(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John Henry Westen Show is A.J. Barker, a former Catholic school principal, to discuss the stunning story of how he was fired for running the school more traditionally.
Barker began the episode by explaining that after he got the principal job, he wanted to implement more traditional Catholic practices, such as having daily Mass during an open block of time and having the kids learn from the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism.
“And, I go to the priest, and I say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this block of time. What do you think? Can we do daily mass?’ And he’s like, ‘Absolutely.’ I mean, most priests, they’d have to pull teeth to try and get their principal to want to do daily Mass,” Barker said.
“From my perspective, I go, ‘Okay, the priest has green-lit it, we’re going to roll now. So [if] I have to take on heat, I’ll take on heat. But we’ve got the principles,” he added.
Barker emphasized that it wasn’t long before he started to face backlash for having daily Mass in the school schedule. Some parents – who were Catholic – felt it was “unfair” to the non-Catholic students.
“The families that left were majority Catholic families. We had non-Catholic families, and the Catholic families that left said, ‘Well, hey, what about the non-Catholic families? You’re doing daily Mass, what about these families that are not Catholic?’” Barker said.
He added that the non-Catholic families were okay with having daily Mass because they sent their children to a Catholic school and expected it to be Catholic.
But what ultimately led to Barker’s demise was a complaint – from an individual who didn’t even have a child or grandchild enrolled at the school – about comments he made on the “Christian Masculinity” (CMASC), podcast hosted by Timothy Gordon, about the importance of finding a spouse who has the capacity to suffer.
Barker said on the podcast:
What I think to look for is a person’s capacity for suffering. So, how well do you think that person can suffer? … When you’re in the presence of someone, you can be like, ‘Is that person capable of suffering?’ No, they’re not going to be Padre Pio yet, I get that. They’re not going to be Mary Magdalene, you know, [a] perpetual penitent. But the point is to say, ‘Are they someone that hates suffering, or are they someone that kind of has the instinct to think that there’s something good that comes through it?’
Barker emphasized that it wasn’t these comments or anything else he said on the podcast that got him fired. Instead, it was his association with the podcast itself because of allegedly controversial comments made by other guests.
Watch or listen to my interview to hear the full story of Barker’s dismissal, the importance of a traditional Catholic education, his amazing conversion story, and more.
To purchase Barker’s book, Advanced Christianity: A Scholastic Demonstration of the Fundamentals of Christianity, click here.
To read and subscribe to Barker’s Substack, click here.
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