Our Holy Week Retreat for Beyond These Stone Walls

Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16), Matthias Grunewald in the Musee Unterlinden, Collmar, France

Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.

March 20, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae

As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. Born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider instead its legacy. Many posts in my long Prison Journal since 2010 have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:

“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”

And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight to write a post about the Passion of the Christ. I compose a new Holy Week post every year since to present a different scene in the Way of the Cross. For me, this has become a sacred obligation as a priest to take part in my own unique way in the events that led to Calvary and beyond. And, yes, there IS a beyond.

Many readers, especially those who have also suffered in ways large or small, have found these posts to be inspiring. No one has been more surprised by this than me. So we have collected our Holy Week posts in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative to become an invitation for a personal retreat. We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance.

If any of them touches your heart and soul in some way, or gives you a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, then please also share a link to them with others. I hear from many newer readers who first came to this blog in just that way, and then found in these pages spiritual consolation and a path to peace.

We will add a new post on Wednesday of Holy Week this year and will make the title linked here, active at that time. We will retain these links at our “Special Post” feature until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage (2020)

Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.

Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light (2020)

The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.

Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane (2019)

The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.

The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ (2024)

The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands (2014)

‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ (2017)

The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.

Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross (2023)

Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found (2012)

Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.

To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell (2022)

The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, what happened to Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection, is a mystery to be unveiled.

Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb (2015)

History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.

Before the gates there sat, On either side a formidable Shape

One of Gustave Dore’s illustrations of the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton (Courtesy of University at Buffalo)

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.”

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

In 1989, Pope John Paul II added a new title to honor Saint Joseph. As “Guardian of the Redeemer” Joseph’s dream set us on a path from spiritual exile to Divine Mercy.

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

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

It’s difficult to believe, but it was just eleven years ago, March 13, 2013 that Pope Francis was elected to the Chair of Peter. In the previous month we had news from Rome that, for many, felt like one of those asteroids had struck at the very heart of the Church. I wrote a series of posts about this in the last week of February and the first few weeks of March 2013. The first was “Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

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

But then they became hurricane winds and tidal waves. Amid all the conspiracy theories and “fake news” about Pope Benedict’s decision to abdicate the papacy, I suggested an “alternative fact” that proved to be true. His decision was a father’s act of love, and his intent was to do the one thing by which all good fathers are measured. His decision was an act of sacrifice, and the extent to which that is true was made clear in a post I wrote several years later, “Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.” Benedict was firm that he was guided by the Holy Spirit.

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

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

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

— Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 2016

Benedict the Beloved also wrote back then from the Oort Cloud, but it is one that he cast himself into. I have always hoped I might run into him out here one day and I might have. His testament ended with these final, surprising words:

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

Carnage in the Absence of Fathers

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

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

So, I did write about it, and it struck a nerve. “In the Absence of Fathers A Story of Elephants and Men” has been shared over 30,000 times on social media and reposted in hundreds of venues. It seemed to awaken readers to the wreckage left behind as fathers and fatherhood are devalued into absence in our society. I am a daily witness to the shortsighted devastation of young lives that are cast off into prisons in a country that can no longer call itself their fatherland.

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

I saw this carnage in a young man I once wrote about, but to whom I never returned because I wanted to shelter readers from the truth of what befell him. A light-hearted post several years ago — “Prison Journal: Looking for Lunch in All the Wrong Places” — included some of the culinary creations of other prisoners who greatly delighted in seeing them in print. One of them was a young man named Joey who made us all laugh with his recipe for a concoction called “mafungo” and his weird instructions for making it.

Joey descended into prison at age 17 as the result of a simple high school fight with another student who was injured. While in prison, he discovered the plague of opiates that is fast consuming a nation in denial. The extent to which drugs have consumed life in this prison was back then the subject of a Concord Monitor article “As drugs surge, inmate privileges nixed” (Michael Casey, Associated Press, Feb 27, 2017).

Joey reached out to me repeatedly throughout the ordeal of his imprisonment. As a member of a small group of prisoners tasked with negotiating over prison conditions, I argued for treatment over punishment when Joey’s addiction kept disrupting his life. The interventions were simply too little too late. At age 23, after six years here, Joey left prison with a serious problem that he did not come in with. Just two months after his release, Joey fatally overdosed on the street drug, fentanyl. He became a statistic, one of hundreds of overdose deaths of young adults in the city of Manchester, New Hampshire which, according to reports, led the entire nation in the rate of young adults opioid overdose deaths. If this is what President Trump meant then by “carnage,” we must face the reality that we are tightly in its grip, and the absence of fathers has been a devastating risk factor.

