“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Kamala Harris, Knights of Columbus and Anti-Catholicism
Absent probing and honest media interviews, no one knows whether Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris still stands by her anti-Catholic rhetoric of 2020.
Absent probing and honest media interviews, no one knows whether Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris still stands by her anti-Catholic rhetoric of 2020.
August 28, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
When I was 18 years old and a newly returned Catholic in 1971, I was invited by my friend, Father Anthony Nuccio, to membership in the Knights of Columbus where Father Tony served as chaplain. Along with the Civil Rights movement, the Knights were largely responsible for fostering in me a sense of Catholic community, service, and a vocation to priesthood. I was, and remain, a member of Valladolid Council #70 on the North Shore of Massachussetts. At the time I entered religious life and seminary in 1974, the Knights of Columbus bestowed on me an honorary lifetime membership. Time and distance diminished my active presence somewhat, but today I consider the Knights of Columbus to be a powerful influence on my life and vocation.
For those unfamiliar, the Knights of Columbus is an international fraternal organization of more than 2 million Roman Catholic laymen. The organization was founded in 1882 by Father Michael J. McGivney to promote ideals of charity, community, fraternity, and patriotism among first and second generation Catholic immigrants. Father McGivney’s cause for canonization was opened in 1997. Pope Benedict XVI declared him Venerable in 2008 and Pope Francis beatified him on May 31, 2020.
More than 10,000 local councils of the Knights of Columbus are presently active throughout the United States, Canada, the Philippines and the Caribbean where the Knights conduct and sponsor volunteer programs for Roman Catholics in service to the communities in which they live. The organization also conducts extensive Catholic education and scholarship programs, promotes Catholic identity, and assists in the support of seminarians and Catholic schools. Our friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri cites Knights of Columbus-sponsored free correspondence courses in Catholic and Biblical Studies as pivotal factors in his 2010 Divine Mercy Catholic conversion.
So, as you can imagine, Pornchai and I both reacted with umbrage to the misinformed and slanderous remarks of Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians while interviewing a judicial nominee in 2020 who happened to be a faithful Catholic and a member of the Knights of Columbus. There are over 73 million Catholics in the United States. That is 73 million potential votes that Ms. Harris does not deserve unless she recants or explains her views on Catholicism and those who practice it.
For the first time in my adult life, I am afraid for America. And not only for America. I fear for all of Western Culture as well. I feel little beyond dismal foreboding for the slide toward democratic socialism into which our democracy is in rapid descent. We cannot escape the truth of it. What was, in 2020, considered the “radical Left” in politics is now merely the Left. There is no irony or subtlety at all in what I am about to write. Our only hope is to halt this course and reclaim it.
This may seem a peculiar point of view from someone for whom democracy and its assurance of justice remains a dismal failure. The imprisoned place from where I write enjoys no distractions of the world in which you read these pages. I cannot escape into Netflix or some local bar to medicate my anxiety. I cannot escape at all. Just using that word in a sentence is risky.
My view of the outside world is limited to raw and sometimes hopeless coverage presented in the 24-hour news cycles. There is no place else to go. You may have heard similar words back in 2020 from Maximo Alvarez, a Cuban-American who fled to the United States forty-four years ago. He fled socialist Cuba for America because his father convinced him that there was no place else to go.
I may be the only person I know who sat through news coverage of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this year. I did so for the same reason that Maximo Alvarez articulated with such courage and clarity at the RNC in 2020 — because we are both afraid for America. We both know that there is no place else to go. I have not been so afraid for my country and culture since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when I was nine years old at the brink of nuclear war. Those of a certain age may remember the drills as grade school children across America were told to hide under their classroom desks with all the shades drawn. The anxiety and fear of a possible nuclear attack from the Cuban Missile Crisis left an impact on the psyche of every child.
When Russia embraced socialism following a cultural revolution, it became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It malignantly spread its tentacles in a quest for global dominance. That included the establishment of a socialist state in Cuba followed in 1962 by the construction of a battery of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. For anyone who listened to Maximo Alvarez at the RNC in 2020, his revulsion and fear of the growing socialism in America was gripping.
Imagine how he felt when Senator Bernie Sanders referred to Fidel Castro as a humanitarian. Imagine the chill in his spine when Senator Tim Scott warned of the forces in America seeking an American cultural revolution and the establishment of the United Socialist States of America. Senator Scott was not referring to anarchists on the margins of American culture. He was referring to the presidential and vice presidential nominees on the Democratic ballot at that time. Now, history repeats.
Are Faithful Catholics a Threat to Democracy?
Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights heads this nation’s largest advocacy group in defense of Religious Liberty. His work was the subject of our post, “Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age.” Most recently, Dr. Donohue and the Catholic League have demanded from the U.S. Department of Justice an investigation and explanation for recent documents launched by the FBI to investigate Traditioned-minded Catholics who are merely attempting to exercise their Faith.
Believe it or not, I am not writing a political post. As a lifelong Democrat, now an Independent, I do not oppose any political party. But my conscience requires me to oppose an ideology that is not only a threat to democracy, but a threat to Religious Freedom and my fundamental right to practice and adhere to my Faith.
In late 2018, as then-Senator Kamala Harris was preparing a presidential run, she sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee where she screened federal judicial nominees put forward by then-President Donald Trump. Senator Harris asked a nominee about his Catholic faith, noting that he had been a member of the Knights of Columbus for over two decades. Her questions alluded to the K of C being some sort of politically suspect group. She demanded to know if his membership in such an “all male anti-choice organization” would cloud his judicial decisions. She referred to the Knights as an “extremist” group.
“Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?,” Senator Harris asked. The judicial nominee, Brian Buescher, was blindsided. It only got worse. Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii picked up on the line of questioning. “Do you intend to end your membership in this organization to avoid any appearance of bias?” The appearance of bias was already front and center, but it wasn’t on the part of the judicial nominee who was eventually confirmed. On January 5, 2019, I wrote this response to the story posted at The Wall Street Journal:
“The big question here is not what judicial nominee Brian Buescher believes, but whether Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono believe in anything at all that is worthy of belief. And the bigger question is whether such overt anti-Catholic suspicions render them unfit for public office. At best, they both need a refresher course in remedial Constitutional law. Their disregard for the Constitutional provision against any religious test for judicial confirmation is a serious flaw in their readiness to represent their constituents…”
What made this biased grilling of a Catholic nominee by Kamala Harris far more reprehensible was its déjà vu factor. Just six months earlier, the Judiciary Chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein, became the subject of public ridicule for openly applying the same unconstitutional religious test to President Trump’s nominee, Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett. Looking over her work as a law professor at a Catholic university, Senator Feinstein referred to her faith as a “cult” and said, “the dogma speaks loudly in you.” There was hell to pay.
But not so when Senators Harris and Hirona repeated the tactic just six months later. With the exception of Bill Donohue’s vigilant voice at the Catholic League, little was said to call attention to the newest anti-Catholic bias of Kamala Harris. When this bias was unmasked, Kamala Harris had defenders who argued that she could not be anti-Catholic because she was teamed up with Joe Biden “who carries a rosary everyplace he goes.” True. He carried it while promoting abortion without restrictions at every stage of development. He carried it while withdrawing his forty years of support for the Hyde Amendment that restricted taxpayer funds for the coverage of abortions.
He carried it when he vowed from his campaign headquarters to roll back religious exemptions in contraception coverage extended by the Supreme Court to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Mr. Biden responded to the Supreme Court decisions in favor of protecting Religious Liberty for the nuns and other conscientious objectors by restoring the mandate that both the nuns and the Supreme Court objected to. This would hit the Sisters with ruinous fines and a deeply felt conflict of conscience. The rosary in his pocket notwithstanding, Joe Biden’s threats to Religious Liberty were evidence of how much he was led and misled by the Left wing of his party, a position for which Kamala Harris has taken the reins and has now made it the mainstream of that party.
In just the six months between the anti-Catholic questioning of Notre Dame’s Amy Coney Barrett and that of judicial nominee Brian Buescher, a lot had changed. One distinctive change was the Senate Democrats’ assault on the character of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a devout Catholic.
Senator Kamala Harris reprised her role as a career prosecutor by grilling Brett Kavanaugh mercilessly on entirely uncorroborated rumors of drunkenness and sexual escapades in his high school years — rumors that not a single person could confirm.
It has also been lost in most of the news media coverage that before becoming the nominee for vice president on the Democratic ticket, Kamala Harris went on record to state that she also believes the sexual allegations against Joe Biden brought forward by Tara Reade in 2020. This is among the tough questions that most in our now-partisan news media will not ask.
Credits: Left, Addie Mena/Catholic News Agency; Right, Associated Press
Anesthesia for the Catholic Conscience
After publication of a controversial post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life,” a priest whom I have known for some years “unsubscribed” from this blog in 2020. His reasoning was that any criticism of Joe Biden on moral grounds amounted to a tacit endorsement of President Trump. I do not endorse President Trump. What I endorse — and so should we all — is the lawful election that put him in office in 2016. I am among the many Americans who resent the notion that this “Basket of Deplorables” who cast their votes were too ignorant to be entrusted with the finer points of democracy.
From the moment the election results were announced in November, 2016, a relentless campaign was launched to nullify this lawful election by discrediting the elected President through any means possible. Most shameful of all for democracy, much of the news media abandoned its mission to report honestly on that partisan cause. One result of that betrayal was evident at The New York Times when young, progressive reporters in the news room revolted and brought about the resignation of a respected editor because he allowed “the opposition” to write an op-ed. “The opposition” in that case was the highly regarded Republican Senator Josh Hawley.
When New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan praised President Trump’s emphasis on Religious Liberty in a FOX News interview, two liberal groups of Catholic nuns sent letters of protest to the Cardinal asking him to retract his remarks. They cited Mr. Trump’s positions on climate change and capital punishment as evidence that he cannot be considered “pro-life.” The National Catholic Reporter published an editorial using the same reasoning.
In the Catholic conscience, some real moral gymnastics are required to measure a candidate’s concept of the value of life solely by a position on the death penalty. It entirely overlooks the moral apocalypse that resulted in the execution of 73 million human lives terminated in the womb at every level of development right up to birth. The awakening of the Catholic conscience to this is evident in my post, “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life”
I am in sympathy with “Black Lives Matter” but there is much hypocrisy. African Americans constitute 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, but 30 percent of U.S. abortions. That is by design and not merely a quirk of sociology. Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger for the purpose of controlling the growth of the African American population. That fact is finally exposed in the public square. As monuments to historical figures are toppled across the land, no one has yet suggested that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi surrender their Margaret Sanger awards for their support of “reproductive rights.”
Whatever Kamala Harris believes about the morality of unlimited abortion on demand, she is falling lockstep in line with the platform of her party. In 2020, Kristin Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, reported that a third of Democrats considered themselves to be pro-life, but “top Democrats have gone out of their way to make it clear that we are no longer welcome in the party.” The DNC ignored the group’s request to testify before its platform committee. A major percentage of these pro-life Democrats are people of faith, Ms Day said, “but the much-hyped group, ‘Believers for Biden’ is a flop. It had only 26 followers on Facebook a week after being created” in 2020. One year later, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the platform stating, “The Declaration of Independence guarantees to every American the right to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” By single-handedly eliminating the most basic of all human rights, the right to life, Kamala Harris set the Democrat Party on a road to hedonism.
