“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 9/11/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 9/11/24

September 11, 2001, Freedom, Terrorism and Kamala Harris

The world was a dangerous place on September 11, 2001 and is now even more so. Freedom is shaken by terrorism and terrorism neither fears nor respects complacent joy.

The world was a dangerous place on September 11, 2001 and is now even more so. Freedom is shaken by terrorism and terrorism neither fears nor respects complacent joy.

September 11, 2024 by Fr Gordon J. MacRae

Eleanor Hodgman Porter was born in Littleton, New Hampshire in 1868. She wrote several novels with little notice, but at the start of World War One she wrote a blockbuster, Pollyanna. It became a world-wide bestseller that commonly came to be known as the Glad Book. It sparked a cultural phenomenon. It was about a girl, Pollyanna, whose ebullient personality met every evil and setback with a sense of glee and giddy happiness.

In the dismal years after World War I, “Glad Clubs” were inspired by it to reprogram young people into a perpetually happy state of mind no matter what ill confronted them. By the start of World War II, according to one reviewer, readers tired of Pollyanna’s laughing ‘hysterically,’ breathing ‘rapturously,’ and smiling ‘eagerly’ in the face of grave concern.

I watched much of the recent Democratic National Convention and was intrigued by it. I thought of Pollyanna all the way through it. It struck me as a half-time show in a Super Bowl game which had no connection to the battle at hand except to entertain. A state of perpetual joy cannot possibly reflect the realities of the dangerous world in which we live. Pollyanna and the Glad Book have mercifully vanished from our culture.

At Christmas in 1985, a young parishioner gifted me with a copy of Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October. I was put off by its sheer volume and had no time to read it then. So I stuck it on a shelf in my parish office where it remained for months. Every time I saw the high school kid who gave it to me he asked me if I had read it yet. “You have to,” the young prophet insisted.

Then I read that President Ronald Reagan was reading that same book and described it as “unputdownable.” Many years and thousands of pages of Tom Clancy novels later, I wrote a tribute to the book and its author on the occasion of his untimely death in 2013. It was “Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and the Hunt for Red October.”

Most of my reading is done — even now — at the end of a busy day while lying flat on my back in bed with a book light. At this writing, nearly four decades after that first Clancy novel, I have devoured some 17,000 pages of his techno-thriller in the widely acclaimed “Jack Ryan” series. As time went on they got ever longer and more detailed, but I found each to be fascinating.

Clancy did a lot of research to bring realism to his novels. At times he would introduce a high tech fighter jet, for example, and devote 20 pages analyzing its technology. That drove some readers away, but it was what I loved most about his books. I made the big mistake once of referring to Clancy’s novels as “guy books.” Whoa, did I ever receive a thrashing from his many “non-guy” readers!

In 1994, I devoured 900 pages of Debt of Honor, Clancy’s eighth novel in the series. More than once, the big hardcover nearly broke my nose as I would read in bed until I could stay awake no longer. Then I would drop the book on my face.

By then, Jack Ryan had progressed through a distinguished and exciting career in the Central Intelligence Agency as a brilliant analyst and eventually as National Security Advisor. The riveting Debt of Honor ended with a spellbinding scene in Washington, DC as a Korean Airlines passenger jet was hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists and flown at high speed by suicide bombers into the United States Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress wiping out most of the sitting U.S. government just as a new president was being sworn in.

History Repeats

Seven years later, on September 11, 2001, I relived that same scene with an intense sensation of déjà vu. Right before my eyes on national television, I watched live as the terrorist assault that came to be referred to simply as “9/11” unfolded before a shocked and unprepared free world. My first thought was to wonder whether the Clancy novel might have sparked such a framework of real terror into the minds of al Qaeda, but there was no such connection. I wrote of that day, its aftermath, and its challenges for the free world in “The Despair of Towers Falling, the Courage of Men Rising.”

Twenty-three years have now passed since that day, but everyone who was alive then, and at or near the age of reason, remembers it vividly. It became one of those iconic events of history in which everyone recalls not only the terror, but also a clear snapshot of where we were and what we were doing as that event unfolded. Tom Clancy instilled in me a high regard for history as a lens to the present. I have since digested 23 of Tom Clancy’s novels about foreign policy, its impact on history, or history’s impact on it.

It was a sequel to The Hunt for Red October that first drew me to the necessity of seeing the present with eyes that have gazed upon the past. September 11, 2001 did not happen in a vacuum. Clancy’s sequel, Cardinal of the Kremlin (Putnam, 1988) opened my eyes about Afghanistan. It was set toward the end of the Soviet Union’s decade-long occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and the struggle of the Afghan people to be rid of that occupying force. The Taliban were never mentioned there, nor were al Qaeda, Islamic State, or ISIS-K. None of them existed yet, but the seeds of all of them were firmly planted and flourishing in Afghanistan as a result of that decade and all that followed. It is important to know this.

On Christmas Day, 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. They quickly won control of the capital, Kabul, and other important cities. The Soviets executed the Afghan political leader and installed in his place a puppet government led by a faction more amenable to Soviet control. Wide rejection of that government by the Afghan people led to civil war. A Saudi Arabian multimillionaire named Osama bin Laden established a training camp in the mountains of Afghanistan for rebels fighting the Soviet forces.

The 1980s also saw increased friction between the United States and the Soviet Union resulting from the 1979 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. President Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, greatly increased American military capabilities. The Soviets viewed him as a formidable foe committed to subverting the Soviet system. In his 1985 State of the Union address, President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” and vowed to root out and destroy any political movements that supported it.

In the mid-l980s, resistance to the Communist government and the Soviet invaders grew throughout Afghanistan. Some ninety regions in the country were commanded by guerrilla leaders who called themselves “mujahideen,” meaning “Muslim holy warriors.” The mujahideen resented the Soviet presence and its puppet government. By the mid-1980s the U.S. was spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to aid these Afghan rebels based in Pakistan in a war to expel the Soviet occupation which took the lives of some 1.3 million Afghanis in their struggle.

Then in 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan leaving in their wake a leadership vacuum in a country wracked by civil war. From a distance over the decade to follow, the United States continued to provide funds and weapons to the mujahideen rebels. Afghanistan was now without solidifying leadership, and nature abhors a vacuum.

The Taliban

From the rubble of war, chaos, and a rudderless nation, the Taliban were born. The Taliban movement was created in 1994 in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar by Mohammed Omar, a senior Muslim cleric (called a mullah) . The name, “Taliban” simply means “student.” It refers to the movement’s roots in the fundamentalist Islamic religious schools in Pakistan. For many youth in this war-torn nation, religious indoctrination was the only education they received.

Even that limited education was available only to young men. As the Taliban rose to power in 1994 imposing strict Islamic fundamentalism on the nation, secondary schools for girls were closed and girls were barred from receiving any education beyond a grade school level. Music and dancing were banned outright. Public works of art were destroyed. I once wrote in these pages of an infamous example. In 2001, just as Osama bin Laden was deep into a plot against the United States, the Taliban drew attention away by blowing up a 180 foot stone statue of Buddha that had been carved into an Afghan mountainside 1500 years earlier.

