2021 Saw Challenges to Life, Liberty, Even Laughter

The Year of Our Lord 2021 in review: a second pandemic wave worse than the first, wide political divisions, many losses, some regrets and even a few funny moments.

December 29, 2021

As I conducted a reality check over this “2021 Year End” post, I felt rather hard pressed to put the word “laughter” in its title. I don’t know about you, but I did not encounter much this past year that caused me to even smile let alone laugh out loud. I considered just reposting our first post of 2020, “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” It resonated with more readers than most subsequent posts, and not much has changed since then in the landscape of our lives. If anything, the climate feels worse.

But as the year wore on, I found myself laughing a little at life in spite of it all. Also in January 2021 I wrote, “Pandemic in Prison: When the Caged Bird Just Can't Sing.” It described how difficult it is to write a weekly post where I live, and how the seemingly never-ending pandemic turned “difficult” into a high-endurance obstacle course. That post's top image — created by our excellent volunteer graphic designer— made me laugh anew so I am using it to top this post about our year in review. It is also fitting, as you will read below, because this year two “Catholic” venues barred me from ever posting at their sites.

So given that I am the caged bird in question, the graphic above is a reminder that letdowns and obstacles should not suppress our ability to smile. However, canary yellow is not my color. I might have preferred a cardinal to a canary, but some might think that a bit pretentious. I also laughed when I proofread this post. I had mistyped “Year End” and referred in the first paragraph to my “Rear End” post. I want to put 2021 behind me, but I’m glad I caught the error.

Despite many obstacles, we published 52 posts in 2021. I wrote most of them while others were by our friends, Fr George David Byers in North Carolina, Fr Stuart MacDonald and Fr Tim Moyle in Ontario, Fr Andrew Pinsent in the U.K., Ryan MacDonald in New York, and two by Pornchai Moontri in Thailand.

My apologies in advance for all the links, but a year in review is just that. I want to profile the four posts you seemed to like the most. That short list will be interspersed with four others that I think deserve a second view. The criteria for your top choices will be an algorithm composed of the post's number of readers at the time it was posted, the number of times it was shared on social media, and the number of times it has been revisited during the course of the year.

My own choices have more to do with how much time was spent in reading, writing and research to produce some posts with limited resources made even more limited in this pandemic. By the way, at the expense of sounding political, have you noticed that “pandemic” is the word, “panic” with a “dem” inserted in the middle?

Life and Liberty Beyond These Stone Walls

By a wide margin, your choice for the most important post of 2021 was “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul” published on July 7. It remains the number one most widely read and revisited post of the year. The Catholic League e-blasted it to its members and hundreds of readers printed off a PDF of it to send to their bishops. Two U.S. bishops wrote to thank me for writing it. In twelve years of writing, that has never happened before.

I fear, however, that the major point of that post became shrouded in the heat of our bipolar politics. The U.S. bishops ended up avoiding any political fallout at their annual meeting in Baltimore by avoiding any real clarity on the subject after Pope Francis cautioned them not to politicize the Eucharist. But sidestepping the questions raised was also a political statement. The bottom line of that post is that our bishops have a sacred duty to care for the souls of all, including Catholic politicians who openly support a pro-abortion agenda.

Receiving the Eucharist while promoting abortion, sans repentance, places a soul in grave spiritual danger. On this, Scripture and Church law could not be clearer as laid out in that post and in Canon Law. In the aftermath of my post and the U.S. Bishops’ meeting, President Biden quoted Pope Francis claiming that he called Biden “a good Catholic” and told him to “keep receiving Communion.” That has not been verified, and whatever you think of Pope Francis, I do not believe it is accurate.

It is ironic that new state laws in Texas, Mississippi, and Arizona might now serve as a catalyst for a stronger defense of life from the U.S. Supreme Court while our bishops — who ought to be our collective guardians of morality on the right to life — shrunk from such an expectation. There was another pro-life post that I wrote earlier in 2021. It was widely acclaimed by many in the pro-life community who read it, but it was not otherwise widely read. Some may have been daunted by its detailed but important historical view. From my perspective, a nation that fails to understand history is doomed to repeat it. That post, published on May 19, 2021, was “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life.”

By a wide margin, your choice for one of the most important posts of 2021 was a boost to my spirit. Posted on September 22, 2021 it was, “A Catholic Priest 27 Years Wrongly in Prison in America.” That post was shared over 5,000 times on social media and became a featured post at the National Catholic Register news aggregator, The Big Pulpit. It was also one of several of our posts this year chosen for promotion by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. If you are not yet a member, please subscribe to this much needed effort. More than any other Catholic organization in the cause of Religious Liberty, the Catholic League has our backs.

But alas, that September 22 post was followed just two weeks later with my being “permanently banned” from posting or commenting by the unnamed Moderator of the r/Catholicism community at Reddit which boasts nearly 130,000 members none of whom even know of the ban. Then, just another week later, the Catholic Media Association declined this blog’s membership after inviting Catholic blogs to apply. Writer and media critic, Ryan MacDonald wrote of this at our new “Voices from Beyond” menu item under the not-so-subtle title, “At the Catholic Media Association, Bias and a Double Standard.”

Should a Vocation to Priesthood Be Perilous?

The state of Catholic priesthood was the focus of twelve of my posts in 2021, and two more by our Canon Law advisor, Fr Stuart MacDonald. Now a doctoral candidate in Canon Law, Father Stuart’s expertise shined brightly in “Bishops, Priests, and Weapons of Mass Destruction” published to wide acclaim on May 26. Just two weeks later, we published my post about a controversial priest in “Catholics to Fr. James Altman: ‘We Are Starving Out Here.’”

Father Altman brought some much needed prophetic witness to the assault on priesthood that has emerged not only in our culture, but, sadly, also in some corners of our Church. The Internet footprint of that post was as broad as that of Father Altman himself. The post was read by thousands and shared on social media nearly 4,000 times.

Father Altman was set aside with his priestly faculties withdrawn by his bishop, not because of any moral failure or impediment, but because of his tone. He never spoke a word contrary to Church teaching. Since then, removing priests from ministry without just cause seems to have become fashionable and has taken a bizarre and tyrannical turn. In some dioceses, bishops are suspending priests who decline to be vaccinated on legitimate moral and conscience grounds — even those who have natural immunity from already having and recovering from Covid.

This all highlights something that Catholic League President Bill Donohue asserted in an appearance on NBC’s Today Show in 2005 in a discussion about my own case: “There is no segment of the U.S. population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.”

A twist in the matter of the rights of accused priests came up near the end of July when I wrote, “Fr Stuart MacDonald and Our Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests.” Once accused of virtually anything, a priest has a very steep climb to restore his life and priesthood. Ryan MacDonald reframed the “Catholic Abuse Crisis” this year as the “Catholic Accuse Crisis.” I think it is a much more accurate term. Anyone who wants to be rid of any priest for any reason has found a potent weapon of Mass destruction. In no other venue in America can a person lose his good name, his housing, his livelihood based solely on an unproven 30-year-old claim brought for financial gain.

The bigger twist came this year, however, with my post, "Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo." I have no doubt that Bishop Libasci, Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire, is entirely innocent. Unlike any accused priest, however, he remains in office with his rights and priestly faculties intact.