As Joe Biden vowed to bankrupt the Little Sisters of the Poor with never-ending legislation and litigation, Kamala Harris did the same during her tenure as California Attorney General. In 2014, the Catholic Daughters of Charity Health System had six hospitals that were operating at an annual loss that could not be sustained. Prime Healthcare made a bid to assume their $300 million liability for worker pensions, but the United Healthcare Workers’ union opposed the deal.
Kamala Harris attached dozens of previously unheard of conditions to the deal such as requiring the Catholic hospitals to provide 24-hour nursing, surgery, anesthesia, radiology and pharmaceutical services for five years. This crippled the deal.
Prime Health sued Kamala Harris for violating its due process rights. The Catholic Daughters executives said that Ms. Harris blocked the deal at the behest of the union with “financially crippling conditions.” The lawsuit alleged that in return the union pledged $25 million in political financial support for Ms. Harris. The lawsuit ended in 2017 when a federal judge ruled that as Attorney General, Ms. Harris had “qualified immunity” from lawsuits. It is ironic that in 2020, Kamala Harris introduced a resolution in the Senate to abolish qualified immunity for police officers while retaining it for herself.
What are American Catholics left with? Back before the election of 2020, vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris was more likely than any nominee in history to assume the Office of President of the United States at some future point due to the age of Joe Biden at that time. And yet she dropped out of the Democratic process with only a pitiful percentage of votes in the primaries. She has declared the 2 million members of the Knights of Columbus to be a subversive organization and has joined the new Democrat Party in its march toward socialism and its inevitable suppression of religious liberty.
But another voice, that of Representative Tulsi Gabbard, caught onto all this duplicity early on during the presidential debates of 2020. Before ending her own bid for the White House, Ms. Gabbard courageously unloaded her views on the suitability of Kamala Harris for the highest public office in the land. Kamala Harris dropped out of the primaries after receiving only two percent of the Democrats’ votes in Iowa in 2020. I’m giving the last word to Tulsi Gabbard:
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Editor’s note: Please share this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
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.”
The United Nations High Commissioner of Hypocrisy
In 2014, a U.N. 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.
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.”
Disney’s Disenchanted Kingdom Versus Parental Rights
A Catholic League documentary film exposes the radical Disney descent into woke politics and child indoctrination and a flagrant disregard for parental rights.
Courtesy: the Catholic League
A Catholic League documentary film exposes the radical Disney descent into woke politics and child indoctrination and a flagrant disregard for parental rights.
January 18, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Beyond These Stone Walls merited two citations in the “In the News” section of the December 2022 issue of Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Seeing this blog cited as a news source among venues like Catholic News Service, Catholic World Report, and Newsmax did little to bolster my New Year’s resolution to foster humility.
Also in that same issue of Catalyst, President Bill Donohue wrote about a documentary film produced by the Catholic League entitled, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom: How Disney is Losing its Way.” In a brief but important article, “Why We Did the Disney Movie,” Bill Donohue laid out a compelling case for its necessity:
“Over the years, beginning in the 1990s, Disney turned against its family-friendly image, making and distributing fare that sharply broke with its moorings. I know this because one of the first big victories I had was in 1995 when I confronted Disney senior officials, ordering them out of the headquarters of the New York Archdiocese where we were located at that time. The occasion was the movie, “Priest,” a diabolical film that featured totally dysfunctional priests, all of whose problems were a function of their priesthood.”
The Catholic-bashing Disney film was distributed by Miramax, a company owned by Harvey Weinstein, now in prison for a series of sexual offenses. Then, according to Dr. Donohue, “Disney/Miramax did one anti-Catholic film after another.”
In March of 2022, Disney released a statement condemning a Florida bill that barred teaching students about sexual and gender identity issues from kindergarten to grade three. Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law recognizing that parental rights are being disregarded when a media company takes on the parental role of sex education, especially when such content targets children ages five to eight. Who could possibly have objected to such a bill?
The Disney franchise did. At first its then-CEO, Bob Chapek, decided to steer clear of the controversy, but then he caved in under a barrage of pressure from Disney’s “woke” employees who dubbed Florida’s effort to protect parental rights as the “don’t say gay” bill. I wrote a multi-faceted post with a segment about this story that many also found shocking. Here are excerpts:
“Disney world has been in the news lately, but not for anything that contributes anything to the common good. In early 2022, following waves of parental anxiety over “woke” trends in education, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill restricting schools from teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten to the third grade. In a bizarre twist for a corporation counting on Florida for success, Disney CEO Bob Chapek launched a corporate protest of the law.
“Supporters of the law said it was aimed at asserting more parental control over content in the classroom, a trend that swept the nation after a former Governor of Virginia declared last year that parents should have no say in what is taught in schools. The loudest reaction from parents has been revealed at the voting polls. Some of the most liberal school board members in some of the most liberal Democrat-led cities across the nation have since been voted out of office.”
Disney in La La Land
If you think the Florida law squashes legitimate debate about public policy, it does nothing of the kind. It simply limits classroom indoctrination about sexual and gender identity issues from kindergarten to grade three. This should need no defense. The law also requires that curriculum on these topics in subsequent grades must be age-appropriate. Governor DeSantis defended the new law amid an onslaught of “woke” protests:
“You’ve seen a lot of sloganeering and fake narratives by leftist politicians, by activists, and by corporate media. We will continue to recognize that in the state of Florida, parents have a fundamental role in the education, healthcare and well-being of their children.”
