The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone

A federal jury found Rolling Stone liable for defamation, and Sabrina Rubin Erdely for actual malice, but their earlier malice cost the life of an innocent priest.

At some point before or after reading this post, pay a visit to Ralph Cipriano’s “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy Behind a Lurid Rape Case” in Newsweek Magazine, published in February, 2016. My post about it is one of the most widely read and shared posts on Beyond These Stone Walls. Some readers found it infuriating. Others enlightening. But nearly all readers were shocked to learn of this story from only one humble little “new media” blog while all the once trustworthy “old media” (with the striking exception of Newsweek) blatantly ignored it.

I’ll explain why they ignored it in a moment, but I warn you in advance, the answer isn’t pretty. I reveal this true account only on a “need to know” basis — as in, “You need to know.” Before you spend another dime on a news media subscription under the guise of being kept informed, you need to know.

In an article for Newsmax magazine (“Trump Taps Into Mass Distrust,” April 22, 2016), Catholic League President Bill Donohue cited a new poll by the Media Insight Project. It was a joint effort by the Associated Press and the American Press Institute, and the results did not go well for the political and media elite.

Respondents in the survey were asked to comment on how much confidence they have in various sectors of society. I found the results fascinating. The top five sources of public trust in America are the military, the scientific community, the U.S. Supreme Court, organized religion, and financial institutions.

At rock bottom on the barometer of public trust were the very news media platforms that launched the survey. Only six percent of Americans responded that they had a great deal of confidence in the press. Members of Congress followed close behind with an embarrassing four percent.

Bill Donohue, whose academic background includes a doctorate in sociology, reported that the two most common reasons cited for widespread public mistrust of the news media are inaccurate reporting and media bias. Donohue also cited other sources that give perspective to the media survey results. In 1985, a Pew Research Center poll found that 55 percent of Americans trust the news media to “get the facts straight.” By 2011, that figure dropped by more than half to only 25 percent. In the 1985 Pew survey, 45 percent of Americans judged the media to be biased. In 2011, that figure jumped to 63 percent.

The Crocodile Tears of a Predatory Media

One of the clearest examples of why the media is no longer trusted can be found in an important story that became buried under all the recent election coverage. A few weeks before the election, Journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, testified under oath as a defendant in a $7.5 million lawsuit charging her with actual malice, and Rolling Stone with defamation. The lawsuit was filed by University of Virginia Administrator Nicole Eramo.

Two years earlier, Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone defamed Ms. Eramo and U-VA in “A Rape on Campus,” a notorious November, 2014, story. It was the shocking account of “Jackie” who claimed to be a victim of gang rape at a U-VA fraternity in 2012. The story helped launch a national debate about sexual assault on college campuses across the nation, and contributed to an atmosphere of moral panic. Draconian measures to limit the due process rights of any student so accused were set in place in response to the high profile account.

Erdely’s Rolling Stone account depicted U-VA administrators as having callous disregard for the pain and suffering of Jackie and, by extension, other victims of sexual assault. But when Erdely’s rolling stones gathered up their dirt and the dust settled on this story, a major problem slowly came to light.

Jackie’s story turned out to be a massive lie, and Erdely’s coverage of it a massive betrayal of journalistic standards. Erdely did no fact checking of her own. She just ran with the lurid and sensational account with no attempt at corroboration. In the defamation trial, Erdely drew upon the same script used by contingency lawyers against Catholic priests and bishops for two decades.

“It takes trauma victims some time to come forward with all the details,” said Erdely in dismissal of her callous disregard for the journalistic skepticism so many in the media have abandoned in favor of political correctness. It is the same necessary skepticism that journalist Joan Wypijewski described in “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film.”

I am haunted by the familiar ring of this story’s aftermath. Reading about Ms. Erdely’s agenda masked as journalism brought a loud and clear echo from my own trial as Judge Arthur Brennan instructed jurors to “disregard inconsistencies” in accuser Thomas Grover’s testimony.

And it recalled Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin’s shady and unexplained coaching of accusers. [In 2022 McLaughlin was exposed on a New Hampshire Attorney General’s previously secret list of dishonest police. McLaughlin’s offense was the fabrication of records and evidence.] In a 1994 police report, he described his response to my accusers’ inconsistencies and multiple versions of the story: “I gave them a copy of MacRae’s resume to help them with their dates.” Dates that repeatedly changed, and were off by years, not days or weeks or months.

“It’s not unusual,” Erdely explained when confronted on the witness stand about her response to the ever changing details and versions of Jackie’s account detailed in the Rolling Stone lawsuit. When Jackie changed aspects of her story, Erdely never questioned her credibility, never confronted her about the discrepancies. With streaming tears, the story and the wreckage left in its wake were all Jackie’s fault. “It was a mistake to rely on someone whose intent was to deceive me.”

The jury saw this differently. Rolling Stone was found to be liable for defamation, and Sabrina Rubin Erdely for actual malice. The bar for proving defamation and malice against a journalist is steep. A jury must conclude, as it did in this case, that a media venue published what it knew to be false, or did so with reckless disregard for the truth. It was only after a multi-million dollar judgment was rendered against Rolling Stone that Erdely was removed from its Contributing Editors listing in the December 2016 issue.

Former journalist, Sabrina Rubin Erdely; the late Fr. Charles Engelhardt, who died in prison; newly minted millionaire Daniel Gallagher, aka “Billy Doe.”

A Media Double Standard: When Erdely’s Jackie Was Billy

One can easily detect between the lines the rest of the news media’s discomfort with this story. Moriah Balingit took it on for The Washington Post in “Rolling Stone reporter says ‘Jackie deceived her about U-VA gang rape’” (October 20, 2016).

I commend Ms. Balingit for her truthful treatment of the story, but it’s a truth reported with carefully drawn limits. My strong suspicion is that the limits on truth were not those of the writer, but of The Washington Post. The focus of the account was on this one story, and not the standards and ethics of Sabrina Rubin Erdely. There is no reason to conclude that her compromised journalistic standards began with Jackie at U-VA.

A news media in pursuit of the whole truth instead of an agenda would look at Ms. Erdely’s past work as well, but they won’t. They won’t because doing so would require delving into another Rolling Stone debacle by Ms. Erdely. It’s a story that I have suggested at the top of this post: “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy Behind a Lurid Rape Case.”