A Long Farewell, but Not Goodbye

The first five months of 2021 were overshadowed by the immense trial of ICE detention for Pornchai Moontri. He was trapped in a huge, overcrowded warehouse filled with detainees who had illegally crossed the U.S. southern border. Sleeping seventy to a room, with overhead lights blazing around the clock and unbearable noise, Pornchai’s spirit was fraying while I did all I could to get him out of there. Finally, in early February, five months after leaving this prison, Pornchai was flown to Thailand. I wrote of this ordeal, and the triumph of his trust in Divine Mercy in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”

This was the closing of one long chapter in our story and the beginning of another. All our carefully crafted plans for support and housing for Pornchai fell apart in the eleventh hour just a day before he boarded his deportation flight. My own trust in Divine Mercy and Divine Providence were heavily taxed by that point. Then, mysteriously from seemingly out of nowhere, in stepped Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, a Vietnamese missionary from the Society of the Divine Word. On the morning of Pornchai’s flight, Father John contacted me with an offer to provide support and a home for Pornchai upon arrival in Bangkok.

As a teenager in the 1970s, Father John was himself a stranded refugee, one of the infamous “Boat People” forced to flee Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Today he is a priest of heroic virtue, selflessly providing food and sustenance to Vietnamese migrant worker families scattered across Thailand with no ability to earn an income during the global pandemic. But the threads of the Tapestry of God kept intertwining beyond these stone walls.

As Advent began, Fr. Tim Moyle and the people of St. Anne Parish, one of the poorest Catholic parishes in Canada, reached out to me with an Advent project to assist Father John and his people half a world away. I wrote of this profound example of the Gospel of the Widow’s Mite (Luke 21:1-4) in “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.” The good people of Mattawa, Ontario made a great difference. There are many other parishes that are struggling less, and many other opportunities to make such a difference. Lent is coming. Just sayin’.

That post above was not the most read of the year, but for me it was one of the most important posts. It came into being because Fr. Tim Moyle in Ontario had been following Beyond These Stone Walls all year. He was deeply moved by our stories about Pornchai’s progress and his good fortune, brought about by Divine Providence, to become connected to the refugee work of Fr. John Hung Le, SVD.

We devoted nine posts in 2021 to Pornchai’s odyssey. Two of them were written by Pornchai himself who now merits his own Category under “Pornchai Moontri” in the BTSW Public Library. The several posts about him tell a deeply moving and magnificent story of suffering and Divine Providence that has gained notice all over the world. My own favorite among these posts is one I wrote on April 14. It was a real-life version of the Book of Tobit entitled "Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri." And there is a dog involved, and the story is beautiful.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: It is with profound thanks and admiration that I commend Fr. Tim Moyle and the good people of St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, Ontario for their sacrifice and mission of mercy this past Advent. And I hold in equal measure our readers who also responded to this Corporal Work of Mercy. It is not too late to visit our SPECIAL EVENTS page.

I just received this message from Fr. Tim Moyle writing from Mattawa, Ontario:

“Dear Father Gordon and Father John: I just wanted to drop you both a note to tell you that we have reached the $5000 mark in contributions from our parishioners in support of John’s missionary work in Thailand. We will forward the funds shortly after the start of the New Year to allow for any last minute contributions that have yet to be received.

My deepest appreciation to both of you for being so instrumental in focusing my parishioners needs on something beyond our local concerns. It has served as an excellent opportunity for them to appreciate the world-wide reach of our Church, as well as our obligation to support those areas in the world most in need of our assistance. I cannot think of a better Christmas gift to have presented to my community than to have their eyes opened to the realities of our universal ministry as Catholics so that they can truly live out their obligations to the least among us… a requirement for salvation for all who carry the names Christian and Catholic. Thank you so very much for becoming such effective ministers of God’s mercy and love. Wishing you both all the blessings of this festive season of hope.”

Many of our BTSW Readers also took part in this effort and added over $4,500 to the sacrifices of the people of Mattawa. $2,500 of this was earmarked by donors to be added to what was raised for Father John’s Refugee Assistance Foundation, and $2,000 was earmarked to assist with the special challenges faced by Pornchai Moontri while assimilating into his homeland after 30 years in a U.S. prison, 15 of them with me. I am beyond thankful for the response to this effort.

With Blessings for the New Year, Father Gordon MacRae

(Clockwise from upper left in the photos above: Saint Anne Church in Mattawa Ontario, Father Tim Moyle in Mattawa, Father Gordon MacRae in Concord NH, and Father John Hung Le SVD in Bangkok. All collaborating this season for an Advent of the Heart.)

Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct

A new article by Ryan MacDonald, linked herein, spotlights police detective James F. McLaughlin who orchestrated the wrongful conviction of Father Gordon MacRae.

March 24, 2021

I read somewhere that the State of New Hampshire — the “Live Free or Die” State — has this nation’s second highest percentage of prisoners over the age of 55, second only to West Virginia. To be certain, the offenses that put most of them in prison did not occur at age 55, however. New Hampshire is also one of only three states with a “Truth in Sentencing” law. In effect it means there is no avenue to reduce a prison sentence based on rehabilitation.

I admit that I do have a vested interest in this subject. I will be 68 years old on April 9th. I was 29 when my fictitious crimes were claimed to have taken place. I was 41 when I was sent to prison for them. I could have been set free at age 43 had I actually been guilty or willing to pretend so.

I have already learned the hard way that growing older in prison is its own special cross. I severely sprained my right knee early this month. I’m not exactly sure how or why it happened. I awoke one morning with a painful knee. At almost age 68 in my 27th year in prison, that is not at all unusual. But me being me, I just ignored it. Later that morning I had to go to the commissary to pick up food and hygiene supplies that I ordered a week earlier.

The pickup process can be a little daunting. After 23 years in a place with very little “outside,” I love living on the top floor in a place where I can step out onto a walkway and see above prison walls into the forests and hills beyond. But this also involves stairs. Lots of them. Among the items I had ordered that day were a supply of bottled water because I had become a little dehydrated. My net bag was substantially heavier than usual.

Leaving the commissary, the walk across the long walled prison yard was no problem. The series of ramps to the upper levels left me huffing and puffing just a bit. But the final leg involves carrying the heavy bag up eight flights of stairs — 48 in all. Just a few steps from the top that day, my knee exploded. Now I use a cane — temporary, I hope — and a knee brace and lots of ice.

Police Brutality Is Overblown, but Not This

I have read that one of the common traits of the wrongfully convicted in prison is that they simply cannot let go of the injustice that befell them. For me, this injustice is as vividly felt today as it was on September 23, 1994.

But there comes a point at which it is no longer even about freedom. When freedom suddenly comes to a man who has spent more than a quarter century in prison, then freedom itself becomes an intimidating affair. We have seen this faced head-on in some recent posts about my friend, Pornchai Moontri. His imprisonment came to an abrupt end after 29 years on February 24, 2021.

Pornchai went to prison at age 18 after years forced into homelessness. Freedom brings lots of firsts for him. He has never driven a car, for instance, and has no frame of reference for how that would feel except to feel scary. I told him that driving became second nature to me as it will one day for him as well.

