“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

— Deacon David Jones

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/22/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/22/25

Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

During his papacy, Pope Francis called upon the Church to evangelize with a moral compass instead of a moral hammer, and to do so in the language of angels. 

During his papacy, Pope Francis called upon the Church to evangelize with a moral compass instead of a moral hammer, and to do so in the language of angels. 

April 21, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Note from Father MacRae: Our Holy Father Pope Francis visited a prison on Holy Thursday, he met with Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday, and then he left this life at age 88 early in the morning on the day after Easter 2025. I admit that I was somewhat irked by his leadership, especially in his suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, which seemed to alienate some of the more faithful among us. However, I have never walked a single step in his shoes. I write here about what I most admired and most want to remember about Pope Francis.

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There are those among us who would break the compass with the hammer, but this Pope knew that what the world needs from us and our faith is a compass, not a hammer. This post started off as a reflection on the Church’s belief in angels in light of Pope Francis’ consecration of Vatican City to St Michael the Archangel, but Pope Francis himself hijacked my topic. This is a strange way to begin a story of angels, but it is the beginning that came to me.

A well known Gospel reading, Saint Luke’s account of the Parable of the Prodigal Son has been emphasized throughout the Pontificate of Pope Francis. I think it should better be called, “The Challenge to the Son Who Never Left.” The father in the well-known parable is, of course, terribly disappointed with the choices of his younger son who left his father’s side to go squander his life and his inheritance on “dissolute living.” Losing all, reduced to life as a servant of the swine, he finally comes to his senses. He decides to venture home to save himself by striking a deal with his father: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He will return a servant and not a son. He plans to negotiate a plea deal but they are seldom just. I know all about the lure of plea deals.

His father is not having it, however. Overjoyed at the sight of his broken son, he ignores the well-rehearsed plea deal and restores his son to his home and his patronage with great celebration. Pope Francis spoke of this prodigal parable during the Angelus in Saint Peter’s Square saying, “Here is the entire Gospel! Here!”

Meanwhile, the older son — the one who never left and was always faithful — was not so keen about his father’s embrace of his brother home from wandering “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden.” It is an attitude his father felt obliged to challenge, and in the parable, the greater challenge is the one issued to this son. Note the powerful symbolism: this son is standing outside his father’s house as he issues his protest against mercy toward his brother. This is an important parable for the story of Divine Mercy, and it is reflected throughout the story of God that encompasses our Sacred Scripture.

“A Piece of Life’s Puzzle That Doesn’t Fit”

But first I must tell you how much I thought of my friend, Michael as I read the parable of The Prodigal Son and his Older Brother. At age 21, Michael is starting his third year in prison, and it seems a self-fulfilling prophesy for him. His father is in prison in some other state and they lost contact years ago. Prison is like the gift that keeps on giving. The sons of prisoners are 85 percent more likely than anyone else to one day go to prison, a reality I wrote of in a post about fathers and sons, “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.”

Michael has also not seen or heard from his mother in over a decade. He was virtually homeless when he graduated from high school — an amazing accomplishment — but most of the rest of his young life has been squandered in dissolute living. I am not sure there was a point at which he actually chose that. There was just no one to stop him.

A year or so ago, Michael shattered a collarbone in several places, and it was never treated. The bone fragments have left him contorted, deformed, and in pain. He is on a waiting list for surgery to repair that mess, but there is no line to stand in to repair a shattered life. Michael’s life is in ruins, and he has little hope for anything so out of his reach as redemption.

Meanwhile, some of my other friends are not so keen on me associating with someone like Michael. This seems especially so of some of my devoutly Catholic friends. They would prefer that I be more like the priest and Levite of another famous Gospel parable and simply step over Michael left beaten by life on the side of the road. The fact that Michael reaches out to me and not one of the many street gangs that proliferate in prison says something important about him — something to which my friends should listen.

With a little help from Pornchai Moontri, while he was here with me, I managed to put a halt to the verbal harassment and disdain Michael endured in prison. Someone always has to be everyone else’s scapegoat in a place like this, and it is usually the most spiritually wounded among us. Now Michael is left alone, and is grateful for that. When asked about God, he says he started life as a Catholic, but it did not last long. “I’m just a piece of that puzzle that doesn’t fit,” he said. I am just not ready to hand Michael over to the darkness.

Pope Francis and That Older Brother

What is the point of saving only the already saved? Pope Francis has recently asked this and some other very hard questions. He seems determined that we are not to be a self-referential Church, a Church that sees membership not as food for the journey, but as the reward for arriving. The news media was all abuzz again recently over comments by Pope Francis about the face of Catholicism presented to a world on the sidelines of redemption.

Some time ago, Pope Francis spoke over 12,000 words reduced to less than 50 in the news media. What Pope Francis said comes down to this: The Catholic Church and the faith we present to the world must not be reduced to a litany of what we oppose — or are supposed to oppose. In the New Evangelization with which this Pope is tasked, the Church must stand as a moral compass and guide, and not a moral hammer. His task is to challenge his spiritual sons and daughters who are alienated from faith, but his more daunting challenge is to the rest of us.

FOX News commentator, Jonathan Morris called the Pope’s words “a new emphasis on mercy, kindness, justice, and truth,” and it is an emphasis that does not change or redefine any moral truths for which the Church stands fast. This faith has behind it a magisterial, two-millennia-old compendium of salvific truths that must not be shrunk in our public voice simply to a list of what we are not, a judgment on the ills we perceive in the world that is not us. For Pope Francis, if that is the face of our Catholic faith that we present to a dying world then our faith may die with it.

It did not take long for a few Catholic bloggers to raise the alarm when Pope Francis suggested that we not limit our Catholic voice to our opposition to abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage. One Catholic blogger who probably should have taken that day off posted in response, “We Don’t Need a Conformist Church.” I think that Pope Francis — who no one would ever characterize as being a conformist Pope — sees that a line can be crossed in our counter-cultural positions that risks making Catholicism appear exclusive. This same tendency has shattered the mainstream Protestant denominations, fosters anti-Catholic sentiment, and leaves many spiritually wounded souls on the other side of a line drawn in the sand. For Pope Francis, it is the Mission of the Church to lead those souls home, not to leave them homeless and adrift.

