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.

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

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.”

Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of this World

At Christmas 2023 the world is frazzled by the winds of war: Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Hamas, the Culture Wars, the political wars, and even a divisive Catholic war.

At Christmas by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“I have often thought it very well that Christmas should fall out in the Middle of Winter.”

— Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English poet and statesman

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Because of the limits under which I write, I had to begin to ponder this Christmas post just a few days after publishing “Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel” on December 6 this year. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not make the leap from what happened to those young Thai men at the vicious hands of Hamas to find any joy in Advent hope and a Christmas spirit. I am hearing of a similar quandary from lots of readers.

Then, when the mail arrived later that same day, I picked up my copy of the December 6 edition of the National Catholic Register a very good newspaper owned by EWTN. On the front page was a large, simple, but beautiful Advent candle array with the inscription, “O Come, Divine Messiah ... .” It was very nice.

But that was all above the fold. As I flipped the paper over to see below the fold, I was assailed by the glaring headline, “Searching for Answers : Why Was Bishop Joseph Strickland Removed?” Just to the right of it on the front page was an op-ed by Fr Raymond De Souza declaring Bishop Strickland to be the former Bishop of Tyler, Texas and the current “Bishop of Twitter.”

Father De Souza ended his op-ed with a criticism that Bishop Strickland could have attended the US Bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore even after his removal, but “preferred to pray the Rosary outside as the still-presiding Bishop of Twitter.” I was in no mood by then to make light of what happened to Bishop Strickland. The NC Register news account on the same page ended with a statement that Bishop Strickland was asked by the Apostolic Nuncio not  to attend the USCCB meeting.

This edition of the NC Register was dated December 6. The news account about Bishop Strickland continued on page 6, and the op-ed by Fr De Souza also continued on page 6. There were a lot of sixes in this story. Three, to be exact.

Then, on the heels of this, it was announced that the honorable and ever faithful Cardinal Raymond Burke was told to vacate his apartment in Rome and was stripped of his retirement income and any official position. No public reason was given, but the assumption of many is that both men were removed for being critical of Pope Francis. I am loathe to jump to such a conclusion, but in the absence of any other plausible one it is what most Catholics conclude.

On “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo” on EWTN on November 30 (replayed on December 5), the guests included the Catholic Register Vatican reporter Edward Pentin and Damien Thompson from The Spectator of London. Of interest, I quoted both men at length in my recent post, “Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truths and the Synod.” On EWTN, both men drew the same conclusions that I described above. It was riveting, but profoundly sad.

This all seems embarrassingly petty next to the non-Catholic headlines running parallel to it: Russia’s imperial crushing of Ukraine, the Hamas brutality in Israel, Israel’s apocalyptic response, and the woke world’s decision to not see or speak the truth about the grotesquely inhuman physical and sexual violence Hamas has inflicted on innocent victims.

The Ukraine, Russian, Israeli and Hamas battles will not pause for Advent and Christmas while the relatively petty Catholic battles seem to have chosen Advent and Christmas for their escalation. That is difficult to get past. Can we move Christmas to mid-summer when many battlefields take a time-out from the heat? I suppose not.

But we can do the next best thing. We can pause for more than just a cursory time-out to honor the Birth of the Messiah. So we are repeating our BTSW Christmas card of past years with new inspired music videos, some thoughts on Christmas, a few links to inspiring Christmas posts, and an invitation to come together in a time of Eucharistic Adoration in the chapel of our Patron, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who was no stranger to the winds of war.

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How December 25 Became Christmas

Father Abraham first heard God 21 centuries before a star rose above Bethlehem. We now live in the 21st century after. At the center of all things, Christ is born.

“For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, thy all-powerful Word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed.”

— Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15

No one really knows when or why tradition first places the Birth of Christ on December 25th, but the custom is ancient. Some theorize that it was influenced by a Roman pagan feast called Saturnalia that stretched for twelve days from the winter solstice into January. The “Twelve Days of Christmas” are thus linked by some historians to pre-Christian Roman tradition. The Persian cult of Mithra, “Sol Invictus” (the “Unconquerable Sun”) practiced by many Roman legionnaires, was also marked on December 25th, and some propose a link between that and the date for Christmas.

However the observance of Christ’s birth on December 25th is far older than the time when Christianity became respectable in the Roman Empire. The first recorded mention of December 25 as the date of observance of the Feast of the Holy Birth was in a Roman document called the Philocalian Calendar dated as early as 336 A.D. Popular observance of the December 25 date of the Nativity, however, was at least a century older.

One obscure theory points to an early Roman Empire legend that great men are fated to die on the same date they were conceived. One tradition traced the date of Passover at or near March 25 in the year Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. If thus among some Romans it became popular belief that he was conceived on that date, then nine months to the day later would be December 25. In the Roman Calendar which preceded our Gregorian Calendar, March 25 was considered the first day of the new year, and to this day it remains observed as the Feast of the Annunciation.

The Roman Martyrology also includes a solemn and far more ancient reach into Judeo-Christian Tradition. The “Proclamation of the Birth of Christ” is sometimes read at the Midnight Mass at Christmas after a procession from the entrance of a church to the Nativity scene. That proclamation places us at a special point in Salvation history. In fact, from our perspective, it places Christ at the very center of that history.

