I was blessed to be able to join my serving colleagues once again, in assisting the St. Patrick's Gregorian Choir, in serving the Lord via the Latin Mass for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. I will draw up a report of this Mass soon with my usual altar setup pics and my recollection of the celebrant's homily.
However, I must now draw some attention to a previous matter, which has taken an interesting turn at the hands of a traditionalist behaving badly .... and badly he and his accomplice(s?) have behaved.
If you will recall last month, I decided to defend my Eminence, ++Collins, against Eric Lea Alcock of Contra/diction! blog, who thinks that my Cardinal isn't just doing enough against the source of abortion, contraception and moral evil. Calling +Collins out, so to speak, from the comfort of his domicile several land masses and some waters away in Newfoundland, he now has 4 recent posts, and others he's wrote in the past, criticizing my Eminence to the point beyond fraternal Charity.
My Eminence was unknowingly slandered and calumnied by this individual, in such posts as seen here, after the magnificent feat of his presence at the Solemn LATIN Mass ``in the Presence of a Greater Prelate`` for Msgr. Foy's 75th ordination, and I decided to take this to task. Worse, ELA is a stereotype of the "Trad Behaving Badly" (my coined term, because "Mad/Rad Trad" infuriates the directed targets to commit more sins, and unfairly calumnies the good traditionalists) as I discovered he was an attendee, and blogmaster for, the now deleted website for a St. John`s Newfoundland Latin Mass group in the Archdiocese of St. John`s, under the pastoral authority of Archbishop Currie. Some snapshots of what was up is provided here:
The blog was taken down.
Google Cache of the former St. John's Latin Mass Community RECENT blog, webmastered by ELA. It actually wasn't like Contra/diction! blog. Too bad.
Wanting to stop to misrepresenting Latin Mass Catholics, and the insult of my Eminence, I decided that this would require ecclesiastical authority in his region to intervene, that is whomever is his bishop (now confirmed as +Currie of A.St. John's). I therefore composed an e-mail detailing what Mr. Alcock has done about my bishop, and how he has misrepresented, like so many others on the internet, the Latin Mass community by what he blogs about. This was sent to the three Archdiocese offices of NL, meant for their (arch)bishops.
Sure enough, Mr. Alcock wasn`t happy with me discovering his TBB antics, and wrote his own defamatory posting about me with a picture of a knight on horseback (thanks. That`s a compliment to me!), and he posted my written letter to +Currie et al. for all to read IN FULL! If you came here because of it, thank you for the additional blog hits (of which I receive 0 pay,) and go on! Explore my blog more! You might like my postings on Latin Mass serving positions and breakdown of the parts of the Mass! In fairness, he did credit my zeal for my Eminence.
I rechecked the post this past week as my experience with TBBs in past is they tend to cover up their works when they are caught, either modifying or deleting things they post. Not only did some other like-minded person want to contact him, Mr. Alcock removed the full text of my letter. Why? In Mr. Alcock's words at the now updated post, with my emphasis bolded and underlined:
" UPDATE: In order to protect my sources I have removed from this posting the contents of an email sent by Julian Barkin to the Bishops of NL. The reader can easily click on this link to one of Barkin's blog postings to get a good idea of what he said to the Bishops about me"
This removal was clearly NOT done in charity to me, by order of +Currie and the Archdiocesan office of St. John's, or repentance of the sin of detraction and/or calumny.
I am quite disturbed by this breach of my confidence and privacy with the Office of the Archbishop of St. John`s. I sent the email to the publicly listed addresses on the Internet and trusted the offices of the NL archdiocese to respect my privacy. Further what am I to think as a young man of 30-years in the Church, as one of those less than 25% (and probably even lower amongst my age group of gen Xers) of weekly Mass attendees, when one of our biggest issues is the distrust of authority, both secular and eccleastical? Were my faith weak, I'd rip myself apart from the Church and hate bishops and priests because of this breach of trust. Thank God at least I can trust my own Archdiocesan Office, and my faith is strong enough NOT to lost Faith, but really?
For the full letter to have been posted, according to the words of ELA above lest he be right, this clearly shows:
- An abuse of power, privilege, and their office, of someone within the Archdiocesan office of St. John's. This can be anyone from a web administrator, an administrative assistant, or other staff member. Further it's easy to use blind copy in e-mails to hide knowledge of other recipients. The person could have passed the email to +Currie, and easily sent it to ELA as a BCC.
- A sincere form of disrespect for +Currie and his office in the Church
- That should there truly be an ally of Mr. Alcock in the Archdicoesan office, then this is an example of blatant hypocrisy by those who claim that liberals snuck into offices in the institutional Church, parishes, and dioceses, and are wreaking havoc in the Institutional Church from within (That is, it weakens their arguments and decreases the likelihood of being taken seriously, including real victims of such crimes by those abusing power).
Sadly, in this case it appears as if the Trads Behaving Badly. have connections in a chancery office for once. If Mr. Alcock is right, someone up in +Currie's office, a TBB or misguided soul, clearly leaked this out, protecting Mr. Alcock as a friend, the Latin Mass, or some other reason.
