St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Our Salvation

In Judeo-Christian tradition the scales of Saint Michael the Archangel measure souls for eternity, weighing not only justice and mercy for us but also from us.

September 27, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

In September 2010, when this blog was but a year old, I wrote a post that was to become one of the most-read posts of the last decade. I had no idea at the time that it would find readers year after year on six of the seven continents. (Is there no one reading BTSW in Antarctica?) The post was “Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed.”

The last word of its title, “Hesed,” is a Hebrew term associated with two central tenets of salvation: Mercy and Righteousness. The story that post tells began within these stone walls and brought about a resurgence of interest in this Patron Saint of Justice. Over time, his Angelic Presence — his name means “who is like God” — has developed a seemingly mystical connection with this imprisonment.

This connection began with a simple gesture from a devout young man named Alberto Ramos. Sent to prison at age 14 for murder — a back-alley drug deal gone horribly wrong — Alberto was a psychology student of mine at age 18 in a prison program for college credit. Alberto also lived in the same prison unit as me and Pornchai Moontri. His painfully amazing story was told at Beyond These Stone Walls in “Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being.” We will link to that post again at the end of this one, and if you click on it you will see a wonderful photo of Alberto and Pornchai as they are graduating from high school.

A startling thing happened after I wrote it. The mother of the young man who died in that Manchester, NH alley that night read it. Then she agonized over it. Then she had a conversion of heart, something she says she would not have thought possible after years of entrenched bitter resentment toward Alberto. She forgave him, and wrote of her forgiveness in a moving comment on that post. She also decided to try to help him.

Mere words cannot capture the meaning of “Hesed” relative to the Scales of Saint Michael and the weighing of souls, but the mother of that murdered boy attained it as much as any human being can. A conversion of heart that sets aside bitterness to give way to mercy made her righteous in the eyes of the Lord.

Some of the images of Saint Michael with his scales depict Satan, even while subdued under his feet, reaching to tip the scales by stifling our ongoing conversion. The battleground of spiritual warfare is our very soul, and the battle is real. One day Alberto walked into my cell carrying a card with a painting on it. He silently climbed up onto a concrete counter and taped the image above my door. “You need this here,” he said, “and you should never take it down.” It was a startling image depicting this scene from the Apocalypse:

“War broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to Earth and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, ‘Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Anointed One, for the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who night and day accused them before God.’”

— Revelation 12:7-10

At the center of the painting was St. Michael the Archangel, sword in one hand and scales in the other, subduing Satan after a fierce battle. I asked Alberto why he thinks I need this. “Because you were falsely accused,” he said, “And you need his protection so you won’t be bitter and never trust anyone again.” Now, almost 14 years later, that image is still above the door of my cell.

Guardian of the Covenant

Sometime later, Alberto was moved to another prison in another state, but I have for years pondered what he said. I did not include his warning about bitterness when I first wrote in “Angelic Justice” of his placing that image above my door. I am not certain why I left it out. But I have come to see that false witness is a powerful tipping of the scales in the measure of souls, and so is succumbing to bitterness. We are far more spiritually vulnerable than most of us realize. It took a long time, but I was finally able to convince both Pornchai and Alberto of a tough lesson I was slow in learning myself. Bitterness is like a toxic brew that we mix for our enemies just to end up drinking it ourselves.

In Jewish tradition, Saint Michael is one of the four angels who stand in the Presence of God. The Book of Daniel (12:1) also identifies Michael as “One who stands beside the sons of your people,” an allusion that he is the guardian of God’s chosen people. His name is mentioned in the Shema, a prayer from Hebrew tradition:

“In the Name of the Lord God of Israel, on my right hand stands Michael, on my left, Gabriel, before me, Uriel, behind me, Raphael, and above me, the Divine Presence of Yahweh.”

Every mention of Michael in the Hebrew Scriptures identifies him as an advocate for Israel and therefore an advocate for the Covenant relationship with God. Advocate in that sense is used in the same manner that someone falsely accused of a crime might describe his defense attorney. And Satan is presented as prosecutor. It is fascinating that in the Book of Revelation, the scene of Satan’s expulsion from heaven by Michael and his angels ends with a declaration: “The accuser of our brethren is cast out.” The offense for which Satan accuses us is something he himself is denied: a hope for salvation. In ancient traditions, Michael defends the righteous in the presence of Yahweh in our final judgment.

Like much of what I write at Beyond These Stone Walls my post, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?”appeared on the professional social media site, Linkedln where it had hundreds of views. I rather like Linkedln even though I have never actually seen it. It’s a little tamer than some other social media platforms where the give and take can become overbearing. And on LinkedIn, you will never have to look at pictures of other people’s cats.

So I was a little surprised when even at the venerable LinkedIn, my rational and factual defense of Cardinal Pell ran into some pointed opposition. One writer who identified himself as “a practicing Catholic” wrote that Cardinal Pell is in prison where he belongs for “abusing children.” Several readers responded that the evidence does not support that claim. In my response, I wrote that his practice of Catholicism needs more practice. And as you know, Cardinal Pell was ultimately exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s highest court.

The abuse crisis in the priesthood is a two-edged sword in seemingly equal measure. It is a story of clerical corruption, but it is by same measure a story of false witness. Clerical corruption has had ample play in the news media, and social media has been no exception. False witness, however, is grossly under-reported.

