Rev. David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L., An Advocate for Truth and Justice

By Ryan A. MacDonald


Canonist, Fr. David Deibel has endured unjust criticism as an advocate for Fr. Gordon MacRae at These Stone Walls and Fr. Frank Pavone at Priests for Life.

The Rev. David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. is a respected and deeply committed Catholic priest with training and expertise in both civil and canon law. As such, he has proven to be a great asset to the U.S. Catholic Church throughout the last two decades of scandal and cultural upheaval.

Many Catholic priests who are accused of wrongdoing have found themselves without the benefit of solid canonical advice and advocacy to their own detriment and the detriment of the entire Church. Some canon lawyers with whom I have spoken are reticent to advocate for priests accused in decades-old sexual abuse claims because they say some U.S. bishops have themselves discarded observance of many of the tenets of canon law that provide for due process for priests accused. This has been especially so since the enactment of the Dallas Charter adopted by the United States Conference of Bishops in 2002.

The Charter and its much nuanced "zero tolerance" policy came as a result of the bishops' invitation to SNAP members to address the conference. It was, in effect, the sole voice the bishops heard as they embraced what many now believe to be a panic-driven policy that summarily discards the rights of priests and inflicts great harm on the relationship of trust between priests and their bishops.

For the moment, however, the American Catholic church has to live with this policy. Let me be clear here that the concerns I raise for both its efficacy and its fairness are mine and not Father David Deibel's. But he is left with some of its wreckage, and a part of that has been his unqualified and courageous canonical defense of a Catholic priest who I and many others have determined was falsely accused. For 18 years, Father Deibel has helped to preserve this man's rights under Church law when far too many in our Church were prepared to discard those rights.

A number of prominent writers have drawn that same conclusion, not least among them Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal who authored "A Priest's Story" in 2005. This gripping two-part series blew open the doors of judicial and prosecutorial tyranny that resulted in the 1994 witch hunt trial and conviction of Father Gordon MacRae. In that series, Dorothy Rabinowitz commended Father David Deibel, the sole Catholic official to tell the truth when the rest of the Church and court system was willing to settle for "a negotiated lie" in their condemnation of a priest, but with no evidence or corroboration whatsoever.

This is why the late Father Richard John Neuhaus referred to the MacRae case as reflecting "a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice." The problem for nearly everyone involved in that debacle of a trial is that Father MacRae did not just go quietly into the night. He has been writing, and what he writes has captured the attention of fair-minded Catholics everywhere, and others willing to hear another side of the sordid story of sex abuse and unquestioned monetary settlements that have been its driving force in more recent decades. In "A Voice in the Wilderness," an article for Catholic Exchange earlier this year, I wrote of These Stone Walls:

"Sitting in his cell on an empty plastic bucket in front of an old Smith-Corona typewriter, Father MacRae has produced some remarkable writing about the scandal of the last decade, about the church in Western culture, about fidelity, false witness, and prison itself...The amazing result is These Stone Walls, an eye-catching, conscience-grabbing blog that is both riveting and spiritually uplifting. This blog's fidelity to the Church, and to the truth, has been deemed by many to be the finest example of priestly witness the last decade of scandal has produced."

If that is the truth - and I believe it is - then Father David Deibel's advocacy for Father Gordon MacRae, and his recent advocacy for Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life is the second finest example of priestly witness the last decade of scandal has produced. It takes great courage to stand up for the truth, but even greater courage to stand up to an institution grown too complacent about compromising truth and justice. I shudder to think of the fate of these two priests without the canonical advocacy of Father Deibel in the current climate.


The Wall Street Journal commends Father David Deibel for the courage of his advocacy. So does The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and The National Center for Reason and Justice. So do the many thousands of readers drawn to These Stone Walls and Priests for Life on a daily basis.

The Church owes a great debt of respect and admiration for the work of Father David Deibel, an advocate for Father Frank Pavone and Father Gordon MacRae, and for Church law itself. There is a far more expert opinion on the matter of this dauntless pursuit of truth and justice, and I defer to it.

