“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
From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor
Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.
Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.
September 4, 2024 by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD, Editor
Prelude from the Student:
“Truth in its simplicity, revealed by suffering, carries a quality in writing. I believe this is what has drawn me to Beyond These Stone Walls and retained my readership over the years when there is not a single other blog or newspaper that I read consistently. I believe it is also a mercy of God that I have been able to read authentic Catholic voices here regarding the tumultuous current events in our world because it has helped keep my Faith alive despite much darkness. I chose this topic because I love God and wish to glorify him.”
— an Arizona State University student
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How did you discover Beyond These Stone Walls, and how did you become the Editor?
I had never heard of Father Gordon MacRae or this blog. On the Feast of Saint Joseph in 2019, I searched “Pope Benedict XVI on St. Joseph,” and the fourth or fifth result was one of Father MacRae’s articles. I read several others, and I read his story at the About Page. Deeply saddened, I wanted to help with my prayers and in any other way I could. On the Feast of the Annunciation, I sent him a letter introducing myself and offering to be a Simon of Cyrene to him.
A priest friend of Father MacRae in North Carolina had been volunteering as acting editor for the previous few years while also having been given additional parish assignments. I was close to the end of my career as a civilian scientist for the United States Air Force. I had been pondering retirement for some time and this volunteer work for Beyond These Stone Walls seemed a perfect fit for me as I now manage all the nuts and bolts of a widely-read popular Catholic blog written under the most unusual conditions.
What is the process for you to receive posts from Father MacRae, post them, and then send the comments to him?
From inside a small prison cell, Father MacRae types each post on his old typewriter and mails it to me. I scan it using optical character recognition software. With the typewritten post he includes a description of the suggested images he would like to include above each section of the post, as well as at the top. Beyond These Stone Walls was built using Squarespace, which also hosts it. Using its services I compose text, images and links to create the post on the blog. We publish every Wednesday morning, and send out an email alert to our 2,000 or so direct subscribers. But the readership of this blog is much larger. Many people go directly to the posts without subscribing. We also publish the posts on some social media such as Gloria.TV where Father MacRae has been given a page. His Christmas post about shepherds had about 50 thousand readers, many in some of the poorest parts of the world such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Father Gordon has never actually seen his published posts. As a prisoner he has no access to the online world and has never seen any social media where his posts are published.
Prisoners cannot receive calls. So when Father Gordon calls me I read him the comments that have been posted on BTSW and some of the ones that have been posted on social media.
Do you believe your Faith life has changed since taking on this position? Why or Why not?
Beyond These Stone Walls shines a light on how Father Gordon MacRae is sharing in the Cross of Jesus. It nourishes me with his example and meditations. It reports on what is happening in society and in the Church, which corporate media and many Catholic media do not. Without Beyond These Stone Walls and the witness of Father MacRae I would miss much of what is going on in the world and in the Church, in which Jesus wants me to be His instrument. I pray that I may hear His voice and do whatever He tells me.
Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” In my youth I had an agnostic period in which I agonized in search of Truth. Jesus, Truth, attracted me to Him. Father Gordon MacRae has most beautifully and faithfully answered Jesus’ ardent prayer to the Father, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) When the corrupt and perverse “justice” system wanted him to lie about having committed crimes that never happened, he did not lie. As punishment Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced him to life in prison. Almost everyone abandoned him. But he clung to Truth, to Jesus. He is a model and a challenge to me and many, a light in the darkness.
This is a time in which astoundingly many are “those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). I ask myself what does Jesus want me to do. He says, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10: 16)
In the midst of so much evil in our time, the Catholic sexual abuse scandal is most significant. Many outside and within the Church seek to confuse what is evil and what is good concerning this scandal. There are two wrongs: the abuse of young people by priests, and the false accusations of abuse of young people by priests. The latter wrong remains hidden from most, deceptively presented as the first wrong by an industry of lawyers, “victims’ advocates,” attorneys general, and anti-Catholic bigots; and very sadly and scandalously, by a bishops’ policy that encourages and promotes this evil industry. Father MacRae wrote of how this has evolved in his own diocese in To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.”
Had I not crossed paths with Beyond These Stone Walls and Father Gordon MacRae, I would not know about the false-accusation industry. I have come to believe that as ugly and depraved as the secular world has become, and as the Church is beset by multiple problems, it is the explosion of false accusations of priests that is the worst ever attack on the Church, the most diabolical attack on the Body of Christ, and therefore the world.
The immediate victims are the falsely accused priests. Their reputations are destroyed. The search for the truth of the accusation is nonexistent. The reputation of all priests is tarnished. The laity are also victims of this attack on the Church. Billions of dollars have been handed out to those who claimed to have been abused. No billionaire donated these funds. Dioceses have been bankrupted. Parish life has been affected.
And incredibly the worst members of this false-accusation industry are (most of) the bishops. In 2002, the Dallas Charter was adopted over the objections of Cardinal Avery Dulles, Father Richard John Neuhaus and a few others. The bishops adopted the “credible” standard, a fig-leaf term to convey a sense that accusations are investigated. They are not. I remember a couple of readers commenting that in their dioceses their bishops investigated the accusations, proved they were false, and the false accusations ceased.
Knowing that it is Jesus Who calls a man to be a priest, it is unimaginable that a bishop would discard a priest without a most thorough investigation. But it is a policy that has been enforced for over two decades. It masquerades as compassionate. It is an evil being called a good. The cruelty and the attack on priesthood it represents is astounding.
Shamelessly, quite a few years after the Dallas Charter was adopted, when there was talk of extending the “credible” standard to accusations against bishops, the USCCB got lawyers to begin defining the term [The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests]. This year the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire dropped altogether the fig-leaf term. Any priest accused of sexual abuse of a young person will be added to the list that publicly shames, and discards priests. The “credible” standard, as weak as it is, has been discarded. The accuser will be monetarily rewarded. Apparently, it should cross no one’s mind that handing out large sums of money would ever entice false accusations. Again, evil gets presented as good. Twenty-two years after the Dallas Charter was adopted a new generation of bishops upholds it.
How can this be anything but a diabolical, concerted effort to destroy priesthood, to destroy the Church?