In that story, Ms. Erdely applied her “reckless disregard for truth” to the wildly inconsistent account of “Billy Doe” told in Rolling Stone on September 15, 2011 with the title, “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files.” It was a clear example of a writer’s preference for shock value over truth.

This time Ms. Erdely’s disregard for journalistic standards cost Father Charles Engelhardt — a good man and good priest — his life. He died chained to a bed in the hospital wing of a Pennsylvania prison because the news media failed in its once honored pursuit of truth. There is an explanation for why most in the news business cower from revisiting this story to look under the rolling stones cast by Ms. Erdely. The Wall Street Journal’ s Dorothy Rabinowitz, a rare and courageous “old media” voice of journalistic integrity, explained why:

“Arguing for due process on behalf of a person charged with child sex abuse violated the progressive views held by many toward crimes involving special categories of victims like women and children… [T]here [is] a school of advanced political opinion of the view that to take up for those falsely accused of sex abuse charges was to undermine the battle… It was to betray all other victims of sexual predators … Where advanced reasoning of this sort prevailed, the facts of a case were simply irrelevant.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz, No Crueler Tyrannies, p. 17-18

“The Story Was Killed Higher Up”

And it’s not just the press. Broadcast news is driven by the same agendas. Last year I was contacted by a correspondent for a popular cable news venue. This is a news figure with obvious integrity whose positions I trusted and still do. She had been reading Beyond These Stone Walls and invested some time in researching the story described on our “About” page. The news correspondent wrote to me asking if I would agree to an on-camera interview for what was described to me as “a few hard questions.”

I agreed, and then waited. And waited. And waited… But the hard questions were never asked. They were never asked because someone did not want them publicly answered. An acquaintance of the news correspondent told me of her disappointment that “the story was killed higher up.”

The story was killed for the same reasons The Washington Post or The New York Times will not look into Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s prior work for Rolling Stone. Hard questions will be asked, and it would be a politically incorrect affront to the media’s progressive agenda if those hard questions were answered. This would require a legitimate inquiry into the story of Daniel Gallagher — Erdely’s “Billy Doe” in the pages of Rolling Stone. It would require some integrity reborn in an “old media” venue such as The Washington Post. For too many in the news business a progressive agenda requires the suppression of truth. As I wrote earlier, you need to know.

You need to know this too. The presiding judge in the case profiled by Ms. Erdely in Rolling Stone in 2011 was by no means immune from the bias Erdely helped to shape. During the process of vetting jurors for the trial of two priests accused in that case, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina objected to a question posed to prospective jurors saying,

“Anybody that doesn’t think there is widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church is living on another planet.”

Survivors and Liars

A recent issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture has an article by Penn State University professor Philip Jenkins entitled “Survivors and Liars” (August 2016). It’s an analysis of the story of Lauren Stratford. Her shocking tale of childhood sexual abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse became a fixture of 1980s tabloid journalism “including a legendary Geraldo Rivera special broadcast near Halloween in 1988” in a “Geraldo” installment called “Satanic Breeders.” The story helped launch a moral panic giving unquestioned credence to the claims of adult “survivors” of sexual and Satanic Ritual Abuse that emerge without evidence, often with claims of “repressed and recovered” memory.

Just two weeks later, Geraldo Rivera helped launch the birth pangs of another moral panic with the November 1988 airing of “The Church’s Sexual Watergate.” It featured the early wave of contingency lawyers and the nascent voices of SNAP eager to harness the news media’s developing scent for Catholic scandal.

Ryan MacDonald found a transcript of that 1988 Geraldo Show among the first documents obtained by Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin to help defraud the Church out of a lot of money. Ryan produced a rather shocking report of his own about how that Geraldo Rivera show influenced the case against me in “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.”

As for Geraldo’s Lauren Stratford story, it was later exposed as a fraud thanks to a report of Bob and Gretchen Passantino entitled “Satan’s Sideshow” — described by Philip Jenkins as “a superb piece of investigative journalism.” Lauren Stratford’s shocking tale hyped on “Geraldo” was just a massive lie told by a delusional narcissist. In its wake, Philip Jenkins asks,

“Might other adult ‘survivors’ of child abuse be telling the literal truth? Certainly. But the case of Lauren Stratford should be a ringing reminder that, absent evidence, to the contrary, any one of them could be making up every word.”

How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night

Prayers for justice, for the fall of prison walls, are prayers for hope. On the night hope fell, Fr Benedict Groeschel served upon me a summons from the Highest Court.

I don’t think I have ever struggled with a post as I struggle now with this one. It is painful to write, and, in part at least, I know it will be painful to read. What I am about to describe is an earlier scene in the story of my own passion narrative that you do not know about, and now it is time to put it openly before you. I only ask you to withhold judgment for the judgment on this story is not yours to have. And I ask that you bear with me to the end for, as you will read, that is exactly what I am doing.

This confession of sorts was prompted by the 54-day Rosary Novena in which so many readers of Beyond These Stone Walls are engaged on my behalf. Many others who could not commit to that effort are offering prayers and sacrifices for those who are. Some include our friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri in these prayers, and I am most grateful for that. I mentioned in a post two weeks ago that I have been simply lost for words by this outpouring of faith and hope, and I will have something to say about it in my post this week.

But that was not entirely true. I have not been as “lost for words” as I claimed. It’s just that the words that come, the words that I must convey to you now, are from a time when my own faith and hope fell into the darkest of nights, and I fear you may think less of me for it. That is what I risk for total candor, but I risk far more if I do not speak up.

When my post, “Seven Years Behind These Stone Walls” appeared on BTSW on June 29, some readers surprised me with an overture to begin a 54-Day Rosary Novena for the cause of justice. It was to begin on the following day, June 30, the Commemoration of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome.

Your prayer for me is much more a prayer for hope, and you may have no idea how much that prayer is needed. Most have no idea how fragile hope can be for the falsely accused. BTSW reader, Helen, sent me a note asking if I am conscious of the prayer support of so many. What I have been most conscious of is what happened on the morning this Rosary Novena began.

At 3:00 AM that Thursday morning, June 30th, I was awakened in my cell from a very vivid and troubling dream. You know that in February I underwent surgery and now have a seven-inch scar extending under my ribcage from the front to my side. In the dream, I woke up with a strange sensation. I lifted my shirt to discover with horror that my scar had opened and blood and water were pouring out from it drenching everything. It was not water mixed with blood. Both were streaming out of the open wound, blood on one side and water on the other. I tried to put my hand over it to stop it, but the flow continued right through my hand. It went on for a long time, and in my subconscious mind this was somehow connected with your prayers.