If I ever regain my freedom, I will likely find it to be less new and intimidating than Pornchai did at first, but I try not to set myself up for disappointment by thinking about it too much. However, being deprived of justice still remains a gnawing insult to both my psyche and my soul. I cannot help but ponder this and it has never relented. After 27 years it still leaves me fending off bitterness and resentment. Justice and freedom were stolen from me by a dishonest police officer.

I find it strange, but just and merciful, that even after more than 26 years unjustly in prison, people are still writing about it. In a thoughtful pair of posts written in France, Catholic writer Marie Meaney arrived at some boldly incisive conclusions after doing substantial research. Both are available in English at her blog, Cheminons avec Marie qui défait les nœuds (“Let Us Walk with Mary Who Unties the Knots”). Marie’s first article published in June 2019 was “Untying the Knots of Sin in Prison.” It was mostly about my friend, Pornchai Moontri, and how the knots of abuse were untied for him through a team effort.

Marie Meaney’s second article, published in November 2020, was a model of thoughtful, honest research. Its understated title was simply, “A Priest Unjustly Imprisoned.” It strikes me as highly ironic that most American Catholic writers — with the bold exception of Catholic League President Bill Donohue — go to great lengths to avoid any mention of this story lest they be targeted by the cancel culture crowd for whom questioning a claim of victimhood is a mortal sin. Meanwhile in France, a nation known for its anticlerical Catholic culture, my story is told with guns of truth blazing. Here is an excerpt from her excellent post:

“This same man had been accusing so many people of sexually abusing him ‘that he appeared to be going for some sort of sexual abuse victim world record’ according to (Thomas) Grover’s former counselor, Ms. Debbie Collet, who said that Grover never mentioned Fr. MacRae during their sessions — though pressure had been put on her by the Keene (NH) police to alter her testimony. This small, 20,000 inhabitant town had been assigned a detective, James F. McLaughlin, to uncover sex abuse cases.”

— "A Priest Unjustly Imprisoned," by Marie Meaney

Please do not misunderstand me here. I am very much pro-law enforcement. I do not at all subscribe to the left’s notion that police brutality has been rampant in America. Hyped-up exceptions must not overcome the rule of law. You may be surprised to learn that most prisoners believe this as well. In the heat of the political left’s promotion of anti-police policies in 2020, I wrote of the danger this represents in “Don’t Defund Police. Defund Unions that Cover Up Corruption.”

Detective James F. McLaughlin

Marie Meaney was correct in her assertion that between 1988 and 1993, the time in which much older claims against me were probed, the City of Keene, New Hampshire, with a population of about 22,000 then, had a full-time sex crimes detective named James F. McLaughlin. He is now mercifully retired. A 2003 Boston Sunday Globe article by Carlene Hempel (“Hot Pursuit,” Nov. 23, 2003) described him as a detective who “focuses specifically on men interested in boys.” The news media, especially The Boston Globe, has since then gone to great lengths to separate the Catholic sexual abuse narrative from having anything to do with homosexuality.

Carlene Hempel reported that McLaughlin separated himself from his initial involvement with ICAC, the “Internet Crimes Against Children” Task Force. Instead, he decided to go it alone, but Hempel avoided writing about why. She infers something, however, in an interview with a former ICAC police trainer who spoke of McLaughlin more generically:

“Cops who ... operate outside the ICAC system put some people at risk. ... You can’t be posing as a 15-year-old and throw something out like, ‘I’m really questioning my sexual orientation and I wonder if someone out there can help me with that.’ That’s really leading, and in my opinion, entrapment.”

— Police ICAC trainer

It was some time after my 1994 trial that McLaughlin took up the cause of Internet crimes. He made 1,000 arrests luring men to Keene, NH from other states in a process that many described as entrapment. In The Boston Globe article, McLaughlin said in his own defense that no judge has ever said that he has gone too far. That did not remain entirely true. In 2005, a federal judge reprimanded McLaughlin for sending child pornography to an online subject of his entrapment effort. At the time, McLaughlin’s supervisor said one of the scariest things I have ever heard from law enforcement. He told a reporter for The Concord Monitor, in an article that has since disappeared from the Internet, that, “It’s our job to ferret the criminal element out of society.”

Detective McLaughlin’s focus on Internet crimes involving men and teenage boys came well after the case he built against me. It is interesting that in her article from France, Marie Meaney mentioned my accuser at trial, Thomas Grover, who in the end was awarded close to $200,000 from the Diocese of Manchester for his easily identifiable lies. The problem with an accuser’s lies in the hands of a crusading sex crimes detective, however, is that they are easily covered up by finding witnesses willing to corroborate the accuser’s story. There were none here to be found, however. Consider this excerpt from a sworn statement of accuser Thomas Grover’s therapist, Debbie Collett:

“Thomas Grover never revealed to me that Gordon MacRae perpetrated against him. Mr. Grover spent a great deal of time being confronted (in therapy) for his dishonesty, misrepresentations, and unwillingness to be honest about his problems. Thomas Grover did reveal that he had been sexually abused, but named no specific person except his foster father. When asked if he meant Mr. Grover, he responded ‘yes, among others ...’ He accused so many people of sexual abuse that we thought he was going for some sort of sexual abuse victim world record. But he never accused Fr. MacRae.”

— Sworn statement of Debbie Collett

Of her experience with Detective James McLaughlin and his pre-trial investigation, Ms. Collett wrote:

“I was contacted by Keene Police detectives McLaughlin and Clarke ... I was uncomfortable with (the) repeated starting and stopping of the tape recorder when my answers to their questions were not the answers they wanted to hear ... I confronted them about this and their treatment of me which included coersion, intimidation, veiled and more forward threats of arrest ... McLaughlin said that he would personally come to my home, drag me out of it bodily if necesary, and force me to testify despite my information to him ... They presented as argumentative, manipulative, and threatening me via use of police power to get me to say what they wanted to hear.”

— Sworn statement of Debbie Collett

Perhaps the more important part of Debbie Collett’s statement is her assertion that it was recorded. Under court rules, the prosecution was required to turn over to the defense all material including any recorded interviews. Despite repeated references to tapes in police reports, however, none were ever provided. The recording of McLaughlin’s interviews with Debbie Collett simply disappeared.

In the article linked at the end of this post, Ryan MacDonald raises the issue of recorded interviews.

“Unlike his protocols in nearly all other cases, Detective McLaughlin recorded none of his interviews with claimants in the MacRae case. A reason for the absence of recorded interviews may become clear from a statement of Steven Wollschlager, a young man who accused MacRae during one of McLaughlin’s interviews, and then recanted, refusing to repeat his accusations to a grand jury. From his sworn statement:

’In 1994 before [MacRae] was to go on trial, I was contacted again by McLaughlin. I was aware at the time of the [MacRae] trial, knowing full well that it was all bogus and having heard all the talk of the lawsuits and money involved, and also the reputations of those making the accusations. ... During this meeting I just listened to the scenarios being presented to me. The lawsuits and money were of great discussion and I was left feeling that if I would just go along with the story I could reap the rewards as well.