How does this affect my Faith? This is not a superficial, little problem that for the most part I can forget while I go on with my life. With “fear and trembling” I ask, “What do You want me to do? Open my ears that I may hear. Without You I can do nothing,”
Certainly, it is a privilege for me to use my time and talent to help project the voice of Father Gordon MacRae outside that prison in New Hampshire as he tries to open minds and hearts to the truth of what is happening in the world and in the Church, to Truth Himself.
As to my treasure, I micromanage my donations. I have stopped donating to the lukewarm and to those who wittingly or unwittingly collaborate with the Father of Lies in trying to destroy priesthood, and I support some of the courageous people and entities that unceasingly defend and proclaim truth.
I pray that my righteousness may surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. I am sickened when I hear priests, bishops or the Pope consider every accusation of a priest to be true, as well as the media and lay people. May Jesus teach me to love them as He loves them.
What are your favorite things about editing BTSW? What are your least favorite?
It is a privilege and a joy to work with Father Gordon and watch his creativity as he directs me to edit an article on the fly. I want what we post to be beautiful and enjoy creating images to make it so. I want as beautiful images as I can get, and that usually takes me quite a bit of time. What I like least is not finding good images, or finding them but not being able to use them because they are copyrighted.
One of my other least favorite things, though it has come to some good, is the ocassional post that gets lost or delayed in the U.S. mail. Our choices in those weeks are to either skip a post entirely or for Father MacRae to slowly dictate a 2,000-word article to me by telephone.
What articles do you remember most? Why?
It is amazing the breadth of topics that Father MacRae tackles, from Scripture to history, to science, to current events. And he writes about his life. Pure evil placed him where he is, and he is sharing in the Cross of Jesus, but he shows how in magnificent ways God is ever present to him.
His Scripture articles are full of facts and striking insights. The collection of Holy Week posts is a gift. Another example is, “Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?” Father MacRae brings out in fascinating detail the interplay between the law of Moses and the Roman law, and how Jesus’ response is a trap of the Pharisees. It seems to me that this and other Scripture articles need a second or third reading to fully grasp and appreciate the depth of what he is presenting.
Father Gordon loves science, especially cosmology. Many think or accuse the Church of being anti-science, but that has never been true. Not only have there been scientists in the Church, but some of the most significant advances in science were introduced by priests. For example, the father of modern genetics was a monk, Gregor Mendel. And a hero of Father Gordon discovered the Big Bang, Father Georges Lemaitre. He had known about Lemaitre for years, and was most flattered when in response to a letter he sent to Carl Sagan about his novel Contact, Sagan replied to Father MacRae, “You write in the spirit of Georges Lemaitre!” But God was not pleased to leave it just at that, He decided to make the most extraordinary connections between Father MacRae and Father Lemaitre.
Though Father Gordon has written several times about Father Lemaitre, maybe the most significant post on this subject is “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.” It is an article about the great scientist Father Georges Lemaitre, co-written with noted physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, a research scientist at the University of Oxford. The article had two postscripts by Father Gordon MacRae. In the article Father Pinsent writes, “Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae through his widely-read blog has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaître.” For his part, Father Gordon recounts that after reading one of his posts on Belgian priest-scientist Lemaitre, Belgian BTSW reader Pierre Matthews, who is Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, wrote to tell him that Fr. Lemaitre was his Godfather.
What makes the breadth of articles so surprising is that in prison, Father MacRae has no online access at all and no resources for research.
Initially, I was struck by how many posts are about or mention Pornchai Moontri. After a while I came to think that their profound bond was like that of friends who endure the horrors of war together and survive. Now I think that it is much more profound than that.
God has inspired many truth seekers to investigate the case of Father MacRae: Dorothy Rabinowitz, Harvey A. Silverglate, Ryan A. MacDonald, Dr. William Donohue, David F. Pierre, Jr., Father James Valladares, former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, and investigative reporter Claire Best. Any fair-minded person who studies their work is convinced that a corrupt system put him in prison and Father Gordon MacRae is innocent.
But God wanted to reveal this with more than facts. He would reveal it with the powerful transformation of lives and souls. Pornchai had been viciously sexually and physically abused for years by a man who trafficked him from Thailand at the age of 11 and murdered his mother. Pornchai escaped and lived on the streets for all of his teen years. Then at age 18 he killed a man who tackled him and pinned him to the ground. After years of enduring violent sexual abuse this sent Pornchai into a rage. He spent the next 13 years in solitary confinement. He was then sent to the prison that houses Father Gordon. Having learned that he had been convicted of sexual abuse, Pornchai should have wanted to stay as far away as possible from Father Gordon. Yet, they became friends and then Pornchai asked Father Gordon if he could be his cellmate.
On the other hand, the corrupt and evil people who railroaded Father Gordon derailed his priesthood, took his freedom and viciously defamed him. It should be noted here that to their great credit, Vatican officials have not dismissed Father MacRae from the clerical state.
Most in the Church who should have stood by him instead abandoned him, or even worse denounced him. If this is how people in the Church treated Father Gordon, how much more understandable it would have been had Pornchai looked at him with suspicion and distrust. Yet, Pornchai has said that Father Gordon is the person in the whole world whom he most trusts. That must be a precious balm that heals Father Gordon’s heart. Many posts describe this most extraordinary friendship. Most important among them is Pornchai’s own words in, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”
Though the suffering of Father Gordon MacRae’s cross has not abated in 30 years, God has not abandoned him. He has sent Father Gordon two special friends who let him know that he is not alone: the prisoner-priest Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and the stigmatist and mystic, who was accused of sexual abuse and attacked from within the Church, Saint (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina. Two of my favorite posts describing their presence in Father Gordon’s life are “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror,” his first encounter with Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial,” a very interesting post, which among other things describes a most special blessing that connected Father Gordon, Pornchai Moontri and Saint Padre Pio through time and space.
Have any comments left an impression on you? Why?
One of the early comments on BTSW was that of Deacon David Jones:
“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.”
I think Father Gordon deserves such a testimonial.
In 2010 Father MacRae’s blog was selected by readers of Our Sunday Visitor as The Best of the Catholic Web in the area of Catholic spirituality. About.com selected it as the second-place finalist for the Best Catholic Blog Award. Readers at the Fishers Net Award selected it as The Best Catholic Social Justice Site.
