“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
On Good Authority, “Salvation Is from the Jews”
Anti-Israel protests and prejudice were as common as any other plague in Biblical history, and often inflamed, just as they are today, by agitators in a proxy war.
Anti-Israel protests and prejudice were as common as any other plague in Biblical history, and often inflamed, just as they are today, by agitators in a proxy war.
May 8, 2024 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
In the image above, The Deliverance of Israel depicted in “The Crossing of the Red Sea” by Raphael Sanzio, 1519.
There is a lawyer here in this prison who, like me, has been here for too many years. He is a learned Jewish man who is one of the most well-read persons I know. He says I am the second most well-read, but I am not prepared to throw down with him over that. A few days before I began to write this post, he approached me in the prison law library where I serve as the legal clerk. I sometimes have to ask him a question or two about legal forms and procedure.
Seeming especially stressed and guarded that day, he nervously scanned the room before talking with me. He wanted to know if I understand the meaning of the word, “pogrom.” I associated it with the earliest days of the Holocaust, and he nodded silent agreement. It was crowded that day in the prison law library, and he seemed keenly aware that mine were not the only ears listening. Wary of the attention his question drew, he left, saying that we must have this discussion in a less public forum.
I knew what this was about. Across the U.S., the anxiety of Jews has heightened of late as universities campuses erupted in violent protest against the Nation of Israel. A “pogrom” is a Russian term that means “devastation.” It refers to a mob attack that is promoted, condoned, or even just conveniently overlooked, by civil authorities. The term was historically used to describe Nazi-era tactics to threaten and harass Jews while inflaming spontaneous mob uprisings and outright assaults against their property, or their persons, or both.
One such pogrom, known as Kristallnacht (German for “Night of Broken Glass”), took place in Germany on the night of November 9, 1938. In the minds of many Jews, including my lawyer-friend, Kristallnacht was the opening act in one of the most feared of all pogroms, the Holocaust. It was carried out in Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe from 1939 to 1945 and it systematically exterminated six million Jews — fully two thirds of the Jews of Europe.
For my friend, and for the Jews of New York City, which hosts the world’s largest population of Jews outside of Israel, recent events have been frightening reminders of the “Night of Broken Glass.” It left succeeding generations of Jews in a state of existential distrust if not terror.
For day after day in the United States and throughout the free world in recent weeks, we have been witnesses to a pogrom, an organized series of so-called “Pro-Palestinian” protests threatening to evolve into riots on major college campuses across America. At Columbia University in New York, the directive given to Jews from campus administration was to “Stay home for remote classes” because the University could not guarantee their safety.
The outrage of many Jews should now be keenly felt by all Americans. The news media called these noisy, escalating protests “Pro-Palestinian,” but in reality they are more accurately “Pro-Hamas.” Let that sink in, please. In the United States of America, should our national response to threats from an internationally recognized terrorist organization openly operating in U.S. territory be to tell its innocent victims to just “stay home?”
Free Palestinians from Hamas
Upon the advice of well meaning friends, I have wanted to avoid writing about this latest hornets’ nest of politics and power struggles in the Middle East, however, it seems inevitable that the forces at work there would eventually work to bring their pogrom here to be acted out before American news cameras. For weeks now, our democracy has been saturated in it, infected by it, and at risk of being further divided by it as it takes hold and festers here.
It would be foolish to think that these protests have spread spontaneously of their own accord to college campuses across the United States. Some in the less partisan and more incisive news media have uncovered evidence of financial manipulation with activist organizations on the deep political left offering $3,000 (student stipends) to infiltrate and inflame mobs for anti-Israel protests.
Many others among the chanting students have been misled and indoctrinated into a revisionist history leaving them tone-deaf to the actual meaning of rousing chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It calls for the annihilation of Israel, and by extension the eradication of Jews. That this chant has been propagated by some Democrat members of the United States Congress has spread fears of our darkest history repeating itself. In a lead editorial entitled, “America’s New Mob Rule” (May 1, 2024), The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote that the protesting students seem not to know or care that Hamas’ Charter calls for the annihilation of Jews.
What is now happening across America began in Israel on October 7, 2023. Thousands of young Israeli citizens and others were savagely slaughtered in the light of day by Hamas terrorists on an innocent Saturday afternoon. The victims were mostly young people the same ages as many of those now promoting and supporting their murderers. These campus protesters are utterly ignorant of the forces manipulating them. I wrote of the meaning and history of Hamas in “The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God.”
There was much more to the events of October 7, 2023 than the vicious assault on Jews along the Gaza border. In response to those events, I wrote a post that stunned many of our readers who had no idea of the extent of Hamas brutality and of how its violence had also targeted other innocent people. That post was “Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel.”
It clarified the extent of the pogrom, the devastation, inflicted on many innocent young people that day, including many whose only crime was poverty and a desire to work to support their families, something these hapless university protesters have never had to do. What follows is an excerpt cited in the above linked post from The Wall Street Journal of October 28, 2023 written by the usually restrained and moderate Editorial Board. If it does not send a shudder down any reader’s spine, then there is no spine left.
“Why did the Hamas men, upon confronting the dead body of a teenage girl start cheering? Why did they argue over who would get to decapitate a Thai guest worker they had shot, then proclaim ‘Allahu akbar,’ ‘God is most great’ with every swing at his neck? ‘Allahu akbar’ was on their lips over and over as they shot defenseless civilians, dragged corpses, and pumped round after round into the dead. There it was again on the terrorists’ return to Gaza, ‘Allahu akbar’ coming from crowds as a Hamas man pulled by the hair a battered hostage with pants bloodied around her groin … . During the music-festival massacre, a terrorist paused to put a bullet through each of the porta-potties lest a single girl escape.”