Pope Francis has not diluted or set aside one sentence of the Church’s moral teaching. Most of the mainstream media — even much of the Catholic press — failed to report on his comments made just one day after his call to reflect a positive and merciful Church. On September 20, 2013 the Vatican Information Service blog published the following:

“Today the Pope met with members of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and Catholic Gynecologists. Francis spoke of the ‘throw-away culture that leads to the elimination of human beings, especially those who are physically and socially weakest. Our response to this mentality is a “yes” to life, decisive and without hesitation. The first right of the human person is his life. He has other goods and some are precious, but this one fundamental right is the condition for all others….’

“Reiterating that in recent times, human life in its entirety has become a priority for the Magisterium of the Church, the Pope… asked those present to ‘bear witness to and disseminate a culture of life…and not only as a matter of faith but as a matter of reason and science, there is no human life more sacred than another; there is no human life qualitatively more meaningful than another.’”

— Pope Francis, September 20, 2013

To Speak with the Tongues of Men and of Angels

In a reflection of mine when Pope Francis consecrated Vatican City to Saint Michael the Archangel, I mentioned some media taunts that this Pope sometimes seems “obsessed with Satan and the demonic.” It is nonsense, of course. If you listen to him, he really emphasizes far more the human capacity for good, and how that good must respond to a suffering humanity by carrying for the world not only truth, but both truth and light. When I began to reflect while writing a post about angelic witness, I was faced with a very surprising mathematical equation that lends authority to the Church Pope Francis wants to present to the world.

In the entire canon of Jewish and Christian Sacred Scripture — our Old and New Testament — there are 117 references to the words “devil” (35), “demon” (28), and the name of Satan (54). In the same canon of Scripture, there are exactly four times that many — 468 — references to the words “angel” or “angels” (326), the angelic orders such as archangel, cherubim, seraphim (114), and the named angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael (28). The math alone tells a simple story. The ratio of angels to demons in the Story of God upon which our faith is built is exactly four to one. These are not bad odds for a Pope called upon to rebuild the face of the Church in the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi.

In regard to those odds, Satan is referenced 54 times in the canon of Scripture while God vastly overshadows him by being named 4,773 times. There is no question of whose story is being told. It is a story of a people called out of darkness, delivered from slavery to sin, and redeemed at a very great price.

In its telling, this Holy Father, like the angelic witnesses to the deeds of God before him, wants to proclaim a salvific truth at the heart of the Gospel, a truth that the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother needed to hear: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

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Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/16/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 4/16/25

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

“This is the night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.”

“This is the night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.”

Holy Week 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

You might readily see the irony of my invoking the haunting passage above. It is from the Exultet, that wondrous proclamation of Salvation History as the Paschal Candle is blessed at the doors of the church in the liturgy for the Easter Vigil. The imagery of Christ breaking the prison bars of death may understandably have deep meaning for me. The excerpt recalls a scene from Holy Week that I once wrote about in “To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell.”

That post tells the story referenced in the Second Letter of Saint Peter, about what happened to Jesus on what we now call Holy Saturday, that period of darkness between the Cross and the Resurrection. And I just now realized, looking back at that post from several years ago, that I cited that same passage from the Exultet in its opening.

Back in February 2025, I wrote a post entitled “On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free.” It mentioned my recent acquisition of the much anticipated Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testament edited by Dr. Scott Hahn. That post also referred to a recent and surprising resurgence of biblical interest throughout the free world. I learned of that explosion of interest when Ignatius Press placed me on a waiting list for that particular bible which is now in its fourth or fifth printing. I have been lugging the weighty hardcover tome, consisting of 2,314 pages, around with me for two months at this writing. I don’t seem to be able to part with it for long. It is a treasure trove of biblical insight and truth, filled not only with readable and scholarly translations of Sacred Scripture, but also with scholars’ notes on the biblical texts. From a historical perspective it draws clear connections between the Old and New Testaments. From a spiritual perspective it is as though a lamp has been relit opening for me, and hopefully also for you, a world of deeper meaning embedded within the texts. As I mentioned in a previous post, my goal has been two-fold: to educate, or rather reeducate myself on the story of God and us, and to avoid dropping the very heavy book on my foot in the process.

The interpretation of a religious text is a study called exegesis. It seeks to convey and understand both the literal and spiritual sense of biblical truths. Neither should be sacrificed in pursuit of the other. I have often described it this way: There is a story on its surface, which is true, and a far greater story in its depths which points to even greater truths. One way in which the spiritual truth of Scripture is expressed is in allegory. Jesus told many allegorical accounts in parables. Most readers are clear that the truth in these precious accounts is in the lesson they convey. Two of the most famous examples are the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” and the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.” You know these stories well, and they need no explanation.

Most of Sacred Scripture is not conveyed in parable form, but as a historical narrative. Allegory is still very much a part of that narrative, and we are cheating our understanding of a text when we suppress its allegorical content. We should start by accepting both truths: the truth of the historical content of Scripture and the equal and sometimes even greater truth in its allegorical content. In this sense allegory refers to a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or religious one. In the 19th and 20th centuries, fundamentalist Scripture scholars stripped allegory from their interpretations of the text, but at great cost. More modern scholars have restored it. One of them has been Dr. Scott Hahn.

When I cited an excerpt from the Exultet Proclamation from the Easter Vigil liturgy as I opened this post, I later realized that the Second Reading for the Easter Vigil Mass is one that I have pondered for a very long time. It is from Genesis 22:1-19, the story of God calling upon Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son. “So momentous is this event in its outcome,” wrote Scott Hahn, “that it stands as one of the defining moments of Salvation History.” I have set out to study the great depths of this account and they are astonishing.

Abraham and Isaac

Isaac is a Hebrew name, of course, and it means “He laughs.” It has its origin in Genesis 17:16-17: “ ‘I will bless (Sarah) and moreover I will give you a son by her; I will bless her and she shall be the mother of nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ ”

Abraham apparently gave little thought to the wisdom of falling to the ground and laughing at God. The fact that he “said it to himself” is no guarantee that God would not have heard it loud and clear. And so it was that the Word of God came to give the son of Abraham and Sarah the name “Isaac,” which means “He laughs.”

