A Call To Action is a group of Catholics, ordained and lay, open to discussing issues outside Church teaching. In a nutshell, that’s how I would describe them. The vast majority of Catholics would not be overly worried about A Call To Action, talk to the parishioner on the Clapham pew and the group will be seen as doing no more than exploring.

But to some they are a source of tutting and pearl clutching. And I will admit, I was one of those people. I registered with their website, I have, to be generous to myself, debated with contributors and I have been honest with them that I have no time for the dialogues they wish to open.

But by discussing these matters with the members of A Call To Action I have had to take a step back. I was being very flippant in my dealings with them and that’s not what any of us are here for. It took me back to my feelings about the Soho Masses. I had a very negative view not only of the Masses, but also the attendees, until I spoke to one. He actually approached me to talk about it and I found myself talking to someone looking for spiritual guidance and support. This was not a time for me to judge, but to serve, as I have been ordained to do.

I’ve now had in depth conversations with three members of A Call To Action, two in person and one via email, also one of the most faithful, Christian, loving, generous people I know is very involved although she and I have not discussed the matter. What I find when I speak to the members is earnestness, a wanting to explore, to learn and to understand.

Sadly on the other side of the spectrum we have the rabid right wing, and I make no apology for my turn of phrase. I could be flip in my dealings with them too. I might say ‘obviously they are so threatened by A Call To Action they need to cut them off at the pass’ or ‘they must feel so insecure in their own faith they’re scared this mob might convert them’, but they don’t like what they see from A Call To Action and that must be handled too, but it will need the same openness with which A Call To Action approach issues before it can be handled.

I’ve been disappointed by the behaviour of the right. Infantile comments about the age of the membership abound for a start. All those I know who are affiliated are younger than my 54 years. Just as they hold up Mark Davies and Philip Egan as the only hope for Catholicism in England and Wales, they’ve taken to deriding Kieran Conry for his allowing A Call To Action to act in his diocese. I have not seen any other bishop who has afforded them time being treated to unkind comments and anonymously authored parody blogs*. It’s all got rather subjective.

But Bishop Conry is doing what all orthodox clergy will do, remembering his ordination promise to serve the people of God, not to refuse them or blog about them, or blog about those who do serve them.

A Call To Action is holding a meeting in the parish where I live, not the parish that I serve, in two weeks time. It’s a walk from home, but I will not be attending, I have no interest, although it’s my weekend off and the ad hoc Vigil of Sunday Mass at 5pm might be useful. But nor will I be out there with a placard, calling them names and wishing the Church to censure them.

When they start discussing they are going to be lead to the truth, the whole thing will evaporate and the attackers will look for someone else to attack, and I sure it won’t take them long. A Call To Action are our brothers and sisters in Christ, we must care for them and pray for them. They have not separated from the Church, perhaps some need to know where they fit in, orthodox clergy will serve them by finding where that is.

* “Parody” last bastion of the bully (with apologies to Dr Johnson)

While we take the students on retreat, these days are really useful for me too.  I love my job, I count my blessings every day, I would not ever want to do anything else.

But like all jobs, there are those days that make me forget how privileged I am.

Days like today bring it all back in kilter.  Next time you hear me moaning, remind me of this.

Worth Abbey near Crawley is a beautiful place. I can fully understand why so many Arundel and Brighton diocesan events such as ordinations and deanery confirmations take place there, it is a beautiful modern church in the most stunning of settings, surrounded by rolling hills and the beautiful Worth School.

It is my utter privilege to be paid to take six classes there on different days at the start of the academic year. We take Year Seven, the newbies who are now part of four new communities, their form, their year group, their house and their school.

The boys get to explore what it means to be a community and what a community actually is. We start by splitting into three groups, and lining up in height order in silence. The silence is the key, then still in silence, they have to line up in age order. That’s when the fun starts, the chaps have to be reminded to remain silent, but then they’re Year Seven, it’s only natural. The third task is to find, silently, throughout the whole class who likes the same biscuits, cakes or sweets as them. This year has seen a particularly steep rise in the popularity of Haribo (other brands of sweet are available)

Having pointed out that, as they’ve seen some communities work better than others, we discuss how communities can help each other with their strengths and weaknesses. We move on to filling in a sheet with things such as ‘my favourite food’ ‘the team I support’ ‘my pets’ etc. When they are all filled in we read them out to see how well they’ve got to know the new members of their community. This works better the later in the year we go, but it’s always very popular. We use this to illustrate that we can have a connection we are unaware of in our community.