Also under-reported are the wonderful expressions of Catholic faith by people of real fidelity undaunted by the arena in which scandal plays out on the front page. Father George David Byers sent me a link to a short video of the Eucharistic Congress Procession in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina. Wonderful!

The Origin of the Eighth Commandment

From the first signs of Satan’s pursuit of the hearts and souls of humankind, the Covenant conscripts us into Saint Michael’s battle against evil. The separation of light from darkness in the human relationship with God portrays Saint Michael as a warrior tasked with the protection and defense of human souls, and the preservation of the covenant.

Written contracts did not exist in the Hebrew society of our Old Testament. In their place, the spoken word had the authority of a signed contract. A blessing or curse was understood to follow the person to whom it was directed for all of his or her life. Spoken words were thus carefully considered. The parties of a covenant were bound by mutual agreement with serious repercussions for those who violated its terms. God’s covenant with Abraham was seen in Jewish culture as the foundation of our relationship with Yahweh. For that story, see “The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek.”

However, the covenant with Israel itself, the covenant that made Israel a people of Yahweh, was the Sinai Covenant in the Book of Exodus (19:1-ff). It made them a people because it set down ethical standards for being a people. The Covenant was set down in the stone tablets of the law, and had the authority of God’s Presence housed in the Ark of the Covenant.

One of these sacred tenets, the Eighth Commandment — “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” — is thought by both Jewish and legal scholars to have an unusual origin: Genesis, Chapter 39. When Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and taken down to Egypt, he was purchased as a slave by Potiphar, a high ranking officer of Pharaoh. In the account in Genesis (39:6-21), Potiphar’s wife repeatedly pursued Joseph but he would not consent. In one episode, she tried to grab his garment, but he fled, tearing off a section of his garment in her hand. She later accused him of sexual assault using the garment as evidence against him.

For this, Joseph was unjustly imprisoned. Alan Dershowitz, a Jewish scholar and Emeritus Professor of Law at Harvard, addressed this in his book, Genesis of Justice (Warner Books, 2000):

“The Ninth Commandment [Eighth in the Christian texts] — “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” — derives directly from Potiphar’s wife bearing false witness against Joseph and Joseph then bearing false witness — even as a pretense — against his brothers. [His brother] Yehuda’s desperate question, ‘How can we clear ourselves?’ is answered by this prohibition and the subsequent procedural safeguards that rest upon this Commandment.”

— Genesis of Justice, p 250

The subsequent procedural safeguards were laid out in the Books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus. The accusation of a single witness, without evidence or corroboration, could not result in a conviction. The testimony of a witness who had a financial stake in the outcome of a juridical trial could not be admitted as evidence against the accused. Today’s juridical proceedings have fallen far from these safeguards.

In both its active and passive forms, false witness was seen in the Covenant as a slayer of souls. Safeguards against it were implemented from the earliest days of Salvation History. In its active form, false witness was any testimony not based on absolute truth. In its passive form, it spreads through rumor, innuendo, and judgments based on bias and agendas instead of facts.

The Necessity of Allies in Spiritual Warfare

It is because of the great danger to the soul that false witness poses that Saint Michael the Archangel took up his cosmic role, as described in the passage from the Book of Revelation above, to cast out the false accuser who no longer has a place in heaven.

Hebrew Scripture and tradition was not unique in this concept. Egyptian mythology depicts a rite in the underworld in which the heart of the deceased was weighed on a set of scales against a “truth feather.” If the heart was heavy with falsehood and false witness, it could not pass on to paradise.

The grave effect of false witness on the person accused, on the souls of accusers, and on the Covenant with God is reflected throughout Sacred Scripture as evidenced in just this partial sampling of passages:

• Exodus 20:16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

• Exodus 23 1-2 “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing to bear witness in a lawsuit.”

• Exodus 23:6-7 “You shall not pervert justice. Keep far from a false charge. Do not kill the innocent or those in the right for I will not acquit the guilty.”

• Deuteronomy 5:20 “Neither will you bear false witness against your neighbor.”

• Deuteronomy 19:18 “If the witness is a false witness, having testified falsely against another, then [the judge] shall do to that witness what he intended to do to the other. So shall you purge the evil from your midst.”

• Psalm 27:12 [This is one many priests could plea to their bishops] “Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up against me.”

• Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things that the Lord abhors: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, a hand that sheds innocent blood, a heart that plots wicked plans, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.”

• Proverbs 19:20 “A false witness will not go unpunished.”

• Proverbs 25:18 “Like a war club, a sword, or a sharp arrow is one who bears false witness against a neighbor.”

This list of excerpts from the Word of the Lord could go on for pages. We live in an age of falsehood, a time when the rule of law is collapsing under the weight of political correctness, identity politics, expediency, and moral relativism. These will spell the ruin of both souls and society.

This is why we have allies in spiritual warfare behind and beyond these stone walls, and we are more than willing to share them with you. They include Mary, Mother of God, whose heart was wounded by seven swords; Saint Maximilian Kolbe, wrongly imprisoned under an evil regime, who gave his life for another; Saint Padre Pio, falsely accused, suspended from priestly ministry, even while openly bearing the wounds of Christ.