’McLaughlin asked me three times if [MacRae] ever came on to me sexually or offered me money for sexual favors. [He] had me believing that all I had to do was make up a story about [MacRae] and I could reap a large sum of money as others already had. McLaughlin ... referenced that life could be easier with a large sum of money ... I was at the time using drugs and could have been influenced to say anything they wanted for money. A short time later after being subpoenaed to court, I had a different feeling about the situation.’ ”

— "Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest," by Ryan MacDonald

Neither Steven Wollschlager nor Debbie Collett have ever been allowed to present their testimony in any appeal before the appeals were dismissed without hearings in State or Federal Courts.

In the photograph atop this post, Detective McLaughlin was honored by unknown entities for his 350th arrest while posing as a male teenager luring adults online to their arrest in Keene, New Hampshire. Less than one percent of these cases ever went to trial. The other 99 percent were resolved through lenient plea deal offers that defense attorneys urged their clients to take — even the ones whom they knew were not guilty.

I was never a part of McLaughlin’s Internet predator obsession, but his tactics and dishonesty leading up to that endeavor were very much a part of his case against me. Recently, journalist Ryan MacDonald was invited to submit an article on police and prosecutor misconduct for SaveServices.org. His February 20, 2021 article has since been republished at multiple other justice sites, including the National Center for Reason and Justice which continues to advocate for justice for me.

Ryan’s article is an eye-opener. Don’t miss “Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest.”

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Editor's Note: Please share this important post, and if you have not done so already, please Subscribe to Beyond These Stone Walls.

You may also like the related articles referenced herein:

Untying the Knots of Sin in Prison

A Priest Unjustly Imprisoned

Don't Defund Police. Defund Unions that Cover Up Corruption

Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest

A Criminal Defense Expert Unfurls Father MacRae Case

Criminal Defense Attorney, Vincent James Sanzone, explains why the case of Father Gordon MacRae has been no measure of justice for either Church or State.

The unjust imprisonment and suffering of Catholic priests at the hands of communist, fascist and other evil despots has and will unfortunately never end. And let’s not forget that Jesus Christ himself told his apostles that the world will hate them as they hated him. Christ was falsely accused and condemned because one man, Pontius Pilate, like most of us, did not have the courage to stand up against the hysterical crowd which did not know, or want to know the truth. As our Lord taught, “The Son of Man came … not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mt 20:28)

When such persecutions occur there is little if anything that the Church can do. Could even our Holy Father, Pope Francis do anything to stop the daily killing of Christians throughout the world today?

Such unjust punishments are not limited to these regimes, and one such travesty of injustice which has been occurring for the last 21-years right here in the United States is the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae. In 1994 this young and dedicated priest was sentenced by a New Hampshire state judge to the draconian sentence of 33 ½ to 67 years, effectively a life sentence. Because Father MacRae refused to admit to a crime which he did not commit so as to take a plea offer before trial, nor will he do so now, he will not be paroled from prison, and is likely to die in jail.

Any reasonable person examining the trial with any degree of fairness cannot come to the conclusion that the prosecution and continuing imprisonment of Father Gordon is not only a tragedy for this good and holy priest, for all clergy and the faithful, but is also a blight on our criminal justice system. The machine of the criminal justice system of the State of New Hampshire is not attempting to re-examine this case and rectify it.

It is without dispute that our society in general is quick to condemn someone accused of committing a crime, especially when there is an allegation of a sexual crime, and more so when the accuser claims involvement of a Catholic priest. Even one with the most conservative law enforcement mindset would deny that for the last 25 years the deck has been stacked against any priest charged with a sexual offense, and that it is almost impossible for a Catholic priest to be processed fairly by jury and judge.

At the time of Father Gordon’s prosecution there was a climate of media-fueled national hysteria regarding any allegation of sexual offenses on anyone under 18 years of age, whether true or false, especially if a Catholic priest was purportedly involved. Such a climate almost entirely preempted juries from fairly applying the reasonable doubt standard, as they were and are prone to believe any allegation of sexual misconduct no matter how bizarre. Many legal scholars have examined the hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s, and equate this period to the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century. The prosecution of Father MacRae was also fueled by sensationalistic media hype with little concern for civil liberties and the presumption of innocence. As one court put it at that time:

“[A] series of highly questionable child sex abuse prosecutions … were fueled by a vast moral panic … a period in which allegations of outrageously bizarre and often ritualistic child abuse spread like wildfire across the country and garnered world-wide media attention.” “[T]remendous emotion [was] generated by the public” as a result of which “the criminal process often fail[ed]”

— ”Friedman v. Rehal”, 618 F.3d 142, 155, 158 (2 Cir. 2010).

The genesis of the criminal prosecution of Father Gordon is no different than what is to be found in most other wrongful convictions. The convergence of factors in this case was a perfect storm for this wrongful conviction. In the wake of these factors, Father Gordon had zero chance of receiving a fair trial and being acquitted of the false charges at trial. As a practicing criminal defense attorney involved in many such cases over the last 25 years, any defendant charged with such a crime must actually attempt to prove his or her innocence. The jury has a sacred duty when charged with deliberating a criminal case: they are to respect that the defendant is innocent and has no burden to prove that innocence, with the burden of proving guilt beyond any reasonable doubt belonging to the prosecution. All of this is often ignored by juries.

In Father Gordon’s case, the evidence is overwhelming that false criminal allegations were brought by a manipulative man with a financial motive to lie. The accuser was trained and coached during the entire process by his attorney, who was seeking a large payout from the diocese of Manchester. The accuser had a long history of alcohol and drug abuse and involvement in the criminal justice system as well as a long history of opportunistic and manipulative lying. Years after the verdict, it was discovered that he bragged to friends and family members how he manipulated the justice system and the diocese. The entire prosecution of Father MacRae hinged upon the inconsistent, contradictory, and incredulous testimony of this one accuser. Father Gordon’s only “crime” had been to try to help this young man who had no family support and was heading down the path to destruction.

In the early 1990s it was common knowledge in New Hampshire that the Diocese of Manchester, as other dioceses in the United States, was paying huge sums of money to anyone claiming to have been abused by a priest. The Diocese was making these payments while conducting little or no investigation to determine the validity of the claims. It was a windfall for predatory personal injury attorneys making money off the backs of faithful parishioners, and a dream come true for scammers and fraudsters looking to cash in. Such was Thomas Grover, a foster child of the Grover family, which sought the help of Father Gordon to counsel and help Thomas. His foster parents struggled with their son’s alcohol and drug abuse, as well as with his mental health problems and frequent run-ins with the law. Years later, when Thomas Grover became aware of the large amounts of money that the Diocese was paying out to accusers, saw his opportunity to make a large amount of money. This was the way he “thanked” Father Gordon for all that he had done for him, weaving a string of lies impossible to refute.

There not being a single witness except Grover himself, which makes his story absurd, since he claimed that he was assaulted by Father Gordon in very public areas. Yet, Manchester Diocese paid him nearly $200,000.00.