Around midday we are joined by one of the monks at the Abbey. This is a highpoint of the day, the students sit agog when they hear of the lifestyle the monks lead, when they are given a chance to ask questions, hands shoot up like Japanese Knot Weed, with no holds barred to questions like ‘do you get to go and see Palace play?’ to ‘Do you know who Rihanna is?’ We run out of time every time which is always greeted with a moan.

Our next part is to walk down to the Quiet Garden (“the clue is in the name gents”) where we look at God’s creation and how it has been enhanced by man, within the garden. The first creation narrative is read (can I sir, can I sir) and then the boys have to look for something beautiful that encompasses God’s creation and the work of Man. There is usually much excitement about the cave in the garden, but the bridge is usually the favourite item of the exercise.

At 12,50 we head into the church to join the monks for midday prayer. The amused, askance looks from some of the lads is a thing of joy, others really take to it and try to join in.

After lunch we talk about the school’s patron and how he is a source of inspiration for the whole school community, many of the boys will know lots about him, others might not know him at all, but superhero status has been granted him by the time we finish.

After a few more community explorations we finish with prayer. Today when I asked what we might pray for ‘Syria’ was shouted out without missing a beat.

We tidy the room, remembering that God’s gift of stewardship of the Earth includes the room we are in, and we set off back to school. It’s rare the boys don’t say thank you, and even those who might need a few reminders during the day enjoy it.

I’m back there soon.

MY CREDENTIALS: -28 November 1999, 10am Mass, we were saying the Creed.  From where I was standing, to the side at the altar I could see nothing but we were suddenly aware that something was very wrong.  To cut a long story short, a man had come into Mass with a sword and started attacking people.  He was stopped, he was arrested, in June the following year he was detained indefinitely due to diminished responsibility.

Fast forward two years.  Our perpetrator, Eden Strang was now considered by the professionals taking care of him to be safe for release into the community.  Just like November 1999, the media went into a feeding frenzy and journalists all over the south east were heading for, telephoning and faxing Thornton Heath.

Various journalists wanted direct quotes and our parish priest met with some, outside the church, one Saturday morning. One of the was a young lady from the Mail on Sunday whom I always saw in my head when I read Harry Potter and encountered Rita Skeeter, why?  This is why.

Fr John explained to the journalists that as Eden did not know what he was doing was wrong, we had nothing to forgive, therefore, we don’t talk about forgiveness, we talk about reconciliation.  Our Rita wrote it up as ‘we cannot talk about forgiveness’ giving a wholly different spin on his words of Christian love.

Leap forward to last week when a Brighton local journalist played the same game with Fr Ray Blake’s blog on the poor.  Fr Ray wrote nothing that any Christian would argue with.  However, our hack, love him, for some reason did not see the last, vital sentence of Fr Ray’s blog  “My big difficulty with confession at the moment is that I have grown complacent in my lifestyle, I don’t want it changed, the message of the Gospels seem to be let the poor into it to mess it up a little.”

Fr Ray in a further post asks for forgiveness for the journalist, to misrepresent by omission is not the act of a Christian, to forgive is.

There has been much blogging and ….stuff.. written about all this, my sad view is rather than leaving the defense of Fr Ray’s blog to Fr Ray and the correct channels, all that’s ultimately happened is our young hack has got himself a story that has spread worldwide, but that is, as I said, only my view.

But none of it, not even this blog is worth reading except this http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100234719/it-can-be-hard-to-forgive-drunkards-and-bad-journalists-but-try-we-must-just-ask-fr-ray-blake/

While musing my response to the reminder of all the wrongs I had done, and apologised for in the past, I took my time.  One; to make sure I didn’t miss anything and, two; so I could take some advice from someone who was up to speed with events.

Over the weekend I had got further acquainted with Google+.  I was interested to find some of the fake accounts were also on Google+.  I wondered if anyone else knew they were there, I was guessing only the fake account owners would know.