I regret that you had to read the above excerpt in these pages. The parts left out about the acts of Hamas were far more hideous and barbaric “Allahu akbar!” God is great but this was not God. This was the work of evil spinning up from the dark hearts of men who have, over eons of inherited hatred, let their politics take the place of God. Some in our nation are at risk of doing the same.
It is this that masses of American college students now support with misinformed, misguided, and inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric masked as concern for the Palestinian people — many of whom are not at all enamored of the Hamas terrorists in their midst using them as human shields. I am all for supporting Palestine. The free world must help them become free of Hamas. The good people of Palestine are as much held hostage by Hamas as the men, women and children chained up in Hamas tunnels to be used as political pawns.
Salvation and Freedom Are Both from The Jews
When I told a priest-friend about the title I was choosing for this post his knee-jerk reaction was, “Are you crazy? Don’t you think ‘they’ can get to you?” I wonder who ‘they’ are. The words of my title — “Salvation Is from the Jews” — were spoken by Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of Saint John, Chapter 4, Verse 22.
The setting is a field in Samaria at a place that came to be known to Jews as “Jacob’s Well.” Tradition has it located at the foothills of Mount Gerazim, a sacred site of Samaritan worship. In New Testament times (First Century AD) the Samaritans were considered heretical and hostile to the Jews who returned that hostility with some of their own. The people of Samaria were separatist Jews who had lived in exile for centuries, a history that I described in “The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God.”
The disciples of Jesus were shocked (John Chapter 4) to discover him conversing with a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans then were only semi-Jewish whose Scriptures were limited to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible known as the “Books of Moses.” The Samaritans knew nothing of the Prophets, the Psalms, the Wisdom literature, the struggles of Judaism, or the Davidic Kingdom and its promised Messianic return. The Jewish-Samaritan disdain for each other is evident in the irony highlighted by Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). The Samaritan in the famous Parable aided a robbed and beaten Jewish traveler when a priest and Levite, honored members of the traveler’s own faith, were barred by ritual laws from doing so.
It was also evident in the dialogue between Jesus and the woman of Samaria set at Jacob’s Well near Mount Gerazim. Jesus instructed her: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” (John 4:22) This was so in God’s Covenants with Noah, Abraham, and Moses, but it was not to stay that way. Christianity arose with Jesus himself upon whom salvation now rests. That is a theological truth, but it does not change the historical truth that Jesus conveyed to the woman of Samaria.
“Salvation is from the Jews.” Saint John’s Gospel reports that “many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony... . So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them ... and many more believed because of his word.”
— John 4:39-42
Freedom also comes from the Jews. Freedom is more than a right that enables and tolerates hapless student protests against what they clearly do not understand. Freedom is the right to live unencumbered by any will beyond your own, and your legitimate government’s, and your Creator’s. The journey to freedom of every enslaved people since the Exodus from Egypt is rooted in the freedom from bondage won for the Jews by the Hand of God.
Higher education in the United States is nothing if not predictable in the current age. The age of tolerance now opts for a select body of lies that many more clear-headed people might describe as “woke,” the newest trendy measure of orthodoxy. Steven Stalinsky, Executive Director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, described the fallout in “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests” in The Wall Street Journal (April 23, 2024):
“At Columbia University, demonstrators chanted support for terrorist organizations [while] burning the American flag and waving Hezbollah’s. They called for Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades to attack again, and taunted Jewish students with ‘Never forget the 7th of October,’ and ‘That will happen 10,000 more times.’ Three men interrupted the Easter Vigil at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York unfurling a banner while shouting, ‘Free Palestine.’”
They also called for humanitarian aid, not for Palestine, but for the protesters themselves. They also demanded unquestioned passage of the Green New Deal, and free pizza.
The protesters at Columbia University in New York City, like those in many other protests, wore masks or face shields so they could remain anonymous. So much for the courage of their convictions. When Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan approached several of them for an interview, they each declined, one by one, saying “I’m not trained.”
Trained by whom?
+ + +
This young Thai guest worker was shot three times by Hamas terrorists while trying to save other Thai workers on October 7, 2023. Interviewed in his hospital bed in Tel Aviv, he said: “I want the people of Israel to know that they are in my thoughts and prayers all the time.”
+ + +
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for bravely reading and boldly sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Thailand’s Victims of Hamas in Israel
The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
After Eight Years in Exile Fr William Graham Is Credibly Innocent
Fr William Graham of the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota was falsely accused and cast out in 2016 after his bishop deemed a nearly 40-year-old claim to be “credible.”
Fr William Graham of the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota was falsely accused and cast out in 2016 after his bishop deemed a nearly 40-year-old claim to be “credible.”
May 1, 2024 by Fr William Graham with an Introduction by Fr Gordon MacRae.
“Now have salvation and power come … for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accused them day and night before God. They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”
— Revelation 12:10-11
From Fr Gordon MacRae: Some of our readers might have passed over my recent post, “Pop Stars and Priests: Michael Jackson and the Credible Standard.” Much more than the strange story of Michael Jackson, that post was really about the much stranger story of Catholic priests falsely accused. Commenter James Anderson wrote of it, “This article is the best ever on your false conviction.” The matter of falsely accused Catholic priests has received some increased attention of late, but not nearly enough to counter the vast media bias that grew and festered through news of the scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood since the moral panic of 2002.
In my post linked above, I wrote of a development in my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire. A press release from the diocese has indicated that more names of long deceased priests have been added to a published list of the merely accused. The previous standard of “credibly accused” has now evolved to include everyone accused with no apparent investigation whatsoever. We published about the grave injustice posed by this practice in another post, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.”
