A fateful day for Chen Kewei; why George Orwell’s 1984 now tops the 2017 Best Seller lists; and the future of Religious Liberty; this week behind These Stone Walls.
A few times a year on These Stone Walls, I feel compelled to add a post script to some of my past posts, so I wait until I have enough to warrant a post of their own. If you have been reading these pages over the last few months, then you know that life here has taken a sharp downward turn for your friends behind these prison walls.
With no space to keep copies of past TSW posts, and with no online access, I must rely only on memory when I refer to anything I have written in the past. I compiled a list of titles, and it now comprises six pages. With that list of titles in hand, I want to add a post script to a couple of my blasts from TSW’s past.
SHANGHAI KNIGHTS
Some readers are aware that our friend, Chen, was moved to another part of the prison in early January. We didn’t see it coming, but every prisoner knows that the dreaded words can come at any time, and for us they came just after the morning prisoner count on January 4: “Chen, pack your things. You’re moving.” An hour later, he was gone.
The worst part of such events in prison is the lack of any and all information. It was a full day before we were able to learn where he went, but more on that below. I wrote about our friend, Chen in a few posts over the last year, most notably in “Time in a Bottle with Jim Croce and the Twang Brothers,” and more recently last fall, “For Pornchai Moontri, A Legion of Angels Victorious.” That latter post has a great photo of Pornchai and Chen and their teammate, Chi Chi holding their championship softball season banner which we proudly post again here.
Yes, that’s me standing off to the right. I was there in my official capacity as team pep-talk coach and TSW Sports Writer. A month after posing for that photograph for the intramural softball championship, Pornchai and Chen’s team went on to an accomplishment without precedent here. They also defeated seven other teams to become the intramural prison football champs, and they did it without breaking anything vital. The team was going to gather in late October for a photo of the football championship, but it would have basically been the same photo of the same players so we just skipped it.
Our friend, Chen, played on both teams. Pornchai-Max Moontri taught him how to play both sports, but more importantly, Pornchai taught him how to BE a sport. Pornchai was Captain and Coach of both teams through both season championships, and Chen was voted “Most Improved Player” of both teams.
You might recall from past posts that Chen came to the United States from Shanghai, China on a temporary student visa at age eighteen. That was three years ago. Having never before ventured far from home, Chen was entirely unprepared to comprehend the nuances and rules of political correctness on a co-ed college campus. The details are unimportant, but Chen was to some extent “Shanghaied.” It’s a term we’ve all heard, but its origins are murky.
To be “Shanghaied” is an English language colloquialism, meaning that it comes from an anecdotal account once told and repeated, but it has no literal meaning of its own. It has its origin in a real event that actually happened in the 19th Century when the Chinese trade port of Shanghai opened to the West in 1842. An American or British sailor was tricked into boarding a foreign vessel in that port – perhaps not even a Chinese one. Once aboard, the unfortunate sailor was forced into serving as a crew member. Thus, he was Shanghaied.
As a colloquialism, to be “Shanghaied” now refers to anyone who has been duped or tricked into captivity. Chen was Shanghaied, and for that matter, so was I.
Chen was given a three-to-six year sentence, but he spent the first year isolated in a county jail before being transferred to the state prison at age 19. Pornchai-Max and I met Chen “by chance” shortly after he arrived here. We then reached out to help keep him off the heavily traveled “road to perdition” as I described the path upon which this prison is rapidly descending. A prison officer also became concerned for Chen, and moved him into an overflow bunk just outside our door. When we were all relocated eight to a cell on perdition’s highway, we managed to get Chen moved in with us.
The only English Chen knows is the little that he has learned in prison, and it’s strictly phonetic. One day he asked me why Americans say things like “Cheese and Rice” when they are angry or frustrated. “Cheese and Rice!” Give it a moment to register. We knew right away that Chen would not fare well here on his own.
So Pornchai and I had to work quickly to find ways to soften the blow for Chen when he was suddenly moved. Pornchai works in the prison gym where he helps with a weight training program, and he was able to get Chen enrolled in it. I was able to get volunteer status for Chen in the prison library each afternoon. So we see Chen every day, and most of those lurking in perdition’s shadows know that Chen is not alone. I’m sorry to put it that way, but it IS that way.