And Saint Michael the Archangel who prevailed when “the accuser of our brothers was cast out who night and day accused them before God.” (Revelation 12:10) False witness, sans repentance, is a path to spiritual ruin for eternity.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do you, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, cast into hell Satan, and all evil spirits who prowl about this world seeking the ruin of souls.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You may also like these related posts :

• Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being

• Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed

• Michael, Gabriel, Raphael: Allies in Spiritual Battle

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POSTSCRIPT

As indicated in this post, my friend Alberto Ramos was sent to another prison about six years ago. While I was writing this post he was returned to the New Hampshire prison to prepare for his coming release after 30 years “inside.” At his earliest opportunity, he came to the prison law library where I am the clerk. His smile was visible in Heaven. As he took my hand in his firm grip he asked three rapid-fire questions: “How are you?, Where is Pornchai? Is Saint Michael still above your door?”

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Why this Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison

Why are some innocent defendants kept in prison? Attorney Harvey Silverglate unmasks the perversion of justice when judges give finality more weight than justice.

August 30, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Preliminary Note: I first wrote this post in 2018. The entire landscape of my own situation has radically changed since then. On October 9, 2022, famed Boston civil rights Attorney Harvey Silverglate penned an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal entitled “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.” He wrote of how any hope for my ongoing defense fell into silence for several years until early 2022. At that time, new evidence emerged that James F. McLaughlin, the Keene, New Hampshire police detective who choreographed the case against me in 1994 had been present on a secret list for police misconduct. The charge against him, which preceded my trial by a few years, was “falsification of records.” Since then a New Hampshire court has sealed his file and has, in a secret hearing, allowed his name to be removed from the public misconduct list. Others who have written of this matter have somehow uncovered other incidents of police misconduct by him including allegations of falsification of evidence, witness intimidation, destruction of tape-recorded evidence, and other examples of official dishonesty, all of which I have been accusing him of for the last 30 years. There are signs of an official coverup going on in New Hampshire, and until someone gets to the bottom of it, progress in my defense had once again fallen into silence.

Until now. Next week in these pages we will host an explosive Op-Ed by a Los Angeles documentary researcher who seems to have arrived, if not at the bottom line of what has actually gone on, then very near to it. She has described her Op-Ed as “the epic of all epic scandals.”

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In North Carolina in 1983, half brothers Henry Lee McCollum, 19, and Leon Brown, 15, were arrested and charged with a heinous crime, the rape, and murder of an 11-year-old girl. Public pressure to solve the case was intense. A lot of facts were overlooked because the police felt certain they had the right suspects. The two brothers were interrogated for hours on end, finally confessed, and then were sentenced to death.

But after an initial state appeal, the young men’s confessions were seen as coerced and vacated. They stood trial but were convicted again. Only the sentence changed. This time Henry Lee remained on death row while Leon, being still a minor, was sentenced to life in prison. Further attempts to appeal their case were rejected by judges citing the state’s interest in “finality,” a principle of law that often prevails over justice.

I often receive letters and comments from readers who may not know the history of my own attempts toward justice. The well-meaning comments suggest that I seek out the Innocence Project for assistance, or that I appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, or file a habeas corpus petition in the federal courts.

I know that these readers would have to plow through a lot of past material on this site to get a sense of how strenuously we have tried all of the above. The Innocence Project has saved many lives, but before taking a case it usually requires the existence of irrefutable DNA evidence that would exonerate a prisoner.

Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence

A conviction like mine is different. Because no crime ever actually took place — a truth that comes down to my word against an accuser’s word — there was no evidence and nothing to review except the accuser’s claims themselves. For reasons you might understand if you keep reading, emerging evidence of innocence, no matter how compelling, has so far been unable to prevail over the court’s interest in finality.

The sheer number of cases overturned with irrefutable DNA evidence do not seem to translate for judges into a concern that wrongful convictions are more common than they want to admit. Mistakes that are made when there is evidence do not compel judges to consider that mistakes are also made when there is none. How finality prevailed over justice in my own attempts at appeal was laid out in an important article by Ryan MacDonald, “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.”

The grievous error notwithstanding, Judge Laplante was not in error in his procedural handling of my habeas corpus appeal. He simply followed existing case law. One of the most egregious principles of law to come out of the United States Supreme Court in modern times was a 1993 decision in Herrera v. Collins.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in his majority opinion that “A claim of Actual Innocence is not itself a constitutional claim” that entitles a convicted defendant to federal habeas corpus relief. This also applies to death penalty cases. Actual innocence is not a bar to lawful execution.

Let that sink in. But first, back to half-brothers Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown in North Carolina: After being sent to prison for the heinous rape-murder charges, the two young men themselves became the victims of sexual and physical assaults.

In a bizarre twist, an older prisoner befriended them, stating his belief in their innocence. That prisoner, Roscoe Artis, had been convicted for a series of sexual assaults against women and was a suspect in at least one “cold case” homicide. It turned out that Mr. Artis believed in the innocence of Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown because he himself actually committed the crime for which they were in prison. He did not tell them this, however.

In 2014 — 31 years after being sentenced to prison — the case of Henry Lee, still not yet executed, was revisited by Sharon Stellato, an investigator for the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. She undertook a dogged pursuit of the actual evidence against them but found none. What she did find, however, was some DNA evidence from the crime scene that had never been tested.

