Saturday, October 26, 2013

There Is A Reason That The Pope Is Called the Holy Father.

By Father Erik Richtsteig

And that relationship is particularly dear to priests. That relationship is also supposed to exist between priests and their bishop. However, like so many parents, all too often bishops are friends or brothers to their priests. Worse they are business managers who play favorites and are only heard from when there are problems. But during my priesthood I have always had the feeling that the Pope was there covering our backs. That we were his priest sons even when we needed to be challenged and corrected. Now, not so much.

There is this commentary over at the register about anxiety over Pope Francis. Here is the relevant section on priests. (continued)

Sunday, October 20, 2013

For Fr. Gordon MacRae’s Appeal to Move Forward, Help Is Needed


By Ryan A. MacDonald 

New Hampshire courts have declined to hear the habeas corpus appeal of Fr Gordon MacRae, and now an appeal to federal court begins, but the help of many is needed.

(These Stone Walls) Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald, author of A Ram in the Thicket. I hope every visitor to These Stone Walls has read and shared with others, “The Trials of Father MacRae,” an account of egregious injustice penned last May by Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist, Dorothy Rabinowitz. Ms. Rabinowitz was also interviewed in a compelling video on this case which I urge readers not to miss. One phrase in her WSJ article provides a conscience-stirring summation:

“Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.’
Three months after the above article was published, a superior court judge in New Hampshire dismissed this appeal without hearing any testimony on its merits or evidence. More recently, an expensive but necessary appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court met, in late September, with yet another refusal by state courts to hear this case.

I am one of those aware of the facts of this case, one who, as Dorothy Rabinowitz put forth, finds it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents. And “perversion of justice” is the most apt description of the 1994 trial that convicted Gordon MacRae and sent him to prison. So I have asked for some space on These Stone Walls this week to update readers on the status of an appeal effort on behalf of this wrongfully imprisoned priest.
This is also an appeal of my own, an appeal to readers to assist with a fund raising effort to continue this hope for justice. Any gift, large or small, will greatly aid this just cause to bring hope and justice to an innocent man, a man who has just begun his 20th year of wrongful imprisonment. I have written below a description of why I am convinced this case is a just and worthy cause, and then I want to describe how you can help.


No. 1 - Rectory

A VIEW OF THE “CRIME” SCENE YOU HAVEN’T SEEN

Like so many who have looked at this case, I was aghast when I first became familiar with the details of the trial of Father MacRae. I wrote of this trial in an article entitled “Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Fr Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison.” Once I became aware of this trial, I also wanted to see for myself exactly where this was all claimed to have taken place. What I saw was a compelling visual to accompany something Attorney Robert Rosenthal included in his appellate brief to the NH Supreme Court:

“In what the petitioner asserts has been revealed as a scam to obtain a cash settlement from the Catholic church, Tom Grover, a drug addict, alcoholic and criminal, accused Father Gordon MacRae of molesting him years before. Grover’s civil suit – featuring MacRae’s conviction -earned him nearly $200,000. No witnesses to the alleged acts could be found, despite that they were to have occurred in busy places. Grover’s claims were contradicted by objective facts (e.g. inoperable locks that he claimed worked, acts in an office to which MacRae did not have access, claims about a chess set that had not [yet] been purchased).”
Just how busy was the place in which Thomas Grover claimed to have been repeatedly assaulted at age 15 by Father MacRae in the summer of 1983? To answer this question for myself, I became quite familiar with the scene above during a short trip this past summer to Keene, New Hampshire and its much-touted downtown Main Street.

A small city with a population of about 23,500 (not counting the 5,000+ students enrolled in Keene State College) Keene is the social and economic hub of southwestern New Hampshire. It boasts the widest Main Street in the United States, and its vibrant downtown area – the envy of many cities its size – is a bustling collection of quaint and busy shops, restaurants, a theatre, offices, and a concert area on the Keene Commons.