Many of the Taliban laws alarmed human rights groups and provoked worldwide condemnation. The Taliban strictly enforced ancient customs of purdah, the forced separation of men and women in public. Men were required to grow full beards. Those who did not comply, or could not, were subjected to public beatings. Women were required to be covered entirely from head to toe in burkas while in public view. Those who violated this were often beaten or executed on the spot by Taliban religious police. Women were also forbidden from working outside the home. With thousands of men lost to war, many widows and orphans lived in dire poverty.

As the Taliban movement grew in size and strength, it recruited heavily from the mujahideen, the anti-Soviet freedom fighters who were funded and armed in part by the United States. The Taliban gave a new national identity to the thousands of war orphans who were educated in only two fields of study: strict fundamentalist Islamic interpretation of the Quran, and war. The young men of Afghanistan became radicalized.

The Rise of Al Qaeda

Most other countries did not recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government, thus further isolating Afghanistan and its people from oversight and connection in the world community. From their pinnacle of power, the Taliban provided safe harbor to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, formed in 1980s Afghanistan to help repel the Soviet invasion and incite a global holy war called, in Arabic, a jihad. The term, al Qaeda is Arabic for “base camp.” For its founder and adherents, it would become the base from which worldwide Islamic revolution and domination would be launched. We entered Afghanistan after 9/11 for that reason. It had become the host and incubator for terrorist actions against the United States. When we withdrew suddenly in 2021 we left behind that incubator, still festering with hatred from Islamic extremists.

Over the course of the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda trained, equipped, and financed 50,000 mujahideen warriors from 50 countries. Saudi Arabian nationals comprised more than fifty percent of the recruits. Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam motivated many young men to come to the defense of Afghanistan and the Muslim world against Western “infidel” influences.

When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to his original goal for al Qaeda: to overthrow Muslim or Arab regimes that he considered too weak and tolerant of Western influence. Bin Laden envisioned replacing these regimes with a single Muslim empire organized around Islamic “Sharia” law. He targeted the United States and other Western nations because he saw them as obstacles to his cause by becoming political allies with Muslim nations he considered to be corrupt.

From 1991 to 1996, with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, bin Laden quietly built al Qaeda into a formidable international terrorist network with cells and operations in 45 countries. Training camps were established in Sudan, and by 1992 most of al Qaeda’s operations were relocated there. From that base, attacks on U.S. troops and U.S. interests were launched in Yemen and Somalia and at a joint U.S.-Saudi military training base in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was especially angered by the mere existence of that base.

Bowing to pressure from the Saudi and U.S. governments, al Qaeda and bin Laden were expelled from Sudan in 1996 and returned to Afghanistan where they were free to plot. He formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Taliban while plans for a direct assault on the United States took shape. The September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed over 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil, thus came together while the world was not watching.

In response, the United States declared war on terrorism, the first declaration of war against a concept instead of a country. While Taliban leaders rejected U.S. demands to surrender bin Laden, the U.S. began aerial bombings of terrorist training camps and Taliban military positions in October, 2001. Ground troops of the Northern Rebel Alliance in Afghanistan rebelled and maintained a front-line offensive against Taliban forces with help in the form of funds and weapons from the United States.

Al Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon began on September 11, but it was not September 11, 2001. This is where failures of national intelligence and readiness are crucial factors. The September 11 date for terrorist assaults on the United States was not random. For extremists in the Muslim world, the next day, September 12, was a day of infamy, a day of reckoning for a 17th Century Islamic assault on Europe.

The Muslim command captured and slaughtered 30,000 hostages. This caused Polish King Jan Sobieski to meet the assault with the largest volunteer infantry army ever assembled. The Muslim push for control of Eastern Europe was stopped in its tracks on September 12, 1683. What we call 9/11 was the result of an Islamic grudge held for over 300 years.

Jesus said (Luke 10:3) “Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” Lambs in the midst of wolves are ever vigilant, and they count on a shepherd who will not lead them into slaughter. The last four years have seen a disastrous policy that left the U.S. southern border open with little oversight. I would want my country to welcome refugees and care for them. That is clearly called for in the Gospel. But among the nearly 11 million who have crossed that border undetected are al Qaeda and ISIS-K operatives lying in wait to unleash their terror upon the United States. In a world at the cusp of war, the threats have never been more dire.

As much as we might like Pollyanna, and revel in her smile, are we really prepared to make her Commander in Chief of U.S. Armed Forces?

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Note from Fr Gordon Mac Rae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and the Hunt for Red October

The Despair of Towers Falling, the Courage of Men Rising

No Child Left Behind — Except in Afghanistan

Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

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

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

Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD 9/4/24 Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD 9/4/24

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor

Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.

Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.

September 4, 2024 by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD, Editor

Prelude from the Student:

“Truth in its simplicity, revealed by suffering, carries a quality in writing. I believe this is what has drawn me to Beyond These Stone Walls and retained my readership over the years when there is not a single other blog or newspaper that I read consistently. I believe it is also a mercy of God that I have been able to read authentic Catholic voices here regarding the tumultuous current events in our world because it has helped keep my Faith alive despite much darkness. I chose this topic because I love God and wish to glorify him.”

— an Arizona State University student

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How did you discover Beyond These Stone Walls, and how did you become the Editor?

I had never heard of Father Gordon MacRae or this blog. On the Feast of Saint Joseph in 2019, I searched “Pope Benedict XVI on St. Joseph,” and the fourth or fifth result was one of Father MacRae’s articles. I read several others, and I read his story at the About Page. Deeply saddened, I wanted to help with my prayers and in any other way I could. On the Feast of the Annunciation, I sent him a letter introducing myself and offering to be a Simon of Cyrene to him.

A priest friend of Father MacRae in North Carolina had been volunteering as acting editor for the previous few years while also having been given additional parish assignments. I was close to the end of my career as a civilian scientist for the United States Air Force. I had been pondering retirement for some time and this volunteer work for Beyond These Stone Walls seemed a perfect fit for me as I now manage all the nuts and bolts of a widely-read popular Catholic blog written under the most unusual conditions.

What is the process for you to receive posts from Father MacRae, post them, and then send the comments to him?

From inside a small prison cell, Father MacRae types each post on his old typewriter and mails it to me. I scan it using optical character recognition software. With the typewritten post he includes a description of the suggested images he would like to include above each section of the post, as well as at the top. Beyond These Stone Walls was built using Squarespace, which also hosts it. Using its services I compose text, images and links to create the post on the blog. We publish every Wednesday morning, and send out an email alert to our 2,000 or so direct subscribers. But the readership of this blog is much larger. Many people go directly to the posts without subscribing. We also publish the posts on some social media such as Gloria.TV where Father MacRae has been given a page. His Christmas post about shepherds had about 50 thousand readers, many in some of the poorest parts of the world such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Father Gordon has never actually seen his published posts. As a prisoner he has no access to the online world and has never seen any social media where his posts are published.

Prisoners cannot receive calls. So when Father Gordon calls me I read him the comments that have been posted on BTSW and some of the ones that have been posted on social media.

Do you believe your Faith life has changed since taking on this position? Why or Why not?

Beyond These Stone Walls shines a light on how Father Gordon MacRae is sharing in the Cross of Jesus. It nourishes me with his example and meditations. It reports on what is happening in society and in the Church, which corporate media and many Catholic media do not. Without Beyond These Stone Walls and the witness of Father MacRae I would miss much of what is going on in the world and in the Church, in which Jesus wants me to be His instrument. I pray that I may hear His voice and do whatever He tells me.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” In my youth I had an agnostic period in which I agonized in search of Truth. Jesus, Truth, attracted me to Him. Father Gordon MacRae has most beautifully and faithfully answered Jesus’ ardent prayer to the Father, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) When the corrupt and perverse “justice” system wanted him to lie about having committed crimes that never happened, he did not lie. As punishment Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced him to life in prison. Almost everyone abandoned him. But he clung to Truth, to Jesus. He is a model and a challenge to me and many, a light in the darkness.