Now Comes Joseph, Guardian of the Redeemer

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

I had barely given Saint Joseph a passing thought for all the years of my priesthood, but in the last two years he surfaces in my psyche and soul repeatedly with great spiritual power. It haunts me that he shares his name with my young friend, Joey, who personified a life in the absence of a father, sacrificed to some south-of-the-border cartel and the carnage of our culture of death.

And it is not lost on me that he shares his name with the late Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, who in life and death personified for the Church a summons to Divine Mercy. The winter of Benedict’s own life spent in silent but loving witness to the Church reflects the life of Saint Joseph in the Infancy Narratives of the Gospel, silent but still so very present. I suddenly hear from readers constantly with a growing interest in Saint Joseph. Last Christmas, I wrote what I consider to be a most important post for our time, and a prequel to this summons to Divine Mercy. It was “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah.”

Ii was a post about love, fidelity, and sacrifice, the hallmarks of fatherhood and the foundations of Divine Mercy. And I wrote a sequel to that post which contains a painful but vital story. It was “Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents.”

These biblical stories were lived by one who remains utterly silent in the pages of the Gospel, but whose life and actions as Guardian of the Redeemer were like a trumpet call to fatherhood and sacrifice. I am hereby bestowing upon him another title. He is, Saint Joseph, “Guardian of Fatherhood Redeemed.”

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Note Number 1 from Father Gordon MacRae: On occasion the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, stewards of The National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, send me a book from their own publishing house that they would like to see reviewed at Beyond These Stone Walls. We have featured several of them over time, but the last one they sent is a real treasure, and here it is: Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father, by Father Donald H. Calloway, MIC.

Please also note that the beautiful top graphic for this post is “Saint Joseph and the Christ Child” by Jacob Zumo (2019). It was commissioned by Father Donald H. Calloway, MIC for inclusion in Consecration to Saint Joseph. This and other wondrous works of art are available at Art By JZumo.

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Note Number 2 from Father Gordon MacRae: Some years ago his Eminence Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke wrote to me in prison. It was a personal letter which in many ways was a gift of Divine Mercy and Divine Compassion. Now he has invited me to take part in a worldwide call to prayer, Return to Our Lady through devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a nine-month novena. Here is Cardinal Burke’s invitation to us. I have subscribed for the good of our Church, and I hope you will join me.

Tap or click the image.

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.”

Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?

The Woman Taken in Adultery, William Blake, c. 1805

“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?,” asked the Pharisees.

March 6, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

In the three-year cycle of Scripture Readings for Catholic Mass, the Eighth Chapter of the Gospel of John (8:1-11), the story of the woman caught in adultery, is assigned to the Fifth Sunday of Lent for one of those three years. This year it is the Gospel for the day after, March 18, 2024. It is an important story and one of the most cited passages of the Gospel. It is also one of the most popularly misunderstood. Having myself been stoned in the public square, I have long been intrigued and inspired by the deeper meaning of this account.

But before we travel into the depths of that wondrous account, Holy Week is coming, and that means some in the news media are already preparing for their traditional Easter Season stoning of your faith by the hyping and re-airing of Catholic scandal. The spurious tradition in our secular news media has already begun. Not much has changed since I last wrote of our experience of this annual media stoning in a 2022 post entitled, “Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.” We will link to it again at the end of this post. The media’s Holy Week hot seat when I first was inspired to write it was occupied by Pope Benedict XVI. I wrote it because Pope Benedict and I had both been subjected to a stoning in the public square at about the same time.

Stoning was the most common method of execution in ancient Israel, and was seen as the community’s “purging the evil from its midst” (Deuteronomy 21:21). Stoning was imposed as both a punishment and a deterrent for a number of crimes against the community including idolatry (Deut 17:5), blasphemy (Leviticus 24: 14-16), child sacrifice (Lev 20:2), sorcery (Lev 20:27), adultery (Deut 22:13-24), and being “a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey” (Oh, for the good old days of Deut 22:18)! That latter example reminds me of a post card I received years ago from my mother on vacation in her native Newfoundland:

“Dear Son: Newfoundland is as beautiful as I remember it. Right now I am standing at Redcliff, a 100-foot precipice where Newfoundland mothers of old would take their most troublesome sons and threaten to heave them over the edge. Wish you were here. Love, Mom.”

It is interesting that in that latter case — the stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey — the stoning was carried out by all the men of the community (Deut 21:21), and only the men. In each case, the punishment of stoning always took place outside of town. More importantly — and this has a bearing on the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11 — the first stones could be cast only by firsthand witnesses of the offense. And the punishment could be imposed only when there were two or more such witnesses. “A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness” (Deut 17 6).