The Proclamation declares that Christ was born in the 21st century after Abraham, our Father in faith, ventured out of Ur of the Chaldees and first encountered God. We now live in the 21st century after. So we kneel before Him this Christmas season knowing that Christ is exactly equidistant between us and the very genesis of the human experience of God. It’s a realization that ought to shake us out of our political and theological divisions, out of our spiritual doldrums, out of any more mundane concerns.

Instead of quibbling over who among the alienated might be saved and how, this Christmas makes us fall on our knees, in sin and error pining, as He appears and our souls feel their worth. All divisions cease.

The Roman Martyrology Proclamation of the Birth of Christ:

The twenty-fifth day of December when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created the heavens and earth, and formed man in His own likeness; when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace — In the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the people of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; in the tenth century since David was anointed King; in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel; in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the founding of Rome; in the forty-second year in the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace — Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since His conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man.

— The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh

O Come! Let us adore Him!

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Credit: Jobs for Felons Hub

Our Christmas Card from East of Eden

I am forced by circumstance to live in a place with men who are banished, not just from home and family and freedom, but too often also from hope. Some with even the darkest pasts have come into the light to thrill us with their stories of grace and true repentance and conversion. You have read of several in these pages and there are other stories yet to come. Some of these wounded men become saints, I am not fit to fasten their sandals.

We live East of Eden, a place from which the Magi of the Gospel saw a star and heard good news, the very best of news: Freedom can be found in only one place, and the way there is to follow the Star they followed. If you follow Beyond These Stone Walls, never follow me. Follow only Christ.

My Christmas card to you is this message, a tradition of sorts from behind these stone walls. My small, barred cell window faces East. It is there that I offer Mass for readers Beyond These Stone Walls. So my gaze is always toward the East, a place to which we were all once banished to wander East of Eden.

At the end of these cold and gray December days I step outside to watch toward the West as the sun descends behind towering prison walls. It reminds me of my favorite prayer,

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path, but now, Lead Thou me on.
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: Remember not past years.

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still will lead me on,
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone.
And with the morn those Angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

— Saint John Henry Newman

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Here is composer Eric Genuis with his original composition of Panis Angelicus, courtesy of Catholic TV.

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Here is the great Celine Dion with my favorite Christmas hymn, “O Holy Night.”

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 Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God

A story out of time for our time: The Prophet Isaiah wrote of Cyrus, King of the Persian Empire who knew not God but was chosen by God to restore freedom to Israel.

October 11, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, attacked the Nation of Israel with an ongoing barrage of long-range missiles. At this writing, the Israeli death toll exceeds 1,000 with thousands of others critically wounded or missing. Many Israeli citizens are being held hostage under Hamas death threats. Just weeks earlier, the Biden Adminstration “unfroze” $6 billion in Iran assets in exchange for Iran’s release of five prisoners.

Many believe that the payment of such ransom to belligerent regimes increases the likelihood of a rogue state continuing to take hostages and hold them in Iranian prisons. Many others believe that these funds were ultimately used to supply and help launch the Hamas attack on Israel. The Wall Street Journal has since reported that Iran is indeed behind this attack and plotted it along with Hamas for weeks.

Hamas is a Palestinian group that has grown dramatically in recent years. It seeks to create a single Islamic state in historic Palestine, which is now largely divided between Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hamas in Arabic means “zealot,” and is an acronym for “Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya,” or “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The group was founded in 1988 as a militant segment of the Palestinian Arab national movement which became gradually radicalized.

Hamas openly seeks Israel’s destruction and this attack has the same impact in Israel that September 11, 2001 had on the United States. If the Islamic Republic of Iran is indeed behind the funding and/or arming of this attack, the free world has to investigate and come to a definitive conclusion.

Ironically, I began working on this post on the very day Israel was attacked. The irony is that my post is about Cyrus the Great, the Sixth Century BC King of the Persian Empire in what is now modern day Iran. King Cyrus is the subject of a reading from the Prophet Isaiah (45:1) at Sunday Mass on October 22, this year:

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed.”

Read on, please, because this Cyrus, pulled from the pages of Biblical history as the ancestor of contemporary Iran, was once the salvation of Israel.

In Defense of Religious Liberty

With only rare variations in any given week, between seventy and eighty percent of the readers of Beyond These Stone Walls are in the United States. Typically, until recently, readers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, comprised most of the remaining twenty to thirty percent. Most recently, this has changed, and the top countries visiting this blog now vary greatly.

I have noticed from weekly traffic reports that readers in other countries actually increase when I write about current events in the United States. It is hard for me to NOT write about some developments especially when they fall within the realm of human rights and religious freedom. If I fail to address what seems to capture the attention of an entire nation, then I feel as though I am overlooking the elephant in the sacristy. It may seem understandable, but nations that are emerging with large numbers of readers of this blog now include Thailand, Singapore, Ukraine (which greatly surprised me), Nepal, Germany and sometimes Israel.

I recently received a snail-mail letter from “Frances” writing from the United Kingdom. She is a long time reader who occasionally comments on my posts. Here is an interesting excerpt from her letter which gave me a bit of much needed perspective:

“A lot of your posts recently have been about the state of your country and upcoming elections. I often consider the differences between our two countries and sometimes I wonder why people are so surprised by public opposition in the USA to the Catholic Church. Here in England, we are still grateful not to be hanged, drawn and quartered, or crushed to death. A practicing Catholic here could not in reality serve as Prime Minister, and it would be very difficult for a Catholic to be a member of Parliament. I think they would have to make too many compromises.

