“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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 7/10/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 7/10/24

Neither Donald Trump nor I Should Wear That Scarlet Letter!

Convicted felon is a label bestowed like a scarlet letter solely to shame another. The real shame is when it is used selectively as cover for one’s own inadequacies.

Convicted felon is a label bestowed like a scarlet letter solely to shame another. The real shame is when it is used selectively as cover for one’s own inadequacies.

July 10, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

The famous New England author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, published The Scarlet Letter in 1850. In its time, it was a lurid Puritan New England soap opera that became classic American literature. In its pages, which shocked the Puritans of Hawthorne’s time, the young Hester Prynne was found to be with child, but the father was not her husband, a much older and morally ruthless Puritan man. The real father was the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the local Congregational minister. Refusing to reveal that truth, Hester Prynne was placed on display in the market square each day to be publicly shamed and shunned while adorned with a scarlet letter “A” for “adulterer” prominently on her dress. Nathaniel Hawthorne was well versed in the Puritan prejudices that shaped New England. His great grandfather was one of the three judges who presided over the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.

Today, the scarlet letter takes many other forms. We made it almost to the end of the now infamous June 27, 2024 Presidential Debate before President Joe Biden declared to the American people that Donald Trump, his opponent in the upcoming election, is a “convicted felon.” It seemed much more an act of desperation than inspiration. “What was the point of it?” a commentator asked. Everything about it told me that its only point was to lay shame upon the opposing candidate when all other rhetoric was failing.

It told us nothing about Donald Trump that we did not already know. It told us nothing about the New York trial that mysteriously transformed questionable misdemeanor charges into felonies to bestow that dubious title upon him for strictly political purposes. But it spoke volumes about the desperate state of the one who said it. It was the clearest thing said by President Biden that night, and likely the most rehearsed.

I, too, am a convicted felon, and if you are not reading this blog for the first time then you know, or at least suspect, that the term has been unjustly imposed. So I have a legitimate gripe about its use and misuse. Just about every fair-minded person familiar with this blog knows that even a cursory look under the hood of my 1994 trial leaves its outcome in serious doubt. Only those with bias and hidden agendas of their own still point to the “convicted felon” millstone around my neck.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a longtime columnist and member of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her bold series of concience-stirring revelations about some of the most notorious witch-hunts sex abuse trials of modern times. My trial was one of them. In regard to my “convicted felon” status, Ms. Rabinowitz wrote: “Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.” (“The Trials of Father MacRae,” The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013).

To those who read and share my posts, I am grateful for your openminded conclusion that justice failed on the day that scarlet letter was imposed on me. And not only on me; the late Cardinal George Pell also refused to wear the “convicted felon” label before he was finally exonerated after 400 days and nights in solitary confinement in prison. Fortunately, the Australian justice system ultimately delivered him from that injustice. American courts differ from Australian courts in this respect. In modern times, American courts have developed a barrier to the pursuit of justice that grants to the justice system itself the last word and a right to finality. Experts described the dynamics behind this in an article, “Why This Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison.”

There have been thousands of proven wrongful convictions in U.S. courts during the 30 years I have spent in prison for refusing to willfully accept the Scarlet Letter label. I could have left prison 28 years ago if I accepted the deal the State of New Hampshire tried to impose upon me. There are an estimated tens of thousands still wrongfully in prison in the United States because they are unable to “prove” their innocence even when no one had to prove their guilt.

Our incarceration nation leads the world in imprisonment with five percent of the world’s population but twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. So it would follow that it also leads the world in conviction errors, forty-percent of which are attributed to police and prosecutor misconduct.

A “Convicted Felon’ in the White House?

On the night before beginning this post, I had a long distance discussion about it with my friend, Pornchai Moontri in Thailand. He is, as most readers know, a real survivor of the very sort of crimes for which I was falsely accused. He is also a survivor of almost 16 years in a prison cell with me. In our recent discussion, Pornchai told me that my only crime was being a Catholic priest and then letting it cost me everything I had. I guess I have to let that sink in. I could have devoted my life in this injustice to building a monument of volcanic bitterness. There is plenty of that to go around where I live. “Thank God you didn’t,” Pornchai said.

So instead of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, I write. I do not just write about the state of my own injustice. I also write about injustice that has befallen others. I write about the state of our freedom, and what is at stake when we take it for granted. I write about the state of our character, about our Church, our politics, our descent into evil and our capacity for good. I write about the senseless impact of prison, and about some, like my friend Pornchai, who overcame it, became redeemed from it, and now faces the challenge of avoiding debilitating labels like the one imposed on me and Donald Trump.

Pornchai Moontri added his belief that I would not be in prison today if I were not a Catholic priest. Then he said that Donald Trump would not have faced those charges in New York if he were not a Republican candidate for President. Mr. Moontri is right about this, and he zoomed in on the one thing that I find most disturbing about Trump’s candidacy: the elitist view that a political outsider has no business running for President of the United States. This prejudice has been evident in mainstream news media since his election in 2016. It has been nothing short of an attempt at voter nullification and egregious election interference.

I know that some of our readers do not like Donald Trump. Back in 2021, we lost some readers when I wrote “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul.” It is globally one of our most read posts and it was also recommended by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. But some of our slightly left-leaning readers concluded that any criticism of President Biden is an ipso facto an affirmation of Donald Trump. That post is a classic example of the sometimes vague boundaries between politics and morality, and why no priest should be afraid to write or speak about the latter.

I have never promoted Donald Trump, and do not do so now. That said, I have never demoted him either. But as an American, I resent all the one-sided rhetoric denouncing his candidacy based on his character. That is a matter for voters to decide, not the courts, and not the news media, and certainly not the elite holding office in Washington, DC. In 2020, it was insisted to me that the whole Hunter Biden laptop story that emerged and was covered up before the election of 2020 was Russian disinformation. I know that I ruffled feathers when I wrote “Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell.” I was lied to then, and so were you.

The clincher in my decision to write this post about Donald Trump’s legal woes came from reading the June 21, 2024 issue of the National Catholic Reporter. It is a far left-leaning “independent” newspaper that I stopped reading decades ago. Another priest gave me a gift subscription to it, and I have wondered ever since what I did of offend him. The front-page headline in the June 21 issue is “Does the Catholic Vote Still Matter?” It was followed by this highlighted text: “A majority of Catholics are trending toward voting for Donald Trump — even after conviction.” Should that fact alone be evidence that the Catholic vote no longer matters just because it doesn’t fit NCR’s ideology?