The Story’s Place in Scripture

The sources and limits of stoning in the Hebrew Scriptures present a necessary backdrop for a fuller understanding of John 7:53-8:11, the story of a woman caught in adultery. It’s best to let Saint John tell it:

“Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple, all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in their midst they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?’ This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. But when they heard this they went away one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus looked up and said to her, ‘Where are they? Is there no one to condemn you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”

— John 7:53-8:11

The placement of this account in Scripture has endured a long controversy. The story is believed by some Scripture scholars to be an ‘agraphon,’ a source of authentic sayings of Jesus that survived orally, then became part of the written canon of Scripture toward the end of the Apostolic age. Two well known Catholic Scripture scholars — Sulpician Father Raymond Brown and Jesuit Father George W. MacRae (my late uncle) — were among those who defended that this story is both authentic and canonical despite the controversy about where it lands in the text.

The controversy itself is fascinating. It seems that some ancient versions of the Gospel of John did not contain this story, but an early text of the Gospel of Luke did. It was found in an early version of Saint Luke’s Gospel after Luke 21:38 and before Luke, Chapter 22.

“And every day he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet. And early in the morning, all the people came to him in the temple to hear him.”

— Luke 21:37-38

In the very next verse (Luke 22:1) the chief priests and the scribes began a conspiracy to kill Jesus. “Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot who was of the number of the Twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests how he might betray him to them. And they were glad, and engaged to give him money.” (Luke 22:3-5) So it seems that the Gospel accounts of the woman caught in adultery may have originally appeared in Scripture in the Gospel of Luke just prior to Satan entering into Judas and the plot to kill Jesus, which will be the subject of our Holy Week post this year. These accounts go to the very heart of our Catholic understanding of sin, redemption and grace.

For some scholars, the story of the woman caught in adultery may have been originally placed in between these verses. The Lord’s defeat of the nefarious intentions of the Pharisees, and his ability to use their own laws against them, may have been the trigger that set his arrest in motion. But instead this account ended up somehow in the Gospel of John, the last of the Gospel texts to come into written form at the end of the Apostolic age. Outside of Sacred Scripture, the historian, Josephus, mentions the account, but mentions it in reference to the Gospel of Saint Luke. For me, this little side road into the examination of texts and origins does not in itself question whether the text is canonical — that is, an authentic event in the life and sayings of Jesus, and an inspired Scriptural text.

For Fathers Raymond Brown and George W. MacRae (and his nephew), there is simply no reason to doubt this. But I will add one factor that the scholars may not have considered. The very idea that this story may have somehow become separated from one tradition (the Lucan tradition) only to end up in another (the Johannine tradition) is evidence of the importance of the story for the Gospel. It seems a divine determination to ensure that this story comes to us regardless of where it ended up in the Gospel narrative.

The Woman Taken in Adultery, Rembrandt, 1644 (cropped)

The Cast of Characters

The presence of the Pharisees, and their intentions in this story, call to mind a well-known parable from the Gospel of Luke, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (10:25-37). In both that account and the account of the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John (John 8), Jesus is confronted by a Pharisee with a question. In both cases, the purpose of the question is not to learn from Jesus, but to entrap him in a corner from which he cannot emerge. In both cases, Jesus turns the table on his questioner in a checkmate.

In the account of the woman caught in adultery above, the Pharisee seems to have laid a more solid trap. “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?” Jesus and the Pharisee both know that the Roman Empire has occupied Palestine. One of its many imposed laws is that the death penalty for crimes must be imposed and enforced only under Roman law and not under local custom. The Pharisees, therefore, could not execute the woman as the law of Moses prescribes. It is for this same reason that the High Priest, Caiaphas, had to hand Jesus, accused of blasphemy, over to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. The prohibition is mentioned later in John:

“Pilate said to them, ‘take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.’ The Jews said to him, ‘It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.’”

— John 18:31

And so part of the trap is laid using both the Law of Moses and the politics of Rome: “This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.” If Jesus openly concurs with the law of Moses about the penalty for adultery laid down in the Book of Deuteronomy (22:22) then the Pharisees can charge him with sedition for subverting the laws of Rome. If Jesus openly forbids the stoning, the Pharisees can use that to discredit him with his disciples as a false Messiah who contradicts the law of Moses.

The response of Jesus seems very odd. Instead of replying at all, he simply bends down and writes with his finger on the ground (John 8:6). Centuries of Scriptural wrangling have been devoted to what he could have written. What Jesus inscribed on the earth is entirely unknown, but it may well be that the act of writing on the ground — and not the content of the writing — is itself the point. What may be happening here — and some Patristic authors agree — is that Jesus uses the authority of the Prophets to undo the Pharisee’s trap using the authority of the Law. The gesture of writing on the ground may have recalled for them the Prophet Jeremiah:

“Those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.”