Based on legal papers submitted in federal court, credible witnesses have now been located and have come forward, willing to testify that Grover admitted committing perjury at trial, and bragged about how he scammed the diocese and the justice system. Grover’s former wife and stepson have admitted that he was a “compulsive liar”, “manipulator”, “drama queen” and “hustler” who had a long history of lying to get what he wanted. When confronted with his lies, he “would lose his temper”, and would then admit himself into the psychiatric unit at Elliot Hospital. While seeking “help”, he would accuse others of molesting him. He accused other clergyman as well as his foster father and baby sitters when he was a child. In addition to his psychological state and alcohol and drug addition, he had an extensive criminal history prior to making his false allegations against Father Gordon. Grover was arrested and convicted for two burglaries, two forgeries, two thefts, theft by deception, assault on a police officer, and aggravated assault on his former wife when he broke her nose during one of many such beatings. His former wife considered him to be a sexual predator, and never left her two daughters from another relationship alone with him while they were living together, as he would eye and grope them.

In April of 2005, the lead detective James McLaughlin was confronted with these sobering facts about Grover in The Wall Street Journal articles by Dorothy Rabinowitz about the unjust conviction of Father Gordon (A Priest’s Story: Part I; A Priest’s Story: Part II). In response to his botched and incompetent investigation, McLaughlin made himself a self-appointed psychologist and responded remarkably by saying: “So we had all these elevated activities with our male victims, so in a sense, when you have a victim present that has this baggage, it’s corroborative of their victimization” (“Story of Jailed Priest Retold”, The Union Leader: Manchester NH, April 28, 2005).

At trial, Grover lied and told the jury that he needed money from his lawsuit with the Diocese for therapy because of the “abuse.” However, after his $200,000.00 payout, and after the trial was over, Grover did not attend one therapy session but took his former wife to Arizona, where he blew it all on alcohol, drugs, cars, pornography and gambling. In fact on that trip he lost about $70,000.00 on a Las Vegas gambling junket. In addition, he stiffed the casino another $50.000.00 on a credit line which he fraudulently applied for by providing false information about his job and income. A collection action initiated by the casino was unsuccessful. His wife finally left him in 1998 when the money was gone, and Grover was caught in bed with his biological sister.

Grover’s testimony at trial did not border on the absurd; it was absurd. His shifty testimony was fantastic, nonsensical and contradictory. When he was spoon-fed by the direct questioning of the prosecutor, he was able recite his rehearsed testimony. However, on cross-examination it was far different. Every time he was trapped in a lie or inconsistent statement he fell back on his rehearsed line, saying that question “overloads my mind and… leaves me more or less in shock for days after…”

When Grover was confronted as to why he did not report the abuse for 10 years he claimed that he repressed the abuse, and it was “difficult to talk [about it] in front of people” until he spoke to his attorneys.

The fundamental question must be asked about our justice system; how could any reasonable jury, having the sworn duty to acquit Father Gordon unless the prosecution proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, find him guilty under this type of incredulous testimony? The State had the burden of proof. How could they have gotten it so wrong? Before a jury could find him guilty they would have to have found Grover’s testimony completely credible. Under our criminal justice system no competent and reasonable jury should have found this type of testimony sufficient to convict a Catholic Priest who, previous to these series of false allegations, had never been convicted of anything but a traffic moving violation.

Not unlike other unjust convictions, the law enforcement investigation of Father Gordon was both overzealous and intentionally unfair. The lead detective, James McLaughlin, was not interested in a fair and impartial investigation, but only in creating and spinning the facts to support his — and eventually the prosecution’s — theory of the case. McLaughlin also suppressed any facts which clearly pointed out that Father Gordon was innocent of the false allegations made by the accuser. McLaughlin engaged in investigating this matter in a way that was patently unfair and used his power as a law enforcement officer to suppress witnesses who were willing to testify for Father Gordon.

To make matters worse, Father Gordon’s bishop at the time of his trial did not support Father Gordon, but in fact allowed his office to issue a press release prior to trial which literally condemned Father Gordon. This misstatement by the bishop helped fuel media hysteria, and it unquestionably tainted the potential jury pool, insuring the prosecution of a conviction. The bishop did not stand up for one of his priests with courage, but rather retreated to bureaucratic-clericalism, more worried about pleasing his lawyers, insurance carrier and insulating the diocese from potential civil liability. This abandonment by the diocese has continued 21 years. The bishop’s technique accomplished nothing because the diocese paid out monetary awards to Father Gordon accuser. The greater cost, of course, was the loss of any trust of the priests of the diocese for the bishop and chancery. Not only was Father Gordon not able to count on his bishop for support, but the bishop negligently or intentionally acted in such a way as to let the public be given the message that Father Gordon was guilty. The bishop needs to answer questions about sacrificing priests on the altar of insurance considerations. To date it is conservatively estimated that the Church in the United States has paid 2.5 billion in claims because of the sexual abuse scandal. How many of these claims were outright false can only be guessed. In any case, the bishop distanced himself from Father MacRae and left him on his own.

If the cards were not already stacked against Father Gordon, his defense attorney at trial was no help. Father Gordon was represented by Ron Koch, an attorney from New Mexico, who died in the year 2000 at the age of 49. Although this attorney did his best to defend Father Gordon, he nevertheless made critical trial errors which hurt Father Gordon’s defense and opened the door for the prosecutor to introduce prejudicial evidence which the trial judge had already ruled was inadmissible and not relevant. Mr. Koch was forced to split his time between his active criminal practice in New Mexico and preparing for Father’s Gordon’s trial, which Mr. Koch was unable to do. Mr. Koch failed to conduct important pretrial discovery and inadequately prepared the case for trial. Father Gordon trial counsel was unprepared and out matched, and therefore constitutionally ineffective. Father Gordon’s constitutional rights to procedural due process and a fair trial were eviscerated. Mr. Koch failed to interview and subpoena critical witnesses for the defense, failed to go to the scene in which Grover alleged that he had been touched, and lastly, failed to preserve attorney-client privileged documents which Koch turned over to the prosecution.

Many people unfamiliar with the criminal justice system in the United States believe that the criminal justice system eventually corrects an unjust conviction. This sadly is the exception and not the rule. Under our judicial system the jury verdict is final, and most appeals, regardless as to the justice of the verdict are denied. Father Gordon is going on 22 years of imprisonment. Every appeal has been rejected, every judge hearing his case has turned his back on his pleas for justice. On March 17, 2015, a federal district court judge who many had high hopes would grant Father MacRae’s writ of habeas corpus, instead, granted the State of New Hampshire’s motion to dismiss on the pleadings. The judge did not even grant Father Gordon an evidential hearing. Father’s Gordon appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals is tenuous at best. Aside from a miracle or pardon from the Governor of New Hampshire or the President of the United States, it is most likely that Father Gordon will die a martyr’s death in prison, or if lucky, be released a very old man

The Catholic Church cannot proclaim the fullness of the truth without its priests. Every priest has been called by God for this mission. The Church has no alternative but to pursue and fight for authentic justice, and it must start with Father Gordon. No pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, or anyone among the laity can sit by and permit this injustice to continue. Diabolic advocacy and persecution of the Church has and will continue. Satan knows his enemy, and his enemy is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, in particular its clergy. Satan’s relentless pursuit is against the only institutional defender of natural law and of life in the world, from the moment of conception to natural death, the Catholic Church.