“Some might claim to be Catholic, but looking at what they do and how they vote, that is questionable. We are used to this situation. We take it for granted that we are the ‘outsiders’ swimming against the tide of public opinion, patriotism, and respectability. With the help of God, we just persevere. But in your country now, the Church seems to have gone from being accepted and respected to being persecuted.”

The persecution is not as overt as it was in post-Reformation England. We will not see Catholics hanged, or drawn and quartered. What we will see — what we are about to see — is a shameless display of Catholic accommodations to the political left’s march further left. The present “Catholic” US President comes to mind. So does the current Bishop of San Diego. In a 2020 rebuttal to Father James Altman, that Bishop wrote that denying the Eucharist to a pro-choice Catholic politician means that we must also deny the Eucharist to anyone who does not accept climate change. That bishop has since been elevated by Pope Francis to Cardinal. Sometimes the most stinging assaults on our Faith come from within.

There are other Catholic leaders, however, who have stood out with courage and integrity in defense of Catholic moral teaching. One — though surprising to some — is Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, who penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal  in 2018 entitled, “The Democrats Abandon Catholics.” It was an honest and faithful assessment of the state of the Democratic Party and its betrayal of Catholics who embrace the Church’s traditional defense of life. Others who come immediately to mind are Cardinal Raymond Burke, and the immensely faithful leader, Bishop Joseph E. Strickland.

In Defense of Jerusalem

It was inspiring to see Cardinal Dolan defend the truth against an anti-Catholic onslaught of biased rhetoric from politicians who court Catholic votes while carrying out a frontal assault on Catholic beliefs. The greatest tragedy to befall the Catholic Church in the United States was to accommodate itself to the culture in which it lives. Church leaders became comfortable in America, then they amassed political power, then they tried to hide the corruption that always accompanies the quest to retain power. There is no more vivid example than the career path of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick whose distortion of the Church’s mandate for the culture of life was laid bare in my post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life.”

The precarious state of religion in this culture, and especially the state of Catholicism in America, has an important historical precedent. As Pope Francis steers the Church into a Synod on Synodality, a controvery between Tradition and accommodation to culture is leaving us scattered. I raised an important question in my post, “Will Pope Francis Stand Against Catholic Schism?” The great cultural divide threatens to leave one side or the other in exile from this Church. The leadership needed in defense of our Faith does not appear to be coming from the sources we might hope for. When I looked at the Mass readings chosen long ago for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time in our liturgical cycle this year, the Prophet Isaiah left me wondering whether we are looking in the right place.

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I grasp, subduing nations before him, and making kings run in his service, opening doors before him, and leaving the gates unbarred: For the sake of Jacob, my servant, of Israel, my chosen one, I have called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not. I am the Lord and there is no other; there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the Lord. There is no other.”

— Isaiah 45:1, 4-6

The Scripture quote above is the First Reading for the Mass of Sunday October 22 this month. Ordinarily, I would have posted this analysis of it on the Wednesday before, which would be October 18. However, the Gospel Reading on that Sunday refers to a cornerstone of our Faith, so I am posting this a week ahead to accommodate the Gospel.

There is little known of the Prophet Isaiah except that he lived in Jerusalem and his prophetic activity extended from about 740 BC to 701 BC, a period of about forty years. In the passage above, the Lord, through Isaiah, is addressing a man named Cyrus who is called by God and given power and a title, “though you knew me not.” The power and authority given to Cyrus is not for Cyrus, but rather so that “the people may know that there is none besides me. I am the Lord.”

Two centuries after the prophesies of Isaiah, in 597 BC, Israel fell under the armies of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. This account, told in the Second Book of Kings (Ch. 24ff) resulted in two waves of exile of the Jews into Babylon. In the first wave, in 597 BC, Israel’s leaders were compromised and taken away. This undermining of the leaders was for the purpose of destroying the religious identity of the people. Then, in 586 BC, the real devastation came. Babylon destroyed the Temple and the entire city of Jerusalem, and sent the remaining Jews into exile.

Then, some two centuries after first appearing in the prophecy of Isaiah, God took the right hand of a man named Cyrus, who knew not God, and subdued nations before him, placed kings in his service, opened doors and unbarred gates just as predicted. Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and all its surrounding regions to become first King of the Persian Empire — which again includes present day Iran. Cyrus did not live a lifestyle that the People of God had any reason to respect. He did not appear to believe in anything but himself.

But Cyrus had one quirky trait that seemed to have been instilled in him by a much Higher Authority. Despite his personally sinful lifestyle and quest for Earthly powers, Cyrus developed a deep respect for the Jews and their Faith, even though he personally shared in none of it. The Lord God had groomed him, knocked down kingdoms before him, so Cyrus did what only the Emperor of the Persian Empire could do. He issued an edict ordering the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem and its Temple, and he returned the Chosen People from their fifty-year exile in 539 BC to the land of Israel earning him an honored place in Judaism and Salvation History.

The Prophet Ezra and the Decree of Cyrus

The Prophet Isaiah presents Cyrus as appearing in about 545 BC as the hope for Jerusalem. He is bestowed by Isaiah with a rather lofty title, “the anointed of Yahweh.” Such a title marked the beginning of the era of messianic prophecy for Israel. The title would have been seen as a great insult to the Jews, but they came to view Cyrus from his present actions and not his past lifestyle. Isaiah (44:28) expanded his title to “Shepherd of Israel,” in recognition of the strangest trait that was found in him: his almost obsessive insistence on the promotion of religious liberty and the establishment of laws that will guarantee and protect it for the Jewish People and for Israel.