I wrote in another post that the Disney franchise was not always on board with its current woke agenda. Walt Disney himself went to an opposite extreme. One of my favorite movies as a child was the Disney production of Old Yeller which left an entire generation of children and teens in tears around 1960. Disney star, Tommy Kirk played a frontier teen forced to euthanize his beloved dog. Tommy Kirk went on to play the starring role in another Disney box office blockbuster, The Shaggy Dog, and again in Swiss Family Robinson.
On sets, Walt Disney introduced Tommy as “our moneymaker.” Then, at age 21, Kirk was seen holding hands at poolside with another teen boy. Walt Disney personally had him escorted off the set and his career with Disney came to an end. In his 20s, Kirk tried to revive his career with a few unmemorable productions, and then he read the writing on the wall. After recovering from addiction, he ran a small business in obscurity for most of his life and died in his 70s in 2020.
Walt Disney did not necessarily harbor prejudice. He simply knew that the public face of Disney’s entertainment empire should not also be the face of controversial social issues. So how would Walt Disney respond today to the spectacle that unfolded earlier last year in Florida?
A half century after Tommy Kirk was expelled from Disney, a reader sent me a message in 2022 suggesting that I should watch a made-for-TV Disney Film called “Under Wraps 2.” I did so with reluctance. The plot was both simple and simple-minded. A group of three middle school students discovered a pair of Egyptian mummies in a museum, assisted in bringing them back to life, attended a party with them, and then the movie ended with the kids jubilantly in the front row at a same-sex wedding which had nothing to do with the rest of the ridiculous plot.
It was clearly meant for indoctrination, and its message was also clear. If Corporate Disney could not foster such indoctrination in schools, it would do so on television, the next largest arena where impressionable children gather, often without parental awareness. In Disney’s contemporary films, the kids are portrayed as the only people who know what is going on while adults — especially parents — are portrayed as disconnected and generally clueless.
Tolerance, respect for human rights, and justice for all people are desirable goals for every society, but there is a gaping chasm between such a noble effort and the sweeping woke demands for schools to teach and promote LGBTQ and gender identity issues as a natural, even preferable evolution in human development that contributes to the common good. The “common good” is the most abused and debatable part of this discussion. I once wrote a post on the special handling of presenting this subject as normative. It was an eye-opener for many entitled, “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.”
In its public opposition to a common sense law, Corporate Disney descended into La La Land and is out of touch with the currents of parental rights and responsibilities. Disney’s dive into the culture war should raise alarms for stockholders whose concerns for Disney’s bottom line might dwarf its woke agenda. It should also raise alarms for parents whose children are lured from parental influence by sexual indoctrination made enticing to children by mixing it with heavy doses of glitter and fun.
Courtesy: the Catholic League
Waking up the Woke
Disney Chief Executive Bob Chapek initiated a public dispute with Governor DeSantis over Florida's common sense measure. Mr. Chapek and Disney World were on the wrong side of public policy and parental rights in this. The Walt Disney franchise can only be harmed by this oblivious descent into suppressing parental rights. I predicted such a development in another post, “The ‘Woke’ Have Commenced Our Totalitarian Re-Education .”
Former long term Disney CEO Bob Iger, frustrated at the lack of response to the new Florida bill, tweeted, “If passed, this bill will put vulnerable young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.” Was Mr. Iger referring to LGBTQ kindergarten students? The absurdity of the statement was left dangling. According to an extended article on the Disney debacle in The Wall Street Journal (Disney Endgame Dec. 17-18, 2022) Mr. Iger had embraced Disney’s drift into progressive politics more than his successor. The tweet caused Mr. Chapek to change course and refute the Florida Bill.
The resultant public controversy took a toll on the Disney bottom line. By September 2021, the company had lost 45% of its stock value, but its corporate responsibility to shareholders became subordinate to what the WSJ described as “the company’s support of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender causes.”
In response to all this, Bill Donohue recruited the interest of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Together they sought a meeting with Disney CEO Bob Chapek who ignored them. In the Catholic League documentary, former Disney writers reveal how the modern Disney franchise sexualizes children including “a history of exposing its young actors ... to grooming with gay and transgender messaging.” Disney's latest animated film, “Strange World,” depicts “the first openly gay teen romance in a children's movie.”
Of interest, one of the global moneymakers in the Disney franchise is Disney Shanghai. With close friends in Shanghai, I have photographs of their family outing at this newest and sprawling Disney theme park. Disney is careful not to let the same woke value judgments invade Shanghai because the Chinese Communist Party would not tolerate it. As Bill Donohue points out, Disney will accommodate China while ignoring polls in the U.S. revealing that “seventy-five percent of American voters say that targeting underage minors in a transgender movement has gone too far.”
In recent developments, CEO Bob Chapek has been fired by the Disney Board of Directors while former CEO Bob Iger has returned for another stint as Disney CEO. Disney’s stock valuation had taken a major hit. A recent extended article in The Wall Street Journal explores these developments at Disney but hints that its returning CEO leans even further left than Chapek. This does not bode well for navigating the company out of the quagmire of one-sided progressive politics into which it has descended.
Check the Catholic League website for information on the release of “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” and a trailer. The documentary features prominent cultural and media commentators including Director Jason Meath, Dr. Bill Donohue, Tony Perkins, Mercedes Schlapp, Dr. Ben Carson, Miranda Devine, Brent Bozell, David Horowitz, and Washington Times Film Critic, Christian Toto.