… and to the Banana Republic for Which It Stands …

I am much informed by a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Why Republicans Don’t Abandon ‘Felon’ Trump” by Michael W. McConnell (June 20, 2024). The author is a Stanford Law School professor, a retired judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He dissected the various charges lodged against Mr. Trump during this election cycle. His conclusions are an eye-opener. Only one of these cases has gone to trial, and after a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings, it appears that many of the other claims perhaps never will. Of the supposed felonies for which a New York State court declared Trump guilty, Professor McConnell wrote:

“Most Democrats I know persuaded themselves of the righteousness of criminally prosecuting Donald Trump to keep him from becoming President again. How, they ask, can any respectable person defend Mr. Trump now that he is a felon? Many Republicans … believe that Democratic prosecutors are waging lawfare against Mr. Trump [and] now consider the legal crusade against Trump to be as threatening to democracy as what happened on January 6, 2021. The charges against Mr. Trump in New York were bogus.”

The article lays out in compelling terms how New York DA Alvin Bragg’s prosecution was an attempt to influence voters and the electoral process. DA Bragg had also been a donor to the Biden campaign and should have disqualified himself from prosecuting the case. Instead, according to Professor McConnell he “openly campaigned on a vow to hold Mr. Trump and his family accountable.” The attention grabber for me was what followed in Professor McConnell’s article: “Mr. Bragg didn’t pursue particular crimes of concern to the public. He pursued a particular defendant who happened to be the other party’s candidate for President.”

That analysis is so vastly unlike almost all other news coverage of that trial that is shocked me, and for good reason. The “suspect in search of a crime” motif was exactly what happened to me. No one ever went to Keene, NH Detective James F. McLaughlin with a complaint about me. Instead, this sex abuse crusader targeted me for no reason other than my being a Catholic priest. Then, armed with a fraudulent claim that he himself manufactured, he manipulated — sometimes with monetary bribes and threats — dozens of troubled adolescents and young adults in places where I had been assigned. He did this relentlessly for five years until he found some who would accuse me for money. (See the “Statement of Steven Wollschlager.”)

The “ lawfare” pursuit of Donald Trump was political, but it never reflected American justice. Its sole purpose was the imposition of a scarlet letter that would most likely be overturned on appeal. According to the purposes of D.A. Bragg, it need only hold up until the November election. After a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Presidential Immunity, New York State judge Juan Merchan delayed Mr. Trump’s sentencing until September 18, 2024.

Meanwhile, President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, now also a “convicted felon” has been serving in the role of a senior advisor to the President during both family and staff negotiations about his future political life, negotiations in which Hunter Biden has a clear conflict of interest. The hypocrisy is stunning.

In his first term as 45th President of the United States, President Donald Trump sponsored the First Step Act. A major tenet of it was a call for the removal of “the box,” a prejudicial feature of federal job applications that kept thousands of former prisoners from finding meaningful work. Permanent “Convicted Felon” status is unjust, demeaning, useless and sometimes even baseless. Recall the words of Sheriff Beauford Puser in my post, “Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment”: “If you let ‘em get away with this, you give ‘em the eternal right to do the same damn thing to anyone of you!”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this timely post. You may also like these related titles from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Why This Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison

Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment

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.”

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/7/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 2/7/24

New Hampshire Dark Justice Is Illuminated Down Under

In early 2024, several Civil Rights venues hosted new, hopeful developments in a 30-year-old lingering injustice: the once hopeless 1994 trial of a Catholic priest.

In early 2024, several Civil Rights venues hosted new, hopeful developments in a 30-year-old lingering injustice: the once hopeless 1994 trial of a Catholic priest.

February 7, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“Fr MacRae was convicted on 23 September 1994 and sentenced to 67 years in a New Hampshire prison. The allegations had no supporting evidence and no corroboration. ... We enter another world with a life sentence. Australia is not New Hampshire, and I don’t believe Australia would blackball the discussion of a case such as Fr MacRae’s.”

— Cardinal George Pell, Prison Journal Volume 2, p.58

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It’s hard to know when to give up on justice. It’s even harder to know when to give up on hope. I have been at the brink of both several times over the last three decades, but I have not yet taken the plunge. I am not sure what that would feel like. Prison is bad enough without adding hopelessness to the mix. Other prisoners watch me for signs of hopelessness. If I descend into it, it will only justify their caving into it as well.

As my 30th year of unjust imprisonment began on September 23, 2023, my friend Pornchai Moontri wrote a post for this blog from Thailand. It is emotionally staggering to read, but it is also filled with hope — the sort of hope for which “the bigger picture” provides much-needed context. Only someone who has suffered and survived a great deal in life, as Pornchai has, could give both suffering and hope equal measure. l was not able to see his post, but our editor read it to me while preparing it for publication. She paused four times to cry.

Not all tears are tears of sorrow. Pornchai’s article deserves an award, but there isn’t one that measures what he and I, and Maximilian Kolbe, and Padre Pio have all been through together and triumphantly. Let that last word sink in. None of us appears on the surface to be triumphant in anything by any measure of this world, but in the Kingdom of Heaven, our enduring hope is radiant.

Its triumph is not just in our endurance, or in any obvious outcome. It is in the grace-filled ability to suffer with faith, hope, and love intact — the greatest of gifts as defined by Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 13:13). If you missed Pornchai’s post, you shouldn’t, but bring a tissue. Bring four of them. Nothing in my experience of the last thirty years makes any sense without the context provided by Pornchai’s heart rending message from our New Evangelization. His post is, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.” We will add a link to it at the end of this post.

In the early dawn of this 30th year in prison, there are some recent developments that I now need to write about, but first I must ask for your forgiveness. During the months between September 2023 and now, several of our readers extended kindness and generosity to me and this humble blog by helping with a number of expenses. I have been unable to respond with gratitude in a timely manner. I am sorry. My excuse is just more suffering. Like many in this overcrowded place I came down with a respiratory virus that lasted two months. A weekly post was all the writing that I could handle.

By December, the virus morphed into vertigo so even walking upright from point A to point B became a challenge. Then it became a month-long migraine with chronic double vision. It may even have been a minor stroke. I hope my posts of the last few months did not mirror the struggle I was in to write them. I now await an “outside” consult with an ophthalmologist.

