Justice Clarence Thomas: When a News Story Becomes the News

Despite known threats against Supreme Court justices, an April CNN report revealed the home address of the elderly mother of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

May 10, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Hours after I began this post, I was forced to abandon it and start over. Just as I sat before my typewriter, popular FOX News host Tucker Carlson was fired from the network for reasons that I am certain will be clearer but no less controversial by the time this is posted. On the same day, CNN Morning News host Don Lemon was also fired, but entirely unrelated to the FOX News story. Both events shook the world of cable television news media.

Whatever the reasons behind them, however, they could not possibly rise to the clear and present danger posed from a violation of journalistic standards that stayed mostly off the rest of the media radar in recent weeks. The only reference I have seen to its seriousness was in an April 21, 2023 column by James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Justice Thomas and the Plague of Bad Reporting.”

James Taranto is the WSJ Editorial Features Editor. His column that day was a very good report about some very bad journalism. It took a complex development and systematically presented it in clear prose. If you cannot see it due to the WSJ pay wall, I want to present some of its highlights. Its subject was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a short list of supposed “ethics violations” touted in some news venues with lots of partisan spin. Mr. Taranto, especially critical of coverage in two Washington DC media venues, wrote: “The Washington Post and ProPublica commit comically incompetent journalism. But by stirring up animus, they increase the risk of a tragic ending.”

The “risk of a tragic ending” refers to some related coverage at CNN. Among the published claims from ProPublica was a charge that the 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas has been living rent free in a property formerly owned in part by Thomas but sold in 2016 to longtime friend, Harlan Crow. When Justice Thomas sold his one-third interest in the property, at a substantial loss, he was required to report the sale, but did not. It was an oversight. A source said that Thomas erroneously believed he did not have to report the sale because he sold it at a loss and none of the entities involved had a case before his Court.

Mr. Taranto went on to explain that the oversight is a rather common one. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Ketanji Brown Jackson had all committed the same oversight which in each case was corrected by simply filing an amendment to the respective year’s report. That same simple correction should have been afforded to Justice Thomas as well, but instead ProPublica pounced on the story in April, presenting it as a gross violation of judicial ethics. It was an oversight that could have been easily corrected within the rules, but that did not stop The Washington Post from also hyping the story for partisan reasons.

The story, as later reported by CNN, was that, as part of a negotiated $133,363 sale price of the home and property in 2016, then 85-year-old Leola Williams, the mother of Justice Thomas, was given an occupancy agreement by the buyer to be able to remain in her home rent free for the rest of her life. She remained responsible for property taxes and insurance. The occupancy agreement was with her and not with Justice Thomas who sold the modest home at a loss to a company owned by longtime friend, Harlan Crow. Ms. Williams is now 92 years of age.

Ethics and Common Sense at CNN

It is perhaps providential that Harlan Crow’s first name is not “Jim.” It did not take long for the political left to turn this story into a scandal, though with some difficulty. Something terribly nefarious was imagined lurking beneath the fact that a white billionaire might offer such a gesture of mercy to an elderly black woman. Former ProPublica president Richard Tofel wrote of this on Twitter: “Can’t imagine how any reasonable person could distinguish this from Crow giving Thomas cash every month.”

In publishing this story on Monday, April 17,2023, CNN followed this “incompetent reporting” by “increasing the risk of a tragic ending.” The potential tragic ending was this: The CNN report also published the home address of the now 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas. That was the only real scandal in this story. With help from a friend, I published the following comment on James Taranto’s Wall Street Journal column:

“In 2022, I was invited by the Pew Research Center to participate in its Survey of Journalists about the state of journalism and news reporting in America, both broadcast and print. One result was a widely expressed dismay by journalists that journalistic ethics are routinely compromised in favor of partisan politics. Apparently, the participating journalists have not done enough to counter this concern.

“The most disturbing part of Mr.Taranto’s column is a revelation that CNN reported the address of the elderly mother of Justice Clarence Thomas. There can be no acceptable explanation for this dangerous and irresponsible setting aside of journalistic ethics in favor of one-sided political gain. The news department at CNN is under new management. Viewers were assured that there would be changes in the way news is presented there. We were promised news with less opinionated partisan influence.

“Whoever at CNN published the address should be fired. Whoever provided oversight to allow this to happen should also be fired, especially in light of other attempted attacks and harassment at the homes of other Supreme Court justices. After this serious breach of ethics, I am deleting CNN from my television channel list until CNN can live up to its promise. This is the only way consumers of the news can speak truth to power. Actions like this at CNN tell me that power takes precedence over truth.”

— Gordon J. Mac Rae, The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2023

A Jarring 2020 Flashback

This was really all about Roe v. Wade and it could easily be interpreted as a reminder to those off the rails that reprisals are now called for. Addressing a crowd of angry pro-abortion supporters in March 2020, then Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) leveled threats against two Supreme Court Justices:

“We know what’s at stake. Over the last three years, women’s reproductive rights have come under attack in a way we haven’t seen in modern history. Republican legislatures are waging a war on women, and they’re taking away fundamental rights. I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”

— Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

We all saw the jeering protesters lobbing threats at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices. Early in the morning of June 8, 2022, two weeks before the leaked decision on Roe v. Wade was formally published, U.S. marshals arrested an armed man trying to break into the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He told police that he had begun “thinking about how to give his life purpose” so he decided to kill Justice Kavanaugh after finding his address on the internet. All of this was known to CNN before publishing the address of the 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas.

