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  • On the Masculine Genius

    On the Masculine Genius

    This article first appeared in Humanum, Nov 2018

    DR GREG BOTTARO

    Many attempts have been made to define the feminine, and more recently, the masculine genius. Naturally, this is difficult enough in the contemporary context, so fraught is it with the dualism between the body and the spirit. By contrast, if we begin by looking at the human organism as a whole, we can actually study the physical body and find in it a deeper meaning since “the body and the body alone … makes visible the invisible,” as John Paul II said.

    We can link the basic paradigm for the masculine and feminine genius to the phenomenon of new life. The human contribution to procreation and gestation of new life necessitates a mother and a father. These human contributions are distinct, while equal in dignity, individually necessary and irreplaceable.

    In the act of procreation, the man is pointed out of himself and the woman is focused within. It is within the body of the woman that both procreation and gestation take place, and it is “inwardness” that can help define the feminine genius. As the new person comes to existence within her body, a woman is wholly focused on this new person with all of her being. The developing baby consumes her attention from within.

    A man is not as concerned about what is happening moment by moment with the developing child because it is not happening inside his body. Instead, his outward focus means that he is free to participate in the new life by ensuring the environment outside and around the child is safe. While a woman’s body is fine tuned for human connection, the man’s body is made for provision and protection. A woman’s body is made to make human bodies inside of her and a man’s body is made to make human bodies outside of him. The woman serves the child in proximity, while a man serves the child from a distance.

    On the basis of these essential, mutually distinct and complementary differences, we can find a “genius” relative to each.

    Just a word on the concept of “genius.” Many discussions of the feminine or masculine “geniuses” open themselves up to anecdotal rebuttals about particular men or women who defy the characterization. Here we do not define “genius” as something essential to each of the sexes, such as capacity for motherhood or fatherhood, but, rather as: “a set of characteristics, and proclivities that derive from those essential and mutually distinct capacities.” The feminine genius, therefore, is the set of characteristics that a well-formed woman will display with a particular proclivity due to her capacity for motherhood. The masculine genius is the set of characteristics that a well-formed man will display with a particular proclivity due to his capacity for fatherhood.

    As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World,

    It is appropriate … to recall that the feminine values mentioned here [a capacity for the other] are above all human values: the human condition of man and woman created in the image of God is one and indivisible. It is only because women are more immediately attuned to these values that they are the reminder and the privileged sign of such values.

    The same could be said for the masculine genius, which is a set of characteristics that are ultimately human values, attainable also by women. The integration of both sets of human values leads to human flourishing, beautifully exemplified by the father of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, described by her thus: “Hard as he was on himself, he was always affectionate towards us. His heart was exceptionally tender toward us. He lived for us alone. No mother’s heart could surpass his. Still with all that there was no weakness. All was just and well-regulated.”

    With these preliminaries in mind, we will now turn to the masculine genius.

    The Developing Genius

    Conception through Childhood

    Beginning in utero, testosterone triggers genes that will lead to a newborn boy’s behaviours. While newborn girls focus on faces and eye contact, boys are tuned in to movement.[1] Testosterone, vasopressin, and cortisol drive the urge towards aggression and competition. Regardless of cultural influence, boys will spend 65% of their free time in competitive activity while girls spend only 35% on the same. When given typically female toys like dolls, boys most likely turn them into weapons. They have been found to use domestic items as tools or weapons six times more than girls.[2] In the toddler male brain, the hypothalamus is forming to initiate competitive behaviour and work towards victory. In this early play, bluffing, posturing, and fighting can be observed. Researchers have observed that by age two boys’ brains are better able to recognize social hierarchy and they are driven towards physical and social dominance.[3]

    The male brain is more naturally suited to work with objects in the environment. By age five, the major cognitive difference between a boy’s brain and a girl’s brain is the ability to mentally rotate and manipulate objects.[4] The female brain can access these same circuits, but they have to be intentionally activated. These phenomena give boys a head start on learning how to manipulate their environments and ultimately best serve the external needs of a family.

    Discovering the Female

    Beginning around age nine, the most significant development in the male brain involves a twenty-fold increase of testosterone.[5] The male hypothalamus, where the neural circuits for sexual pursuit are located, grows twice as a large as a female’s. Here develops the physiological correlate to the characteristic of the masculine genius to pursue and initiate.

