When God Deployed a Sinner to Save a Nation: The Biblical Precedent

Would God call a known sinner to save a nation? If so, it would not be for the first time if Religious Freedom is at stake. There is a striking Biblical precedent.

Over fifteen years of writing for Beyond These Stone Walls, I have tried to steer clear of politics. It hasn’t been easy because politics by its very nature has tentacles reaching into every aspect of existence in the human community. The word comes from the Latin, politicus which came from Greek, politikos, meaning “citizen of the city.” To be human is to practice politikos.

But as you know from the daily news, practice does not make perfect. I had a little practice of my own in my highly politically sensitive post, “The Unspoken Racist Arena of Roe v. Wade.” For some, just using the current President’s name in a sentence is to lend to him some sort of tacit endorsement or approval.

Listening to the news, some commentators refuse to call him “President” Trump. He is, for them, simply “Trump,” uttered with a hint of audible disdain that would have been widely condemned during previous administrations. At MSNBC, he appears to be the only politician in America.

Recently, I passed by a group of twenty-something young adults in a heated argument about Mr. Trump’s fitness for office. I tried to stay out of it, but as I passed I was asked whether I think he should be elected. I responded politically: “Well,” I said, “that is a matter for all the voters to decide, and not just the pundits from the ruling class.”

Because I qualified my answer, the “Not My President” crowd was horrified. “So, you actually LIKE Trump?!” they shot back incredulously — as though I were wearing a MAGA hat and a red tie of my own. My response was not a matter of like or dislike, but rather one of truth and its various distortions that today pass as journalism and broadcast news.

There is a vast difference in the politics of today and those of decades past. There are few Americans in America. We are now mostly Republicans and Democrats.

Should Christianity Today Trump the President?

I have long admired the work of Eric Metaxas, author of over thirty books including, If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty. In 2020, I was very pleased to see a provocative op-ed from him in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Christian Case for Trump” (Jan. 8, 2020).

Before the 2020 election, much of the news media had hyped an editorial in the venerable Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, founded by the late Billy Graham. On the heels of the impeachment vote in Congress, the editors of Christianity Today endorsed the removal of President Trump from office citing that his behavior has been “profoundly immoral,” his character “grossly” so, and the “facts” of his guilt “unambiguous.”

I also cringed when I first read the response by Eric Metaxas because I knew that I might feel compelled to write about it. That means wading into a national partisan battle of words and attitudes with little connection to truth. I know some readers cannot see the Metaxas article without a WSJ subscription, so I will summarize its major points.

Mr. Metaxas clarified the politics behind the flap. In the 1990s, the editors of Christianity Today publicly endorsed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton citing that his moral failings made him unfit for office. As you may recall, President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate.

Some of Mr. Trump’s detractors cited the Evangelical magazine’s position in the Clinton case while accusing Evangelicals of hypocrisy if they did not apply the same standards to Mr. Trump. As with President Clinton, Mr. Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate. But Mr. Metaxas asks whether the comparison makes sense. “Aren’t the political realities different two decades later?” I will get back to that, but the heart of the point made by Metaxas is theological, and it is a point with which I strongly agree:

“But these subjective pronouncements promote a perversion of Christian doctrine, [a doctrine] which holds that all are depraved and equally in need of God’s grace. For Christianity Today to advance this misunderstanding is shocking. It isn’t what one does that makes one a Christian, but rather faith in what Jesus has done.”

Christianity Today got this embarrassingly wrong. The political reality of the last two decades has seen orchestrated efforts to park Christianity outside the public square. Jesus may be seen as irrelevant by the growing secularism in America, but this must not be so for people of faith. Metaxas described the magazine’s editorial as evidence not of its noble truths, or its roots in the Biblical witness of Reverend Billy Graham, but rather of its “Slough of Despond populated by liberal elites.”