I know that CNN is not the only news venue that packages news along partisan lines. According to media expert, Alex S. Jones in his 2010 book, Losing the News (Oxford Press). “CNN and MSNBC have shifted their focus from news to opinion in pursuit of FOX News’s highly successful mix of news and advocacy.” In the month before this breach of ethics at CNN, its ratings had soared 35-percent since the New York indictment of former president Donald Trump. Its audience base was already highly charged. And it goes without saying that if Donald Trump had said in public what Senator Chuck Schummer said on the steps of the Supreme Court, that story would have eclipsed all other news.

A March 26, 2023 You Gov poll of trust in broadcast news services asked respondents to address two questions: 1) which of the following TV networks do you watch to keep up with the news? And 2) Which TV networks do you most trust for news? The combined results were definitive: Fox News 41%; ABC News 24%; CNN 22%; CBS 22%; NBC 21%; MSNBC 18%.

Whether our readers agree with the partisan spin of any of these news networks is beside the point. There is clearly a ratings war going on, and networks that have trailed in ratings have also suffered a decline in advertising dollars, the networks’ sole source of income. Most viewers who consistently choose one network over another tend to do so not just because they want the news, but also because they want their own belief system to be affirmed. This was the number two complaint among journalists in the recent Pew Research Center Survey of Journalists in which I and this blog were invited to participate.

Taking part in that survey is not a bragging point. If anything, it made me realize how much I am also a slave to a news service and its fundamental frame of mind. The blending of news and opinion is a toxic but alluring mix. Once I became conscious of this, I have tried to view news networks with opposing views, but it hasn’t been easy. Two years after the election of 2020, one of these networks remains dedicated to 24-hour coverage of “get Trump at any cost.” Another seems wedded to the idea that we are all unrepentant racists. When I leave a news program feeling angry and riled, just imagine how an already fired-up mob is responding.

At least one cooler head has prevailed. After reading the above column and two recent sequels by The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, I am convinced that the ethics claims against Justice Clarence Thomas are entirely contrived and reported along partisan lines to support a strictly partisan bias.

Along those same lines, the Gallup Poll now reports that 70% of Democrats, 27% of Independents, and only 14% of Republicans say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust and confidence in the current state of journalism.

Have an opinion? I would love to hear it, but please don’t shoot the messenger!

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Two final notes from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Forty-four years ago on May 11, 1979, my friend Father Joseph Sands was murdered in the rectory of St. Rose of Lima parish in the town of Littleton, New Hampshire. The years to follow revealed that this troubling story had many mysterious tentacles into the case that sent me to wrongful imprisonment. Ryan A. MacDonald untangled those tentacles in “The Story Buried Under the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

On a very different note, Sunday May 14 is Mothers Day in the United States. It is a day to honor our mothers, both living and deceased. I would like to think that after all these years of injustice, I managed to bring some poetic justice to my mother in “Mothers Day Promises to Keep, and Miles to Go Before I Sleep.”

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.”

Fifty Years after Watergate Comes the January 6 Committee

A news commentator described the January 6 Committee hearings as the most fascinating since Watergate, but I have yet to find anyone who has watched any of them.

July 20, 2022 by GJ MacRae

Many of our readers know that I was asked awhile back to serve as a Registered Wall Street Journal Opinion Leader. Besides its slightly ego-inflating title, the position actually means very little and comes with no perks at all — not even a discount on my annual subscription. The voluntary position requires only my commitment to participate in regular surveys about the news, about how it is gathered, reported and delivered, about marketing, and about various WSJ features. As a result I regularly publish commentary on news and opinion at WSJ.com.

I suspect that this led to a more surprising invitation. A few months ago I was asked to participate as a journalist and agree to an interview for the Pew Research Center 2022 Survey of Journalists. I have just received the full report of this survey on the state of journalism and the news industry in America. The Report has surprising results — the most important of which is a very wide disconnect between the perceptions of journalists and those of the public about the news. Here is a summary:

The Pew Research Center 2022 Survey of Journalists

“Washington, D.C. (June 14, 2022) — From the economic upheaval of the digital age to the rise of political polarization and the Covid-19 pandemic, journalism in America has been in a state of turmoil for decades. In this major new study, The Pew Research Center shares the perspective of journalists about the news industry they work in and their relationship with the public they serve.

“While journalists recognize challenges facing their industry, the Center’s survey of nearly 12,000 U.S. journalists finds that they express a high degree of satisfaction in their jobs and 77% say they would pursue a career in journalism again.

“At the same time, when asked to describe their industry in a single word, 72% used a word with negative connotations. The most common are words that relate to “struggling” or “chaos.” Specific areas of concern for journalists were widespread. They include disinformation, freedom of the press, and partisan coverage of the news. Here are some key findings of the Report:

• Just 14% of journalists surveyed think the U.S public has a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media.

• About seven out of ten journalists (71%) say made-up news and information is a big problem for the country. This was significantly higher than the 50% of the adult public that said the same thing.

• In a separate survey, 82% of the American public says that journalists should keep their views out of whatever they are reporting on. Among journalists, only 55% agree while 42% report that they feel unable to keep their own views out of their reporting.

• Over half (55%) of journalists say that in reporting the news every side does not deserve to have equal coverage while only 44% said equal coverage of the news is a goal.

