Father Sam Johnston Needs Your Prayers

Cancer Diagnosis

I wrote the following at my other blog for Father Sam "Life in the Spirit"

At morning prayer this morning, Wayne Zimmer told us that Father Sam Johnston has been diagnosed with colon cancer.  That is all we know at this moment, but it is sufficient for us to go to prayer about.

As I receive more details I will relay them.

There will be the first gathering of a prayer group at St. Michael's in Ridgetown at 7 pm on April 29, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to pray with him directly at that time.

Please intercede for this holy priest and man of God in your daily prayers. 

Father Sam is a retired priest of the London Diocese.  Although he is in his 80's, he is still a spring chicken, having traveled to a mission in Columbia and to Medjugorge, as a priest/confessor already this year.  Retirement has only given him more time for prayer and to minister individually to those who come to him.  In fact, I think he works harder now than he did with his parish.

I am sure that if God really wants Father Sam to go home, that he will go with a smile on his face, but he has asked God to give him more time here to carry on the work he has been called to.

Father Sam received a prophecy just before he retired in 2005, which is posted here on his site.

One stanza in the prophecy was as follows:

My healing power is resting upon you;
A new fire is burning everywhere.
You may not understand My ways,
But turn to worship and prayer.

 I believe that God's healing power has been on Father Sam.  I have seen it operate in my life and in the life of My Dear Wife, when we have been in his presence.  But, one line says that "My healing power is resting on you."  I am praying that that power is available to Father Sam now, and that he will recover from this illness.

Please join me in praying for this faithful priest of God.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in your love for Father Sam.  Sacred Heart of Jesus, fill him with your blood.

God Moves In Strange Ways

Discussion After Breakfast

This morning at our gathering for morning prayer there was present Deacon George Sebok, and Wayne Zimmer, who expects to join the diaconate formation programme this coming year, and myself.  After morning prayer, we went for breakfast. Today, because of a scheduling conflict, we did not meet at our usual 5:45 am, but at 6:30, certainly a more civilized hour.   When we completed our prayers, Wayne suggested that we go for breakfast, and then called another old prayer partner, Deacon Chuck Stillwell, who works a night shift security job, and who I have not seen in a long time, inviting him to join us.

It was a blessing to see Chuck again, and reminded me of many of the things that have happened in the lives of the four of us present together over the last 25 years.  Not today's story, but certainly worthy of writing about.

We had a pleasant meal together, and Deacon Chuck left to go home to sleep.  After Wayne left, Deacon George and I talked for a few minutes.  I told George about this story of a German 3 year old who drowned, and was revived:

A three-year-old boy revived by doctors after being clinically dead for more than 3 hours said he saw his great-grandmother in heaven, German daily newspaper Bild reported Thursday.

The boy, named only as Paul, was airlifted to hospital after falling into a lake at the end of his grandparents' garden in the town of Lychen, north of Berlin, and doctors were about to abandon resuscitation efforts.

But after 3 hours and 18 minutes, Paul's heart starting beating again.

"I have never experienced anything like it," one of the doctors, Lothar Schweigerer, told Bild.

"Normally when children have been underwater for several minutes, they don't make it. Paul said to his parents: 'I was with Oma (granny) Emmi in heaven. She told me to go back really quickly.'"

George then reminded me of a story that he had participated in many years before, when he had his own tailor shop.  George has had an abiding faith in our Saviour for a long time, and prayed all day long in his tailor shop while working on people's clothes, repairing them or hemming them.  I always took anything in need of repair to him, because I knew that it would be prayed over.

One day as he was sitting at his sewing machine, he says he saw a movie projected on the wall in front of him.  As he saw it unfold, he saw a young boy who had fallen through the ice, and was trying to get back up from under the ice to safety, fighting against the ice above him.  George remembered specifically that the boy was wearing a red plaid shirt at the time.  He took this as an invitation to intercede for this young boy, whoever and wherever he was.  He was so intent on his praying that he did not hear his employee Joan enter the shop.  She could see how intent he was and came over to him.

She was so caught up in what she had just heard on the radio that she started to tell him the story of a young boy who had fallen through the ice and drowned, but had been revived.  For some reason, the story mentioned that he was wearing a red plaid shirt at the time he fell through the ice.

She then asked George if he was all right, and he proceeded to tell her what had just happened to him.

So, in faith we believe that God called on George to intercede for this young boy, and that his prayers were answered.

When it comes into our minds or hearts that someone we know or don't is in need, it is wise for us to stop what we are doing and pray for their intentions.  It might save their life.  It might help save their soul.

But, it sure won't hurt.

Lord, help me to be aware of your Holy Spirit urging me to prayer for people and situations that I do not fully understand, and answer that call.

Our Church and Pope Are Under Attack

 We Must Respond

Michael Terheyden does some articles for Catholic Online.  Below is an article he published yesterday Bout the attacks on the Church, and our need to respond.  As he concludes: "We may be his hands and feet in this world, but Jesus said he would be the one to build the Church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18)".  He is of course right, and it is our faith in Christ, not in the humans around us, inside the Church or outside that gives us this conviction.  