When I finally awoke for real, I quickly sat up and lifted my shirt. I grabbed my book light and a mirror, but all was dry and the scar was sealed and intact. It was a little after 3:00 AM and I was filled with anxiety and had trouble breathing.

So I got up and paced around this cell. Soon after, Pornchai was awakened in the bunk above me. He asked me what was wrong. I was shaken, but I told him about the dream. As I spoke, he glanced over my shoulder at the Divine Mercy image on our cell wall. Pornchai got it immediately, but I am a little slow in such matters. Saint Faustina wrote:

“During prayer I heard these words within me: The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls... These two rays issued forth from the very depth of my tender mercy when my agonized heart was pierced by a lance on the Cross.… Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 299

Later that morning, I called Father George David Byers and told him about this dream. It was only then that I connected it with an event in the Gospel of John (19:34), “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” Please do not misunderstand me. I have no messianic delusions whatsoever. Christ asked, and I merely fled. The first stunning lines of Francis Thompson’s haunting, “The Hound of Heaven” capture best what happened when I was first issued a summons to Divine Mercy:

“I fled him, down the night and down the days; I fled him, down the arches of the years; I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears, I hid from him.”

Christ at the Crossroads

A note on John 19:34 describes the flow of blood and water as evidence of Christ’s humanity, that place where His life and that of fallen humanity intersects. The dream has stayed with me through the days of your prayers, and I find it to be both scary and hopeful. The hardest, most unrepentant criminal here fears only one thing: dying in prison. You can imagine then the toll that such a prospect takes on someone wrongfully imprisoned.

So of course I want your prayers to have real meaning, and to succeed despite the fact that I am not worthy of them. I am not worthy of them because there was a time in my life when, on the night of my own Gethsemane, faith and hope utterly failed me and I fell. In my hopelessness, I attempted to take my own life, and was hospitalized for it.

I have to try to convey the context. It was May of 1993, weeks after I had been accused. At the time, ironically, I served in ministry as Director of Admissions of the New Mexico Servants of the Paraclete residential center for priests.

There is no point in the details, but what I did was serious, and deadly, and I should not have survived it. But I did survive. It is one thing for someone justly accused to face such charges, but to be falsely accused, summarily declared guilty by my own bishop and diocese, disposed for the sake of thirty pieces of silver, is devastating for a priest.

Complicating this picture was the fact that I have epilepsy — specifically, complex-partial seizure disorder with a focus bilaterally in the temporal lobes. That, combined with the crushing experience of being falsely accused and discarded, swept away in a moment of despair all frame of reference for my life as a priest, and left me drained of all resources.

This was a time when the U.S. church was reeling over the sudden emergence of many such claims from decades past, and many in the Church pretended to believe them all just to ease the path to quick, quiet financial settlement. It was the dawn of what Father George David Byers described as “The Judas Crisis.” As my broken spirit descended into chaos, I believed that a sacrifice was required, the sacrifice of the life of a priest, and I believed I was to be that sacrifice. It was a moment when all hope went out of my world, and my faith and sanity fell along with it.

By some miracle of actual grace, I survived. On that night late in May of 1993 I regained consciousness in the Intensive Care Unit of Albuquerque Presbyterian Hospital. I did not, for a time, know where, or even who I was, but within a day my mind came back on line as though rebooted. I felt the deepest darkest shame and despair over this shattering of all hope as my life and priesthood lay before me in utter ruins.

My friend, Father Clyde Landry, was there with me. He told me that I had written a letter to the Servant General, Father Liam Hoare, asserting my innocence of these charges, but asking his forgiveness for the sacrifice of my life because of the harm these false claims brought upon priesthood and Church. I do not know what became of that letter.

That night in my hospital room, my friend Father Clyde brought me something that he knew I treasured and might want. It was a portable shortwave radio. Later, when I was alone, still deeply shattered, I turned it on and placed the earpiece in my ear. I randomly turned the dial, then stopped suddenly.

I had used that radio on many nights as I surfed the shortwave band for broadcasts from around the world, but I had never before come across what I heard that night in Gethsemane. I distinctly heard intoned the “Salve Regina,” and then an announcer’s voice that I was listening to EWTN broadcasting on a shortwave band from Irondale, Alabama. Then I heard a clear and very familiar voice. It was the voice of someone I had known well many years earlier, but lost touch with. The lilting voice and Yonkers accent were unmistakable. It was Father Benedict Groeschel.

My Gift to the Lord: An Empty Vessel

Some time ago, I wrote a post in defense of Father Groeschel entitled, “Father Benedict Groeschel at EWTN: Time for a Moment of Truth.” What happened on the night I am now describing is why I wrote that post. He was accused of calling into question a claim of victimhood in the Catholic scandal, and the Gospel of Political Correctness that American bishops had cowardly agreed to was not going to spare him. The wolves began to circle Father Groeschel and several Catholic institutions he so generously served all began to get some distance from him. In my challenging post, I drew a line in the sand that many stood behind. “Not this time! Not this priest!” I wrote.

I wrote that post because twenty years earlier, Father Benedict Groeschel entered my darkest night with a message of hope, and a plan for redemption when all was lost. In that hospital bed that night, it was as though he was addressing me directly. I can only paraphrase it here, and hope that I am doing it justice:

“When life seems as though it has fallen apart, and you face an immeasurable sense of loss, whether the cause is tragic illness, or loss of a loved one, or financial ruin, or public shame, or grave injustice, the loss of all hope seems to be the final loss. It leaves you as though an empty vessel which you feel can never be filled again. This is a crucial and vulnerable time. It is also a moment when God is nearest to you.”

Father Groeschel went on that night to speak of the only response left for an empty vessel: a spirit of abandonment and surrender to God’s Providence. God alone can fill what has been torn asunder by the forces of this world. “Surrender control, for control of your life is an illusion,” he said. “Embrace surrender to God’s Providence so that your empty vessel may serve Him in the salvation not just of your soul, but of many souls.” I was, for perhaps the first time in my life, ready to hear these words and absorb them. Nothing made sense up to then, but Father Groeschel made total sense.