    The increase of testosterone, along with vasopressin and cortisol, also makes the male brain more sensitive to threats against status or territory. The male’s sympathetic nervous response (the “flight-or-fight” system) is fuelled by this combination of hormones.[6] These changes give rise to behaviours typically observed in a teenage boy such as a greater need for privacy—personal domain to have control over—and conflict with authority. While discipline is necessary, looking through the lens of the masculine genius deepens our understanding of misunderstood behaviours.

    Teenage boys also learn how to better anticipate threats in the environment posed by other people. Vasopressin works in the male brain to interpret aggression in others’ faces. Even neutral faces will be interpreted more frequently as negative or aggressive when vasopressin is increased.[7] (Girls, by contrast, will interpret neutral faces as friendlier under the influence of increased vasopressin.) The amygdala and hypothalamus in the male brain are primed with greater sensitivity to hormonal increases, leading to aggressive alertness and activation of the sympathetic nervous system.[8]

    Procreation

    As testosterone increases, visual circuits relay information about a woman’s fertility through unconsciously perceived traits. The hypothalamus takes over much of a man’s behaviour at this point, as everything in his brain is geared towards procreation. The drive towards fatherhood is imprinted in the man’s brain. Olfactory receptors are tuned in to pheromones that communicate beneficial traits in a woman for sexual compatibility and the generation of children. Sensory neural circuits connect to the release of oxytocin and an increase of testosterone, further amplifying the drive towards bonding. [9] Due to his increased ability to take risks, lower fear of consequences, and greater drive towards finding a mate, a man is built to initiate sexual relationships.

    Physiologically, the sexual encounter ends for a man at the point of ejaculation, while for the woman this moment is potentially the beginning of what will happen in her body. Whereas the man’s brain is tuned into the fertility of a woman, his desire being amplified when his neural circuits detect her pheromones, the woman’s brain is tuned into the personal character traits of a man, ones which give her a sense of whether or not he will remain committed to providing for and protecting the potential child born of an encounter. Though these character traits may become distorted in some way, they are typically strength, courage, leadership, loyalty, and respectability. These are the very same traits men are neurologically disposed to observe and attempt to emulate in their environment from boyhood.

    Parenting

    Throughout the process of gestation and birthing a child, the changes in a man’s brain are not as obvious as they are in a woman’s brain; but in some ways they are just as drastic. Fathers have emotional, physical, and hormonal changes that occur along with those in mothers. During the last stage of pregnancy, male testosterone levels decrease over 20% and prolactin levels increase 33%.[10] Researchers believe that pheromones released by the mother help to initiate these shifts in the father’s brain. Prolactin helps fathers respond more sensitively to their newborn babies. Their hearing sensitivity increases as does their empathic response.[11] The ability to tend to the new baby does not come as quickly for the father as it does for the mother. Even though it is not immediately active, the father’s brain is wired to experience the same attunement for the baby, even if it is not manifested in the same way. The more contact he has with the baby, however, the greater the effect of dopamine and oxytocin in increasing bonding and the ability to feel greater empathy for his new child.[12] His amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and insula will respond with greater sensitivity to the cries of a new baby as time goes on.

    This is a fascinating neurological correlate to the observation made by JPII in Mulieris Dignitatem:

    This unique contact with the new human being developing within the mother gives rise to an attitude towards human beings—not only towards her own child, but every human being—which profoundly marks the woman’s personality. It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person, and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more. The man—even with all his sharing in parenthood—always remains “outside” the process of pregnancy and the baby’s birth; in many ways he has to learn his own “fatherhood” from the mother. (emphasis added)

    A man who is already attuned to his wife will follow her lead in being attuned to the child, and as contact increases, so does his ability to develop his own empathy and tenderness. A man’s brain changes, in some ways developing the characteristics women have at the outset, as his disposition towards his own child grows. He becomes a better father for it.

    Fathers’ sympathetic nervous systems are not activated to the same extent as mothers’ when children are playing, and so they take risks with their children, entrusting them to masculine strength and confidence in ways that typically surprise new mothers. This type of play has been shown to form self-confidence in boys and girls as well as the ability to socially engage in healthier ways with peers.[13] Men’s voices have also been shown to register differently for children, especially in areas of attention and obedience.