The victory is sure, and the prize awaits, but we must persevere in defending the Church that Christ founded.  When we arrive at heaven's gate, we will not be asked if we fell down, Jesus knows the answer to that.  We will be asked, even though he already knows the answer, if we got back up again, and stood firm to the end.  In Hamlet, we read the soliloquy of himself penned by William Shakespeare, which though not biblical has truth to it in its opening lines that we all remember:

To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them.

For us taking arms against a sea of troubles is to pray for the coming of God's Kingdom here on earth, the Kingdom that Jesus promised.  But, here is how Michael Terheyden sees it, and I concur.

One reason the Catholic Church is being attacked is because, in spite of the weaknesses, sins and even crimes of a few members of the clergy, the Church is still the greatest herald of truth, beauty, goodness, and unity in the world. As such, she is also the gatekeeper of morality, and there are many people in the world, often having immoral intentions, who hate the Church and what she represents.

KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - Since the sex abuse scandal in the Church has resurfaced, the news has been filled with attacks against our Church and Pope. Unrelenting exaggerations and distortions are being hurled at the Church via the media and governments; then there is the frenzy against Pope Benedict accusing him of a cover-up and demands for his resignation; there are also threatened legal actions against the Pope, including an effort to have him arrested under international law for crimes against humanity. None have any real legal credibility and appear intended to harass. When faced with this kind of aggression, we cannot look the other way. Instead, we need to put this scandal into perspective, try to understand the reason for these attacks and respond to them.  

The scandal seems to have resurfaced in Ireland with the release of a long awaited government report on abuse (physical, sexual and psychological) in the Church. The scandal has since spilled over into Germany, some of the other European countries and rekindled concerns in the United States. There is no denying that there is a scandal in the Church, but attempts to drag Pope Benedict into this scandal appear ludicrous and make his accusers look like opportunists and possibly liars. There is no room for abuse in the Church. Pope Benedict XVI has been very clear on his unwavering commitment to root it out. Yet the problem within the Church is also a reflection of a wider problem in secular society.

Studies clearly reveal that our children are much safer in the institutions of the Church than in many secular institutions. For instance, it seems that the public school system is one of the most unsafe places for our children. According to a Department of Education report conducted by Charol Shakeshaft at Hofstra University in 2002, "nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career." This represents approximately 4.5 million children. Furthermore, Dr. Shakeshaft was quoted as saying, "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."

Although one sexually abused child is too many, it is still important to notice that while there may be thousands of cases in the Church throughout Europe and the United States over a fifty year period, there are easily millions of estimated cases in the public schools during the past decade alone. So where is the outrage for the sexually abused children in the public schools from the media and government leaders, and why is this scandal being used to agitate the public and attack our Church and Pope?  The author George Weigel; Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City; and, inadvertently, the New York Times each answer this question in their own way.

George Weigel answered the question in a single, masterful stroke. In an article, "Scoundrel Time(s)," published in First Things he wrote, "For the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young . . . than it is about taking the Church down-and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy. For if the Church is a global criminal conspiracy of sexual abusers and their protectors, then the Catholic Church has no claim to a place at the table of public moral argument."

Ed Koch wrote in the Jerusalem Post, ". . . The reason, I believe, for the constant assaults is that there are many in the media, and some Catholics as well as many in the public, who object to and are incensed by positions the Church holds, including opposition to all abortions, opposition to gay sex and same-sex marriage, retention of celibacy rules for priests, exclusion of women from the clergy, opposition to birth control measures involving condoms and prescription drugs and opposition to civil divorce."

It appears that the reason for the attacks against our Church and Pope is inadvertently revealed in a New York Times article where the Church is described as an ancient institution struggling with modernity. The article claims that the Church and religious belief in general are seeking their place in "modern, secular society,"  but Pope Benedict, believing that modern culture is hostile, is holding the Church back from modernization. The article also points out that Pope Benedict's critics consider his approach "narrow and regressive" and believe that his goals have been threatened by the scandal and could undermine his moral authority.

Each of the three answers above refers to morality. It would seem that one reason the Catholic Church is being attacked is because, in spite of the weaknesses, sins and even crimes of a few members of the clergy, the Church is still the greatest herald of truth, beauty, goodness, and unity in the world. As such, she is also the gatekeeper of morality, and there are many people in the world, often having immoral intentions, who hate the Church and what she represents. Some of these people are in positions of influence and power, and they will not tolerate anything or anyone standing in the way of their goal to establish a secular state, free of moral restraint of any kind. The Church and Pope Benedict are standing in their way. 

Such aggression demands a response, but we first need to realize that our battle is not against human forces; it is against principalities and powers, the rulers of darkness, evil spirits (Eph 6:12). Therefore, we need to be in a state of grace and wrap ourselves in prayer. It will also be helpful if we arm ourselves with information and organize into groups. Focused groups offer the support and strength that we will all need moving forward. Now we are ready to respond to the attacks against our Church and Pope. There are many possible responses. The following are some suggestions.