Also in recent years, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has published a good deal about the rights of priests and why those rights must be defended within the Church. Another excellent source of commentary built upon justice is The Media Report hosted by writer David F. Pierre, Jr. Back in 2019, he sent a title and link into our Inbox: Two Falsely Accused Priests Fight Back and Win! In the matter of one priest in the Diocese of Duluth, MN, Dave Pierre summarized a development that caught my attention back then:
We are pleased to report that a Minnesota appeals court recently upheld a $13,500 jury award to Rev. William C. Graham after the jury found that an accuser had falsely accused him.
As we reported last year, the accuser was represented by the notorious law firm of Jeff Anderson, and Anderson's sleazy lawyer, Mike Finnegan, lied to the media that there was somehow a "split verdict" in the jury's decision.
But a woman on the jury wrote a letter blasting Finnegan's characterization of the verdict and added that there was "no proof" that any abuse occurred. Good for her.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new trend. When folks lie to courts claiming they were abused by priests, the priests should countersue, naming names. Justice demands it.
The slowly evolving matter of justice for Father William Graham finally came to a conclusion just days ago when Father Graham’s removal from ministry was overturned by the Vatican for lack of any credible evidence. Father Graham has been restored as pastor to the very parish from which he was removed unjustly eight years ago, and exiled from any priestly ministry, barred from even identifying himself as a priest. It comes as a great and triumphant irony that Father William Graham is now restored as pastor of Saint Michael the Archangel Parish, a parish named to honor the Patron Saint of Justice. Here is Father Graham’s first homily upon his return sent to me just days ago.
+ + +
Father William Graham on the Road to Emmaus
Well, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted ... Thank you. I’ve been working on that line for the last 95 months.
The old gospel hymn describes what I see here today: “When all God’s children get together, what a time, what a time, what a time!” And what a wonderful sight this is to me: all of us together again around book and table, thanking God for the gift of Christ, remembering and celebrating that the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. Vatican II teaches us that: “the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the Paschal Mystery: reading those things ‘which were in all the scriptures concerning Him’ (Luke 24:27), celebrating the Eucharist in which ‘the victory and triumph of His death are again made present,’ and at the same time giving thanks ‘to God for His unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. 9:15) in Christ Jesus, ‘in praise of His glory’ (Eph. 1:12), through the power of the Holy Spirit. To accomplish so great a work, Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations.’
We are much like those disciples who, on the road to Emmaus, met Jesus. He was made known to them as He is made known to us: in the telling of the stories and in the breaking of the bread. Those disciples shared the agony of the passion and death of Jesus. We, too, have suffered as the Body of Christ, broken, but called to new life and renewed hope.
You and I have been through a terrible, traumatizing experience. I was falsely accused and denied both justice and mercy by our local Church. A number of folks have asked why I didn’t just quit and go away. That is not how justice is accomplished; it is not how we seek the Truth, who is Christ, and who will set us free. Doing the right thing is a demanding task. You know that. I have found the path to justice exhausting and worrisome and, let me say, very, very, very expensive. All that we have is our human dignity, and it is our obligation to assert and defend that dignity as we seek the face of God. Pope St. Leo the Great told us of that duty of ours when he said in the fifth century, “Christian: remember your dignity!”
I am deeply sorry that the pursuit of justice was so long and difficult for you here, and for me, and for all who were involved. Those who stood for justice will enjoy what the psalmist promises, that the Lord does wonders for his faithful ones, and hears us when we call upon him. Further, the light of the Lord will shine on us, and he will put gladness into our hearts (Psalm 4).
The Vatican official who made the last determination of my case spoke out on March 25. He is Archbishop Charles Scicluna, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. He told Vatican Media that “The pope very often repeats this phrase: ‘When one of us suffers, we all suffer.’” Scicluna added, “If there is this attitude of solidarity, if there is the thirst for justice of which Jesus speaks, but also the will to do good, then the law becomes a living instrument, otherwise, like all laws, it could remain a dead letter.”
I am grateful for the Church’s laws and courts. I received no justice, no comfort and no word of mercy from the Diocese of Duluth during my long ordeal, and often told the bishop, and the previous bishop, that Psalm 31 speaks to my pain: “I am like a dead man, forgotten, like a thing thrown away.”
Pope Paul VI told us that if we want peace, we must work for justice. We who seek Christ among us must understand that justice is the first virtue of both Church and civilization. Without justice, we have no future or no hope. I am grateful to the Vatican, my legal team, my family and friends, and many of the members of this parish, and many former members, who insisted that justice be done. We cannot walk away from injustice and hope that the universe will fix it. Our mission is to build the Reign of God among us; we cannot do so if we ignore the demands of justice. Justice is first and obligatory; we are bound to seek justice; we are called to do charity. Jesus Himself tells us in today’s Gospel passage why we pursue justice, no matter the cost. Remember that the two disciples who had encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus were telling the others about their experience. “While they were still speaking about this, [Jesus] stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” They were terrified, thinking He was a ghost. When they recognized Jesus, He ate with them, and said:
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name to all the nations,
beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”
Christ “claims dominion over all creation,
that He may present to [the] almighty Father,
an eternal and universal kingdom:
a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace.”
— Preface of Christ the King
We, you and I, are called to be men and women of peace, in imitation of Jesus, with whom we are on the road, and whose Spirit gathers us to Himself. Here at St. Michael’s, our immediate task will be to pray together and listen to each other with the ears of our hearts. After that, we will ask each other, Where do we go from here? We can’t have a plan or an agenda yet, but we will move to healing and peace, reconciliation, cooperation with grace, “Proclaiming the Gospel in Word, Sacrament, and Service” (Parish Mission Statement 2015).
I have heard that some say that this is a time for mourning, or grief or grieving. I do not say that. I say that this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it.
May The One who began this good work in us bring it to completion in the day of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
+ + +
Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this landmark post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed
Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write on the Ground?