Click here to read: "The Duty of a Priest: Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life"

Pornchai Moontri at the Narrow Gate

By Ryan A. MacDonald






"The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." I was once very disappointed to hear a judge say that as he imposed sentence on a young man in his court. Imagine being known and judged for the rest of your life solely for the worst mistake you have ever made, with no hope for atonement or restoring your name.

In the 1980's and 1990's, the balance between rehabilitation and punishment shifted in American prisons and courts. Sentences grew longer - much longer - and the path out of prison became far steeper. Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger once wrote:

"We must accept the reality that to confine offenders behind walls without trying to change them is an expensive folly with short-term benefits - winning battles while losing the war."

Justice Burger was right. The current rate of incarceration in the U.S. is almost five times the world average. But should everyone who is in prison remain in prison? Is punishment, and not redemption, all we can hope for?

Last year, the Catholic Church welcomed Pornchai Moontri into a life of faith. On September 10th, 2011 Pornchai will turn 38 years of age. Exactly half his life - 19 years - has been spent in prison. At the age of 18, Pornchai committed an act of violence that took a man's life. It was not what he set out to do. For the next thirteen years in Maine's prisons, Pornchai was locked away and labeled as beyond redemption. He responded accordingly. Pornchai was locked in a high security cell for 23 hours a day because he could not, or would not, control the rage that burned within him. After thirteen years with a dismal prison record, Pornchai was transferred to a New Hampshire prison. The story of what happened next is well told, and you should read it for yourself. It is simply amazing! (see "Pornchai's Story" under "Commentary").

Three years ago, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights published "Pornchai's Story" as "The Conversion Story of 2008." It got a lot of notice. Pornchai received many comments about his journey to faith including personal letters from Cardinal Michai Kitbunchu, the Archbishop of Bangkok, and from the United States Ambassador to the Holy See as well as the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, among others. "Pornchai's Story" was reprinted in Thailand andat an online site on prayer and conversion here in the U.S. The response to his story was remarkable, as is the path that brought him to this point in his life.

When Pornchai Moontri was sentenced at age eighteen to 45 years in prison, the judge cited her belief that Pornchai had "many opportunities" in the United States to "turn his life around." Anyone who reads "Pornchai's Story" is left to wonder exactly what those opportunities were. If the judge knew the entire story of Pornchai's life up to the point at which he committed his awful crime, it is doubtful that she would have characterized his life in terms of "opportunity."

But the judge did not know the whole story, and still doesn't. Justice will one day require that Pornchai stand before a human judge again, and with an advocate who will present the entire truth. That day is, hopefully, not too far away.

In the meantime, Pornchai has stood before a far greater Judge, and the result is simply extraordinary. In the last five years, Pornchai has enrolled in and completed programs in Interpersonal Violence, Commitment to Change, Anger Management, Victim Impact, Life Skills, and others. He has been awarded certificates for over 600 hours of post-secondary education in Culinary Arts, Computer Sciences, and advanced mathematics. He has taken every course in mathematics that the prison Education Department has to offer. Pornchai is rather modest about his giftedness in math, a skill he generously uses to tutor other inmates. Math is the most common obstacle for inmates trying to obtain their G.E.D. high school equivalency diplomas.

One young inmate wrote in a letter in Pornchai's prison file:

"I had been unable to pass the G.E.D. math exams and pretests. I just could not understand the math. For almost three
months, Pornchai Moontri worked with me several hours per week. Today I received my G.E.D. grade report: I got a 500
in math and passed all the others for a total score of 2630. I never in my life believed this would be possible. I have my
G.E.D. today because of Pornchai Moontri.”

Pornchai has also been cited twice by prison officials for his volunteer work as a mentor and teacher in a prison program for young, first time offenders called Fast Track. Pornchai developed and implemented a challenging physical fitness curriculum, and personally led the inmate participants in twice per day endurance routines. These young men admired and respected Pornchai who had an enormous influence on them. When others in prison were recruiting young inmates for gangs, Pornchai was teaching them math, helping them build self-confidence, and speaking openly with them about his path to redemption. Pornchai now spends his spare time studying the Catholic faith to which he is preparing to commit himself. He completed an excellent ten-part correspondence course in Catholic studies sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, and is now enrolled in theology courses at Catholic Distance University. His grade point average for his first two university level theology courses is 98%.