It’s very easy to add people on Google+, just like following on Twitter, so I added them.  Who knows, Google+ might exonerate the authors of said accounts. It was suggested the author of a fake account or two might get in touch with me over the matter, at least it would open dialogue.

My more pressing task was to respond to the post on my many faults, It was written and needed looking over, but before I could post it, this arrived in response to me, from the owner of the blog to whom I responded: –

Actually I am beginning to believe that there is a serious problem here.

3 people have independently contacted me this weekend to let me know that they have been tracked down on the Internet by an account purporting to be Tony Flavin via Google Plus, one person in particular is very concerned about how his email may have been obtained.

In addition, as I mentioned, I was contacted out of the blue by Deacon Tony when my daughter was 3 days old and I was still in hospital connected up to IVs and catheters, complaining about the content of others’ tweets to me. He has yet to clarify from where he procured my email, it was not via the blog.

Another lady had Deacon Tony write to her at her home address, after his friend published it on Twitter, much to her dismay. Deacon Tony did not take his friend to task for publishing such confidential information online and neither did he when his friend did the same to me recently, publishing my former surnames, not available online, whilst addressing @frererabit and seemingly accusing a fifty/sixty year old Spanish ex-pat who runs a donkey sanctuary of being me. I sense double standards applying here.

Furthermore another friend has told me how Tony tracked her down and sent a letter to her work address, something which she found very peculiar and rather creepy and today, another friend has just informed me that she has discovered an email from him from April this year, admonishing her for RTing another account and asking her motivations for doing so. He said he googled her email address and every single person who had RTed, to check if they were real or ‘socks’.

This is extremely concerning behaviour. Twitter is not so important as to waste valuable amounts of time on, let alone tracking women down in real life, to let them know he knows where they live and work and pursuing a vendetta. It seems verging on criminal activity and that’s 4 women now (in his email Tony mentioned a fifth woman he’d contacted) who can attest to being dismayed and concerned at his tracking them down in real life.

I do of course have all the evidence to substantiate this as I would not be so irresponsible as to publish false allegations.

This appears to have simply come about because I had added people on Google+. While the use of the word ‘stalking’ appeared to be rather emotive language, I’m not going to denigrate someone for their lack of vocabulary, I can’t, glass houses and stones and all that, but the prepared post was then response was nuanced and posted: –

I wouldn’t expect you, or anyone else to play Twitter Police, but I would suggest to you that you act as the <blog owner’s name>  police and guard your reputation from being tarnished by the on line company that you keep.

I’m sure you’ll understand after my own experience I will not be satisfied by simply being told anonymous accounts belong to real people. As we have seen, many of the accounts I have called fake have disappeared or stopped being used. Take for example Sheehanboy, Jean Racine, StopAntiCath and Clothilde Simon. My experience cannot lead me to accept the two vile unpleasant Tweeters in question to be genuine. And yes, I would hold that anyone, including a priest, who engages with these unpleasant profiles, is culpable. Archbishop Smith reminds people frequently that we clergy are but men, and sometimes we get things wrong. He will then go on to ask for prayers for the clergy.

You said I was monitoring your timeline. Your timeline was watched when the author of another account was being sought back in June and it was made clear to you we feared you were being made to look as if you were the author, which we have also made clear, we do not think is the case.

Currently we are speaking of a blog post and the tweets of others with whom you have engaged, these would not just be on your timeline.

However, as we saw on 10 and 12 June, in spite of neither of us following each other you admonished me for two separate posts. Neither of these admonitions are in accord with your point on dealing with issues outside social media.

At the time of giving birth last year, your tweets were private. Twitter Support can confirm this for you. I had only seen tweets to you, not from you, and as you have indicated is favourable, I dealt with the matter outside social media.

While Fr Stephen may have received your apology well, my whole point is how these things look to others, particularly the action of the male profile who jumped into that thread. We have seen much viciousness from that profile, simply stepping away without taking the profile to task looks, I am trying to stress, as accord with all actions of the profile. The same applies to the female profile who was unnecessarily unpleasant to your colleague.

Maureen Clarke was enduring comments from crisscross60. No matter what our relationship with other tweeters, if they include us in a tweet and it makes us uncomfortable, we have to act or look duplicitous. For example take my own actions with AnnraoiOD who do not interact with. I told him emphatically I was not interested in being included into his tweets to you.