In regard to the restoration of Israel, this hope was fulfilled in 538 BC when Cyrus ordered the protection of the Jews and their return to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of their Temple from the treasury of the Persian Empire. The full text of the Decree of Cyrus appears in the Book of the Prophet Ezra (6:3-5), a passage once doubted for its authenticity but now accepted as authentic by modern Scripture scholars:

“In the first year of Cyrus the King, a decree concerning the House of God in Jerusalem: Let the House be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices are offered and burnt offerings are brought. Its height shall be sixty cubits and its breadth sixty cubits with three courses of great stone and one course of timber. Let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. And also let the gold and silver vessels of the House of God which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the Temple be brought to Babylon to be restored and then returned to the Temple in Jerusalem, each to its place in the House of God.”

— Ezra 6:3-5

The Prophet Ezra went on to describe that some of the restoration of Jerusalem was interrupted by local vassal kings who did not believe that the conquering tyrant, Cyrus, would issue such an order. A complaint was made by a local governor to Darius I, King of Hystaspis, that the Jews were rebuilding the city. Darius then found an authenticated copy of the Decree of Cyrus, and ordered that the Temple and reconstruction of the city will be continued with no further hindrance. This was the same King Darius, by the way, who threw Daniel into the lions’ den (Daniel 6:6ff).

Is there a point of understanding to be considered from all this in our present time? Only you can arrive at such a conclusion. I have already arrived at mine, and I must come down on the side of religious liberty. I am tired of seeing the Little Sisters of the Poor having to defend themselves in never ending court proceedings. I am tired of listening to hapless bishops equate the immorality of 70-million prenatal executions with “climate change.” I shuddered when the Pentagon announced in 2020 that the U.S. Navy would halt all Catholic Masses on Naval bases — a decision that was mercifully reversed from higher up. I shuddered, as should all of you, when I read the FBI memos calling for investigations of Traditional Catholics who were equated with radicalized groups. I was inspired when the immediate past President, in a Cyrus-like gesture, ordered that the United States Embassy to Israel must be restored to its rightful spiritual Capital, Jerusalem.

Our Temple is rebuilt from within ourselves. Catholics must not acquiesce to exile and accommodation to a culture turning from God. Our faith and our vote are not mutually exclusive.

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The Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great (Courtesy of the United States Military Academy, West Point)

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

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage

The Holy Spirit and the Book of Ruth at Pentecost

Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

Left in Afghanistan: Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS-K, Credibility

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.”

Cry Freedom! Saint Paul and a Prisoner of the Apocalypse

Two prior posts from Beyond These Stone Walls revisit the ideal of freedom, what it means to find it, what it costs to keep it, what it takes to give it to another.

Some readers who are aware of my day to day life as a guest of the state have heard that I was held in a high security quarantine dormitory setting for the entire month of May and part of June this year. I did write briefly of this just before it happened, but it seems that what I wrote was too cryptic. I just received a letter from a reader who wanted to launch a petition over my continued heightened confinement. Please don't show up here with picket signs. I am now liberated from my dungeon.

I was not technically in quarantine. Due to a planned construction project where I was living, I and 23 others were moved to an unused dormitory space that had been previously set up as a Covid-19 triage and quarantine area. It commenced on May 1 and was supposed to last for just ten days at which time, it was promised, we would all move back to our housing assignments.

The construction ran into obstacles, however, and the predicted ten days ultimately turned into forty. During that time, I was pretty much locked into a crowded, noisy room with 23 other disgruntled prisoners. I had no access to my typewriter while there so writing was extremely difficult. Somehow, I still managed to write three posts, but with great difficulty. One of them was for my 39th anniversary of priesthood entitled, “It Is the Duty of a Priest to Never Lose Sight of Heaven.”

I wrote that post “by fits and starts,” a term meaning “haphazardly” that has gone out of style in writing. I wrote that post only in my mind. I was still able to work, as needed but with greatly reduced hours, in the prison law library where I am the sole legal clerk. There is an old manual typewriter there, so I managed to type that post over two hours one afternoon. I mailed it just at the final deadline to have it posted on time. I hope its troubled creation was not so evident.

I could not bring myself to complain about the forty-day confinement. I was constantly aware that our friend, Pornchai Moontri, spent five full months in ICE detention awaiting deportation in a room of the same size, but housing 60 to 70 detainees at any one time. That story should become another BTSW classic post on freedom. The gripping story is told in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”

More importantly, it was also impossible for me to offer Mass during my stay in what I can only describe as “a FEMA shelter without the disaster.” I had hoped to offer Mass on June 6, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi this year and the anniversary of my First Mass on the day after my priesthood ordination on June 5, 1982. But it was not meant to be. After forty days, we were all finally liberated and returned to the place in which I have lived since July of 2017.

It is difficult for me to believe that it was four years ago this month that Pornchai and I were finally moved to that better housing. For the previous 23 years — 12 for Pornchai — we were prisoners in a building housing 504 prisoners but built for half that number. There was little to no access to the outside. It contained all the trouble and chaos that such constant confinement brings.

But we are now free from that. Even in a state of unjust imprisonment, I can honor Independence Day and thank God for the freedoms I have. I am free to write to the world beyond these stone walls which means more to me than you may know.