I have begun to feel a little better but the vision problem remains a challenge, though with more recent minor improvements. So besides my BTSW posts, I have managed only a few letters in the last few months. Forgive me, please. We need your help but I am sorrowful to accept it in silence. A family member who had for the last 30 years been managing a small expense account for me with power of attorney has also had some health issues and I have had to relieve him of that burden. Please note at both our “Contact and Support” and “Special Events” pages, that we now have a new address for assistance to me and this blog. The address is: “Fr. Gordon MacRae, P.O. Box 81, Fayetteville, NY 13066-0081.”

You are raised up in thanksgiving before the Lord at every Sunday Mass in my prison cell. If you ever decide to help again in the wake of my only silent gratitude, it would help further if you always include an email address so I may properly acknowledge your assistance.

The Bill of Rights Obliterated

I owe a debt of gratitude to Ryan A. MacDonald, an accomplished columnist who has taken up my cause repeatedly over these many years. His latest articles appeared here over the last few weeks. In “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List” Ryan accomplished something that no other writer has taken on. He exposed concrete examples of how judicial secrecy in New Hampshire has further eroded the rights of citizens to seek justice.

Former Keene, New Hampshire Detective James McLaughlin is now retired, but at this writing he continues in retirement to investigate cases for the local Cheshire County (NH) prosecutor. As many readers now know, he has been exposed for a pattern of corruption and misconduct in his investigations when his name appeared on a once-secret list of officers with credibility issues. He also choreographed a fraudulent case against me that rode the waves to capitalize on Catholic scandal over the last thirty years.

Detective McLaughlin’s name appeared on that secret list for an unspecific 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records.” In some reports it has been described as “Falsification of Evidence,” something that I have accused him of since my own charges first arose over 30 years ago. Getting to the bottom of this is a test of endurance in a legal system that shelters police misconduct through secret and anonymous hearings.

Under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent (“Brady v. Maryland”), prosecutors are required to inform defendants and their defense counsel when an investigating detective is on the list for misconduct. In my case and many others, they did not do so. This discovery constitutes new evidence that can reopen a case. Famed civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate addressed this in a 2022 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.”

As pointed out in these pages in recent weeks, however, judges hearing former Detective McLaughlin’s petition to remove his name from that list have allowed these hearings to be presented in secret proceedings that are rendered anonymous through the use of “John Doe” in place of an offending officer’s name. Citizens are prevented from offering any further evidence because of this judicial secrecy. On January 24, Ryan MacDonald published another bombshell: “In New Hampshire Courts, Police Corruption Is Judged in Secret.”

His article lays out additional evidence under New Hampshire law for a multitude of other alleged incidents of official misconduct on the part of this officer. They include perjury, witness tampering, attempted bribery, tampering with evidence, and additional incidents of falsification of records. All of this has been shielded under color of law by the practice of sealing police personnel files and hearing challenges to the police misconduct list in secret. Ryan has also cited articles published at InDepthNH.org:

“The records obtained by InDepthNH.org indicate there are more internal affairs reports dealing with McLaughlin which the city has not so far provided. The city has also not provided an explanation for the omission of the other reports.”

The reporter cites a 1988 letter in McLaughlin’s file from then Keene, NH Police Chief Thomas Powers:

“I reviewed your personnel file and several internal affairs investigations. While you have accumulated a number of praises in your career, a disproportionate number of serious accusations and violations have significantly detracted from your record, including a one-week suspension.”

First in the Nation

By coincidence (or probably not) I am writing this post on January 23, 2024, the day that the State of New Hampshire hosts its much-celebrated, but now endangered, First-in-the-Nation presidential primary election. In anticipation of this event, Kentucky attorney Frank Friday penned a superb and provocative article for American Thinker entitled “Our Corrupt FBI : New Hampshire Edition.” It begins ...

“This Tuesday, New Hampshire will hold its quadrennial first-in-the-nation primary. I am sorry to say, I have come to know something of the seamier side of this small state, writing these past years about a great legal injustice that has occurred up there. This is something most Granite Staters don’t like to think about: the Fr. Gordon MacRae frame-up.

“Thanks to the state’s tiny, inbred legal and law enforcement community, the matter was kept quiet for years. But the truth is inevitably coming out especially regarding the ‘hero-detective’ who doesn’t look so good now.

“One of my New Hampshire friends who writes about this has even found a small army of New Hampshire lawyers, police and politicos making a nice living off spurious sex abuse allegations. The local FBI office, no surprise, may even be connected. It’s worth reading the whole thing. You will be appalled.”

— “Our Corrupt FBI : New Hampshire Edition,” AmericanThinker, January 20, 2024

To my great admiration, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights emailed the above article to its entire global network of members. It links in the final paragraph to a previous post here at Beyond These Stone Walls by Los Angeles documentary researcher Claire Best. Mr. Friday is right. You will be appalled! The link goes to, “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

And because of the American Thinker article, and the decision of the Catholic League to promote it, that link above surpassed almost all other posts in traffic so far this year. It is just the sort of thing that needs to happen. History has shown that nothing stifles Civil Rights more than a silent Coverup.

Wrongful Convictions Report — Down Under

While all the above was going on in recent weeks, I wrote a painfully difficult article about new developments in the case of the late Cardinal George Pell for whom I also have great respect and admiration. I do not think there has been a Church figure in modern times so unjustly maligned. My December 10, 2023 post was, “The Trial of Cardinal Becciu, the Betrayal of Cardinal Pell.”

An unintended effect was that it caught the attention of a site in Australia that I did not even know existed. Within a week of posting the above link, the site editor, Australian writer Andrew L. Urban, did a deep dive into my own situation and published two outstanding articles there:

“Sexual Abuse or Justice Abused?”

“False allegations, a corrupt detective, flawed judicial decisions ... no wonder Father Gordon MacRae’s life has been ruined, sentenced to a 67-year jail term, after refusing a one-year plea deal wishing to maintain his innocence.”

And...

“The Back Alley of Justice: Fr Gordon MacRae’s Wrongful Conviction”

“Malevolent shenanigans behind the scenes in the Fr Gordon MacRae case, from withholding evidence to witness tampering ... It seems justice took a holiday — and hasn’t returned. Fr Gordon, now 70, has been in prison for men in Concord, USA since he was 41.”

The above two articles are the result of exceptional investigative reporting by Andrew Urban who also published an extended excerpt from one of my own recent posts on Australia’s own Cardinal Pell marking the first anniversary of his death on January 10. Andrew Urban entitled it, the “Week of Pell’s Resurrection.”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which casts some needed light on a story otherwise kept in darkness. You will demonstrate to the above writers the importance of this story by sharing it. You may also like these related posts cited herein:

On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized by Pornchai Moontri

Our Corrupt FBI : New Hampshire Edition by Frank Friday, Esq.