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Beyond These Stone Walls is a prison journal. Evil people did much to destroy the lives of Father Gordon J. MacRae and Pornchai Maximilian Moontri. But as this blog documents, their story is one of priesthood, sacrifice and conversion writ large. They met in the New Hampshire Prison for Men in Concord, New Hampshire, but as we have seen in some posts God had much earlier connected their lives in some intriguing ways. Into these lives weighed by deep suffering Divine Mercy entered at first in hidden ways, and then it overwhelmed them.
Shortly before the nightmare of arrest, trial and wrongful imprisonment, Father MacRae was invited to write an intention to be placed on the altar for the Mass of Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. He wrote:
“I ask Blessed Faustina’s intercession that I may have the strength and courage to be the priest God wants me to be.”
His strength and courage would be sorely tested. After six long years in prison he celebrated his first Mass on April 30, 2000, which unbeknownst to him was the day Pope John Paul II canonized Saint Faustina and the first official Divine Mercy Sunday.
Six years later at a most dark period in Father MacRae’s life and priesthood, Franciscan Father James McCurry, who had been a vice-postulator for the cause of sainthood of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, visited him and asked him, “What do you know about Saint Maximilian Kolbe?” Thereupon began a most special friendship between these prisoner-priests.
At just this time Pornchai Moontri was transferred from solitary confinement in Maine to the New Hampshire prison. When he first entered Father MacRae’s cell and saw Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s image on a card, half in the garb of a prisoner and half in the garb of a priest, he asked, “Is this you?” Father MacRae writes, “From that moment on, we were caught up in the light of Divine Mercy.” Pornchai’s conversion was set in motion by Father Gordon’s example and writings. Pornchai Maximilian Moontri was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010.
When they both learned that at the end of Pornchai’s prison term he would be deported to Thailand, the prospect seemed dismal. He had been taken from there decades earlier, he did not speak the language, and no one would be waiting for him. But Father Gordon said, “We will just have to build a bridge to Thailand.” And so it happened. Today Pornchai Maximilian Moontri lives in Pak Chong, Thailand and continues to be active in this blog.
Pornchai has recently been selected to represent Father Gordon MacRae and the group, Divine Mercy Thailand, at the Fifth Asian Conference on Divine Mercy in the Philippines this year. For Father Gordon, this is the best evidence that Mary is still at work here.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We are simultaneously publishing the article by the Arizona State University student at the Voices from Beyond page:
A Voice for the Voiceless: Beyond These Stone Walls
You may also like these related posts:
A Mirror Image in the Devil’s Masterpiece by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD
Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam by Frank X. Panico
Betrayed by Victims’ Advocates by Anonymous
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross by Fr Gordon MacRae
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.”
For Those Who Look at the Stars and See Only Stars
An MIT astrophysicist trying to reconcile science with a quest for spiritual truth wrote upon the death of his parents, “I wish I believed.” I believe he just might.
First deep field image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScl
An MIT astrophysicist trying to reconcile science with a quest for spiritual truth wrote upon the death of his parents, “I wish I believed.” I believe he just might.
July 5, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: The image atop this post is the first of many images transmitted by the James Webb Space Telescope parked one million miles from Earth in 2022 to survey the Cosmos. I first wrote this post in 2018 for an older version of this blog. It needed to be restored for our readers, but I ended up completely rewriting it. My goal was to highlight a bridge between science and faith, but some say it also highlights a bridge between life and death.
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When Beyond These Stone Walls was just a few months old back in 2009, I wrote a post about the death of my mother. It told a story about an event that occurred on her birthday a year after she died. At first glance it seemed an ordinary event, the sort of thing usually chalked up to coincidence. But its meaning and timing and how it unfolded made it an extraordinary grace beyond comprehension. It required that I set aside the mathematical odds against such a thing and see it foremost in the light of faith.
It remains to this day a pivotal moment, a wondrous event that shook my faith out of the closet of doubt where I tend to store it when times get rough — which is often. The story told in that post may shake you, too, if it hasn’t already. By that, I do not mean that it will challenge your faith. It’s just the opposite. My story lifted for me a corner of the veil between doubt and belief. So the title I gave it was “A Corner of the Veil.”
My friend, Pornchai Moontri was with me that night when the event occurred while I offered Mass in our prison cell. I asked Pornchai if he remembers it. “How could I forget it?” he said. He described it as an “ordinary miracle,” the kind he says he has seen a lot of since his eyes were opened.
I could repeat the whole story here, but it will take too long and I have written it once already. It is but a mere click away. I will link to it again after this post. You can decide for yourself whether the story it tells is mere coincidence or something more. My analytic brain tends toward coincidence, but sometimes that just doesn’t add up. This was one of those times.
I then came upon a strange little book of fiction by Laurence Cossé first published in French as Le Coin du Voile, and in English, A Corner of the Veil (Scribner 1999). It strangely fell at my feet from a library shelf after my post with the same title.
Laurence Cossé was a journalist for Radio France when she wrote this book described by Notre Dame theologian Ralph McInerney as “a theological thriller that makes a mystery out of the absence of mystery.” It is a spellbinding account of what happens to the people and institutions of Church and State when a manuscript surfaces that irrefutably proves the existence of God.
Science, religion, and politics all transform as their experts ponder its meaning and their own continued relevancy. The reader is left to wonder whether the discovery will spark a new era of harmony or launch the final battle of the apocalypse.
“Six pages further, Father Bertrand was trembling. The proof was neither arithmetical nor physical nor esthetical nor astronomical, it was irrefutable. Proof of God’s existence had been achieved. Bertrand was tempted, for a second, to toss the bundle into the wastebasket.” (p 15)
As it does for people who awaken to faith on a personal level, the discovery immediately altered the way its readers face both life and death. The transformation was astonishing. Death came to be seen, not as an entity unto itself, but as it really is a chapter in the continuity of life, of me, of the person I call "myself," integrated into the Great Tapestry of God.
I happen to know a lot of people whose experience of living is suddenly overshadowed by the prospect of dying. They have come to know that death is drawing nearer day by day. Some of them struggle. What does death mean, and why do we wage such war against it? The age of individualism and relativism distorts death into a fearsome enemy. As Dylan Thomas wrote,
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.”