In light of a prior post at this blog — “March for Life: A New Great Awakening” — I am conscious that this self-righteous culture may be seeing a moral splinter in this President’s eye while ignoring the immensity of the moral lumber in its own. I was encouraged and affirmed in the above post by this brilliant but deeply unsettling presentation by Eric Metaxas of the truth about our moral compromises:

“In the 1990s, some Democrats were antiabortion. Neither party could exclusively claim the high ground on this deepest of moral issues. Mr. Clinton spoke of making abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” No longer. Democrats endorse abortion with near unanimity often beyond viability and until birth. If slavery was rightly considered… both a moral and political issue, how can this macabre practice be anything else? How can Christians pretend this isn’t the principal moral issue of our time as slavery was in 1860? Can’t these issues of historic significance outweigh whatever the President’s moral failings might be?”

Prolife Catholics and Evangelicals were also affirmed when President Trump became the first sitting U.S. President to appear in person and address the March for Life. Evangelical Americans formed a wide cross section of President Donald Trump’s support in the 2016 presidential election, though it is widely believed that at least some of their enthusiasm was not so much for Trump as it was against the alternative. That is the same case in play in 2024. Pope Francis, who never injects himself into U.S. politics, has urged American Catholics to vote for the candidate and party that inflicts the least moral harm. He clarified, without names, that one candidate rejects migrants while the other “kills children.”

The choice of president in 2016 also presented one, and perhaps two, opportunities to nominate lifetime appointments to fill likely vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. As you know, it turned out to be three vacancies which led directly to overturning Roe v. Wade and therefore returning the judgment to voters in each state. For many who found themselves weighing the lesser of evils in 2016, consideration of who sits on the Supreme Court for life actually (and morally) outweighed who occupied the White House for the next four years.

Two Decades of Christianity’s Cultural Decline

As I have written elsewhere, the first Great Awakening in America was a religious revival in the Colonies by Presbyterian preachers who inspired a sense of national identity that led to the Revolutionary War of 1776. In the United States today, self-described Wiccans outnumber Presbyterians.

This is not the same country that it was just a decade ago. Topics like religion and Religious Liberty have been under increasing assault. We have every reason to believe the trend toward secularism will continue. The need to protect Religious Liberty has never been more urgent. In 2010, seventy-six percent of Americans identified as Christians. By 2020 that figure had diminished to sixty-five percent.

In 2010, fifty-one percent of Americans identified as Protestant. By 2020, the figure had dropped to forty-three percent. The missing eight percent did not convert to some other religion. They abandoned religion to join the “Nones,” people who profess no faith in anything but secularism. In 2010, seventeen percent of Americans did not identify with any organized religion. In 2020, that figure now exceeds twenty-six percent.

The Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination and a conservative political force, lost 1.5 million members over the last decade. The second and third largest Protestant denominations, Episcopalians and Methodists, had major schisms, dividing over LGBTQ issues along political fault lines.

Among American millennials — identified as those born between 1981 and 1996 — forty percent claim no religious affiliation at all beyond their embrace of secularism. For this age group, this represents an increase of thirteen percentage points in just the last decade.

In the same decade — despite media hype of sex scandals, financial scandals, and battles between Traditionalists and progressives — those calling themselves Catholic declined by only three percent. Lest Catholics take too much pride in that, a WSJ/NBC news poll in 2000 revealed that Americans, including Catholics, who attend religious services at least once per week stood at forty-one percent. By 2020, the figure had declined to twenty-nine percent.

All of these statistics create a snapshot of religion in America before Covid. During the Covid crisis under the Biden Administration, government mandates at the state and federal levels across the land shuttered churches as “nonessential” gathering places. Liquor stores and casinos remained open while most Christians were barred from congregrating in any way but remotely. I wrote of the catastrophic effect this has had on the Catholic Church in American when too many of our bishops placidly went along with these government restrictions. That post was “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.” Christianity in America has not recovered from Covid.