Abraham was apparently not the only one laughing. God seemed to get a chuckle out of it as well.

As the story progressed, the significance of Isaac’s birth was immediate. He was to be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Isaac was to be the bearer of the covenant into future generations: “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for him and his descendants after him” (Genesis 17:19). Then the drama of the Book of Genesis reaches its greatest intensity with the heart-wrenching story of God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice as a burnt offering his beloved son upon the heights of Mount Moriah. Had Abraham shown anything less than heroic faith and obedience the grand narrative of the Bible would have developed very differently thereafter. Here is the Genesis account which became the Second Reading of our Easter Vigil liturgy.

From the Book of Genesis 22:1-18:

After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, “Take your son, your only begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and went to the place of which God had told him. … Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on the shoulders of his son to carry, and he took in his own hands the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. Isaac said to his father, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on your son or do anything to him for now I know that you have not withheld your only begotten son from me.” Abraham then lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. So Abraham went and took the lamb and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place YHWH YIR’EH, in Hebrew, “The Lord will see.”

It is from this very account that, twenty one centuries later, the Gospel of John (1:29) proclaims “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

I have always felt that this account in Genesis was a presage, a looking far ahead, to the sacrifice of Jesus upon Golgotha. It is allegorical in that sense. The account is true on its literal face but it is also true that it echoes the Greatest Story Ever Told which will come many centuries later. All the elements are there. The Second Book of Chronicles (3:1) identifies Moriah as the site upon which, nearly one thousand years later, Solomon would build the Jerusalem Temple, and Calvary, where the only begotten Son of God was crucified, is a hillock in the Moriah range. So for the Hebrew reader of the story of the Crucifixion, there is a powerful sense of déjà vu: the place, the mount, Abraham placing the wood for sacrifice upon the back of Isaac, and is not the ram caught by its horns in the thicket highly reminiscent of the Crown of Thorns? But we cannot reminisce backwards. This amazing account from Genesis is a mysterious example of the power of biblical inspiration. Only in the mind of God, in the time of Genesis, was the story of Christ evident.

From Sheol to the Kingdom of Heaven

In the Old Testament, “to die” meant to descend to Sheol. It was our final destination. To rise from the dead, therefore, meant to rise from Sheol, but no one ever did. The concept of Sheol being the “underworld” is a simple employment of the cosmology of ancient Judaism which understood the abode of God and the heavens as being above the Earth, and Sheol, the place of the dead, as below it. This is the source of our common understanding of Heaven and hell, but it omits a vast theological comprehension of the death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus and the human need to understand our own death in terms of faith.

If, up to the time of Jesus, “to die” meant to descend into Sheol, then Jesus introduced an entirely new understanding of death in his statement from the Cross to the penitent criminal, Dismas, who pleaded from his own cross, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus responded, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). This is an account that I once told entitled, “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

It is by far the most widely read of our Holy Week posts, and not just at Holy Week. On the Cross, where the penitent criminal comes to faith while being crucified along with Jesus, God dissolves the bonds of death because death can have no power over Jesus. It is highly relevant for us that the conditions in which the penitent Dismas entered Paradise were to bear his cross and to come to faith.

It was at the moment Jesus declared, in His final word from the Cross, “It is finished,” that Heaven, the abode of God, opened for human souls for the first time in human history. The Gospels do not treat this moment lightly:

“It was now about the sixth hour [3:00 PM], and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Saying this he breathed his last.”

— Luke 23:44-46

“And behold, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the Earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised ... When the centurion, and those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake, and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, ‘Clearly, this was the Son of God.’”

— Matthew 27:51-54

The veil of the Temple being torn in two appears also in Mark’s Gospel (15:38) and is highly significant. Two veils hung in the Jerusalem Temple. One was visible, separating the outer courts from the sanctuary. The other was visible only to the priests as it hung inside the sanctuary before its most sacred chamber in which the Holy of Holies dwelled (see Exodus 26:31-34). At the death of Jesus, the curtain of the Temple being torn from top to bottom is symbolic of salvation itself. Upon the death of Jesus, the barrier between the Face of God and His people was removed.

According to the works of the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, the curtain barrier before the inner sanctuary that was torn in two was heavily embroidered with images of the Creation and the Cosmos. Its destruction symbolized the opening of Heaven, God’s dwelling place and the Angelic Realm, to human souls.

In ancient Israel in the time of Abraham and Isaac the concept of Sheol after death was closely connected with the grave and pictured only as a gloomy underworld hidden deep in the bowels of the Earth. There human souls descended after death (Genesis 37:35) to a joyless existence where the Lord is neither seen nor worshipped. Both the righteous and the wicked sank into the nether world (Genesis 44:31). Despite the apparent finality of death, Scripture displays great confidence in the power of God to deliver his people from its clutches. That confidence was made manifest in the deliverance of Jesus from his tomb after he displayed the power of God to the one place where he had always been absent, the realm of the dead. “For Christ also died for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and declared to the spirits in prison who did not formerly obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)

The essential point for us could not be clearer or more hopeful. Besides Jesus himself, the first to be sanctioned with a promise of paradise was a condemned prisoner who, even in the intense suffering of his own cross, refused to mock Jesus but rather came to believe and then place all his final hope in that belief. As I ended “Dismas, Crucified to the Right” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country of Death, toward his sunrise and eternal home.

I have written many times that we live in a most important time. The story of Abraham told above took place twenty one centuries before the Birth of the Messiah. We now live in the twenty first century after. Christ is now at the very center of Salvation History.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Here are some recommended posts along a similar theme.

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ

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Our “From Ashes to Easter” feature will be retitled after the Easter Season to become “Salvation History.” We will adding other Scripture-based posts at that time.

News Alert: When we tried to share some of these Holy Week posts in several Facebook Catholic groups, Facebook characterized them as “SPAM” and then disabled our account. There is no easy way to communicate with Facebook about this. We have opened an “X” account (formerly Twitter) and find it a much more accepting platform for Catholic or traditional viewpoints. Please follow us there at BeyondTheseStoneWalls.