New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case by Claire Best

Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List by Ryan A. MacDonald

In New Hampshire Courts, Police Corruption Is Judged in Secret by Ryan A. MacDonald

**Former Judge Arthur Brennan arrested at a Washington, DC protest in 2011.**

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Ryan A. MacDonald 1/24/24 Ryan A. MacDonald 1/24/24

In New Hampshire Courts, Police Corruption Is Judged in Secret

Former Detective James McLaughlin, aka John Doe, has a single incident on a list of police misconduct but only because the public is barred from providing evidence.

Former Detective James McLaughlin, aka John Doe, has a single incident on a list of police misconduct but only because the public is barred from providing evidence.

January 24, 2024 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Editor’s Note: The following is Ryan A. MacDonald’s continuation of a post that appeared here recently entitled, “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List.”

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Just a day before starting this article, I received a surprising message with a link to a new title posted in Australia by Andrew Urban on the well-known Wrongful Convictions Report blog . The title of the new article is “Sexual Abuse or Justice Abuse?”

The well-researched article first appeared in Australia on January 8 this year, but by the end of the day it had found its way around the globe. I read it with concern at first, wondering if Mr. Urban’s article somehow preempts this one which is also well researched. Our two pieces were written with similar conclusions but from very different points of view. I am struck by how incisively Andrew Urban and several reader comments unmasked the questionable police tactics of former Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin, architect of the case against Father Gordon MacRae.

Since then, I have had a chance to peruse Mr. Urban’s excellent Wrongful Convictions Report with a special interest in his posts about the case against the late Cardinal George Pell. The case of Cardinal Pell and Father MacRae seem remarkably similar in their background origins, their shady police investigations, and in the extent to which money changed hands. Most interestingly, Cardinal Pell and Father MacRae also wrote about each other in their respectively unjust imprisonment. Father MacRae’s latest report on the Pell matter was his recent bombshell, “The Trial of Cardinal Becciu, the Betrayal of Cardinal Pell.”

Preceding all the above by several months, Los Angeles-based documentary researcher, Claire Best also performed a public service with one of her many incisive articles published at Medium.com. This one, published September 1, 2023, is entitled simply, “Who Is James F. McLaughlin — New Hampshire’s Top Child and Internet Sex Crimes Detective?” Here’s an important excerpt:

“When McLaughlin’s name first appeared on a list of police with credibility issues in late 2021, it disappeared within hours. Something’s up, and past and present Attorneys General and District Attorneys know it. What are they hiding that they don’t want to come out, and why? For the majority of the sex crimes James F. McLaughlin investigated, plea deals were reached before trial. Money seems to be involved... He owns companies in Jaffrey (NH) with an agent/attorney who specializes in trusts and municipal laws. His wife owned a real estate company in Keene (NH). How were they funded to invest in real estate?

"Thomas Grover, the accuser of Father Gordon MacRae, admitted to his former stepson — Charles Glenn and a victim of YDC abuse who has demanded federal investigation of Attorneys General for their role — that he was offered money by James F. McLaughlin to accuse the priest who has been denied justice for the past 29 years — framed by the former sex crimes police officer.”

[See also “The New Hampshire YDC Scandal and the Trial of Fr MacRae,” a collaborative effort by Claire Best and Ryan A. MacDonald.]

Police Misconduct under Shield of Law

As indicated in “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List,” former detective James McLaughlin has petitioned the court to remove his name from an official NH Attorney General’s List of police with credibility or misconduct issues. McLaughlin has been allowed to seek his removal from the list under a pseudonym, “John Doe,” in Court filings. Thus any hearing before a New Hampshire judge will be held in secret at a time and place that is also secret. His police personnel file has been sealed. If any New Hampshire citizen had input or pertinent information that could further inform the Court in this process, that information is rendered moot by concessions to “John Doe’s” judicial secrecy.

At least one New Hampshire judge has published his disagreement with this process in a published op-ed, “Judge: Laurie List Police Lawsuits Are Being Improperly Sealed.” The judge, former NH Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker, stated:

“One of the fundamental precepts of a democracy is that public officials must be accountable to the citizens. This concept has been codified in the New Hampshire Constitution since 1784. Part I, Article 8 provides: ‘All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and always accountable to them. Government, therefore, should be open, accessible, accountable, and responsive...’” “Cases cannot be fully sealed from the outset.... The party seeking to maintain court records under seal must demonstrate a ‘sufficiently compelling interest’ that outweighs public right of access.”

Whatever that ‘sufficiently compelling interest’ is or was in the case of former Detective McLaughlin, it, too, remains under seal and beyond public view. Having followed his cases and activities for years, I simply cannot fathom what that “compelling” secrecy interest could be. The Court process itself smacks of corruption.

The obvious public hazard here is that the McLaughlin petition to be removed from the Laurie List is thus heard in a vacuum. All that is publicly known is an original, non-descript 1985 incident labeled “Falsification of Records.” In other postings, specifically in articles by Damien Fisher at InDepthNH.org, the Laurie List incident is described as “Falsification of Evidence,” a far more serious infraction for a police officer.

Whether the original matter was “falsification of records” or “falsification of evidence,” or both, McLaughlin’s 1988 and 1994 investigations of Fr. Gordon MacRae involved both. I will clarify evidence for this below.

Damien Fisher appears to be the sole New Hampshire reporter covering the matter of the Laurie List. He reports multiple attempts at obtaining information under Freedom of Information Act requests with limited success. What he has obtained and reported on, however, raises serious questions about the judicial secrecy under which this matter still hides. It seems that as a sworn officer, James F. McLaughlin is culpable of far more malfeasance than his 1985 “Falsification of Records” infraction alludes, but it remains the sole publicly known infraction. There are hints of many others, however, but public accountability is hindered by judicial secrecy.

Attorney Andru Volinsky, who is representing the New Hampshire Center of Public Interest Journalism in its ongoing lawsuit to unseal the complete Laurie List:

“I have no idea whether any of the judges who looked at these cases applied an appropriate standard whether to make this anonymous or sealed or not. It creates a system of secrecy that does not build confidence in the court system.”