I wonder what the late Tommy Kirk might think today about the Disney drift to the opposite extreme of LGBTQ concerns. One need not travel back more than a few decades to find a parade of young actors used, used up and discarded by Corporate Disney. Remember Bobby Driscoll? He found stardom as Jim Hawkins in the 1950s blockbuster Disney production of Treasure Island. Bobby died from drug addiction in his early thirties after spending much of his youth anonymously discarded on skid row.
“What father among you would hand his son a stone if he asks for a fish?” (Matthew 7:10). What parent among you would take a cue from Disney on the education and raising of your child?
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The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has released its 50-minute documentary film exposing “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom: How Disney Is Losing Its Way.” This film is a must-see for anyone concerned about the erosion of parental rights in the woke indoctrination of children. Watch the Catholic League documentary here.
Editor’s Note: The December 2022 issue of the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst also profiles and recommends a new book by Stephen Krason, a member of the Catholic League Board of advisors who teaches political science at Franciscan University. His book gathers a stellar group of scholars who address, Parental Rights in Peril published by Catholic University Press.
Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. You may also like these related posts from Fr. Gordon MacRae at Beyond These Stone Walls:
The “Woke” Have Commenced Our Totalitarian Re-Education
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix
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One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. The site has a real-time live feed of its Adoration Chapel with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. We invite you to spend some some time before the Lord in a place that holds great spiritual meaning for us.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Beyond These Stone Walls in Thailand by Pornchai Moontri
Brought to America as a child victim of human trafficking, Pornchai Moontri was deported to Thailand 36 years later. This is his progress in a life starting over.
Brought to America as a child victim of human trafficking, Pornchai Moontri was deported to Thailand 36 years later. This is his progress in a life starting over.
July 21, 2021
In the photo above, Pornchai Moontri, Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, and Pornchai's Thai language teacher, Mea Thim Chalathip, escape the heat after a day of recollection with the Bangkok Oblates of Mary Immaculate community.
Editor’s Note: This is Pornchai Moontri’s second post since his arrival in Thailand in February, 2021. His most recent was “Free at Last Thanks to God and You!” These are no longer “guest posts.” Beyond These Stone Walls is now Pornchai’s home away from home.
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To all my friends Beyond These Stone Walls, Sawasdee Kup! That is the traditional Thai greeting. I am writing to you from just a few kilometers north of the City of Bangkok, Thailand. In Thai, Bangkok is called Krung Thep meaning, “City of Angels.” (I’m not kidding! It was called that even before I got here!)
Father Gordon MacRae and I have been talking about another post from me. It is not easy for me to write because there is too much to say to fit in one post. I will send this to Father G first so he can fix it up a little. I am struggling right now between multiple confusing languages, but I will tell you more about that in a minute.
What someone wrote about Beyond These Stone Walls being sort of my “home away from home” makes me smile. It is a long time since I had a home. I told Father G once that the only place I remember feeling “at home” was in a prison cell with him for 15 years. A lot has happened since the day I said that. I left Concord, New Hampshire where I last saw Father G on September 8, 2020. The five months after that were spent in ICE detention while waiting for deportation. That was really awful and I will tell you more about it. In the five months since my arrival here, I have mostly just felt overwhelmed.
Father G wrote about the day I left in a very moving post, “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.” It tells the story of how, through my Godfather, the late Pierre Matthews, Padre Pio became one of our two patron saints. I will never forget the morning I left that Father G wrote about in that post. When I arrived in Thailand, I read in tears about the rest of Father Gordon’s first day without me.
I want to tell you about all the challenges I face now. Just like the local news, I will start with the weather. Thailand is south of the Tropic of Cancer and stretches down the Malay Peninsula almost to the Equator. After 36 years of my life a lot farther north on the far side of the world in Maine and New Hampshire, the tropical heat of Thailand is at the top of my list of things that take some getting used to.
On the day I am writing this in July it is 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and very humid. Converting to Celsius has not been easy. I am used to the other scale, so I never know what the temperature is. The choices are hot, very hot, and sizzling. The air conditioner where I live broke down a few weeks ago so I have been making do with a fan. While trying to write this, I shivered when I got my bill for a new air conditioner — 26,000 Thai baht — which thankfully turned out to be only $800. Whew!
Handling money has been another challenge. For 29 years in prison in America, I never even saw money. There is not much in the way of practical living skills that are taught to prisoners, most of whom end up with no idea of what things cost. In Thailand, that adjustment has been doubled. The Thai unit of money is the "baht," and the rate of exchange varies from week to week. Right now one U.S. dollar equals about 32 Thai baht. I was shocked once when dinner in a Thai restaurant cost 256 baht, but turned out to be only $8.00.
Technologically Challenged
Another big adjustment has been the metric system. As most of you know, I was taken from Thailand sort of traumatically at age eleven. A long and winding road brought me back at age 47 with only shadowy memories of Thailand and the people left behind here, and no memory at all of the metric system.
Father G once wrote about an episode of Family Guy in which Stuey went back to school as an adult. When the teacher handed out a math test, the students reached into their desks for calculators. But Stuey pulled out an Asian boy and poked him with his pencil saying, “Do Math. Do Math.” I am naturally good at math so whenever someone asked for help, Father G would poke me with a pencil saying, “Do math!” I was proud of the fact that I usually had the answers even before Father G could turn on his calculator.
But now the constant conversions are a way bigger math test. I walk around with calculations blazing through my mind to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and the English system to metric. This is second on my “big adjustment” list. There are no longer inches or feet or miles, no ounces or quarts or gallons, not even pounds or tons. I lost a lot of weight in my five months in ICE. I started off at 195 pounds. Now I weigh 80 kilograms. When I work out I used to bench press 360 pounds. Now I can only manage 165 kilos.