With many thanks and Easter Blessings,

Father Gordon MacRae

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Fr. Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD 4/2/25 Fr. Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD 4/2/25

Vatican Bans Publishing Lists of ‘Credibly’ Accused Priests

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts, two other Vatican Dicasteries, and Pope Francis himself have banned publishing lists of priests ‘credibly’ accused.

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts, two other Vatican Dicasteries, and Pope Francis himself have banned publishing lists of priests ‘credibly’ accused.

April 2, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: This post may not move hearts, but it should move minds and consciences. It is of utmost importance to me, to the priesthood and to the whole Church. So we should not be silent in the face of injustice. So please share this post.

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On February 22, 2025, the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, the Vatican office responsible for issuing authoritative legal interpretations and directives for the universal Church, published online a long awaited guidance to bishops impacting the due process rights of “credibly accused” Catholic priests.

The announcement underscores the Dicastery’s decision that bishops considering publication of lists of priests deemed credibly accused of sexual abuse are prohibited under Canon Law from doing so. This guidance is for a multitude of reasons connected to long established civil and canonical rights of due process. I will describe below some examples of how these rights have been impacted.

From the point of view of official Church positions, the problem is, and has always been, the bishops’ collective interpretation and use of the term “credible” in their response to the crisis. It is a standard applied nowhere else in the world of civil or criminal jurisprudence. It means only that a claim of abuse cannot be immediately dismissed on its face. If a claimant alleges abuse in a specific community 30 or 40 years ago, for example, and the named priest had once been assigned there, the claim is “credible” unless and until it is disproven.

There is no court in America that admits such a standard of evidence but it is routinely applied now to accused Catholic priests. Courts have long recognized that older memories are highly malleable, and misidentification of the accused is a frequent risk.

Before delving further into this, I want to present a reaction to the Vatican news from William A. Donohue, Ph.D., President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who has consistently defended the due process rights of priests.

From Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Vatican Finally Does Right by Accused Priests

Six years after Pope Francis rejected the practice of publishing the names of accused priests, the Vatican has finally codified his plea. Henceforth, dioceses are discouraged from publishing such a list. Among the reasons cited was the inability of deceased accused priests to defend themselves.

This should never have been an issue in the first place. But in the panic that ensued following the 2002 series in The Boston Globe detailing clergy sexual abuse, the bishops convened in Dallas in 2004 to adopt a charter that listed comprehensive reforms, some of which substantially weakened the rights of the accused.

At the time, I was highly critical of the way some bishops allowed a gay subculture to flourish, one that resulted in a massive cover-up of the sexual abuse of minors (homosexual priests — not pedophiles — were responsible for 8 in 10 cases of abuse). But I also said of the Dallas reforms, “There is a problem regarding the rights of the accused. It appears that the charter may short-circuit some due process rights.”

One of the problems was the desire to publish the names of accused priests. Egging the bishops on was Judge Anne Burke, the first person to head the National Review Board commissioned by the bishops to deal with the problem.

She made it clear that priests — and only priests — should be denied their constitutionally prescribed right to due process. “We understand that it is a violation of the priest’s due process rights — you’re innocent until proven guilty — but we’re talking about the most vulnerable people in our society and those are children,” she said. Such thinking allowed the bishops to make public the names of accused priests.

In an interview I had in my office with a female reporter from CNN, she became quite critical of the Church for not posting the names of accused priests on its diocesan websites. I picked up the phone and, holding it in my hand, asked her for the name and phone number of her boss. When she asked why, I said I was going to accuse her of sexual harassment. I added that I wanted to see if CNN would post her name on its website. She said, “I get it.” I put the phone down. (For more on this see my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse).

No organization in the United States, religious or secular, publishes the names of accused employees. That there should be an exception for priests is obscene.

The rights of accused priests need to be safeguarded, and the penalties for those found guilty need to be severe. The Church failed on the latter, which is why the scandal took place, and it failed on the former, which is why Pope Francis, and now the entire Church, had to act.

The sexual abuse of minors in the Church in America has long been checked — almost all the cases in the media are about old cases, and most of the bad guys are dead or out of ministry. Now that the rights of the accused have been given a much needed shot in the arm, we can say with confidence that the problem has been ameliorated.

Now back to Father MacRae............

But My Diocese Employs “Trauma-Informed” Consultants

On July 31, 2019, Bishop Peter A. Libasci, Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire proactively published a list of the names and assignment histories of 73 priests in his diocese who had been “credibly” accused of sexual abuse of minors and removed from ministry. Most of the claims deemed “credible” are decades old. The majority of the priests on Bishop Libasci’s list are long deceased. In most cases, the sole condition making the claims “credible” was the fact that money — lots of it — changed hands.

Bishop Libasci’s stated goal for publishing his list was “transparency.” In 2024, long after Pope Francis discouraged bishops from doing so, Bishop Libasci republished the list with the names of additional accused but deceased priests.

Weeks after Bishop Libasci’s original list was publicized in 2019, Ryan A. MacDonald penned and published a contentious objection: “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.” It was contentious because it represented well my disagreement with this action of the bishop of my diocese, something I otherwise hoped to avoid. Plaintiff attorneys and activist groups like SNAP pressured bishops to publish such lists for the purpose of “assuring victims they are not alone and that they are heard.”

The real reason for pushing for published lists, however, was to provide a forum and online database for false “copycat” claims, a lucrative business for contingency lawyers and claimants alike with little or no court oversight. In May 2024, Ryan A. MacDonald published a report on how and why this happens in “To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.” Here is an excerpt from an official statement of my Diocese:

“The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when abuse occurred, through a process utilizing independent trauma-informed consultants.”

A basic problem with handling the matter of due process for the accused and outcomes for the Diocese by abdicating judgment to “trauma-informed consultants” is that the term is widely noted and critiqued by professionals as highly biased. It has a documented negative impact on judicial fairness and due process of law in claims of sexual abuse and assault.

The Center for Prosecutor Integrity (CPI ) is an organization that seeks to strengthen prosecutorial ethics, promote due process, and end wrongful convictions. Victim-centered investigations, also known in the sex abuse contingency lawyer industry as “trauma-informed,” presume the guilt of all accused and lead to wrongful convictions.