St. John Vianney, the patron of parish priests, understood this all too well. He was also subjected to outrageous lies about his character when he made this profound statement over 150 years ago: “When people wish to destroy religion, they begin by attacking the priest, because where there is no longer any priest, there is no sacrifice, and where there is no longer any sacrifice, there is no religion.”

At the end of our brief temporal life all of us will be judged for what we “did and failed to do”; did we all do what is right and just?

Vincent James Sanzone, Jr., Esq., loves his Catholic faith, and has been a practicing criminal defense attorney in New Jersey for the last 25 years. Attorney Sanzone is a member of the New Jersey Bar Association, of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, and of the Legal Center for Defense of Life. He is admitted to the bar in the State of New Jersey and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey as well as Federal Appeals Courts for the Third and Fourth Circuits. In addition, he has been admitted to practice pro hac vice in the Southern District of New York, and in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Attorney Sanzone has argued successfully before the New Jersey Supreme Court, and has tried hundreds of criminal trials. Many of his clients were minority young men and women whom were acquitted of all charges at trial and went on to live exemplary lives

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

Novelist Tom Clancy, master of the techno-thriller, died on October 1st. His debut Cold War novel, The Hunt for Red October, was an American literary landmark.

Two years ago on These Stone Walls, I wrote a post for All Souls Day entitled “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.” Some readers who have lost loved ones very dear to them found solace in its depiction of death as a continuation of all that binds human hearts and souls together in life. Like all of you, I have lost people whose departure left a great void in my life.

It’s rare that such a void is left by someone I knew only through books, but news of the death of writer, Tom Clancy at age 66 on October 1st left such a void. I cannot let All Souls Day pass without recalling the nearly three decades I’ve spent in the company of Tom Clancy.

I’ll never forget the day we “met.” It was Christmas Eve, 1984. Due to a sudden illness, I stood in for another priest at a 4:00 PM Christmas Eve Mass at Saint Bernard Parish in Keene, New Hampshire. I had no homily prepared, but the noise of a church filled with excited children and frazzled parents conspired against one anyway. So I decided in my impromptu homily to at least try to get a few points of order across.

Standing in the body of the church with a microphone in hand I began with a question: “Who can tell me why children should always be quiet and still during the homily at Mass?” One hand shot up in the front, so I held the microphone out to a little girl in the first pew. Proudly standing up, she put her finger to her lips and whispered loudly into the mic, “BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE SLEEPIN’!”

Of course, it brought the house down and earned that little girl — who today would be about 38 years old — a rousing round of applause from the parishioners of Saint Bernard’s. It lessened the tension a bit from what had been a tough Advent for me in that parish, a set of events I described in an Advent post last year entitled “Electile Dysfunction: Accommodations and the Advent of 1984.”

But that’s not really the moment I’ll never forget. After that Mass, a teenager from the parish walked into the Sacristy to hand me a hastily wrapped gift. In fact, it looked as though he wrapped it during the homily! “We’re not ALL sleeping,” he said about the little girl’s remark. I laughed, and when it was clear that he wasn’t leaving in any hurry, I asked whether he wanted me to open his gift. He did. I joked about needing bolt cutters to get through all the tape. It was a book. It was Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. “Oh, wow!” I said. “How did you know I’ve been wanting to read this?”

It was a lie. I admit it. But it was a white lie. It was the sort of lie one tells to spare the feelings of someone who gives you a book you’ve never heard of and had no plan to read. I remember hearing about a circa 1980 interview of Barbara Walters with “Miss Lillian,” a Grand Dame of the U.S. South and the mother of then President Jimmy Carter. Miss Lillian — to the chagrin of presidential handlers — declared that her son, the President, “has nevah told a lie.”

“Never?!” prodded Barbara Walters. “Well, perhaps just a white lie,” Miss Lillian hastily added. “Can you give us an example of a white lie?” asked Barbara Walters. After a thoughtful pause, Miss Lillian looked her in the eye and reportedly said in her pronounced Southern drawl, “Do you remembah backstage when Ah said you look really naace in thaat dress?” Barbara was speechless! First time ever!

Mine was that sort of lie. The young giver of that gift would be about 43 years old today, and if he is reading this I want to apologize for my white lie. Then I also want to tell him that his gift changed the course of my life with books. I had read somewhere that First Lady Nancy Reagan also gave that book as a gift that Christmas. True to his penchant for adding new words to the modern American English lexicon, President Ronald Reagan declared The Hunt for Red October to be “unputdownable!”

So after a few weeks collecting dust on my office bookshelf I took The Hunt for Red October down from the shelf and opened its pages late one winter night.

“Who the Hell Cleared This?”

After busy days I have a habit of reading late at night, a habit that began almost 30 years ago with this gift of Tom Clancy’s first novel. Parishioners commented that they drove down Keene’s Main Street at night to see the lights on in my office, and “poor Father burning midnight oil at his desk.” I was doing nothing of the sort. I was submersed in The Hunt for Red October, at sea in an astonishing story of courage and patriotism.

In the early 1980s, the Cold War was freezing over again. The race to develop a “Star Wars” defense against nuclear Armageddon dominated the news. President Ronald Reagan had thrown down the gauntlet, calling the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire.” Pope John Paul II was working diligently to dismantle the Soviet machine in Poland. The Soviet KGB was suspected of being behind an almost deadly attempt to assassinate the pope, an event I wrote of in “The Beatification of Pope John Paul II: When the Wall Fell.” As revealed in that post, it was an event that later formed yet another powerful and stunning — and ultimately true — Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan thriller, Red Rabbit.

In the midst of this glacial stand-off between superpowers that peaked in 1984, Tom Clancy published The Hunt for Red October. Its plot gripped me from page one. The Soviets launched the maiden voyage of their newest, coolest Cold War weapon, a massive, silent, and virtually undetectable ballistic nuclear missile submarine called the “Red October.” Before embarking, the Red October’s Captain, the secretly renegade Marko Ramius, mailed a letter to his superiors indicating his intent to defect and hand over the prized sub’s technology and nuclear arsenal to the government of the United States.

By the time the Red October departed the Barents Sea for the North Atlantic, the entire Soviet fleet had been deployed to hunt her down and destroy her. American military intelligence knew only that the Soviets had launched a major offensive. An alarmed U.S. Naval fleet deployed to meet them in the North Atlantic, bringing Cold War paranoia to the brink of World War III and nuclear annihilation.

Having few options in the book, the Soviets fabricated to U.S. intelligence a story that they were attempting to intercept a madman, a rogue captain intent on launching a nuclear strike against America. Captain Marko Ramius and the Red October were thus hunted across the Atlantic by the combined naval forces of the world’s two great superpowers operating in tandem, and in panic mode, but for different reasons.

Then the world met Jack Ryan, a somewhat geeky, self-effacing Irish Catholic C.I.A. analyst and historian. Ryan, with an investigator’s eye for detail, had studied Soviet naval policies and what files could be obtained on its personnel. Jack Ryan alone concluded that Captain Marko Ramius was not heading for the U.S. to launch nuclear missiles, but to defect. Ryan had to devise a plan to thwart his own country’s navy, and simultaneously that of the Soviet Union, to bring the defector and his massive submarine into safe harbor.