It was enough — just enough — to overcome finality so a judge ordered it to be tested. It excluded Henry Lee and Leon from any involvement in the crime, and it convicted Roscoe Artis, the man who befriended and protected them in prison. It was also revealed that fingerprints found at the 1983 crime scene were not a match for either Henry Lee or Leon, a fact that the police never conveyed to defense attorneys. At ages 50 and 46, more than 30 years after they were sent to prison, Henry Lee and Leon were finally released.

Politics, Prosecutors, and Career Paths

About every other week or so, usually on a Friday afternoon, I am summoned to a prison office to open and sign for an item of legal mail. Anything sent to a prisoner that obviously comes from a court, a lawyer, or a law firm falls into this category. It simply means that unlike all other mail, the item is opened in my presence after I sign a log indicating that I accepted it.

Prisoners shudder when the P.A. system announces their names for legal mail. It is generally an omen of bad news for prisoners. Those who are guilty of their charged offenses — and yes, they are the vast majority — don’t mind so much. They expect little beyond the justice already meted out to them. But those who maintain their innocence brace themselves for a letdown, or another step toward bankruptcy, whenever their names are called.

It is one of the myths of prison that many prisoners claim to be innocent. The reality is just the opposite. Those who do so are taunted as “damn fools” by nearly all others. I spent my first few years here fending off a taunt by both prisoners and guards: ‘You could have been out of here in ONE YEAR if you took a deal? What an idiot!” 

Much of the legal mail that I am summoned to pick up these days is from Harvey A. Silverglate, a well known civil rights and appellate defense lawyer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Silverglate is author of the book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (Encounter Books 2009).

The foreword of the book is by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor and a colleague and friend of the author. Both Misters Silverglate and Dershowitz appear frequently in the Boston and national media, and I have followed them for years.

In his Foreword, Alan Dershowitz presents with clarity a crucial point that I have made many times. Mr. Dershowitz writes:

“Prosecutors in other countries are civil servants who do not pander to the people’s understandable wish to be safe from crime ... in the United States, prosecutors are not only elected ... but the job is a stepping stone to a higher office as evidenced by the fact that nearly every congressman or senator who ever practiced law once served as a federal or state prosecutor. Winning becomes more important than doing justice.”

— Three Felonies a Day, p. xxv

It is also an important fact that prosecutors routinely move on to political appointments as judges. Judge Joseph Laplante, who declined to hear any evidence or testimony in my federal habeas corpus appeal, had a career as a federal prosecutor spanning twenty years before his appointment to the federal bench. Judge Laplante had been prosecutor in the NH Attorney General’s office at the time of my trial and first State appeal, and likely knew of Detective McLaughlin presence on the secret list of dishonest police.

Judge Arthur Brennan, who presided over my 1994 trial, was personal legal counsel to then-Governor Judd Gregg (1989-1992) when he received a political appointment to a judgeship just months before my trial. Judge Larry Smukler, who declined to hear my State habeas corpus appeal, also declined to provide any biographical information about his career trajectory for the official New Hampshire Law Directory.

The Acknowledgements section of Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day is a virtual Who’s Who of many of the advocates for justice who have taken up my case. The names there include Dorothy Rabinowitz whose writings in The Wall Street Journal reopened my story in the important court of public awareness.

Also included there is Bob Chatelle, founder and president of the National Center for Reason and Justice which continues to feature my story and its appellate case files. Mr. Chatelle also hosts the Friends of Justice blog which links to many of my posts and has featured posts about my experience of justice.

Harvey Silverglate’s “Freedom Watch”

Mr. Silverglate, being a Massachusetts attorney, is not able to represent me in New Hampshire, but he generously sends me each installment in his series of articles called “Freedom Watch” published by WGBH News. I am most grateful for these informative glimpses into the inner function, and too often DYSfunction, of the criminal justice system. Mr. Silverglate has also long been a reader and supporter of Beyond These Stone Walls.

A recent article he sent was “When the Criminal Justice System Can’t Admit a Mistake: The James Rodwell Case.” He refers to this murder conviction as “a case that will not go away” because “too many people remain disturbed by the outcome.” Harvey Silverglate is one of them because …

[The] instinct that drives people to persevere when the system misfires is countered by the system’s self-protective reflex that makes it difficult to get judges to take a second, third or fourth look into a case, even when new and powerful evidence of a severe miscarriage of justice surfaces.”

This self-protective reflex, Mr. Silverglate says, has long roiled the justice system, producing “considerable disagreement between the two camps of judges — those who view finality as the ultimate goal, and others who deem justice to be paramount.” The central issue in the James Rodwell case, says Silverglate, is whether Mr. Rodwell actually committed the murder for which he has constantly maintained his innocence throughout 36 years in prison.

The sole evidence against him was the testimony of “two inmate thugs” who were treated favorably by prosecutors and police in exchange for their testimony. One of them claimed that Rodwell confessed to the murder while they occupied neighboring cells in a county jail where they were held pre-trial. Further, the district attorney’s office had since “lost” the entire file of its prosecution of this case.