    The Communicating Genius

    Neural Connectivity

    The feminine genius correlates with greater trans-hemispheric communication. Women are better able to connect feelings to words and use language to express interior experiences and memories.[14] This helps them communicate verbally with others, which builds relationships.

    Greater connectivity also gives women a much deeper sense of intuition. Intuition is differentiated from rational analysis as a method of understanding. It allows women to communicate with a kind of transrational understanding of another person’s needs or experience.[15] Here is another way that a woman’s body is made to make persons inside of it. Through intuition, the female brain is able to understand the needs or experience of a baby, either pre-born in the womb or post-natal, before the child develops the use of rationally based language. My wife (without necessarily knowing how) will immediately know why our baby is crying, while I have to think through a checklist to figure out what the problem might be.

    There is less connectivity between the right and left hemispheres in the male brain. This allows for greater compartmentalization. At the same time, there is actually more connection between the front and back of each hemisphere in the male brain. These two realities contribute to the masculine genius. Men are better at spatial organization and abstract thinking, both of which utilize intra-hemispheric communication. These qualities dispose a man to make decisions and solve problems that are related to the external environment. Intra-hemispheric frontal-lobe modulation is more natural for men, which makes it easier to detach from the emotional considerations of a situation.[16] These qualities generally predispose a man toward a greater use of unemotional, rational thinking. At times when a certain emotional distance is required to make decisions for the wellbeing of a family, a man’s brain is particularly well suited.

    It is important to note that the feminine complement to the masculine trait of rationality is not irrationality, but transrationality, as described above. Far from being a weakness, the fact that the female brain is less physiologically dependent on rationality than the male brain indicates that women are not limited by the need to communicate with structured and rational constructs. Women, indeed, could be said to be more sophisticated in the way they communicate. Unfortunately, our world has come to elevate the idea of rational above the idea of intuitive. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.”[17] We have come to worship the servant and defile the sacred gift. Still, as we elevate the qualities of the feminine genius to their proper dignity, we must do the same for those qualities proper to the masculine genius.

    Conclusion

    These are the physiological realities of every healthy man and woman, whether or not a new person is actually conceived. As a woman is totally focused within on the new person developing in her body, knowing how to care for new life intuitively and transrationally, man is built to forge the way forward, providing for the needs of mother and child, and protecting against any outside threat to either. Together, man and woman form the unity that God intended for the sacred collaboration of creating new life. These observations identify only a few of the physiological realities that illuminate what it means to be male and female. It is a step towards a truly integrated model of the human person as male and female.

    [1] Wright, C. L., S. R. Burks, et al. (2008). “Identification of prostaglandin E2 receptors mediating perinatal masculinization of adult sex behavior and neuroanatomical correlates.” Dev Neurobiol 68(12): 1406–19.

    [2] Lever, J. (1976). “Sex differences in the games children play.” Social Problems 23: 478–87.

    [3] Archer, J. (2006). “Testosterone and human aggression: An evaluation of the challenge hypothesis.” Neurosci Biobehav Rev 30(3): 319–45.

    [4] Keller, K., and V. Menon (2009). “Gender differences in the functional and structural neuroanatomy of mathematical cognition.” Neuroimage 47(1): 342–52.

    [5] Larsen, P. R., ed,  Williams Textbook of Endocrinology, 10th ed. (2003).

    [6] Archer, J. (2006). “Testosterone and human aggression: An evaluation of the challenge hypothesis.” Neurosci Biobehav Rev 30(3): 319–45.

    [7] McClure, E. B., C. S. Monk, et al. (2004). “A developmental examination of gender differences in brain engagement during evaluation of threat.” Biol Psychiatry 55(11): 1047–55.

    [8] Giedd, J. N., F. B. Lalonde, et al. (2009). “Anatomical brain magnetic resonance imaging of typically developing children and adolescents.” J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 48(5): 465–70.

    [9] Savic, I., H. Berglund, et al. (2001). “Smelling of odorous sex hormonelike compounds causes sex-differentiated hypothalamic activations in humans.” Neuron 31(4): 661– 68.

    [10] Storey, A. E., C. J. Walsh, et al. (2000). “Hormonal correlates of paternal responsiveness in new and expectant fathers.” Evol Hum Behav 21(2): 79-95.

    [11] Swain, J. E., J. P. Lorberbaum, et al. (2007). “Brain basis of early parent-infant interactions: Psychology, physiology, and in vivo functional neuroimaging studies.” J Child Psychol Psychiatry 48(3–4): 262–87.