For starters, we can demand that the public school system be held to the same standard as the Church, that schools be made safe for our children or shut down. We can also protest against biased, anti-Catholic reporting and lies in the media and government and against the immorality and degradation being  promoted in secular society. We might even consider getting on professional boards or running for public office. However, whatever we do, and this is important, we must do it out of love and respect, not anger. No matter how bad things get, we need to remember that God is in control, not us. We may be his hands and feet in this world, but Jesus said he would be the one to build the Church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Mat 16:18)-----
Michael Terheyden is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. He is Catholic because he believes that truth is real, that it is beautiful and good, and that the fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church. He is greatly blessed to share his faith with his beautiful wife, Dorothy. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.
 - - -Deacon Keith Fournier asks that you join with us and help in this vital mission by sending this article to your family, friends, and neighbors and adding our link (www.catholic.org) to your own website, blog or social network. Let us broadcast, we are PROUD TO BE CATHOLIC!

 Amen to that.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, we trust in your love for your Church here on earth.  Sacred Heart of Jesus fill us all with your blood.

The Prophecy in Rome - Part VII

Mark Mallett Continues

Recently, I started reproducing Mark Mallett's TV excerpts on the Prophecy in Rome delivered through Evangelist Ralph Martin, from  Pentecost Monday, 1975 in the square at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, in the presence of Pope Paul VI.

The original complete prophecy is here at Fr. Sam Johnston's blog.

Here is Mark Mallett's seventh piece on the prophecy on his tv show. 

His web site is here, and his blog is here.


The Prophecy at Rome - Part VII from Mark Mallett on Vimeo.

Opinion: Margaret Carlson, Anti-Catholic Catholic Seizing the Abuse Crisis to Change the Church?

Why Tell The Truth When a Good Lie Will Appear to be More Effective?

I stand four square with Deacon Keith Fournier, my own friend Deacon George Sebok, and all the faithful priests and deacons and religious of the Catholic Church.  Just because so many are perverting the truth, and so few are interesting in hearing it and believing it makes the truth no less true.

It is bad enough that the Main Stream Media have made a crisis by rewriting the history that they covered 8 years ago.  It is bad enough (and really much worse) that some priests and religious made a mockery of their own religious vows, and broke the trust of those who they encountered.  But, it is disgusting when Catholics alleging to be faithful, work against the Magisterium of the Church, its teaching arm, and pretend to know what is better for us.

It disgusts me when one claims to be a follower of a holy one who has preceeded us, and then twists what that holy one stood for, in love and service of Our Saviour into some pulpit to knock the Church that Christ founded.

Having gotten that off my chest, here is what Deacon Keith Fournier had to say over at Catholic Online yesterday about a woman Margaret Carlson (Margaret means Pearl by the way, something of much value), who does not live up to her birth name, and cerainly is not living up to the person she claims to be emulating Dorothy Day, after hearing her expound on the radio about what the Church needs, as if she had clue one.

Margaret Carlson appears to be following Rahm Emanuel's advice to "never let a good crisis go to waste". Her appearance on 'Morning Joe' was an example of some in the media promoting dissenting Catholics. She tried to use the founder of the Catholic Worker movement to justify her pet peeves with the very Church which Dorothy Day loved. Her goal was to promote her agenda to change the Church.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - I should have known better.  As I sipped the first cup of my wife's wonderful coffee, I decided to see what "Morning Joe" had to offer. The last time I did that was Easter Monday morning. I was verbally assaulted by Mike Barnacle, an anti-Catholic Catholic, ranting about the "Old men in Rome", being egged on by Joe Scarborough, his Protestant enabler. That experience led to a column entitled "Benedicts Burden". 
Wednesday morning, April 20, 2010 it was not Mike Barnacle; it was Margaret Carlson playing the role of what I call an "Anti-Catholic Catholic." She has become quite a presence on the pundit circle these days. This morning she referred to herself as a "Dorothy Day Social Justice Catholic."  This is part of an effort to paint a division in the Church between what she calls "Social Justice Catholics" and those who do not share her view of politics or the Church. 

Given Carlson's penchant for rejecting the teaching of the Magisterium  (teaching office) of the Church, Dorothy Day would have had what my mother calls a 'conniption fit'  upon hearing this identification. Margaret Carlson should read Dorothy Day before she tries to hide her dissent under her mantle. Dorothy Day is one of my heroes - along with Peter Maurin whose well worn "Easy Essays" is a must read for me regularly!  I wonder if Carlson knows that the late beloved Cardinal O'Connor, with whom she would have had serious disagreements, is the one who presented Dorothy Day to the Holy See for canonization.

In his letter to the Vatican promoting her cause he wrote: "It has long been my contention that Dorothy Day is a saint - not a "gingerbread" saint or a "holy card" saint, but a modern day devoted daughter of the Church, a daughter who shunned personal aggrandizement and wished that her work, and the work of those who labored at her side on behalf of the poor, might be the hallmark of her life rather than her own self.

"To be sure, her life is a model for all in the third millenium, but especially for women who have had or are considering abortions. It is a well-known fact that Dorothy Day procured an abortion before her conversion to the Faith. She regretted it every day of her life. After her conversion from a life akin to that of the pre-converted Augustine of Hippo, she proved a stout defender of human life. The conversion of mind and heart that she exemplified speaks volumes to all women today on two fronts.