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Claire Dion Has Fallen into the Hands of the Living God
Our great friend, Claire Dion, succumbed to cancer early on April 26, 2024. She passed peacefully in the presence of her family into the hands of the Living God.
Our great friend, Claire Dion, succumbed to cancer early on April 24, 2024. She passed peacefully in the presence of her family into the hands of the Living God.
April 29, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae
“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
— Colossians 3:3
It is rare that I publish more than one post a week. However, I could not let this opportunity pass to acknowledge Mrs. Claire Dion for her undaunted efforts over many years to help bring our posts to you every week. I wrote a tribute to Claire posted on April 3, 2024 entitled, “In a Mirror Dimly: Divine Mercy in Our Darker Days.” Claire played many roles in my life and in the life of our friend Pornchai Max Moontri in ways both innovative and heroic. I have spent much time pondering, in the past few days, how we could ever continue on without her.
But we must, and Claire would be the first to insist that we must. She was and is one of the most selfless souls ever to cross my path. A Mass of Christian Burial is to be offered for Claire on the day this is posted, April 29, 2024. The Mass will be at Saint Pius V Catholic Church in Lynn, Massachusetts in the very neighborhood in which I grew up. You may read all about Claire, and our hopes and fears for her in the winter of her life, in the post linked above.
But the memory I most want to cling to, and convey to all of you, is perhaps the most innovative thing she had done for us. It was late September of 2020 at the height of a global pandemic. After 16 years here as my friend, my roommate, and my family, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri was taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin the long and painful ordeal of deportation to his native Thailand. Prison life was beset by a panicked and draconian response to Covid, and it seemed much of the world had come to a screeching halt. Here is how I presented this story a few weeks ago:
The Divine Mercy Phone Calls
In 2020, Pornchai was held for five months in ICE detention at an overcrowded, for-profit facility in Louisiana. It was the height of the global Covid pandemic, and we were completely cut off from contact with each other. But Claire could receive calls from either of us. I guess raising five daughters made her critically aware of the urgent necessity of telephones and the importance of perceiving in advance every attempt to circumvent the rules.
Claire devised an ingenious plan using two cell phones placed facing each other with their speakers in opposite positions. On a daily basis during the pandemic of 2020, I could talk with Pornchai in ICE detention in Louisiana and he could talk with me in Concord, New Hampshire. These brief daily phone calls were like a life preserver for Pornchai and became crucial for us both. Through them, I was able to convey information to Pornchai that gave him daily hope in a long, seemingly hopeless situation.
Each step of the way, Claire conveyed to me the growing depth of her devotion to Divine Mercy and the characters who propagated it, characters who became our Patron Saints and upon whom we were modeling our lives. Saints John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, Padre Pio, Faustina Kowalska, Therese of Lisieux, all became household names for us. They were, and are, our spiritual guides, and became Claire’s as well by sheer osmosis.
Neither Pornchai Max nor I will ever forget Claire, but what we will both most remember with gratitude in our hearts and thanksgiving to the Lord for the graces bestowed to us through Claire is the clever and innovative story described above. It was unorthodox, but she saved the day for us both.
If you would like to post a prayer or thought about Claire, or condolence to her family, you are invited to do so at this site.
+ + +
Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Please pray for Claire and her family. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.
In a Mirror Dimly: Divine Mercy in Our Darker Days
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Pop Stars and Priests: Michael Jackson and the Credible Standard
The late Michael Jackson settled one abuse claim for $20 million but supporters maintain his innocence. A Catholic priest is ruined for life just for being accused.
The late Michael Jackson settled one abuse claim for $20 million but supporters maintain his innocence. A Catholic priest is ruined for life just for being accused.
April 24, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Daniel Kahneman died last month on March 27, 2024. Just as Beyond These Stone Walls was beginning, I was asked by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, to write an article for the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst. Published in July 2009, my article was “Due Process for Accused Priests.” It began with a revelation about the work of Daniel Kahneman, a noted psychologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in a phenomenon known as “availability bias.”
As a result of availability bias, humans tend to replace their beliefs with the crowd’s beliefs simply because a proposition has been repeated in the media and presented as widely believed. We are subjected to subtle cues of social pressure every day in marketing that convince many people to purchase things they don’t really need. We also face subtle cues and social pressure in the daily bombardment of news stories that cause many people to believe something based solely on its prevalence in the media. It is indeed possible that Michael Jackson and many Catholic priests became the subjects of classic, media-fueled availability bias.
In his 2011 bookThinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman laid out the foundations of what a stream of availability bias might look like:
“An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by ‘availability entrepreneurs,’ individuals or organizations who seek to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a ‘heinous cover-up’”
— Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p.142
Does this not sound like exactly what has taken place in the early days of the priesthood crisis? In that arena, the “availability entrepreneurs” were composed largely of contingency lawyers and groups like SNAP, which I once exposed in “David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”
One of the conclusions of “availability bias” widely touted in the media is that statutes of limitation for lawsuits should be extended or discarded because it takes victims of sexual abuse many years or decades to come forward. The prison system in which I have spent the last 30 years houses nearly 3,000 prisoners. Estimates of those convicted of sexual offenses account for about 40 percent of them. This translates into a population of approximately 1,200 offenders in this one prison who stand convicted of sexual crimes, most true but some not. In addition to these 1,200 men, thousands more are currently on parole in New Hampshire as “registered” sexual offenders.
Only one among these thousands is a convicted Catholic priest, and if you have been paying attention at all, then you know that his conviction has been widely called into serious doubt. The thousands of other men convicted of sexual abuse are accused parents, grandparents, step-parents, foster parents, uncles, teachers, ministers, scout leaders, and so on, and for them the typical time lapse between abuse and the victim reporting it has been measured in weeks or months, not years — and certainly not decades.