In early January, Chen was Shanghaied again. He was moved into a one-size-fits-all program that he was supposed to be admitted to at least eighteen months before his minimum sentence of three years which he reaches on March 24. Chen cannot possibly complete this program which has taken no account of his language barrier.
Like Pornchai, Chen has already been ordered by a federal judge to be deported from the United States, so both will be handed over to Homeland Security immediately upon release. Chen will be sent to Shanghai, and he had every reason to expect that this would happen when he reaches his minimum sentence on March 24. The program into which he was placed a month ago, and the New Hampshire state court, could keep him Shanghaied for up to three years longer, but what would be the point? Chen has not seen his parents for three years and just wants to go home.
Chen has been granted a hearing scheduled before a New Hampshire judge on March 13 at which point the Court will determine whether his language barrier disqualifies him from that program. If the hearing is successful, Chen will be turned over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement later in March to begin the long process of going home.
So please remember Chen in prayer for the success of that hearing on March 13. And if you have the stomach for it, also read my post about another one-size-fits-all for-profit fiasco: the ICE deportation of so-called “criminal aliens.” Pray that Chen will be spared the nightmare my post describes. Pornchai too, when his turn comes.
GEORGE ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
It seems a very odd thing, but I wonder if you have noticed that a book written in 1949 reached number one on Amazon’s Best Seller lists over the last few weeks. It’s George Orwell’s classic but chilling novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s an interesting development, and it occurred as a direct result of the strange and unexpected U.S. presidential election. That fact is as strange as the election itself.
Still ringing in my mind is the question posed to Donald Trump by FOX news anchor, Chris Wallace in the Fourth Presidential debate: “Will you accept the results of this election?” Of course, everyone, including Chris Wallace, assumed Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory. So the same question was not posed to her. When Donald Trump hesitated in his response, Mrs. Clinton famously retorted, “Not accepting the results of this election would be a direct threat to democracy!”
I am not writing a defense of Donald Trump. I don’t have a defense of Donald Trump. But I do have a defense of the Americans who placed him into office in accordance with the United States Constitution. I believe that one sentence sealed the fate of the Presidential Election of 2016: “Donald Trump’s supporters are a Basket of Deplorables!”
It is expected that presidential candidates will be on the front lines for any manner of critique and attack, but attacking the voters has consequences. The biggest consequence is now sitting in the White House. Donald Trump won in 2,600 counties – that great, vast field of red that stretched across the nation on Election Day. Hillary Clinton won 500 counties – the blue, heavily populated urban coastal centers around New York, Boston, Los Angeles – what some of the Deplorables came to refer to as Hollywood’s self-proclaimed “Adorables.”
The fact that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four subsequently landed on the Best Seller lists is a testament to the extent to which that end of the political spectrum has lost its sense of self-awareness. I cringe now every time some Hollywood figure uses an entertainment soapbox like the Golden Globe Awards to enlighten us lesser folks on political thinking.
The very news media that is supposed to be reporting the news is openly holding the Vice President in contempt, not for his politics, but for his Christian beliefs. The bold fact that Vice President Pence addressed the annual March for Life – which most in the media would prefer not to even mention – is somehow a black mark on America.
THE FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
So how does George Orwell enter the picture? The President’s campaign manager and Senior Advisor, Kellyanne Conway – who also addressed the March for Life – appeared on Meet the Press and used the phrase, “Alternative facts.” She used that term in defense of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. In reply, The Washington Post accused the White House of trying “to discredit the news media’s critical role in our democracy.” From my perspective, the news media had already done that without the President’s help.
In his novel, 1984 (I’m going to use “1984” because I’m tired of typing “Nineteen Eighty-Four”), George Orwell imagined a totalitarian state in which “Big Brother” is always watching. In the novel, the term “Alternative Facts” describes the state’s “Ministry of Truth” which uses lies to rewrite history, and it imposes those lies on the masses. Just those two words – “Alternative Facts” – spoken by Kellyanne Conway launched 1984 onto the Amazon and New York Times Best Seller lists as readers of the left scramble for more ammunition.
I, too, wrote of an analogy between the White House and George Orwell’s 1984. But my analogy was an observation about the previous Administration after the Presidential Election of 2012. Its perhaps unfortunate title was “Electile Dysfunction: Accommodations and the Advent of 1984.”