"First, it demonstrates the mercy of God, mercy in that a woman who sinned so gravely could find such unity with God upon conversion. Second, it demonstrates that one may turn from the ultimate act of violence against innocent life in the womb to a position of total holiness and pacifism. In short, I contend that her abortion should not preclude her cause, but intensifies it.

"It has also been noted that Dorothy Day often seemed friendly to political groups hostile to the Church, for example, communists, socialists, and anarchists. It is necessary to divide her political stances in two spheres: pre-and post- conversion. After her conversion, she was neither a member of such political groupings nor did she approve of their tactics or any denial of private property. Yet, it must be said, she often held opinions in common with them. What they held in common was a common respect for the poor and a desire for economic equity. In no sense did she approve of any form of atheism, agnosticism, or religious indifference.

"Moreover, her complete commitment to pacifism in imitation of Christ often separated her from these political ideologies. She rejected all military force; she rejected aid to force in any way in a most idealistic manner. So much were her "politics" based on an ideology of nonviolence that they may be said to be apolitical. Like so many saints of days gone by, she was an idealist in a non-ideal world. It was her contention that men and women should begin to live on earth the life they would one day lead in heaven, a life of peace and harmony. Much of what she spoke of in terms of social justice anticipated the teachings of Pope John Paul II and lends support to her cause"

Margaret Carlson tried to use the founder of the Catholic Worker movement to justify her pet peeves with the very Church which Dorothy Day loved. Carlson claimed to recall her childhood, referring to the authority of priests as being so great "back then" that the nuns "genuflected' when they came into the room. I am 55 years old and went to a parochial school. First, genuflection is reserved for worship and Carlson knows that. Second, I never saw any Nun act like that toward a priest. They respected the office of the Priesthood but they often held their own against individual priests!

Then she lit into the Church. Her goal was to promote her agenda to change the Church. She argued that the source of the problem was what she calls the 'power structure' of the Church. No, the problem is sin and what the late John Paul called the "mystery of iniquity." In his letter of March 22, 2002 to all priests he wrote "As priests, we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis [mystery of evil] at work in the world."

Margaret Carlson appears to be following Rahm Emanuel's advice to "never let a good crisis go to waste". She used this crisis to attack her own Church. She also set the stage for Joe Scarborough, her Protestant enabler, to again display his ignorance of the Catholic Church. Prefacing his comment with a reference to not caring whether it hurt his ratings - as if to make it sound courageous - he began another rant. He talked about how Catholics put priests, bishops, cardinals and the pope in elevated positions. His inference reeked of anti-catholic screeds of days past. He then tried to make it comical, noting that Southern Baptists never hold the preacher in such a position; they let them know not to let the service exceed an hour or "they were leaving for Morrison's" for brunch.

I have used this expression "anti-Catholic Catholics" in the past in reference to those Catholics in public life who take positions at odds with the teaching of the Church and the Natural Law. The most obvious example is those who reject the fundamental Right to Life and endorse the killing of our first neighbors in the womb through voluntary abortion as some kind of "right". Another example is those who reject the truth concerning the structure of a true marriage and the family and society founded upon it. Barnacle and Carlson exhibit another face of the problem. They reject the Catholic teaching on the nature of the Church.

It should come as no surprise that Joe Scarborough does not understand Catholic teaching. He is a self professing "Southern Baptist". He apparently believes that the Church is some-thing; an organization we fashioned. It provides places where we gather to read the bible, listen to sermons (though apparently short ones) and attend services before we go eat brunch. 

However, Barnacle and Carlson are Catholic Christians. They should understand what Catholics (and Orthodox Christians) believe about the Church. The Church is not some-thing but "Some-One", the Risen Body of Jesus Christ who continues His redemptive mission THROUGH the Church which He founded.  The Head and the Body cannot be separated. The Church is God's plan for the whole human race, the new world, and the seed of the Kingdom to come. Priests are not people who chose a career, but men called by Jesus Christ to participate in His redemptive mission. When we say that a priest stands "in the person of Christ" at the altar we do not mean he takes the place of Christ! Rather, that the Risen Lord is in our midst. They stand in Him and it is He who acts!

In addition, the Bishop is not an elected official; he is the successor of the Apostles. The Bishop of Rome, the Pope, is not simply a CEO but the successor of Peter. The "magisterium" (teaching office) is not as Barnacle paints them "those old guys in Rome" but part of the fulfillment of the Lords promise that he would not leave us orphans but send us the Holy Spirit who would guide us into all truth. Lest anyone think that this view of the Church lessens the horror of the sin and evil engaged in by the relatively few clergymen who caused this crisis, think again! It makes their actions even more egregious!

People like Mike Barnacle and Margaret Carlson either do not understand Catholic ecclesiology (the theology of the Church) or they just plain out reject it. In short, they embrace what Joe Scarborough seems to believe. They want to replace the Catholic vision of the Church with a notion which sees it as merely a human organization which they can then restructure as they will. If so, they are anti-Catholic Catholics with an agenda quite different then what they claim. They cannot go unanswered.

   - -
Deacon Keith Fournier asks that you join with us and help in this vital mission by sending this article to your family, friends, and neighbors and adding our link (www.catholic.org) to your own website, blog or social network. Let us broadcast, we are PROUD TO BE CATHOLIC!