**Keene, NH Det. James McLaughlin celebrates his 350th arrest as a sex-crimes crusader.**

Infractions That Never Made the Laurie List

Listed below, therefore, I have itemized specific New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated (NH RSAs) governing police misconduct laws. Each is followed by examples of claimed misconduct raised by citizens or reporters regarding Detective James McLaughlin that had been kept out of any official investigation due to the seal of judicial secrecy. No one has investigated these claims:

RSA 641 : 6 (I) — Falsifying Physical Evidence

A person commits a Class B felony if, believing that an official proceeding as defined in RSA 641:1, II, or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he alters, destroys, conceals, or removes any thing with a purpose to impair its verity or availability in such proceeding.

RSA 641 : 1 (I a) - Perjury

A person is guilty of a Class B felony if in any official proceeding he makes a false material statement under oath or affirmation, or swears or affirms the truth of a material statement previously made, and he does not believe the statement to be true.

RSA 641 : 2 (I b)— False Swearing

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if he makes a false statement under oath or affirmation or swears or affirms the truth if (b) the statement is one which is required by law to be sworn or affirmed before a notary or other person authorized to administer oaths;

EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATIONS: In sworn interrogatories in the 1994 case of NH v. Gordon MacRae, Detective McLaughlin was ordered by the Court to produce to the defense any taped conversations with MacRae or other witnesses in the case. McLaughlin wrote in a police report logged as Case No. 89-0-2440, “I also told [MacRae] the interview would be recorded to safeguard both him and the police from misunderstandings about what was exactly stated.”

McLaughlin then went on in his report to attribute statements to MacRae that were never made. When MacRae’s defense requested a copy of the tape, McLaughlin responded under oath that the recording in question had been recycled for other investigations and is thus no longer available.

Eleven years later, in 2005, McLaughlin sent that very tape recording to a reporter at The Wall Street Journal who then described its contents very differently than McLaughlin first reported them. Neither McLaughlin nor the prosecutor has ever explained this. This “Falsification of Evidence” should have been logged as an additional finding on the Laurie List about McLaughlin, but no one has acknowledged or investigated it.

RSA 641 : 3 (I a) — Unsworn Falsification

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if he or she makes a written or electronic false statement ... on or pursuant to a form bearing a notification authorized by law.

EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATION: Throughout the “investigation” of MacRae, multiple tape recordings were referenced in police reports, but none were ever turned over for defense review as ordered by the court. McLaughlin’s signed reports attributed to named witnesses allegations about Gordon MacRae that those witnesses insist were never made. However the recordings containing such statements became inexplicably unavailable.

RSA 105 : 19 (I) — Reports of Misconduct by Law Enforcement Officers

For the purposes of this section, “misconduct” means assault, sexual assault, bribery, fraud, theft, tampering with evidence, use of a chokehold, or excessive and illegal use of force.

EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATION: From a Signed Statement of Steven Wollschlager: (October 27, 2008):

“Again during this meeting I mostly just listened to scenarios and statements being spoken to me by the police. The lawsuits and money were of greatest discussion and I was left feeling that if I would go along with the story I could reap the rewards as well.

“McLaughlin had me believing that all I had to do was make up a story and I could receive a large sum of money as others already had. McLaughlin reminded me of the young child and girlfriend I had and referenced that life could be easier for us with a large amount of money.”

RSA 641 : 5 (I a) — Tampering with Witnesses and Informants

A person is guilty of a class B felony if: Believing that an official proceeding, as defined in RSA 641 : 1, II or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he attempts to induce or otherwise cause a person to a) Testify or inform falsely.

EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATION: From a Signed Statement of Debra Collett (February 20, 2008)

“I am Debra Collette I am making this Statement to James Abbott, Investigator for Gordon MacRae. My involvement leading to speaking with James Abbott was as Clinical Director at Derby's Lodge in NH. I was contacted by Keene Police Detective McLaughlin. I was uncomfortable with repeated stopping and starting the tape recorder when he did not agree with my answers to his questions ...

“His treatment of me included coercion, intimidation veiled and more forward threats as well as being disrespectful. I was overtly threatened. McLaughlin told me he would personally come to my home, drag me out of it bodily if necessary, and force me to appear in court and testify despite my information to him.

“My overall experience in interacting with [him] was one of being bullied with [his] attitude of animosity, anger, and preconception of guilt ... [He] presented as argumentative, manipulative, and threatening via use of police power in an attempt to get me to say what they wanted to hear.”

RSA 641 : 7 (III) — Tampering with Public Records or Information

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if he purposely and unlawfully destroys, conceals, removes or otherwise impairs the verity or availability of any such thing.

EVIDENCE FOR INFRACTION: Detective McLaughlin’s tape recordings of his interviews with Ms. Debra Collett cited above simply disappeared before MacRae’s 1994 trial and therefore could not be heard by defense counsel, the judge, or the jury.

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Citations from reported articles at InDepthNH.org by Damien Fisher regarding content not reported on the Laurie List

1. Altered Tape Recordings: Source: Damien Fisher, “County Investigates McLaughlin Complaint Filed By Man Convicted Decades Ago” (November 15, 2022):

“In 1988, James McLaughlin received a letter of reprimand from then-Chief Thomas Powers after James McLaughlin was involved in a December 1987 heated verbal confrontation on the phone, and later inside the station. It was during this incident that the audio portion of the tape was destroyed under suspicious circumstances, according to Powers ... . Powers called James McLaughlin’s explanation for the tape erasure ‘unacceptable.’”

2. Other Undocumented Infractions:

a) [From the same source as above]: From a 1988 Letter of Chief Thomas Powers in the file of James F. McLaughlin:

b) Source: Damien Fisher, “Records Show Keene Police’s Famed Ex-Detective Caught in Lies” (September 19, 2022) :

“McLaughlin was suspended for lying about shooting his gun, and another in which he ‘accidentally’ destroyed an audio recording that could have put him in a bad light.” “The records obtained by InDepthnH.org indicate there are more internal affairs reports dealing with McLaughlin which the city has not so far provided. The city has also not provided an explanation for the omission of the other reports.”

c) Source: Damien Fisher, “Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment” (January 11, 2022) :

“Once it was discovered that McLaughlin had sent [child sex abuse images] to [Defendant Lee] Allaben, United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe censured the police officer in court.”

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Editor’s Note: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We thank Ryan A. MacDonald for his careful analysis. Part One, which appeared here recently, is: “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List.” You may also be interested in these related posts published at the site, Wrongful Convictions Report on the case of Fr. Mac Rae:

Sexual Abuse or Justice Abuse?