My own diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, in just the last month has provided a six-figure settlement to the accuser of a long deceased priest accused in a claim from 52 years ago. Even the lawyer involved admitted in a press report that “No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but … it is important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process,” which in this case involves a whole lot of money, forty percent of which goes to that attorney. In their own statement, Church officials said, “The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when the abuse occurred.” I live in a place with men some of whom have taken lives for far less money than that provided by my diocese to those who falsely took my reputation and freedom.
A simultaneous press release came under the title “Diocese of Manchester Adds to List of Clergy Accused of Sexual Abuse of a Minor.” Accuracy in language is important here. The press release continued, “The Diocese of Manchester added three priests to its list of clergy accused of sexual abuse.” Note that the usual term “credibly accused” is missing from these reports. Even that weakest of standards seems to have been discarded in favor of discarding priests who are merely “accused.” Ryan A. MacDonald wrote of the risks that such published lists pose to priests. His eye-opening article was, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.”
Pop Stars and Priests
I kicked a hornets’ nest some years ago when I wrote an article in response to a quote from actress Marlo Thomas who suggested in some published forum that the best American role model for middle school age boys might be singer Michael Jackson. I scoffed in my own response why the suggestion was ridiculous for many reasons, not least being the taint of sexual abuse claims against him.
Despite being acquitted in a criminal trial, Michael Jackson settled a single claim of sexual abuse for a reported $20 million, and untold millions settled other claims against him. When Michael Jackson died, he was celebrated as a cultural icon of the entertainment industry. In contrast, an American bishop, under pressure from a victims’ group, reportedly ordered the remains of a posthumously accused priest exhumed from a diocesan cemetery and reinterred elsewhere.
My point was not that I thought Michael Jackson was guilty. It was that for many fans the claims and sett1ements did not destroy his name. He was acquitted at trial, so if there was any evidence at all a jury did not find it persuasive. Some people conclude that, despite acquittal in a criminal trial, Michael Jackson’s multi-million dollar settlement of civil lawsuits was itself evidence of guilt. I’ll get back to that point.
Catherine Coy, a fan and advocate of Michael Jackson, sent a shot across my bow back then for suggesting any connection between settlements and credible accusations. I knew I was in for it when Ms. Coy began her message with “You, of all people …!” Actually, when Catherine Coy and I listened to each other, we came to a sort of detente if not agreement. In a 2005 article, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud” (Catalyst, Nov. 2005), I detailed the relationship between mediated settlements and claims against Catholic priests. Did Michael Jackson become vulnerable to the same media-generated shroud under which claims against priests were seen as “credible?”
Catherine Coy insisted that in spite of monetary settlements, Jackson had never had a “credible” claim of sexual abuse lodged against him. That statement might evoke a dismissive “Yeah, right!” in some corners, but not in mine.
Why did so many people presume the worst of Mr. Jackson? It certainly wasn’t evidence. It is more of a spontaneous response, and one that is very similar to what happens when priests are accused and maintain their innocence. This is the point predicted by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. The mere news media repetition of sordid stories about Michael Jackson and Catholic priests took on such prevalence in the news media that they became an unconscious bias against both. When the Catholic bishops of the United States refer to a 20-, or 30- or 40-year-old claim against a priest as “credible” they mean only that they have determined that both the priest and the accuser lived in the same community in the time period alleged.
Michael and I in The Wall Street Journal
Catherine Coy was right. I, of all people, should have seen the analogy instantly. Ms. Coy wrote “There isn’t a person alive who could have withstood the onslaught of lies, innuendo and slander that was heaped on Jackson for well over 20 years.” On that score, I beg to differ, but I see her point.
The very association of Michael Jackson’s name with the bizarre proclivity attributed to him may in fact be the result of media-fueled availability bias and not evidence. There is no doubt in my mind that I and many other priests have faced this same phenomenon. With no personal experience of the behaviors attributed to some accused priests, many Catholics simply adopted the point of view given them by the news media.
This does not mean that all the claims of sexual abuse by priests are false. The U.S. Bishops commissioned a formal study of the matter conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. There were really two waves in the scandal. The first was the revelations that priests were accused at the time alleged abuse happened in the 1960’s to the 1980’s, and then were quietly moved around to other parishes to avoid a public scandal. This was scandalous enough, and tragic.
The John Jay Report also revealed that a full seventy percent of the claims faced by bishops and dioceses in 2002 and following also alleged claims from the 1960’s to 1980’s, but those claims were not brought forward until 2002 when it became clear that Church institutions would settle because of the bludgeoning they took in the media. Those claims were propelled by the widely held belief that it takes victims decades to realize they were abused and report it. Lots of people now believe that, and entire states have passed legislation to accommodate that belief. However, as demonstrated in “Due Process for Accused Priests,” the “delayed reporting” principle is classic availability bias.
In June, 2005, just three months after Dorothy Rabinowitz published an explosive two-part analysis of the case against me in The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Daniel Henninger wrote a most interesting commentary as Michael Jackson’s criminal trial got underway (“Pushing the Envelope – Michael Jackson: A Freaky Culture’s Peter Pan,” June 3, 2005).
It was Daniel Henninger who first put into print what I hoped someone out there might grasp:
“[Prosecutor] Tom Sneddon may lose this case. If so, it will be because Mr. Jackson, like Kobe Bryant [and O.J. Simpson], was able to mount a defense equal to the accusatory powers of the state. Not everyone can do that. If Michael walks, I’ll wonder if any of the many convicted Catholic priests similarly charged were in fact innocent but found guilty because they couldn’t push back against the state’s relentless steamroller.”