— Jeremiah 17:31

Just a few verses earlier in the Gospel (John 7:38), Jesus identified himself as the fountain of living water: “He who believes in me … out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.” Thus Jesus may well have been inscribing into the ground the very names of the Pharisees standing before him. Then Jesus did something equally odd. He stood and said, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” It strikes me as immense irony that the only person without sin in that gathering is Jesus himself, the one posing this counter-challenge.

This challenge of Jesus — about who is to cast the first stone at her — also recalls a law these Pharisees would know well. Deuteronomy (17:7) prohibits anyone but a firsthand witness to the crime — and there must be at least two such witnesses — from casting the first stone. So the befuddled Pharisees look at each other, wondering which of them is about to implicate himself in this adulterous offense against the law of Moses, and, if he casts the stone, implicate himself in an offense against the law of Rome.

As Jesus stooped a second time to continue his writing on the ground, the Pharisees left one by one, “beginning with the eldest.” That is another way of saying “beginning with the wisest” among them, for they were the first to catch on that their trap had not only been sprung by Jesus, but actually turned round in a way that entraps them. Once again, Jesus has exposed their duplicity and thoroughly frustrated their plans, a trend that will eventually land him before Pilate.

Thus being the sole person present without sin, and under his own terms the only one qualified to stone her, Jesus assures the woman with an act of Divine Mercy:

“‘Where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.’”

— John 8:10-11

It is the perfect Lenten story. Christ is the fountain of living water, the source of the Spirit poured out upon the world, and he is simultaneously the source of mercy poured out for those who come to know and profess the truth about Him — and about ourselves. In the very next verse in the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke to the assembled crowd as the Pharisees were departing: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You might like these three related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition

Stones for Pope Benedict and Rust on the Wheels of Justice

A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe

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An Important Announcement from His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke:

Tap or click the image.

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.”

If Night Befalls Your Father, You Don’t Discard Him! You Just Don’t!

There is another scandal in the Catholic Church just under the radar. It is what happens after Father is accused, and it would never happen if he were your father.

February 28, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Back in the summer of 2011 in Massachusetts, Independence Day brought dismal news for devoted Catholics already bent under the millstone of scandal. On that morning I turned on New England Cable News to learn that a forty-two year old Massachusetts priest ordained only six years, had taken his own life. It was heartbreaking, and I know his family must have been devastated. However, I feared that far too many in his other family — the Catholic Church — had so steeled themselves against the relentless tide of painful news that such a tragedy was just part of another news day. That was an even greater tragedy. If you have never read my article, “The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul,” about the suicide of a priest I knew, please do. I wish this priest, and his diocesan family had read it. It may have helped him to seek another way to deal with whatever immense pain brought him to this horrific act. I have been where he was in the final moments of his life. I wrote about surviving that painful day in “How Father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night.”

I do not know the particular anguish of that young priest in 2011. He died sometime the previous Saturday night after celebrating Mass and then ministering to a family in a hospital emergency room where he was a chaplain.  When he did not show up for his Mass that Sunday morning, someone went in search of him. In between was the darkest night of his own priestly soul. Please, please pray for him. Though this was a major news story in 2011, I am sparing his family from reliving this again in 2024.

Some thirty American Catholic priests have taken their own lives since priests became a favorite target of the news media, of S.N.A.P., and of Satan himself. I have personally known eight of them, and three others who were murdered. A psychiatrist friend who has been conducting research on the priesthood told me that it is extraordinary that I have known 11 priests who were either murdered or died by their own hand. He said that I have been hanging out with the wrong crowd — or, if you read the Gospel, the right one.

I do know this: simply casting off the most wounded among our priests has been the sin of the Church, and it is a sin that would not happen in our own families. The late Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote of this in one of his last letters to me before his death in December 2008:

“Thank you for keeping me informed about the great scandal of the failure of the Church to support her priests in their time of need.  Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and will be instrumental in a reform.  I am sure that in the plans of Divine Providence your ministry of suffering is part of your priestly vocation.”

No corporate bottom line would dictate whether we care for our fathers, our grandfathers, our brothers, or our sons, but lately in the Church in America, it does, and it has compounded The Scandal. Christ came into the world to call forth a community’s soul, not a corporate sole. One bishop I know wrote in a whining missive to Rome that if he helped one accused priest in his diocese he would fear an uproar. At least the bishop was honest. His response toward a brother left beaten on the side of the road was moved by fear.

The problem was strictly American back then. But it has since spread to other parts of the world where the same draconian and terminal measures have been imposed upon priests who are merely accused without due process leading to their being simply discarded — sometimes on the streets with no place to go. I fear sometimes that the Catholic Church in America is becoming far more American than Catholic. America is a disposable culture that does not abide problems, and the Church has come to reflect this ugly side of America. Not long ago, Pope Francis derided our “cancel culture,” then he proceeded to cancel the careers of many priests and bishops who did not fall immediately into his ideological plan. The stewards of our faith have capitulated to cancel culture.