Should what Mr. Alcock claims to be true, it was morally, spiritually, and professionally INAPPROPRIATE of you, the person behind the information leak, to abuse your position in your office, to leak that communication, and I hope that the Archbishop will be more cautious in future of whom he hires as staff. I trusted your boss, +Currie, with this communication, that he would do the right thing for Holy Mother Church, by helping to fight against the radical traditionalism that plagues the Latin Mass and their self-elected adherents online and in person, and to stop the calumny and detraction of another fellow Canadian prelate, who's MY "SPIRITUAL" BOSS.
Might I also inform viewers that while I am an adult, +Currie released, for public viewing, a letter on the Archdiocesan Policy for screening employees, viewable here. In it, he says the following, with my emphasis bolded and in one instance, underlined:
".... At the core of effective ministry is a sacred trust which must be created and nurtured. Like professionals in our society, such as physicians, lawyers and others, trust is given to those who perform ministries in the church. Trust can take time to create, but can be destroyed in a moment. Screening of priests, employees and volunteers will help to reveal instances where trust has been abused in the past. It will help to protect those for whom we care, and to reduce the risk of misconduct from occurring in the performance of our ministries. This screening policy will benefit those who minister by clarifying their responsibilities and by outlining how to perform their ministries appropriately ...."
Mr. Alcock`s source would have been screened, likely with the high risk option, with some form of background check to be fully employed in the chancery office, as they are dealing with all kinds of people, including those in most need of our safeguarding (e.g. elderly, minors). Despite not being a minor, and that the screening is not fullproof, this is clearly a violation of the Screening in Faith policy he/she underwent, as outlined in +Currie's letter at the link above. As a matter of fact, the release of such information in ANY workplace dealing with sensitive information, would constitute termination of employment.
While other possibilities might exist, I am 100% percent certain, that +Currie is innocent in the whole matter. +Currie, as per his blog here, `Vox Clamatis in desertio,`` was on his way to Quebec, Montreal, and the surrounding areas for a week long pilgrimage. He would have to entrust such communications to his staff and to deal with such business upon his return. He would be concentrating on the pilgrimage at hand and not archdiocesan business. The expression is ``While the cats are away, the mice will play`` and I would not be surprised for someone to do something like this in his physical absence from office. Further, permanent, PUBLIC, Sunday time slots for TLMs are according to bishop's authority (therefore, Sunday obligation) and the community has existed since the turn of this decade (2010's), so it would be contrary for +Currie go against the St. John`s community after all these years? This act clearly could not have been at his hands, so all you TBBs, cease your whining and conspiracy theories now!
To wrap this up, as seen above, Mr. Alcock has decided to take off the blog he was the webmaster of for his Latin Mass community in St. Johns. While there is an older blog still up containing the basic information for any Newfies to go to the TLM if interested, it is clear that Alcock's blog was the more recent one for the group. Perhaps this was a direct order to dismantle the blog by the St. John`s group? I surely hope that this wasn't a classic TBB playbook move of covering up evidence of wrongdoing. Also, couldn't Alcock have transferred over the position to another person in the TLM community as an alternative to maintain the blog? Or to have a second person be the author of that blog to post content and to post that person's profile, if he had to step down? That's usually what organizations do if they want to keep the existing framework, but to give a new, positive image to the organization.
Regardless, this whole episode just shows how far these TBBs will go in their pride and power, and what they will do to enforce their Trad Behaving Badly "version" of Traditional Catholicism, the one that Pope Francis detests in his multiple homilies, It's their way or no way, and they do not care who they hurt, whether it is the young people of the Church, or all the way up to the Church's princes and Vicar. You fight, they will play dirty and publicly smear you. They are the "other side of the narrow path towards the heavenly gate."
Sad thing is .... their antics will just lead more prelates and dioceses to reject the Latin Mass and traditional Catholicism and not dispose of anything that might be considered "spirit of Vatican II", as what the TBBs are doing, looks 100 times worse. THIS IS THE WORST TIME IN THE CHURCH TO DO SUCH THINGS POST-BENEDICT XVI !!!
Traditionalists, everyone, please smarten up. Take the good acts these few stronger bishops, like ++Collins are doing, for what they are with no criticism or ill will, unless they are doing something grave like ad-libing the Mass, or objectively violating church teaching (e.g. "communion to divorced AND remarried Catholic is OK"). Support and cheer them on when they act courageously and do things like hold EF Masses or issue strongly worded pro-life pastoral letters without the added barb of TBB poison or speculation.
Good Trads, those who are not these TBBs, or represented by them, please be active in the defense of your beloved Latin Mass and Traditional Catholicism. Else these TBBs will represent you, and even the good princes of the Church, might not be so willing to extend their graces to you, despite Church laws and motu proprios. Law is 50% interpretation remember?
Part II will also be coming up later, though I will need a bit of work on that one as it will involve trying to post differently than what I have here. I might even need a bit of help on that. Also, reporting on last night`s Latin Mass is a bigger priority to me on S.U.D.
Pax, Julian.