You may remember a post of mine about the suicide of another priest from my diocese, Father Richard Lower. I wrote of this tragedy in “The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul.” After being informed by Monsignor Edward Arsenault of the emergence of a decades-old sexual abuse claim, Father Lower was given the usual 24 hours to vacate his parish and residence without a word to his parishioners whom he had served for a dozen years. He was to be just another priest who disappears in the night. In his darkest night, he walked out to a deserted mountain path and took his own life. In “The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul” I wrote that I would have given anything to have been on that path with him. It’s because I HAVE been on that path, and I survived.

Some twenty-six accused U.S. Catholic priests have taken their own lives since the U.S. Bishops entered into The Judas Crisis by presuming every money-driven claim against a priest to be true. Whatever cynic presumes from this their guilt knows nothing of the identity of priesthood and its permanent bond with the notion of sacrifice. No priest should be required to sacrifice his life to satisfy the demands of contingency lawyers, insurance companies, and the agendas of those who despise the Church.

The Summons of Divine Mercy

The summons served upon me by Father Benedict Groeschel that night came from the Highest Court of justice, a Court in which Divine Mercy is its mirror image. It was actually the second time that summons was served. The first time was exactly one month earlier. A friend and coworker in the Servants of the Paraclete ministry to priests was Father Richard Drabik, MIC. He was also my spiritual director. You may recognize him as the former Provincial Superior of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, and the author of the Preface to the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina.

In early April, 1993, Father Drabik came to my office with a request. He was leaving for Rome a week later to concelebrate Mass at the Beatification of (then) Blessed Faustina on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 18, 1993. Father Drabik invited me to draft a petition that he would place on the altar at the Beatification. The petition I wrote was this simple note sealed in a small envelope:

“I ask for the intercession of Blessed Faustina that I may have the courage to be the priest God intends for me to be.”

Fifteen days after the Beatification, I was charged with crimes alleged to have taken place over a decade earlier, crimes that never took place at all, and the violent emptying of the vessel of my life and priesthood began. Two weeks later, the courage I asked for gave way to hopelessness as I lay in ICU hearing this summons repeated by Father Benedict Groesechel.

So on that awful night, I solemnly vowed to go the distance, to remain an empty vessel with hope and trust as my only choices in life while discerning God’s Providence. Since then, as you know if you have been an attentive reader of Beyond These Stone Walls, that summons to Divine Mercy has become woven into every fiber of my life, and not only my life, but many others.

The stunning evidence for this is found in many places, but one of the more striking is the medical miracle confirmed as attributed to Saint Faustina by the Vatican Congregation for the Cause of Saints. The recipient of that miracle was Mrs. Maureen Digan who shares a chapter along with Pornchai Moontri in Felix Carroll’s wondrous book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions. Seeing Pornchai’s and Maureen’s stories together in that volume is to see Divine Mercy come full circle in my life and priesthood, and this empty vessel filled with hope beyond imagining. I thank you for your heroic prayers for justice on my behalf. The most fundamental aspect of justice is the preservation of hope.

“O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as Fount of Mercy for us, I trust in You.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 309

“To priests who proclaim and extol My mercy, I will give wondrous power; I will anoint their words and touch the hearts of those to whom they will speak.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 1521

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Editor’s Note: This post continues next week on Beyond These Stone Walls with “Saint Maximilian Kolbe: A Knight at My Own Armageddon.”

And with joy and thanksgiving, Father Gordon MacRae wants you to know about the publication of an inspiring biography, A Friar’s Tale: Remembering Father Benedict J.Groeschel, C.F.R. by John Collins available from Our Sunday Visitor.

A Friar’s Tale — Remembering Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel by John Collins (Our Sunday Visitor)

Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence

A new Manual for Eucharistic Adoration from the Poor Clares and Saint Benedict Press has found a captive audience in Fr Gordon MacRae as he marks 34 years of priesthood.

June 1, 2016 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“You have GOT to be joking!” That was my first reaction. In early April this year, I was summoned to a prison office to sign for “personal property.” I had no idea what it could be. I hadn’t ordered anything recently from the place where we in prison must purchase shoes, clothing, toiletries. So it had to be a book, but receiving books here also requires that I know in advance that the book is coming. I knew of nothing.

I signed for the mysterious item and returned to my cell where I sat down on a concrete stump — the same one I am typing upon at this moment. “You have GOT to be joking’” I said to myself as I perused the book in my hand and its cover letter. It was from Christian Tappe, Director of Marketing at Saint Benedict Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. The letter began:

“I am pleased to enclose this review copy of TAN Books’ Manual for Eucharistic Adoration… written by the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. If you would like more information, or to schedule an interview…”

I was more bewildered than ever. It was the fourth time in the last year that a Catholic publisher has sent me a book to review on These Stone Walls. Are people actually reading TSW? But this particular book was a complete mystery. First off, I should not have received it at all. The shipment and cover letter were addressed to “Father” Gordon MacRae with no prison number (67546) as required on anything sent to me. In the ordinary course, either the use of a title or the absence of a number would cause the book to be rejected and returned to sender without my even knowing about it. But here it was, in my hand nonetheless.

My first impulse was to toss the book aside as useless, at least for me. My apologies to the Poor Clares who so lovingly wrote it, and to the publisher who so kindly sent it to me. I am a slow learner, so the nicely adorned book sat unopened in a corner of my cell for a month. I was simply too caught up in the glaring irony of it. There is no True Presence here to adore. There is only the present absence.

To make matters worse, and more mysterious, on the same day I received the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration  I learned from lawyers that we had lost yet another effort at appeal of my wrongful conviction and imprisonment. It took one full year for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to notify us that they will not review an earlier decision to dismiss my appeal with no hearing on its merits or evidence. This has made the road to justice ever steeper and more treacherous. I am told that others will be taking this up to write about it.

In the Nighttime

So it was in the dim and murky light of continued injustice that I tossed aside the good sisters’ book about Eucharistic Adoration, and shrugged it off. But appearances can be deceiving, and you never know what apparently “useless” thing might have a profound influence on your view of the world — not only the world you live in, but the world that lives in you. Who you are is in large part a collision of these two worlds, and a person of faith risks great loss if the interior life is forfeited to live only in that other, more calamitous world. We have to live in and with both worlds, and we have to keep them in balance.