For full article tap image.

Disposable Priests in a Disposable Culture

There are priests who, for various reasons, are not assigned to ministry. Under a tenet of Canon Law (Canon 1722) a bishop, with just cause, may forbid a priest from the exercise of public ministry for a period of time, but he remains a priest. For seven years before I was accused and faced trial in 1994, I was not assigned by my bishop and diocese.  For the first two years, I was director of a drug and alcoholism treatment center, and vice-president of the New Hampshire Association of Chemical Dependency Service Providers.  But I was still very much a priest living under obedience to the authority of my bishop.  I celebrated Mass and other sacraments. For the following five years I served in ministry to other priests as Director of Admissions in a residential psychological and spiritual renewal center for Catholic priests and religious.

Even now, in my 30th year in prison for a crime that I insist never took place, I witness to the Gospel and to the Mission of the Church every day in conditions that most priests cannot imagine.  That is not a boast.  Who would boast of such a thing?  I celebrate the sacraments, as you know, and I am still a priest.

A priest may also petition the Holy See for voluntary removal from the clerical state, known popularly as “laicization.” Some years ago this blog had a comment from a man who left ministry as a priest to marry. As far as the Church was concerned, he remained a priest and entered into a civil, but invalid marriage. He reported that he was only recently granted his petition for laicization so that he may now have his marriage blessed by the Church. For reasons that are both sound and prudent, the Church has never been in any hurry to return a priest to the lay state.

One of the most destructive fallouts of the sex abuse scandal in the American Church has been the reality of involuntary laicization. When enacting the 2002 Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the US Bishops quoted a statement of Pope John Paul II in his address to American cardinals on April 23, 2002: “There is no place in the priesthood or religious life for those who would harm the young.” Some American bishops have used that statement to seek forced laicization of accused priests under Canon 290, by judicial sentence or by a special act of the Pope. Prior to the Dallas Charter, such a permanent and unappealable removal from the priesthood was exceedingly rare. After the Charter, there was a wave of involuntary laicizations, and some believe they have done irreparable harm to the very Catholic theology of priesthood.

From a practical standpoint, forced laicization — popularly but erroneously called “defrocking” in the media — might satisfy some vindictive urges in certain victim groups, but it does nothing to prevent any possible victimization. It merely discards a priest with problems, or an innocent one falsely accused, upon the dung heap of Job with no support, no supervision, and no  accountability because of claims that are decades old and often unsubstantiated. Families do not discard their fathers, sons, or brothers, and the Church should not discard her priests.

A Puritan Response to Sin

The Bishops’ Charter failed to add a qualifying statement of Pope John Paul II to the American cardinals summoned to Rome in 2002:

“At the same time . . . we cannot forget the power of Christian conversion, that radical decision to turn away from sin and back to God, which reaches to the depth of a person’s soul and can work extraordinary change.”

By omitting the most important part of the Pope’s statement, the U.S. Bishops adopted a punishment with no allowance for repentance. In an essay for Homiletic & Pastoral Review (“Sex Abuse and Anti-Catholicism“) Ryan A. MacDonald wrote:

“The Puritan founders of New England would approve of the purging of the priesthood now underway in Western Culture, for it is far more Calvinist than Catholic.”

In a landmark article in America magazine, “The Rights of Accused Priests” (June 21, 2004), the late Cardinal Avery Dulles issued a stinging rebuke of the bishops. What follows are some excerpts:

“The United States bishops have taken positions at odds with [their own] high principles.”

“Under intense pressure from various survivors’ networks, they hastily adopted, after less than two days of debate, the so-called Dallas Charter . . . ”

“In their effort to . . . restore public confidence in the Church as an institution and to protect the Church from liability suits, the bishops opted for an extreme response.”

“The dominant principle of the Charter was ‘zero tolerance’ . . . Having been so severely criticized for exercising poor judgement in the past, the bishops apparently wanted to avoid having to make any judgements in these cases.”

Cardinal Dulles went on to address the often near impossibility of judging the truth of allegations against priests without investigation, and the inherent injustice of taking actions that brand a priest as guilty before such investigation. He then outlined the rights of priests under Canon Law, and how the Charter and current policies ignore or even destroy those rights. I urge every priest and every Catholic to read Cardinal Dulles’ article.

I am not a canon lawyer, and I have only limited training in Church Law. What I have learned has been from experience, and my own experience has been a crash course in fending off what I believe is a seriously flawed and unjust process faced by many accused priests who simply did not commit the crimes.

