Father Gordon MacRae’s New Blog
I thought you’d like to know that Father Gordon MacRae launched his new blog this morning:
These Stone Walls
http://www.thesestonewalls.com/
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Fr. Gordon MacRae on the Year for Priests
Fr. Gordon MacRae on the Year for Priests
Several hours ago or this evening, depending upon where in the world you are, the Holy Father will commence the Year of the Priest following First Vespers of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome.
We priests are all encouraged to join ourselves spiritually to our Holy Father and to the Sacred Heart of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose image we are ordained and in whose Heart we serve. The faithful are also encouraged to join our Holy Father as we begin this new year in the life of the Church, a year dedicated to the wounded and suffering Priesthood of Christ.
As we begin this year I want to thank the readers of Priests in Crisis, and those who read numerous other sites and have posted messages directed to me, a priest in prison. After 15 years in prison your messages may be saving my faith. Two weeks ago I was aware that the Year of the Priest was beginning on this date.
I read the news of our Holy Father’s announcement as though I was seeing it through a very dense cloud. It is inevitable that prisoners feel separated from the world. In the life of our Church I very often feel a deeply felt separation. In just a few short weeks since Pentecost, your messages and prayers have built for me a bridge to Rome upon which I can partake of the life of the Church again in a spirit of unity with all of you who are, in fact, the Church.
Your faithfulness to the teachings of the Church, to the Corporal Works of Mercy, and to the alienated among us have been an inspiration for me and I feel deeply touched by your prayers. On this Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus I will also pray for you.
With love and blessings,
Fr. Gordon MacRae
See Fr. John Zuhlsdorf’s commentary on:
Leave Year for Priests greetings for Father Gordon MacRae in the comments section below!
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Rev Gordon MacRae Thanks Priests in Crisis Readers on his Ordination Anniversary
Rev Gordon MacRae Thanks Priests in Crisis Readers on his Ordination Anniversary
Dear Suzanne and Readers of Priests in Crisis:
May grace and peace be with you. Over the course of the last week since Pentecost Sunday, many of your messages were read to me and printed copies have been mailed to me.
I have not yet received them as mail to prisoners is quite slow. Once I have read your comments I plan to write again more personally.
For now, I wish to tell you how overwhelmed I am with the knowledge that so many have taken the time to read the truth and to offer prayers and Masses for me.
Today, June 5th, is the 27th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I offer this day in prison and tomorrow, the anniversary of my first Mass, as a share in the suffering of Christ for the readers and supporters of “Priests in Crisis.”
A significant part of the ongoing tragedy of priests being accused from decades past is that many have attempted to use the scandal to further an agenda.
What sets “Priests in Crisis” and its readers and contributors apart is the heroic spirit of fidelity to the Church and Magisterium inherent in your words and work.
As the late Fr. Neuhaus wisely wrote,
“There are three solutions to the current crisis: fidelity, fidelity and fidelity.”
On this day in prison, on the occasion of my 27th anniversary of priesthood, I honor your fidelity to the Church and to the priesthood of suffering and sacrifice.
As a wrongly imprisoned priest, I honor your exemplary faithfulness to the corporal works of mercy.
With Thanks and Blessings,
Fr. Gordon MacRae
Rev Gordon MacRae Writes to Priests in Crisis Readers on Pentecost
Please send Father 27th Anniversary well wishes in the comments section below!
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Catholic League Releases Statement on Margaret Markey’s Sexual Abuse Bill
Catholic League Releases Statement on Margaret Markey’s Sexual Abuse Bill
June 4, 2009
Paul Vitello has a news story in today’s New York Times reporting on the decision by New York State Assemblywoman Margaret Markey to amend her bill on the sexual abuse of children. Her previous bill only covered private institutions like the Catholic Church, leaving in place protections afforded public institutions.
This led many Catholics to oppose her bill and support the one sponsored by Assemblyman Vito Lopez which treats public and private institutions equally. There is still one major difference between the two bills: Markey’s allows for a one year suspension of the statute of limitations, thus permitting anyone to file a claim regardless of when the abuse occurred.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue outlined a new campaign:
The statute of limitations is an integral provision of justice, and that is why the Lopez bill is still preferable to Markey’s new one.
But if Markey’s bill prevails, the Catholic League will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a massive public education campaign to alert those who have been sexually abused by a public school employee that they now have one year to sue the schools, even if the abuse took place when JFK was president. We will use every media outlet available.
Our campaign will be limited to those victimized in public schools. Why? Because up until now, in New York and many other states, lawyers and professional victims’ abuse advocates have waged a relentless campaign to exclusively stick it to Catholic institutions, all the while doing positively nothing to help those victimized by public school teachers.
To even the scales of justice, we will now copy-cat their tactics, only the target audience this time will be those molested in the public schools.