• Journalists express far more concern than the public about politically like-minded people clustering around the same news outlets. 75% of journalists report this as a major concern while only 39% of the general public shares the same concern.

• Two thirds of journalists surveyed say that social media has a negative impact on the state of journalism while only 18% say it has a positive impact.

• The survey results reveal that journalists recognize that the public views their work with deep skepticism. When asked what one word they think the public would use to describe the news, the majority of journalists answered with “inaccurate, untrustworthy, biased, or partisan.”

• Journalists and the public stand far apart on how well they think news outlets perform their key functions:

  • 67% of journalists report that the quality of their coverage of important news is very good or good compared to only 41% of the public.

  • 65% of journalists say they report the news accurately compared to only 29% of the public.

  • 52% of journalists report that they fulfill their role as a watchdog of government. Only 29% of the public agrees.

  • 43% of journalists say that they manage or correct misinformation in their reporting. Only 25% of the public agrees, and 51% of the public says that journalists do a poor job at correcting misinformation.”

The Journalist / Public Disconnect

Though not a part of this survey, other media surveys report that the only U.S. institution with less public trust than journalism is Congress. Perhaps nowhere is this journalist/public disconnect in perception more evident that in the work of the Congressional task force known as the “January 6 Committee.” It has been conducting hearings about the events of January 6, 2021 and the chaotic transition of power at the U.S. Capitol. After the Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas and the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, it seems that far fewer people have been paying attention to the January 6 Committee hearings.

I was interested at first, and even began to follow the hearings. Then I heard one of the Committee members or an associate complain that the Uvalde, Texas tragedy was “a distraction” that took public attention from the partisan hearings. Like many Americans, I lost interest in the January 6 affair after that.

I have long admired and respected Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, and I frequently publish commentary on her column in the WSJ Weekend Edition. However, I suspect that she was misreading the nation in one aspect of her June 25, 2022 column entitled, “Trump and Biden Both Face Rejection.” She attached to the January 6 hearings an awareness and importance to the collective consciousness of America that just doesn’t seem to be there. She did this, as her excerpts below attest, by drawing a comparison with the 1972 media coverage of the Watergate scandal. Ms. Noonan wrote:

“There has been criticism that the 1/6 committee isn’t the Watergate hearings, which the entire country watched and which in the end turned public opinion. Totally true. We had an entire country that watched things together once. But the Watergate story was often hard to piece together in those hearings. Not so here.

“The 1/6 committee has been knocked for hiring television producers, but that’s part of why it is yielding a coherent story. They made it tight, not cheap. And after they aired, the Watergate hearings disappeared because there was no internet. The 1/6 hearings will be telling their story forever — on C-Span and YouTube … and they will be heavily viewed.”

With all due respect to Peggy Noonan, I could not disagree more. The Watergate hearings of 1973 were iconic. They left a lasting impression on the American political psyche. The public was riveted to them. The hearings resulted in the production of a major motion picture — All the President’s Men — which won numerous Academy Awards and still enthralls 50 years later. Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, remain household names 50 years later as icons of journalistic pursuit and integrity. No one in today’s news media has a similar reputation.

I was 19 years old when the Watergate burglary was reported at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC on June 17, 1972. I was 20 when the Watergate Congressional hearings took place and led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Along with the entire nation, I was riveted to the unfolding story and its fascinating cast of characters.

America was a different nation in 1972, and it was a different time. There was no Internet, no Facebook, no Google. The most memorable newsman in America was Walter Cronkite. As Washington correspondent for CBS Evening News, he established a reputation as a trusted, paternal figure. As a result, his reports on the Vietnam War and the Watergate affair greatly influenced public opinion. Today, no one in the news media evokes a similar reputation for trust that comes even close. I cannot say that the news media is better off for having generated no one of similar character and prestige over the last half century.

These Are Not Your Father’s Watergate Hearings!

I admit that I write from a peculiar vantage point. I cannot jump on the internet to take the pulse of the nation, but I am in touch with a lot of people who speak from varying points of view. So over a recent week, I informally polled some of them about their awareness of the January 6 Committee Hearings. This is by no means a scientific survey, but here is a sampling of the underwhelming results from some honest observers. I have not excluded any results that spoke from a contrary point of view:

Law enforcement officer #1 : “I know the hearings are going on, but they are totally one-sided. When I heard that Trump wanted to send troops to stop the Capitol riots but Nancy Pelosi declined, I stopped watching. No one I know watches any of this.”

Law enforcement officer #2 : “I haven’t watched. If they gave equal time to the Joe and Hunter Biden scandal, I might watch.”

Parish priest : “I have not seen the hearings, and none of my parishioners ever even mention them. There are way more important things going on like the reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

High school teacher #1 : “The hearings came as school was ending so I watched a little. I just don’t trust MSNBC which seems to be the main network covering (or exploiting) the story.”

High school teacher #2 : “I got pretty disgusted when I heard one of the Committee members complain that the tragedy at Uvalde was taking attention away from Jan. 6 hearings so I lost interest.”

High school teacher #3 : “I don’t follow the hearings after Nancy Pelosi declined to allow the participation of two prominent Republican Committee members. It is a one-sided political panel.”

Retired obstetrics nurse : “After the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, I don’t think anyone even knew these hearings were still going on.”

Federal Government Employee #1 : “I followed a little at first, but it seems totally one-sided. They just want to ‘get Trump’ while the country is moving on.”