As I pondered Independence Day in America this year, I realized that it falls on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. This time is anything but ordinary for me and Pornchai. When I looked at the Mass readings for that day, I noted that I wrote of those same readings for Independence Day six years ago. So I want to invite you to visit that post anew. It is the story of Saint Paul and his plea to be free of his famous but cryptic “thorn in the flesh.”

The second post I want to present anew is a memorable one you also may have previously read. It is brief, but you should not miss it.

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Independence Day: St Paul and His Thorn in the Flesh

A Mass Reading from Second Corinthians on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time conveys Saint Paul’s thorny lesson about freedom and power. Our world has it all wrong.

It is not by design, but the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time falls on Independence Day in the United States in 2021. The Mass readings assigned to that day (Lectionary 101 – Year B) have an important lesson about the nature of freedom and the source of true power. The lesson’s focal point, as in every Mass, is the Gospel (Mark 6:1-6). Jesus concludes that the people in his own “native place” would not hear Him, but “only took offense at Him.” I certainly know the feeling.

These were his own people. The Gospel mentions that they knew Joseph. They knew Mary. They knew some of the Apostles, but Jesus “was amazed by their lack of faith.” He concluded famously that “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). It is having confronted that reality that the Mission of Christ Universal begins to unfold.

As I read this Gospel passage, I thought of a letter sent to me two years ago by Cardinal Raymond Burke. In it, he expressed his concern for my plight and asked for my prayers for him and for the Church. His words suggesting that I offer some of what I endure for a greater good — “pro bono Ecclesiae,” a phrase taught to us recently in Father Stuart MacDonald’s provocative post, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.”

Cardinal Burke’s request that I suffer for something greater than suffering was an honor without measure. I wrote of this in a Christmas post last year. Here is an excerpt from my post, “Silent Night and the Dawn of Redeeming Grace.”

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This letter is among the best Christmas gifts I have received out here among the Church’s debris, and it came as a source of grace, a sort of awakening. What follows may be the most important sentence in this post: There is no greater service to those who suffer than to give meaning to what they suffer.

A few months after my receipt of Cardinal Burke’s letter, a bishop came to this prison to offer Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday. Our friend, Pornchai Moontri and I were among the fifty Catholic prisoners gathered in the prison chapel for Mass. You know Divine Mercy Sunday is a special day for us.

After the Mass, as we filed out, the Bishop grasped my hand and said something very strange to me. He had obviously been reading These Stone Walls. As he took my hand, he bent forward a bit and said quietly but forcefully, “You are a prophet! YOU are a prophet.” There was no further exchange.

As we descended down the long flights of stairs outside, my friend, Pornchai said, “Wow! That was weird. What do you think it means?” I responded sarcastically, “If the Church is consistent, it means my head is about to be lopped off!”

Our prophets do not fare very well. In Scripture, some were thrown into prison. The Prophet Jeremiah was stoned to death. According to legend, the Prophet Isaiah was sawed in half. The Prophet Jonah was thrown overboard. John the Baptist was beheaded. Saint Paul was shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned, and finally martyred.

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As the great Saint Teresa of Avila once said to God in prayer, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder that you have so few!”

The Gospel is, of course, the centerpiece of the Liturgy of the Word, but on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time it is the Second Reading that really leaps off the page in my quest for my own Independence Day. It is Saint Paul’s famous account from the Second Letter to the Corinthians (12:7-10) about his thorn in the flesh:

“… A thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ ”

— 2 Corinthians 12:7-8

Scripture scholars — both real and imagined — have pondered for centuries to decipher what this cryptic thorn in the flesh could mean. Some have interpreted it to mean a physical ailment or disability of some sort that rendered Paul weak and challenged. His phrase, “my power is made perfect in weakness” lends itself to that theory when you consider the vast influence he has had on the growth of Christianity.

THE AGENT OF SATAN

Others have suggested that his thorn in the flesh was the manifestation of some mental illness which, in Saint Paul’s time, was often described in Jewish tradition as a manifestation of Satan or some other demonic attack. His words, “to beat me, to keep me from being too elated” suggest a sense of personal diminishment that could support a theory about some mental condition such as bouts of chronic depression or anxiety.

In more modern times, some have suggested with a straight face that the thorn in the flesh could be an allusion to some morally compromising sexual proclivity over which Paul experienced little self-control. I believe that all three of these theories are incorrect, and the third one is far more descriptive of the preoccupations of our own time than Saint Paul’s.

I have formed my own conclusions about Paul’s mysterious “thorn in the flesh,” and they come from a more panoramic understanding not just of what he wrote, but also of who he was — and is. I believe his “thorn in the flesh” is a person, someone who stood in hostile opposition to Paul and his missionary activities.

Saint Paul, formerly Saul, was a Jew born in the town of Tarsus in the Roman Province of Celicia. In his Letter to the Romans (11:1) he revealed that he was from the Tribe of Benjamin. He was also a Roman citizen which gave him certain rights and privileges. In Acts of the Apostles (22:25-29) Paul was about to be scourged by a Roman tribune. When it was learned that he was a Roman citizen by birth, the punishment was halted.

Paul was also a zealous member of the Pharisees (Acts 26:5). This meant that in Jewish circles, he was highly educated in the law and Jewish Scripture and traditions. His writing has to be seen in this context, and the phrases he used have to be weighed against the Hebrew Scriptures with which he was thoroughly familiar.