This bustling downtown area begins at the doors of Saint Bernard Church and Rectory, the scene depicted above. The building in the background is Saint Joseph Regional Catholic School (grades K to 8). The entire complex is bordered on the left by the 5,000 student campus of Keene State College, and on the right by busy downtown Keene. Just across the wide, heavily traveled Main Street from the rectory door is the region’s largest and busiest U.S. Post Office, a pizza restaurant heavily patronized by KSC students, and a convenience store conducting a brisk college town business 24/7.

No. 2 - saint bernard Rectory

In the scene just above, note the flat-roofed adjunct just to the left of the rectory building. It was added on at some point to the large old house that became St. Bernard Rectory. The few stairs and rounded door on the building’s left side was in 1983 the rectory’s main business entrance.

Around 1980 or so, a closed circuit television camera was installed just above that door because the rectory had been the scene of a number of urban burglaries and an armed robbery or two. In the late 1970s, two priests and the pastor’s elderly mother were tied up at gunpoint in the rectory basement while the house was robbed. 

Just inside that door in the 1980s was the desk of a receptionist and secretary staffed in two shifts from 9:00 AM until 9:00 PM. Also just inside the door was a waiting area for parishioners wanting to see one of the four priests assigned there in early 1980s, and for daily clients of the region’s busy St. Vincent DePaul Society seeking assistance with food, clothing, and emergency shelter. This doorway was the busiest place in or around Saint Bernard Parish in the 1980s. The photo above was taken very early in the morning. At virtually any other time, it is a hubbub of activity.

Just to the left of that door is a large window. It was just behind this highly visible office window – in full view of the daily hustle and bustle of Main Street traffic and a steady stream of visitors into and out of St. Bernard Church and Rectory – that 27-year-old Thomas Grover claimed at trial in 1994 that he was four times overpowered and sexually assaulted by Father Gordon MacRae in the summer of 1983.

It was here behind this window where Grover claimed that in the months just prior to his 16th birthday he sought MacRae out for counseling for his drug addiction, but instead was threatened, berated, made to cry, and then raped. It was here behind this window that 220-pound Thomas Grover claimed to have returned four times from week to week unable to remember the sexual assaults alleged to have occurred in previous weeks. It was behind this window that he claimed to have the PTSD induced “out-of-body experiences” that caused him not to remember.

Thomas Grover claimed that these assaults occurred in this office commencing in April 1983 and ending just as he turned 16 years old in mid-November 1983. It has been determined that Father MacRae did not arrive at St. Bernard Church until mid-June 1983, and did not have access to this particular office, or any office on the first floor, because they were occupied by other priests until the end of July 1983. Grover then vaguely claimed other assaults in other nearby places, moving at least one claim to an adjacent busy office to which MacRae also had no access that summer.

No. 3 picture saint bernard catholic church keene nh 0

The prosecution produced not a single witness to these acts. No one ever saw Thomas Grover there. No one ever opened the door to admit him, or saw him leave. No one ever claimed to have heard anything. An ornate marble chess set that Grover claimed was inside that office during the 1983 assaults was not purchased by the priest until three years later in 1986. According to Thomas Grover’s ex-wife, Thomas Grover perjured himself about the chess set claiming that it was what he was told to say. A lock Grover claimed that MacRae used to secure the office door had been dismantled and painted over years before the priest arrived.

The one person who could have helped in this appellate defense – a prominent priest of the Diocese of Manchester – refused to help. The above scene was his office for several years before MacRae arrived, and for several years after MacRae left St. Bernard’s. That priest could have spoken to the improbability of all that had been claimed. He could have described the locks that didn’t work, the shade on the office window that wasn’t there in 1983, the absence of air conditioning requiring that this office window remain wide open to the front door main entrance throughout summer months.
That priest could have attested to the traffic; to the noise of people coming and going, noise that easily penetrated that office door in both directions. He could have attested to the waiting area just outside that office door, and its steady stream of people. But he refused. In his answer to Father MacRae’s plea as the investigation for this appeal began, that priest wrote, “I can’t be of any help to you, and don’t see the necessity to entertain any further correspondence from you.”