To highlight how flawed this process is, I would like to reproduce a letter I received in 2002 from a prominent priest, canon lawyer, and professor of Canon Law at a leading Catholic University. I am printing the entire letter, but without his name since I have not asked his permission to print his name. I will let his letter speak for itself:

“Dear Father MacRae:

Don’t ever discount the real spiritual good accomplished by your words at Beyond These Stone Walls. You make people like me, with consciences dulled by repetitious prevalence of procedural abuses, face our responsibilities to protest and to act. You make it personal and compelling.

I want to pass along some bad news. You may already be aware of it, since you seem very well informed, but, if not, at least it will give you occasion to reflect. It seems that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has turned to ‘penal dismissals from the clerical state’ as a routine solution to the cases being sent by American bishops after preliminary investigations. The decrees of dismissal are not subject to appeal or review.

The procedural injustice of this practice is obvious.

In the preliminary investigation process, the accused priest has no opportunity to defend himself. The cases are sent by bishops to CDF sometimes with an expectation that they will instruct the diocese to proceed with a canonical trial for dismissal or allow the accused priest to remain [in the priesthood] in a penitential state but removed from public ministry. Instead, the CDF seems to be taking this drastic and terminal action based solely on the information provided by a bishop in the preliminary investigation — often when the priest is accused of abuse alleged to have occurred thirty years ago or more.

I don’t want to discourage you or any petitions to the Holy See on your behalf. Quite the contrary, I would urge any and all possible interventions.

Think about the implications if this shameful result should fall on you. It is really an empty juridical gesture with no practical consequences. You remain a priest. No one can take that away. You can pray, and you can celebrate the Holy Eucharist validly, absolve or anoint in emergencies, and, I presume, you  could continue your very valuable ministry of consciousness raising. What I am trying to say is please do not be discouraged or lose hope if this awful expedient is aimed at you.”

Ganging Up on the Already Down

To date, at least, that final chapter of my nightmare has not taken place. But the Church must be made aware — you must be made aware — of the inherent injustice of “piling on” that occurs when most priests are accused.

When I faced trial in 1994, I was entirely on my own against an assault on three simultaneous fronts. First, I faced a criminal trial, a highly sensationalized and problematic one that Ryan A. MacDonald recently described in these pages in “Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison.”

Very few priests earn a salary or have access to funds that would assure a fair trial. I certainly did not, but my diocese issued a letter to my attorneys instructing them: “To the extent he is without funds, he should contact the public defenders’ office.” The cost of my defense would have been but a tiny fraction of the cost of mediated settlements.

Secondly, simultaneous to a criminal defense and preparing for trial, I also faced civil lawsuits naming both me and my diocese as defendants. The accusers were represented by their contingency lawyers, and both they and their lawyers had a clear financial stake in the outcome. My diocese was represented by a high profile law firm seeking, from day one, the quietest path to settlement that would generate the least publicity. With my meager assets dissolved in only partial funding of a criminal defense, I was not represented at all against the civil claims. When I protested the possibility of a settlement without substantiation, my accusers and their lawyers simply dropped me as a defendant so that I would no longer have any standing in the matter.

Lastly, from the moment I was accused, I faced a trial-by-media that set an impossible boundary between me and justice. The accusers had contingency lawyers who were relentless spokespersons for their feigned “victimization.” My diocese had a spokesperson who advocated for the distance the diocese was motivated to obtain from me. As I faced trial in 1994, knowing that I maintained my innocence, and knowing that I was not represented at all as settlement negotiations ensued in the background, my bishop and diocese issued a press release stating:

“The Church has been a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae just as these individuals. It is clear that he will never again function as a priest.”

— Press Release of the Diocese of Manchester, September 6, 1993

My attorneys protested this to deafened ears. With that public statement came the end of my civil rights to a presumption of innocence and a fair trial. Throughout the trial, the local news media cited that statement. The jurors in my trial read the statement. To pretend that this scenario represents justice requires far more skill in the art of pretense than I have ever been capable of.

And it’s even worse still, today.

The Bishop Accountability website publishes every sordid detail about every money-driven claim taking no responsibility whatsoever for whether their information is true or corroborated. The site administrators publish the names and lurid details claimed of every accused priest while removing the names of all accusers. In some instances, this amounts to aiding and abetting them in the commission of the crimes of fraud and larceny.

And now, as is clear from the canonist’s dismal letter above, if the accused priest cares anything at all about preserving his priesthood then he must also hire a canon lawyer to defend himself against yet another tier of simultaneous judicial processes: the possibility of canonical dismissal from the priesthood.

If night befalls your father, you don’t discard him! You just don’t!

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. Please consider these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood

When Priests Are Falsely Accused: The Mirror of Justice Cracked

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.”

A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ

The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.