One day recently, I saw a vocation ad in Our Sunday Visitor for a community of sisters. The ad described them as a “monastic, cloistered and contemplative community,” and then added, “Find us on Facebook!” That, to me, seemed a collision of two worlds, but it works if the sisters can reflect in the latter world the light that shines in the former.

On June 5th I mark thirty-four years of priesthood. Twenty-two of them have been in a place where presence before the Blessed Sacrament is unavailable and simply impossible. It can only be imagined. It has been a long time since I wrote of the power of the True Presence in a place where it seems absent. In 2010 I wrote a post entitled “The Sacrifice of the Mass” (Part I and Part II), and it seemed a pivotal point not only for These Stone Walls, but for my life as a priest in extraordinary circumstances.

The two-part post described the utter deprivation of something many readers simply took for granted in their world. For my first seven years in this prison, Mass was unavailable to me, and without it I found myself growing ever more distant from my life as a priest. That post described the extreme efforts it took to gain the ability to offer Mass, beginning with what I today call a “spiritual offering.”

It wasn’t what you might think. It was along the lines of a “Spiritual Communion,” and I got the idea from reading Father Walter Ciszek’s book, He Leadeth Me. During twenty years in a Siberian prison accused of being a Vatican spy, Father Ciszek could only imagine the Mass. Sitting in the pitch dark at night on his bunk, he began to recite The Roman Canon in his mind, and to imagine himself present before the Blessed Sacrament. After reading this, I began to do the same, and my post, “The Sacrifice of the Mass” evolved from that. After I wrote that two-part post, a TSW reader sent me a letter, an excerpt of which follows:

“I cannot imagine what sustains your identity as a priest in that prison. There is nothing in that environment that in any way supports your priesthood. You are not ever in the company of other priests. Your diocese and fellow priests have cast you off. You see yourself each day in the mirror wearing the uniform of a prisoner, and you know in your mind, heart and soul that there has been no justice in your being forced to wear this role.

“And yet when I read your writings, your priesthood is always at the forefront, the part of you that shines the brightest, that speaks the loudest, that sustains not only you but apparently many of those around you in that place. Can you explain, Father MacRae, what exactly allows you to retain a priestly identity?”

Come Be My Light

I do not have an answer for this. After I wrote my recent post, “Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Pentecost Illumines the Night,” some readers wrote in comments that they are moved by my faith. It is not so obvious. At least, it is not obvious to me. I struggle with faith on a daily basis, and I found a kindred spirit in Saint Mother Teresa when I learned that she struggled as well. The truth is that it was the Poor Clares’ Manual of Eucharistic Adoration that caused me to look more deeply into the faith life of soon-to-be Saint Mother Teresa. The Manual includes an admonition from her, and it was this quote that prompted me to write “Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Pentecost Illumines the Night.”

“The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about everlasting peace on earth.”

Manual, p. 111

It was from writing that post that I fathomed the necessity of Eucharistic Adoration. It is not for us to be present to Him. It is for Him to be present to us in a way that “will deepen your union with Him.” That is the very purpose of the interior life, that other world that we must balance with our other foot in this world.

While writing my Pentecost post, I learned of the spiritual deprivation often experienced by Mother Teresa, but that deprivation never seemed able to diminish her commitment to serve the poor. Rather, the opposite happened. It was her service to the poor that brought her to the Paschal Mystery and kept her there, ever providing the beckoning of Christ that compelled her spiritual life. Mother Teresa sought union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and brought Christ from there to the poor. It was never the other way around.

Eucharistic Adoration

So how could I, as a priest wrongly imprisoned for decades, possibly bring my interior life into this world where the True Presence is so overshadowed by the present absence? No matter what the source of the sense of emptiness is in your life, if you are reading this you know what I mean by “the present absence.” That is why God allowed Mother Teresa and others among our patron saints to suffer spiritual deprivation, and to endure it. It was so that we might emulate them as they serve as beacons in spiritual darkness. Their witness inspires hope in the dark, not just our rescue from it.

As has happened on so many nights in prison, I awoke one night recently, filled with an anxiety that has no name. It’s not related to anything I can identify. It’s just there, a natural side effect of the stifling nature of an American prison. I have a little battery-powered book light purchased from the same prison vendor from which we purchase clothing and other needs. Waking often in the night, I have gotten hundreds of times my money’s worth from that small light.

I switched on the light in that anxious night, and reached for my glasses and a book on a small shelf at the end of my iron bunk. I thought I had grabbed another book, but my hand landed on the previously untouched Manual for Eucharistic Adoration by the Poor Clares. It has a ribbon page marker so I opened to the ribbon and was struck by this admonition from Saint John Vianney, the Curé of Ars and the patron saint of priests:

“When you awake in the night, transport yourself quickly in spirit before the tabernacle, saying, ‘Behold, my God, I come to adore you, to praise, thank, and love you, and to keep you company with the angels.’”

Manual, p. 116

So that night I tried to imagine a time and a place in which being before the Blessed Sacrament was most meaningful to me. Sadly, it was long ago. It wasn’t during my years as a parish priest when time and again I passed by the sanctuary and tabernacle barely noticing, blindly going from one pastoral task to another, not even genuflecting, not even knowing that I failed to bring Christ with me because I failed to stop and enter into His Presence. At some point in my life as a priest, this world collided with that one, and demolished it. This has been the real priesthood scandal. Action somehow overshadowed contemplation to our priestly peril.

It was only years later, after year upon year of absence, that I became aware of this deprivation of the Presence of God. So in that night of prison anxiety my mind fled down the nights and down the days, past the parishes where I served, and the seminary I attended, to a Benedictine Abbey just twenty miles from this prison. The journey in my mind took me to 1977. I was a Capuchin then, attending school at Saint Anselm College, and my most special place on campus was a tiny alcove built into the Abbey Church.

There, before a magnificent granite tabernacle, I spent many hours in the Presence of the Lord. Last year, a reader found a photograph of the interior of the Saint Anselm Abbey Church and printed it for me. It is the opening graphic for this post. Then our Missionary of Mercy Friend, Father George David Byers, found a photo of the Blessed Sacrament alcove to the right of the main sanctuary. This is where I went back then, before the world shook lose the Holy Longing to be in His Presence. This is where I go now when I awaken in the night. Sometimes, now, I don’t think I awaken with anxiety and then go there. I think I now awaken just to go there.