The decline has merely continued and we have no reason to believe it will stop. If the next president is not someone who is sensitive and supportive of Religious Freedom, regardless of whether he or she practices any religion of their own, then religion in America is doomed.

My Country ’Twas of Thee

History sometimes repeats itself. In “President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform,” I wrote of another possible basis for seeing a flawed character in a more Biblical light.

In 722 B.C., Israel fell to the Assyrians and was sent into exile. In 605 B.C., the Kingdom of Israel divided between north and south. The southern Kingdom of Judah fell into Babylonian captivity. In 587 B.C., Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. This was the time of the apocalyptic Prophets — Daniel, Ezekiel and Baruch. A century earlier, Isaiah actually prophesied the name of the man who would one day restore Israel to its rightful path and preserve its heritage:

“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.”

— Isaiah 45:1

Between 559 and 530 B.C., a man named Cyrus the Great united the Medes and Persians [in present day Iran] to form the great Persian Empire. Fifty years after Israel was invaded, cast into exile, and suffered the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, Cyrus and his armies conquered Babylon.

However no one but Isaiah could have predicted that, for the Jews in exile, Cyrus would turn out to be more of a liberator than a conqueror. He practiced no religious faith that the Jews could recognize. He lived a lifestyle with values deplorable to them. But this disruptor of no faith at all turned out to develop deep respect for theirs.

Cyrus restored the Kingdom of Israel, ordered his armies to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, declared an end to slavery and oppression, and established a charter to protect Religious Liberty. The Book of the Prophet Ezra contains the entire Decree of Cyrus guaranteeing Religious Liberty for the Jews and protecting it throughout the Persian Empire. But Cyrus himself never changed.

The Prophet Isaiah certainly never envisioned anyone like Donald Trump leading an America in rapid religious decline. He is notorious for living in a manner understandably anathema to Evangelical Christians, and yet he has also come to be seen as a Cyrus-like defender of Religious Liberty. No president in modern times has done more to protect and defend Religious Freedom.

So let me repeat myself, please. If the “Not My President” crowd is horrified as though I wrote this post wearing a MAGA hat and a “Not My Impeachment” T-shirt, this is not a matter of like or dislike. It is a matter of truth and its various distortions that today pass as journalism and broadcast news, and I am not willing to hand my Truth over to them.

A little perspective is always a good thing. This candidate’s moral past, his former overused Twitter account, and his novel approach to both foreign policy and the swamp of contemporary politics pale next to the moral decline of a nation that has terminated the lives of sixty-two million future citizens.
Some were appalled, but not nearly appalled enough, when 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, a member of the current White House Cabinet, distorted our Sacred Scripture to defend the mass extermination of human life:

“There’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath… the kind of cosmic question of where life begins. It ought to be up to the woman making the decision.”

We were not nearly appalled enough when former candidate Beto O’Rourke called for an end to Religious Rights and Freedom for any institution that fails to fall in line with same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ political narratives. We were not nearly appalled enough when the remaining Democratic candidates offered no rebuttal, not even an audible gasp.

But to quote Eric Metaxas one more time, “It isn’t what one does that makes one a Christian, but rather faith in what Jesus has done.” That may include faith in the notion that God can choose a sinner like King Cyrus as an instrument of good in the bigger picture of human history, and maybe even one like Donald Trump.

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Editor’s Note: Father MacRae emphasizes that this post is not an endorsement of a political candidate. It is an endorsement of a solid Catholic tradition that redemption is open to all who seek it.

Please share this post and ponder these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls

Donald Trump Has a Prayer by Father Raymond de Souza

Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age

One Nation Under God: The Future of the U.S. Supreme Court

Neither Donald Trump nor I Should Wear That Scarlet Letter!

President Trump and Melania Trump pray at the Shrine of Saint John Paul II in Washington, DC

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.”

For the Soul of a Nation: In Defense of Religious Liberty

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the present U.S. Supreme Court are all that stand in the way of the gradual annihilation of religious liberty.