    [12] Leckman, J. F., R. Feldman, et al. (2004). “Primary parental preoccupation: Circuits, genes, and the crucial role of the environment.” J Neural Transm 111(7): 753–71.

    [13] Grossmann, K., K. E. Grossmann, E. Fremmer-Bombik, H. Kindler, H. Scheuerer-Englisch, and P. Zimmermann (2002). “The uniqueness of the child-father attachment relationship: Fathers’ sensitive and challenging play as a pivotal variable in a 16-year longitudinal study.” Social Development 11(3): 307– 31.

    [14] Gasbarri, A., B. Arnone, et al. (2006). “Sex-related lateralized effect of emotional content on declarative memory: An event related potential study.” Behav Brain Res 168(2): 177–84.

    [15] Stern, K., The Flight From Woman (New York: Macmillan, 1965).

    [16] Gasbarri, A., B. Arnone, et al. (2007). “Sex-related hemispheric lateralization of electrical potentials evoked by arousing negative stimuli.” Brain Res 1138C: 178– 86.

    [17] Samples, Bob, The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness 26, (Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley, 1976), 26.

    Dr. Greg Bottaro is a husband and father of five children. He is the founder and director of the CatholicPsych Institute, whose mission is to bridge the gap between Catholicism and Psychology.

  • Loneliness, Isolation and the Need for Friendship – The Choices Facing Catholic Men Today

    Loneliness, Isolation and the Need for Friendship – The Choices Facing Catholic Men Today

    Image: Poe Dameron and Finn from The Rise of Skywalker

    I’m not a great fan of the recent crop of Star Wars films but, during the Christmas holidays in 2020, I took my family to see the finale of the trilogy of trilogies, The Rise of Skywalker.

    As expected, it was a curate’s egg, with even the good elements struggling to lend it gravitas. Nonetheless, a recurring theme that interested me was the desperate need for friendship among the characters and for the skill, courage and – above all – the inspiration and hope of others in order to win the day.

    Of course, it was all underscored with emotional cries of, “We’re not leaving you!” or “We’re coming with you!” or “I can’t do this on my own!” – but it was a quote from Poe Dameron, as a newly promoted General discussing plans for the final stand, that really struck me. He said, “The First Order wins by making us think we’re alone. We’re not alone. Good people will fight if we lead them.”

    Replace The First Order with Satan and you have the key to the devil’s mission – isolate and conquer.

    In the Garden of Eden, God saw that it was not good for man to be alone and so created him a helpmate. Satan’s immediate response was to come between Adam and Eve and to tell them they could be gods, omnipotent and without the need of anyone’s help. But one can only feel godlike by separating oneself from those who are not, leaving them abandoned and isolated in their own way; as always, the devil makes godlike separation an attractive proposition, but the reality is a spiral into self-centred isolation and lonely despair.

    Men, in particular, can fall for this ‘godlike ideal’. At one end of the scale, there is the independent, self-sufficient, invincible alpha male, with his high-flying job, trophy wife and expensive, secluded homestead. But it always surprises people when the more extreme of these types turn on their wife and kids and then shoot themselves in an act of despair when their lives go horribly wrong, often through debt or divorce. They can’t handle the isolation, sudden vulnerability and loss of control – and helplessness quickly becomes hopelessness.

    At the other end of the scale there is the man who wants a sedate, comfortable and uninterrupted life, with his TV, Playstation and takeaways, happy to let his wife carry the burden of raising the family. And somewhere along the spectrum there may be the man who buries his head in work, or travel, or hobbies, or in some other way avoids engaging with the reality of other people.

    The recent admission of loneliness by the British businessman, Mark Gaisford, and the viral acknowledgement it received, simply confirms how endemic isolation is in our society.

    Not all men are like this, of course. And many Catholic men have their isolation imposed on them when they find themselves just about the only male attending Mass. Despite a strong desire for fraternity, they are frustrated by the complete absence of men, let alone those with whom they might share real friendship. Their loneliness stems from being abandoned rather than having deliberately withdrawn themselves from fraternity.

    Yet try to convince Catholic men to join a men’s group and you often meet an extraordinary level of resistance: “I’d love to come but I can’t! The wife, the kids, the job, the house! I have no time! Now is not the right time!” It’s as if we have become too comfortable in the isolation-we-know to muster the strength to commit to the fraternity-we-don’t! Busy individualism has become the new normal to the extent that leisurely fraternity looks like madness.