This is a time in which astoundingly many are “those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). I ask myself what does Jesus want me to do. He says, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10: 16)

In the midst of so much evil in our time, the Catholic sexual abuse scandal is most significant. Many outside and within the Church seek to confuse what is evil and what is good concerning this scandal. There are two wrongs: the abuse of young people by priests, and the false accusations of abuse of young people by priests. The latter wrong remains hidden from most, deceptively presented as the first wrong by an industry of lawyers, “victims’ advocates,” attorneys general, and anti-Catholic bigots; and very sadly and scandalously, by a bishops’ policy that encourages and promotes this evil industry. Father MacRae wrote of how this has evolved in his own diocese in To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.”

Had I not crossed paths with Beyond These Stone Walls and Father Gordon MacRae, I would not know about the false-accusation industry. I have come to believe that as ugly and depraved as the secular world has become, and as the Church is beset by multiple problems, it is the explosion of false accusations of priests that is the worst ever attack on the Church, the most diabolical attack on the Body of Christ, and therefore the world.

The immediate victims are the falsely accused priests. Their reputations are destroyed. The search for the truth of the accusation is nonexistent. The reputation of all priests is tarnished. The laity are also victims of this attack on the Church. Billions of dollars have been handed out to those who claimed to have been abused. No billionaire donated these funds. Dioceses have been bankrupted. Parish life has been affected.

And incredibly the worst members of this false-accusation industry are (most of) the bishops. In 2002, the Dallas Charter was adopted over the objections of Cardinal Avery Dulles, Father Richard John Neuhaus and a few others. The bishops adopted the “credible” standard, a fig-leaf term to convey a sense that accusations are investigated. They are not. I remember a couple of readers commenting that in their dioceses their bishops investigated the accusations, proved they were false, and the false accusations ceased.

Knowing that it is Jesus Who calls a man to be a priest, it is unimaginable that a bishop would discard a priest without a most thorough investigation. But it is a policy that has been enforced for over two decades. It masquerades as compassionate. It is an evil being called a good. The cruelty and the attack on priesthood it represents is astounding.

Shamelessly, quite a few years after the Dallas Charter was adopted, when there was talk of extending the “credible” standard to accusations against bishops, the USCCB got lawyers to begin defining the term [The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests]. This year the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire dropped altogether the fig-leaf term. Any priest accused of sexual abuse of a young person will be added to the list that publicly shames, and discards priests. The “credible” standard, as weak as it is, has been discarded. The accuser will be monetarily rewarded. Apparently, it should cross no one’s mind that handing out large sums of money would ever entice false accusations. Again, evil gets presented as good. Twenty-two years after the Dallas Charter was adopted a new generation of bishops upholds it.

How can this be anything but a diabolical, concerted effort to destroy priesthood, to destroy the Church?

How does this affect my Faith? This is not a superficial, little problem that for the most part I can forget while I go on with my life. With “fear and trembling” I ask, “What do You want me to do? Open my ears that I may hear. Without You I can do nothing,”

Certainly, it is a privilege for me to use my time and talent to help project the voice of Father Gordon MacRae outside that prison in New Hampshire as he tries to open minds and hearts to the truth of what is happening in the world and in the Church, to Truth Himself.

As to my treasure, I micromanage my donations. I have stopped donating to the lukewarm and to those who wittingly or unwittingly collaborate with the Father of Lies in trying to destroy priesthood, and I support some of the courageous people and entities that unceasingly defend and proclaim truth.

I pray that my righteousness may surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. I am sickened when I hear priests, bishops or the Pope consider every accusation of a priest to be true, as well as the media and lay people. May Jesus teach me to love them as He loves them.

What are your favorite things about editing BTSW? What are your least favorite?

It is a privilege and a joy to work with Father Gordon and watch his creativity as he directs me to edit an article on the fly. I want what we post to be beautiful and enjoy creating images to make it so. I want as beautiful images as I can get, and that usually takes me quite a bit of time. What I like least is not finding good images, or finding them but not being able to use them because they are copyrighted.

One of my other least favorite things, though it has come to some good, is the ocassional post that gets lost or delayed in the U.S. mail. Our choices in those weeks are to either skip a post entirely or for Father MacRae to slowly dictate a 2,000-word article to me by telephone.

What articles do you remember most? Why?

It is amazing the breadth of topics that Father MacRae tackles, from Scripture to history, to science, to current events. And he writes about his life. Pure evil placed him where he is, and he is sharing in the Cross of Jesus, but he shows how in magnificent ways God is ever present to him.

His Scripture articles are full of facts and striking insights. The collection of Holy Week posts is a gift. Another example is, “Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?” Father MacRae brings out in fascinating detail the interplay between the law of Moses and the Roman law, and how Jesus’ response is a trap of the Pharisees. It seems to me that this and other Scripture articles need a second or third reading to fully grasp and appreciate the depth of what he is presenting.

Father Gordon loves science, especially cosmology. Many think or accuse the Church of being anti-science, but that has never been true. Not only have there been scientists in the Church, but some of the most significant advances in science were introduced by priests. For example, the father of modern genetics was a monk, Gregor Mendel. And a hero of Father Gordon discovered the Big Bang, Father Georges Lemaitre. He had known about Lemaitre for years, and was most flattered when in response to a letter he sent to Carl Sagan about his novel Contact, Sagan replied to Father MacRae, “You write in the spirit of Georges Lemaitre!” But God was not pleased to leave it just at that, He decided to make the most extraordinary connections between Father MacRae and Father Lemaitre.

Though Father Gordon has written several times about Father Lemaitre, maybe the most significant post on this subject is “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.” It is an article about the great scientist Father Georges Lemaitre, co-written with noted physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, a research scientist at the University of Oxford. The article had two postscripts by Father Gordon MacRae. In the article Father Pinsent writes, “Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae through his widely-read blog has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaître.” For his part, Father Gordon recounts that after reading one of his posts on Belgian priest-scientist Lemaitre, Belgian BTSW reader Pierre Matthews, who is Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, wrote to tell him that Fr. Lemaitre was his Godfather.

What makes the breadth of articles so surprising is that in prison, Father MacRae has no online access at all and no resources for research.

Initially, I was struck by how many posts are about or mention Pornchai Moontri. After a while I came to think that their profound bond was like that of friends who endure the horrors of war together and survive. Now I think that it is much more profound than that.

God has inspired many truth seekers to investigate the case of Father MacRae: Dorothy Rabinowitz, Harvey A. Silverglate, Ryan A. MacDonald, Dr. William Donohue, David F. Pierre, Jr., Father James Valladares, former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, and investigative reporter Claire Best. Any fair-minded person who studies their work is convinced that a corrupt system put him in prison and Father Gordon MacRae is innocent.

But God wanted to reveal this with more than facts. He would reveal it with the powerful transformation of lives and souls. Pornchai had been viciously sexually and physically abused for years by a man who trafficked him from Thailand at the age of 11 and murdered his mother. Pornchai escaped and lived on the streets for all of his teen years. Then at age 18 he killed a man who tackled him and pinned him to the ground. After years of enduring violent sexual abuse this sent Pornchai into a rage. He spent the next 13 years in solitary confinement. He was then sent to the prison that houses Father Gordon. Having learned that he had been convicted of sexual abuse, Pornchai should have wanted to stay as far away as possible from Father Gordon. Yet, they became friends and then Pornchai asked Father Gordon if he could be his cellmate.

On the other hand, the corrupt and evil people who railroaded Father Gordon derailed his priesthood, took his freedom and viciously defamed him. It should be noted here that to their great credit, Vatican officials have not dismissed Father MacRae from the clerical state.

Most in the Church who should have stood by him instead abandoned him, or even worse denounced him. If this is how people in the Church treated Father Gordon, how much more understandable it would have been had Pornchai looked at him with suspicion and distrust. Yet, Pornchai has said that Father Gordon is the person in the whole world whom he most trusts. That must be a precious balm that heals Father Gordon’s heart. Many posts describe this most extraordinary friendship. Most important among them is Pornchai’s own words in, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Though the suffering of Father Gordon MacRae’s cross has not abated in 30 years, God has not abandoned him. He has sent Father Gordon two special friends who let him know that he is not alone: the prisoner-priest Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and the stigmatist and mystic, who was accused of sexual abuse and attacked from within the Church, Saint (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina. Two of my favorite posts describing their presence in Father Gordon’s life are “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror,” his first encounter with Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial,” a very interesting post, which among other things describes a most special blessing that connected Father Gordon, Pornchai Moontri and Saint Padre Pio through time and space.

Have any comments left an impression on you? Why?

One of the early comments on BTSW was that of Deacon David Jones:

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

I think Father Gordon deserves such a testimonial.

In 2010 Father MacRae’s blog was selected by readers of Our Sunday Visitor as The Best of the Catholic Web in the area of Catholic spirituality. About.com selected it as the second-place finalist for the Best Catholic Blog Award. Readers at the Fishers Net Award selected it as The Best Catholic Social Justice Site.

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Beyond These Stone Walls is a prison journal. Evil people did much to destroy the lives of Father Gordon J. MacRae and Pornchai Maximilian Moontri. But as this blog documents, their story is one of priesthood, sacrifice and conversion writ large. They met in the New Hampshire Prison for Men in Concord, New Hampshire, but as we have seen in some posts God had much earlier connected their lives in some intriguing ways. Into these lives weighed by deep suffering Divine Mercy entered at first in hidden ways, and then it overwhelmed them.

Shortly before the nightmare of arrest, trial and wrongful imprisonment, Father MacRae was invited to write an intention to be placed on the altar for the Mass of Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. He wrote:

“I ask Blessed Faustina’s intercession that I may have the strength and courage to be the priest God wants me to be.”

His strength and courage would be sorely tested. After six long years in prison he celebrated his first Mass on April 30, 2000, which unbeknownst to him was the day Pope John Paul II canonized Saint Faustina and the first official Divine Mercy Sunday.

Six years later at a most dark period in Father MacRae’s life and priesthood, Franciscan Father James McCurry, who had been a vice-postulator for the cause of sainthood of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, visited him and asked him, “What do you know about Saint Maximilian Kolbe?” Thereupon began a most special friendship between these prisoner-priests.

At just this time Pornchai Moontri was transferred from solitary confinement in Maine to the New Hampshire prison. When he first entered Father MacRae’s cell and saw Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s image on a card, half in the garb of a prisoner and half in the garb of a priest, he asked, “Is this you?” Father MacRae writes, “From that moment on, we were caught up in the light of Divine Mercy.” Pornchai’s conversion was set in motion by Father Gordon’s example and writings. Pornchai Maximilian Moontri was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010.

When they both learned that at the end of Pornchai’s prison term he would be deported to Thailand, the prospect seemed dismal. He had been taken from there decades earlier, he did not speak the language, and no one would be waiting for him. But Father Gordon said, “We will just have to build a bridge to Thailand.” And so it happened. Today Pornchai Maximilian Moontri lives in Pak Chong, Thailand and continues to be active in this blog.

Pornchai has recently been selected to represent Father Gordon MacRae and the group, Divine Mercy Thailand, at the Fifth Asian Conference on Divine Mercy in the Philippines this year. For Father Gordon, this is the best evidence that Mary is still at work here.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We are simultaneously publishing the article by the Arizona State University student at the Voices from Beyond page:

A Voice for the Voiceless: Beyond These Stone Walls

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 8/31/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 8/31/24

The First and Last Labor Day Pandemic Games

Long holiday weekends have always been a scourge behind prison walls, but a Covid shutdown over Labor Day 2020 spawned the Corn Hole Pandemic Games. Guess who won …

Long holiday weekends have always been a scourge behind prison walls, but a Covid shutdown over Labor Day 2020 spawned the Corn Hole Pandemic Games. Guess who won …

August 31, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

In the image above, Max Moontri and friends tackle the construction of Corn Hole stations for the Labor Day Pandemic Games in September 2020.

Note: Over fifteen years in the life of this blog, a post before the long Labor Day weekend has always been a challenge to write — not least because few people really want to read it. Any post on Labor Day competes with the end of summer, a last day at the beach, or the annual back-to-school frenzy. The Labor Day weekend of 2020 was a special challenge for your friends behind these walls, so I decided to revisit a post first published back then. Though only four years ago, it was the week a global pandemic descended on us all to change the world, and this prison world especially.

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The origin of Labor Day is attributed to Peter J. McGuire, a New York carpenter and union leader who lobbied for a holiday to honor workers in 1882. He chose the first Monday in September to give workers a holiday between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. The first Labor Day observance was held with a parade in New York City on September 5, 1882. Thousands of workers marched from City Hall to Union Square, and then gathered in Central Park for speeches and family picnics.

In 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed into law a bill to make Labor Day a federal holiday. That same year, railway workers in Pullman, Illinois went on strike to protest wage cuts. President Cleveland sent federal troops to end it. Some strikers were killed and their leaders jailed. So Congress and the President hoped a new holiday might pacify the union rank and file. A holiday contrived to calm the masses, however, has little such effect in prison.

In 2020, at the outset of the Covid pandemic, social distancing and other precautions was a real challenge in an overcrowded prison. Life here was already in a state of perpetual pandemic anxiety and lockdown with some prisoners living eight to a cell or in overcrowded dormitory settings. So a holiday weekend here is quite different from what you may experience. Once it became clear that all activities here would cease operation during the pandemic — including all visits, programs, religious services, all but essential employment, library and recreational access, and access to all but essential work sites — some ingenuity was required to keep an already agitated population from descending into Covid-induced chaos.

So in stepped the current prison warden with a dubious plan. She asked my friend, Pornchai “Max” Moontri and a few other woodcraft workers to design and build six “Corn Hole” stations for each of the three medium security prison units here. Each station consists of a pair of wooden platforms, each about 48 by 24 inches, with retractable legs on one end to elevate the platform 30 degrees off the ground. A 6 inch-hole was cut into the middle of the higher end of each platform. In the scene above, Max Moontri and a few of our woodworking friends were hard at work on the project.

Corn Hole? … Really?

Max showed me the design his crew came up with. Each Corn Hole unit would be placed 25-feet away from its mate. Contestants would then toss one-pound sewn cloth sacks of dry corn the 25-foot distance with a goal of getting them through the hole. I scoffed at this plan: “Give me a break!” I said. “No one will want to play this!”

Most prisoners here are under age 30 and grew up staring at video games. I dismissed Corn Hole as a monumental bust, but I went along and helped out anyway. Three sets of two Corn Hole units each were set up in the asphalt-covered prison yard in each of the three housing units here. In the one we lived in, most of the nearly 300 prisoners had already been subjected to weeks locked into the unit with no access to activities beyond its menacing high walls.

Younger prisoners approached the Corn Hole stations cautiously at first, many smirking just as I had predicted. Some wondered what their friends might think of them if they were seen actually trying it. A few did, and discovered that landing the one-pound sack in a 6-inch hole 25 feet away was a lot harder than it looked. Then, as though right on cue, local news carried a segment about the Boston Red Sox having to postpone playoff games due to Covid. One of the Red Sox pitchers had set up in his yard something identical to Pornchai’s Corn Hole units and was videoed trying to land his fast ball through the hole from 25 feet away. That was all it took. Competition for the Pandemic World Series of Corn Hole was on!

This went on for an entire week leading up to Labor Day, with teams taking turns practicing all day long. Max patiently explained the game to me. Each player was given four one-pound red or black cloth-covered sacks. The woodworking crew careful measured out the dried corn for each then meticulously weighed and sewed the sacks.

A player would get one point for landing the sack on the platform 25 feet away. However, an opposing player could steal the point by knocking the other players’ sacks off the platform with some of his own. Getting the sacks through the hole was much more difficult, and worth three points each. On the Sunday afternoon before Labor Day, Max dragged me out there for some practice. Having shown me all the intricate maneuvers for landing a sack near or in the hole, my first throw caught the corner of my shirt and went straight up. It smacked Max on the head on its way back down. He just rolled his eyes and patiently told me that we are supposed to throw the sacks at the platform and not at each other.

By then, news that I had condescended to play Corn Hole spread throughout the entire building. Picture the South Unit as a giant motel with four floors, each with a long railed concrete walkway. Along the levels of walkways are doors to individual pods each housing 24 men in small 60-square-foot rooms around its interior perimeter. From our vantage point from the courtyard down below, men were pouring out those doors like the mobs at Nero’s Circus Maximus in ancient Rome to watch me and Pornchai introduce the fine art of Corn Hole to gladiator school. To raucous cheers from the abhorring crowd, I actually managed to score a point with my very first throw. My second throw landed nicely on a platform near the hole, but it was the platform for the game underway next to us. I was mortified!

On Labor Day, a Corn Hole Tournament was underway with players vying for wins in 2-out-3 game sessions. One by one over the day players were eliminated only to become critical spectators. By late in the afternoon on Labor Day, only two finalists were left: Max Moontri and one of our friends, Jeff. I was selected by wide acclaim to be scorekeeper because no one trusted anyone else to do it. The competition rose to a frenzy. Dozens of raucous spectators lined the court while a hundred other watched, with cheers and catcalls, from the walkways above.

Since I was the scorekeeper, and the roommate of one of the contestants, I had a box seat just feet away from the action. The tension was brutal. Max lost the first game. Then he won the second. The third game ended in a tie (no pun intended). So now we were in Corn Hole Overtime Play and I was at the edge of my seat in the heat of nerve-wracking competition. The finalists were both very good and almost evenly matched. Every throw was met with a chorus of cheers or groans from the multitude.

The game was for 21 points. In the final playoff game, Max was losing 20 to 16. Jeff was one point away from the Grand Championship when Max, with a single masterful throw eliminated every sack Jeff had positioned around the hole on the platform. The crowd became silent as Max tossed his final sack high in the air. It went through the hole 25 feet away without even touching the wood for a decisive and spectacular win.

Before a cheering and adoring crowd, Max Moontri became the first (and last) Prison Corn Hole Pandemic Games Champion. I was beaming with pride!

But then, as the crowd calmed down, I advised Max against adding “Corn Hole Pandemic Games Champion” to his resume. Some things are just better left unsaid.

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Epilogue

The above story took place on Labor Day, September 7, 2020. On the next day, September 8, after 30 years in prison since age 18 and fifteen years as my roommate, Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed up to take Max away for forced deportation to his native Thailand which he had not seen since he was taken from there at age 11. The rest is not a feel-good Labor Day story, but it does have a somewhat hopeful and happy ending. You can read both the story and its continuation in the following posts (If you don’t have time to read all three, we especially urge you to read number 3.):

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

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 8/28/24 Fr. Gordon J. MacRae 8/28/24

Kamala Harris, Knights of Columbus and Anti-Catholicism

Absent probing and honest media interviews, no one knows whether Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris still stands by her anti-Catholic rhetoric of 2020.

Absent probing and honest media interviews, no one knows whether Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris still stands by her anti-Catholic rhetoric of 2020.

August 28, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

When I was 18 years old and a newly returned Catholic in 1971, I was invited by my friend, Father Anthony Nuccio, to membership in the Knights of Columbus where Father Tony served as chaplain. Along with the Civil Rights movement, the Knights were largely responsible for fostering in me a sense of Catholic community, service, and a vocation to priesthood. I was, and remain, a member of Valladolid Council #70 on the North Shore of Massachussetts. At the time I entered religious life and seminary in 1974, the Knights of Columbus bestowed on me an honorary lifetime membership. Time and distance diminished my active presence somewhat, but today I consider the Knights of Columbus to be a powerful influence on my life and vocation.

For those unfamiliar, the Knights of Columbus is an international fraternal organization of more than 2 million Roman Catholic laymen. The organization was founded in 1882 by Father Michael J. McGivney to promote ideals of charity, community, fraternity, and patriotism among first and second generation Catholic immigrants. Father McGivney’s cause for canonization was opened in 1997. Pope Benedict XVI declared him Venerable in 2008 and Pope Francis beatified him on May 31, 2020.

More than 10,000 local councils of the Knights of Columbus are presently active throughout the United States, Canada, the Philippines and the Caribbean where the Knights conduct and sponsor volunteer programs for Roman Catholics in service to the communities in which they live. The organization also conducts extensive Catholic education and scholarship programs, promotes Catholic identity, and assists in the support of seminarians and Catholic schools. Our friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri cites Knights of Columbus-sponsored free correspondence courses in Catholic and Biblical Studies as pivotal factors in his 2010 Divine Mercy Catholic conversion.

So, as you can imagine, Pornchai and I both reacted with umbrage to the misinformed and slanderous remarks of Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians while interviewing a judicial nominee in 2020 who happened to be a faithful Catholic and a member of the Knights of Columbus. There are over 73 million Catholics in the United States. That is 73 million potential votes that Ms. Harris does not deserve unless she recants or explains her views on Catholicism and those who practice it.

For the first time in my adult life, I am afraid for America. And not only for America. I fear for all of Western Culture as well. I feel little beyond dismal foreboding for the slide toward democratic socialism into which our democracy is in rapid descent. We cannot escape the truth of it. What was, in 2020, considered the “radical Left” in politics is now merely the Left. There is no irony or subtlety at all in what I am about to write. Our only hope is to halt this course and reclaim it.

This may seem a peculiar point of view from someone for whom democracy and its assurance of justice remains a dismal failure. The imprisoned place from where I write enjoys no distractions of the world in which you read these pages. I cannot escape into Netflix or some local bar to medicate my anxiety. I cannot escape at all. Just using that word in a sentence is risky.

My view of the outside world is limited to raw and sometimes hopeless coverage presented in the 24-hour news cycles. There is no place else to go. You may have heard similar words back in 2020 from Maximo Alvarez, a Cuban-American who fled to the United States forty-four years ago. He fled socialist Cuba for America because his father convinced him that there was no place else to go.

I may be the only person I know who sat through news coverage of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this year. I did so for the same reason that Maximo Alvarez articulated with such courage and clarity at the RNC in 2020 — because we are both afraid for America. We both know that there is no place else to go. I have not been so afraid for my country and culture since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when I was nine years old at the brink of nuclear war. Those of a certain age may remember the drills as grade school children across America were told to hide under their classroom desks with all the shades drawn. The anxiety and fear of a possible nuclear attack from the Cuban Missile Crisis left an impact on the psyche of every child.

When Russia embraced socialism following a cultural revolution, it became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It malignantly spread its tentacles in a quest for global dominance. That included the establishment of a socialist state in Cuba followed in 1962 by the construction of a battery of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. For anyone who listened to Maximo Alvarez at the RNC in 2020, his revulsion and fear of the growing socialism in America was gripping.

Imagine how he felt when Senator Bernie Sanders referred to Fidel Castro as a humanitarian. Imagine the chill in his spine when Senator Tim Scott warned of the forces in America seeking an American cultural revolution and the establishment of the United Socialist States of America. Senator Scott was not referring to anarchists on the margins of American culture. He was referring to the presidential and vice presidential nominees on the Democratic ballot at that time. Now, history repeats.

Are Faithful Catholics a Threat to Democracy?

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights heads this nation’s largest advocacy group in defense of Religious Liberty. His work was the subject of our post, “Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age.” Most recently, Dr. Donohue and the Catholic League have demanded from the U.S. Department of Justice an investigation and explanation for recent documents launched by the FBI to investigate Traditioned-minded Catholics who are merely attempting to exercise their Faith.

Believe it or not, I am not writing a political post. As a lifelong Democrat, now an Independent, I do not oppose any political party. But my conscience requires me to oppose an ideology that is not only a threat to democracy, but a threat to Religious Freedom and my fundamental right to practice and adhere to my Faith.

In late 2018, as then-Senator Kamala Harris was preparing a presidential run, she sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee where she screened federal judicial nominees put forward by then-President Donald Trump. Senator Harris asked a nominee about his Catholic faith, noting that he had been a member of the Knights of Columbus for over two decades. Her questions alluded to the K of C being some sort of politically suspect group. She demanded to know if his membership in such an “all male anti-choice organization” would cloud his judicial decisions. She referred to the Knights as an “extremist” group.

“Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?,” Senator Harris asked. The judicial nominee, Brian Buescher, was blindsided. It only got worse. Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii picked up on the line of questioning. “Do you intend to end your membership in this organization to avoid any appearance of bias?” The appearance of bias was already front and center, but it wasn’t on the part of the judicial nominee who was eventually confirmed. On January 5, 2019, I wrote this response to the story posted at The Wall Street Journal:

“The big question here is not what judicial nominee Brian Buescher believes, but whether Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono believe in anything at all that is worthy of belief. And the bigger question is whether such overt anti-Catholic suspicions render them unfit for public office. At best, they both need a refresher course in remedial Constitutional law. Their disregard for the Constitutional provision against any religious test for judicial confirmation is a serious flaw in their readiness to represent their constituents…”

What made this biased grilling of a Catholic nominee by Kamala Harris far more reprehensible was its déjà vu factor. Just six months earlier, the Judiciary Chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein, became the subject of public ridicule for openly applying the same unconstitutional religious test to President Trump’s nominee, Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett. Looking over her work as a law professor at a Catholic university, Senator Feinstein referred to her faith as a “cult” and said, “the dogma speaks loudly in you.” There was hell to pay.

But not so when Senators Harris and Hirona repeated the tactic just six months later. With the exception of Bill Donohue’s vigilant voice at the Catholic League, little was said to call attention to the newest anti-Catholic bias of Kamala Harris. When this bias was unmasked, Kamala Harris had defenders who argued that she could not be anti-Catholic because she was teamed up with Joe Biden “who carries a rosary everyplace he goes.” True. He carried it while promoting abortion without restrictions at every stage of development. He carried it while withdrawing his forty years of support for the Hyde Amendment that restricted taxpayer funds for the coverage of abortions.

He carried it when he vowed from his campaign headquarters to roll back religious exemptions in contraception coverage extended by the Supreme Court to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Mr. Biden responded to the Supreme Court decisions in favor of protecting Religious Liberty for the nuns and other conscientious objectors by restoring the mandate that both the nuns and the Supreme Court objected to. This would hit the Sisters with ruinous fines and a deeply felt conflict of conscience. The rosary in his pocket notwithstanding, Joe Biden’s threats to Religious Liberty were evidence of how much he was led and misled by the Left wing of his party, a position for which Kamala Harris has taken the reins and has now made it the mainstream of that party.

In just the six months between the anti-Catholic questioning of Notre Dame’s Amy Coney Barrett and that of judicial nominee Brian Buescher, a lot had changed. One distinctive change was the Senate Democrats’ assault on the character of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a devout Catholic.

Senator Kamala Harris reprised her role as a career prosecutor by grilling Brett Kavanaugh mercilessly on entirely uncorroborated rumors of drunkenness and sexual escapades in his high school years — rumors that not a single person could confirm.

It has also been lost in most of the news media coverage that before becoming the nominee for vice president on the Democratic ticket, Kamala Harris went on record to state that she also believes the sexual allegations against Joe Biden brought forward by Tara Reade in 2020. This is among the tough questions that most in our now-partisan news media will not ask.

Credits: Left, Addie Mena/Catholic News Agency; Right, Associated Press

Anesthesia for the Catholic Conscience

After publication of a controversial post, “Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life,” a priest whom I have known for some years “unsubscribed” from this blog in 2020. His reasoning was that any criticism of Joe Biden on moral grounds amounted to a tacit endorsement of President Trump. I do not endorse President Trump. What I endorse — and so should we all — is the lawful election that put him in office in 2016. I am among the many Americans who resent the notion that this “Basket of Deplorables” who cast their votes were too ignorant to be entrusted with the finer points of democracy.

From the moment the election results were announced in November, 2016, a relentless campaign was launched to nullify this lawful election by discrediting the elected President through any means possible. Most shameful of all for democracy, much of the news media abandoned its mission to report honestly on that partisan cause. One result of that betrayal was evident at The New York Times when young, progressive reporters in the news room revolted and brought about the resignation of a respected editor because he allowed “the opposition” to write an op-ed. “The opposition” in that case was the highly regarded Republican Senator Josh Hawley.

When New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan praised President Trump’s emphasis on Religious Liberty in a FOX News interview, two liberal groups of Catholic nuns sent letters of protest to the Cardinal asking him to retract his remarks. They cited Mr. Trump’s positions on climate change and capital punishment as evidence that he cannot be considered “pro-life.” The National Catholic Reporter published an editorial using the same reasoning.

In the Catholic conscience, some real moral gymnastics are required to measure a candidate’s concept of the value of life solely by a position on the death penalty. It entirely overlooks the moral apocalypse that resulted in the execution of 73 million human lives terminated in the womb at every level of development right up to birth. The awakening of the Catholic conscience to this is evident in my post, “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life”

I am in sympathy with “Black Lives Matter” but there is much hypocrisy. African Americans constitute 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, but 30 percent of U.S. abortions. That is by design and not merely a quirk of sociology. Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger for the purpose of controlling the growth of the African American population. That fact is finally exposed in the public square. As monuments to historical figures are toppled across the land, no one has yet suggested that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi surrender their Margaret Sanger awards for their support of “reproductive rights.”

Whatever Kamala Harris believes about the morality of unlimited abortion on demand, she is falling lockstep in line with the platform of her party. In 2020, Kristin Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, reported that a third of Democrats considered themselves to be pro-life, but “top Democrats have gone out of their way to make it clear that we are no longer welcome in the party.” The DNC ignored the group’s request to testify before its platform committee. A major percentage of these pro-life Democrats are people of faith, Ms Day said, “but the much-hyped group, ‘Believers for Biden’ is a flop. It had only 26 followers on Facebook a week after being created” in 2020. One year later, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the platform stating, “The Declaration of Independence guarantees to every American the right to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” By single-handedly eliminating the most basic of all human rights, the right to life, Kamala Harris set the Democrat Party on a road to hedonism.

As Joe Biden vowed to bankrupt the Little Sisters of the Poor with never-ending legislation and litigation, Kamala Harris did the same during her tenure as California Attorney General. In 2014, the Catholic Daughters of Charity Health System had six hospitals that were operating at an annual loss that could not be sustained. Prime Healthcare made a bid to assume their $300 million liability for worker pensions, but the United Healthcare Workers’ union opposed the deal.

Kamala Harris attached dozens of previously unheard of conditions to the deal such as requiring the Catholic hospitals to provide 24-hour nursing, surgery, anesthesia, radiology and pharmaceutical services for five years. This crippled the deal.

Prime Health sued Kamala Harris for violating its due process rights. The Catholic Daughters executives said that Ms. Harris blocked the deal at the behest of the union with “financially crippling conditions.” The lawsuit alleged that in return the union pledged $25 million in political financial support for Ms. Harris. The lawsuit ended in 2017 when a federal judge ruled that as Attorney General, Ms. Harris had “qualified immunity” from lawsuits. It is ironic that in 2020, Kamala Harris introduced a resolution in the Senate to abolish qualified immunity for police officers while retaining it for herself.

What are American Catholics left with? Back before the election of 2020, vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris was more likely than any nominee in history to assume the Office of President of the United States at some future point due to the age of Joe Biden at that time. And yet she dropped out of the Democratic process with only a pitiful percentage of votes in the primaries. She has declared the 2 million members of the Knights of Columbus to be a subversive organization and has joined the new Democrat Party in its march toward socialism and its inevitable suppression of religious liberty.

But another voice, that of Representative Tulsi Gabbard, caught onto all this duplicity early on during the presidential debates of 2020. Before ending her own bid for the White House, Ms. Gabbard courageously unloaded her views on the suitability of Kamala Harris for the highest public office in the land. Kamala Harris dropped out of the primaries after receiving only two percent of the Democrats’ votes in Iowa in 2020. I’m giving the last word to Tulsi Gabbard:

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Editor’s note: Please share this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

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.”

Bill Donohue 8/21/24 Bill Donohue 8/21/24

Cultural Meltdown: Prophetic Wisdom for a Troubled Age

Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis by Bill Donohue is a tour de force about our culture in decline and what we need to stem the encroaching tide.

Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis by Bill Donohue is a tour de force about our culture in decline and what we need to stem the encroaching tide.

August 21, 2024 by Bill Donohue, Catholic League President

Introduction by Fr Gordon MacRae:

Speaking at the “Essence Festival of Culture” in 2023, Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris described what culture means to her:

“Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know … it comes in the morning. We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too.”

That quote from the current Vice President at a symposium on culture, was followed by her signature outburst of raucous laughter. I found it cited (without the laughter) in the June, 2024 edition of Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, in “Kamala Wins Race to the Bottom.”

Fortunately for America, Catholic League President Bill Donohue has a more nuanced view of culture, what it means for a society to survive, and the price we pay if it fades away. I believe the United States would face even greater cultural decline if not for the brakes applied by honest and vocal prophetic witnesses like Bill Donohue. Among the many accolades of his newest book, Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis (Sophia Institute Press, 2024) Catholic Encyclopedia editor Russell Shaw wrote, “Like the prophets, Donohue skewers bad guys — doers of evil and sowers of confusion — with consistent vigor and style.”

Cultural Meltdown (the book) is riveting, and in equal parts alarming, hopeful, and culturally uplifting. Donohue holds nothing back. His discussion of the roots and fallout of “Transgenderism” spans 58 pages, an education unto itself. It is a deeply troubling exposition of where we are and how we got here. The sheer madness of gender transition treatment for children is distressing. I recall hearing President Joe Biden casually say that “If an eight-year-old boy decides he wants to be a girl, his parents should have no say in it.” Pope Francis, no staunch defender of cultural traditions, called transgender ideology “demonic.”

In June, 2024, the Pew Research Center released results of a nationwide cultural survey. Sixty percent of respondents on the political left reported that being a man or a woman is merely a matter of personal preference and choice. Only nine percent of those on the conservative political right believe that. The lines of demarcation have permeated our politics. A recent Wall Street Journal news report analyzed the evidence of an ideological shift toward the right in young men under the age of thirty. The experience of one man, age 22, is an eye-opener:

“Harrison Wells said Trump’s 2016 campaign initiated his shift to the political right. He recalled being confused by the apoplectic reaction from teachers and students to Trump’s [2016] victory. His high school canceled classes and held listening sessions with students. ‘People were crying, upset,’ he said. ‘Everyone was hysterical.’ The experience crystallized growing skepticism of his private Catholic high school outside Menlo Park CA which organized lectures about the importance of access to contraceptives and abortion and celebrating transgender visibility.”

— “ElectionTriggers Battle of the Sexes, “ WSJ, July 30, 2024

No one involved with the article raised a question about how or why a California Catholic high school sponsored lectures on “the importance of access to abortion and contraceptives and celebrating transgender visibility.”

In the July/August 2024 issue of the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst, Bill Donohue wrote a brief essay entitled, “We Are Badly Divided.” As evidence for his title he wrote, “Those who love Biden hate Trump, and vice versa. The hatred of Trump, often called Trump Derangement Syndrome, is so bad that 86 percent of Democrats reported in a recent survey that the Justice Department should have authorized ‘the use of deadly force’ in its retrieval of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.”

This comes from the same people on the left who have gone on record, as Vice President Kamala Harris has, to advocate for defunding police. Such attitudes lured a hapless 20-year-old at a recent rally in Pennsylvania to the destruction of his own life while trying to end the life of Donald Trump. There is a way out of this cultural madness, and the prophetic Bill Donohue charts its course. What follows is Bill Donohue’s own explanation of why he wrote Cultural Meltdown. I could not improve upon it, so with his permission I am reproducing some of it here:

From Bill Donohue: “Why America Is in Trouble”

“The principal reason I wrote my new book is to address why America is in trouble. We live in a topsy-turvy world and most people, especially older adults, can’t seem to make sense of it. It is my hope that after reading Cultural Meltdown the reader will have a better handle on how this happened. We are a country torn between two conflicting visions of man and society. There are those who accept the religious vision and there are those who accept the secular vision. These perspectives are not only different, they are irreconcilable.