Carina Nebula image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScl
If That’s All There Is, Then Let’s Keep Dancing!
While writing this post, I received a letter from a reader in Ohio who asked me to write a note of encouragement to a friend whose death is drawing near. After a lifetime of faith, he wrote, the friend is having grave doubts and fears about the end of life and the finality of death. He is asking the age-old question put to song: “Is that all there is?”
But that is our problem. We speak in terms of “finality” as though when faced with death, all that we once believed with hope takes on the trappings of a mere children’s fantasy. I know too many people who are dying, and many of us treat it as the silent elephant in the room because we know that sooner or later we will join them just as our parents did before us. It is part of the flow of life, but we ward it off as a terror in the night. In the face of death, science alone comes up empty.
When you think of it, death is best seen as an act of love. Imagine the inherent selfishness of a humanity without death. Those we love the most in this world — those who fulfill our very purpose for being in this world — would be left out of existence if this life were ours alone to keep. But facing death with no life of faith casts both life and death into a formless, meaningless void.
I recently came across a review of a book by noted MIT physicist and astronomer Alan Lightman entitled Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (Pantheon 2018). It was reviewed by UMass physics professor Alan Hirshfeld in “A Longing for Truth and Meaning” in The Wall Street Journal April 7-8, 2018).
In some previous science posts here at Beyond These Stone Walls, I have cited both writers for other books and articles they have written. Mr. Lightman’s book, and Mr. Hirshfeld’s review of it, both raise provocative questions about “the core mysteries of human life” and the way science explores the Universe:
“Why are we here? What, if anything, is the meaning of existence? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Whence consciousness?”
I am very happy to see science ponder these questions, but they can never be answered by science alone. It comes up short when the task moves beyond the mere physics and chemistry of life to its meaning and purpose. Consider this explanation of the self, of who and what you are as a conscious being, offered by Mr. Lightman:
“Self is the name we give to the mental sensation of certain electrical and chemical flows in our neurons.”
It is too tempting for science to reduce us to fundamental biology and chemistry, but the mere mechanics of what I am do not at all define who I am. If science is the only contribution to the meaning of life and death, then it becomes obvious why so many spend significant time in denial or in dread of death.
In his new book reflecting on the Cosmos, MIT astrophysicist Alan Lightman takes up these questions and more. Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is a view of the world through a scientist’s lens which requires the scientist to see in it, as Alan Hirshfeld describes,
“Tangible bits of matter and energy, all governed by a set of fundamental physical laws … In keeping with his ‘Central Doctrine of Science,’ he eschews unprovable hypotheses, most significantly the existence of God and the afterlife.”
But these hypotheses are only unprovable from the point of view of science which concerns itself, as it concerns astrophysicist Alan Lightman, with matter and energy and fundamental laws. But Professor Lightman has acquired the wisdom not to stop there. His reflection on the death of his parents brings him to the “impossible truth” that they no longer exist, and he will one day follow them into this nonexistence.
Is that all there is? “I wish I believed,” he wrote. But “a precipice looms for each of us, an eventual plunge into nonexistence.” As Alan Hirshfeld described it:
“A depressing prospect, for sure, yet the inevitable judgment of those for whom religious or spiritual alternatives carry no resonance.”
Pictured: Fr. Georges Lemaître, Albert Einstein and Fr. Andrew Pinsent
Threads of the Tapestry of God
I have written numerous articles about the sciences of astronomy and cosmology, the origins and mechanics of the Universe. But these are not the only tools with which to explore the universe and measure life and death. The conclusions of science and faith are not as inseparable as science might have you believe.
I have raised this analogy before, but consider these two passages from two sources that have become meaningful to me. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 296) expresses a fundamental truth of faith God created the Universe and life “out of nothing.”
Among the many contributions of science that I hold in high regard, this is one by the mathematician Robyn Arianrhod whose book, Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics (Oxford University 2005) draws the same conclusion. Don’t let the scientific language dissuade you from understanding this phenomenal bridge between science and faith:
“The Belgian priest and astrophysicist, Georges Lemaitre began to develop expanding cosmological models out of Einstein’s equations … In 1931, Lemaitre formally sowed the seeds of the Big Bang theory [which] showed that Einstein’s equations predicted the universe had expanded not from a tiny piece of matter located in an otherwise empty cosmos, but from a single point in four-dimensional spacetime … Before this point, about 13 billion years ago, there was no time and no space. No geometry, no matter. Nothing. The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.”
— Arianrhod, pp 185-187
Reflecting on the death of his parents, Alan Lightman wrote that he wished he believed in the continuity of life after death. It could be at least a starting point that sometimes science and faith share some of the same language and conclusions about the origin of life. Faith, to have any real depth, is not simply an emotional experience to assuage our fears, but rather one arrived at also through reason. Catholicism presents 2,000+ years of faith seeking understanding, of belief built upon reason.
And sometimes reason just cannot explain away our intuition that life has an Author, and when we die, the book is still not finished. I am intrigued by Professor Hirshfeld’s use of the term, “resonance” for I have also used it in some recent posts. I have described it as a sort of echo that finds its way among the “threads of the Tapestry of God” in ways that give life meaning and purpose, in ways that connect us. One way spiritual resonance manifests itself is by giving meaning to suffering.
Consider this stunning action of spiritual resonance that was described in a post, “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.” That post was co-authored by me and Father Andrew Pinsent, PhD, a priest, physicist and Director of the Institute for Science and Religion at Oxford University.
When my friend Pornchai Moontri came into the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, one of our readers, the late Pierre Matthews in Belgium, inquired rather urgently asking to stand as Pornchai’s Godfather. They visited several times. However, it was only after I wrote about Father George Lemaitre that Pierre contacted me with the staggering revelation that the Godfather of Pornchai Moontri is the Godson of Father George Lemaitre. The mathematical odds against such a “mere coincidence” are ... well … astronomical!