    Subconsciously, I believe, the real reason is that men know that fraternity will make humbling demands of them. It will challenge them to do the things they should be doing as men, but don’t because there is no one holding them accountable. Isolation makes us inert, inertia makes us susceptible to temptation and sin, and sin further isolates us from our brethren and from God. Ask any man addicted to pornography and he’ll tell you it becomes a lonely and shameful hell. But, surrounded by the deceptive comforts that money and technology bring, we kid ourselves that life is good and that we have all we need to keep loneliness at bay.

    So what’s to be done? You can’t force anyone out of their isolation, but sometimes it takes a devastating or rock-bottom situation to do it for them. A man has to see how awful it is to be alone before he chooses to either end his life or to find it again in the company of others.

    When he comes to that point, however, will there be others ready and waiting to give him hope? As Poe Dameron says, “They’ll come if they know there’s hope”.  

    And when they did come, boy was it impressive!

    The timely arrival of the allied fleet
  • When Fathers Despair, We All Despair

    When Fathers Despair, We All Despair

    This picture of a father in tears at London’s recent Extinction Rebellion demonstration left me troubled.

    “I’m just a father of two children that’s frightened of their future!”

    On the one hand, I was drawn by the heartfelt measures he was prepared to take to protect the future of his children: joining a group of protesters causing disruption in the city to such an extent they were getting arrested. Would I lie on the tarmac to prevent cars passing through if it meant the government would allay the fears over my children’s future?

    On the other hand, I was disturbed by his shaking, emotional outburst while cowering on the floor. It was an image of despair and helplessness; defeat and suppression underscored by his cheek pressed against the asphalt. Would I want my children to see me in this state? I have a feeling that would make them fear more for their immediate future than the possibility of environmental collapse.

    For a long period of their young lives, most children are able to look up to their fathers as bastions of strength and immutability, regardless of the circumstances. When my car broke down on the highway at two o’clock in the morning, on our way to a six o’clock ferry at the start of a holiday, my children were understandably fearful and in tears. I was panicking inside, especially when I found out that my breakdown cover hadn’t renewed and, being the end of the month, I had few assets left in my current account. But it was my job to reassure the kids that everything would be okay, that steps would be taken to resolve the matter and that we’d soon be on our way. And, of course, that turned out to be true (and they didn’t need to know how much it cost me).

    Several years later, my children remember the occasion as one where catastrophe was systematically averted by daddy calming everyone down and going through the steps of getting us rescued, repaired and back on the road for a later ferry. We then had a fantastic holiday. For one of my sons in particular, it was a valuable lesson in bringing his fears under control.

    I have no idea whether we are on the verge of extinction or not but, even if we are, I’m not sure I’d lie on the floor and cry.

    As a parent, a teacher and a leader I’m well aware that my despair or my resolve, my hopelessness or my courage, my depression or my optimism quickly rubs off on those in my charge. Then everyone becomes either desperate or resolute, despondent or courageous, depressed or optimistic. As a father, it’s my job to use my masculine attributes to alleviate immediate problems for my family to the best of my capacity. Where the problem is greater than my ability to solve it, I look for help and demonstrate a resilience for my children to emulate. If every father, every man, took that line, we might just find ourselves in a very different set of circumstances.

    Perhaps that was the motive that drove our Extinction Rebellion father out onto the streets? However, what troubled me about the image of him crying on the floor was that, by that stage, he had so surrendered to his own fears he was bereft of any capacity to safeguard his children’s future.

    Maybe I’m being unfair! After the picture was taken, he might have jumped straight back up, dusted himself off and vigorously rejoined the demonstration. However, if the abiding image we have, as children, is one of our father’s impotency, if we see that our own fathers have broken down in the face of adversity – those strong, immutable men – what message of hope does that leave us?

    In contrast, the Catholic man is obliged to present a very different image. Even if we are on the verge of extinction, we have hope! We know there is more to life, more after life, than the material world we inhabit. That’s not to excuse any negligence in looking after our planet; on the contrary, we should shoulder our responsibilities as stewards of creation. However, we shouldn’t be mawkish about the state of the world around us but instead, as St Paul exhorts, “…  boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”.