The back alley of justice

And by Claire Best and Ryan A. MacDonald:

The New Hampshire YDC Scandal and the Trial of Father MacRae

And again by Ryan A. MacDonald:

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 12/27/23 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 12/27/23

Catholic Grief and Faithful Shepherds in Death and Exile

2023 began in sorrow with the death of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds. It ended in sorrow with the exile of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds.

2023 began in sorrow with the death of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds. It ended in sorrow with the exile of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds.

December 27, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” King Henry II (1133-1189) referring to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who opposed the King’s effort to subject priests to trials under English law instead of Church law. Four of King Henry’s knights took the words as a directive. They murdered Thomas Becket as he offered Mass in the Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170.

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Of the 54 posts published here in 2023, fully half of them were consumed with the painful internal affairs of the Catholic Church — affairs in which both priests and faithful Catholics always seem to come out on the losing end of things. My second post of 2023 was “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”

Its title speaks for itself. The results of CUA’s broad study demonstrated a huge chasm between the perspective of bishops and that of priests in the trenches. The consensus among priests was that their bishops are largely oblivious and unresponsive to the pressures and challenges of their ministry. The consensus among bishops was the opposite, that they are right on top of things and are supportive of their priests in challenging times.

Perhaps the most glaring result of the study was the perception among priests that they can be “canceled” by their bishops for any reason or no reason at all. It is a grave irony, as we will explore later in this post, that the year began with an in-depth review of this study and ended with the removal of a faithful bishop from his ministry with no clear canonical crime or reason other than his fidelity.

Many Catholic laity also spent much of 2023 in a state of high anxiety about their lived experience of Catholic faith. As I began typing this post, I received a letter from a reader who revealed that she and her family have been spiritually enriched from weekly participation in the Traditional Latin Mass. “Please pray that this is not taken from us,” she pleaded. It gripped my heart to realize that the Catholic version of “cancel culture” is a source of torment for traditional Catholics.

This year began as the previous year ended — with breaking news of the December 31, 2022 death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. His longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, revealed that Benedict was alarmed and saddened by the new restrictions placed by decree on any celebration of the Latin Mass, a practice that Benedict himself had restored to the faithful by Motu Proprio, the same means by which Pope Francis restricted it. The “optics,” as politicians often say, were terrible.

Much of the last year of Benedict’s Earthly life was spent fending off the exploitation and unjust smearing of his good name while the liberal secular news media feasted on the spoils. Much of the mud thrown at him seemed to emanate from the heart of the German synodal path. I wrote of this story and its fallout in 2022 in “Benedict XVI Faces the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.”

The matter at hand was the elderly Benedict’s failure to instantly recall accurately, and without consulting notes, a meeting he attended forty years earlier in which an accused priest was discussed. Benedict was thus accused of obfuscating, minimizing, and covering up the truth. The real agenda, according to Archbishop Gänswein, was to undermine Benedict’s reputation as a bulwark of Catholic Truth and orthodoxy, and to drive a wedge between faithful Catholics and his papacy. I addressed this again in early 2023 in “Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell.”

George Cardinal Pell v. Vatican Corruption

Just ten days after the death of Benedict XVI, Cardinal George Pell died during routine surgery in a Rome hospital on January 10, 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, I wrote twelve posts about the plight of Cardinal Pell. I wrote them perhaps because I can most identify with all that he endured from explosive accusations and charges, a trial by media, exploitation by enemies of the Church from without and within, false imprisonment, and suspected corruption from both secular and ecclesiastical sources.

Among my posts about Cardinal Pell in 2023, one of them, the last one, drew a huge readership from around the globe. It was “Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod.”

In the trials of my own life, I have not yet been able to attain the reversal of injustice that ultimately set Cardinal Pell free, but only because U.S. courts function with a different standard than Australia’s courts. In the U.S., finality in a case is given more weight than other considerations and it is difficult to overcome. When I started this post, I found a letter written to me by Cardinal Pell in Rome after his exhoneration. He wrote that I had been on his mind since his release from prison. He spoke of his plan to raise my case during various meetings in and around Rome, but he never got that chance.

While Cardinal Pell was in prison, I wrote an article about something I had researched heavily. The article is entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Well, it turned out that he was. My article was sent to him in prison, and it became an entry in his celebrated Prison Journal, which was published after his release. He wrote the entry in his prison cell after reading my post.

Four of my dozen posts about the injustices that befell Cardinal Pell were written in 2023. One of them became recommended reading by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It tied together, though unintentionally, several stories that are now prominent in the news. That post was “Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell.”

Readers may have seen recent news of the trial and conviction of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu charged with embezzlement in a Vatican Court. Vatican magistrates alleged that Becciu had embezzled more than $100,000 through a non-profit group run by his brother. Cardinal Becciu has been on trial since 2020 and was the first cardinal in history to face trial in the Vatican criminal court. On December 13, 2023, just a few days before the verdict of guilty, The Wall Street Journal’s Vatican correspondent, Francis X. Rocca, ran an extended story analyzing the case in “A Cardinal Once Seen as Future Pope Now Faces Prison.” Here is an excerpt:

“The Secretariat of State managed around $700 million in financial assets, including the investment that later engulfed Becciu and other Vatican officials in scandal.... Around that time, Francis made Australian Cardinal George Pell his finance chief and gave him sweeping powers. Pell unveiled new financial guidelines for the Vatican. But he clashed with the secretariat, which opposed his plans for a financial audit by an external auditing firm. Pell considered Becciu his main opponent in the secretariat. Other Vatican officials also lobbied the Pope against Pell’s changes. The Pope curtailed Pell’s powers and the external audit was canceled.... Pell later returned to Australia to face child sex abuse charges. He was acquitted on appeal and died this year.”

In an October 15 commentary on this account in The Wall Street Journal, I added some further context to this story:

“The part of this nebulous story that most troubles me is the decision of Pope Francis to listen to Cardinal Becciu and other Vatican officials who lobbied against Cardinal George Pell’s financial reforms after [the Pope] had empowered him to reform Vatican finances. Mr. Rocca does not speculate on the source of charges against Cardinal Pell in Australia — charges for which he was exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s High Court. This was after he wrongly spent 400 days in prison. There are many who believe that there may have been a connection between Cardinal Pell’s attempted reforms of Vatican finances and these false charges in Australia. Pell himself suspected this.”