In those Scriptures, the word, “thorns” is often symbolically used to refer to enemies. The context for its use by Paul in the excerpt from Second Corinthians cited above was not that the “thorn in my flesh” was placed there by Satan, but rather is described as “an agent of Satan.” This presents an impression that this thorn is a person in hostile opposition to Paul.

As a Pharisee, Paul would have been thoroughly familiar with the Torah, the Books of Moses held to be especially sacred. The Book of Numbers, which is a re-telling of the Exodus story and the arrival of the Israelites in the Promised Land, contains an allusion with which Paul would have been very familiar:

“But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your side.”

— Numbers 33:55

Saint Paul’s description of this “thorn” as a “servant” or “angel” (messenger) of Satan suggests that Paul was faced with a growing personal hostility and oppression from someone within his own community. By “his own community,” I mean his Jewish community and not the community of believers in “The Way.” It was more likely someone in the Jewish community who oppressed Paul because his allusion to the thorn as depicting an enemy is a purely Old Testament Jewish symbolism.

So the only remaining mystery is not “what” the thorn in his flesh was but rather who. It was during Paul’s Second Missionary Journey commencing in 50 A.D. that he established the Church in Corinth, a city in Greece on the Isthmus of Corinth. Paul remained there for over a year, but before departing he was viciously attacked by an unnamed enemy (2 Corinthians 11:13).

The unnamed enemy may well be the thorn in Saint Paul’s flesh. Paul was a Pharisee who had previously persecuted Christians, capturing them and handing them over for stoning. He was deeply committed to the Pharisaic tradition of maintaining legal and ritual purity for the Jews. Now Paul was promoting this new faith, and not only promoting it, but actively welcoming gentiles to its ranks.

It was during his Third Missionary Journey to Macedonia that he wrote the Second Letter to the Corinthians in 53 A.D. He wrote it from Philippi in Macedonia. Then, proceeding to Corinth, he wrote his Letter to the Romans. At the time he wrote both Second Corinthians and Romans, he began to speak of his impending imprisonment and martyrdom.

Saint Paul’s allusion that “Three times I begged the Lord” about the thorn in his flesh, i.e., the hostility he encountered — likely refers to a leader in the Jewish community. Using the past tense, “begged,” infers that he has stopped begging, and has accepted the answer that came to him:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power [the power of God] is made perfect in [your] weakness.”

The power Paul encounters is manifested in his acceptance of weakness, meaning his acceptance that it is not his own gifts and talents that are driving the bus on this mission:

“I will rather boast: most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

— 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Independence Day thus dawned for the Apostle Paul.

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Left Behind: In Prison for the Apocalypse

This medium security prison has a library where I have been a prisoner-clerk for the last ten years. Its shelves are stocked with 21,000 volumes. With an average of 1,000 visits, and some 3,000 books checked out each month, the library is a literary hub intersecting virtually every facet of prison life. But there is a lot more going on than books flying off the shelves.

There are few proud moments in prison, but one of mine came in the form of a second-hand message from my friend Skooter, now free. Two months after Skooter ascended through the corrections system to finally hit the streets, another friend of his was sent back to prison for a parole violation.

That friend came to the library one day, and standing at my desk, said, “You’re the guy who broke Skooter out of prison!” The man explained that he lived near Skooter in a seedy urban rooming house while both were unemployed and barely surviving in their first few months on parole. He said that Skooter had been unable to land a job, working in temp jobs for minimum wage and at times faced with a choice between food and rent.

It is an all-too-familiar account for young men struggling to emerge not just from a prison, but from a past. Skooter came very close to giving up, the friend said, but often spoke of his “wanting very much not to disappoint you” by coming back to prison. “So he stayed the course,” said the friend, “and now he’s gotten his life together.”

I first met Skooter several years earlier, one of the scores of aimless, rootless, fatherless, uneducated young men for whom prison can become a warehouse, a place in which thousands of “Skooters” store their aimless, hopeless futures. One day as we slowly ascended the multiple flights of stairs to be checked in at the Education Floor where the prison library is located, Skooter told me with a sense of shame that, at age 24, he had never learned to read or write.

Having resisted all the concerted efforts to recruit him into any number of prison gangs that would only foster his ignorance and exploit it, Skooter became a regular fixture in the prison library. For an hour a day there, I and other prisoners worked with Skooter to teach him to read and write.

My friend, Pornchai Moontri tutored him in math, Skooter’s most feared academic nemesis. We made sure he didn’t starve, and in return, he struggled relentlessly toward earning his high school diploma in prison, a steep ascent in a place that by its very nature fosters humiliation and shuns personal empowerment.

One day, shortly before his high school graduation in May 2011, Skooter came charging into the library looking defeated. He plopped before me the previous day’s copy of USA Today, opened to a full-page ad by some self-proclaimed Prophet-of-the-End-Time announcing that the world is to end on May 21, 2011, a week before Graduation Day.

“It’s just my luck’” lamented Skooter. “I do all this work and the world’s gonna end just before I graduate.” “It’s not true,” I said calmly. “It MUST be true,” Skooter shot back. “They wouldn’t put it in the paper if it wasn’t true!” Like many prisoners, and far too many others, Skooter believed that all truth was carefully vetted before ending up in newsprint.

Apocalyptic predictions sometimes play out strangely in prison. I told Skooter that back in 1999, a prisoner I knew became convinced of dire consequences from a looming technological Armageddon called “Y2K.” ‘That prisoner deduced somehow that prison officials would release toxic gas at the turn of the millennium so he spent the night of December 31 sewing his lips and eyes shut. Skooter wanted to know how the guy managed to sew that second eyelid, a small tribute to his deductive reasoning.