It is a long time since I have viewed with awe the expanse of our galaxy spanning the night sky in all its brilliance, but like Alan Lightman, I have done so, and find it unforgettable. He is on the right track, and may one day come to see that the awe it instills in him is not the awe of science alone. “I wish I believed,” he wrote. I believe he just may.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: Fr. Gordon MacRae and Beyond These Stone Walls are now featured on Gloria.tv, an international Catholic social network and a video and news sharing platform. We are honored by this invitation, and by the Catholic fidelity demonstrated by Gloria.tv. We invite our readers to support this venue by visiting and sharing our page and other content there.
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Fr. Georges Lemaître
Editor’s Note: Continue this great adventure of science and faith with these related posts:
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael: Allies in Spiritual Battle
On September 29, the Church honors the three named angels of Sacred Scripture, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and on October 2, our Guardian Angels.
On September 29, the Church honors the three named angels of Sacred Scripture, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and on October 2, our Guardian Angels.
September 29, 2021
“Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
— Psalm 91:9-11
The September issue of “Give Us This Day,” a monthly prayer and liturgy guide for Catholics published by Liturgical Press, has a small tribute to the great Japanese novelist, Shusaku Endo. He died on the Feast of Michaelmas, September 29, 1996, at the age of 73.
Shusaku Endo was a Catholic convert best known for his acclaimed novel, Silence, which I read in my early years in prison. It had an enormous impact on me. It is a small book, about 200 pages, first published in Japanese in 1969. The focus of much of Endo’s writing reflects his struggles, as a translator described it, “with the anguish of faith and the mercy of God.”
I read it at a time when I, too, was struggling with both. It is sometimes less of a struggle, and therefore a temptation, to simply not believe. There is a scene in this powerful book that left me spellbound. The story is about a Portuguese Jesuit priest, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, who entered Japan in the 16th Century at the height of Christian persecution at the hands of the Shogun. That is the Japanese name for the military dictatorship ruling Japan from 1192 to 1867. The name is a contraction of the Japanese, “seii tai shogun” (“barbarian-hunting warriors”)
Father Rodrigues was among the “barbarians” hunted by the Shogun military, the samurai, under a constant threat of public torture and death. The scene that made me shudder most was a description of how Father Rodrigues entered Japan. Foreign ships were barred from its ports so the ship that bore him secretly approached a remote part of the 16th Century Japanese coast in the dark of night. The priest swam to shore in the pitch blackness with nothing but the clothes on his back and no idea of where, or to whom, he would go. The fear of the dark unknown and the courage it took to overcome it was vivid and staggering.
Darkness is itself a character in this highly symbolic book. Father Rodrigues spent a good deal of time in a brutal Shogun prison in a constant state of darkness and near starvation. At one point, in an intense scene of fear and despair, he asked — and it is from this that the book takes its title — “Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent?”
I have asked that same question many times in the dark of prison. For the character of Father Rodrigues, however, the silence of God was finally broken. He was tortured by the Shogun in order to force him into publicly trampling on the “fumie,” the Japanese term for a sacred icon. It was a crucifix. Despite the torture, Father Rodrigues refused and endured. Then he was forced to watch while 30 Christian converts were lined up one by one to take his place for torture unless he trampled on the crucifix. An inner voice came to him:
“Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know the pain of your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross!”
— Silence, p.171
Father Rodrigues trampled upon the crucifix.
Spiritual Battle
Upon first reading, that excerpt may seem a betrayal. However, digging a little deeper into the words that came to the priest unveils a profound soteriology, the theology of salvation. The priest bore his own suffering, but by his actions he redirected the suffering destined for his converts onto Christ. “It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”
I was surprised to learn that Shusaku Endo left this life leaving behind the life of his fictional tormented priest, Sebastian Rodrigues — on the Feast of Michaelmas. That was the old English name for the feast day of what was once called Saint Michael and All Angels on September 29. In the Catholic calendar it is now the Feast Day of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the only angels in the Bible whose personal names are revealed.
The September 29 date was established in the Sixth Century when on that same date the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels was dedicated on the Salarian Way in Rome. The feast day was called “Michaelmas,” meaning “the Mass of St. Michael.” In British custom, it was one of the “quarter days,” traditionally marked by the election of magistrates and the beginning of the legal and university terms. This may have been because — or the cause of — the designation of Saint Michael as the Patron of Justice.
It was on another date — the feast day of the Guardian Angels on October 2 — that I discovered in prison that the silence of God is but an illusion. God has spoken volumes throughout all of human history, and His megaphones are Scripture, Tradition, and the ongoing revelation of grace in our lives. Justice is also not just an elusive and singular event, but a cosmic guarantee, and Saint Michael is its manifestation.
This is a difficult concept that I will try to convey to whatever extent I understand it myself. Scripture suggests to us that the conflicts we face and the struggles we endure in our lives on Earth have an unseen spiritual dimension. The Catholic Biblical scholar, Scott Hahn expressed this in his terrific little book, Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones (Image Books, 2014):
“St. Michael is mighty among the angels. The Book of Revelation (12:7ff) depicts him as the commander of the heavenly host of angels as they battle Satan and the rebellious spirits .... We know how the battle ends, and we know Michael is victorious (12:10). Still, the war will rage on until the final consummation of history.”
— Angels and Saints, p. 84
From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have invoked Michael as a guardian, patron, and leader in spiritual warfare. Our troubles and struggles in this world are not always simple anxieties over material discomforts, painful relationships, or the tragedies that occur in our lives. They are also manifestations of spiritual battle, and should be seen and resisted as such. People of deep faith recognize the spiritual battles within themselves and their environments, and rely on faith and spiritual allies to defend against them.
I have suggested before that priests especially are targets of spiritual warfare, inundated by constant temptation in a culture locked in spiritual combat between Heaven and hell. I have cited a Holy Week post of mine that exemplifies the most active goal of Satan: to prevent our reception of the Eucharist and undermine its truth. Every time I write about this, it is followed by days or weeks of spiritual struggle and painful events all around me. This is clearly a story “someone” does not want exposed. The post in which I first exposed this is “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”
The Art of War Requires Allies
For 23 years, I had been living in the Hancock Building in this prison complex. For the first six, though I had done nothing to warrant it, I was forced to live in a place with eight men per cell. Words cannot express the assault on the psyche and spirit that life in such a constant environment produced. Just about everyone living there was given an opportunity to move to better housing within a year. I was there for six years.
