Journalism Outside the Box: Wall St. Journal Bravely Profiles Stunning Case of Wrongfully Convicted Priest Fr. Gordon MacRae

Thank you Ms Rabinowitz for defending truth and justice–however unpopular.

I pray God should remove the biggotry in people's hearts against the Occupy movement, that they may stop siding with the 1% against the 99%., and be on Jesus' side with the poor and disenfranchized. Amen

I have often discussed the political connections – such as we have seen so strongly suggested in the Philadelphia trials on the BigTrial site – that seem to underlie so much of the Catholic Abuse Matter.

Judge Brennan – who presided over the (now deeply contested) MacRae trial back in the early 1990s – has in that regard a curious professional history. From getting his law degree in 1983, it took less than 10 years for him to be appointed to the Superior Court in NH; he had previously worked for three years for that State’s (Republican) Governor as a legal counsel  on policy matters.

Before that, upon his return from military service in 1972, he worked with his father as a stone-mason and logger until deciding to go into law, graduating with his law degree from a local law school in 1983.

He was appointed to the Superior Court in 1992, by a (Republican) Governor whose term ended (after one term) on January 7, 1993. That politician then went on to the US Senate.

In 2007, halfway through the term of a Democratic Governor, Brennan retired from the bench and took a job with the US State Department (under a Republican President) in the Iraq Reconstruction bureaucracy.

(I include at the bottom of this comment the link to the official NH announcement of his retirement and his bio included therewith.)

He has since been seen – as this TMR article reports – speaking out against the current (Democratic) administration.

I draw no absolute conclusions from the above information. And yes, there is almost always some amount of ‘politics’ in major judgeship appointments in this world of ours.

But my thoughts and questions – based on the curiosities above – are these:

First, Brennan and political-preference seem especially intermixed, given his unusual professional history and course-of-career.

Second, to what extent was his handling of the MacRae case so brashly handled – similar to what we saw in the Lynn case in Philadelphia last year with Judge Sarmina – because of political connections and interests which he saw it in his best interests to serve?

In the Perfect-Storm synergy of interests that coalesced in the Catholic Abuse Matter from the beginning, the ‘law-and-order’ element – from the Right, if we might say – was strong. (Indeed, it was Ronald Reagan as Governor of CA in the mid-60s who first hit upon the idea of using ‘victim-friendly’ laws as a way of increasing the Republican/Right ‘law and order’ appeal to voters, especially when substantial State and Federal monies were made available to self-reported victims back in that place and era.)

New Hampshire – although stuck up there in the mostly-‘blue’ Northeast – was in the early 90s a Republican-leaning State that prided itself on having held itself aloof from the urban (and Democratic .. and historically Catholic) mess of the cities to their south. New Hampshire was Republican and independent and very much prided itself on its law-and-order.

In such a setting, the opportunity to a) establish further creds for ‘law and order’ while b) taking a swipe at an organization (i.e. the Church) predominantly Democratic in the Northeast , while simultaneously c) opening up a possibility for some enterprising voters to garner victimist-inspired payouts while also d) opening up some interesting windows and fields of possibility for the (always politically-active) tort-attorneys, while also  e) making a play for by-then-influential victimist and feminist political elements that were usually presumed to be Democratic and also f) giving law-enforcement a shot at some juicy ‘investigations’ and ‘convictions’, and all the while g) providing great and grabby copy for the state’s premier newspaper, the Manchester Union-Leader … to a politician’s calculating eye, what was not to like?

To consider all of the above possibilities, while also considering the depth and substance of the material submitted in the MacRae Appeal … is an eye-opening experience in historical-thinking. And, personally, I can’t see how a reviewing Court is going to be able to explain-away all that material.

Third, if Brennan’s political connectedness and activity are still robust, then especially in an election cycle where Republicans will presumably seek to expand their possibilities in the run-up to the next national (and possibly even state) elections, will those connections have a bearing on how the NH Superior Court now considers the MacRae Appeal?

And all this on top of the fact that it is always an iffy proposition to get a Superior Court to reverse a trial court; especially when ‘one of their own’ was the trial judge.

But also that it is especially so when the weight of material ostensibly in favor of reversal (or in this case, Habeas relief) pretty much requires the Superior Court to recognize the failures and difficulties created by the trial judge (in this case, Brennan).