In the telling of this tale, Tom Clancy nearly got himself into a world of trouble. His understanding of U.S. Navy submarine tactics and weapons technology was so intricately detailed that he was suspected of dabbling in leaked and highly classified documents. When Navy Secretary, John Lehman read the book, he famously shouted, “WHO THE HELL CLEARED THIS?”

The truth is that Tom Clancy was an insurance salesman whose handicap — his acute nearsightedness — kept him out of the Navy. He wrote The Hunt for Red October on an IBM typewriter with notes he collected from his research in the public records of military technology and history available in public libraries and published manuals. His previous writing included only a brief article or two in technical publications.

The Hunt for Red October was so accurately detailed that its publishing rights were purchased by the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. Clancy hoped that it might sell enough copies to cover what he was paid for it. It became the Naval Institute’s first and only published novel, and then it became a phenomenal best seller — thanks in part to President Reagan’s declaration that it was “unputdownable.” And it was! It was also — at 387 pages — the smallest of a dozen novels in a series about Clancy’s hero — and alter ego — Jack Ryan.

The World through the Eyes of Jack Ryan

After devouring The Hunt for Red October in 1984, for the next 25 years — and nearly 10,000 pages of a dozen techno-thrillers — I was privileged to see the world and its political history through the eyes of Tom Clancy’s great protagonist, Jack Ryan.

From that submarine hunt through the North Atlantic, Tom Clancy took us to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, the Irish Republican Army’s terrorist branches in Patriot Games, the drug cartels of Columbia in Clear and Present Danger, and the threat of domestic terrorism in The Sum of All Fears. This list goes on for another seven titles in the Jack Ryan series alone as the length of Tom Clancy’s stories grew book by book to the 1,028-page tome, The Bear and the Dragon, all published by Putnam. I wrote of Tom Clancy again, and of his gift for analyzing and predicting world events, in one of the most important posts on TSW, “Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times.”

At the time of Tom Clancy’s death at age 66 on October 1st, he had amassed a literary franchise with 100 million books in print, seven titles that rose to number one on best seller lists, $787 million in box office revenues for film adaptations, and five films featuring his main character, Jack Ryan, successively portrayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine (the latter, and his final book, due out in December).

I once made the chauvinistic mistake of calling Tom Clancy’s novels “guy books.” Mea culpa! It isn’t so, and I was divested of that view by several women I know who love his books. Writing in USA Today (“Tom Clancy wrote America well,” October 9) Laura Kenna wrote of Tom Clancy’s sure-footed patriotism as America stood firm against the multitude of clear and present dangers:

“We will miss Tom Clancy, his page-turning prose and the obsessive attention to detail that brought the texture of reality to his books. We have already been missing the political universe from which Clancy came and to which his books promised to transport us, a place never simple, but still certain, where clear convictions made flawed Americans into heroes.”

— Laura Kenna, USA Today, Oct. 9, 2013

Tom Clancy was himself a flawed American hero whose nearsighted handicap was in stark contrast to the clarity and certainty of vision that he gave to Jack Ryan, and to America. I think, today, Clancy might write of a new Cold War, not the one about nuclear warheads pointing at America, but the one about Americans pointing at each other. He might today write of a nation grown heavy and weary with debt and entitlement.

As Tom Clancy slipped from this world on October 1st, his country submerged itself into a sea of darker, murkier politics, those of a nation still naively singing the Blues while the Red October slips quietly away.

What do John Wayne and Pornchai Moontri Have In Common?

As Advent begins in the midst of some long-awaited changes and revisions in the Catholic Mass, I have been doing some thinking about the nature of change.

In “February Tales,” an early post at Beyond These Stone Walls, I described growing up on the Massachusetts North Shore — the stretch of seacoast just north of Boston. My family had a long tradition of being “Sacrament Catholics.”

I once heard my father joke that he would enter a church only twice in his lifetime, and would be carried both times. I was seven years old, squirming into a hand-me-down white suit for my First Communion when I first heard that excuse for staying home. I didn’t catch on right away that my father was referring to his Baptism and his funeral. I pictured him, a very large man, slung over my mother’s shoulder on his way into church for Sunday Mass, and I laughed.

We were the most nominal of Catholics. Prior to my First Communion at age seven, I was last in a Catholic church at age five for the priesthood ordination of my uncle, the late Father George W. MacRae, a Jesuit and renowned Scripture scholar. My father and “Uncle Winsor,” as we called him, were brothers — just two years apart in age but light years apart in their experience of faith. I was often bewildered, as a boy, at this vast difference between the two brothers.

But my father’s blustering about his abstention from faith eventually collapsed under the weight of his own cross. It was a cross that was partly borne by me as well, and carried in equal measure by every member of my family. By the time I was ten — at the very start of that decade of social upheaval, life in our home had disintegrated. My father’s alcoholism raged beyond control, nearly destroying him and the very bonds of our family. We became children of the city streets as home and family faded away.

I have no doubt that many readers can relate to the story of a home torn asunder by alcoholism, and some day soon I plan to write much more about this cross. But for now I want to write about conversion, so I’ll skip ahead.

The Long and Winding Road Home

As a young teenager, I had a friend whose family attended a small Methodist church. I stayed with them from time to time. They knew I was estranged from my Catholic faith and Church, so one Sunday morning they invited me to theirs. As I sat through the Methodist service, I just felt empty inside. There was something crucial missing. So a week later, I attended Catholic Mass — secretly and alone — with a sense that I was making up for some vague betrayal. At some point sitting in this Mass alone at age 15, I discovered that I was home.

My father wasn’t far behind me. Two years later, when just about everyone we knew had given up any hope for him, my father underwent a radical conversion that changed his very core. He admitted himself to a treatment program, climbed the steep and arduous mountain of recovery, and became our father again after a long, turbulent absence. A high school dropout and machine shop laborer, my father’s transformation was miraculous. He went back to school, completed a college degree, earned his masters degree in social work, and became instrumental in transforming the lives of many other broken men. He also embraced his Catholic faith with love and devotion, and it embraced him in return. That, of course, is all a much longer story for another day.

My father died suddenly at the age of 52 just a few months after my ordination to priesthood in 1982. I remember laying on the floor during the Litany of the Saints at my ordination as I described in “Going My Way,” a Lenten post last year. I was conscious that my father stood on the aisle just a few feet away, and I was struck by the nature of the man whose impact on my life had so miraculously changed. Underneath the millstones of addiction and despair that once plagued him was a singular power that trumped all. It was the sheer courage necessary to be open to the grace of conversion and radical change. The most formative years of my young adulthood and priesthood were spent as a witness to the immensity of that courage. In time, I grew far less scarred by my father’s road to perdition, and far more inspired by his arduous and dogged pursuit of the road back. I have seen other such miracles, and learned long ago to never give up hope for another human being.

The Conversion of the Duke

A year ago this very week, I wrote “Holidays in the Hoosegow: Thanksgiving With Some Not-So-Just Desserts.” In that post, I mentioned that John Wayne is one of my life-long movie heroes and a man I have long admired. But all that I really ever knew of him was through the roles he played in great westerns like “The Searchers,” “The Comancheros,” “Rio Bravo,” and my all-time favorite historical war epic, “The Longest Day.”