Federal Government Employee #2 : “I haven’t watched the hearings, but I hope they can get Trump! Can’t stand him!”

Ten random prisoners: “Hearings? What hearings?”

The Rise and Fall of the News Media

In 1972, The Washington Post sent two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to cover the story of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Office Complex. The Post editors made a decision early on to allow that story to go where the facts led. As a result, Peggy Noonan was right. The whole country watched entranced as the Nixon Administration dissolved before our very eyes.

Fifty years later, Washington political scandal has not changed at all. What has changed is the news media. The Washington Post is now arguing in its editorials that George Washington University must change its name because of its namesake’s association with slavery 300 years ago. The Post is conveniently not applying the same argument to its own name. As historian, Barbara Tuchman wrote in The March of Folly, “There is nothing more unjust than to judge men of the past with the ideas of the present.”

The Washington Post and other news outlets today join the partisan Congressional framers of the January 6 Committee hearings to exaggerate public interest or decry the lack thereof. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins demonstrated journalistic courage in covering anew a story that most in the news media and the Democratic side of Congress helped to actively suppress.

In “Hunter and the Press: Who’s the Real Degenerate?” (WSJ July 2, 2022) Holman Jenkins revealed a series of evolving Washington Post headlines about the now notorious Hunter Biden laptop in late 2020. The Washington Post coverage leaves no doubt that the paper was actively suppressing that story in order to help facilitate a desired election outcome without regard to the damage it was doing to journalism, not to mention democracy. There was no hint of The Washington Post of the Watergate era. In the Hunter Biden story, The Post showed no consideration at all to its Watergate-era determination to “let the story go to where the facts take it.”

In this age of partisan spycraft and woke politics, the news media that was once the underpinning of democracy is now in a state of determined self-destruction. Most in the news media have chosen a partisan political side to the detriment of journalism, and perhaps the nation itself.

I hope, with the small voice given to me, to remain a purveyor of truth, and let the story go where the facts take it. Please do tell me anytime you think I might be screwing this up!

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Note: Thank you for reading. Please continue to take the measure of the news media with these related posts:

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Hitler’s Post, Nazi Crimes and The New York Times

The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe

A Soap Opera at CNN Amid the Winds of War

The Unspoken Racist Arena of Roe v. Wade

Catholic priests and politicians who are silent about abortion often cite racism as a higher moral priority. Are they blind to the racist oppression of Roe v. Wade?

July 6, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Shortly after a U.S. Supreme Court draft was mysteriously leaked with an impression that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned, this reactionary nation descended once again into chaos. At the time, I wrote a post making a case for why overturning a precedent like Roe v. Wade was not the legal earthquake some in the partisan news media described it to be. Catholic League President Bill Donohue sent an email to the civil rights group’s thousands of members asking them to read my post entitled, “After Roe v. Wade, Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul.”

It became our most-read post for the month of May, 2022, but I had long before been marked as a “prolife priest.” I had never even imagined that there are Catholic priests out there who might not champion the cause for life. I have since learned from lots of readers that they rarely if ever hear support for prolife causes in their parishes. So I set out in this post to make an argument for why Catholics — including priests — can and should be challenged to take up a well-informed defense of life.

I was a late arrival on the side of life. When I was a newly ordained priest forty0-two years ago in 1982, I learned that my one and only niece (two others arrived later) longed for a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas. They were all the rage then, but my sister in the Boston area told me that the demand was so great it was simply impossible to find one. So I went on a mission and implored the help of a friend who managed a large department store just over the border in New Hampshire. She laughed saying that I should have listened to my sister, but I was an uncle determined not to disappoint my only niece.

A few days later, the friend called me and said that one of the chain’s stores had one that remained unclaimed so I quickly asked her to hold it for me. She wanted me to come late at night when the store was closing because she feared I might be mugged by desperate parents while carrying the semi-precious doll from the store. I felt like a thief in the night as I arrived to discover that the remaining doll was modeled after an African American infant. A flood of implications raced through my mind, but I dismissed them all and purchased the doll.

It was two weeks before Christmas, 1982. Back at my parish, I carefully opened the box, intrigued by the enormous social pressure on parents to find and buy this pseudo-human infant for their young daughters that Christmas. Inside the box, I was surprised to see what looked like an official birth certificate with the doll’s name and date of “birth” printed in nice calligraphy.

So the following Sunday at Mass, I brought the doll with me, box and all. It was the Fourth Sunday of Advent. During my homily, I opened the box and produced both the doll and the birth certificate. The parish was instantly riveted, not by the point I was making but by the fact that I had somehow actually obtained a Cabbage Patch doll. My homily called out the irony that the creators of this doll went to such great lengths to fabricate authenticity — including a birth certificate — and promote such enormous demand that mothers and fathers could not find one. Meanwhile, real human babies are quietly aborted by the millions every year across the land. The reaction to my homily was both strained and strange.

Project Rachel

As I held up the birth certificate, there were audible gasps. Some looked alarmed and uncomfortable, others mesmerized, some quite pleased, and others downright hostile. No priest likes hostility, and I was no exception. At the door after Mass, some people thanked me for bringing up a subject never before heard in their parish. Others whisked by me without eye contact. A few looked really ticked and muttered something about “politics from the pulpit.” One man who clearly did not get the point said, “a hundred bucks for the doll, Father.”