In just a few months, These Stone Walls will mark seven years in publication, just one third the time that I have been in this prison. During that seven years, many readers have sent me letters and comments informing me that they have devoted an hour before the Blessed Sacrament to be in His Presence in my stead. You have bestowed upon me a most priceless gift, and for this I have much gratitude.

Now the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, along with author Paul Thigpen and Saint Benedict Press, have provided a road map to the interior life, and a tool to converse with the Living Christ among us. I most highly recommend the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration and, if you are not there already, the restoration of the Lord’s Presence in your interior life.

I humbly thank you for thirty-four years of priesthood, even out here on the dark peripheries from which I write. Without you, I might have forgotten how to be a priest, and might today be just a prisoner. There are two kneelers before the Blessed Sacrament at Saint Anselm Abbey Church in Manchester, New Hampshire. Some night when anxiety awakens you in the dark, join me there. I’ll have the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration in my hands.

Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb

History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous and noble woman, an apostle to the Apostles.

As an imprisoned priest, a communal celebration of the Easter Triduum is not available to me. My celebration of this week is for the most part limited to a private reading of the Roman Missal. Still, over the five-plus years that I have been writing for These Stone Walls, I have always agonized about Holy Week posts. I feel a special duty to contribute what little I can to the Church’s volume of reflection on the meaning of this week.

Though I have little in the way of resources beyond what is in my own mind, I feel an obligation in this of all weeks to “get it right,” and leave something a reader might return to. So I have focused in past Holy Week posts not so much on the meaning of the events of the Passion of the Christ, but on the characters central to those events. In so doing, I have developed a rather special kinship with some of them.

I hope readers will spend some time with them this week by revisiting my Holy Week tributes to “Simon of Cyrene, Compelled to Carry the Cross,” and “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.” I wrote a follow-up to that one in a subsequent Holy Week post entitled, “Pope Francis, the Pride of Mockery, and the Mockery of Pride.” Last year in Holy Week, I visited a haunting work of art fixed upon the wall of my prison cell in “Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands.”

Lifting these characters out of the lines of the Gospel into the light of my quest to know them has enhanced a sense of solidarity with them. This has never been truer than it is for the subject of this year’s TSW  Holy Week post. Any believer whose reputation has been overshadowed by innuendos of a past, anyone who stands in possession of a truth that must be told, but is denied the social status to be believed will marvel at the faith and courage of Mary Magdalene.

Her Demon Haunted World

First, a word about language. You might note that I always use the Aramaic term, “Golgotha,” instead of the more familiar “Calvary” for the place where Jesus was crucified. Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew. It became the language of the Middle East sometime after the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C., and was the language of Palestine at the time of Jesus. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and so did his disciples.

The Aramaic word, “Golgotha” means “place of the skull.” When the Roman Empire occupied Palestine in 63 B.C., it used that place for crucifixions. It isn’t certain whether that is the origin of the name “Golgotha” or whether the hill resembles a skull from some vantage point. The Gospels were written in Greek, so the Aramaic “Golgotha” was translated “Kranion,” Greek for “skull.” Then in the Fourth and early Fifth Century, Saint Jerome translated the Greek Gospels into Latin using the term, “Calvoriae Locus” for “Place of the Skull.” That’s how the name “Calvary” entered Christian thought.

Mary Magdalene is one of only two figures in the Gospel to have been present with Jesus during his public ministry, at the foot of the Cross at Golgotha, and in his resurrection appearances at and after the empty tomb. The sole other figure was John, the Beloved Disciple. Mary the Mother of Jesus was also present at the Cross, but there is no mention of her at the empty tomb. In the Gospel of Saint Luke, the Twelve were with Jesus during his public ministry …

“… also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Suzanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means.”

— Luke 8: 1-2

The presence of these women openly challenged Jewish customs and mores of the time which discouraged men from associating with women in public. Add to this the fact that these particular women “had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” could have set the community abuzz with whispers at their presence with Jesus. In the Gospel of John (4:27), the Apostles came upon Jesus talking with a woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well, and they “marveled that he was talking with a woman.”

A revelation that seven demons had gone out of Mary Magdalene is in no way suppressed by the Gospel writer. On the contrary, it seems the basis of her undying fidelity to the Lord. The Gospel of Saint Mark adds that account in the most unlikely place — the one place where Mary’s credibility seems a necessity, the first Resurrection appearance:

“Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”

— Mark 16: 9-11

In all four of the Gospel accounts, it was Mary Magdalene who first discovered and announced the empty tomb, and in all four places the announcement sowed doubt, and even some propaganda. In the Gospel of Matthew (28:1-10), “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb … .” There they were met by an angel who instructed them, “Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead and behold, he is going before you to Galilee.”

Then, in Saint Matthew’s account, Jesus appeared to them on the road and said, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” Put yourself in Mary Magdalene’s shoes. She, from whom he cast out seven demons; she, who watched him die a gruesome death, is to find Peter, tell this story, and expect to be believed?

Immediately after in the Gospel of Matthew, the Roman guards went to Caiaphas the High Priest with their own story of what they witnessed at the tomb. Like the thirty pieces of silver used to bribe Judas, Caiaphas paid the guards to spread an alternate story:

“Go report to Pilate that Jesus’ disciples came and stole his body while the guards slept…’ This story has been spread among the Jews even to this day”

— Matthew 28:11

Apostle to the Apostles

It makes perfect sense. I, too, have seen “truth” reinvented when there is money involved. Remember that Mary Magdalene is a woman alone, with demons in her past, and she must convey her amazing account to men. So suspect is she as a source that even the early Church overlooked her witness. When Saint Paul related the Resurrection appearances to the Church at Corinth about twenty years later, he omitted Mary Magdalene entirely:

“He appeared to Cephas [the Greek name for Peter], then to the Twelve, then to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James then to all the Apostles. Then last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me, for I am the least of the Apostles.”

— 1 Cor. 15:5-9

Saint Paul lists six appearances of Jesus during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. One of those appearances “to more than 500” appears in none of the Gospel accounts. Saint Paul likely omitted the fact that it was Mary Magdalene from whom news of the Resurrection first arose, and to whom the Risen Christ first appeared, because at that time in that culture, women could not give sworn testimony.