In his lifetime, John Wayne was awarded three Oscars and the Congressional Gold Medal. After his death from cancer in 1979, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But, for me, the most monumental and courageous of all of John Wayne’s achievements was his 1978 conversion to the Catholic faith.

Not many in Hollywood escape the life it promotes, and John Wayne was no exception. The best part of this story is that it was first told by Father Matthew Muñoz, a priest of the Diocese of Orange, California, and John Wayne’s grandson.

Early in his film career in 1933, John Wayne married Josephine Saenz, a devout Catholic who had an enormous influence on his life. They gave birth to four children, the youngest of whom,  Melinda, was the mother of Father Matthew Muñoz. John Wayne and Josephine Saenz civilly divorced in 1945 as Hollywood absorbed more and more of the life and values of its denizens.

But Josephine never ceased to pray for John Wayne and his conversion, and she never married again until after his death. In 1978, a year before John Wayne died, her prayer was answered and he was received into the Catholic Church. His conversion came late in his life, but John Wayne stood before Hollywood and declared that the secular Hollywood portrayal of the Catholic Church and faith is a lie, and the truth is to be found in conversion.

That conversion had many repercussions. Not least among them was the depth to which it inspired John Wayne’s 14-year old grandson, Matthew, who today presents the story of his grandfather’s conversion as one of the proudest events of his life and the beginning of his vocation as a priest.

If John Wayne had lived to see what his conversion inspired, I imagine that he, too, would have stood on the aisle, a monument to the courage of conversion, as Matthew lay prostrate on the Cathedral floor praying the Litany of the Saints at priesthood ordination. The courage of conversion is John Wayne’s most enduring legacy.

Pornchai Moontri Takes a Road Less Traveled

The Japanese Catholic novelist, Shusaku Endo, wrote a novel entitled Silence (Monumenta Nipponica, 1969), a devastating historical account of the cost of discipleship. It’s a story of 17th Century Catholic priests who faced torture and torment for spreading the Gospel in Japan. The great Catholic writer, Graham Greene, wrote that Silence is “in my opinion, one of the finest novels of our time.”

Silence is the story of Father Sebastian Rodriguez, one of those priests, and the story is told through a series of his letters. Perhaps the most troubling part of the book was the courage of Father Rodriguez, a courage difficult to relate to in our world. Because of the fear of capture and torture, and the martyrdom of every priest who went before him, Father Rodriguez had to arrive in Japan for the first time by rowing a small boat alone in the pitch blackness of night from the comfort and safety of a Spanish ship to an isolated Japanese beach in 1638 — just 18 years after the Puritan Pilgrims landed the Mayflower at Squanto’s Pawtuxet, half a world away as I describe in “The True Story of Thanksgiving.”

In Japan, however, Father Rodriguez was a pilgrim alone. Choosing to be left on a Japanese beach in the middle of the night, he had no idea where he was, where he would go, or how he would survive. He had only the clothes on his back, and a small traveler’s pouch containing food for a day. I cannot fathom such courage. I don’t know that I could match it if it came down to it.

But I witness it  every single day. Most of our readers are very familiar with “Pornchai’s Story,” and with his conversion to Catholicism on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. Most know the struggles and special challenges he has faced as I wrote in “Pornchai Moontri, Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

But the greatest challenge of Pornchai’s life is yet to come. In two years he will have served twenty-two years in prison — more than half his life, and half the original sentence of forty-five years imposed when he was 18 years old. In two years time, if many elements fall into place and he can find legal counsel, Pornchai will have an opportunity to seek some commutation of his remaining sentence based on rehabilitation and other factors.

It is a sort of Catch-22, however. Pornchai could then see freedom at the age of forty for the first time since he was a teen, but it will require entering a world entirely foreign to him. On the day Pornchai leaves prison — whether it is in two years or ten or twenty — he will be immediately taken into custody under the authority of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, flown to Bangkok, Thailand, and left there alone. It is a daunting, sometimes very frightening future, and I am a witness to the anxiety it evokes.

For every long term prisoner, there comes a point in which prison itself is the known world and freedom is a foreign land. Pornchai has spent more than half his life in prison.

Even I, after seventeen years here, sometimes find myself at the tipping point, that precipice in which a prisoner cannot readily define which feels more like the undiscovered country — remaining in prison or trying to be free. I had a dream one night in which I had won my freedom, but entered a hostile world and Church in which I was a pariah, living alone and homeless in a rented room in hiding, pursued by mobs of angry Catholics.  I know well the anxious fears of all the prisons of men.

Pornchai was brought to the United States against his will at the age of eleven. That story is told in deeply moving prose by Pornchai himself in “Pornchai’s Story.” I think we became friends because by the strangeness of grace I knew only too well the experience of having the very foundations of life and family and all security fall out from under me. Pornchai spoke a language that I understood clearly. The transformation of pain and sorrow into the experience of grace is the realm of God, and enduring it to one day lead another out of darkness is a great gift. In the end, who can ever say what is good and what is bad? It is not suffering that is our problem, but rather what we do with it when it finds us.

But what Pornchai faces in the future is daunting. With no opportunity for schooling as an abandoned child in Thailand, he never learned to read and write in Thai and hasn’t heard the Thai language spoken since he was eleven. He remembers little of Thai culture, has no prospects to support himself, no home there, no contacts, and no solace at all. Like Father Rodriguez in Silence, Pornchai will be dropped off in a foreign country, and left to fend for himself with no preparation at all beyond what he can scrape up from behind prison walls in another continent. Welcome to the new America!

Pornchai’s options are limited. He can try to bring about this trauma sooner by seeking commutation of his sentence at an age at which he may still somehow build a life in Thailand. Or he can remain quietly in prison another decade or more, postponing this transition until he is much older, with fewer chances for employment, but perhaps can find connections in Thailand.

These are not great choices. “Pornchai’s Story” got the attention of the Thai government and the Cardinal Archbishop of Bangkok two years ago, but the Thai government has been in chaos since, and the Archbishop has retired. All overtures to both since 2009 have been met by silence.

So in the midst of all this dismal foreboding, and in the face of a future entirely unknown, and perhaps even bleak, Pornchai Moontri became a Catholic. He embraced a faith practiced by less than one percent of the people who will one day be his countrymen again, and in so doing, he piled alienation upon alienation.

And yet this man who has no earthly reason to trust anything to fate, trusts faith itself. I have never met a man more determined to live the faith he has professed than Pornchai Moontri. In the darkness and aloneness of a prison cell night after night for the last two of his twenty years in prison, Pornchai stares down the anxiety of uncertainty, struggles for reasons to believe, and finds them.

I am at a loss for more concrete sources of hope for Pornchai. But like Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, whom I have quoted so often, I believe that “I am a link in a chain; a bond of connection between persons.”

Someone out there holds good news for Pornchai — something he can cling to in hope. I await it with as much patience as I can summon. Pornchai awaits it with a singular courage — the courage of conversion that seeks the spring of hope in the winter of despair.

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