One week later at Christmas, my niece was overjoyed at her new “little sister.” Within a few years she would have two real ones, and would learn that little sisters are a mixed blessing when you are accustomed to being the only one at center stage. Today, they remain very close and each is now also a mother.

It was because of this experience — the simple act of buying a doll for my niece at Christmas — that I thought Roe v. Wade all the way through and knew that I could not be silent about what I had learned. My first lesson was how easy it was to dupe myself into comfortable moral complicity by not thinking it through. I know this is an uncomfortable subject for some, but it is not possible to fully profess the Gospel without discomfort.

Two years later, I became one of four priests in my diocese to join Project Rachel, a Catholic ministry approved by the U.S. bishops to assist women who have had an abortion with the process of repentance and reconciled Communion with their faith. It is one of the most important ministries in the Catholic community, second only to the cause of life itself.

Our culture has romanticized the Christmas story, but in the Gospel of St. Matthew it concludes with terrible tragedy. Enraged at being tricked by the Magi, Herod ordered the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem. The story ends with a prophecy of Jeremiah which is the source for Project Rachel’s name:

“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they are no more.”

— Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:16-18

A reader of Beyond These Stone Walls recently told me of a discussion with her parish priest about abortion and Roe v. Wade, and the fact that the priest had never addressed either in a homily. She is a retired obstetrics nurse who obviously had a lifetime of thinking this through. I have heard the same critique of many priests in many states. Some respond that other social justice issues such as racism and inequality are higher moral priorities for them. They miss the crux of the matter.

There have been bold exceptions, priests who have inspired me and others in the cause of life. Among them are Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, and Father Stephen Imbarrato, also known as the “Protest Priest.” He is the moderator of Catholic Prolife and a leader in Red Rose Rescue.

When San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone recently imposed a canonical discipline barring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion, Mrs. Pelosi accused him of hypocrisy. She stated that she is in fact prolife, but her prolife activism centers on limiting the death penalty. It is spiritual blindness, and a common progressive position. But it is also one that I have shared. I was dubbed “the priest who kicked the hornets nest” when I wrote of this a decade ago. To protest the death penalty while promoting abortion is to become comfortable with spiritual blindness.

Catholic politicians like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden have compartmentalized and dulled their Catholic consciences. Like many progressive politicians, they have not thought this all the way through. The arenas of both the death penalty and abortion rights are mired in racism.

The Real Social Injustice of Racial Inequality

The list of racial disparities in America is extensive. African Americans represent only 12.5 percent of the U.S. population but 40 percent of the U.S. prison population. Many studies have shown that African American defendants often received longer prison sentences than White defendants for the same offense. They have been more likely than White defendants to be sentenced to death for capital crimes, and have been many times more likely to actually be executed in states that retain a death penalty.

This is of grave concern, but all of our concern is moot if we cannot even get the subjects of our concern born in the first place. At his shocking and eye-opening site, Blackgenocide.org, Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr. reveals that “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” When it comes to racial disparities in abortion the political left and too many of our priests and bishops remain silent in a state of ignorant bliss. There is no more racist agenda than the one behind the abortion industry in America.

In 1992, President Bill Clinton presented what was then the accepted liberal Democratic view: that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Since then, the overall abortion rate has declined to about half of what it was in the 1980s — except among African Americans. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, Black women are today eight times more likely than White women to seek an abortion. Abortion’s impact on the size of the African American population is critical, but conveniently overlooked by the news media and the progressive political left.

I had no idea when I gave my three-year-old niece that African American-looking Cabbage Patch doll in 1982 that infants who look like that particular doll are especially in peril. In a 2019 abortion case, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas observed that in New York City that year, for the first time in history, more African American infants were aborted than born.

It is also true that Planned Parenthood of America places its origin in the work of Margaret Sanger, an activist American nurse who worked tirelessly to provide access to abortion. From her own writings, one of her motivations was an interest in eugenics, the science of selective breeding. By controlling the growth of the African American population, Margaret Sanger and others believed that the purity of American genetic heritage could be maintained.

Jason L. Riley, an African American writer and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal authored a recent op-ed entitled “Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?” (WSJ, May 11, 2022). He wrote that the political left in America is quick to set off alarms anywhere racial disparities are known to exist — except for this one.

Race-based differences in SAT test scores, for example, brought calls to eliminate the SAT as a college admission test. A racial gap in arrest and incarceration rates has long vexed this nation, resulting on the left with socially destructive reactions like the “defund police” movement. In terms of sheer numbers and their impact on the African American population, abortion far exceeds other social justice concerns. The number of babies aborted by Black women each year in America far exceeds the combined numbers of Black youths who drop out of school, are sent to prison, and who are murdered on the streets of our cities.

The WSJ’s Jason Reilly cited a Pennsylvania case study about death rates. Examining premature deaths from all causes in 2018, it was discovered that abortions constituted 23.9 percent of premature deaths among the White population and 62.7 percent among the Black population. Abortion rights activists often cite these facts as a function of poverty, but even among other groups with higher poverty levels, Black women still have abortions at much higher rates than any other demographic.

The notion that not growing up at all is better than growing up in poverty is a notion only of the elite. Think of the arrogance behind such statements. If activists believe that lower incomes impact Black abortions, then the social justice issue and goal should be equality in income not controlling the population Planned-Parenthood-style through abortion.

Black lives matter. Indeed they do. Black infant lives matter too. There is no more racist agenda in America than the one keeping an entire people down through abortion.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.