I shall not comment on the myriad of my faults you have reminded us, and informed others about. I have, as you and many others are aware, apologised for my actions to you on more than one occasion. However they stand to serve exactly the purpose of my response to your blog. If these comments had come from an anonymous account would that account be best disposed to make retribution?

While you appear to accept my apology at the time, those faults keep being dragged up, forgive me please for considering that Christian actions speak louder than simply words. Once again, I apologise for upsetting you and leave those we share these posts with, particularly those familiar with the Spiritual Works of Mercy, to be my earthly judge.

But if you could provide proof of me calling anyone a horse or a dog I’d be grateful.

Can I just verify one thing with you. Last year you bought your distress during pregnancy into threads on Twitter. One or two others mentioned your pregnancy as a mitigation for people possibly allowing you not to be challenged on your posts, some of which others, myself not included as your tweets were private and I could not see them, found contentious. Already in this pregnancy one of the profiles referred to earlier is defending your right to say whatever you feel without the matter being discussed due to your condition. Surely this is not your view? Currently I know of a liquidator and an oncologist who are pregnant, neither of them would expect exemption from trickier, non physical tasks, just as they hadn’t in their previous pregnancies. You debated live on BBC1 during that time, hence I draw this conclusion.

Finally you refer to my campaign against you. I have to point out, as the evidence is there to support, I simply respond to you, as I have in this instance. There is no campaign, and no trouble making, simply response. If there was any campaign I would not have emailed you privately on 12 June, outside social media as you suggest, asking how I had upset you and asking how I could correct it. I am willing to share my emails to you with anyone who wishes to see them, as I am sure you too are willing for our correspondence to be witnessed.

I wish you no harm , I would have hoped my getting in touch to congratulate you on your performance on the Vanessa show and your appointment as a columnist at The Universe and the other occasions I have tweeted you might have illustrated this. If there is a gap in my communication perhaps a contributor with a real name might be able to assist me.

As a reply this has appeared: –

Deacon Tony. I have been advised that it would be a kindness to you to remove your incriminating and comment in which you admit that a group of you have been monitoring and watching my timeline since last year, behaviour which could well amount to criminal conduct

I shall continue to hold you in prayer and hope that you find a more fulfilling way of spreading the Good News of the Gospel in accordance with your ministry.

..And my post was removed.  Obviously there is no criminal activity here, if there is, then I was subjected to it on 10 and 12, but I shall forgive.   Using your ordered state as a rod with which to beat one is also something else I shall forgive.  In diaconate formation we were told it would happen, we are reminded during ongoing formation that it will happen when you do something someone doesn’t like, it will be there only response.  This reminds me of Dr Johnson on patriotism ‘the last bastion of the scoundrel’.

I’ve received no other answers to any of the points I have made.

Considering that I had previously thought of bloggers along the same lines as those people who whistle in the supermarket, it could look a little superficial me blogging, but it’s for a reason.

The need for this arose out of my fight for fairness from some unkind fake profiles on Twitter. One blogger thought my stance was, her words, ridiculous, well, needless to say i thought this needed addressing. I had not been named in the blog, in fact I was referred to as “one tweeter whom I shall decline to name”. Personally I loved that, it gave me a feel of ‘She who must be obeyed’ from jolly old Rumpole.

I felt it appropriate to respond.  My response is below, You’ll note I refer to other parts of the blog post that you might not be party to, forgive me please, but here goes: –

..as I am the tweeter you decline to name, perhaps you’ll let me clear up something that’s been misconstrued.

I do not insist that all tweeters use only their real name. Where I know the people behind the pseudonyms, I engage with them. Examples are readily available.

When I don’t know the person behind the profile I do not engage and I explain why. Some get upset, others prove who they are without issue.

I am well aware that you have seen pseudonymous accounts make unkind unnecessary comments to people, or even as we’ve seen in my own case, blog unkindly about my wife and parish, and set up a fake and very unkind profile for my wife. To date I am told by anyone I speak to about this, such behaviour should not be endured or encouraged. Sadly though, some then go into their shell, or even stay sniggering behind their own pseudonymous profile, justify their behaviour in blogs and conveniently forget the words of Edmumd Burke “all it takes….”
Fake accounts tend to latch on to others with whom they become friendly. The friends give the fake accounts a credibility which in turn emboldens the faker to behave ever more inappropriately.