    And, because the Lord God helps us, we will not be disgraced. We will set our faces like flint, for we know we will not be put to shame. If ever we find ourselves in a momentous or catastrophic situation, what abiding image will the world have of us? As I write here, our task as Catholic men is not to give up, but to get a grip!

  • Traditional Liturgy and Catholic Masculinity

    Traditional Liturgy and Catholic Masculinity

    Main Image: Dominican rite ‘Missa Maior’ at the High Altar of the Rosary Shrine (St Dominic’s Priory) in London.

    Fr Lawrence Lew OP – Iota Unum Talk on the Traditional Liturgy and Catholic Masculinity, London, 31 May 2019

    Themes

    • Manly virtues
    • Sexual distinctiveness
    • Men are called to fatherhood
    • Consecration to St Joseph
    • The vice of mollities
    • The virtue of fortitude
    • Scouts of Europe
    • Traditional liturgy and the virtues

    Anecdotally, it seems that the traditional Mass attracts proportionately more men than modern forms of the Mass.

    Fr Lawrence Lew OP celebrates a Dominican rite Mass at the Lady Altar
    in the Rosary Shrine, London

    This observation was made privately to me by Fr Aidan Nichols OP in a conversation we had when I was in the novitiate. And then, I mentioned this in a private conversation with a young man I met at a conference in Cambridge. I didn’t realise he was an intern from The Tablet and the next week, I found this private statement published and in print! So, depending on whether or not you trust The Tablet this may or may not be true!

    Realistically, though, this is an observation we can all make for ourselves: the traditional Mass appears to attract more men and young families than your average novus ordo Mass. My experience as a university chaplain for four years up in Edinburgh has been that Catholic men who are intent on the faith and on the life of virtue – converts (and ‘reverts’) particularly – are drawn to the traditional Mass almost as soon as they encounter it; armed with a Missal or some informed reading, they quickly grow to love it.

    Speaking as a convert myself, that was my experience too. However, stating the obvious like this is easy. It’s rather more difficult to analyse the phenomenon and try to answer why this is the case. Why is it that Catholic lay men in particular are drawn to the traditional Mass? What is there about its form – obviously, its essence is the same as the novus ordo’s – that appeals to serious Catholic men of our time?

    Gender Revolution and Pope Francis’ response

    To attempt an answer, I think we need first to speak about men specifically, and about what is proper to their nature, and about the virtues and vices that pertain to the masculine nature.

    En route with Rover Scouts of Europe

    Incidentally, one of the best youth movements that I know of, and that exists to form young Catholic boys in manly virtues, and to raise them up to become good Catholic men is the Scouts of Europe. I have been privileged to work with the Scouts of Europe for a number of years now, and each time I try to start a new troop in a parish, or give a presentation about them, I am faced with protests from Catholic parents, teachers, and even priests against the fact that we do not mix boys and girls in our units, and I have to explain that boys and girls are different and they have different needs and different temperaments and characters and so they need to be formed separately and led to virtue in their own distinct ways.

    Indeed, one of the many heresies of our age, which Cardinal Robert Sarah calls a “Luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God”, purports that men and women are alike, gender-neutral at birth, and so they do not have specific inherent differences. Any honest parent would tell them otherwise! All this is supposedly advanced in favour of a fundamental human dignity.

    In 2017, Pope Francis acknowledged this current on-going “cultural revolution” and he called on the Church to confront it. He said quite plainly: “The recent proposal to advance the dignity of a person by radically eliminating sexual difference and, as a result, our understanding of man and woman, is not right.” He added: “the utopia of the “neuter” eliminates both human dignity in sexual distinctiveness and the personal nature of the generation of new life.” And the Pope decried “the biological and psychological manipulation of sexual difference, which biomedical technology can now make appear as a simple matter of personal choice – which it is not!”

    Masculinity and the Crisis of our Times

    So, what makes men different from women? What constitutes masculinity? What are manly virtues?

    In the first place, men are called to fatherhood, and thus to exemplify on earth and through various vocations – as priests, husbands, fathers – the one Fatherhood of God, the God from whom “all paternity in heaven and earth is named”, as St Paul says (Eph 3:15).

    The increase in single mothers who are abandoned by irresponsible men; the increase in children who thus do not know their fathers; the perpetuation of the Peter Pan syndrome among men; the clerical abuse crisis; and the refusal of priests to lead people in faith and to teach the Gospel in all it fullness: these are all some of the signs of a sinful failure to exemplify the Fatherhood of God.