So I am very interested in the fate of the MacRae Appeal.

http://www.courts.state.nh.us/press/2007/brennanretirement.htm

The delay by the judicial system in dealing with this case – with it's well-documented insufficiency of evidence as well as evidence of a malicious prosecution – is unconscionable. Is there no one who will see that justice is belatedly done in this case??? Why are not lawyers, politicians and all who are aware of the case demanding the relevant court hold an emergency hearing to have Fr MacRae released immediately as the conviction was clearly unsafe??? What on earth is preventing this from happening?!! I could not see a man who's clearly been the victim of a miscarriage of justice, not being released by the courts in the UK or Ireland, as a matter of supreme urgency, were the evidence that is available, available in a similar miscarriage of justice in the courts of Ireland, England or Wales. 

This development regarding Father Gordon doesn’t surprize me even a little bit .We all know that when the Sex scandal broke a large number of priests were accused of abusing children .In many cases there was a kneevjerk reaction and many men were suspended without any explanation .In addition Due process for these priests was nonexistent Christian Justice didn’t exist and many suffered because of this .It also in some cases became a polictical game .It also was game of trying to tell the general public that something was being done .In regard to the Review Boardsthat were established they wereca joke and a cover up .I wish someone could tell me how it s determined that something is creitable That all being said my final point s in some situations the abuse occurred many years ago how does one investigate and come to good conclusion on something in some cases that went back many years.In my view this is impossible .When reading this article about Father Gordon I didn’t see or read anything about where the Diocese stands on this situation .Perhaps it s the saying see no evil hear no evil

Responding to Herb’s comment of 1011PM last night.

I’m not trying to make a political connection, in the sense of trying to blame one Party or the other. As I have often said, this victimist agenda has been embraced – for their own purposes – by each of the Parties. And thus in things-victimist I hold no brief for either Party.

Instead I had merely pointed out the facts of Brennan’s bio in order to establish the fact that he seemed to have relied on political connections (with whatever Party being secondary) to get along and get ahead.

But this dovetails nicely enough, I would say, with your assessment of his incompetence (which incompetence I also suspect is the case). The professionally incompetent have more reasons than the average bear to compensate for their incompetence with political connections.

The fact that this guy muggered around as a logger and stone-mason for half-a-decade of his post-military adult life before deciding to take up Law as a profession struck me right off the bat when I was reading the official bio. And then how quickly he moved ahead through political-appointments up to the Superior Court bench. (Nor did I see in the bio that he had had any prior bench experience at the lower trial-court level.)

I also agree with the possibility of an ambitious prosecutor. Although from what I have been able to discern (although you may have more knowledge than I do about this particular case involving Fr. MacRae) I cannot yet agree that the actual and only reason for the screw-ups in the MacRae trial was Brennan’s inability to manage the prosecutor. The two Philadelphia trials, as we saw, provide more than enough material to consider that there were political synergies that would make an ambitious (competent or otherwise) judge want to shape the process to serve some political bosses’ agenda and objectives.

As far as Brennan holding “some personal grievance against the Church”, I certainly cannot and do not deny that possibility. His photograph imparts to me the impression of some 1960s-type wingnut (I run into them at various reunions) and on top of that – as you say – there may be not simply that type of 1960s (or “socialist anti-religion”) aversion to the Church but also some personal animus.

And I agree that Fr. MacRae certainly did get caught up in this whackery, as you say.

In fact, he was taken under fire from both sides, since not only was the civil/public milieu deranged against him but the hierarchy itself – in the form of his Ordinary – also turned on him. I suspect his Ordinary at that time was – to use my terminology from comments on prior recent articles – a City-Cohort commander used to leading parades and the daily pleasantries of presiding over it all, rather than a commander of the legions with the wit and spirit and chops and competence to deal with the situation that enveloped Fr. MacRae.

And in that regard it is my hope that starting now Ordinaries will be appointed from the legions rather than from the City-Cohorts. Pope Francis is certainly – in my taxonomy – a legion commander and I hope and pray that his spirit will begin to manifest in the selection of American Ordinaries.