Mr. Silverglate went on to describe the “remarkable display of clairvoyance” in a Superior Court judge who denied Rodwell’s latest appeal. The judge stated that “it is highly unlikely” that the ‘lost’ files contain evidence of prosecution deals afforded to inmate witnesses in exchange for their testimony.

This judicial clairvoyance struck a familiar note. When my own habeas corpus appeal came up against a wall of finality, Judge Joseph Laplante offered some clairvoyance of his own. While declining to hear from witnesses, including my accuser’s former wife, Judge Laplante attributed a motive for her to lie today about her ex-husband’s perjury: Thomas Grover was charged with felony domestic assault for punching her and breaking her nose before my trial — a charge conveniently dropped on the day my trial ended in a conviction.

Her bravely coming forward with the truth today was explained away by Judge Laplante who asserted that my defense could have called her as a witness at my 1994 trial, and could have tried to elicit the truth then. This assertion completely overlooks the fact that she may have been terrified of the man who had just broken her nose for questioning his truthfulness then. It is fascinating how all the credence afforded to victims of abuse and domestic violence is set aside when their testimony might right a judicial wrong.

Mr. Silverglate’s “Freedom Watch” article went on to describe some of the “far too many infamous cases where the indications are strong that justice misfired, but where the systemic preference for finality and the resistance to the confession of judicial error are strong.” One of these cases he cited is that against the Amirault family and the “witch trial” prosecution of them in the notorious Fells Acres Day Care Center case. 

This story and others convey powerfully both the perversion of finality prevailing over justice and the perversion of justice when politics preside over a courtroom. In their book, Actual Innocence (New American Library, 2003) Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld describe how the doctrine of “finality” is an obstacle to justice:

“Only the criminal justice system exempts itself from self-examination. Wrongful convictions are not seen as catastrophes, but as topics to be avoided... Finality is a doctrine that can be explained in two words when it comes to innocence tests: willful ignorance... The Innocence Project and other advocates have spent hundreds of hours just arguing against ‘finality’ doctrines that are used to block inquiries that no fair person would resist.”

— Actual Innocence, p. 320

For Harvey Silverglate, Advocate for Justice, “The key question is whether judges, clothespins firmly attached to noses, will continue to pretend that justice was done.” None of the rest of us are given clothespins.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and please return here next week for the “epic of all epic scandals.” You may also be interested to see some new evidence added to our Important Documents in the Fr Gordon MacRae Case. It is the evidence that appellate judges have declined to hear.

Affidavit of Former FBI Special Agent James Abbott

Statement of Steven Wollschlager

Statement of Debra Collett

Statement of Leo Demers

The United Nations High Commissioner of Hypocrisy

In 2014 a United Nations Commission accused the Vatican under Benedict XVI of a past sex abuse cover-up. Then the U.N. was exposed for a present sex abuse cover-up.

July 12, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I sometimes come across an older post I have written about events in the news, and am struck by how much what I wrote ends up coming true. I just re-read a post I wrote on July 7, 2010. I read it anew with far more invested in the topic today than when I originally wrote it. That post is “The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe.”

It raised an important point about an issue that has simmered in the background of this blog since its inception in 2009. That issue is the Catholic clergy sex abuse story, and how much the story has itself been abused in the news media to further certain agendas. On Easter Sunday 2010, for example, The Boston Globe hyped this story about a popular Massachusetts senior priest, Father Dominic Menna, who under the terms of the U.S. Bishops’ “Dallas Charter,” was removed from ministry due to a claim of sexual abuse.

In reporting the story, the Globe neglected to mention that the uncorroborated single claim that destroyed this priest’s life was alleged to have occurred over a half century ago in 1971. And it was no accident that the story was reserved for the Globe’s Easter Sunday edition.

What the Globe omitted from the Easter Sunday 2010 story was the fact that the adult bringing that claim — a man in his late fifties — stood to gain a substantial financial settlement just for making the claim while proving nothing.

The contingency lawyers and their enablers in the media are counting on you to have no frame of reference to put any of the claims of priestly abuse into context. I do have a frame of reference, and I can tell you that the distortion created by lawyers and the news media is deeply unjust — not only to Catholics and their priests, but to millions of adult victims of abuse whose suffering has been trivialized and cheapened by the distortion that only victims of Catholic priests are worth hearing and compensating.

Since I wrote the above post, The Boston Globe was sold by its parent company, The New York Times, for less than ten cents on the dollar, compared to what the Times paid to purchase it. Some like to think that in the end the Globe pretty much reaped what it had sown at the expense of truth and justice.

The eventual result of the symphony created by contingency lawyers and biased news media was an arena in which the Church would become dislodged as a global source of moral truth. I wrote of some of the fallout for other innocent victims in my post, “Benedict Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.”

The U.N. Assault on the Catholic Church

In 2014, an explosive 16-page report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner on the Rights of the Child indicted and convicted the Catholic Church without investigation, without evidence, without a formal defense, and without any trial of the facts. I know the feeling!

This public shaming of the Holy See came as a result of the emergence into public view of hundreds of claims of sexual abuse by priests dating back thirty, forty, fifty years or more. These were claims often brought forward by contingency lawyers who — once the mass settlement process had been established as status quo — flooded Church institutions with demands for “out-of-court” settlements with no effort at corroboration. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said N.H. contingency lawyer, Peter Hutchins when handed a $5.2 million check from the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire.