And remember that there was another matter Mary Magdalene had to reconcile before conveying her news. It is the elephant in the upper room. She must not only tell her story to men, but to men who fled Golgotha while she remained. Among all in that room, only Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple John saw Christ die. Peter, their leader, denied knowing Jesus and remained below, listening to a cock crow.

I have imagined another version of Mary Magdalene’s empty tomb report to Peter. I imagined reading it between the lines, but of course it isn’t really there. Still, it’s the version that would have made the most human sense: Mary Magdalene burst into an upper room where the Apostles hid “for fear of the Jews.” She summoned the courage to look Peter in the eye.

Mary M.: “I have good news and not-so-good news.”
Peter: “What’s the good news?”
Mary M.: “The Lord has risen and I have seen him!”
Peter: “And the not-so-good good news?”
Mary M.: “He’s on his way here and he’d like a word with you about last Friday.”

Of course, nothing like that happened. The words of Jesus to Peter about “last Friday” correct his three-time denial with a three-time commission of the risen Christ to “feed my sheep.” The Gospel message is built upon values and principles that challenge all our basest instincts for retribution and justice. The Gospel presents God’s justice, not ours.

Of the four accounts of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection Appearances, the Gospel of John conveys perhaps the most painful, beautiful, and stunning portrait of Mary Magdalene, all written between the lines:

“Standing by the Cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister [possibly Salome, mother of James and John], Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

— John 19:25

Also standing there is John, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene becomes a witness to one of the most profound scenes of Sacred Scripture. Jesus addressed his mother from the Cross, “Woman, behold your son.” Is it a reference to himself or to the young man standing next to his mother? Is it both? Standing just feet away, the woman from whom he once cast out seven demons is fixated by what is taking place here. “Behold your Mother!” he says among his last words from the Cross, bestowing upon John — and all of us by extension — the gifts of grace and the care of his mother.

“Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”

“From that point on, John took her into his home,” and we took her into the home of our hearts. Mary Magdalene could barely have dealt with this shattering scene as her Deliverer died before her eyes when, on the morning of the first day of the week, she stood weeping outside his empty tomb. “Woman, why are you weeping?” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote of this scene from the Gospel of John in his beautifully written book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (Ignatius Press, 2011):

“Now he calls her by name: ‘Mary!’ Once again she has to turn, and now she joyfully recognizes the risen Lord whom she addresses as ‘Rabboni,’ meaning ‘teacher.’ She wants to touch him, to hold him, but the Lord says to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). This surprises us…. The earlier way of relating to the earthly Jesus is no longer possible.”

— Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, p. 285

Hippolytus of Rome, a Third Century Father of the Church, called Mary Magdalene an “apostle to the Apostles.” Then in the Sixth Century, Pope Gregory the Great merged Mary Magdalene with the unnamed “sinful woman” who anointed Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (7:37), and with Mary of Bethany who anointed him in the Gospel of John (12:3). This set in motion any number of conspiracy theories and unfounded legends about Jesus and Mary Magdalene that had no basis in fact.

The revisionist history in popular books like The Da Vinci Code, and other novels by New Hampshire author Dan Brown, was contingent upon Mary Magdalene and these two other women being one and the same. The Gospel provides no evidence to support this, a fact the Church now accepts and promotes. This faithful and courageous woman at the Empty Tomb was rescued not only from her demons, but from the distortions of history.

“While up to the moment of Jesus’ death, the suffering Lord had been surrounded by nothing but mockery and cruelty, the Passion Narratives end on a conciliatory note, which leads into the burial and the Resurrection. The faithful women are there…. Gazing upon the Pierced One and suffering with him have now become a fount of purification. The transforming power of Jesus’ Passion has begun.”

— Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, p. 220

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Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands

“Ecce Homo!” An 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri depicts a moment woven into the fabric of salvation history, and into our very souls.

“So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd saying, ‘I am innocent of this righteous man’s blood.’”

— Matthew 27: 24

A now well known Wall Street Journal  article, “The Trials of Father MacRae” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (May 10, 2013) had a photograph of me — with hair, no less — being led in chains from my 1994 trial. When I saw that photo, I was drawn back to a vivid scene that I wrote about during Holy Week two years ago in “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.” My Holy Week post began with the scene depicted in that photo and all that was to follow on the day I was sent to prison. It was the Feast of Saint Padre Pio, September 23, 1994, but as I stood before Judge Arthur Brennan to hear my condemnation, I was oblivious to that fact.

Had that photo a more panoramic view, you would see two men shuffling in chains ahead of me toward a prison-bound van. They had the misfortune of being surrounded by clicking cameras aimed at me, and reporters jockeying for position to capture the moment to feed “Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests.” That short walk to the prison van seemed so very long. Despite his own chains, one of the two convicts ahead of me joined the small crowd in mockery of me. The other chastised him in my defense.

Writing from prison 18 years later, in Holy Week 2012, I could not help but remember some irony in that scene as I contemplated the fact of “Dismas, Crucified to the Right.” That post ended with the brief exchange between Christ and Dismas from their respective crosses, and the promise of Paradise on the horizon in response to the plea of Dismas: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This conversation from the cross has some surprising meaning beneath its surface. That post might be worth a Good Friday visit this year.

But before the declaration to Dismas from the Crucified Christ — “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) — salvation history required a much more ominous declaration. It was that of Pontius Pilate who washed his hands of any responsibility for the Roman execution of the Christ.

Two weeks ago, in “What if the Prodigal Son Had No Father to Return To?”, I wrote of my fascination with etymology, the origins of words and their meanings. There is also a traceable origin for many oft-used phrases such as “I wash my hands of it.” That well-known phrase came down to us through the centuries to renounce responsibility for any number of the injustices incurred by others. The phrase is a direct allusion to the words and actions of Pontius Pilate from the Gospel of Saint Matthew (27: 24).

Before Pilate stood an innocent man, Jesus of Nazareth, about to be whipped and beaten, then crowned with thorns in mockery of his kingship. Pilate had no real fear of the crowd. He had no reason to appease them. No amount of hand washing can cleanse from history the stain that Pilate tried to remove from himself by this symbolic washing of his hands.