In that same six years, my friend, Pornchai Moontri, was in the neighboring state of Maine living in the spiritual madness of endless solitary confinement. We lived with polar opposite prison anxieties, and each was in its own way devastating.
In 2000, I was finally moved to a saner place with two prisoners per cell. In 2006, Pornchai Moontri arrived. For the next 15 years we lived in the same cell. Then, in 2016, both of us, along with 94 others, were forced in a mass migration back into the place with eight prisoners to a cell. It was because of a development in the prison that had nothing to do with us. We were promised a return to a better housing situation in a matter of weeks. One year later, we were still there.
In mid-July, 2017, I was summoned from my job as the legal clerk in the prison law library and handed a few trash bags. After 23 years in the dreaded Hancock Building, I was given one hour to unravel from it and move to another unit on the opposite end of this prison complex. I was told that Pornchai would be joining me there on the next day. After my arrival, another officer told me that Pornchai was supposed to come with me, but some unseen hand changed that order and he was to be sent somewhere else.
The next day, from a top floor stairwell outside the law library where I work, I saw Pornchai in the distance looking forlorn as he wheeled a cart in the opposite direction from where I now lived. I thought I would never see him again. It was a crushing blow for us both. I knew he would be facing deportation in a few years and now would face it alone. I cannot make sense of what happened next.
The outcome of this spiritual battle was stunning, but became so only when I sought help from our allies in spiritual warfare. I knew in my heart that I was called to bring some justice and hope to the burdens Pornchai carried. I described them in “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” Three weeks after our parting, I returned from work one day to find the person living in the bunk above me gone, and in his place was Pornchai Moontri. This never happens here. We were shocked, perplexed and overjoyed.
There were later signs that our allies summoned other allies behind the scenes who had come to know of us. On the day we were reunited, they were in just the right place at just the right time saying just the right things to just the right people. It was the most unlikely symphony of actual grace. Incredible!
This computer generated image depicts the constellation Triangulum and galaxy RD1, 12.2 light-years billion from Earth, formed in the early period of the Universe after the Big Bang.
3:00 AM in a Dark Prison Cell
I’m sorry if this gets a little weird. Just before all these clouds gathered on the horizon and our chaotic upheavals took place, I had a mysterious dream. It was early in the morning of October 2, 2016, the day the Church honors our Guardian Angels. Had I ever really believed in them? I do now.
I found myself at 3:00 AM standing and staring into a small stretch of sky that I could see beyond my barred cell window. There was an older man standing with me. I could see Pornchai fast asleep in his upper bunk. The older man was very familiar and someone I felt I implicitly trusted, but I cannot remember what he looked like. That part of the dream was erased when I awakened. He pointed to the sky and asked, “What do you see?”
I said, “I only see the prison lights.” “Look beyond the prison lights,” said the mysterious man. Then in the dream my vision suddenly changed. I was able to see far, far away into the vast darkness, and there in the center of my field of view I saw a constellation, a triangle of three stars. Within the triangle, the stars were joined by streams of glowing light. “It looks like neon,” I said stupidly in the dream. Then the companion said, “Michael dwells within the light.”
It seemed that I stood for a long time, mesmerized by this vision. Then I awakened in my bunk. It was very dark. I got up and walked to the window wondering whether it was a dream or real. I saw only prison lights, but I have since learned to look beyond them. I could not forget the simple statement that “Michael dwells within the light.” Later that morning, I called a friend to search an astronomy database to see if such a triangular constellation even exists. This was what was sent to me:
1998 — The Most Distant Object Yet Discovered: Astronomers have stumbled upon the most distant galaxy ever found, an object 12.2 billion light-years from Earth. It was announced on March 12, 1998. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So a light-year is a distance of 5.6 trillion miles. The distance of this object in miles is that times 12.2 billion. [Good luck with the math!]
A team of scientists led by astrophysicist Arjun Dey of John Hopkins University, was analyzing the light from a distant galaxy inside the Constellation Triangulum when they noticed the spectral signature of a faint and far more distant galaxy at its center. By taking longer exposures with the Keck-II telescope they were able to identify the new galaxy which is 90 million light-years farther away than the previous most distant galaxy discovered.
Based on knowledge that the universe is approximately 13 billion years old, “RD1” was formed soon after the Big Bang gave birth to the universe. By studying it, astronomers hope to learn how and when the earliest galaxies formed. Little is currently known about these early galaxies. A report on the discovery was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This, of course, rocked my world. You might recall from our recent post, “Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang,” by priest and physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, that the Church and science are on the same page about the origin of the Universe in an instant, “out of nothing.”
In the Fifth Century, Saint Augustine proposed that in the Genesis story of creation, God’s declaration of “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) was the moment the angels were created. In the next verse (Genesis 1:4), God separated the light from the darkness. For Augustine, this was the moment the fallen angels were driven from Heaven by Saint Michael in the battle of the Heavenly Hosts.
This all left me with a profound sense that our stories are not just our own, nor are our struggles or pain. We are a collective part of an immense fabric God has woven toward a specific end. And we have allies who connect with us within the threads. I have written about three of them who now appear together in our BTSW Library under the Category, “Spiritual Warfare.” I also link to them here.
Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed
St Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us
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Most glorious prince of the heavenly armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness. Corne to the assistance of us whom God has created to His likeness, and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector. To you the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray therefore the God of peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer hold us captive and do injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us. Take hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent which is the devil and Satan. Bind him and cast him into the abyss so that he may no longer seduce the nations.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, we beseech you to intercede for us at the throne of Divine Mercy. As you announced the mystery of the Incarnation to Mary, so through your prayers may we receive strength of faith and courage of spirit and thus find favor with God and redemption through Christ our Lord. May we sing with the angels and saints in Heaven forever the praise of God our Savior through your Annunciation: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
O Raphael the Archangel, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us. Raphael, Angel of happy meeting, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for. May all our movements be guided by your light and transfigured with your joy. Angel, guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Hirn whose unveiled face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed in spirit by the separations and sorrows of life, we feel the need of calling to you and pleading for the protection of your wings so we may not be as strangers in the province of joy. Remember the weak, you who are so strong, you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder in a land that is always at peace, bright with the resplendent glory of God.