Take for example the tweets to Maureen Clarke by an anonymous account on 21 July. Some of the comments made to Maureen at that time were outrageous, unchristian and juvenile. But while this was going on the account is tagging you in, a “Catholic Voice”, you make no attempt to be removed from the conversation which could be perceived to give said fake account some esteem.

On 17 August a second account, again anonymous, took a wholly inappropriate swipe at Mary Clarkson when she entered into a conversation with you. Others defended Mary’s words. Your own standpoint was to simply asking for a cessation of the conversation. This might be interpreted as you defending the anonymous account. I suspect you saw it differently but it was the view of the person who pointed me to the exchange.

After your tweet on the excellence of the Southwark Vocation Service on 15 August, another account took an opportunity to have a dig at Fr Stephen, the director of the service. The account purports to be a former seminarian, even giving a name, however, attempts to reach the gentlemen through known legitimate channels are proving fruitless.

More importantly Fr Stephen is a friend of Fr Terry Martin, vocations director for the diocese for which <close relative of blog owner> might be ordained, this could prove a little awkward for the two gentlemen who we can be assured work closely together in sharing best practice. Surely it would be appropriate to distance yourself from such anonymous activities.

You may feel you can dismiss my sensitivities as ‘ridiculous’ but when misfortunes happen to me, my instinct is not to bleat and cry victim but to work to prevent anyone else from enduring the same. If that makes me ridiculous I’ll happily accept the charge.

As you say, an injustice is an injustice regardless of the semantics. If we don’t speak up, like More, then we are simply in cahoots with the bullying, ridiculing unkind people who employ anonymous accounts for improper ends. I have the parody accounts and screen caps of the deleted blog posts to prove it and look forward to the harping of said accounts should you publish this in your comments box.

Finally “It cannot be much of a surprise that the majority of non-clerical Catholic tweeters and bloggers employ pseudonyms which they zealously guard” I think if you look you’ll find again the ‘majority’ of these blog posters, who are in fact a minority and simply identify as Catholic, do so for inappropriate use such as sniping and bullying others anonymously which is not something I will align myself to.
I hope that clears up things there.

A reply came the same day

Thanks for your comment Deacon Tony.

You seem to expect me to act as ‘Twitter police’.

I tweet in the capacity as an individual. I do not have time to be admonishing others for the contents of their tweets, where a conversation makes me uncomfortable I remove myself from it.

The two anonymous accounts to which you refer belong to real people. While I do not condone all their comments, neither may I be held responsible for them and where a conversation takes a turn I do not like, I put an end to it.

I would remind you that those two accounts are also followed by other tweeters who engage, including Catholic priests. Are they equally responsible?
Generally speaking, it is better to deal with issues outside of social media, therefore if I believe someone is perhaps behaving inappropriately, I would deal with it by other means instead of causing a fracas.

My response was well received by Fr Stephen and I am sorry but I see your attempt to link in others such as my husband as trouble-making and an attempt to create problem and conflict where none exists as well as threatening. The same with a colleague of mine, you are sowing discord and division where none exists, by trying to prescribe what you believe my actions should have been. The best solution to conflict is not to publicly feed it. Removing myself from the situation was the best solution in both cases, making clear as I did, that I was not comfortable instead of pouring petrol on the fire. Re the tweets tagging in Mrs Clarke, I may not have even seen them, that lady is blocked as she has spent every day for the past 6 weeks monitoring my timeline and sending me a barrage of aggressive tweets as well as hectoring me.

I note you are following my timeline avidly despite being blocked, an activity which is unhealthy.