I do not at all begrudge Michael Jackson’s having had the means to mount a defense equal to the state’s prosecution of him. Whatever he spent defending himself, it was less than the state spent trying to put him in prison. At the same time, I thought Daniel Henninger’s comment about convicted priests was just and fair, but he missed an important point. I no longer have the letter, but I wrote to Mr. Henninger shortly after his 2005 editorial. This is the gist of what I wrote:
“As a priest without the means to push back in equal measure to Michael Jackson, I must point out some factors you overlooked:
“Imagine how steeply uphill Michael Jackson’s battle would have been if twenty years passed between the alleged crime and the state’s prosecutorial steamroller rumbling into action for a trial. Imagine the state having to prove nothing while Michael Jackson’s defense tried in vain to prove that something alleged to have happened two decades earlier never happened at all.
“Then imagine Michael Jackson struggling to proclaim his innocence while the institution he served denounced him and his attempts to defend himself, seeking only the path of least resistance to settle with his accusers and rid themselves of liability at the expense of due process.
“Imagine all of this, and you will have captured the scene faced by most similarly accused Catholic priests.”
The Wall Street Journal
The aftermath of those articles in April, 2005 was most interesting. The accusers in the case against me — anxious to talk to the news media before receiving settlements — suddenly had nothing to say. one of my prosecutors had nothing to say. The other took his own life. The judge was quoted in a local news article saying, vaguely, “Review is a positive thing.” Then he took early retirement from the bench. The police detective who choreographed the case, reportedly offering bribes to potential accusers, had nothing to say and has since been exposed on a previously secret list of ethically challenged police.
After those WSJ articles about me, I expected an onslaught of defensive rhetoric from victims’ groups, prosecutors, and contingency lawyers, but it never came. The sole protest came from the most unexpected source. Father Edward Arsenault, my Bishop’s delegate and the man most involved in settlement negotiations in these cases, declared that I was found guilty in a court of law by a jury of my peers, and nothing else needed to be said. Father Arsenault denounced The Wall Street Journal and its writer as biased. Incredible!
A few years later, Msgr. Edward Arsenault was convicted of multiple counts of embezzlement, including charges of forgery and fraud, and sentenced to prison. He was subsequently dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis but now inexplicably has a new life and a new name: Edward J. Bolognini.
In 2005 just as the Catholic scandal was building up steam to rumble full speed ahead for a national contingency lawyer windfall, I did not expect that the world’s largest secular newspaper would publish so openly against the tide — or tidal wave — of typical media coverage of claims against priests while most in the Catholic media remained silent. With the exception of Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things and The Catholic League in Catalyst, and the Catholic World Report, the Catholic media — on both the left and the right — continued to remain silent about false claims against priests brought for money, or, worse, they have used the clergy scandal for some agenda of their own.
And of Michael Jackson, writing in The Nation, (“The Love We Lost”), JoAnn Wypijewski wrote that
“Ordinary rules of judgment have been suspended” in this sound-bite culture of news that shapes most peoples’ views on sex and the accused:
“[I]t cannot matter that Michael Jackson was acquitted of child molestation, since he was frequently remembered in death as a pedophile… just as it cannot matter whether others who plead guilty to a sex charge really did it, or whether evidence to convict was nonsense, or whether the guilty served their time. They can never ‘pay their debt to society.’ Guilt is the presumption, forever.”
JoAnn Wypijewski went on to describe the case of the priest convicted in a trial in which the sole “credible” evidence presented to the jury was the mere fact that he is a priest — that, and a claim of repressed and recovered memory, the legitimacy of which is always questioned when the accused is not a priest. In an all-too familiar twist, that priest’s bishop added his own sound bite by administratively dismissing the priest from the priesthood just before the sham of a trial.
JoAnn Wypijewski also bravely wrote about me just as the fiasco film, “Spotlight” was receiving its Academy Award for Public Service. Her ground-shaking article was “Oscar Hangover Special: Why "Spotlight" Is a Terrible Film.”
After what has now exceeded $4 billion in total mediated settlements nationwide, the matter of false claims is the elephant in the sacristy that no one wants to talk about. At the same time, our beleaguered Catholic bishops present case after case as “credible” despite knowing exactly what that term means and does not mean.
The “credible” standard Catherine Coy applied to Michael Jackson is admirable and hopeful. Ms. Coy’s fair-minded attitude about Michael Jackson is the polar opposite of what is now applied to Catholic priests.
There is no mechanism whatsoever beyond preserved DNA or an admission of guilt that would serve as evidence that a priest accused from decades ago is guilty. There is no investigation technique that could determine the credibility of such claims. What makes most claims against priests “credible” is the fact that someone — not them — has paid money to an accuser. Nothing else. Catholics should take note of the efforts by Michael Jackson fans to revisit credibility despite financial settlements which, in the secular world, are merely designed to make the claim go away with no statement of culpability.
For my part, I can only remember the famous scene early in Michael’s trial during which he danced on the hood of an SUV outside the court to the wild cheers of fans. Michael sure was a strange guy, but the dance gave me pause. Having been through such a trial, I know its oppression. That dance was surely the act of a delusional man …
… or perhaps an innocent one.
Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Your comments are most welcome, but they are moderated, so they may not appear instantly. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.
Due Process for Accused Priests, Catalyst, July 2009
In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
The Acquittal of O.J. Simpson and the Conviction of Father MacRae
The trial of O.J. Simpson and the trial of Fr Gordon MacRae were parallel dramas playing out on opposite sides of the U.S. in the 1990s and with opposite results.
The trial of O.J. Simpson and the trial of Fr Gordon MacRae were parallel dramas playing out on opposite sides of the U.S. in the 1990s and with opposite results.
April 17, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Editor’s Note: The above image depicts O.J. Simpson at the time of his arrest in 1994 and Father Gordon MacRae in 1983 at the time his accusations are alleged to have taken place.