Markey is nothing if not dishonest. All along she insisted that her initial bill applied equally to private and public institutions. But if this were true, then there would have been no need to amend it.
Contact Markey at MarkeyM@assembly.state.ny.us
For more information by Francis X. Maier on the public school protections, read Crisis Magazine on Clerical Abuse Scams
The parishioners of the Diocese of Manchester have been scammed of their Mass donations and The Rev Gordon MacRae stripped of his reputation and liberty.
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Fr. Gordon MacRae Writes to Priest in Crisis Readers on Pentecost
Fr. Gordon MacRae Writes to Priest in Crisis Readers on Pentecost
Father was kind enough to send me this note written for you. Some of us wanted a closer look into his troubling situation that threatens many priests in this current climate of hysteria.
Thank you Charlene for coordinating Father’s correspondence!
FROM FR. GORDON J. MACRAE
“Kill the priest!” “Kill the priest!” “Kill the priest!” This rousing foot-stomping chant greeted me as I was led down the tier of a prison cell block nearly 15 years ago. It was maddening.
Today the eve of Pentecost 2009, I have been in prison for 5,333 days and nights for a crime that never took place. My fellow prisoners do not organize chants for my demise any longer. I have a pretty good rapport with them, though even after 15 years it’s clear that I don’t quite fit in.
I live daily with the irony that I would not today be in prison if I did not maintain my innocence. Under a deal offered by the state I would have left prison over 13 years ago had I been guilty and willing to say so.
Today I am prisoner number 67546 in the Hancock Unit of the New Hampshire State Prison. I live in a prison block reserved primarily for men serving long, long sentences, most of them for murder. I taught college courses to prisoners for several years and now work in the prison library.
The case against me was a fraud brought for the guarantee of hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement money. I have come to know that there is far more fraud in the claims against American Catholic priests than most people know or want to believe.
Some would have us believe that no one – certainly no young man – would falsely accuse a priest just for money. My fellow prisoners laugh at such naïve beliefs. Some of them have reminded me that they have taken lives for far less money than what was gained by those who took my reputation and freedom 15 yrs. ago.
A few years ago a contingency lawyer representing dozens of claimants seeking five million dollars in new settlements from my diocese was quoted in a local newspaper: “Church officials didn’t even ask for details for the claims, such as location and date and the abuse alleged. I’ve never seen anything like it.” That same lawyer is now in his fifth round of mediated settlements.
The names of the accused priests have been released to the public despite the contingency lawyer’s statement that the church sought no corroboration for the claims whatsoever before handing over millions of dollars. The names of the accusers, many of them now men in their 30s, 40s and 50s, remain shielded from public view.
Fifteen years in prison for a crime that never took place is no small affair. In 2005 the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, in the first of a series of letters between us, salvaged the spiritual life of my priesthood. He placed my unjust imprisonment in a context that in my anger and hurt I had not previously considered. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
God does not intend that your life be futile. Much of the finest Christian literature comes from believers who were Unjustly imprisoned. Do you believe, Fr. MacRae? Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and be instrumental in a reform.
I am sure that in the plan of Divine Providence your ministry of suffering is part of your priestly vocation, filling up for the Church what is wanting in the suffering of Christ. Your writing which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound will one day be monument to your trials.
I hope and pray that this is so. Cardinal Dulles gave meaning and purpose to something that is otherwise meaningless, as anyone who has ever served an unjust imprisonment will attest. On his suggestion, I now offer each day in prison as a share in the suffering of Christ for the spiritual support of another.
I will always be grateful to Cardinal Dulles. I am also grateful to Suzanne and “Priests in Crisis.” It takes a singular courage to speak against any unjust tide.
Please do not be ready to always believe the worst of any priest who is accused in the current climate.
Be sure to check out Father’s response to your kind comments here: Rev Gordon MacRae Thanks Priests in Crisis Readers on His Ordination Anniversary
Click here for a closer scrutiny of Father MacRae’s case
It would make Father’s day to receive a note of encouragement from you in the comment box below. Comments are moderated, but I get to them promptly. Thanks!
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Catholic League Releases Statement on Fr. Gordon MacRae This Morning
May 29, 2009
Help Fr. MacRae
No priest that we are aware of has been more unfairly tried and convicted than Father Gordon MacRae. Just as those who are guilty of sexual molestation shake the conscience of ordinary Americans, those who are unfairly accused should merit the same response. Sadly, this is not the case, and it is certainly not true in Father MacRae’s case.
For justice to be done, Father MacRae needs to raise additional funds to pay for an investigation that may help enormously. If you agree that he has been treated unfairly, please give what you can to help this man.
For information about his case go to www.GordonMacRae.net See the “Contact” section for where to donate.