I pointed out to Skooter in the USA Today ad’s smaller print that this newest End-Time prediction was actually a revision of the author’s previous one set in 1994. I strongly urged Skooter not to put off studying for final exams because of this. Skooter stayed the course.

Since then, a subsequent prison policy barred all prisoners from teaching and tutoring other prisoners, a decision that effectively eliminated all of the positive influence, and none of the negative influence, that takes place in prison, driving the former underground.

Still, that graduation was Skooter’s finest moment, and one of my own as well. It was a direct result of a prison library subculture that grants every prisoner a few hours a week out of prison into an arena of books, a world of ideas, a release of huddled neurons yearning to be free.

A week after graduation, Skooter showed up in the library with a copy of The Wall Street Journal  opened to an article by science writer, Matt Ridley. The article explored evidence that the Earth’s magnetic core shifts polarity every few hundred thousand years, and pointed out with dismal foreboding that it is 780,000 years overdue. Mr. Ridley stressed that no one knows its potential impact on our global technological infrastructure.

“It’s just my luck!” lamented Skooter as he plopped the article on my desk. “Just when I was thinkin’ about college!”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please visit our “Special Events” page.

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Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic presidential nominee in U.S. history but his pro-abortion stance leaves him in broken communion with his profession of faith.

Millions of American Catholics who uphold the Right to Life as a foundational human right in accord with Catholic teaching and the Bill of Rights were disappointed in recent weeks. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices in a matter of life and death. The question before the Court was whether a Louisiana law requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was unconstitutional.

In the split (5-4) decision in favor of abortion providers, Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority in a matter from which he had earlier dissented. This may not be the setback some in the pro-life movement have feared. The Court’s ruling in support of the precedent set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey did not address the precedent itself which inserted into the Constitution a right to abortion. This is a distinction that I wrote about early this year in “March for Life: A New Great Awakening.”

The timing of publishing this decision — in the final months of a highly charged presidential battle for the soul of America — reminded me of something that unfolded in these pages during the 2016 election. At that time, I wrote a post entitled “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.”

Among a vast media leak from the Hillary Clinton campaign back then was a set of email exchanges between Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and some progressive U.S. Catholics. The leaks exposed a plan to recreate U.S. Catholicism into an entity more appealing to the Democratic Party and its ever descending slide toward the left.

The central tenet of that plan was to move American Catholics away from any identification as a “Roman” Catholic Church into a state of mere symbolic authority from Rome. The result would be something more akin to the U.S. Episcopal church and its open embrace of identity politics, reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology, and a much-weakened moral voice in the public square.

Climate change, open borders, and a global identity were to be the new moral imperatives. Abortion without limits would quietly fall without challenge into the politically correct category of “settled law.” It is easy for the living, while descending toward the left, to compartmentalize their consciences and deny a right to life to the most vulnerable among us.

Back in 2016, Pope Francis raised an alarm among conservative Catholics and the pro-life mission when he was quoted in the media as suggesting that the Church cannot speak only about abortion. The left arm in Catholicism seized upon that, but since then Pope Francis has offered some clarity. You may not know about it because the mainstream media only hypes his more trite sayings such as “Who am I to judge?”

On the matter of life, however, Francis has been as unequivocal as his predecessors, articulating clearly his support for and continuance of the pro-life emphasis of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis affirms that the foundational human right is the right to life. He has stated that the right to life and transgender ideology are the most pressing moral issues of our time. To say that the Church should not speak only of these issues does not at all suggest what the 2016 Clinton and Podesta agenda suggested: that we just set them aside and not speak of them at all.

Joe Biden’s Catholic Communion

Among the moral issues of our time, Pope Francis agrees with the U.S. Bishops that the right to life is the most fundamental human right in Catholic moral teaching. This places Democratic nominee Joe Biden far outside the moral life and teaching of his professed faith. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Joe Biden said from his basement campaign forum:

“We need to ensure that women have access to all health services during this crisis. Abortion is an essential health care service.”

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party. All four have been Democrats. The first was New York Governor Alfred Smith who was easily defeated by Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. Smith’s Catholic faith was widely seen as a cause of his defeat. The anti-Catholic political ice was not broken again until 1960 when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. President.

Neither Al Smith nor President Kennedy faced a pro-life question because Planned Parenthood v. Casey had not yet happened. The matter of Catholic identity and abortion first arose in 2004 when Massachusetts Senator John Kerry became the nation’s third Catholic nominee for president exposing a wide contradiction between his professed Catholic faith and his public promotion of abortion rights.

Senator Kerry lost the election when President George W. Bush won a second term. Throughout his campaign, Kerry openly defied Church teaching on abortion. For that he was endorsed by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. His open defiance launched a debate among bishops about responding to pro-abortion Catholic politicians who receive the Eucharist, the ultimate sign of communion with their faith.

The argument was based on Canon 915 in the Code of Canon Law which holds that those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” For an analysis of how this has applied to Catholic political candidates, I rely on an excellent account in the National Catholic Register by Lauretta Brown: “Biden and the U.S. Bishops” (May 24, 2020).

The matter of promoting abortion while pretending to be Catholic has been raised anew in the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden. As a Delaware Senator and vice-presidential nominee on the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008, Joe Biden declared on Meet the Press that he “was prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.” He qualified his belief, however, by stating that he would not impose that belief by promoting laws that reflect it.