February 21, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: If you were present at Catholic Mass for the First Sunday of Lent, then you heard the Gospel Proclamation about the demonic temptation of Christ in the desert. I have discovered much more to that story, and it is manifested here in a Church that still wanders in the desert. Lest we wander too far into the desert wilderness, please read on.

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In my estimation, one of the best movies about Catholic life in America taking a wrong turn has been deemed by some to be a bit rough around the edges. Robert DeNiro portrays Los Angeles Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, and Robert Duvall is cast as his brother, LAPD homicide detective Tom Spellacy in the 1981 film, True Confessions. The film is from a novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne based on the famous Los Angeles “Black Dahlia” case of 1947.

DeNiro’s character, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy is a priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the late 1940s at the epicenter of the power politics of a church beginning to succumb to the world in which it thrives. Amid corruption while being groomed to become the next Archbishop, the Monsignor nonetheless clings to an honest spiritual life just starting its inevitable fraying at the edges as he is dragged ever deeper into a tangled web of deceit.

Robert Duvall portrays his older brother, Tom Spellacy, an honest and dedicated — if somewhat cynical — L.A. homicide detective whose investigation of the murder of a prostitute brings him ever closer to the perimeter of an archdiocese circling the wagons. Charles Durning portrays the thoroughly corrupt owner of a large construction firm bidding for church building projects. Having just been awarded Catholic Layman of the Year by Monsignor Spellacy, he is also a suspect in the murder investigation that a lot of people want quietly swept under a rug.

Those wanting to influence and sideline Tom’s investigation come up with evidence — a photograph — that his Monsignor-brother also knew the murdered girl, but the photograph is entirely benign. Still, it’s enough to make a lurid case for guilt by association leaving Tom in a quandary about pursuing an investigation that will destroy his innocent brother’s career. The film ends with the case solved, but Monsignor Spellacy banished to a small parish in the California desert, his hopes for political advancement in the Church destroyed.

That the film — and the priesthood of Monsignor Spellacy — ends in the desert is highly symbolic. The image has ancient roots into our Sacred Scriptures, and especially into the Book of Leviticus. This book is comprised of liturgical laws for the Levitical priesthood reaching back to 1300 BC as Moses led his people through a forty-year period of exile in the Sinai desert. Some of the ritual accounts it contains are far more ancient.

In a recent Christmas post, “Silent Night and the Shepherds Who Quaked at the Sight,” I wrote that the troubles of our time are the manifestation of spiritual warfare that has been waged in the world since God’s first bond of covenant with us. Before that bond, we were doomed. Since that bond, reestablished by God again and again, there is hope for us. We remain oblivious to spiritual warfare to our own spiritual peril. We live in a very important time in God’s covenant relationship with us. The Birth of the Messiah and His walking among us are equidistant in time between our existence now in the 21st Century AD and Abraham’s first encounter with God in the 21st Century BC.

Our Day of Atonement Begins

The Gospel according to St Luke (4:1-13) is also set in the desert as the Day of Atonement begins for all humankind. Revealed in Baptism as the Son of God …

“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.”

— Luke 4:1

The scene has roots in an ancient ritual for the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16:5-10. Aaron, the high priest …

“Shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering .... Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering, but the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the desert wilderness to Azazel …”

— Leviticus 16:5,7-10

This describes the ritual for purification known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement from Leviticus Chapter 16. The ritual reaches far beyond Moses into the time of God’s first covenant with Abraham some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah.

There are two goats mentioned in the ritual: One for sacrifice, to Yahweh, and the other — the one bearing the sins of Israel — is “for Azazel.” This name appears only in Leviticus 16 and nowhere else in Scripture. The name is believed to be that of a fallen angel and follower of Satan who haunts the desert wilderness. Some scholars believe Azazel to be the being referred to as “the night hag” haunting the desolate wilderness, in Isaiah 34:14.

The Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible called the second goat “caper emissarius,” (“the goat sent out”). An English translation rendered it “escape goat” from which the term “scapegoat” has been derived. A scapegoat is one who is held to bear the wrongs of others, or of all. The symbolism in the Gospel of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert to face the devil is striking because Jesus is to become, by God’s own design, the scapegoat for the sins of all humanity.

In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This term appears in only three other places in Scripture, all three also written by Saint Luke. In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (6:5) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit” was the first to be chosen to care for widows and orphans in the daily distribution of food. Later in Acts (7:55) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God” as he became the first Martyr of the Church.

The witnesses who approved of the stoning of Stephen “laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58) whose radical conversion to become Paul would build the global Church.

Also in Acts (11:24) Barnabus is filled with the Holy Spirit as he founded the first Church beyond Jerusalem for the Gentiles of Antioch. The sense of the term “filled with the Holy Spirit” in Saint Luke’s passages alludes to the hand of God in our living history.

