask.

The State of Louisiana, where Pornchai has been held unjustly for over four months awaiting transport, has the fourth highest rate of Covid infection in the country. Detainees by the hundreds from Central America, with just a few Asians mixed in among them, are housed 70 to a room with no testing, little screening, and no obvious preventive measures. America, on either side of the aisle, does not seem to have the political will to address this.

Those from Central American countries seem to be moved out in large numbers while Pornchai and other Asian detainees are kept in horrible conditions for much longer. I plan to write in much more depth about ICE in an upcoming post.

Until then, I can only say thank you for being here with us throughout the trials of the past year. Your prayers and your support and friendship have been priceless, and have made a very great difference. I especially thank Bill Donohue for the courage and sense of justice the Catholic League has stood for. If you are not yet a member, please join me in that important cause at www.CatholicLeague.org

+ + +

Note from Father Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like the related posts referenced herein:

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times

And BTSW has a Library! Unlike most blogs, our past and present posts are slowly being organized by topic in 28 categories of special interest. This is a work in progress, but check it out, and come back for updates.

Please share this post!