My Visit with Pornchai Maximilian Moontri by Claire Dion
Claire Dion, a contributing writer for Beyond These Stone Walls, interviewed Pornchai “Max” Moontri at the New Hampshire State Prison for a tale of hope and amazing grace.
Claire Dion, a contributing writer for Beyond These Stone Walls, interviewed Pornchai “Max” Moontri at the New Hampshire State Prison for a tale of hope and amazing grace.
Preface by Father Gordon MacRae
The following is a guest post by Mrs. Claire Dion, a reader of Beyond These Stone Walls in Bridgton, Maine. Claire graced these pages with a Corporal Work of Mercy that touched our hearts in 2017. After two years with us, our friend, Kewei Chen from Shanghai, China, was transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to await his deportation.
After reading of the unique circumstances that brought Chen from China to an American prison, and the pain of our parting as well as our hopes for Chen, Claire drove from her home in Maine to meet with him at the place where he was awaiting deportation. The result of that visit became her first guest post on Beyond These Stone Walls, “My Visit with Kewei Chen in ICE Detention.”
Her post was comforting. From my perspective, and that of Pornchai Moontri who had become Chen’s older brother, the void in our hearts could not be filled, but Claire’s guest post left it not quite so empty. It ended with a wonderful photograph of Chen emailed from the Shanghai airport as he saw his parents for the first time after his unplanned three-year absence.
More recently, Claire asked if she could visit me and Pornchai, a much further winter drive for her. Since prison rules allow for being on the visitor list of only one prisoner, I asked her to visit Pornchai, to treat it as an interview, and to write another guest post for Beyond These Stone Walls.
I did this because, as I have hinted in some previous posts, there is a very special story coming, one that I know will both break your hearts and then mend them again with evidence of the immense power of Divine Mercy to restore the human soul. This story is coming when I am able to fully tell it, and it will be unlike anything you have ever read before on Beyond These Stone Walls.
So as a prelude, I want to present Pornchai “Max” Moontri through the eyes of a reader meeting our friend for the first time. His story should begin, after all, not upon the dung heap of Job where life took him, but at the point to which Divine Mercy has redeemed him out of darkness into a very great light.
Claire Dion is a wife and mother of five adult daughters and a devoted grandmother. She is currently retired from a career as a registered nurse in obstetrics at Lynn, Massachusetts General Hospital. She today lives in Bridgton, Maine where she has been part of the Faith Formation Team at Saint Joseph Parish and a follower of Father Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning Glory and Marian Consecration. It’s an honor to present Claire Dion.
Saturday – January 8, 2018 at 8:00 AM
I pulled into the parking lot of the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord. I will be meeting Pornchai Moontri, a man I have come to know and love from reading Beyond These Stone Walls. Walking into the visiting area where I have to sign in, I feel a little uneasy. I did not have a clue what I was to do and I had not slept the night before as I was afraid I would do something wrong and the visit would be canceled.
Everything went well until I passed through a metal detector and the alarms went off. What was I thinking? I should have realized that two knee replacements and a hip replacement might present a problem. After being sent back to the waiting room with alarm bells ringing, some guards questioned me, and then led me into the visiting room. It was a large room with metal tables and chairs screwed to the floor. Each table was numbered, and I was instructed to go to table number twenty-four.
From a distance I saw Pornchai walk into the visiting room. I realized that he had not seen me before, but I recognized him from Beyond These Stone Walls. So I waved and smiled, and he smiled back. When he got to the table, I asked him if I could give him the allowed “three-second hug.” He laughed while I hugged this man whom I had only read about but was very anxious to meet.
While I was waiting for Pornchai to arrive, I wondered how we were going to fill in a two-hour visit. I was not allowed to bring anything with me so I had no notes to help me remember what I wanted to talk to him about and all the questions I had. I knew that Father Gordon wanted me to write about this visit for Beyond These Stone Walls.
We sat next to each other at the table in a room filled with cameras. The large room was also full of visitors, and, as many of them were children visiting their fathers on a Saturday morning, it was noisy. It took only seconds for us to relax and start talking. From the moment we sat down, I had a sense that I already knew this very special person.
We continued to talk nonstop for the entire two hours. We both felt that it was amazing that we were sitting here together, Pornchai from Thailand and me from Lynn, Massachusetts (which, by the way, is the city just North of Boston where Father Gordon grew up).
Soon we were talking about Pornchai’s incredible journey from a village in Northeast Thailand to Bangor, Maine and ending at the New Hampshire State Prison. I learned that Pornchai was abandoned by his mother at age two and that a teenage relative found him and brought him to live with his family.
Nine years later, when Pornchai was age eleven, his mother returned to Thailand. He did not recognize or even remember her, but against Pornchai’s will he was taken from Thailand and brought to America. A series of traumatic events broke his heart and his soul. That is another story that hopefully Father Gordon will be telling soon at Beyond These Stone Walls.
When Pornchai was fourteen years old, he ran away. He became — though not by choice — a homeless child living on the streets for the second time in his young life, and he spoke little English. While still a teen, he was involved in a struggle that resulted in the death of another man, and he was sent to prison.
While listening to his story, my heart ached as I could see and feel his pain over these events from so long ago. Sentenced to 45 years in a Maine prison, Pornchai continued to have outbursts of anger and rage which landed him in solitary confinement for many years in Maine’s “supermax” prison. [Note: PBS Frontline did a gripping story on that very place and time.]
Pornchai told me that his only plan for life was to never leave prison. It sounded as though he knew he was going to die there, and that was what he wanted. It was his “Plan B” for his life. However, God had other plans for Pornchai Moontri. Fourteen years later, he was moved to a prison in New Hampshire for the rest of his sentence, and Father Gordon MacRae stepped into the story of his life.
Here Pornchai’s eyes and expression softened as he spoke about meeting Father Gordon whom he and other prisoners call “G.” At this point, Pornchai said he felt completely alone, still angry and trusting no one. Another prisoner, a young man from Indonesia, introduced him to a man called “G” and said that G helped him a lot and that he trusted G.
Pornchai watched how G in a caring and patient way helped others and how they trusted him. In his life, the very idea of trust was entirely new. Slowly and cautiously, Pornchai let G into his life and a friendship began.