In our first Sunday Gospel for Lent, Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, “having returned from the Jordan,” is led by the Spirit for forty days in the desert wilderness. The Gospel links this account to His Baptism at the Jordan at which He is revealed as “Son of God.” This revelation becomes a diabolical taunt, and knowing that Jesus has fasted becomes the devil’s first temptation: “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread.” Jesus thwarts the temptation, and the taunt with a quote from the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 8:3), “Man does not live by bread alone (but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.”)

The symbolism is wonderful here. Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son — also from Luke (15:11-32) — God had two sons. In the Book of Exodus (4:21-22) Israel is called God’s “first-born son”:

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let my son go, I will slay your first-born son’.”

It was the fulfillment of this command of God that finally broke the yoke of slavery and caused Pharaoh to release Israel from bondage. But, as in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Israel was not faithful and spent forty years wandering in the desert as a result of this son’s infidelity. In the Gospel of Luke, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity assumed the humanity of the first son, and was led by the Spirit into the desert to save us in the Second Exodus, our release from the bondage of sin and death.

Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism

The second temptation is the lure of political power. In a single instant, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said, “I shall give you all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me… all this will be yours if you worship me.” This has been the downfall of many, including many in our Church. Jesus again quotes from Scripture, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone” (Deuteronomy 6:13). This Gospel revisits the lure of political power immediately after the Institution of the Eucharist:

“A dispute arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves… I am among you as one who serves.”

— Luke 22:24-26

The Greek in which this Gospel was written used for the word “leader” the term “hēgoumenos.” Its implication refers especially to a religious leader. The Letter to the Hebrews (13:7) uses the same Greek term for “leaders,” and it is not their power which is to be emulated, but their faith to the extent to which they reflect Christ:

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

— Hebrews 13:7-8

Though it doesn’t generate the media’s obsession with sexual scandals, hubris and self-centeredness have been a far greater problem in our Church, and are the underlying catalyst for almost all other scandals, sexual, financial, and reputational. This culture has led Church leaders into the temptation of Earthly Powers, and too many have been eager participants. Some refer to this as “clericalism,” and in my opinion the best commentary on it was a brief article by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things entitled, “Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism.”

The Payment of Judas Iscariot

Catholicism in America thrived when it had to earn its dignity. Once it became politically accepted, it went on in this culture to become comfortable, and its leaders (“hēgoumenos”) perhaps a bit too comfortable. Religious authority and the sheer masses of believers spelled political power. The pedestals upon which we stood grew in height with every clerical advance, and our bishops stood upon the highest pedestals of all with palatial trappings more akin to the courts of Herod and Caesar than the Cross of Christ the King, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It is no mystery why, as the height of our pedestals grew, so did our scandals. This is perhaps why Jesus offered to us the way to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It is because He alone could be led by the Spirit into the desert of temptation and emerge without dragging along behind Him the evil He encountered there.

As the last temptation of Christ unfolded in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, it is now the devil, in a final effort, who dares to quote and distort the Word of God. He led Jesus to Jerusalem, and to the parapet, the highest point of the highest place, the Temple of Sacrifice. And now comes his final taunt:

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone’.”

— Luke 4:9-11

This devil of the desert takes up the argument of Jesus, the Word of God, quoting Psalm 91 (11-12). The taunt to test God and “go your own way” is far deeper than the mere words convey. In Jerusalem, the devil will take hold of Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3) leading to the trial before Pilate and the Way of the Cross. In Jerusalem, the powers of darkness, first encountered here in the desert, are mightily at work: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:53)

The Church in the Western world has entered a time of persecution but thus far the institutional response — having traded the Gospel for “zero tolerance” in a quest for scapegoats to cast out into the desert to Azazel — does not bode well for the faith of a Church built upon the blood of Her martyrs.

Perhaps, as the Spirit leads us into this desert, it is our vocation, and not that of our leaders, that is essential. Perhaps it is not clerical reform that is needed so much as a revolution — a revolution of fidelity that can only be lived and not just talked about. We will not find the Holy Spirit in a revolution that manifests itself in blessing sin or in any politically correct acquiescence to same-sex unions and other moral distortions of our time. Those who abandon their faith in a time in the desert were leaving anyway, just waiting for the right excuse. To use the behavior of leaders to diminish and then abandon the Sacrament of Salvation is to cave to the true goal of Azazel. He could not lure Christ from us, but he can lure us from Christ and he is giving it a go.

The devil finally gives up in the desert scene of the Last Temptation of Christ in Luke Chapter 4. But the devil is not quite done. Luke’s Gospel tells that he will return “at a more opportune time.” Satan finds that time not in an effort to test Jesus, but rather to test his followers. He targets Judas Iscariot in the last place we would ever expect to find the devil: “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post to help place it before someone at a crossroads.

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.”