I thought my title was rather clever because it described both the arrival of George Orwell’s “Big Brother” from his novel, 1984, and it also described a story that really took place during Advent in the year 1984. You can read it for yourself, but to make the story shorter here, I committed a political sacrilege for both Church and State during Advent in 1984 when I mentioned from the pulpit the fact that a local public school teacher asserted his right to acknowledge Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s a sad but revealing account of the extent of Big Brother’s real agenda and reach.
It’s a great irony that the left, and the leftist news media, would trigger sales of 1984 in response to the current Administration which actually seems to be getting Big Brother’s nose out of business, the business of faith, and various other American enterprises. The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Rago seemed to agree with me on the irony when he wrote “Big-League Brother Is Watching, Say Orwell’s Unlikely Fans” (WSJ, Feb. 2):
“Yet if Americans who buy 1984 actually read it and think about it, maybe the irony will be that U.S. political fevers start to break. Any literate person can recognize that the analogies between Mr. Trump and Big Brother are, not to put too fine a point on it, preposterous.”
So it’s a really good sign that the current White House is now working to embrace a religion agenda that would make it perfectly okay for me to address from the pulpit, without accusations of committing political heresy, that it should be okay for a public school teacher to mention the Birth of Christ at Christmas.
At the National Prayer Breakfast last month, the American President said that his Administration…
“…will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty… I will get rid of and totally destroy the [1954] Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.”
These are not exactly the words and goals of George Orwell’s Big Brother at the dawn of a new totalitarian state.
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Father Gordon J. MacRae says
I want to let everyone know that our good friend Kewei Chen, who is featured in this post, had a hearing before a judge on March 13. Today he has learned that as a result of our efforts the judge has suspended his remaining sentence and he will be handed over to ICE in one week to begin his return to his home in Shanghai China. He is elated, more than a little scared, but hope springs eternal for him. Pornchai Max and I will miss him terribly, but we have only joy in our hearts that our good friend is going home at last. Thank you so much for your prayers.
With love and blessings from us,
Father Gordon MacRae
Maria Stella says
Father G, this is great news! I will pray that Chen has a safe journey home to China and for a joy-filled reunion with his Mom and Dad
Mary Fran says
This is WONDERFUL news, Father G! Always great to hear good news from the prison; there seems to be a short supply of it, though you manage to ferret it out. I will continue to pray for Chen, especially that his experience isn’t anything like Augie’s. I hope he can continue to follow you on TSW from China.
Arkanabar T'verrick Ilarsadin says
I will admit that I preferred TV’s Donald Trump to his opponent in the presidential election. That I and many others did so is far less a comment on his excellence (which I will admit is severely lacking) than upon the sad and sorry state of the Democrat Party and its leadership.
To all those who fear, I offer the advice of St. Padre Pio: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.” Pray especially for the conversion of Donald Trump, even if it is late in his life. He has at least a devotion to his children and some good company in Mike Pence.
Father Gordon MacRae says
I very much respect Sheila Berry and her comments. I think she makes her point well without demanding that I or anyone else agree. Without doubt, even many who voted for President Trump wish he would become more of a statesman right now. But I recall that when the Cristeros accepted General Enrique Gorostieta as their Commander in Chief, he did not share their cause, or their faith, or their commitments. He wanted the money and he had a growing distain for the arrogance
of his government at that time. In the end, he embraced the Cristeros’ faith and was martyred for it.
At the dawn of Donald Trump, American government had become self-referential, self-righteous, arrogant, and even, at times, tyrannical (hauling the Little Sisters of the Poor all the way to the Supreme Court). Our government demanded that people of faith change their faith to accommodate a government agenda. Mrs. Clinton was right in that last presidential debate: “Not accepting the results of this election would be a direct threat to democracy.” We are seeing that threat in action.
Finally, I want to thank our readers for their interest and prayers for our friends, Chen and Pornchai. For all the blustering about the “rapid removal” of so-called criminal aliens, forcing them to remain longer in prison is nothing more redemptive than vengeance. They both went to prison as teenagers. Vengeance should not ever be what this nation is all about.