With help, I have been learning to drive here which is also a double adjustment. I never drove a car, of course, in the 29 years I was in a U.S. prison (15 of them with Father G). Learning to drive now means learning it in reverse of what I had known. Thailand drives on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side of the car. I have had a lot of help with this so far, and for that I am thankful.
But nothing is as big a challenge as technology. Father G used to joke that we will be like techno-cavemen when we leave prison. After 36 years away from my homeland and 29 years in prison, everything I do or touch is new to me. When I arrived, I had to spend 14 days in a Bangkok Holiday Inn, a period of Covid-19 quarantine required by the Thai government. Our friends here left me a really cool Samsung smart phone so I could communicate with Father G and others. I had never in my life used or even seen a smart phone.
Father G marveled at how fast I learned how to use the phone, but it was a matter of survival. I felt so alone and stranded that I spent my first night in Thailand in the hotel room finding and exploring Beyond These Stone Walls for the first time. I watched the two-hour Video Documentary Interview with Father G. It was wonderful and comforting to see and hear my friend and spiritual father again.
Father G is still behind those stone walls, and that makes me sad, but we talk for about a half hour every day by telephone. He calls me at 9:00 PM which is 8:00 AM the next morning for me. That also takes some getting used to. I am up before 6:00 AM each day which is 7:00 PM the night before for Father G. I spend the first two hours of each day working out. I have found this to be very important for my physical, mental and even spiritual well-being. So my first investment in Thailand was a weight set, mats and power bench. Father G helped me to purchase it. He calls each day right at the end of my workout.
Using the phone app on his GTL tablet, he calls me from the cell where we once both lived, and where he lives still. GTL allows internet-based calls from prison to Thailand at a cost of about 96 Thai baht for thirty minutes. That is about three U.S. dollars. It is not a big expense. Even after ten months since I left Concord, this is still an important part of my day and Father G’s.
I sometimes get impatient with myself, but Father G reminds me that I “just got here.” I feel as though I should be further along in learning Thai language, history and culture, the metric system, driving on the left side of the road, and not having to “report in” every time I do anything or go anywhere. The name, Thailand, means “Land of the Free,” but even that became part of my adjustment. I often have to remind myself that I am free. Few of the people around me understand this. The list of adjustments goes on and on but I guess I am the last to notice my progress.
The late Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, was a postulator for the cause of sainthood of St. Faustina. He interviewed Pornchai and Fr. Gordon in prison.
Suffering and Divine Providence
As most readers know, I became a Catholic in 2010 due to living with an extreme example of what that means. My journey to the Catholic faith was centered around Father G and Divine Mercy. I learned about Divine Mercy thanks to him and to my friendship with Father Michael Gaitley, Felix Carroll, and Eric Mahl. The Catholic League president, Dr. Bill Donohue, also had a hand in this.
Father Gaitley invited me to become a Marian Missionary of Divine Mercy. Felix Carroll drew me into the Association of Marian Helpers, and wrote about me in a chapter in his book, Loved, Lost, Found. Bill Donohue gave me honorary membership in the Catholic League, and also wrote about me several times. Father G and I joined St. Maximilian’s Militia of the Immaculata and Knights at the Foot of the Cross. It is a lot to take in, and all of it very much influenced my faith journey. Divine Providence was another matter. I never understood it until I found myself face to face with it.
Father G says it is hard to believe that I have been gone for ten months. I have actually been in Thailand for only five months. The other five were spent in ICE which he has written about. (See “ICE Finally Cracks! Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”) The five long months awaiting deportation in ICE detention were a terrible ordeal, but for me and Father G it turned into a story of Divine Providence. I did not understand that at all until Father G and I had a phone conversation about it. Here is what I learned.
When a person has been deprived of good things in life, like parents, family, safety, a home, acceptance, love, freedom, even at times food and shelter, then the bad things in life become normal. When I was handed over to ICE and became buried in another overcrowded prison with total strangers in Jenna, Louisiana, all I could think of was all the good things I once had. I began to feel that I lost them all. Trust was the first thing I lost.
Father G saw to it that I had numbers to call no matter where I was. It took time for him to find me and be able to speak to me. Thanks to Claire Dion in Maine, a way was devised for us to speak each day even for a few minutes. The promised ICE flight to Thailand was delayed again and again for weeks and then months. I began to despair because of the awful circumstances in which I was living. I could not have made it through this if not for Father G.
By the fifth month of my detention, my call to Father G became routine. I was bitterly thinking that the delays will never end and he would say to me the same thing every day: “The day will come when you will walk out of there to a new life.” At first I was clinging to that, and then I started to no longer believing it. Each day, we both prayed deeply for an end to this suffering. Father G challenged me to try to help others. I did try.
Over the last eleven years since my conversion, Father G and I worked hard to come up with a plan for my future survival once we knew that I would one day be sent back to Thailand. In my mind, it was all like a big black hole. All I knew was America, and all I really knew about America was its prisons. The promise of Heaven for someone who has only known Hell can feel empty and too far beyond reach. I blocked out any expectation of good things because of my past experiences of bitter disappointment.
Then one day, in my daily call from ICE, Father G dropped a bomb with great reluctance. He told me that our plan for housing and support that we had spent years building suddenly fell apart. The founder of Divine Mercy Thailand, the man who was to take me in and give me a home, fell critically ill and was hospitalized. I prayed daily for him, but he passed away. In my mind, this was a crushing blow.
Father G did not want any surprises so he told me all of this. He said he did not want me to hear of this from anyone else. For me, it seemed as though all hope had gone out of the world. Then Yela, our Bangkok friend from the Divine Mercy apostolate, told Father G in an email that Father John Hung Le from the Missionary Society of the Divine Word had been reading about us and offered his home to me. My strongest feeling was that I did not want to be a burden for anyone, but my choices were gone.