+ + +
On the night of May 5, 1993, I entered into a nightmare from which I have not yet awakened. I had dinner that evening at a small Rio Rancho, New Mexico diner with two friends with whom I also shared a home and office, Father Michael Mack and Father Clyde Landry. I wrote of them once, and of the chasm of loss brought about by their sudden absence from my imprisoned life, in “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”
Minutes after arriving at home on that evening in 1993, the doorbell rang. I opened it to see two Rio Rancho police officers standing there. “We’re looking for a Gordon J. MacRae,” one said. “I am he,” I replied. “Please turn and face the wall,” said one of the officers as he placed me in handcuffs to escort me to his cruiser.
That scene, and the ones to follow that night, have replayed in my mind a thousand times since then. I was driven to the Rio Rancho Police Headquarters where Detective Arlan Norby showed me a warrant for my arrest issued weeks earlier 2,000 miles away in Keene, New Hampshire. The warrant described that I stand accused of numerous charges of sexual assault upon two adolescent males alleged to have occurred a dozen years earlier. It listed their identities only as “T.G.” and “J.G.” and I had no idea who they were.
It did not take long for the true nature of the case to surface. Detective Arlan Norby told me that he had numerous telephone conversations with Keene, NH, Detective James F. McLaughlin who was investigating these claims, and added, “This is all because your church has not been handling these cases very well.” From that moment on, I knew this would not be a simple case of truth and justice, and I was right. I was not to be the one on trial.
Within three days, I was released from custody on a personal recognizance bond ordered by a New Mexico judge, and the long, slow process of obtaining information on the case against me began. It was weeks before I learned the identities of “T.G.” and “J.G.” and when I did, I had not thought it possible. I remembered Thomas Grover and his brother, Jonathan, two Native American young men who, years earlier, had been adopted in the Keene area by Patricia and Elmer Grover who divorced after adopting eight multi-racial children. Theirs was not an easy life, but it seemed they found an easy repository for their life’s woes — that and a road to easy money.
Thomas Grover, then age 27, had a criminal record of his own for fraud, forgery, theft, and drug charges, and had pending domestic violence and assault charges. His brother, Jonathan Grover, then age 25, had been discharged from the U.S. Navy after a drunk driving arrest. Jonathan Grover had by then also accused another priest. I could not fathom then how or why these brothers would concoct such a scheme, but the rest of this story — at least, the parts we know, for there are still mysteries yet to be uncovered here — has since been published by various writers including Dorothy Rabinowitz whose summation you may read for yourself as it unfolded in “The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr Gordon MacRae.”
It took a full 18 months, and the refusal of numerous lenient plea deal offers, before the case was scheduled for trial. At one point, in a highly unusual development, the prosecution requested a six-month delay because the principal accuser, Thomas Grover, had become uncooperative. It was later learned that he rebelled because he was told that I refused a one-year plea deal. He had apparently been assured that there would be no trial and he could just move on to the money.
It was an irony that I had not fully considered at the time, but I had been living in New Mexico for the previous five years because I was working in ministry as Director of Admissions for the Servants of the Paraclete center for priests. Over the previous two years, the center had become notorious in both local and national news media — including “60 Minutes” which did a shameless, one-sided “gotcha” segment over the treatment of Father James Porter some twenty-five years previously, a case that was ever in the background of my trial.
Thomas and Jonathan Grover’s older brother, David, was actually the first to accuse me. A police report documented that he heard on his truck radio about eighty blanket settlements in the notorious “Father Porter” case by the Diocese of Fall River in neighboring Massachusetts in 1993. He had to pull over, he later claimed, as a flood of repressed memories of abuse suddenly emerged.
David Grover was the first to attempt the scam, claiming that he was molested by me at my parish at age twelve. It somehow became known that I was never there until two weeks before he turned 18 and joined the U.S. Army. So the process of charging me with even a semblance of possibility fell to his two younger brothers. Blatant lies are no obstacle to settlement, however. My diocese still settled with David Grover for $185,000.
This pattern has not changed since then. Even as I write this post, I have learned that my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, provided a six-figure settlement last month, when a newly emerged accusation against a long deceased priest claimed that he molested a teenager more than 50 years earlier in 1972:
“No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but the attorney representing the John Doe who was involved said it’s important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process.”
“In a statement, the Diocese of Manchester said, in part: ‘The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when the abuse occurred, through a process utilizing independent trauma-informed consultants.’”
— WMUR News, March 26, 2024
The White Bronco
I had to take a leave from my ministry with the Servants of the Paraclete center as I awaited trial, but the superiors of the Order in New Mexico asked me to remain with them throughout my ordeal. It was a courageous gesture of mercy and support for which I have only gratitude, even after all these years.
It was while living with that community that I walked into our common room a few weeks later on June 17, 1994, to see the now famous televised spectacle of a white Ford Bronco being pursued at low speed on a Los Angeles freeway by a dozen police vehicles and TV news helicopters. Ever since then, the case of O.J. Simpson seems in my memory to be the backdrop against which my own nightmare played out.
My trial, from jury selection to conviction, was over in less than two weeks because there was zero evidence for a jury to review. I was pronounced guilty in less than two hours of jury deliberation, and then sent to prison with a 67-year sentence on September 23, 1994. Most of the local news media pounced on the “priest in prison” story while ignoring the fact that I had three times been offered a sentence of one year in prison if I would plead guilty.
The O.J. Simpson trial, by contrast, stretched on for nine months, dominating the background of my entire first year in prison. It was all other prisoners ever talked about. Because the trial was televised, it seemed the only thing every prisoner watched. I did not have a television then, but I was crammed into a cell with seven other men, and had a daily dose of the O.J. Trial whether I wanted it or not.
Still from KCLA News Los Angeles video
“If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit.”