The various bishops and dioceses caved in to these demands, and then a hapless U.N. committee took that to be proof enough that the claims were all true. In a courageous article in First Things, “Rolling Stone, Alan Dershowitz, and Catholic Priests” (May 21, 2015) Father Thomas Guarino described the cost of this abandonment of rights for the priests accused when bishops got the monkey off their backs by throwing money at it:

“This Episcopal peace comes at a heavy price…. The problem is that, in many cases, no contrary evidence can come forward because an accusation is decades old. What convincing evidence could possibly be adduced to clear a man’s name? Even if a charge could be true, is lifetime suspension a proportionate penalty for a mere possibility? Should bishops be held hostage by forces dividing them from their own priests?”

— Fr Thomas Guarino, First Things

The United Nations had no such interest in basic civil rights like the presumption of innocence. Claudia Rosett, who led the Investigative Reporting Project for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, also reacted to the U.N. Commission report on the Vatican with a similarly titled column in The Wall Street Journal (“The U.N. Assault on the Catholic Church,” WSJ, February 10, 2014). Ms. Rosett described the report:

“A Report on the Holy See — released by a U.N. Committee last week to much media fanfare — alleged that tens of thousands of children have been abused by Catholic clerics and that the Vatican has helped cover it up.”

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, described that U.N. report as “one of the most ambitious power grab efforts ever undertaken by a U.N. committee.” The report was, of course, a lie, simply repeating a media mantra. But in the process of describing this in The Wall Street Journal, Claudia Rosett exposed another big lie, one belonging to the United Nations itself.

Now Hiring: A U.N. High Commissioner of Hypocrisy

Between 2007 and 2013, United Nations peacekeeper forces have been repeatedly implicated in the sexual abuse of children they were tasked to protect, and the U.N. has now been implicated in a cover-up of that fact. But the most disturbing part of this story is the extent to which it has been ignored — another form of cover-up — by the American news media. In fact, Ms. Rosett’s above column in the WSJ was likely the first hint of the scandal at the U.N. that appeared in mainstream U.S. news.

Since then, other media outlets have taken this up, but few of them in the United States. Sandra Laville, in The Guardian (U.K.) covered a report leaked to her newspaper alleging that the U.N.’s own investigation revealed “the rape and sodomy of starving and homeless boys” by French U.N. peacekeeper forces operating in the Central African Republic.

As sickening as that charge is, it gets much worse. French president Francois Hollande promised that France would prosecute those soldiers. The story came to light only because of a whistleblower. According to Matheiu Delahouse in the French paper, Le Nouvel Observateur, the U.N. marked its report on this matter “secret” and filed it away.

This is a story worth telling. The French government was not even informed of the claims against its soldiers until a man named Anders Kompass, a Swedish citizen working for the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees, “broke protocol and gave a copy of the report to the French government,” according to The Week:

“Naturally, the French investigators asked if they could speak to the U.N. investigator who wrote the report, but the U.N…refused to allow that. Meanwhile, Kompass, the whistleblower, has been punished and may lose his job. Saying he leaked a confidential document, the self-interested bureaucrats at the U.N. have suspended this 30-year veteran of humanitarian work for intervening on behalf of children.”

— The Week, “United Nations: Riding sexual abuse by peacekeepers,” May 15, 2015

Rosa Freedman, writing at TheConversation.com from Australia, charged that the U.N. has “a long and sordid history of covering up sexual abuse by peacekeepers.” Simon Allison, writing from South Africa for The Daily Maverick observed about the U.N., “Who can trust an institution that covers up the sexual abuse of minors?”

The very fact that such a question is now asked of the United Nations itself after it dragged the Catholic Church through a round of public mudslinging is symptomatic of an institution in crisis. The situation is more hypocritical than it appears.

I have also written of the hubris and hypocrisy of the U.N.’s finger pointing on this issue. I have described evidence that even while the U.N. was pointing fingers at the Vatican for decades-old and unproven claims of abuse, the U.N. was itself being sued. In 2014, the United Nations employed any and every legal means to fight off a lawsuit from the beleaguered people of Haiti after its unscreened peacekeeper forces caused the deaths of innumerable children by bringing a cholera outbreak to their earthquake stricken country. One of its defenses was to blame the people of Haiti for the cholera, a plague that killed hundreds of Haitian children.

The saddest part of this story is that the Holy See sent emissaries to the U.N. Commission on the Rights of the Child to assure the U.N. that many hundreds of priests have been cast out after being accused in these decades-old claims of abuse. In “The U.N. Assault on the Catholic Church,” (WSJ, February 10, 2014), Claudia Rosett proposed a more fitting response from the Church to the U.N.:

“Pope Francis might want to consider that it is precisely to avoid gross intrusion by U.N. ‘experts’ that the United States signed, but never ratified, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This treaty has less to do with children than with political power plays, and a fitting reform of the Vatican would be to walk away from it.”

Would that such advice was followed before hundreds of accused priests were thrown under the bus and out of the priesthood. Would that such advice was followed before the extent of United Nations hypocrisy was bared for all to see. Is reform of the U.N. on the horizon? The evidence does not indicate that it is. The United Nations now needs a High Commissioner of Hypocrisy.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: You would serve the cause of justice and truth by sharing this post. You may also like these related posts:

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam

Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition

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

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Keene New Hampshire sex crimes Detective James McLaughlin developed claims against a Catholic priest while suppressing exculpatory evidence and coercing witnesses.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald is a response to Fr. Gordon MacRae’s recent, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire Laurie List Bombshell.”