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Catholic League on Clerical Sex Abuse Payout Fraud and Larceny
Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud by the Rev. Gordon J. MacRae
(Catalyst 11/2005)
Three years before the latest wave of clergy sex abuse claims rippled out of Boston across the country, Sean Murphy, age 37, and his mother, Sylvia, demanded $850,000 from the Archdiocese of Boston. Sean claimed that three decades earlier, he and his brother were repeatedly molested by their parish priest.
In support of the claim, Mrs. Murphy produced old school records placing her sons in a community where the priest was once assigned. No other corroboration was needed. Shortly thereafter, Byron Worth, age 41, recounted molestation by the same priest and demanded his own six-figure settlement.
The men were following an established practice of “blanket settlements,” a precedent set in the early 1990s when a multitude of molestation claims from the 1960s and 1970s emerged against Father James Porter and a few other priests. In 1993, the Diocese of Fall River settled some 80 such claims in one fell swoop. Other Church institutions followed that lead on the advice of insurers and attorneys.
Before the Murphys’ $850,000 demand was paid, however, Sean, his mother, and Byron Worth were indicted by a Massachusetts grand jury for conspiracy, attempted larceny, and soliciting others to commit larceny. It turned out that Sean and Byron were once inmates together at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Shirley where they concocted their fraudulent plan to score a windfall from their beleaguered Church.
On November 16, 2001, Sean Murphy and Byron Worth pleaded guilty to all charges and were sentenced to less than two years in prison for the scam. The younger Murphy brother was never charged, and Mrs. Murphy died before facing court proceedings.
Local newspapers relegated the Murphy scam to the far back pages while headlines screamed about the emerging multitude of decades-old claims of abuse by priests. When two other inmates at MCI-Shirley accused another priest in 2001, a Boston lawyer wrote that it is no coincidence these men shared the same prison.
“They also shared the same contingency lawyer,” he wrote. “I have some contacts in the prison system, having been an attorney for some time, and it has been made known to me that this is a current and popular scam.”
It is not difficult to understand the roots of such fraud. Prison inmates, like others, read newspapers. Just months before the onslaught of claims against priests, the Archdiocese of Boston landed on the litigation radar screen with the notorious arrest of Mr. Christopher Reardon, a young, married, Catholic layman, model citizen, and youth counselor at a local YMCA who was also employed part-time at a small, remote parish outpost north of Boston.
As Mr. Reardon’s extensive serial child molestation case came to light—with substantial and graphic DNA, videotape, and photographic evidence of assaults that occurred over previous months—the YMCA quickly entered into settlements consistent with the State’s charitable immunity laws.
In a search for deeper pockets, however, a local contingency lawyer pondered for the news media about whether the rural part-time parish worker’s activities were personally known—and covered up—by the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston. It was a ludicrous suggestion, but it was a springboard to announce in the Boston Globe (July 14, 2001) that “the hearsay and speculation” among lawyers and clients, is that “the Catholic Church settled their cases [of suspected abuse by priests] for an average of $500,000 each since the 1990s.”
It was a dangled lure that would soon have many takers, some of whom have been to the Church’s ATM more than once. In January of 2003, at the height of the clergy scandal, a 68-year-old Massachusetts priest had the poor judgment to be drawn into a series of suggestive Internet exchanges with a total stranger, a 32-year-old man named Dominic Martin.
Using a threat of media exposure of the printed exchanges, Mr. Martin demanded that the priest leave an envelope containing $3,000 in a local restaurant lobby. The frightened priest, who never had a prior accusation, compounded his poor judgment by paying the demand. Soon after, another cash demand was made, but the priest finally called the police who set up a sting of their own. On January 24, 2003, Dominic Martin and his wife, Brianna, were arrested at the drop point, and charged with extortion.
The police report revealed that Mr. Martin had changed his name. His birth name was identified as Tod Biltcliffe, a man who, a decade earlier, obtained a lucrative settlement when he accused a New Hampshire priest of molesting him in the 1980s. At the time the priest protested that Mr. Biltcliffe was committing fraud and larceny. The Church settled anyway.
Biltcliffe’s claim was that when he was 15 years old, the priest fondled his genitals while the two were in a hot tub at a local YMCA. Curiously, the investigation file contained a transcript of a 1988 “Geraldo Rivera” show entitled “The Church’s Sexual Watergate.” One of the cases profiled was that of a young man who claimed that a priest fondled his genitals while the two were in a hot tub at a local YMCA.
The 1988 “Geraldo” transcript was a sensationalized account of clergy sex abuse cases from the 1970s and 1980s. The transcript is notable because it contains many of the same claims of exposing secret Church documents, archives, and episcopal cover-ups in 1988 that lawyers and reporters claim to have exposed in 2003.
Writer Jason Berry, and contingency lawyers Jeffrey Anderson and Roland Lewis all appeared live on “Geraldo” on November 14, 1988 to announce the existence of secret Church archives, cover-ups by bishops, and out-of-court settlements of Catholic clergy sex abuse claims across the country.