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After Roe v. Wade: Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul

Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul

Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life

After Roe v. Wade, Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul

A prematurely leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft may send a polarized nation to the brink of civil war, but Roe v. Wade is not the first precedent to be overturned.

May 11, 2022 by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

KA-BOOM! For many months, the U.S. Supreme Court has been examining a case from the State of Mississippi. It is one of the most widely anticipated abortion rights cases in decades, and it could result in the termination of a federal constitutional right to abortion established in the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

In early May, a draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to and published by Politico. It is the first time in history that a draft of a pending Supreme Court decision was leaked to the media before it made its way through the Court’s decision-making process. The leaked draft leaves a distinct impression that the Court is (or was) about to overturn Roe V. Wade. The leak was an earthquake for government, the Supreme Court, and advocacy groups on both sides of the abortion issue.

Chief Justice John Roberts immediately requested an investigation of the unprecedented leak. I hope that by the time this is posted, the perpetrator(s) and process through which it was leaked are exposed. Explosions of furor over this in Washington are not exaggerated. The integrity of justice, the Supreme Court, the Separation of Powers, and government itself are at stake.

And there was another, simultaneous explosion, a nuclear one with a mushroom cloud spreading across this divided nation. The leaked news that Roe v. Wade may now be overturned has created a tidal wave of protest outside the Supreme Court and in cities across the land. On the left, the partisan protests are taking an unfortunate tone of vile hostility toward the pro-life movement, toward politicians who have been in sympathy with it, and toward Catholics who have traditionally been a driving force behind the Right to Life.

We should be proud of our defense of life while also avoiding any rhetoric of “we won and you lost!” The only potential winners here are the unborn who may have a chance to live if this leaked document becomes our reality. That is still likely months away.

President Joe Biden, who ran for office on a pledge to unite this polarized nation, has stoked the raging fires by denouncing the Court and calling for abortion rights to now be encoded in federal law. He knows full well that this is highly unlikely in the current divided House and Senate so his rhetoric can only be interpreted as an effort to ratchet up dissent and chaos.

In 2006, as Senator Joe Biden he backed an amendment to overturn Roe. Two years later, he became Vice President in the Obama White House. I can only interpret his radical flip, and his current hostility to the Right to Life, as evidence of a widely held belief that someone else has been doing his thinking for him on this and other crucial issues facing Americans. This is not a good time for the United States to have a puppet presidency.

The leaked document does not represent a final position of the Court, but it appears to have been written for the majority opinion. Whether leaking it was an attempt at sabotage remains to be seen. But the text of Justice Alito’s majority decision draft gives much hope to the pro-life cause.

A Misguided Emphasis on Precedent

The leaked draft affirms that the Constitution makes no reference to abortion and that no such right is implicit in any of its provisions. The draft states that there is no history or tradition that protects abortion as a right with a Constitutional guarantee of due process. This mirrors the position of the late Justice Antonin Scalia who held that the only such right found in the Constitution is the one that the (7-2) majority Court in Roe invented and inserted there in 1973. The draft concludes that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start, its reasoning exceptionally weak, and with damaging consequences.”

In defending Roe, a lot of ink and rhetoric have been spilled over a legal principle known as “Stare Decisis,” a Latin term literally meaning “to stand by things decided.” The legal principle compels a court to stand by precedents for matters in which the same legal points arise in litigation. You likely heard the term, “respect for precedent” a lot in the Senate hearings vetting recent nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Without exception, the precedent case referred to in these hearings was the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling barred states from adopting restrictions on abortion before the third trimester which was the point at which the Court determined in 1973 to be the time of viability of life outside the womb. The scientific evidence no longer supports that determination.

The principle of “Stare Decisis” does not mean that a precedent is set in stone with no avenue for reconsideration just because it is a precedent. There have been ten cases in U.S. Supreme Court history that have widely become known as “Landmark Precedents.” One of them is Roe v. Wade which had the effect of bitterly dividing the nation into two warring camps thus giving birth to the Pro-life Movement. Each year since 1975, two years after Roe, hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens descend upon Washington for the National March for Life.

Another precedent also bitterly divided the nation setting in motion the events which led to the Civil War. That case was Scott v. Sanford, an 1857 landmark decision and the one that has been most compared by judicial scholars to the flawed judgment in Roe v. Wade.

In 1846, Dred Scott, a slave living in St. Louis, Missouri, sued contending that he, his wife, Harriet, and their two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom because their “owner” brought them to Missouri which was a free state. After being tried in Missouri state courts and in federal circuit court, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856. In 1857, the Court issued its 7-2 split decision rejecting Dred Scott’s claims.

Writing for the Supreme Court majority, Chief Justice Roger Taney, like Joe Biden a self-identified Rosary-carrying Catholic, ruled that “blacks, even when free, could never be citizens of the United States” with rights to sue in federal courts. In his written decision — one that no person of just mind and well informed conscience could hold today — Justice Taney concluded that “blacks are so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The Taney decision for the Court majority — which, like Roe v. Wade, was also split 7-2 — also determined that the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that banned slavery in territories north and west of the state of Missouri was unconstitutional. The outcome of Dred Scott v. Sanford led directly to the Civil War.

To claim today that “precedent” alone should be the determining factor in such a case is tantamount to stoking the embers of that war. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery and paved the way for the Fourteenth Amendment which recognized the rights to life and liberty for all Americans. Those who would cling to “Stare Decisis” as an impenetrable judicial boundary are left today in a misinformed judicial quandary.