Well said, Deacon Keith.
May God Bless You, and Sacred Heart of Jesus, we trust in your love for Margaret Carlson.

Ballad of the Unborn

Barry David Butler and Fay Clayton

Barry David Butler and Fay Clayton wrote this song for the unborn child who cannot sing out for himself or herself.  If they don't sing it, and if those of us who hold life sacred do not speak it out, then the stones will.

Support Life.

Justice is Blind - And Sometimes Deaf, Dumb and Stupid

Father Gordon MacRae

The perfidious assault by the Main Stream Media recently over the "sexual abuse" scandal in the Catholic Church, a rehash of things written 8 years ago, has shed a light on a lot of things, but I am sure you were not expecting this.

There is no doubt that a significant number of Catholic Clergy sexually abused young people.  There is no doubt that there are still a small number of incidents of this kind of abuse occurring.  What is also not disputable is that this is a world wide epidemic, and not limited to the Catholic Church.  However, what makes the Catholic Church unique is that it is the only reasonable target for financial gain. 

There is a part of the legal community that feeds on contingency based litigation.  You have all read and heard about class action cases against major companies for real or frivolous things that occurred.  This, the contingency based, legal maneuverings is a growth business.  Bringing a class action against a major corporation is your pit bulls against our pit bulls, and in the event that there is a sympathetic jury to the group that has claimed foul, the major victors are the litigation lawyers, who make off with 1/4 or more of the take from the bad guys, who in fact may or may not have actually been bad guys.

Well, a number of these legal eagles have made a small fortune from taking on the Catholic Church, over the sexual abuse of their clients, by members of the clergy, and they never did it out of the goodness of their hearts.  When this occurs, it is their put bulls, against our sheep.

But, what if there is no evidence to support the claims.  Often there is not.  Often, though there is no evidence, the claims are just.  Sometimes, maybe more often now that there is a cash incentive, and a flock of contingency lawyers available, nothing really happened.  Often times, in the 60's to 80's a priest was just doing the best he could to meet the needs of his parishioners, and left himself vulnerable to some cash strapped or cash hungry young person who saw a way to stick it to the man, and get a little piece of the rock many years later.

Here is one such example, that should give pause, but probably won't.  This is a reproduction of the About page of These Stone Walls, a web site devoted to Father Gordon MacRae's unjust incarceration over alleged sexual abuse.

“There is no segment of the American population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.” William Donohue, Ph.D., President of the Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights (NBC’s “TODAY,” 10/13/05.)

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Exodus 20:16

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, 1742.
On September 23, 2009, Father Gordon MacRae marked fifteen years in a cell in the New Hampshire State Prison. Father MacRae is 56 years old. The crimes for which he was accused and convicted are claimed to have occurred when he was between 25 and 30 years old. Brought with no evidence or corroboration whatsoever, the claims were accompanied by lawsuits settled by his Diocese for hundreds of thousands of dollars despite evidence of fraud.

In 2005, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Wall Street Journal published an account of the travesty of justice by which Father Gordon MacRae was convicted (see “A Priest’s Story” above). It is a story, as described by Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things magazine, of “a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.”

Father MacRae maintains his innocence of these crimes, and could have left prison over 12 years ago had he accepted any of the “plea deals” presented to him before trial. In the years since the panic-driven and selective release of files and other accumulated claims and demands for money – but no evidence – some began to take a closer look under the surface of the case against Father Gordon MacRae. What is found there is troubling to anyone concerned for the state of due process, justice, and liberty in America.

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles and The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus encouraged Father MacRae to write. Cardinal Dulles wrote in 2005:

“Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and will be instrumental in a reform. Your writing, which is clear, eloquent, and spiritually sound will be a monument to your trials.”

In 2006, Cardinal Dulles asked Father MacRae to contribute “a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from believers who were unjustly imprisoned.” Fr. MacRae’s writings from prison have appeared in First Things, Catalyst, The Catholic Response, online at PriestsinCrisis.com and numerous Catholic blogs, and now here at These Stone Walls.
These Stone Walls and Father Gordon MacRae’s defense are sponsored by The National Center for Reason and Justice (www.ncrj.org), and endorsed by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and numerous organizations dedicated to correcting injustice and wrongful convictions in the American criminal justice system.

These Stone Walls is dedicated in memory of Avery Cardinal Dulles and Father Richard John Neuhaus under the patronage of St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Pio of Petrelcina. All were champions of truth, justice, and fidelity.

But, God is still on His Throne, and will judge the just and the unjust alike, and all will be well.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in your love for Father Gordon MacRae, and for his accusers, and all those who have profited from his unjust incarceration.

The Power of Prayer

An Interesting Thing Happened

For the past few days, My Dear Wife and I were traveling in the Upper Peninsula area of Michigan.  Prior to that, there had been some disturbing things occurring with some of our relatives that were connected to their family history, and current family dysfunction.  It was disturbing to My Dear Wife, and late last week, we had been praying about it. 

During our evening prayers, we have a meditation that we read, and some particular prayers as well, and one particular evening, it became abundantly clear to us that we (she, in particular) had to trust God completely in these matters, as painful as they might be, and as desirous as we might be to try and intervene.