Archbishop Charles Chaput and Bishop James Conley published a rebuttal, stating that the beginning of life is a matter not only of faith but of scientific truth. Embracing objective truth has nothing to do with imposing it on anyone. The two bishops wrote:

“If, as Senator Biden said, ‘I am prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception,’ then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.”

Mr. Biden was also criticized by Bishop Francis Malooly during the 2008 presidential campaign for his public misrepresentation of Church teaching on abortion. And he was criticized by Bishop John Ricard for receiving Communion during a campaign trip to Florida. This raised anew the debate among bishops about Communion for Catholic politicians who promote abortion.

Now Comes Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — Again!

Cardinal Raymond Burke, then Archbishop of St. Louis, was one of the first bishops to state in 2004 that he would deny Communion to Catholic candidate John Kerry due to his public stance on abortion. Many bishops joined him in support of that view. In June of 2004, the U.S. Bishops Conference released a document entitled “Catholics in Political Life.” It communicated the U.S. Bishops’ unqualified “commitment to the legal protection of life from the moment of conception until natural death.”

Previous to the publication of that document, however, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then Archbishop of Washington DC, was appointed by the bishops to chair a USCCB Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians. McCarrick quietly lobbied other bishops to oppose denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians. There was significant foul play in McCarrick’s lobbying effort.

In 2004, The USCCB Task Force received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was a year before the death of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger’s election at the Conclave of 2005. As Task Force Chair, McCarrick received the letter from Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the other members. The future Pope Benedict’s letter was entitled, “Worthiness to Receive Communion: General Principles.” Here is one of its major points:

“[R]egarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood in the case of a Catholic politician as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws) his pastor should instruct the person about the Church’s teaching and tell him not to present himself for Communion.”

However, in his own report Cardinal McCarrick misrepresented the Ratzinger letter and manipulated the Task Force findings and recommendations to the U.S. Bishops in 2004. He instead reported to the bishops that it was the Task Force Commission’s conclusion that denial of Holy Communion to Catholic politicians could further divide our Church and could have serious unintended consequences.” The report concluded:

“In light of these and other concerns, the Task Force urges for the most part renewed efforts and persuasion, not penalties.”

An official who assisted Cardinal Ratzinger in the writing of that letter tells me today that it carefully referenced Canon 915, instructing that those who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

In revealing his Task Force Report to the U.S. bishops in 2004, Cardinal McCarrick attempted to hide the Cardinal-Prefect’s letter and his misrepresentation of it. The letter from Cardinal Ratzinger was later leaked by an unknown source exposing the manipulation, but only after the bishops accepted McCarrick’s more accommodating view — that pro-abortion politicians should be instructed but not penalized.

The Pro-Life Sensus Fidelium

What those “unintended consequences” cited by Cardinal McCarrick were can only be imagined. However, hindsight sheds some light on them. There are some who viewed McCarrick in the same way he apparently viewed himself — as a power-broker in the politics of both Church and state.

The full report on Theodore McCarrick’s rise and fall will likely soon be released by the Holy See. It will be interesting to see whether and how it reflects this, and reflects his manipulation of the U.S. Bishops’ collective approach to politicians who claim to be Catholic while dissenting with impunity from Catholic moral teaching on something as fundamental as the Right to Life.

In 2020, the U.S. Bishops formulated a new letter for Catholic voters that specifically cited the priority of life and abortion as “preeminent” priorities. It adopted the language of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI with clarity about the central importance of life issues in the current political climate.

Meanwhile, Candidate Joe Biden continues to espouse his Catholic identity while moving even further left in his promotion of abortion rights up to and including late-term abortion. In recent months he has withdrawn his four decades of support for the Hyde Amendment, a 1974 bilateral agreement between parties that protected U.S. taxpayers from violating their consciences by government application of their tax dollars for abortions.

There are few steps left to take for a Catholic candidate who openly rejects the Right to Life and other tenets of Catholic moral teaching, but Candidate Joe Biden has discovered them. He has officiated at a same-sex “marriage” and promotes the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ ideology and identity politics. Most recently Mr. Biden has called for codifying the right to abortion in federal law. After a recent Supreme Court decision on religious liberty, he vowed to roll back rights extended to the Little Sisters of the Poor concerning forced contraception coverage.

Some courageous bishops would deny him Communion for the simple but grave fact that he is no longer in communion with his faith. Other pro-life Catholics have asked for his excommunication.

Canon Law limits such a step to those who actively perform or otherwise cause abortion.

Joe Biden’s unabashedly pro-abortion rhetoric and promotion may collectively rise to that standard. In such a case, the Sensus Fidelium may call for something as decisive as excommunication. It would not be a penalty, but a discipline, an invitation to tend to the state, not only of Mr. Biden’s politics, but of his soul.

And how utterly strange and unacceptable that the current Archbishop of Washington, DC, while remaining silent on the Democratic nominee’s pro-abortion politics, chose this moment for a public repudiation of the only major party candidate who has been unequivocal in his support for the Right to Life, his promotion of religious liberty, and his efforts to appoint pro-life judges to the federal judiciary.

I can only ask the same question that has been on the minds of many faithful Catholics in recent weeks:

What in Hell is going on here?

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U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington and Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, look on during a news conference at the Vatican April 24, 2002. (CNS photo/Vincenzo Pinto, Reuters)