I asked Pornchai Moontri if he understands the moment at which his life changed course so radically. It wasn't the company he keeps these days, or the thanks he receives for his service to others. It wasn't the letters from prominent people, or his becoming aware of his giftedness in math. It was hearing the Word of God. Specifically, it was hearing Matthew 7:13:

"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it
are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

The Gospel that we Catholics hear Sunday after Sunday left Pornchai thunderstruck. He said he now asks himself every day and in everything he faces, "What is the Narrow Gate for me?" This Gospel passage planted a seed sown by God Himself in the depths of Pornchai's soul. No human could have accomplished within Pornchai what God has accomplished. Pornchai was called upon to change, and the change was fundamental in his very core.

We who welcome Pornchai to a life of faith also agonize with him. When his prison sentence is over, he will be punished yet again. Like all who have committed crimes on U.S. soil, he is ordered to be deported to his native Thailand from which he was taken at the age of eleven in 1985. Pornchai also spends his days studying Thai, a language he never learned to read and write and one he hasn't heard spoken for 25 years. Pornchai hopes to seek some clemency from his remaining sentence so that he may go to Thailand at an age at which he can still build a life. His atonement, he says, is to be a life of service to others. Is our country beyond mercy? No number of years or decades in prison can restore the life lost through Pornchai's crime. However, he clearly is no longer that young man driven to despair. It is time for the justice system to revisit justice.

Pornchai has chosen the name "Maximillian" as his Christian name. It is a name I have read before on These Stone Walls. It permeates the very cell where Pornchai lives, and has profoundly influenced his world. Pornchai Moontri has fallen into the hands of the Living God.

Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?

"Doubt" is a terrific film about an accused Catholic priest starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The real Oscar-winning character in the film, however, was doubt itself. Early in the film, Father Flynn (Hoffman) delivered a homily about it saying: "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty."

It made me spontaneously think of the 1994 trial of Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester who will soon mark his seventeenth year in prison for crimes that I and lots of other people now doubt he committed. I wonder what certainty Father MacRae's jury had when they determined this priest to be guilty after weighing the case for less than two hours following an eight day trial in 1994.

It could not have helped that the priest's own bishop and diocese, apparently advised by their own lawyers to quickly settle the simultaneous lawsuits brought by the priest’s accusers, declared him guilty in a pre-trial press release that had the effect of demolishing his civil and canonical rights.

In the ensuing years I have studied the case against Father Gordon MacRae with a fine-toothed comb, and I am left only with doubt. What I have found most alarming about his trial is the fact that a court and a jury convicted him with no evidence at all beyond the lynch-mob hype of local media and a police detective and prosecutor determined to find the priest guilty at the expense of due process and civil liberties. Equally alarming is the fact that there was much evidence that Father MacRae's jury never heard at all. I have examined some of that evidence in the form of police reports and pre-trial dispositions of the priest's accusers. The cold hard fact is that Father Gordon MacRae's accusers originally also accused another priest - Father Stephen Scruton - who fled the state when subpoenaed for MacRae's trial. What happened next is an account that will leave you exactly where it left me: filled with doubt about whether a priest who has staunchly maintained his innocence for seventeen years in prison was guilty of anything at all.

What follows is an account of the evidence Father Gordon MacRae's judge and jury never saw or heard. When you read it, and I hope you will, I am certain you will join me in the only possible conclusion: doubt.

Let's hope our common doubt creates the enduring bond Father Flynn predicted. There is an innocent priest languishing in prison who needs our help. Originally published at These Stone Walls, "Truth in Justice: Was the wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?" is by far the most important document I have ever written.

Good-Bye, Good Priest! Father John Corapi's Kafkaesque Catch-22

"A rolling stone gathers no moss, but administrative leave required Father John Corapi to be more like a sitting duck than a rolling stone."
There is a perspective on the story of Father John Corapi that few people have considered. It's the point of view of a priest sitting in prison for a crime that never took place because sanctions imposed on him kept him from defending himself. Before drawing any conclusions from the Father Corapi saga, please have a look at "Good-Bye, Good Priest! Father John Corapi's Kafkaesque Catch-22" by Fr. Gordon MacRae this week at These Stone Walls.