According to the Center’s website, “The most destructive types of victim-centered investigations are known as “Start by Believing,” and “Trauma-Informed.” The Center exhibits a professional bibliography documenting the “junk science” behind such investigations creating an epidemic of false witness and police and prosecutorial misconduct. Given the well-founded caution about false claims and financial scammers, it was alarming to read the following in a recent news article, “Diocese of Manchester Settles Sexual Abuse Claims from the 1970s.” Here’s an excerpt:

“No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but the attorney representing the ‘John Doe’ who was involved said it’s important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process, … thus announcing a six-figure settlement outside the Diocese of Manchester office.”

Has it never dawned on anyone in Church leadership that there are those in our midst who would find a “six-figure settlement” an enticement for false accusations? This is especially so when there is no court oversight for such claims. The process has been made very simple. A lawyer writes a letter and a bishop writes a check.

In addition to these trauma-informed consultants retained by the Diocese of Manchester and other dioceses,”it seems that civil lawyers and risk managers, not bishops, are often running the show.” So wrote prominent canon lawyer, Michael Mazza, JD, JCD, in a recent First Things article (February 24, 2025): “Who’s Really Calling the Shots at U.S. Diocesan Chanceries?” Mazza concludes:

“ln the wake of the clerical abuse crisis, church leaders may have surrendered too much authority to risk managers focused on eliminating every threat. Seasoned entrepreneurs understand that the moment lawyers run the show, adopting a zero-risk strategy as the business model, the company grinds to a halt. While the surest way for a car company to avoid getting sued is to stop making cars, that strategy is not an option for an institution that has received a divine call to preach the Gospel to all nations. Bishops must recognize this truth and seize the helm with the resolve their office demands.”

The Perspective of a Not-So-Credibly Convicted Priest

My name was on Bishop Libasci’s published list under the unique category, “convicted,” but that was not at all my point of contention with his list. Unlike most of the priests named on that ongoing list, I at least had public charges in a public forum — a 1994 criminal trial — no matter how jaded and unjust it was. The details of those charges and that trial have emerged over time and are also now in public view. They have raised awareness about the absence of truth and the aura of injustice in the forum in which I was condemned and sentenced.

As Ryan A. MacDonald’s article, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List” points out, Bishop Libasci’s predecessor, the late Bishop John B. McCormack, went on record in an unpublished media interview in the aftermath of my trial stating his informed belief that I was falsely accused, wrongly convicted, and should not be in prison. He insisted, however, that this information should never leave his office. These details were exposed in a 2021 post, “Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Affidavits Expanded.”

Going back even further in this history of neglected due process, Bishop McCormack’s predecessor, the late Bishop Leo O’Neil, chose not to wait for the outcome of a trial. Before my trial commenced, he published an official diocesan press release declaring that I victimized not only my accusers but the entire Catholic Church. After that, a trial seemed just a formality.

The most visible post-trial analysis of due process in the case, however, was that of Dorothy Rabinowitz, awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her courageous exposure of “accusation, false witness, and other terrors of our time.” Her series of articles in The Wall Street Journal culminated in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in 2013, six years before Bishop Libasci published his list.

In a compelling five-minute video interview produced by The Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz saw through all the smoke and mirrors and got to the heart of the matter. It is a brief but bold exposé of unassailable truth that ties the two-decade outbreak of clergy abuse claims to the very unquestioned settlements money promised by my Diocese in its statements above.

I give the last word to “A Video Interview with Dorothy Rabinowitz.”

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Note from Father Gordon Mac Rae: I thank Catholic League President Bill Donohue for his contribution to this post. His outstanding book on this subject is The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse (2021) published by Ignatius Press.

I also thank Michael J. Mazza, JD, JCD for letting us reprint a segment of an article that I highly recommend: Who’s Really Calling the Shots at U.S. Diocesan Chanceries? First Things, February 24, 2025.

During Lent this year I created a list of our Scriptural posts and published them together under the title “From Ashes to Easter.” We shared the list on several Facebook Catholic groups. In response, Facebook dismissed it as “SPAM,” and then froze our account. (Again!) So we cannot share this post on Facebook, but you can. Thank you for doing so.

You may also like these related and eye-opening posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants

Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo

Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Aﬃdavits Expanded

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Alexander 3/26/25 Alexander 3/26/25

The Prodigal Son: Alexander’s Long Lent Toward Easter Sunrise

This account of a young man’s conversion to the Catholic faith is the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in prose; a story of pain and loss, of grace and freedom.

This account of a young man’s conversion to the Catholic faith is the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in prose; a story of pain and loss, of grace and freedom.

March 26, 2025 by Alexander

My name is Alex. I am 38 years old. Fourteen years ago I was prisoner number 96829 in the New Hampshire State Prison. One day back then I was standing in the doorway of Cell Number One having a conversation with two friends. I think you might know the ones I mean. Anyway, I went there a lot to talk about a very big decision I made back then that changed the course of my life. I didn’t know when I went to visit Cell One that I would one day be telling you this story, but here I am. It took a long time for this to come into print, and in the meantime all of our lives have changed.

I have become a Catholic. That might seem no big deal to the casual observer. Just about everywhere at this time of year, people are getting ready to enter the Catholic Church. If you knew me then, however, you might see that this decision was most unlikely, but, like I said, here I am.

It’s hard to pin down the point where I first thought of this. It isn’t something that I pursued. It’s more like it pursued me. Of all the places for a person to find faith for the first time in his life, prison seems the most unlikely. At least that’s what I always thought. Before I went there with my life in ruins, I had lots of misconceptions about prison and prisoners.

My memory of my life as a child is that it was fairly normal for today’s standards. I had loving parents and an older brother. Until I was 11 years old, everything was ordinary for me. Then came the fall. My father left. He didn’t just leave. He left my Mom alone to raise two sons. He moved to Kansas in search of himself and a new family. I was yesterday’s child, and I was angry about it.