As the final fate of Roe v. Wade looms, I urge readers to arm themselves with some truths beyond the hysteria of protests covered 24/7 by cable news. I would like to ask you to read at least one or more of the posts linked at the end of this one, to share them, and to pray ardently for the cause of life and the integrity of this nation.

Be prepared to duck because a political storm is rising. There is on its horizon a distinct impression that the integrity of America and the cause of life are not at all beyond hope.

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Please also read and share:

Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul

The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life

In 2022: Epiphany, Pro-Life Progress, Papal Paradox

If you are burdened by the affairs of Church and State in this age, take a knee and prepare for an epiphany. The Way of the Lord calls forth life and liberty.

January 5, 2022

Instead of yet another failed New Year resolution, I am planning on having another epiphany in 2022. I admit that I have had the same plan at the start of every New Year leading up to this one since about 1994, but my expectation that this will be “the” year of my epiphany is simply what we call “hope.” Despite the struggles all around us, there were little glimmers of that hope in recent years, but the politics of this age are oppressive and heavy. Like most of us who struggle today, my spirit is occupied with many heavy things.

The word, Epiphany comes from the Greek, “epiphaneia” meaning, “appearance” or “manifestation.” When used as a noun, it usually refers to a spiritual enlightenment, an understanding that comes about through a sudden intuitive realization. I once wrote of such an epiphany that was especially popular with Star Trek fans. You need not be one to appreciate it, and it might even surprise you. I wrote it as a Linkedin article entitled, “Gene Roddenberry and Captain Kirk’s Star Trek Epiphany.”

Used in the upper case, however, Epiphany refers to an event: the revelation to the Magi, led by a star to Bethlehem, that Jesus Christ is Savior. It is an event described in the Gospel According to Matthew (2:1-12). In the Eastern Church the event of Epiphany recalls instead the Baptism of Jesus and God’s revelation about Him (Matthew 3:13-17). Epiphany has been observed in the Roman Rite on the Sixth of January since A.D. 194. This year it has been dislodged by its proximity to the Sunday obligation. It marks the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas. I wrote of its history and meaning in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.”

The world we live in has changed dramatically since the dawn of the Twentieth Century. I was shocked to read recently that the average life span of a man in 1900 was between 35 and 40 years of age. In the decades to follow, despite two world wars and a number of plagues, the average life span has been slowly extending. I wonder if there is a corollary between our longer life span today and our tendency to drift away from God under the pressures of this culture.

In a recent post, I wrote of an event in my life that occurred in March of 1992. In that post, I called it my “Great Comeuppance.” In looking back over the three decades since, I realize that the event, though only a moment in time, had an enormous impact on my life and my priorities for living. The post was life-changing and important — important to me, anyway. I hope you will read it if you missed it. It was “To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

If and when you read that post, please read to the end. The 1992 event it describes connects to another chapter in my life decades later. It took me some time to put this together, but that event was an awakening of sorts and that is why I now refer to it as an epiphany. Over the ensuing years, I can see in hindsight how that event had a power that altered many things in my life, including my perception of my cross of unjust imprisonment which commenced just two years later. Those who read that post found the connection between its beginning and its end to be remarkable.

In Support of the Cause of Life

I had been a priest for ten years when the event described in that post took place in the back seat of a car. One of the most evident changes that came as a result was my activism in the Catholic pro-life cause. It was another epiphany, a Great Awakening that many are now seeing despite the narcissistic tendencies of our time.

During all of my seminary training, and in the first ten years of my priesthood, I had little regard for the pro-life cause. I was not antagonistic to it, but it never had a place on my inner radar. I remember blocking dedicated pro-life activists from placing their literature in my parish vestibule because I believed that it had nothing to do with what was happening in the liturgy of the Church. When I look back on that now, I cannot make sense of how I could not have seen the importance of their mission and message. It has everything to do with what is happening in the liturgy of the Church.

When the lights finally came on, I saw the truth stripped of all its politics and self-serving rhetoric about “reproductive rights.” I saw the folly of Roe v. Wade and it struck me like lightning. Our interference in the development of human life was captured in an eye-opening op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The Obsolete Science behind Roe v. Wade” by Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, diagnostic radiologist and policy advisor for the Catholic Association.

Dr. Christie lent scientific justification to the conclusion of conscience which my epiphany had set in motion. She pointed out that the development of medical knowledge has reached a heightened awareness since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Ultrasound technology was in its own infancy then.

“Today, three-dimensional ultrasound images have put a human face on the person once dehumanized as a mere clump of cells. Perfectly apparent now, to the justices sitting on today’s court as well as the public, are the liveliness and humanity of babies at 15 weeks of gestation. They have proportions of a newborn. The major organs are formed and functioning, and although the child receives nutrients and oxygen through the mother’s umbilical cord, the baby swallows and even breathes, filling the lungs with amniotic fluid and expelling it. The heart is fully formed, its four chambers working hard with the delicate valves opening and closing.”

— Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, WSJ.com

No one can read Dr. Christie’s brief article and not also see the great spiritual decline that Roe v. Wade has set in motion in our culture. Several years ago, as a direct result of my own epiphany that opened my eyes to the truth, I wrote of how this decline has blinded us to the horror that Roe v. Wade produced.