God bless you and keep you,
Father Gordon MacRae
Ronald June says
Frankly, I find Sheila Berry’ s comments offensive and rude. With all due respect, I wish to remain in solidarity with you, Father.
Helen says
CORRECTION (sorry)
How very sad that people forget that Mr. Obama has declared abortion in this country as acceptable. President Trump, however he is not liked, is saving unborn lives. If we can’t stand up for those who have no voice…what good do we deserve, otherwise?
God save America! and her babies.
Monica Harris says
Yes, I will pray for Chen and his hearing in March. All for the love of “Cheese and RIce”!
Bernadette McK says
I read Ronald June’s comment with incredulity but not being a US citizen declined to comment. However having now read Sheila Berry’s comments I am prompted to say how fearful many of us are in Britain following the election of President Trump. We certainly do not feel safer over here now that he is in power and French friends have also voiced to me their disquiet as to the future of the world with someone like Trump . Some have asked me how Americans could vote for him – they are completely mystified.
Like Sheila Berry I also find it hard to understand the enthusiasm Christians especially Catholics have for Trump.
Ronald June says
Bernadette, I’m sorry you feel the way you do, peace to you.
Doug says
Dear Father Gordon,
I will gladly and happily add Chen in with my prayers. Thank you for the update.
As for the political unrest … you hit the nail on the head a few weeks back when you wrote, to the effect, the cost of the crucifixion is often overlooked by the joy of the resurrection, but there is no resurrection without a crucifixion. Perhaps this political unrest and climate is our via dolorosa. If so, I can only add my amen. Let God’s will be done.
Dorothy Stein says
Two years ago at the National Prayer Breakfast President Obama excused all of Islam from any responsibility for terrorism committed almost exclusively in the Western World by radical Islamists. He went on to blame terrorism on the Catholic Crusades which ended a thousand years ago. I certainly cannot suggest that Donald Trump’s stupid comment about his former reality show is an improvement, but I can’t say it’s much worse either. I too wish he would shut up, close his Twitter account, and surround himself with solid people to get on with the business of running the country. I neither support nor oppose him. But I agree with Father MacRae that he is duly elected, and he is elected largely because all of his supporters were denounced as deplorable by the other presidential candidate. It is not at all lost on me, and I hope it is not lost on your readers, that you ended this very enlightening post with the canonization tapestry of St. Jose Sanchez del Rio, a teenage Cristero, who is today a patron saint of religious liberty from the other side of the wall that Donald Trump wants to build. Thank you for this post, which I must read again and again, and please let your friend Chen know that we walk with him on his difficult journey. Let us all hope that upon his return to Shanghai, his stories of America will be filled with you and the very good Pornchai Max, and not the horrors of our prisons.
Sue says
Looks like a troll has found you, Father! The best thing to do is ignore her.
Thank you for a great post! I’ve been swamped by preparations for Andrew & Kate’s wedding which was last Saturday. Now I have a miserable head cold. So, haven’t been keeping up with news at all & may continue it not be informed. Most of it is lies from mainstream media anyway.
I read 1984 as part of an American History Arts & Crafts class I took my sophomore year in high school. I hated that book because of the totalitarian government! The entire world is upside-down these days!. We have liberals who wouldn’t know TRUTH if it hit them in the face & crushed them. But they’re the ones who get all the attention. Time to ignore them & set the rest of the country free to worship God & make our nation great once again.
Keeping you & Max & Chen in our daily prayers!
Helen says
Thank you, again, Fr. Gordon, for posting TRUTH! Not too often, does it occur, that we get to READ Truth! I like it! It makes me feel whole. It allows me to make decisions on what it is that is really happening. So, again, thank you.
Also, please let Chen know he is being prayed for…having had Masses prayed and will again, for him and all of your buddies, and, of course. YOU! Also, Chen is being placed on many worldwide prayers lines; major ones like: Lourdes, Fatima, and others. We’re (the readers) all hounding the Gates of Heaven. Hopefully, we’ll be like the widow who woke the unjust judge up in the middle of the night. Luke 18:1-8.
I love the photo of your team above. If I had to change anything, it would just be to have you smile. But really, what do you have to smile about? L@@K where you’re living. Duh on me!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, again, Fr. Gordon. This is another outstanding post. You always manage to give me many things to think upon, read about and learn. I pray God uses every one of your words to help us help you…and to declare to the world, this place that we journey…IS NOT OUR HOME.