Those years were rough for my family. My Mom struggled to keep our home, but couldn’t. My older brother worked as much as he could to lift the burden from my Mom, but couldn’t. At 12 I started smoking dope and drinking, trying hard to escape feeling like a burden and discarded. My best friend was going through a similar breakdown in his family and we escaped together into drugs and alcohol. There was just no one there to stop us.

So in the eighth grade we began skipping school. First, a day here and there, then it slowly became our way of life. Up to then I was an honor student, but by ninth grade I was drinking every day and all honor left me. It was a crushing source of shame that I stole money from my already struggling Mom and from my friend’s Mom. I was feeding a growing addiction to oxycodone. Today I see its grip on my 14-year-old self as demonic.

I was barely living, fighting every day with my Mom who fought hard to save my life and my soul from self-destruction. It was a losing battle, but still, as with everything else, she struggled. Then another life-changing event happened. My Mom and I were in a terrible accident in the fall of my ninth grade. She was hospitalized for a year. My brother had to leave school and work full time to support us.

By the tenth grade I told my Mom that I wanted to drop out of school and work full time as a roofer. She reluctantly agreed, but got me to at least agree to work on obtaining my G.E.D. high school equivalency. I signed the papers and went to work, but I hated my life and the powers that had stolen my will. I was yearning for something, though then I thought it was just drugs.

Some of my “friends” would offer me drugs for free when I had no money just to keep me in my habit. That’s when I learned that I had no real friends. My older brother even told me that there was nothing wrong with doing drugs, or as he put it, “living life.” I didn’t see it then, but I see it today. He had no more guidance than I did, and neither of us knew what “living life” meant.

California Dreaming

I was 17 years old when I had enough of the way I was living and sought a geographical cure. I talked with a friend in California who told me I would have a place to sleep if I came out there. So off I went. I wasn’t counting on the fact that my Mom was still struggling to save me, so in her eyes I was now a 17-year-old runaway. Eventually, she came to tolerate my latest bad decision, but reminded me of my promise to at least complete a G.E.D.

In California, I landed a job within five days. My glorious new life of freedom from myself and the past lasted all the way up to my first paycheck which, true to form, was handed over to alcohol and drugs. In California, nothing changed but the direction of the tides. The tides of my life, meanwhile, still flooded over me.

I think it’s important to note that up until this point in my life I had no real exposure to religion or faith. I did not believe in anything, least of all myself. I remember as a small child asking my Dad what religion we were. He said, “Well, if you had to put a label on it, I’d say we are Protestant.” I had no idea what a Protestant was. As I grew older, I learned that my Mom was a Methodist as a child, and I discovered that I had been baptized whatever that meant.

But here in California I was more lost than ever before. I stayed until I was almost 20 until the next geographical cure brought me home to New Hampshire where my downward spiral with drugs and alcohol continued until I was 24.

On July 6, 2010, my first and only son was born. When I saw him open his eyes for the first time and stare into mine, I cried. It was as though someone had turned a light on for the first time in my life, and I saw how very limited I was. I knew things had to change, for my son and for myself. I was determined not to bestow upon my son the legacy of absent fatherhood, the abyss I spent so much of my life trying to fill.

Over the next six months, I stopped drinking and using drugs. I began to think more about the miracle of life before me and less about all the searching I left behind. There had to be something more to life. I had seen it in my son’s eyes.

So I began to read about religion. I read about Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. Then one day I was parked on a street waiting for a friend when I began to pray for the first time in my life. I asked God to show me the way. When I opened my eyes I saw two young men cross the road carrying a Bible and I started to laugh. I watched as the young men left, and thought I had missed my chance.

So I prayed again. I told God that if those young men ever again cross my path, I will get up the courage to talk with them. When I finished and looked up, they were standing, still holding their Bible, looking around and puzzled. They turned 180 degrees and started walking back toward my car. I jumped from the car, and I think I scared them. That day I received my first Bible and started reading.

The Debts of the Past

Then my life of wandering caught up with me. In 2014, I was sent to prison. I had never before been in jail or prison, and I was preparing for the worst. It’s not at all like what you see in the movies or on T.V. It was devastating and frightening. At the point at which I was just beginning to discover myself, I became prisoner 96829.

After three months of being classified, I was terrified. In the whole time I was there, all I heard were prisoner horror stories about this one unit called Hancock, or “H-Building” as it was called. Prisoners called it the “gladiator unit,” and I prayed to God that I wouldn’t be sent there. So when I was told to pack my things and move to H-Building, I was terrified.

When I arrived in Hancock, I was sent to Echo or “E-Pod” where there were eight prisoners per cell. I quickly began to learn the difference between T.V. prison and real prison. Day to day life was very difficult with fights breaking out all around me. It was always loud and dirty, and the arguments and fights were a daily occurrence. I tried to keep to myself, but the overcrowding made that impossible. I knew that sooner or later I would have to defend myself. It was filled with aimless young men all trying to prove themselves and not appear vulnerable.

I knew this place could destroy me so I started going to classes in the prison and to the prison chapel whenever I could. After all, I thought, it could be worse. I could be on Bravo or “B-Pod.” The rumor on the upper pods was that B-Pod had “lifers who will take what they want and kill you in a heartbeat.” I prayed to God not to let me be sent to B-Pod. Within days of that prayer, just after my birthday, I was told to pack my things because I was being moved. When I asked where, the dreaded words terrified me all over again. “You’re going to B-Pod.”

I was put on a top bunk on B-Pod out in the day room where the lights are kept on 24/7. I was at least glad to have a top bunk because I thought it would be harder for someone to jump me. I was terrified and knew everyone could see it. I also knew that prisoners would be true to form, and most would look to exploit my fear.

I unpacked my few things, most of which I expected to be stolen by morning, and climbed into my bunk to hide behind a book. It felt as though everyone was avoiding me, “the new guy,” like the plague. I was afraid to leave my bunk to go to the prison chow hall so I just stayed there behind my book. As the day moved on, prisoners started returning from work. This one bald guy with glasses walked past me and stopped. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

I recognized him as the guy who works behind the desk in the law library. He saw instantly that I was very intimidated by this place so he told me not to worry, that everything would be okay and no one would harm me. I only later learned that this man was Fr Gordon MacRae.

Then the next guy to come over to me was Donald Spinner. He asked me why I did not go to dinner, and I had no answer for him. So Donald came back and left some bread and peanut butter and jelly on my bunk and said “you’ll be hungry before the day is over.” I was starving!

Then the next guy to stop was an Asian man everyone called “Ponch.” He joked around and made me laugh, and then said he is G’s roommate, and to just come over if I need anything. Yeah right! I thought. I’m not going anywhere near these guys!

Later, a lot later, I would have the privilege of reading a post by Father G called “The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope.” In it he wrote about a man named Squanto who was horribly lost in the odyssey of life. I thought this could have been my story. When I read it I thought back to that first day on that bunk out on the pod, and I realized that the discipleship that these guys believed in was very real. These guys didn’t just believe it. They lived it.

The Homecoming

One day I ventured over to the weight machine on the pod to look at it. Pornchai Moontri came over and asked me if I was interested in getting into shape. I thought it was a lost cause, but he encouraged me. For the next several months, Pornchai worked with me every day, teaching me weightlifting and how to get enough exercise to change the way I think and feel about myself.

Then he began to talk about faith and what I believe. I knew he had become Catholic. Another friend of Pornchai and Gordon, Michael Ciresi also worked out with us. One day I read Michael’s post that Father G invited him to write. It was “Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I left Behind” and it profoundly changed the way I see my past, my present, and my future. I could see these guys heading off to Mass every Sunday, but more importantly I could see the way they conducted themselves in a very difficult environment from Monday through Saturday. I could also see the way everyone else conducted themselves around them. It was best behavior all around! These guys were the real deal.

One day I was sitting on a bench near Donald Spinner’s cell. He asked if I was okay, and I asked him, “What do Catholics believe about Baptism?” I told him that I thought I needed to be baptized again, and he said that if I already am, it is for life. This led to many conversations about faith and about the Catholic Church’s place in history. I wasn’t being “won over” so much as “called home.” I began to see that I was changing not just physically, but spiritually.

When I began to go to Mass offered by Father Bernard Campbell — Father Bernie — I approached him and said that I needed to be forgiven. I asked if I could go to Confession, and Father Bernie didn’t even ask if I was Catholic. He smiled and said, “Of course,” and said he would meet me at the Chapel on the following Friday. I will never forget that day — the day of my first Confession when I walked away a new man.

That new man now has a new faith, and is on fire with it. I am clean, and sober, and free of the life long burdens of the past. I remember something that Father G showed me that Pornchai wrote:

“One day I woke up with a future when up to then all I ever had was a past.”

Today, miraculously born in the most unlikely place, I have an identity. I no longer wake up wondering who I am. I am a man! I am a father! I am strong! I am a Catholic! I am hopeful! I am free!

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these other stories of Redemption from behind these stone walls.

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand by Pornchai Moontri

Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I Left Behind by Michael Ciresi

We have added a new feature at this blog, a list of the Scriptural accounts of Salvation History, which I hope you will visit and share with others: From Ashes to Easter.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/19/25 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 3/19/25

To Honor Saint Joseph and to Remember Pope Benedict

Saint John Paul II added a new title to honor Saint Joseph. As “Guardian of the Redeemer” Joseph’s dream set us on a path from spiritual exile to Divine Mercy.

Saint John Paul II added a new title to honor Saint Joseph. As “Guardian of the Redeemer” Joseph’s dream set us on a path from spiritual exile to Divine Mercy.

[Credit: Book cover of Consecration to St. Joseph, published by Marian Press. Photo of Pope Benedict XVI, L’Osservatore Romano / Catholic News Agency]

Out of my sometimes inflated separation anxiety, you may have read in these pages an oft-mentioned thought. From behind these stone walls, I write from the Oort Cloud, that orbiting field of our Solar System’s cast-off debris 1.5 light years from Earth out beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was named for its discoverer, the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrick Oort (1900-1992).

There are disadvantages to being way out here cast off from society and the life of the Church. I am among the last to receive news and the last to be heard. But there is also one advantage. From here, I tend to have a more panoramic view of things, and find myself reflecting longer and reacting less when I find news to be painful.

It seems so much longer now, but it was twelve years ago this month that we had news from Rome that, for many, felt like an earthquake in our very souls. I wrote a series of posts about this in the last week of February and the first few weeks of March 2013. The first was “Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

Like most of you, I miss the fatherly Pope Benedict, I miss his brilliant mind, his steady reason, his unwavering aura of fidelity. I miss the rudder with which he stayed the course, steering the Barque of Peter through wind and waves.

But then they became hurricane winds and tidal waves. Amid all the conspiracy theories and “fake news” about Pope Benedict’s decision to abdicate the papacy, I suggested an “alternative fact” that proved to be true. His decision was a father’s act of love, and his intent was to do the one thing by which all good fathers are measured. His decision was an act of sacrifice, and the extent to which that is true was made clear in a post I wrote several years later, “Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.” But this is not about Pope Francis, and the heresy is not at all what you may think.

Benedict is firm that he was guided by the Holy Spirit. For some, the end result was a Holy Father who emerged from the conclave of 2013 while silently in the background remained our here-but-not-here “Holier Father.” Such a comparison has always been unjust, but inevitable. A reader at that time sent me a review by Father James Schall, S.J., in Crisis Magazine. “On Pope Benedict’s Final Insights and Recollections” is a review of a published interview by Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: Last Testament.

The word, “final” in Father Schall’s title delivered a sting of regret. It hearkened back to that awful March of 2013 when the news media pounced on Pope Benedict’s papacy and delivered news with a tone of contempt too familiar to Catholics today. The secular news media is getting its comeuppance now, and perhaps even finding a little humility in the process, though I doubt it. Even the late, ever fatherly Pope Emeritus took an honest poke at its distortions:

“The bishops (at Vatican II) wanted to renew the faith, to deepen it. However, other forces were working with increasing strength, particularly journalists, who interpreted many things in a completely new way. Eventually people asked, yes, if the bishops are able to change everything, why can’t we all do that? The liturgy began to crumble, and slip into personal preferences.”

— Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 2016

Benedict the Beloved also wrote from the Oort Cloud, but it is one that he cast himself into. I had always hoped I might run into him out here one day and I think I did. We got stoned together once. Neither of us inhaled anything illicit, but I wrote about it in “Breaking News! I got Stoned with the Pope.”

Benedict’s testament ended with these final, surprising words:

“It has become increasingly clear to me that God is not, let’s say, a ruling power, a distant force, rather He is love, and loves me, and as such, life should be guided by Him, by this power called love.”

Carnage in the Absence of Fathers

In the winter of a life so devoted to a dialogue with the deep theological mysteries of our faith, it seemed surprising that Benedict XVI would choose this as the final message he wanted to convey to the Church and the world. My own interpretation is that he chose not the words of a theologian, but those of a father, an equal partner in the ultimate vocation for the preservation of life and the sake of humanity: parenthood.

Fathers who live out the sacrifices required of them are an endangered species in our emerging culture of relativism. In his first-term inaugural address to the nation, President Donald Trump spoke of the “carnage” that our society has failed to face, and he was widely ridiculed for it. But he was right. I see evidence of that carnage every day in the world I am forced to live in here, and I would be a negligent father if I did not write about it.

So, I did write about it, and it struck a nerve. “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men” has been shared many thousands of times in social media and reposted in hundreds of venues. It seemed to awaken readers to the wreckage left behind as fathers and fatherhood were devalued into absence in our society. I am a daily witness to the shortsighted devastation of young lives that are cast off into prisons in a country that can no longer call itself their fatherland.

We breed errant youth in the absence of fathers, and those who stray too far are inevitably abandoned into prisons where they are housed, and fed, and punished, but rarely ever challenged to compensate for the great loss that set their lives askew. Prison is an expensive, but very poor replacement for a caring and committed father.

Our readers have come to know about the transformation of a dear friend, Pornchai Moontri who took the name “Maximilian” in his Divine Mercy Sunday conversion in 2010. He goes by “Max” now, because like the Biblical figures of old who discovered a covenant with God, he was given a new name. Not long after Max arrived in his native Thailand after a 36-year-long odyssey set in motion by the betrayal of a fake father, a terrible tragedy happened in Thailand in a village quite near the one where Max was born. A troubled police officer who had betrayed his badge was fired from his position after being caught trafficking in drugs. The former police officer went on an evil rampage and slaughtered dozens of preschool children in a small village before turning his weapons on himself. In a nation left speechless, and maybe even hopeless, Max found the courage to write about this story and his prophetic witness spread throughout Thailand. His post was “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.” Speaking about a prior tragedy in Uvalde, Texas and the two young men who carried it out, Pornchai wrote to me:

“I did not care about anyone either; and then someone cared about me. If I did not find God, and you, and acceptance, and Divine Mercy, I might have stayed on a road to destruction. It was all I knew or expected. Hatred left me when something came along to replace it. Do you remember your Elephants post? It makes total sense. The one thing missing from my life and the lives of those two kids [who fired the shots in Uvalde, Texas] was a father. Without one, a decent one, a kid is at the mercy of dark forces and his mind just breaks.”

*The Holy Family with a Little Bird* by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Saint Joseph, Fatherhood Redeemed

I do not think it is mere coincidence that in the midst of this cultural crisis of fatherhood and sacrifice, our Church and faith are experiencing a resurgence in devotion to Saint Joseph, Spouse of Mary and Father of the Redeemer, a title formally bestowed upon him by Saint Pope John Paul II. His Feast Day on March 19th was established, not just by papal edict, but by “sensus fidelium” over a thousand years. He was declared Patron of the Universal Church by Pius IX in 1870. In 1989, he was given a new title, “Guardian of the Redeemer.” This title beckoned fathers everywhere to live their call to sacrifice and love so essential to fatherhood.

I had barely given Saint Joseph a passing thought for all the years of my priesthood, but in more recent years he has surfaced in my psyche and soul repeatedly with great spiritual power.

It is also not lost on me that he shares his name with Joseph Ratzinger, the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who in his final days bestowed upon the Church a summons to Divine Mercy. The winter of Benedict’s own life spent in silent but loving and faithful witness to the Church reflected the life of Saint Joseph in the Infancy Narratives of the Gospel, silent but so very present. I have heard from readers constantly with a growing interest in Saint Joseph.

In a surprising guest post in 2024, our editor Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD described that she discovered this blog through a prior post I wrote about Saint Joseph and Pope Benedict, and then became our editor inspired, not by me, but by them. I am grateful, but not surprised, that Saint Joseph inspired Dilia to reach out to me and this blog. She was just then in the process of retiring from a career as a civilian scientist with the United States Air Force. Taking over the mechanics of Beyond These Stone Walls was a natural fit for Dilia. But of great benefit to me and all of us, she brought with her a deep devotion to Saint Joseph, Father of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed.

Saint Joseph is most present in the Infancy Narrative in the Gospel According to Saint Luke. He is virtually silent in that narrative, but his actions speak volumes to men, to fathers, to the priesthood and to the Church.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: When Saint Pope John Paul II established this Feast of Saint Joseph on March 19, he gave it a new title and insisted that it be a Solemnity, the highest level of liturgical observance in the Church. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD

And by Father Gordon MacRae:

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents

Saint Joseph: Father of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

A Special Announcement

FROM ASHES TO EASTER: We have added a new feature at this blog, a list of the Scriptural accounts of Salvation History, which I hope you will visit and share with others: From Ashes to Easter.
Lastly, this other recent new feature may seem rather strange. Some of my advocates have been having a dialogue about my trial and the nature of the case against me that has kept me wrongly in prison for 30 years and counting. The dialogue has not just been among themselves but also with the advanced Artificial Intelligence platform launched by Elon Musk called xAI Grok. This is an ongoing endeavor that will have several chapters. The site, Les Femmes, The Truth, reviewed its first chapter and called it “absolutely fascinating.” So we are adding “The Grok Chronicle” a new feature at Beyond These Stone Walls. It may be the most unusual Lenten reading you’ve ever encountered.and we invite you to follow along beginning with “Chapter 1: Corruption and the Trial of Father MacRae.” additional chapters will follow over time.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”