My Dear Wife was settled into this revelation, and we carried on.  But, the other night while in the UP, she became distressed, and that continued into yesterday morning.  As we were driving along heading to the interstate from where we had been staying at Boyne Mountain, MI, we passed a sign that had on it the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus from Sister Faustina.  I did not see it at the time, as I was preparing to make a turn.  But, My Dear Wife told me she had just seen it.  Moments later, we passed a cross by the side of the road, probably from a death in a car accident some time ago.  Again, I did not see it as I was focused on another turn at the time.  She told me that it had a name on it, and that the name was the name of the central family member involved in the situation that we had previously been praying about.

We have enough faith to know that when these seeming "coincidences" occur, that they are God-incidences and require us to pray.  So, we did pray immediately for the individual with the same name, and for other family members connected to the individual.

This morning, I rejoined my prayer partners for our morning devotion at the chapel at St. George Parish, here in London.  Deacon George Sebok and I arrived earlier than our other partner for the day, and so I told him about what happened.  George then prayed with me for the situation, and in particular invited me and My Dear Wife to pray a particular prayer that we have found to be very fruitful in the past, a simplification of the Divine Mercy prayers.  He and I prayed it together this morning.

It goes as follows: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in your love for them (or name particular individuals or groups).  This prayer is said 10 times.  After the tenth time, we said the following: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, fill me with your blood."  We then repeated this 3 times.

It is not a magic potion, where pray this and you will win the lottery.  No, this is a serious prayer, to be prayed out of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Our Saviour, and out of trust in the mercy that comes from that Heart, the heart of the one who bled and died to save us all from sin and death.

The purpose of repetition is to build up in our own spirits the essence of the prayer, trusting in His Divine Mercy, a mercy and love that we cannot understand fully, or sometimes even remotely.  The purpose of the 11th prayer, filling me up with His blood, is to make me an instrument of His divine healing and mercy, by becoming like Him, more and more each day.

This is a prayer as simple as the Sign of the Cross, filled with meaning.  We trust in God enough, and in Our Divine Saviour to know that he loves the people involved in this situation in ways that we never can, because He is Creator, and we are the created, in His Image, but not Him.

We shall await healing of the particular situations here, and trust that all will happen in God's perfect will and perfect timing.  Our faith does not require a particular answer to this prayer at a particular moment, but our faith requires us to TRUST Him.

The Prophecy in Rome - Part VI

Mark Mallett Continues

Recently, I started reproducing Mark Mallett's TV excerpts on the Prophecy in Rome delivered through Evangelist Ralph Martin, from  Pentecost Monday, 1975 in the square at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, in the presence of Pope Paul VI.

The original complete prophecy is here at Fr. Sam Johnston's blog.

Here is Mark Mallett's sixth piece on the prophecy on his tv show. 

His web site is here, and his blog is here.


The Prophecy at Rome - Part VI from Mark Mallett on Vimeo.

Breaking News: I Got Stoned with the Pope!

Well Not Me, but Father Gordon MacRae From Prison, and then Him, Not Literally

I have been particularly troubled by the ridiculous lies disseminated by the press, and then picked up as truth by many faithful Catholics recently.  The distortion of the truth is beyond the pale, and yet people are falling for it.  In the mean time, as I have written previously, what about the rest of the victims of abuse?  Who is speaking up for them.  Well, nobody really, because no lawyer can smell a fat contingency fee by taking up their cases.

Here is Father Gordon MacRae from a prison cell, where he has been living for over 16 years, due to the accusation of one individual against him.  No provable facts, just an accusation.  His perspective though is intriguing.  He lives with criminals, who probably to a one, were abused themselves in their youth.  They have been held accountable for their actions, fair game, but who cared about them as people, and what has led them to this place in their lives.  Who speaks for the abused?

Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church were the subjects of a stoning of Biblical proportions during Holy Week and Easter, but was any of it justified?

You’d think that someone in prison for going on 16 years wouldn’t still be getting stoned, but I was stoned just a month ago, and Pope Benedict XVI was stoned as well.

No, I didn’t inhale anything illicit, I doubt the Pope did either. I’ve never actually even been THAT kind of stoned. But the title of this post is about the only suggestive headline that didn’t make its way into the news media during Holy Week and Easter this year.

The kind of “stoned” I’m talking about is one I first began to describe in my post, “The Eighth Commandment.” It’s the experience of being in the presence of a mob passing judgment with noise and rocks instead of facts. Stoning is a Biblical form of execution that first appeared in the Book of Exodus (17:4). Moses complained to God that the people he led out of Egypt were about to stone him for leading them into the desert. Long before it was legislated in the Torah, stoning as a form of execution likely began with the reaction of an angry lynch mob – perhaps the very mob Moses faced in the desert.

Stoning became a method of mob execution in Israel because it lacked any identifiable blood guilt. As a reaction of the mob, no one person could ever be said to have struck the fatal blow. Stoning was prescribed in the Torah for the following crimes: idolatry, blasphemy, child sacrifice, Sabbath violations, adultery, fornication by an unmarried woman, and being gored by thy neighbor’s ox. The stoning of the Church’s first Martyr, Saint Stephen (Acts 7:57-8:1) was a time of momentous importance to the Church. It was in the willingness to suffer for one’s belief that the Church began.

WHERE ARE YOUR ACCUSERS?

The most famous example of near stoning is in the Gospel of John (In 8:1-11) when the Scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman accused of adultery. It’s clear to anyone reading the account that the woman was not the accusers’ real target. She was but a pawn in a well choreographed plan to rid the world of Christ, and in 2,000 years that plan has lost none of its dubious momentum. In John’s Gospel, whatever Jesus wrote in the sand caused the fired up mob to drop their stones and drift away in silence. We’re not told what Jesus wrote in the sand, but later manuscripts depict Him writing a list of the hidden sins of each person in the mob.

In the end, there is no one left but Jesus, the frightened woman, and a pile of stones.

Lest you think that stoning as a form of execution is long gone, think again. It has just taken another form. It is names and reputations, today, and not bodies that are destroyed. The modern form of stoning takes place in the news media, and it’s just as lethal. Whoever can make the most noise – whoever holds the media microphones and spews out the loudest, most sensational and scandalous cacophony – becomes judge and executioner on behalf of the mob, stirring it up for the kill.

I was stoned last month when a Catholic magazine published a hateful, name-calling rant about me. That’s how stoning takes place in the modern era. Someone’s name is dragged into the public muck and pummeled with accusations, innuendo, half-truths, and outright lies.

The March issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review published some heavy stones of judgment and condemnation thrown at me by a letter writer I have never met. It turned out to be a mixed blessing in the end, however. Writer Ryan MacDonald, an occasional contributor to These Stone Walls, took up a thorough debunking of the HPR letter.

Ryan’s essay, “Should the case Against Father Gordon MacRae be Reviewed?” is located under Case History on TSW.  He has two additional essays that are also worth reading: “Truth in Justice” and “To Azazel: The Gospel of Mercy in the Diocese of Manchester” posted on TSW at “A Priest’s Story.”
I’m rather used to being stoned – as much as one can be and still retain an intact soul. I wasn’t even going to write about this latest instance of it, but it seems that the very existence of These Stone Walls and my attempt to defend myself have driven some people into a self-righteous temper tantrum. I’m grateful to Ryan MacDonald for responding with factual – even charitable – sanity to this latest blustering attempt to fire up the mob.

But there’s another reason I have to respond. Like the woman accused of adultery in the Gospel of John, I know that I am not the real target of this latest stoning. The insidious agenda of typical news media coverage of the Catholic Church finally showed its face last month, and it wasn’t pretty. In the weeks leading up to Holy Week, the name of Pope Benedict XVI was repeatedly dragged through the media mud.

Does anyone really believe that this story just happened to emerge as the Church prepared for Holy Week? Of course it didn’t! It was carefully choreographed and part of a scripted social agenda to dismantle any Catholic influence in the public square by bankrupting the Church both morally and financially. An attempt to implicate the Holy Father in sex abuse claims against a Wisconsin priest 25 or 30 years ago is like saying President Obama is responsible for shooting up an army base last year. It’s ludicrous. We know it’s ludicrous. But the news media also knows that sex sells and sexual scandals sell best of all.

THE SCARLET LETTER

The condemning media feeding frenzy attacking the Holy Father and the Catholic Church spoke volumes about how out of control this witch hunt has become, and it may very well turn the tide on its promoters. Many people who didn’t see that the news media’s coverage of sexual abuse has evolved into an irresponsible, name-calling lynch mob are seeing it now. Perhaps we are also finally seeing that the accused priests are not the real target of the news media and the vigilante groups of Catholic “reformers” who have made themselves pawns for this agenda of bigotry.

Perhaps NBC sensed the line of decency was breached a few weeks ago when it apologized to The Catholic League and the world for a scandalous and libelous smear against Pope Benedict XVI on its affiliate news channel, MSNBC. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Donohue and The Catholic League for not letting this one pass.

It is also no coincidence that the lurid stories of priestly sex abuse and papal complicity rose to a frenzy in the U.S. in the same weeks that tax-payer funded abortion was being argued in the Obama health care bill. Writer and art historian Elizabeth Lev made this same point in a brilliant essay on PoliticsDaily.com entitled “In Defense of Catholic Clergy (Or Do We Want Another Reign of Terror?)” Ms. Lev cited English statesman, Edmund Burke’s 1790 commentary on Catholic witch hunts during the French Revolution:

“What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks …? In 1790, Burke answered … ‘It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those they are going to plunder.’ What would he think of the insistent attempt to tie [a] sexual abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links … as the present sales of Church property to pay settlements swell the coffers of contingent-fee lawyers and real estate speculators …?”

THE VIEW FROM WITHIN THESE STONE WALLS

I sometimes write about prisoners who stand out from the crowd, but I think you already know that most prisoners are criminals, and many are career criminals. Many have made their way through life scamming, stealing, defrauding, raping, and even killing to get what they want. I never mean to give the impression that prisons are not necessary. Indeed they are, though there are also examples of true repentance and redemption, and even true innocence, and most of those should not still be in prison. Unfortunately, the justice that is supposed to be blind is often deaf as well.

One prisoner, a self-described career criminal, recently came to talk with me. He is now age 50, and the longest he has been out of prison since the age of 20 is two years. He’s serving his seventh prison sentence. In his comments about the sexual abuse crisis, he seemed to be surprised about how naive I am – and even more surprised at how naive YOU are.

He doesn’t mean you, personally, of course. He is referring to fellow Catholics who he thinks bought the
whole sex abuse scare lock, stock and barrel while overlooking the money involved. I see his point. He rattled off the names of six men he has known who have scored windfall settlements with entirely contrived sexual abuse accusations against Catholic priests over the last ten years.

Most of these men were not prisoners whose claims of abuse and demands for compensation you might want to take a second look at. They were men he knew on the streets – admittedly part of this man’s shady world, but that fact alone lent itself to enhancing their claims. They actually got away with citing their drug addictions and asocial lives as symptomatic of the “abuse” they suffered. These men thought nothing of bringing down the reputations of some elderly priests for money, and today they laugh at the fact that they were believed at all.

One of the men was in prison, and I actually met him several years ago. Back in 2002, he asked me if I would consider giving him the name of a priest – any priest – who might have been stationed in his childhood community. He asked me if I thought the Church would settle if he made an accusation. I declined, of course.  Last year I read that indeed an elderly priest from that same community was accused of sexual abuse alleged to have occurred in 1972.  I heard that the accuser was the same man who approached me.  I wrote immediately to a diocesan official urging that this case not be settled. I never received a reply.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for Catalyst entitled “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.” A lot of people who read it said it was their first glimpse of an even darker side of the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal: the reality that we can’t tell victims from perpetrators in these decades-old claims. There is a mindset that has evolved in our culture that calls upon us to always err on the side of caution when the safety of children is at stake. It has caused many to overlook the fact that the typical accuser of a priest is far from being a child. My accuser at trial is a 43-year-old, 240-pound man who walked away with nearly $200,000 for accusing me.

Last year, in a follow-up article for Catalyst entitled “Due Process for Accused Priests,” I cited the typical quality of due process in the arena of mediated settlements for sex abuse claims against priests. I included two direct quotes from a New Hampshire contingency lawyer who wanted the world to know that $5.5 million was handed over to him by my diocese with few questions asked.

“A New Hampshire contingency lawyer recently brought forward his fifth round of mediated settlements demands. During his first round of mediated settlements in 2002 in which 28 priests of the Diocese of Manchester were accused in claims alleging abuse between the 1950’s and 1980’s – the news media announced a $5.5 million settlement. The claimants’ lawyer, seemingly inviting his next round of plaintiffs, described the settlement process with the Manchester Diocese:
‘During settlement negotiations, diocesan officials did not press for details such as dates and allegations for every claim. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ (NH Union Leader, Nov. 27, 2002).
‘Some victims made claims-in just the last month, and because of the timing of negotiation, gained closure in just a matter of days’ (Nashua Telegraph, Nov. 27, 2002).”

Think about this kind of “due process” when you read smears in the news media that Pope Benedict declined to “defrock” a priest accused without evidence in his old age decades after claims were alleged to happen.
After watching some of the Holy Week news coverage of smears against the Holy Father and the Catholic Church, the “career criminal” who told me of organized fraud against priests came to ask me a tough question. There’s no genteel way to put this, so I’ll just come out with it exactly as he asked it:

“Has it ever occurred to you that it’s a contradiction for a society that dismisses the killing of 50 million infants as “reproductive rights” to be also engulfed in a witch hunt over whether children were harmed in the Catholic Church thirty, or forty, or fifty years ago?”

In my January post, “Prophets on the Path to Peace,” I noted the deprivation of basic civil rights inherent in two similar decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court: Dred Scott in 1857, and Roe v. Wade in 1973. The very political and cultural milieu that dismisses infanticide as an exercise of “freedom of choice” also seems obsessed with expunging from society anyone accused – truthfully or not – of ever having harmed a child no matter however long ago, no matter whether financial motives for false claims exist, and only the Catholic Church – the last remaining moral voice for life in our culture stands so accused. How convenient!

As I pointed out in “Due Process for Accused Priests,” the notion that it takes victims years or decades to come forward with claims is a fiction – a form of availability bias – fed to the public by the same news media and contingency lawyers who profit from its momentum.  Criminalizing Catholic priests is a win-win outcome all around.     Catholics should be far more outraged by this than by the suggestion that some long deceased priest abused someone a half century ago.

The writer-critic in Homiletic & Pastoral Review last month took the position that justice is served by my imprisonment because: “I have faith in our jury system and believe it highly improbable that twelve of [his] fellow citizens would incarcerate [him] on trumped up charges.”

Well, I guess that settles it then!  But I suspect he hasn’t yet read “The Eighth Commandment,” either the version I posted or the original “posted” in stone by  THE  Blogger.
. . . to be continued

Editor’s Note: Several of you have expressed a desire to join Fr. MacRae in a Spiritual Communion. He celebrates a private Mass in his prison cell on Sunday evenings between 11 pm and midnight. You’re invited to join in a Holy Hour during that time if you’re able.