Father G said that when everything we hope for feels gone, the only task left is trust. Father John turned out to be a very good priest and a very great friend. He is also a carpenter so we have a lot in common. He has become a good friend to Father G as well.
Some of Father John’s community and friends rallied around me when I arrived. Mea Thim, a retired Thai language teacher, began to tutor me daily in Thai language studies and has been very patient with me. She is also teaching me to drive and to acclimate to Thailand. Not having even heard Thai spoken in 36 years, and having never learned to read or write Thai, my progress feels slow but others say I am improving right on track.
Thailand is now in the middle of another strict shutdown due to a new Covid variant outbreak from India. Father G just told me that the Wall Street Journal has reported that the Thai government has lost confidence in Sinovac, a vaccine from China and the only one available in Thailand. All gatherings have been prohibited and a stay-in-place order is enforced. My required national Thai ID has been delayed for months so I cannot yet work, open a bank account, obtain medical care or a vaccine, or even board a train. Father John and I help each other, and I am busier than ever.
Strangely — Divine Providence again — the Thai headquarters for Father John’s Order are in Nong Bua Lamphu Province, nine hours drive north near the very village I was taken from 36 years ago. We have traveled up there three times for Father John’s missionary work with Vietnamese refugees, seminarians and migrant workers. We stay at the house my mother began to build before her death in 2000. My Aunt and cousins are there and I have reunited with them. After 36 years, they are now my family again. I have two families now, at opposite ends of the Kingdom of Thailand that I now call home.
And Father G, the man who showed me the Path to God, is still with me every day. He has told me that if our prayers were answered, if I had not suffered those five months in ICE, if God had given in to our pleas for my deliverance, then all would now be different and none of what I have just described in this post would be my reality.
This, he says, is the work of Divine Providence and I am astonished by it. On the day I left Father G, I said to him, “Thank you for giving me a future.” I had no idea how promising it would be.
The odds against all of this coming together are mathematically astronomical. When I come face to face with God, I want to poke Him with my pencil and say, “Do Math! Do Math!”
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A Postscript to readers from Pornchai:
I want to express my very deep gratitude to all of those who have assisted me over these months of transition. Your gifts for food, shelter, and the expense of starting life over have moved me profoundly. Please accept my apology for being unable to write to each one of you personally. You know who you are, and so do I. I pray for you every day.
With love and gratitude, Pornchai Moontri
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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. The Wall Street Journal has been reporting about recent events in Thailand. A new variation of Covid is creating havoc for the country, its economy and especially the well-being of its people. If you wish to help our friends, please also visit our “Special Events” page.
And you may also like these important related posts:
Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri
After Mass at the OMI Center near Bangkok. (Pornchai Moontri and Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, are third and fourth from the right. On the far right is Pornchai’s Thai teacher Mea Thim Chalathip.)
A Few Bold Bishops in Defense of Religious Liberty
There are hopeful signs that some Catholic bishops are speaking boldly about the erosion of religious rights even while facing criticism for it from other bishops.
There are hopeful signs that some Catholic bishops are speaking boldly about the erosion of religious rights even while facing criticism for it from other bishops.
The Catho1ic World Report is a venerable old publication of Ignatius Press that is now only available as an online magazine. The publication recently posted through its Twitter account that Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s nominee for the post of Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services, is (or was) “a biological man who [now] identifies as a transgender woman.”
That mere statement of verifiable fact by a Catholic publication resulted in a charge of “hateful conduct” by Twitter and the suspension of its account. After the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights posted this story, I was one of many thousands who emailed Twitter in protest. My protest message charged that Twitter’s response poses a significant threat not only to religious liberty but to freedom of speech and freedom of the press as well, three of the fundamental rights defined in the First Amendment.
I have no delusion that my message to Twitter made a difference, but Twitter rescinded its suspension of CWR ’s account the next day. It nonetheless struck me after this affair that the tyranny of such suppression of rights and civil liberties is the result of two forces working in tandem with each other:
the noise of a few
and the silence of many.
The suspension of the Catholic World Report ’s Twitter account was the result of a single complaint by an LGBTQ activist. The reconsideration came as a result of a multitude of protests on the side of right. I am proud to have been one of them.
We live in a time in which the measure of our self-worth is not determined by our system of values or our moral fiber in living up to them for the greater good. As a culture, we have been lulled into a quest for social media “likes” and approval from those whose mission it is to discard and replace the truths we have long lived by. Any media source that does not uphold the sensitivities of identity politics and the progressive social agenda will find itself parked far outside the public square.
The Catholic World Report simply did what the news media is supposed to do. The news media has traditionally been dubbed, “The Fourth Estate,” its public role being a much needed checks and balance on government. CWR reported no falsehood, nor did it cast any aspersion on President Biden’s appointee to Health and Human Services. The Catholic publication simply pointed out that the nominee has a lifestyle that by implication may lend itself to bias against traditional moral beliefs and practices.
Then Twitter was allowed to do what the Chinese Communist Party does on a daily basis. It eliminated from public view information, regardless of its truth, that the progressive agenda does not want us lesser folks to see or hear. I hope I am not the only one who resents this. As a Catholic, as a writer — even as a condemned prisoner — I resent it with every fiber of my being.
Les Miserables
One of the most visited posts at Beyond These Stone Walls has had an effect that I never intended. It is “Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean.” My post has been visited by countless high school students around the world who have used it as a source of “CliffNotes” when assigned a book report on the novel. I am glad to have been some service, but the novel itself is soaring. So is its musical rendition that has appeared on Broadway and in theaters across the globe. Bear with me. There is a point here and I am getting to it.