January 26, 2022 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Last week, Fr. Gordon MacRae wrote here about the manipulation of facts and witnesses in his 1994 trial on charges brought forward by former Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin. This manipulation included allegations that he coerced and threatened a witness, Debra Collett, to alter her first-hand testimony because it did not agree with his bias. Another witness, a former accuser of Father MacRae who recanted, alleged that McLaughlin presented him with a proffered bribe to concoct a false claim against MacRae and conspired to attempt perjured testimony before a grand jury.

These are very serious allegations. They were uncovered years after the trial by former FBI Special Agent James Abbott who conducted a three year investigation of this case. Mr. Abbott obtained signed statements from these witnesses and others that became part of a habeas corpus petition seeking to free Father MacRae from an unjust imprisonment.

As MacRae’s post linked above points out, New Hampshire judges at both state and federal levels overlooked these allegations, and declined to allow an evidentiary hearing to permit these witnesses to testify under oath. From a political standpoint, this may be business as usual in New Hampshire. From a justice standpoint, it is most disturbing.

At the start of 2022, advocates for Father MacRae learned that former Detective James McLaughlin appears on a newly published list of police officers with professional misconduct or credibility issues previously held in secret personnel files. The list had been held in secret for years by the NH Attorney General, but a recent legal decision required its public release. Formally called the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule,” the list is also known as the “Laurie List” for the NH Supreme Court case that initiated it.

It came as no surprise to discover Detective McLaughlin on this list for a 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records.” That was nine years before MacRae’s trial. Over fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brady v. Maryland that state and federal prosecutors are required under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution to reveal to defendants and legal counsel all exculpatory evidence uncovered in the investigation of a case.

The failure of prosecutors to reveal the “falsification of records” charge against Detective McLaughlin was a violation of what is known as the “Brady Rule” that can and should overturn a conviction. As a minimum, it constitutes new evidence that can reopen a case for judicial review of the entire case.

Advocates first learned of this Brady violation from an article published at InDepthNH.org by Damien Fisher entitled, “AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release.” The article, though largely accurate, contained some misinformation. It described MacRae as a “former” Catholic priest which is not accurate. It also cited that MacRae “claimed that McLaughlin offered to pay cash to one of his accusers.” That claim was not made by MacRae, but by the accuser himself who recanted in a signed statement obtained by former FBI Agent James Abbott.

Politics and Prosecution

The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, which publishes InDepthNH.org, is continuing its lawsuit seeking full and unredacted disclosure of the “Laurie List” in its entirety. A more recent article by Damien Fisher, “Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment” (January 11, 2022) detailed a clear case of entrapment by McLaughlin. The article describes the original “Laurie List” charge of “Falsification of Records” by McLaughlin as “Falsification of Evidence.”

Noted Boston lawyers Harvey Silverglate and Alan Dershowitz are long-time associates in the cause of preservation of our civil rights and civil liberties. Mr. Dershowitz wrote the Forward for Silverglate’s acclaimed 2009 book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. The following is an excerpt:

“Our system of investigation and prosecution is unique in the world. We [in America] have politicized the role of prosecutor, not only at the federal level but in all of our states and counties as well. Nowhere else are prosecutors (or judges) elected. Indeed, it is unthinkable in most parts of the world to have prosecutors run for office, make campaign promises and solicit contributions. In the United States, prosecutors are not only elected but the job is a stepping stone to higher office as evidenced by the fact that nearly every congressman or senator who ever practiced law once served as a prosecutor. Winning becomes more important than doing justice.” (p. xxv)

There were two prosecutors at Father Gordon MacRae’s 1994 trial. One inexplicably took his own life several years later after the first articles challenging this case appeared in The Wall Street Journal and were published along with the items in our Documents page at a site that preceded MacRae’s blog. The lead prosecutor was Bruce Elliot Reynolds. At the time of the high profile trial, he used its notoriety to campaign for another Assistant County Attorney in his office who was running to unseat the incumbent. In New Hampshire, a County Attorney is equivalent to a District Attorney in other states.

There was a lot that went on behind the scenes of this trial. The lead prosecutor was reined in by the judge for sensational media statements about the trial which could (and did) taint the jury pool. The trial drew lots of local news coverage. As it got under way, Mr. Reynolds was chastised by Judge Arthur Brennan for wearing his campaign button before news cameras.

On the day after the trial, for reasons unknown, Reynolds was fired by the winner of the election, the incumbent against whom he was campaigning. Sometime later, Reynolds decided to run for County Attorney himself. His campaign cited his “vigorous” prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae as his most significant “tough on crime” career achievement. Mr. Reynolds was then exposed for some sort of tax matter, dropped out of the race, and left the state. He relocated to the State of Wisconsin.

Prior to the trial, Reynolds sent a letter to MacRae’s defense counsel which laid out terms for a strikingly lenient plea deal for a sentence of one to three years in prison if MacRae would simply plead guilty. He refused this offer because he is not guilty. He refused a similar offer in the middle of trial when the offer was reduced to one-to-two years. The prosecutor asked what it would take to get MacRae to take the deal. His lawyer’s answer: “The dismissal of charges because he is innocent.”