We talked for awhile about G and I learned that no matter what happens in prison G stays calm. He is a humble, steady person in the midst of the constant turmoil and darkness of prison life, and is always available to any prisoner who comes to him. With a chuckle, I have to add here that I remember Chen telling me that G is a very good man “but you don’t bother him when he is typing a BTSW post!”
“When I Was in Prison, You Came to Me” —Matthew 25:36
It was quite awhile before Pornchai found out that G is a Catholic priest. We spoke about how Father Gordon’s strong faith impressed Pornchai even though many in the Church had abandoned him. Pornchai told me that G’s faith shines in prison, and has attracted some of the prisoners to join him at Sunday Mass and in retreats sponsored by Father Michael Gaitley and the Marians of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy.
Pornchai also said that Father Gordon constantly reaches out to those he feels he can help, and Pornchai was one of them. It was during this conversation that I asked Pornchai to tell Father Gordon how much I love, respect and honor his priesthood.
Through him, Christ’s presence is being felt there, and it is making a difference for many behind those stone walls and many of us BTSW readers.
As their friendship grew, Father Gordon told Pornchai that he must start taking positive steps with his life. He encouraged Pornchai to leave aside “Plan B” and plan instead for a future.
Pornchai began taking education courses, spending his days in school instead of in a cell. He proudly told me that he earned his high school diploma in prison and was Valedictorian of his 2012 graduating class. I listened and learned that his educational journey was just beginning. With Father G’s help, he then enrolled in courses in social work and psychology at Stratford Career Institute earning academic certificates “with highest honors.” This was followed by studies through a scholarship at Catholic Distance University where he took courses in theology with a straight “A” average.
What Pornchai has accomplished is nothing short of amazing given that he learned English in prison. He and “Father G” encourage other prisoners to become educated, and Pornchai now spends time mentoring and tutoring them, especially in mathematics in which he excels. He also spends his days in the woodworking and Hobby Craft shop where he teaches safety training to other prisoners on the use of carpentry tools and machines.
Pornchai designs and builds handcrafted model ships, beautiful Divine Mercy keepsake boxes, and other creations in wood. Some of these are made as gifts and some are sold in a store near the prison grounds. Pornchai used the proceeds to pay for his education courses. Father Gordon later told me that Pornchai is modest about his great skill in woodworking. One of his ships is on display in Belgium where a curator posted a brass plaque indicating that it was designed and created by “Master Craftsman Pornchai Moontri, Concord, New Hampshire.”
Divine Mercy Conversion
As Pornchai’s friendship with Father Gordon deepened, and Pornchai was influenced by his patient practice of faith, he made a decision to become a Catholic. Seeing in the many comments how much Father Gordon’s posts spiritually affect BTSW readers, we talked about how becoming Catholic has helped Pornchai in prison. He received the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation on April 10, 2010. He chose “Maximilian” as his Christian name to honor St Maximilian Kolbe.
On the next day, he received his First Eucharist from Bishop John McCormack. When this was first being planned, neither Pornchai nor Father Gordon realized the date was Divine Mercy Sunday. On that day, Jesus showered Pornchai with His love and mercy and Pornchai felt it. He said that before he became a Catholic he was always feeling unloved and alone. Now he could feel that God was with him and loved him. He also spoke about his love for the Blessed Mother. As he told me this, there was a sense of peace within him.
When I asked Pornchai what he would like me to tell BTSW readers, he became very serious. He said that he and Father Gordon are deeply impacted by the support they receive and that BTSW could not exist without it. They deeply appreciate the love, prayers, and encouragement they receive from readers all over the world. He kept going back to the BTSW readers and how important they are to both of them. He spoke of how he has done nothing to earn this outpouring of love.
Pornchai spoke about the lawyer who has helped him and Chen so much, Clare Farr in Western Australia, and how she learned of him through BTSW. He spoke of Suzanne Sadler, BTSW’s Australian-based webmaster and publisher. He spoke of Father George David Byers who helps ready Father G’s posts for publishing. He spoke of Mrs. LaVern West who prints and mails him the BTSW comments.
Pornchai also said that Father Gordon corresponds with Father Andrew Pinsent, a scientist at Oxford University who has cited his science writings. I mentioned that Father Gordon’s science posts are over my head and Pornchai said with a smile, “Mine too!” In an astonishing connection that Father Gordon later told me about, Father Georges Lemaître, the priest-physicist considered in science to be “Father of The Big Bang and Modern Cosmology,” was a close family friend of Mr. Pierre Matthews in Belgium who today is Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather.
And Pornchai also spoke of Charlene Duline who helps Father G communicate with readers, and is Pornchai’s Godmother. She once sent him a letter in which she called him “precious,” and then other prisoners teased him about it, but he laughed and said that they are jealous because no one calls them precious.
Suddenly the lights in the room flashed on and off. Our visit was over, but not before we were able to have a photograph taken together. With a hug (three seconds only) we said goodbye. I was truly blessed to meet this amazing young man, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, and to see Father Gordon through his eyes. I know I will visit him again.
On the coldest day of winter, I left the New Hampshire State Prison with summer in my heart.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:
I thank Claire Dion for this snapshot into our lives. In my recent post, “The Days of Our Lives,” I wrote that Pornchai Moontri and our friend, J.J. Jennings work together in the woodworking and Hobby Craft center. The photos below are of their latest project, a Jewelry Cabinet.
The design for a cabinet of this size was by J.J. Jennings, who collaborated with Pornchai Moontri for the highly skilled construction. The one on the right was made by J.J. and the one on the left by Pornchai. The woods for both are solid maple and black walnut. The drawer fronts are maple or black walnut with poplar sides and bottoms. The drawers and side cabinetry doors are lined with velour.
These beautiful pieces are 20” high, 14” width, and 8.5” depth, and are customized with wood-burned or painted designs and brass fittings. The top is hinged with a 2.5”-deep display area. Two of the drawers are for rings and the other drawers are deeper. The intricate side cabinets are for hanging jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets, and rosaries. Other photos of their work can be seen on the Pinterest Board, “Woodworking and Model Shipbuilding by Pornchai Moontri.”