My post about Les Miserables above tells the story of Bishop Bienvenue (which means “Welcome” in the novel’s original French). Bishop Bienvenue is one of literature’s most noble characters. He seeks out the poor and downtrodden, sees himself primarily as a servant, and has no interest in amassing political clout or Earthly power in any other form. His encounter with ex-convict Jean Valjean sets the latter on a course toward his own noble future. The two are unforgettable literary characters.
Victor Hugo wrote and published Les Miserables in 1862. In the decades after the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, France entered a period of anti-clericalism. Bishops and priests were widely regarded with disdain. When Victor Hugo’s son read the manuscript for Les Miserables, he pleaded with his father to change the character of Bishop Bienvenue to someone the French might more easily see as noble. It is one of the ironies of French literature that Victor Hugo’s son wanted Bishop Bienvenue recast as a lawyer.
But Hugo defended his choice. He argued that Bishop Bienvenue may not represent a Catholic bishop that France has in real life, but rather he represents the bishop that France wants to have. I find a sort of parallel in this time of our own cultural revolution. Many Catholics struggle to maintain and nurture an identity as Catholics on a moral course against a more vocal majority speeding toward identity politics and a culture of open disregard for the value of human life.
The United States has now elected the second Catholic president in its history. He has described himself as a devout Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket everyplace he goes. He has also also openly promoted unlimited and unrestricted access to abortion at any point in a pregnancy and has pledged to repeal the Hyde Amendment which for decades has spared taxpayers from being forced to violate their consciences by providing taxpayer funded abortions.
If such a situation existed in 1862, Victor Hugo’s Bishop Bienvenue would have as the least of his concerns the erosion of his social standing or political clout if he presented an apostate nominally Catholic leader with merciful but truthful fraternal correction. I described the problem that the current President brings to Catholics of conscience in a previous post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life."
The mainstream media has played down this conflict while playing up the President’s Catholic identity. So the media never revealed a statement published by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez at the time of the President’s inauguration. With inherent charity and true moral leadership, Archbishop Gomez commended this President for his thoughtful concern for the plight of immigrants (a concern that I share after some experience with Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Archbishop Gomez also spoke, and wrote, of this President’s unapologetic promotion of abortion, his threat against the Hyde Amendment — which he publicly supported until he ran for President — and his stated intent to codify into federal law the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade so that it cannot be readdressed by the current or any other future Court. These, according to Archbishop Gomez, are the preeminent Catholic issues of our time.
Accommodations in the Garden of Good and Evil
The Washington Post accused the Archbishop of “assailing” the President over abortion rights. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter described the statement as “churlish.” I had to look up “churlish” since I hardly ever use the word. It means “surly” or “mean spirited,” the absolute opposite of the Archbishop’s demeanor or intent. NCR ’s Winters also wrote that Archbishop Gomez “threw cold water on the most Catholic Inauguration in history.”
Archbishop Gomez went on to add in his statement his “deep concern for the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.” This latter concern is heightened by some of the nominees our devout Catholic President has put forth. Foremost among these is Xavier Becerra, current Attorney General of California. He is passionate about expanded access to abortion and embyonic stem cell research. Beccera has been awarded One-Hundred percent ratings on reproductive rights by Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
In “Becerra Is a Threat to Life and Liberty” Bill Donohue wrote in the February 2021 issue of Catalyst that “Becerra is one of the cultural warriors” threatening to haul the Little Sisters of the Poor back into court again if they do not comply with a mandate to provide insurance coverage for contraception. In a previous issue of Catalyst, Bill Donohue wrote of the current President, “It is okay for Catholics to bludgeon the Little Sisters of the Poor so long as they carry a rosary.”
Of all the responses to the courageous statement of Archbishop Jose Gomez, however, the one from Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich is the most troubling. As the elected President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Gomez carefully framed his statement in accord with Catholic teaching, inc1uding Catholic social teaching. Using his Twitter account, Cardinal Blase Cupich publicly rebuked the Archbishop describing his statement as “ill considered.” He suggested that the statement should have been vetted before the entire body of bishops for discussion and a vote. I know of no other Catholic bishop who spoke against the statement. I applaud Archbishop Gomez for his fidelity.
And he is not alone. In an equally courageous statement, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote forcefully against state and local government declarations that Catholic Mass is not an essential activity worthy of consideration.
Writing boldly for The Wall Street Journal, Archbishop Cordileone spoke truth to power in “California’s Unscientific Worship Ban.” The Governors of California and New York have been in lockstep with one another on this, a point I made recently in “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” Archbishop Cordileone described his long ordeal against civil authority at both the state and local level. He did not mince his words:
"Whether religious services are ‘essential’ isn’t a matter for government to decide ... In lifting California’s blanket ban on indoor worship (in a 6-3 decision), the high court rightly acknowledged the blatant unfairness of treating religious worship differently from secular activities such as shopping ... Such blatant disregard for the Constitution bodes ill for everyone. These next four years will be a time to coalesce around core ideals or continue to divide along ideological lines.”
Even as the pandemic lessened during the summer and many other activities opened up, the City of San Francisco doubled down on its bans for religious gatherings. All indoor worship was banned while even outdoor services were limited to no more than 12 participans. At the same time, the city government had nothing to say about street protests that were openly allowed to continue, and with some in the city’s government participating.
We who have faced this pandemic with a dismal sense of Les Miserables are empowered by the witness of Archbishops Gomez and Cordileone.
Bishop Bienvenue lives on.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and if you have not already done so, please subscribe. It’s free, and we will only invade your inbox once per week. You may also like the related posts featured in this one:
Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean
