Please Remember Fr. Tim Vakoc’s Family on September 11

Fr. Gordon MacRae’s Blog

• February Tales
  . . . When I was growing up North of Boston, I spent as little time as possible indoors. I climbed every tree I could find. My friends and I spent a lot of time in trees - something Freud, or maybe Darwin, might read into. There was a huge elm on our block. When I was ten, I loved to climb high into it above the traffic of the street, find my favorite perch […]
• Questions from Readers of These Stone Walls
  . . . On August 26th, I posted "Postcards from the Edges." It wasn't exactly a masterpiece of western literature. Nonetheless, I thought it was a good post that addressed a timely topic: news media bias. It was barely noticed, and received few comments. Six weeks later on October 7th, I posted "To the Readers of These Stone Walls." […]
• Prophets on the Path to Peace
  . . . There is a natural abhorrence to such language today, and to such a decision from our Supreme Court. But in 1857 the Court went far beyond the simple ruling that Dred Scott did not possess the rights of a citizen to sue. The decision rendered the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional thereby throwing out the U.S. Congress’s right to make territory fr […]
• The Eighth Commandment
  . . . Last month, a Massachusetts high school teacher was exonerated after facing a nearly identical plight. A 14-year-old student accused him of sexual assault. Months later, his life in near ruins, the teacher was exonerated at trial when it was learned that the girl made up the story because the teacher had reprimanded her in class. Here in prison, men of […]
• First Things
  . . . In "Scandal Time," Fr. Neuhaus stared straight into the hearts of panicked American bishops who responded to the crisis with neither fidelity to the law of the Church nor with mercy. To the very end of his life, Father Neuhaus, like Cardinal Dulles before him, pleaded for the due process rights of priests accused, and for fidelity to the Magi […]
• My Final Post for 2009
  . . . My final post of 2009 is a day earlier than my usual Wednesday posting day. I think you will see why as you read it. It was written for Priests in Crisis. I think it is the most important post of the year. . . . As we prepare to begin a new year, I will offer Mass on the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God for the readers of These Stone Walls. Thank […]
• A Ghost of Christmas Past
  . . . Many of the Christmas cards that now adorn my cell wall tell of a Light shining in the darkness. You have cast a light into the darkness and spiritual isolation of prison this year. It's a light magnified ever so brightly, in my life and in yours, by Christ. The darkness can never, ever, ever overcome it. . . . When a young prisoner came to Dr. F […]
• Angels We Have Heard on High
  . . . When These Stone Walls was first considered, I was a bit nervous about an expected onslaught of negative, hateful comments. It's astonishing that in the five months of this blog's existence, only three such comments were aimed in our direction. One was from a self-described member of Voice of the Faithful that was little more than a name-call […]
• Disperse the Gloomy Clouds of Night
  . . . Some prisoners have very little outside of here. Last year on Christmas day, I just had to get outside. It was cold, and it had snowed, but I went to the small, caged-in yard in front of this building anyway. A guard closed the gate behind me, locking me in the snow-covered yard for an hour. The only other person there was a young man I did not know. […]
• A Corner of the Veil
  . . . Then the other prisoner was back! "This was in the book," he said as he propped a photograph against my small TV screen. It was the photo of my mother and Frances that I had lost four years earlier - the photo I searched for in vain when my mother died. Just as Mass began on my mother's birthday - at the very moment I was offering the M […]