May I remind you that as a Deacon of the Roman Catholic Church last year you repeatedly accused me of having ADHD, asked “when are people gunna wake up and smell the Ritalin coming from the South Coast” and said that you had worked with enough children with ADHD to recognise attention seeking when you see this. How do you feel justified in using a condition to pathologise and attack someone you don’t like who had never been rude or unkind to you? How would the parents of those at your school who have this condition feel? How appropriate is it to diagnose strangers of mental health issues over the Internet and then use such presumed issues to attack them? For the record I do not suffer from the condition.
When one ‘Caral James’ tweeted about Madame being found out, you tweeted in response ‘what other accounts does she have. Let’s screencap the evidence, DM me’. You also tweeted ‘I see people are waking up to the foibles of Madame de Marionnette de Chausette sur le cot de sud, Bon bloody bon”. To whom were you referring if not me? If you believed I was responsible for these ‘sock puppet’ accounts then the Christian action would have been to approach me first, instead of accusing me all over Twitter. You’ll be aware that your holy orders give credence to this.

For the record I was never responsible for ANY sock puppet account but you used your intuition to join in part of a terrible campaign, claiming that my pregnancy was no excuse ‘she wasn’t pregnant last year when it started’ was your response. Actually in 2011 I WAS pregnant and in any event was not aware of any sock puppet scandal then. The accounts you accused me of having involvement in, tweeted repeatedly when I was on air several times and also when I was in the operating theatre giving birth! The ‘narwhalmaria’ account began tweeting when I was at an Ordination Mass, I remember returning to find myself subject to a barrage of accusations. It also tweeted whilst I was on a diocesan pilgrimage in Lourdes in the company of several people, with no Internet access.
Shortly after my daughter was born you RTed an Eccles’ post with the added comment in caps “HOW DOES SHE DO IT?”. You later admitted that you believed me to be responsible for Bruvver Eccles. Can you not see your habit of public accusation, having involved yourself for well over 17 months in publicly slandering and accusing a Catholic wife and mother and as you note, the wife of a seminarian, does not fit with your public office?

That’s before we come to calling another woman abhorrent names like a “skank, a dog, a horse, a venomous and heinous individual”.

You’ve also repeatedly accused real individuals of being sock puppets and demanded that they provide you with credentials such as real names and addresses and publicly derided them to all your followers. Why should people be obliged to do this?

There’s the other matter of attacking people of good faith for tweeting prayers, accusing them of false vanity.  So while out of 50,000 tweets in 4 years a few may not have been great on my part, it is not fair of you to expect me to act as some kind of Twitter policeman and if you are going to take me to task over whom I interact with, you need to do the same with others, including priests, who can verify that people whom you deem fake, are in fact real.

I would suggest however that policing others on Twitter is not in the cause of the New Evangelisation nor the model of service.

Recently you referred to two anonymous accounts as ‘pieces of sh*t’ without using an asterisk and then tagged me in to your next tweet as if you were holding me accountable. They were both genuine people of good will, one later DMed me to tell me she had never received any emails that you had claimed to send her and was so upset, she deleted her account. The woman had never tweeted anything aggressive or unkind.

Perhaps when you rather aggressively refer to my bleating and calling victim*, you may wish to consider that having been repeatedly accused of something of which I am wholly innocent upon the grounds of no evidence, and your deciding that I need to waste my time reporting to you, that perhaps I may be one.

Your aggressive comment here, calling me to task for not getting into further twitter spats and not attacking other people, your attempts to cause and stir up trouble where none exists, not only for my husband but also in my relationships with others, reinforces that.

I really have nothing else to say Deacon Tony, aside from screencaps of how a Deacon in the Catholic Church repeatedly attacked a woman who was heavily pregnant and clearly distressed, can be provided.

Through monitoring my timeline you will have been aware of when I gave birth. I was not gratified to receive an email out of the blue (you never told me from where you procured my email address) when still in hospital, 3 days later, following a difficult and complicated c-section, you took me to task for the tweets of other people to whom once again, I did not respond neither had I solicited a conversation.

That you continue your crusade, attempting to implicate and involve me in a non existent conspiracy causes both me and my family enormous distress along with your trouble making.

I hope that clears things up.

There were other comments under the posts, but all of them from anonymous posters, so I was not interested, in fact I felt they helped to highlight my stance.

I deny none of the posts that have been pointed out but something had, I am sure erroneously, been omitted.

I threw an asterisk in there, it was to remind me I had not said anyone else cries victim, it’s just something I won’t do.  I took to heart that I must watch how I present things.

I started musing my response.