This scene became the First Station of the Cross. At the Shrine of Lourdes the scene includes a boy standing behind Pilate with a bowl of water to wash away Pilate’s guilt. My friend, Father George David Byers sent me a photo of it, and a post he once wrote after a pilgrimage to Lourdes:

“Some of you may be familiar with ‘The High Stations’ up on the mountain behind the grotto in Lourdes, France. The larger-than-life bronze statues made vivid the intensity of the injustice that is occurring. In the First Station, Jesus, guarded by Roman soldiers, is depicted as being condemned to death by Pontius Pilate who is about to wash his hands of this unjust judgment. A boy stands at the ready with a bowl and a pitcher of water so as to wash away the guilt from the hands of Pilate . . . Some years ago a terrorist group set off a bomb in front of this scene. The bronze statue of Pontius Pilate was destroyed . . . The water boy is still there, eager to wash our hands of guilt, though such forgiveness is only given from the Cross.”

The Writing on the Wall

As that van left me behind these stone walls that day over thirty years ago, the other two prisoners with me were sent off to the usual Receiving Unit, but something more special awaited me. I was taken to begin a three-month stay in solitary confinement. Every surface of the cell I was in bore the madness of previous occupants. Every square inch of its walls was completely covered in penciled graffiti. At first, it repulsed me. Then, after unending days with nothing to contemplate but my plight and those walls, I began to read. I read every scribbled thought, every scrawled expletive, every plea for mercy and deliverance. I read them a hundred times over before I emerged from that tomb three months later, still sane. Or so I thought.

When I read “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized,” Pornchai Maximilian Moontri’s guest post from Thailand, I wondered how he endured solitary confinement that stretched for year upon year. “Today as I look back,” he wrote, “I see that even then in the darkness of solitary confinement, Christ was calling me out of the dark.” It’s an ironic image because one of the most maddening things about solitary confinement is that it’s never dark. Intense overhead lights are on 24/7.

The darkness of solitary confinement he described is only on the inside, the inside of a mind and soul, and it’s a pitch blackness that defies description. My psyche was wounded, at best, after three months. I cannot describe how Pornchai endured this for many years. But he did, and no doubt those who brought it about have since washed their hands of it.

For me, once out of solitary confinement, the writing on the walls took on new meaning. In “Angelic Justice: St Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed,” I described a section of each cell wall where prisoners are allowed to post the images that give meaning and hope to their lives. One wall in each cell contains two painted rectangles, each barely more than two by four feet, and posted within them are the sole remnant of any individualism in prison. You can learn a lot about a man from that finite space on his wall.

When I was moved into this cell, Pornchai’s wall was empty, and mine remained empty as well. Once this blog began in 2009, however, readers began to transform our wall without realizing it. Images sent to me made their way onto the wall, and some of the really nice ones somehow mysteriously migrated over to Pornchai’s wall. A very nice Saint Michael icon spread its wings and flew over to his side one day. That now famous photo of Pope Francis with a lamb placed on his shoulders is on Pornchai’s wall, and when I asked him how my Saint Padre Pio icon managed to get over there, he muttered something about bilocation.

Ecce Homo!

One powerful image, however, has never left its designated spot in the very center of my wall. It’s a five-by-seven inch card bearing the 1871 painting, “Ecce Homo!” — “Behold the Man!” — by the Swiss-born Italian artist, Antonio Ciseri. It was sent to me by a reader during Holy Week a few years ago. The haunting image went quickly onto my cell wall where it has remained since. The Ciseri painting depicts a scene that both draws me in and repels me at the same time.

On one dark day in prison, I decided to take it down from my wall because it troubles me. But I could not, and it took some time to figure out why. This scene of Christ before Pilate captures an event described vividly in the Gospel of Saint John (19:1-5). Pilate, unable to reason with the crowd has Jesus taken behind the scenes to be stripped and scourged, a mocking crown of thorns thrust upon his head. The image makes me not want to look, but then once I do look, I have a hard time looking away.

When he is returned to Pilate, as the scene depicts, the hands of Christ are bound behind his back, a scarlet garment in further mockery of his kingship is stripped from him down to his waist. His eyes are cast to the floor as Pilate, in fine white robes, gestures to Christ with his left hand to incite the crowd into a final decision that he has the power to overrule, but won’t. “Behold the Man!” Pilate shouts in a last vain gesture that perhaps this beating and public humiliation might be enough for them. It isn’t.

I don’t want to look, and I can’t look away because I once stood in that spot, half naked before Pilate in a trial-by-mob. On that day when I arrived in prison, before I was thrown into solitary confinement for three months, I was unceremoniously doused with a delousing agent, and then forced to stand naked while surrounded by men in riot gear, Pilate’s guards mocking not so much what they thought was my crime, but my priesthood. They pointed at me and laughed, invited me to give them an excuse for my own scourging, and then finally, when the mob was appeased, they left me in the tomb they prepared, the tomb of solitary confinement. Many would today deny that such a scene ever took place, but it did. It was thirty years ago. Most are gone now, collecting state pensions for their years of public service, having long since washed their hands of all that ever happened in prison.

Behold the Man!

I don’t tell this story because I equate myself with Christ. It’s just the opposite. In each Holy Week post I’ve written, I find that I am some other character in this scene. I’ve been “Simon of Cyrene, Compelled to Carry the Cross.” I’ve been “Dismas, Crucified to the Right.” I tell this story first because it’s the truth, and second because having lived it, I today look upon that scene of Christ before Pilate on my wall, and I see it differently than most of you might. I relate to it perhaps a bit more than I would had I myself never stood before Pilate.

Having stared for three years at this scene fixed upon my cell wall, words cannot describe the sheer force of awe and irony I felt when someone sent me an October 2013 article by Carlos Caso-Rosendi written and published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the home town of Pope Francis. The article was entitled, “Behold the Man!” and it was about my trial and imprisonment. Having no idea whatsoever of the images upon my cell wall, Carlos Caso-Rosendi’s article began with this very same image: Antonio Ciseri’s 1871 painting, “Ecce Homo!” TSW reader, Bea Pires, printed Carlos’ article and sent it to Pope Francis.

I read the above paragraphs to Pornchai-Maximilian about the power of this scene on my wall. He agrees that he, too, finds this image over on my side of this cell to be vaguely troubling and disconcerting, and for the same reasons I do. He has also lived the humiliation the scene depicts, and because of that he relates to the scene as I do, with both reverence and revulsion. “That’s why it stay on your wall,” he said, “and never found its way over to mine!”

Aha! A confession!

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Note from the Editor: Please visit our Holy Week Posts Page.