Jason Berry, who excoriates the Church and priesthood at every opportunity, actually defended, in 1988, the existence of so-called “secret” Church archives: “Canon law says that you have to have a secret archive in every diocese….That’s funny because I’ve been attacking the Church for three years on this…I want to express my own irony of [now] being in a position of defending the Church.”
I have been in prison for eleven years. As a priest, I cringed while the latest wave of abuse claims unfolded in the press in the last few years. Inmates often feel like victims, but some saw the proliferation of abuse claims as a lucrative scam and wondered why they were letting such an opportunity pass.
I have been repeatedly asked whether I would give the name of a priest who might have been present in someone’s childhood neighborhood, or if I thought the Church would quietly settle if a claim was made. When asked if the claim would be true, the answer is always the same: “Of course not!” One inmate reported that he was visited by his lawyer who asked if he is Catholic. The lawyer is alleged to have said: “If you want to accuse a priest of something, I can have $50-grand in your account by the end of the year.”
Another inmate told of his narcotics arrest by a detective who was apparently fielding cases for contingency lawyers. The young man reported that he was asked whether he wanted to accuse a priest who had been accused by others. The young man insisted there was nothing he could accuse the priest of, but the detective reportedly suggested: “That’s sort of beside the point, isn’t it? We’re talking a lot of money here.”
Yet another inmate claims that he indeed was molested by a priest and is awaiting settlement from a distant diocese. The man says little about the abuse beyond a vague and cursory suggestion that he somehow repressed it. He drones on incessantly, however, about plans for his expected windfall, about investment opportunities, and about how non-invasive the settlement process has been.
Another, rather insightful inmate remarked: “Let me get this straight. If I say that some priest touched me funny 20 years ago, I’ll be paid for it, I’ll be a victim, and my life will be HIS fault instead of mine! Do you have any idea how tempting this is?”
In a 2004 article in the Boston Phoenix, “Fleecing the Shepherds,” legal expert and author Harvey Silverglate cautioned against capitulating to significant numbers of questionable claims brought after the Church entered into huge blanket settlements. In some cases, such claims were deemed “credible”—the standard established for permanent removal of accused priests—with no other basis than their having been settled.
As accusations swept over the U.S. Church, few in the media dared write anything contrary to the tidal wave gaining indiscriminate momentum against the Church. A notable exception was the left-leaning Catholic magazine Commonweal, which editorialized: “Admittedly, perspective is hard to come by in the midst of a media barrage that is reminiscent of the day care sex abuse stories, now largely disproved, of the early nineties…All analogies limp, but it is hard not to be reminded of the din of accusation and conspiracy-mongering that characterized the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s.”
With media coverage of the unprecedented millions invested in blanket settlements, the trolling for claims and litigation continues unabated. Last year, a Boston area high school history teacher and coach of twenty years, a husband and father with no prior record or accusation, was caught up in an Internet sting by a detective posing on-line as a teenage boy cruising Internet chat rooms for sexual encounters.
The practice has netted the detective some 400 arrests, including—by his own estimation—1 priest, 6 police officers, and 18 public school teachers. The ex-teacher, now prison inmate, related that as the handcuffs were set upon him, before he was even led out of the YMCA to which he had been lured and arrested, the detective asked some curious questions: “Are you a Catholic?” “Yes.” “Were you ever an altar boy?” Another “yes.” “Were you ever molested by a priest?”
Father Gordon MacRae is in prison for claims alleged to have occurred in 1983, and for which he maintains innocence. His case was extensively analyzed in a two-part series in The Wall Street Journal (April 27/28,2005) by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Dorothy Rabinowitz.
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Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on Falsely Accused Priests
A Kafkaesque Tale
May 2008
First Things
Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, has been in prison for more than twelve years, convicted of a sex-abuse crime that he insists he did not commit. He is sentenced to thirty-three years, and his claim of innocence precludes his being considered for parole.
So, you might think, most prisoners claim they are innocent. True enough, but in this case people of unimpeachable integrity and intelligence have closely examined the matter and believe he is telling the truth. MacRae admits to two earlier instances in which he was guilty of sexual misconduct but not to the charges on which he was convicted.
Among those who have critically examined the prosecution is Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter of the Wall Street Journal who wrote a two-part expose of the way in which he was railroaded, with the apparent help of the Manchester diocese and its bishop, John McCormack, a former aide to Cardinal Law of Boston.
Now the friends of Father MacRae have created a website, GordonMacRae.net, which provides a comprehensive narrative of the case, along with pertinent documentation. It makes for engrossing reading and will arouse a sense of outrage among all but the morally somnolent. The website also suggests how people can help Father MacRae in his quest for justice, which is a long shot but not hopeless.