While researching this, I discovered yet another similarity between the Pell case and my own. In both of our legal matters, police misconduct and government corruption played a substantial role. It is a little known fact in the Cardinal Pell case that a 2014 email reveals an exchange between a media assistant in the Victoria, Australia Police Department and the Deputy Commissioner of Police suggesting that promoting these charges in the media could deflect from public exposure of a burgeoning scandal within the Police Department.

Bishop Joseph Strickland and Raymond Cardinal Burke

Then, seemingly dwarfing all of the above in shock value, Pope Francis swiftly and mysteriously removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from his role as shepherd of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas in November 2023. Then, in rapid succession he ordered Cardinal Raymond Burke to vacate his Vatican apartment and reportedly left this faithful shepherd without income or position. Lots of ink has been spilled over both stories, especially in the United States. I covered the Bishop Strickland story a week ago in the first segment of “Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of this World,” my Christmas post this year.

Both stories have been heavily covered by so many Catholic writers and commentators that there is nothing left for me to add except sorrow. These are faithful shepherds. Perhaps in time, the hidden truth of both matters will emerge. Absent that, I am sad to write, the buck stops only at the top.

In a stunning article in the January 2024 edition of Newsmax magazine (Pope Pushes Radical Agenda that Shocks Faithful) the National Catholic Register’s Vatican correspondent, Edward Pentin, commented on both stories:

“This past November, Francis removed [Bishop Joseph] Strickland from heading the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, citing his criticism of the Pope’s liberal social agenda and allowing the faithful to partake in the Latin Mass.... But the biggest surprise was his late November targeting of Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of Saint Louis and one of the Vatican’s most influential prelates.

“Burke has been an open critic of Francis for some time, alleging that the Holy Father has been discarding some of the most basic church teachings on communion, sexuality, and marriage. In a private meeting in Rome, Francis reportedly declared that Burke was ‘my enemy’ and he would strip him of his Vatican salary and even his apartment residence in Rome.”

Early in his pontificate, I wrote several posts in defense of Pope Francis. However, what Edward Pentin describes above seems more reminiscent of the court of Caligula than the Vicar of Christ.

Scandal and sorrow were not the only news items dominating this blog in 2023. There were other major events. We took a break from all the bad news of the Church to launch “A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls” in March. It was composed of most of our past special Holy Week posts and the invitation had many takers. In a Church wandering in the desert mired in political controversy it was encouraging to see this vast lay interest in the events of Holy Week.

In June, documentary film producer Frank X. Panico unveiled his project about my trial and imprisonment in a 45-minute video production, “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam.”

As I marked the beginning of a 30th year in prison on the Feast of Saint Padre Pio in April, our friend Pornchai Moontri moved the world to tears with his deeply moving post that left me and many others speechless. It was, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Not wanting to leave justice dangling, Los Angeles documentary researcher, Claire Best, caused a New Hampshire earthquake with her bombshell post, “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

That led us finally into December with the much needed shining light of the year, “The Music of Eric Genuis Inspired Advent Hope.”

And on that note, this is where I leave you until 2024. Keep the faith. Keep it close to your heart. And may the Lord Bless you and keep you in the New Year ahead.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. You may like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod

Christ the Good Shepherd

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 11/29/23 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 11/29/23

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Some Older Songs

The Covid pandemic nearly ended this blog by a priest in prison. From under its wreckage came something new, but catching up and keeping up is a steep uphill climb.

The Covid pandemic nearly ended this blog by a priest in prison. From under its wreckage came something new, but catching up and keeping up is a steep uphill climb.

November 29, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I will always be grateful to the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for seeing past the myths and agendas about the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. They got to the truth, and boldly exposed it in Bill Donohue’s recent book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse. If you are not a member of the Catholic League, please consider joining. It has done much to support the religious liberty of Catholics and has defended the reputations of Catholic priests falsely accused, including mine.

Most of our readers know that this blog began in the summer of 2009 as These Stone Walls. I had been invited by Bill Donohue to submit an article for the monthly Catholic League journal, Catalyst. My first published piece from prison was rather bluntly but truthfully titled, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.”

It was published in November 2005 just six months after Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal published a major two-part exposé about the fraudulent case against me. Together, these articles caused a bit of an uproar with denunciations coming from the activist group, SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. It was out of fear of the relentless public condemnation of accused priests that our due process rights severely eroded while most in the Church maintained a self-preserving silent distance. That tide changed just a little when the Catholic League published “SNAP Exposed.” After terrorizing priests and bishops for two decades, SNAP president David Clohessy resigned after exposure in a kickback scheme.

Besides Bill Donohue, some other high profile Catholics — though they were few — also took courageous positions in spite of ridicule. Cardinal Avery Dulles sent words of encouragement, the first I had ever heard in prison from any prelate or priest: “Your article is an important one, and hopefully will be followed by many others. Your writing, which is clear, eloquent, and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”

However, one Catholic blogger took umbrage with that. He need not be named now, but he published a mean-spirited criticism of Cardinal Dulles, chastising him for reaching out (technically, reaching “in”) to a convicted priest in prison. When it was read in Australia, a writer there urged me to allow her to start a blog in my name. At about the same time, Father Richard John Neuhaus published an influential editorial about my trial in First Things magazine entitled, “A Kafkaesque Tale.”

One month later in 2008, Cardinal Dulles asked in a letter to me in prison that I consider “adding a new chapter to the volume of Christian writing from those unjustly in prison.” He asked that I add to the voices of some who had already become my spiritual heroes: St. Maximilian Kolbe, Fr Walter Ciszek, Fr Alfred Delp, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If Cardinal Dulles were to make this request today, he would surely add Cardinal George Pell. All had inspired me. All had become a part of my life in prison.

Then Cardinal Dulles died on December 12, 2008, the Feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. His good friend, Father Richard John Neuhaus, who joined him in eternal life just three weeks later, eulogized him in First Things: “We thank God for love’s fire that burned to the end, and we pray that the truth to which he bore tireless witness, is now opened to him in the fullness of the Beatific Vision for which he longed with nothing less than everything.”

Thus These Stone Walls was born in 2009. It was my friend, Pornchai Moontri who suggested its name from a 17th Century poem, “To Althea from Prison,” by Richard Lovelace:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.