God bless you and ALL who support you.
Helen
MaryJean Diemer says
Hi Father Gordon!
I will pray that all goes well for Chen. Going back will be a better situation for him and I hope it happens soon.
I also believe that God had a purpose in Donald Trump and Mike Pence being elected. This is the first time I have felt hope for our unborn and hope for belief in God to be a part of this country again. The Holy Spirit does use the unlikeliest of vessels sometimes and that is what we need to keep in mind. Jesus did not come for the sinless but for the sinners and we all fit that bill! I pray for our president that that he will let God guide him. If we truly believe in our God then we must also believe that He would never put us in harms way without a safety net! Sending love and prayers to you all as always. Jeannie
Mary Fran says
I will be offering my daily Masses and communions for Chen until his hearing on March 13.
Sheila Berry says
As a post script, the president’s first request at the National Prayer Breakfast was that we pray for better ratings for his old TV show. Priorities.
Mary Jean Diemer says
I think the Lord laughed at the President’s joke .
Sheila Berry says
I do not support Donald Trump. He is not normal. He is unstable, malignant, devoid of integrity—and he does not speak for me. Seeing Donald Trump’s message of exclusion and open bigotry take root in so much of my country disheartened me in ways I can’t quite quantify. Watching so much of the American Church so gladly participate in elevating a man as unlike Jesus as anyone I’d ever seen, revealed a layer of racism and misogyny and Nationalism in the Church that were shocking even to someone who thought they’d seen it. Without qualification, temperament, or intelligence, the man was simply being awarded the priceless things which he desired, despite the most reckless, vile behavior. I saw more profoundly what privilege affords us. Hate is a horribly powerful thing. Extremism in a handful of like-minded people can alter the path of a nation. It can make them sell their souls and betray their brother with a kiss for a few pieces of silver. Right now my country is riddled with people loudly claiming faith in a Jesus who would not be welcome in the very America they are making. And as much as this grieves me, the challenge is to still respond to them in a way that still resembles this Christ.
Philip Nachazel says
Shelia.
And the alternative?
You have quickly forgotten who we voted against.
Let me refresh your memory.
“Religions must change their views on abortion.” -HC
The Clinton Foundation has been more underhanded, debased and criminal than the actions of Mr. President in his years in real estate dealings.
Please pray for those souls who call themselves Christian and voted for the criminal Hillary Clinton.
Frank Chowaniec says
I suspect that your knowledge of Christ is similar to Obama’s. You’re using the same stale talking points that all the opponents of this Republic use. President Trump doesn’t need to
be the best Christian among us, he just has to be good enough to know that unborn life needs protection, that the Little Sisters of the Poor don’t owe anyone for contraceptives and that the gov’t represents the 2600 counties over the 500 counties that were imposing their tyrannical
will under the dems and their supporters.
The swamp does need to be drained, it will be drained and we will be a better nation for it.
Ronald June says
I am in support of President Donald Trump and I do feel safer since his inauguration. I feel the democrats are doing him a great disservice in their terrible opposition to him.
Joan Ripley says
Amen, Brother!!! Me too!!! We are blessed at last to have a strong Christian leader in the United States whose coinage so proudly proclaims “In God we Trust”.
Sadly, it appears that the deeply aggrieved Democrats have put their collective trust in Allah and his well-to-do representatives in the Middle East and are still following the leadership of their dearly departed hero, Barack Hussein Obama, who apparently has only moved next door in Washington, DC. It seems they are vigorously adhering to the playbook of Community Organizer in Chief Obama’s avowed idol, Saul Alinsky, in fomenting and maintaining this horrific political mayhem that continues to unfold daily in an ever rising crescendo. We absolutely must pray for God’s protection and for courage and strength for Mr. Trump, his government and family and that the Republicans will stand loyally behind him until this horrendous challenge is overcome.
There are no words to describe how sickening it is to learn that Democratic, ie subversive, operatives in the judiciary and highest levels of the civil service are gleefully undermining every possible move of the new administration. No one would have believed this if it had been written in a novel.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Ronald June says
Amen, Amen,Amen.