Thanks to television, the entire nation had a front row seat to the rare drama of “The O.J. Trial.” The spectacle included the opening statements of L.A. prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden on January 24, 1995; the theatrical opening statement of defense attorney Johnny Cochran the next day, and some famous names among lawyers as F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, and Robert Shapiro joined him in O.J.’s million dollar Dream Team defense.
In the year-long spectacle, we heard L.A. Detective Mark Fuhrman grilled by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey for his suspected history of racist remarks only to later assert his Fifth Amendment right to refuse questions after tapes were played in open court. Then Attorney Robert Shapiro cross-examined Detective Vanatter about statements he allegedly made to mob informants that shed light on why the L.A. police went to the home of O.J. Simpson in the early days of the case.
We witnessed the heavily hyped scene of O.J. trying on the gloves obtained as prosecutorial evidence resulting in Johnny Cochran’s most famous sound bite to emerge from this trial “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” And we saw all of this entirely eclipse a mountain of physical and scientific forensic evidence against O.J. Simpson, including DNA evidence. But none of it mattered. None of it could defeat the theatrics.
In his closing argument before the jury, O.J. defense attorney, Johnny Cochran compared Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler. In his closing argument in my trial just a few months earlier, prosecutor Bruce Elliot Reynolds compared me to Adolf Hitler. However, my attorney had already left the trial and was not there to object.
On October 2, 1995, after a trial that presented mountainous evidence over the course of nine months, the O.J. Trial jury reached a verdict in just three hours. It was one of the most watched moments in American television history. From my prison cell, having served a year in prison with just sixty-six left to go for crimes that never took place and for which there was no evidence at all, I heard the O.J. verdict: “not guilty” on both counts of murder.
Book cover by Graymalkin Media. Photo by AFP
Now Comes Marcia Clark
Three years after the O.J. Trial ended, with me still in prison, I received a letter from the studios of Mark Phillips Films and Television in Los Angeles. Here’s the entire letter dated January 15, 1998:
“Dear Father MacRae: I work for former Los Angeles prosecutor Marcia Clark. She is doing a primetime special for FOX Broadcasting Network which will air at 9:00 PM on Monday, February 16, 1998. Through the National Justice Committee I heard about your story. I talked with Mark Phillips, the Executive Producer of the show, about your case. He in turn talked with the executives at FOX about profiling your story on our special, and they want to feature your story on our show.
“Basically what we are doing in this one-hour, one-on-one interview show with Marcia Clark is to send her wherever the story is. She would do a sit-down interview with you. The interview would end with you taking a polygraph test. I understand you have taken several polygraphs in this case, and have passed them.
“We want to profile your story in a more positive light. It is obvious to us that an injustice has occurred in your case, and through profiling your story we want to get the word out that justice has not been served, and that there is an innocent man sitting in prison who should be free. By getting your story out, people will think twice about blindly accepting charges brought by one person against another person in your situation.”
— Letter of January 15, 1998 from Mark Phillips Films & Television
I accepted Marcia Clark’s invitation immediately, though I added that my accusers should also cooperate with polygraph (lie detector) tests. This had been proposed a number of times, but none of my accusers or their attorneys would even acknowledge similar invitations to take a polygraph or respond to questions. When a former FBI agent investigating the case found and approached accuser Thomas Grover at the Hualapai Tribal Reservation in Arizona where he is hiding, all he would say is “I want a lawyer.” Where I live, pretty much everyone knows what “I want a lawyer” means.
But to make a long story shorter, the 1998 Marcia Clark program was a dead end. New Hampshire officials blocked the plan and would not allow FOX to conduct an on-camera interview, nor would they allow the polygraph expert to test me. Fox executives sent an appeal to then Governor Jeanne Shaheen (now U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH) who responded in a letter dated January 31, 1998:
“I understand your company’s interest in an on-camera interview with Gordon J MacRae, who is currently an inmate in the New Hampshire State Prison, however I will not interfere with the decision not to allow media access to Mr. MacRae.”
So the Constitution, the First Amendment, and Freedom of the Press all took a back seat to some hidden agenda. The interest of Marcia Clark, however, is the real reason I am writing of this today. Perhaps the overture would have been different after the fall of the priesthood in the revelations of 2002 and 2003 which managed to squash all other media courage — except that of Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal — in seeing both sides of this story.
In the trial of O.J. Simpson, Marcia Clark saw justice fail in a very big way as a prosecutor trying to bring justice to two murdered victims in Los Angeles. Just three years later, for her to even attempt to bring justice to another high profile story when the rest of the media world was just spitting on it is, for me, a sign of real courage and integrity that is sorely lacking in most of the news media today.
In 2016, twenty one years after the O.J. Trial, the FX cable television network broadcast American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, a dramatic presentation of the trial. The series was built upon a factual publication of CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin entitled, The Run of His Life. It was a serious effort with an impressive cast including Academy Award-winning actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, Sarah Paulson as prosecutor Marcia Clark, and John Travolta, Nathan Lane, and Courtney B. Vance as defense attorneys Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, and Johnny Cochran respectively.
Executive Producer Nina Jacobson promised that “looking back at O.J. helps us understand the world we live in now — 20 years later.” Well, Nina, the world I live in now 30 years later makes me want to turn the channel and run for cover. Justice is not served, then or now.
So my first thought was that I’d rather have a root canal than relive the O.J. Trial! But in a saner, quieter moment, I came to the only conclusion possible. How could I NOT watch? Maybe someone else in the media will catch the example of the likes of Marcia Clark and Dorothy Rabinowitz and grow a spinal column.
O.J. Simpson passed away from cancer at the age of 76 on April 10, 2024, the day after my 71st birthday in my 30th year in prison.
+ + +
Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this timely post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :
In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List
Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”