April 19, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Early in 2023, a global Internet tracking service reported that there are more than two billion active websites, 600 million of which are blogs publishing over 2.5 billion posts per year — including this one. Back in 2010 when this blog was in its infancy with a much smaller readership, a site called The Crescat reviewed a variety of blogs it categorized as Catholic blogs.

A moderator divided them into further categories and asked for reader input to sort them out. Somehow, this blog showed up on The Crescat’s radar, but it defied easy description. I wrote about everything. So in the end we were given the dubious distinction of “Best Under-Appreciated Catholic Blog.”

I do not look for recognition in writing, but that may not seem evident when publishing a single weekly post that competes for readers with about 50 million other weekly posts. I also never called this blog a “Catholic blog.” It has no Imprimatur, no Nihil Obstat, and no official recognition from any official Catholic institution, but neither do any other Catholic blogs.

As a writer, I have to earn Catholic “street cred” the hard way. “Street cred” is a term I hear a lot in my present environment. It refers to “street credibility.” In prison it is considered a standard of personal integrity, a sort of consistency of being. Having pulled oneself up from the school of hard knocks translates into a badge of honor for some and a cause for disdain for others. The Catholic Writers Guild invited this blog’s participation while the Catholic Media Association rather bluntly refused it.

“The School of Hard Knocks” is a literary term defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as, “the practical experiences of life, including hardships and disappointments that temper and educate a person.” It isn’t easy for a priest — even one in prison — to claim such a thing, but in recent years some priests could be considered for this distinction. For a Catholic priest, being falsely accused and unjustly in prison is like the postgraduate level of the school of hard knocks.

This blog has always struggled against tidal forces to survive. So you might understand my surprise a few years back when readers of Our Sunday Visitor cited Beyond These Stone Walls as “The Best of the Catholic Web” in the area of Spirituality. Then Catholic Culture gave it highest marks for content, excellence, and fidelity. Then About.com awarded it second place in the category of Best Catholic Blogs. Being where I am, I did not even know about some of this. Do they not know from whence I write?

But for me, the “street cred” with the most impact has come from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the largest, most influential, and most visible organization dedicated to the defense and preservation of religious liberty. Catholic League President Bill Donohue has repeatedly recognized this blog as a source of credible Catholic witness in dark times. And Bill Donohue himself has recently been cited by the Catholic Herald in the U.K. as one of the top religious leaders in the U.S.

On a dozen occasions recently, Bill Donohue and the Catholic League have cited and promoted posts from Beyond These Stone Walls sending tens of thousands of readers to this site. Each cited post covered some aspect of religious liberty or controversial currents in the Church that impact religious freedom. These posts are now collected on the page, “Cited by the Catholic League.”

Image Credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

A Growing Culture of Hostility to Religion

On July 21,2022, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke at the University of Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in Rome. This excerpt of his address, published in The Wall Street Journal (August 4, 2022) exemplifies the dire importance of our attention to the state of religious freedom. From Justice Samuel Alito:

“I am reminded of an experience I had in a museum in Berlin. One of the exhibits was a rustic wooden cross. A woman and young boy were looking at this exhibit. The young boy turned to the woman, presumably his mother, and said, ‘Who is that man?’ The memory has stuck in my mind as a harbinger of what may lie ahead for our culture. The problem that looms is not just indifference to religion; it is not just ignorance about religion. There is also growing hostility to religion.

“A dominant view among legal academics is that religion does not merit special protection. A liberal society, they say, should be value-neutral, and therefore it should treat religion just like any other passionate personal attachment — like rooting for a favorite sports team, pursuing a hobby, or following a popular artist or group. Now I think we would all agree that in a free society, people should be free to pursue those avocations. But do they really merit the same protection as the exercise of religion?”

— Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, July 21, 2022

In a different recent address, Vice President Kamala Harris cited the Declaration of Independence. She emphasized that the document “guarantees all Americans the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But there was an intentional glaring omission. The Vice President conspicuously left out the most fundamental of inalienable rights, the Right to Life. It is a right rooted in religious liberty, recognizing both life and religious freedom as rights given by God and not simply by the whim of government.

I have strong reason to now believe that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the current United States Supreme Court are all that stand in the way of the annihilation of the Right to Life and Religious Liberty in America. A Catholic League annual membership fee is a small price to pay for lending your name in defense of the most basic of our unalienable rights, the right to practice and profess your faith even in a secular world.

I admit to having a vested interest in this. More than any other voice, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has treated me with open-minded justice and fairness. The Catholic League has also advocated for my friend, Pornchai Moontri as he languished in ICE detention for five grueling months during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. To great effect, Bill Donohue and the Catholic League petitioned the White House to move Pornchai’s case forward from the bureaucracy in which it was stalled.

A Movement Defending Parental Rights

The Catholic League has also recently distinguished itself as a staunch defender of parental rights. One of my posts cited and recommended this year was “Disney’s Disenchanted Kingdom versus Parental Rights.” That post was about the production of a documentary sponsored by the Catholic League entitled, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” which has received wide acclaim.

In a recent news release, Catholic League President Bill Donohue described some of its accolades. The film was just one entry among films from 22 nations in the L.A. International Short Film Festival. “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” was nominated for six categories and won in four of them awarding it Best Documentary, Best Editing, Best Sound Design, and an Honorable Mention for Best Trailer. The latter three awards were in a broader field than just the documentaries alone. They were judged the best of all films presented to the International Film Festival. “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” is now also nominated for Best Documentary and Best Poster Design at The Prisma Film Festival in Rome, Italy.

Some on the political left have remained stubbornly tone deaf to the assault on parental rights that the Disney franchise has recently embraced. Parental demands to be heard have upended the political spectrum in Virginia and Florida and are now spreading across the playing field of U.S. politics. To suggest that religion does not belong in that arena may be a fair assessment, but Religious Liberty as an unalienable right certainly does belong in the political sphere, and so does parental rights.

More recent examples of the tone deaf politics arising out of the debate over Parental Rights in Education have come from two prominent New York House Democrats. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) characterized the Parental Rights in Education bill in Congress thusly: “Extreme MAGA Republicans don’t want your child to learn about the LGBTQ+ experience.” He deserves our thanks for making our point so succinctly. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) described the Parental Bill of Rights as “fascism,” adding, “Our children need urgent and aggressive educational solutions. When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is: It is freedom over fascism.”

There is not much left to say after that. They have made our point for us. Please consider lending your voice to the Catholic League efforts to preserve and protect our freedoms. You may become a member or subscribe for free email news releases at: www.catholicleague.org.

Bill Donohue’s new book, War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class Is Killing the American Dream, was published yesterday and is available on Amazon and Sophia Institute Press.

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A Message to Our Readers from Fr. Gordon MacRae

In recent months, a number of readers have suggested that I compile some of our past posts into a series of published books. I think the popularity of the Prison Journal by George Cardinal Pell raised this idea among some of our readers. I have been moved beyond words that I had a substantial presence in the late Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal Volume Two.

I am also moved by the Journal itself and the many similarities in our respective prison experiences. The late Cardinal Pell and I responded to prison in much the same way, boldly facing the absence of anything that supports our faith or our priesthood. It is amazing how important something becomes when you can no longer have it. Cardinal Pell's Prison Journal is a legacy for the whole Church. So is his final message which was one of our posts recommended by the Catholic League: “The Vatican Today: Cardinal Pell’s Last Gift to the Church.”

The exoneration of Cardinal Pell was the answer to a prayer. At the time of his exoneration by Australia’s highest court, he had spent just over 400 days in unjust imprisonment. At the time I was storming Heaven for his freedom, I marked 10,000 days and nights in prison. Australia’s justice system is not the same as in the United States. A release based on wrongful conviction here is very hard won. An effort to review my case and restore my freedom is still underway. My faith and my priesthood are also still intact, and they inform and empower my survival.

Compiling past posts into my own version of a Prison Journal like Cardinal Pell’s is not possible, however. I have no access at all to the online world or to income, and that has been so for a much longer period of time. I cannot even see and have never seen this blog. I have no access to almost 14 years of writing published at this site. With severe restrictions on space, I have no access to printed copies of past writings. I have only a list of titles and I reference them only on memory.

But perhaps we have done the next best thing. When These Stone Walls, the prior version of this blog, evolved into Beyond These Stone Walls in 2020, we added the BTSW Public Library with multiple categories. We have slowly been restoring past posts to add them to the respective categories. Some of our categories have considerably more posts than others. This is because I pay more attention to some category subjects than others. Because I have abiding interest in Sacred Scripture, for example, I have written many posts about it.

The BTSW Public Library is set up like an ordinary library’s card catalog except that it is digital. Each category has a title and top image. Once you tap or click on either one, you will enter that category to scroll through a list of images and titles for each post. When you find a post that interests you, just tap or click on the image. When you close it, you will remain in the same category to peruse it further if you wish.

Abuse of the Abuse Crisis

The newest Category in our Library is “Abuse of the Abuse Crisis.” This is an important Category for me because it contains posts about how others have magnified and exploited the abuse crisis in the priesthood for their own ends and agendas. There has been no shortage of people who — out of vindictiveness or greed or just anti-Catholic bias — have used our crisis to tear down the priesthood and your faith. The posts in Abuse of the Abuse Crisis tell a riveting story about the costs of such abuse not only to the Church’s financial future, but to our lives as priests and your lives as Catholics. Real abuse has made us all ashamed, but the amount of fraud and bias is an outrage.

My interest in developing this special Library Category came from an experience with watching CNN a few years ago. A CNN commentator told the world that During a protest at the Vatican, 100,000 victims of sex abuse by priests were refused an audience with the Pope.” I was alerted to this story from several readers so, to the extent I was able, I looked more closely under the hood.

It turned out that SNAP, the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests, did in fact stage a “victims’ protest” near the Vatican. The number of people present was about 40 — of which more than half were media people invited in advance to the photo op. The actual protesters were very few, and actual victims fewer still. By the time the story reached CNN, 40 became 100,000. I sent this story to Bill Donohue at the Catholic League and he followed it with a protest of his own. CNN apologized and promised to be more vigilant with its facts.

We must not accept such distortions blindly just because they appear in the news media. A post at this new category, second from the top, also addressed this same story. The SNAP-sponsored trip to Rome later became part of an employee lawsuit against SNAP in which the organization was exposed for fraud, a lawyer kickback scheme, and misused donor funds — some of which paid for a high end junket at first class hotels for this protest in Rome. I expect 100,000 people will now visit my Abuse of the Abuse Crisis page. Well ... maybe it will be closer to 40, but you might understand how such numbers are easily confused.

There are other important additions. You may have noticed the “Documents” feature in the menu at Beyond These Stone Walls. You will find there some important documents in the case against me and also a section with documents on the Pornchai Moontri story. Both sets of documents have been equally visited and l consider both to be of great importance to the cause of justice. Over 16 years of listening to the constant tap-tap-tap of my typewriter, Pornchai more than earned an honored place at this blog.

We have recently added a new item atop the documents section in my own case. It was recently prepared for a legal review through a new set of eyes. The document is entitled “Synopsis of the Case.”

Finally, for those who want to help me personally, and/or contribute to maintaining this blog or aiding me in support of Pornchai Moontri and Fr. John Hung Le, we have added access to a Zelle Account in addition to our existing PayPal Account. Zelle is easier and less expensive to use, but presently only available in the United States. Please visit our “Contact and Support” page or “Special Events” for further information.

Thank you for coming here. May the Lord Bless you and keep you.

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.”