And this as the Bishop of Manchester, who promised assistance and then reneged, informed Vatican officials and others that he and the Diocese of Manchester fully support Father MacRae’s right of defense.

We of good conscience and justice in our hearts cannot allow this to stand. Let’s make this an effort of the Church Pope Francis speaks of, the Church of the people addressing an egregious injustice with the small gifts of the many instead of the efforts of a few. Please help... (continued)


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Monday, October 7, 2013

Guess the Saint

By Ann Barnhardt

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Guess the saint:

This saint joined a Crusade to Egypt in the hopes of PROSELYTIZING as many musloids as he could before being killed.  This saint was not killed, but was instead received into the court of a sultan.  Our saint then offered to engage in a trial by fire – literal fire – with the sultan’s musloid “scholars”.  Our saint offered to enter into a fire pit and if he emerged unscathed, the musloid scholars would then have to concede that the CATHOLIC GOD (the word “catholic” means “universal”, so of course God is Catholic, and of course His Church is Catholic) and not the phoney musloid god (our saint, like any intelligent person, knows that the thing called “allah” is a non-existent pagan-Bedouin moon deity concocted by the inventors of the musloid political system, inspired by satan himself) is the One, True God.  Naturally, knowing that their non-existent deity could not duplicate such a miracle, and not wanting to be burned to a crisp, the musloids declined the challenge – BUT the sultan granted our saint permission to PROSELYTIZE and win souls for Christ in his territory WHILE THIS VERY SULTAN WAS FIGHTING CRUSADERS.

Who was this saint who knew that not only was PROSELYTIZING not “solemn nonsense”, but was utterly essential and demanded by Our Lord – a direct corollary to the two Great Commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor?

Yep.  It was St. Francis of Assisi.

Giotto’s fresco depicting St. Francis’ Trial by Fire. The musloids are on the left, slinking away. Apparently this was all a terrible mistake on St. Francis’ part. He should have merely “encountered” the musloids in a spirit of “dialogue” and listened to their lies and then declared that they should all engage in good works and “meet each other there”. Because, you know, there isn’t a “Catholic God”, and the god the musloids believe in is the same as the Triune Godhead, or something. And God Himself being Goodness Itself, and good and evil being whatever the individual “conceives” them as being, “God” is whoever or whatever the individual says He, She or It is. Thank “god” we have Smart Francis today to correct all of the errors of Stupid Francis of Assisi.

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Sunday, October 6, 2013

Assent and Papal Magisterium


By Father Tim Finigan

(The Hermeneutic of Continuity) Various questions have arisen recently concerning the assent that we ought to give to the words of the Holy Father. I thought it might be helpful to give a few notes concerning the papal magisterium from classical Catholic theology. I have referred to the excellent Jesuit manual Sacrae Theologiae Summa published by BAC.

When the Pope defines ex cathedra a doctrine concerning faith or morals, he enjoys that infallibility with which Our Lord willed the Church to be endowed. To these definitions, we must give the assent of faith. Obvious examples are the definition of the Immaculate Conception by Blessed Pius IX in 1854 and the definition of the Assumption by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

The Pope also teaches with an authentic magisterium (teaching authority) that is not infallible. Examples of such teaching are the encyclical letters of the Pope, and decrees issued by the Holy See in forma specifica.

Decrees of the Holy See may be issued merely in forma communi. This approval means that they are legitimate, authentic and to be promulgated. But this approval does not make such statements to be formal decrees of the Supreme Pontiff. To such statements or decrees, we must give obedience, though we may internally disagree with them.