This blog began in conflict but it also began in friendship. What started off as a negative slur against me and Cardinal Dulles turned into something life-changing, for both me and others. I recently recalled this story with my friend, Pornchai Moontri, who is now free in Thailand, but struggling to reclaim the life that was long ago taken from him. On September 23, to mark the start of my 30th year unjustly in prison, Pornchai wrote a deeply moving post about what happened to both of us and what this blog has accomplished in our lives. It made me cry. It also many of our readers cry, but not all tears are tears of sorrow. Pornchai’s post was, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Some Older Songs Must Now Be Sung Anew

My apologies and thanks to the great Marguerite Johnson for lending me a title for this post from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her acclaimed 1970 autobiography. Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928, Marguerite began writing under the pen name, Maya Angelou at age 25 in 1953, the year I was born. She went on to become a celebrated American poet, novelist, screenplay writer, actress, film director, and an icon of the American Civil Rights movement. Her writing began in trauma, as did mine, and her trauma was followed by seven years of silence. During those seven years, Maya Angelou did not speak at all.

Some of our readers have seen the graphic atop this post before. As the Covid pandemic engulfed the world in 2020, writing from my present location became difficult to the point at which I was almost effectively silenced. Then, after publishing over 500 posts, These Stone Walls, our earlier version of this blog, collapsed entirely in October of 2020 as Covid shutdowns swept the world, and swept away my ability to write and publish from prison.

At the same time my writing from prison was collapsing, my friend Pornchai Moontri was spending five horrible months awaiting deportation in ICE detention packed 70 to a room during the worst of the Covid pandemic. I wrote of what happened in our first post for the newer version of this blog which we renamed, Beyond These Stone Walls. Posted on November II, 2020, I described the loss of our earlier blog in “Life Goes On Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls.”

Then this caged bird began to sing again — and without that awful mask! Now here we are, three years later, and we are running into a problem for which I need your help and patience. When These Stone Walls collapsed in 2020, we left behind more than 500 past posts that now exist in a sort of archival limbo uploaded to a computer in New York. They need to be restored one by one and then reformatted to fit the host venue at Beyond These Stone Walls. This is a time-consuming process and, as you know, I can do none of it myself. I have no access to a computer or the internet and have never actually even seen this blog.

Longtime readers may have noticed that some posts in the last month or two seem vaguely familiar. Some — especially posts about Sacred Scripture which readers seem to appreciate — follow the Church’s three-year liturgical cycle for Mass readings. For special feasts and observances, I have been asking our editor to retrieve a past post to restore and update it for posting anew. Sometimes these posts are updated to the point at which they are entirely new. Occasionally, readers note that a post seems to have been “recycled.”

Our volunteer editor spends many days preparing my new posts for publication by embedding links and choosing graphics — sometimes even creating new and inspiring graphics from scratch. It would not be possible for her to format and publish new posts while also trying to restore more than 500 older posts one by one. I resolve part of the problem by occasionally restoring a relevant older post and then posting it anew. But they are not simply “reruns.” These restored posts go through a lot of re-editing with new and updated content.

Over the last year or so, many readers have asked me to consider editing our past posts into a book format for a published journal similar to the three-volume Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell. I don’t think I have written anything worthy of such a project, but the bigger problem is that nearly everything I have written over the I4-year life of this blog has been for an electronic format. It would be a massive effort for even an experienced editor to accomplish the task of converting over 500 blog posts for publishing in a book. I cannot even see my own blog and have no access to past posts beyond what is in my own mind, so I could accomplish none of this myself.

God Alone Knows What the Future Holds

Two years ago, I thought that any hope for justice in my life was a ship that had long since sailed. You may have read of our experience with New Hampshire judges who have simply declined to review any new evidence or witnesses in this matter. Ryan MacDonald wrote of this in “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.”

Then at the beginning of 2022 Ryan MacDonald also wrote of a new development in, “Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest.” Along with that came a new hope for justice, but it is justice against the tide and there are many people with nefarious agendas committed to preventing it.

However, I have declined to allow any fundraising toward this end. Many of our readers contributed generously to an appeal effort several years ago only to have it dashed in the end by New Hampshire judges who declined to hold hearings in the matter. We described how and why this was so in “Why This Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison.” In the arena of justice, little has changed since then except perhaps in the court of public opinion.

I also know that all of our readers endured the same financial burdens I did during the long pandemic shutdown worldwide. Other countries have suffered much more than America did. In recent days, I have learned that some 24 young men from Thailand — who sought migrant labor in Israel to support their families — are now held captive by Hamas terrorists in tunnels under Palestine. As I write this, 10 have been released back to the Thai government after spending six weeks in hellish captivity underground. Many more of these young workers from Thailand were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists on October 7. I plan to write more about this soon. These innocent bystanders had nothing to do with the issues behind their captivity. They are captives of terrorists now only because they are poor.

But I cannot now shun all fundraising without also silencing my own voice. Toward the end of each year, fees for our platform and domain come due along with fees from a few services that help in the management of this site. Along with those costs, I must also, at this time, order Mass supplies and typing ribbons for the coming year. And I have to eat and replace some tattered clothing. Prisoners must also provide a co-pay for medical services. And, as many of you know I sacrifice to continue assistance to my friend, Pornchai, who could have easily been among those who were killed or in captivity in Gaza as they sought migrant work to support themselves and their loved ones.

So in the month before Christmas each year, I count on our readers for help, if able. Please visit our “Contact and Support” page for how. Thank you for considering this.

I was a Beatles fan as a youth in the 1960s. They were radical then but now they are just “old school.” Several years after the 2001 death of George Harrison, a group of musicians from that era led by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr appeared in a tribute to George Harrison on PBS. It featured many of the songs Harrison wrote for the Beatles and others. One of them was the haunting ode, “All Things Must Pass.”

The song depressed me at first, but now it inspires me. What kind of world would this be if none of us ever left it behind? This humble blog must also one day pass. I am not Jesus so my words will all one day pass away. But in the meantime, there is Truth to be told for as long as I have a voice and a forum to tell it. Unlike most Catholic blogs, this one comes to you in spite of many hurdles.

There are hopeful signs still, including a resurgence of interest in the matter of justice. And as for this Voice in the Wilderness, there is new interest there as well. The popular Catholic site, GloriaTV established a page to present some of my posts which has increased traffic to BTSW substantially.

However, no one brought more timely meaning and light to these pages than the late Cardinal George Pell of Australia. A white martyr for the cause of truth and justice, his voice seems louder and clearer now than ever. It was most recently heard in my post, “Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: If you have not already done so, please share my recent post, “Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod” which also addresses the recent plight of Bishop Joseph Strickland which has roiled the entire Church.

**The late Cardinal Avery Dulles and Father Richard John Neuhaus, who passed from this life just three weeks apart, and just as this blog which they spawned was beginning.**

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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