Three Favorite Religious Books

Hey! A meme for bookworms finally! Colleen at Inadequate Disciple tagged me for a meme which asks you to name your three favorite religious books and then tag five other bloggers to do the same. Not counting the Bible, here are three of my favorites:

~ Practice of the Presence of God  by Brother Lawrence - I read this book at least once a year and sometimes more often than that. Great book!

~ Divine Mercy in My Soul: St. Faustina's Diary - I usually have this book out for easy access. St. Faustina is one of my favorite saints.

~ Fire of Love/Understanding Purgatory by St. Catherine of Genoa - This little book is a treasure. Reading this book made me realize that it really is all love on God's part and that Purgatory is a blessing for those who have died before attaining the perfect purity of heart so necessary before coming face-to-face with the Living God.

I tag:

Kathryn at Heart for God
Sue at Sue Elvis Writes
Mary at Hope Echoes
Esther at A Catholic Mom in Hawaii
Jennifer at Crafolic ~ Catholic Crafts and More!!

New Evidence Comes to Light in the Bizarre Case of Father Gordon MacRae

Father Gordon MacRae is an imprisoned priest (accused of sexual abuse of a minor) here in my home state of New Hampshire. I first became aware of Fr. MacRae, who claims he was falsely accused, in 2010 after reading a few articles about his case online. In the beginning, I chalked this case up to "just another prisoner refusing to accept responsibility for his mistakes and claiming innocence despite all the evidence against him".

The problem was...there WAS no evidence against him.

 Nothing.

 Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Sounds a bit unbelievable, I know, but true, nonetheless. I didn't find this out until I studied his case files (along with other documents I found online and old newspaper articles about the trial) myself and realized that there was a strong possibility that this man might very well be innocent. I wrote a series of articles about this priest who claims that he was falsely accused and continued to read everything I could find about his case.

Today I received an e-mail from Spero News columnist, Ryan A MacDonald, who has written numerous articles about this falsely accused priest, including a number of articles on his blog - A Ram in the Thicket. The e-mail related the news that new evidence has been brought to light in Fr. MacRae's case. Evidence that is strong enough to exonerate him. You can read it here:
http://www.themediareport.com/2012/02/20/new-evidence-may-exonerate-priest-gordon-j-macrae/.
After reading the article I couldn't help thinking how little evidence it took to convict him and how much evidence was needed to exonerate him.  Scary, isn't it? Especially in a country where the judicial system works on the premise "innocent until proven guilty".

Words fail me.