Decrees of the Holy See that are issued in forma specifica are those that are expressly published as the Supreme Pontiff’s own decrees. They are inferior to ex cathedra statements but, as part of the authentic magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff, they do not require the assent of faith but they do demand our religious submission of mind and will. Lumen Gentium n.25 affirms this.

Popes may also teach privately. Such teaching would be expressed, for example, in sermons, interviews or books. When Pope Benedict published his book Jesus of Nazareth, he said:
It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my personal search "for the face of the Lord" (cf. Ps 27:8). Everyone is free, then, to contradict me. I would only ask my readers for that initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding.
I mentioned this in a post three years ago and, I think reasonably, said that the same would apply to papal interviews with journalists... (continued)


Link:
h/t to Fr. Z

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Mark Shea vs. Michael Voris

One Night. One Fight. Who's Got It Right?

(Argument of the Month) In a world so militantly secularized that even the Catholic Church cannot escape the dictatorship of relativism, every man must ask himself: What does Christ expect of me? Do I speak out? Do I publicly resist? Do I pray and fast? What does it mean to be a soldier of Christ in a Christophobic day and age?

Come to the AOTM and watch two heavyweights go toe-to-toe on the issue that matters most: How do we defend the Catholic Church in Crisis?

After the dust settles, who will be left standing: The Investigative Catholic reporter, or the Catholic Apologist?

The AOTM is proud to present THE debate of the year...

MENU

From the AOTM CORONARY KITCHEN!

Appetizer

Beer cheese bread dip with lots of bacon

A great German-style cheese dip flavored with bacon, onion, herbs and of course beer.

Dinner

Beer Brats

These brats are grilled and then slow cooked in onions, peppers, in Bavarian style sauerkraut and of course lots and lots of beer! Served with German roasted potatoes covered in dill.

Dessert

Apple Crisp

Apple crisp served with REAL whip cream

Where

St. Augustine's Catholic Church

In the basement of St. Augustine's Catholic Church.
408 3rd St N.
South St Paul, MN 55075

Link:

Pope, in new interview, vows to change Vatican mentality

Pope Francis celebrates a mass in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has promised to do everything in his power to change the Vatican's mentality, saying in an interview published on Tuesday that it was too focused on its own interests.

He also revealed that he had briefly considered not accepting his election as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years when his fellow cardinals chose him in March.

In the long interview with the atheist editor of the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper, he said too many previous popes in the Church's long history had been "narcissists" who let themselves been flattered by their "courtier" aides.

"The (papal) court is the leprosy of the papacy," said Francis, who has brought a new style of openness, consultation and simplicity to the papacy.

The interview, conducted last week in the pope's spartan residence in a Vatican guest house, appeared as he began a three-day, closed-door meeting with eight cardinals from around the world to help him reform the Vatican's troubled administration, known as the Curia.

There are some "courtiers" among the Curia's administrators, he said, but its main defect is that it is too inward-looking.

"It looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, in large part temporal interests. This Vatican-centric vision neglects the world around it and I will do everything to change it," he said.
Francis said the eight cardinals he had chosen to make up his advisory board did not have selfish motives.

"They are not courtiers but wise people who are inspired by my same feelings. This is the start of a Church with an organisation that is not only vertical but also horizontal," he said.

Speaking of his personal faith, Francis said: "A Catholic God does not exist...

"I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my master and my pastor, but God, the father ... is the light and the creator. This is my being."

In the interview, the Argentine pope said that on the night fellow cardinals elected him in the Sistine Chapel on March 13, before formally accepting, he had asked to go to an adjoining room to be alone.

"My head was completely empty and a great anxiety came over me. To make it go away and relax I closed my eyes and every thought went away, even that of not accepting, which the liturgical procedures permitted," he said.

On September 19, Jesuit journals published a landmark interview with Francis in which he said the Catholic Church must shake off an obsession with teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality and become more merciful.

Francis did not discuss themes of sexual morality in the La Repubblica interview.

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