It seemed clear throughout pretrial motion hearings and the trial itself that the real prosecution of this case was carried out by Detective James McLaughlin, the sole sex crimes detective among the 25 or so officers in the Keene, NH Police Department. An account of how Detective McLaughlin investigated this matter is laid out in “Wrongful Convictions: the Other Police Misconduct.”

A Conspiracy of Fraud

This trial was a classic example of why the blending of politics and the justice system often defeats justice. The trial was not about arriving at the truth. It was all about winning, at any cost, because political aspirations and careers were at stake. In no other arena but the political could a prosecution accept without question testimony from a grown man who claimed that he was sexually assaulted five times by a Catholic priest a dozen years earlier at age 15, but returned to be assaulted again and again for a total of five times because he repressed all memory of the vicious assaults from week to week.

Only political blindness could deny and obfuscate the fact that a $200,000 settlement from a Catholic diocese is a possible enticement for perjury and fraud. As Alan Dershowitz observed above, “Winning becomes more important than doing justice.” Such an arena requires the work of an unethical crusader to mold and shape a case toward that end. In Detective James McLaughlin, the State had just such a crusader.

At the “Documents” section on this site is a three-part case history which was the result of substantial research. It includes a most telling document entitled, “United States District Court: Gordon J. MacRae v. James F. McLaughlin, et al.” It requires a little background. Prior to the 1994 MacRae trial, the suppression of evidence and one-sided media coverage was so great that Father MacRae felt his only recourse was to file a lawsuit of his own. It lays out the bold but simple truth of this matter. No one refuted even one of its many claims.

The lawsuit was upheld and survived several attempts to have it thrown out, but in the end it had to be dismissed without prejudice — meaning without a judicial ruling — when MacRae was convicted at trial. He could only bring the lawsuit again if the underlying convictions were resolved. This document lays out perhaps the most chilling factual abuse of police power in this or virtually any other case. It is well worth a review.

Prior to this trial MacRae voluntarily took, and conclusively passed, two polygraph examinations with a noted expert. Some of Detective McLaughlin police reports made allusions to the possible creation of child pornography by MacRae. At the time of his sentencing, Judge Arthur Brennan cited this, claiming that “This Court has heard clear and compelling evidence that you created pornography of your victims.” This never surfaced at all during the trial, but the ugly accusation at sentencing was later used for a purely evil endeavor. It was used by SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, to bolster a crimes against humanity charge targetting Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Mercifully the effort failed. Eleven years later in 2005 Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal questioned Detective McLaughlin about the nature and substance of that evidence. “There was never any evidence of child pornography,” he admitted. In this entire matter, that was the only time McLaughlin told the truth.

During the trial, two court observers reported spotting a woman in the gallery giving hand signals to Thomas Grover to begin crying during his testimony. It came after he testified that he was unaware of any plan to sue the Catholic Church. He was asked by MacRae’s counsel to reveal to whom he went first with his accusations: the police or a lawyer. At this point, Ms. Pauline Goupil was observed from the gallery signalling Grover to cry. He was riveted upon her for his entire testimony. At that point she was seen placing her fingers below her eye and then down her cheek in a pantomime of crying. In response, 27-year-old Grover wept loudly and at length. The two witnesses who observed it reported it to the defense counsel who then approached the bench. Judge Brennan cleared the jury from the court and called Ms. Goupil to the stand. She identified herself as a therapist retained by Thomas Grover at the behest of his attorney. All treatment records of Mr. Grover were to be reviewed by the defense pretrial, but neither Pauline Goupil’s records nor the fact of her treatment of Grover were revealed.

Hard evidence surfaced pretrial that Detective McLaughlin conducted some of his one-sided investigation, not from his Keene police office, but from 60 miles away in the law office of Robert Upton, the personal injury lawyer who brought a lawsuit on behalf of Thomas Grover and obtained a $200,000 settlement from the Diocese of Manchester. Family members of Grover revealed years later that Grover was coached to “act crazy” before the jury, to appear vulnerable, and to commit perjury in regard to some of his testimony. When asked who did this coaching, their answer was Pauline Goupil and Detective McLaughlin. These family members, the former wife and stepson of Thomas Grover, were also barred from giving testimony under oath. The two people who observed Pauline Goupil’s courtroom witness tampering were also barred from testifying.

A public debt is owed to the NH Center for Public Interest Journalism which publishes InDepthNH.org. The Center continues an open lawsuit contending that the new law that only partially released the “Laurie List” does not protect the public right to know its extent.

In a 2003 Concord Monitor article — now apparently removed from the Internet — fellow Keene, NH officer Sgt. Hal Brown defended McLaughlin’s shady tactics and actions:

“It’s our job to ferret the criminal element out of society.”

I believe Father MacRae would today agree with me that those are very scary words!

Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post on your social media.

You may also be interested in these related articles:

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest

A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph LaPlante’s Court

Several years after sentencing Father Gordon MacRae to life in prison, Judge Arthur Brennan was arrested in Washington, DC in 2011 during a protest in which he tried to occupy the US Capitol Building.