That post, though only about five years old now, will seem a bit dated. It analyzed several television series that were most popular among young adults then. In each of these shows, the protection of life was a central theme while in reality abortion became disconnected from our personal and collective conscience.

In Support of Authentic Catholic Identity

As a Catholic priest, even one in the most difficult of trials, I never saw myself as being in rebellion with Rome, and I am not so now. But I am perplexed. Not long ago, I wrote a post entitled, “The Once and Future Catholic Church.” Its intention was to bring hope to faithful Catholics who feel alienated by the trends of today that seem to suppress what were once authentic and deeply held expressions of faith for many. Fidelity to the tenets of our faith, and to the Chair of Peter, is central to both faith and priesthood.

I am not “more Catholic than the Pope,” and do not presume to question him on orthodoxy. But sometimes timing is most important. I cannot help but wonder what was behind Pope Francis using the backdrop of Christmas to further alienate traditional Catholics with new and more divisive restrictions on an expression of faith that many hold dear, the Sacrifice of the Mass in the language that served the Church for two millennia: Latin.

In 1947, after two years of rebuilding following World War II, the Catholic population of the world was between 340 and 380 million. Today it stands at nearly 1.2 billion, and certainly the suppression of the Latin Mass is a concern for only a small percentage. But the largest percentage — upwards of seventy percent — is not concerned with the Mass at all because they are not at all practicing their faith. So why suppress what for centuries was seen as a valid expression of that faith?

In 1947, Pope Pius XII published the 15,000 word encyclical, Mediator Dei, in which he warned against false mysticism, quietism, naturalism, and adherence to exaggerated notions about the liturgy. He opposed using the vernacular in the Mass in place of Latin. In a 1947 radio address, he warned Catholics against “uniformity that seeks to regiment all apostolic works into one kind.”

In January, 1975, well after the Second Vatican Council concluded, the Congregation for Divine Worship sent notice to the world’s bishops that the celebration of the Mass, whether in the vernacular or in Latin, must adhere to the rites set forth in the New Order of Mass authorized by Pope Paul in 1969. Clearly, the point of Rome’s contention was not the use of Latin, but rather the extraordinary form of the Mass.

Today in Germany, a progressive expression of Catholicism has taken hold to the point of being virtually unrecognizable as Catholic. There has been much ink spilled on the necessity and hope of avoiding a liberal-progressive Catholic schism in Europe. I have read that this looming threat weighs heavily upon Pope Francis. I am not a rebel, but I am still perplexed. Despite this looming threat of a progressive schism in Europe, it seems that all the efforts of Pope Francis at suppressing rebellion and promoting conformity are aimed at Traditional Catholics.

A Great Schism v. A Great Awakening

This leaves many priests who care in a state of conflict. We are in solidarity, not only with the authority of the Pope, but also with the thousands of devout Catholics who feel wounded and alienated by this inexplicable suppression. A few priests have privately corrected me saying that Pope Francis has the authority to determine rubrics for the sacrifice of the Mass. Of that, I have no doubt nor do I have a challenge.

This is not about authority, however. It is about the Church’s need for a Chief Shepherd with the heart of a shepherd. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prior to his pontificate taught us that the Holy Spirit does not choose the Pope so much as guides the conclave that makes that choice. Pope Francis began his pontificate with a summons to seek out the alienated along the periphery of the Church, not to create more of them. Where did that go?

There have been other periods of Church history in far worse sin and error pining. What is known as the “Great Schism” in the Western Church began with the contested election of Pope Urban VI in 1378. The cardinal electors, dismayed by his erratic behavior, withdrew their obedience and declared Urban’s election invalid because it was made under the duress of rioting in Rome. They then elected a new pope, Clement VII. Urban retaliated by excommunicating Clement and his followers and by creating a college of cardinals of his own. Now there were two popes.

Then Clement moved to Avignon under the protection of the King of France. This elevated the schism to a frenzy of political alliance determined by the political preferences of the secular rulers concerned. It was impossible to distinguish between the Church in the modern world and the modern world in the Church. During the half-century the schism lasted, a number of solutions were proposed including the resignations of both popes, but both refused. In 1409, Cardinals from both sides held a convocation at Pisa only to elect yet a third pope in contention with the other two.

Finally, the Council of Constance (1414-18) resulted in the resignation or deposition of the three contending popes and the election of Pope Martin V — who reigned from 1417 to 1431 — receiving universal recognition. The scandal of the schism gave temporary impetus to a conciliar theory of church government based on consensus regarding the politics of the day. This intensified calls for reform that eventually led to the Protestant Reformation.

What does all this have to do with my hoped-for epiphany in 2022? It is pointless to allow the politics of our time to stand between us and the source and summit of faith — the true Presence of Christ in our midst. We have just passed through yet another Christmas season of alienation between opposing political factions, and it sometimes appears that governance in the Church embraces one faction over another.

When Christ returns will He find faith on Earth? The answer to that will have a lot more to do with our individual and collective epiphany than our politics.

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Announcements:

This post will be placed in our “Catholic Spiritual Life” and “Catholic Pro-Life” Categories in the BTSW Public Library. Please visit there for past titles of interest. We also invite you to visit our “Voices from Beyond” page for the latest addition.

You may be interested in reading and sharing some of the following titles linked in this week’s post:

Gene Roddenberry and Captain Kirk’s Star Trek Epiphany

Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Once and Future Catholic Church