And Lord, I have one more prayer, a request actually, that P shorten is lengthy, unbelievably lengthy posts. It's niether necessary; nor fair; nor interesting. Please Lord? amen

"Curiously, Learned-Counsel’s envisioning of the typical ‘family’ whose child would later become an allegant easily supports not only the possibility that the “super-involved” priest (however that is defined) made his way into the family circle on the pretext of helping, but also supports equally well the possibility that a priest tried to help out a particularly difficult and troubled family and thus unwittingly provided the pretextual basis for a later effort to score a check from the Church." No, not curiously but rather, precisely. That is why the pederast priest gambit sometimes works.

"Probably one result of this Catholic Abuse Matter is that priests are not going to be risking involvement with such families (which are only going to become more numerous as time goes on and various large-scale social initiatives bear their ineluctable poisonous fruits). But – if my surmise is accurate – then such families will thus simply be thrown into the arms of the (increasingly cash-strapped) state … and that will be that." Not probably, but perhaps. The priests can stick to sacraments and theology and leave the social work to trained social workers. Or not. Come what may for troubled families and their troubled children and the state and country in which they live. The people and the state will deal with that. The church does not need to save the state from the possibility. The church could keep her priests at the church and there would still be plenty of charitable work for the catholic charties to do.

"The allegations and the defenses are “nothing new” because they are simply the working-out of the actual originating scenario from which they spring. Thus again, though, we are left with the question: Which of the two general scenarios is the actual originating scenario – that a) the evil priest slyly insinuated himself into a family for nefarious sex-abusive purposes or that b) individual(s) within that family later realized that there were big bucks to made with little legal risk even if – by some improbability – one’s allegations were examined and one’s gambit exposed?" False dicotomy. Senario (a) happened frequently. Senario (b) very rarely.

"But, lastly, my point in my prior comment was that what “newness” the Chicago case would offer would be in the way the judge and jurors might deal with the case and specifically with the claims of the allegants. And if the allegations were dealt not simply in the usual victimist-inspired way but rather were handled more even-handedly, then that would indeed be significant. Learned-Counsel may not be a trial-attorney, but no matter what the outcome of the Chicago case, the ever twitching-whiskers of all attorneys will be acutely sensitive to the outcome: either there is still a good chance to run the same old playbook, or things have changed and there is not such a good chance any longer. That sort of thing." Yea, no. Nothing new will happen. The court's decision will be what you have come to expect or a happy surprise. You will have to supply the perceived "change" later.

Here is why. Say that a priest, friend of the family, takes my 13 year old son out regularly for an icecream or dinner and a movie and any number of church-related activities. This has been going on since my son was 10 years old. Now, my 13 year old son comes to me and says that the priest, on a couple of occassions, convinced him to wrestle with him in his room at the rectory. Both times the priest kissed him and touched his genitals. The first time, my son told the priest to stop and the priest apologized, saying it was an accident. The second time, my son told him to stop, pushed him away and came home. This would be a sexual assault and battery but what actually happened? Where is the evidence? I want to believe my son but the priest, when confronted, denies the accusation vehemently. He says my son is going through a tough time, that they had a falling out and that he may be making this up in order to distance himself from the priest and from religion. It is just his word against his word. If the law were to get involved with this matter at all, it would never have anything more than circumstantial evidence. Were these two together? Did they have some sort of familiar relationship? Also, assume that the time period is the 1990's or earlier so that cell phones, text messages, email and video are not pervasive and great sources of evidence. You can tweak the senario to make the battery more serious/severe or go all the way to a form of rape. You can increase the number of abuse incidents based on the manipulative power of the priest and/or the gullibility/susceptibility of the boy. ALMOST no matter what you do, you will not have the type of physical evidence or credible impartial eye- witness evidence to satisfy beyond a reasonable doubt. Just he said, he said. Well, you can always just do nothing about it. Or you can give the boy some money to be quiet and calm down. Keep the event a secret. And move the priest to another parish. That has been tried. Or you can do many other things, but they will all require an assessment and a judgement and a reaction based on the he said he said. That is the dilemma at the root of this. Based on my lived experience, I tend to believe the accuser. That is my bias. Might be the bias of some of the media too. We tend to be correct way more often than we are wrong – my assessment.

Apparently, homosexuals preying on minors is OK with the left, so long as you're not affiliated with Catholicism.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-philbin/2013/05/22/left-defends-accused-child-molester-because-she-s-lesbian

Starbuck, despite your constant comparisonof the so called Abusenik movement to the great evil totalitarian regimes of modern history, I do not see much alarm in the comments. Should not all the commenters that love your posts be worried about the take over of the Abusenik regime through the perversion of the law. They are not scared or concerned. They are cheering     your rhetoric. Enjoy you popularity with your fans, even though they do not really get you. They just like to read you battling us pesky victims. You are such and alarmist though. I want the Roman Catholic Church gone. It is my enemy. It is a major retarding influence on the human race. Realistically, though, I just want to see its continued diminishment. I don't think it could ever go completely away. But I will not make a secret of my contempt for the church and religion.

Now, having said that, I was being ironic about the clearing and the reinstatement of the embezzler. You are often too literal. And in case you want to goon now about the seriousness of the subject, I was using irony and humor to make a serious point about how laughably flawed the church and her priests are. The Globe could not throw the embezzlement in there if it were not true.

i have to say that I love reading your propaganda so please keep it coming. You are so bold. Like when you try to make Brennan sound like a strange disenfranchised hipster worthy only of suspicion and then provide a link to a write up that describes a veteran, professionally accomplished, family man. You are the spin czar.

btw, thanks for the generous and charitable correction on my spelling of scenario. I did not realize that I was missing the c. Good thing Harvard cannot take back my degree, right?

So simple:

1. Marriage between one man and one woman, only

2. No Sex outside of Marriage (see #1)

The rest is HIStory.

‘Rondre’ has taken time off from teaching media courses to claim that this TMR article is “hysterical”. Were she to have said ‘inaccurate’ or ‘un-balanced’ then – without agreeing with her – I could at least have accepted it as input worthy of consideration. Once again, presuming that when one sits down to tap out a comment one does not leave one’s professional chops downstairs or out in the car – then it raises the question as to whence exactly these comments come.

Nor do I say this to personally go after Rondre. But again and again I notice the type of exaggerations or ungrounded assertions and so forth in the Abusenik universe, either by (self-proclaimed) victims or by sympathizers of same. And again, I wonder: if such inexactness and such imprecision (of concept and/or expression) and so on are deployed in commentary, then are we reasonably to presume that no such difficulties existed in the original allegations and claims? And as to the sympathizers: a media that takes such material whole-hog and without analysis cannot but convince itself that there is a) a large amount of belief-worthy support for b) a Catholic Abuse Crisis that actually exists to the extent and depth that is so often claimed and asserted.

Thus too: I don’t quite grasp the relevance of Fr. MacRae’s earlier Franciscan connection and I am not about to accept at face-value any assertion that anybody indeed “know[s] priests and friars” or that such alleged gentlemen “have seen MacRae in action with kids” and that such alleged gentlemen have also put themselves on record about their supposed observations. But again: how many times during the Stampede has this type of assertion or tissue of assertions been accepted at face-value, either by readers or by media?

Nor do I wish here to rattle any cages unnecessarily. But JR’s of 135AM on the 24th seems perhaps to refer to my material, at least to some extent. Aside from noting the uncharacteristic familiarity with a somewhat Latinate style (“detailia”, “boredumbia”, thus combined into the Latinate “detailia boredumbia”, and “delirium” – which is also a psychiatric term, but let’s not go there), I note that it all seems to boil down to nothing making sense and “nothing matters”.

Again, given the phrasing and expression, I can’t quite tell who or what is the subject here. But such inexactness – by whatever inspired or motivated – once again serves to prompt the question about comments-now and allegations-back-then.

Nor, lastly, do I see the significance of – I am presuming the subject of the remark here – Bill Donahue’s supposed “$400,000”. It’s not a million, certainly. But is JR somehow implying that receiving remuneration disqualifies comments or ideas? If that is the case …

I'd like to point out some other imaginary heroes from history, cartoon history. Very similar really to religious history.

The Passion of the Popeye. Mel Gibson starring as Popeye.

In our scenario Popeye, the saver of all mankind can't get to his sacred can of Spinich in order to beat the demon called Blutto who is harssing Popeye's holy "bride" Oliveoyl. (Any Italian connection is purely coincidental.)

Oh heck make up your own stories, you always do anyway.

Out of the recent bits I can glean very little that requires extended comment.

But the “humor” is – I think – useful in a larger sense: it seems the fallback position when a gambit fails or is exposed as being without-substance: Ha, ha I was only kidding – silly you that you couldn’t see it andyoumustbereallydumbnottoseehumorandcrazytooandI’msosureofthatsoitprovesIam …  And so on with that sort of thing.

It does make one think twice about the “delirium” though.

But in the Abuse Matter that’s pretty much been a given: there would never be any serious consequences if the allegations or the claims were discovered to be false. There would be no consequences – either one could claim a mistaken memory of a repressed memory of a false memory and simply expect not to be ‘revictimized’ by further interrogation, or else one could just do one’s styling of the marvelous sing-songy Roseanne Rosannadanna bit from the old SNL: “Nevvvvvvvvvvver mind”.

The media, the legal system  - they would all give you a pass if you needed it. Meanwhile, the accused would be suspected of anything and everything.

As Al Capone might have said looking back on the good old days (and perhaps did): it was a great racket while it lasted.

The readership is welcome to entertain any ‘proposal’ that comes along, after considering the source. That’s one of the perks of being a reader.

If evidence of any stories I have made up is offered, I’d like to see that evidence. Unless what is meant is merely some large chunk of Catholic or religious belief, but what would be new about that in this context?

And there remains then the thought-provoking possibility that some of the greatest or most remuneratively successful creators of stories have suddenly taken it upon themselves to make a life out of being outraged at other ‘stories’.  There is a clear symmetry in this, although further speculation along that line is not the proper focus of this site or of my commentary.

But I also want to turn one of my own thoughts around here: I would hope now that a new era of the Church’s priestly formation is going to be further and fruitfully developed. I would see this developing along the lines of what Vaclav Havel discussed as being a fundamental element of individuality: the sense of responsibility. (See, for example, his Letters to Olga in the 1988 Knopf edition around page 145.)

Havel’s idea was that responsibility is the fundamentum around which all other elements of human identity develops. And the reality around which human identity fails or succeeds. In Vladimir Tismaneanu’s recent discussion of it (see his The Devil in History, around pages 184-5) this individual sense of responsibility “is the foundation, the root, the center of gravity, the constructional principle or axis of identity”.

Of course, neither Havel nor Tismaneanu are speaking from a Christian or Catholic perspective; they are humanist philosophical thinkers, seeking to refresh (perhaps rebuild) an authentic individual human identity after the decades of that identity in the former Eastern Bloc being corroded by the Political Correctness inherently required by the Communist system and its thought.

Thus – in my view – they are unable to take their fine vision further back or further up: they are limited to human beings in the here and now, with no resources beyond the here-and-now. They are well-intentioned Existentialists, though they have taken a far more other-oriented and communal human stance here than earlier Existentialists such as Camus and – surely – Sartre.

Havel does indeed refer the need to develop a “vertical identity”, but this verticality extends only within the individual self, and does not because it philosophically cannot arise to a Vertical beyond the human self, a Vertical that originates in God and is the Origin of human-being itself.

Whereas the genuine Christian and Catholic Vision allows one to take this excellent sense of responsibility and further ground it in the reality of humans being made in the Image of God and sustained by God’s Grace. Thus simultaneously connecting human-being to that Beyond that is and always has been its genuine Source and Origin.

Priestly formation – seeking (I hope) not simply to train sacramental functionaries as in the City-Cohort sense but rather to train fuller and more comprehensive participants in the ministry of Christ – can and should draw on all of these resources to develop a deeply-rooted Stance toward life and ministry.

And, of course, this would be an excellent element to introduce into all catechetical education as well, and would provide – I would say – a rich possibility for educational development among the laity as well.

I think that with the election of a Pope from a religious Order (rather than one from a diocesan priestly background) there is great hope for this type of possibility being actualized. The diocesan approach can sometimes get bogged-down in more of the administrative and basic-function type of formation. Of course the religious-Order approach is liable to its own over/under-emphases: perhaps a bit too ‘idealistic’, some might say.

But I think this fresh approach is needed now. Especially given the huge ‘existential’ (if you will) challenges now facing Western and American culture and society.