“Right now everything is in flux. As someone who favors the religious vision, I see signs of optimism, but not always. At some point, one side will win. We can’t go on indefinitely living as if we are living in two different worlds. The religious vision acknowledges belief in God, truth, human nature, the natural law, moral absolutes and Original Sin. It recognizes the limitations of the human condition. While it believes in progress it manifestly rejects the idea of human perfectibility.

“The secular vision promotes exactly the opposite view: God does not exist; truth is a mirage; human nature can be changed; there is no such thing as natural law; there are no moral absolutes; and the idea of Original Sin is fanciful. Furthermore, as the secular vision considers the human condition to be infinitely malleable, it champions the idea of the perfectibility of man.

“Left-wing intellectuals epitomize the secular vision. They are the ones who have had the greatest influence on the young, liberals, Democrats, and the well educated. As survey research shows, these are the most secular people in our society.

“The Catholic Church epitomizes the religious vision. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Men and women are biologically different, but possess equal dignity. We are expected to conform our behavior according to the tenets of the natural law. The faculty of reason is important, but it should complement faith, not oppose it.

“Those who ascribe to the religious vision reject the moral relativism that secularists promote. Moral relativism holds that what is moral is a matter of opinion and that there is no such thing as an act which is inherently immoral. Intellectuals very much believe this to be true. So did Hitler.

“I mention Hitler because he rode the waves of moral relativism right into office. There were political and economic reasons why he succeeded, but it was the moral collapse of German culture during the Weimar Republic (between the two world wars) that left the masses without a clear understanding of right and wrong. He capitalized on this cultural meltdown.

“Secularists are fond of saying that as long as two people agree on what constitutes proper moral behavior, that’s all that matters. It all boils down to consent. Those who believe in the religious vision know this to be false. It could justify incest. Without an understanding that God has given us Commandments to live by — and the moral absolutes they entail — all kinds of monstrosities are possible. History has shown exactly that.

“If there is one intellectual strain that is creating mass confusion it is postmodernism. For this we can thank French intellectuals in the 1960s. It is the most extreme expression of the secular vision. At bottom, it regards truth to be a fiction. Once this idea takes hold, look out. Here’s how postmodernism plays out in real life:

“David Detmer is a philosopher who knows how absurd postmodernism is. He interviewed one of its practitioners, fellow philosopher Laurie Calhoun. He asked her a simple question, one that any preschool child could answer: ‘Are giraffes taller than ants?’ ‘No,’ she replied. It is ‘an article of religious faith in our culture.’ In an earlier time, we would house people like her in an asylum. Today they are working in the academy.

“There is a chapter in the book on libertinism, or sexual license. Normal people regard people with perversions as sick and in need of help. Many left-wing intellectuals — who do not want to be regarded as normal, and who indeed reject the idea of normalcy — not only disagree that perverts are abnormal, they want to celebrate them.

“In 2022, Indiana University erected a large bronze sculpture of Alfred Kinsey, the zoologist-turned-sexologist. School officials celebrated his years of work there. There is also a Kinsey Institute on campus. They are proud of his writings and research on sexuality. They shouldn’t be. As I point out [in Cultural Meltdown, p.107] Kinsey was ‘a scientific fraud, a pervert, a voyeur, an exhibitionist, a gay-bar-hopping homosexual (even though he was married) and a child abuser. Oh yes, he also had sex with animals.’ Guess which institution he hated? The Catholic Church.”

More from Bill Donohue: Christianity and Transgenderism

“The secular vision, especially postmodernism, explains the existence of Transgenderism, or gender ideology. If truth does not exist, then it is entirely possible for boys to think they are girls and vice versa. It does not matter what our chromosomes are. All that matters is what we feel is real.

“The tenets of Christianity and Transgenderism are polar opposites and cannot be reconciled. Pope Francis understands this as well as anyone. He calls gender ideology ‘one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations’ of our time. ‘Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs the differences and the value of men and women.’ So upset was [Pope Francis] with this ideological madness that he once called it ‘demonic.’

“Anti-science transgender activists are among the most intolerant people in our society. They believe there are more than two sexes (which they falsely call genders) and anyone who disagrees with them — which is to say most normal people — is dismissed as a bigot.

“The damage being done to young people — 80-percent of those who ‘transition’ to the opposite sex are girls who want to be boys — is incalculable. The long-term physical and psychological problems that they will experience have yet to be determined. We already know that puberty blockers, chemical castration, and genital mutilation have created enormous suffering. Indeed, this is the greatest child abuse issue of our day.

“The last two chapters [of Cultural Meltdown] explain why we are so divided as a nation. To take one example, we are treating racial and ethnic groups as if they were different tribes, pitting one against the other. Robin DiAngelo, the author of the best-selling book, White Fragility likes it that way: ‘People of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other.’ They teach this racism — in the name of combating it — in many colleges and corporations. No doubt the Klan would agree with her. So does Harvard. That is why it designated ‘an exclusive space for Black-identifying audience members’ when an adaptation of MacBeth was performed in 2021.

“Welcome to the world of the new apartheid. That much-condemned South African practice of separating the races is now very much in vogue in the United States. We have separate dorms on college campuses based on race, as well as separate graduation ceremonies. Part of the problem is the tendency of left-wing intellectuals to compare the tenets of the American Creed — the belief in freedom, equality and rule of law — to existing conditions. Inevitably, we come up short. But the Creed is the ideal; it is not reality. It gives us something to shoot for — holding out the potential that some day we will make good on this promise. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this. Why can’t intellectuals?”

Back to Father MacRae:

I came of age as a young adult in the middle of the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was deeply affected by it, and in some ways the roots of my vocation to priesthood were inspired by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. We have come a long way since then. It is doubly tragic for those who gave their lives to promote racial equality to see the deterioration of their work today. It is deeply sad that some in the Democratic Party of today choose to foment racial and ethnic divisiveness instead of promoting unity. For me, it feels like a giant step backwards in our culture. Bill Donohue concludes his book with a caveat:

“The Catholic Church — along with evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and Muslims — must hold the line and not bow to secular opinion. Secularism is the heart of our moral crisis; it is responsible for our cultural meltdown. We need to proclaim and defend eternal truths about man and society and the moral imperatives that make for the best of all possible worlds on Earth. We don’t need to re-create anything. We need to repair to our religious moorings.”

We are at a crossroads. As we face another presidential election in 2024, we stand at midnight in the garden of good and evil. Even some facets within our Church have quietly ventured over to one side of that garden — the “woke” side. Cultural Meltdown is our wake-up call.

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Bill Donohue is President of the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from New York University and served for twenty years on the Board of the National Association of Scholars. The author of ten previous books, he has appeared on thousands of news, television and radio programs including EWTN, Fox News, CNN, NEWSMAX and other national media.

Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis by Bill Donohue is published in 2024 by Sophia Institute Press. His most recent guest post for Beyond These Stone Walls was, “The Ordeal of Father Gordon MacRae.” He was also instrumental in our recent, highly acclaimed post, “A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free.”

Digital billboard just outside the United Center in Chicago, the venue of the Democratic National Convention.

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.”