    For the call to fatherhood is a call to lead, care, and protect a household as paterfamilias. There is a crisis of virtuous leadership, of genuine paternity in our society, and thus, also, a crisis of genuine holy masculinity in the world and in the Church. Consequently, the family itself is in crisis today. Like the gender ideology that plagues us, the crises of fatherhood and the family is diabolical.

    In 2016, Cardinal Sarah walked with some two thousand Rover Scouts of Europe to Vézelay – this is a wonderful annual pilgrimage that involves the adult male branch of the Scouts of Europe.

    In his address, he said to these Catholic men: “Don’t let yourselves be influenced by a Europe which is drunk on its numerous ideologies which do a lot of harm to the whole of mankind. Think of Marxism and its gulags, of Nazism and its horrors, and now the gender theory directly attacking the laws of God and of nature, destroying marriage and our societies, damaging our children as young as those of primary school age. I repeat it: the gender ideology, the disproportionate and unlimited democratic freedoms, and ISIS have all the same satanic origin. You, Scouts of Europe Rovers, if you resist this Europe without God – a Europe that proudly dominates the poor and the weak, and that denies its Christian roots – you will be preventing Europe from committing suicide and from disappearing, eliminated by more virile peoples, those more believing and prouder of their identity and of their relation to God.”

    The Cardinal rightly believes that a more virile people, that is, those who are more manly, more committed to their cause and more willing to suffer for its success, will eliminate Christendom if we remain weak-willed and drunk on ideology and hedonism; if the Christian men of today do not rise to the challenge of being strong Catholic men, and if we do not work now to form our boys to become men of virtue.

    Earlier this month, I had the joy of travelling to the Holy Land for the first time, in the company of two inspiring Catholic men: Jim Caviezel who played Christ in ‘The Passion of the Christ’, and the Marian priest, Fr Donald Calloway. Jim Caviezel spoke to us about his work and his mission, but the enduring thought he shared with us was his discovery of redemptive suffering, his patient endurance of suffering, through undergoing the ‘Passion of the Christ’. It seems that Our Lord gave him the essential manly virtue of fortitude so that the man who played him on film might also suffer with him. I shall, therefore, return to this virtue presently.

    Jim Caviezel and Fr Lawrence Lew, The Holy Land, 2019

    However, Fr Calloway also gave me a manuscript of his latest book for me to review and endorse. Fr Calloway’s mission, which he explains in this book, is to have Catholics everywhere go to St Joseph and to be consecrated to St Joseph. He wants us in our time to claim the spiritual fatherhood of St Joseph, and for us men to learn from St Joseph how to be fathers and to become good men. For, just as God led the children of Israel to the patriarch Joseph during the famine, so during the moral famine of our times, God’s children are being led to Saint Joseph to be fed by him; to be led by him out of this cultural wasteland; to be taught by him and so to enjoy St Joseph’s spiritual paternity even as Our Lord Jesus Christ did.

    As Pope Pius XII has said: “If Joseph was so engaged, heart and soul, in protecting and providing for that little family at Nazareth, don’t you think that now in heaven he is the same loving father and guardian of the whole Church, of all its members, as he was of its Head on earth?” I agree with Fr Calloway that now is the time to consecrate ourselves to St Joseph, and to receive his paternal love and guidance and leadership. St Joseph will teach us, in our current crisis of fatherhood and of holy masculinity, to become Christian men of virtue.

    Mollities

    Before I consider the chief masculine virtues, I would like to consider the chief vice that is opposed to manly virtue. St Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Church, refers to the vice of mollities, meaning ‘softness’ or ‘yielding’.

    This is sometimes, rather distractingly, I think, translated as ‘effeminacy’. However, St Thomas says: “to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure. This is what we understand by mollities, because a thing is said to be ‘soft’ if it readily yields to the touch.” (ST IIa IIæ, 138, 1) So, softness, I think, is as at least as good a translation of mollities.

    St Thomas goes on to explain the specificity of this vice. The one who suffers from it is said to “yield to the touch” and not to heavy blows or force because he yields, as it were, to caresses and pleasures of the flesh; he has a certain addiction, so to speak, to pleasure and comfort and ease, and he will not relinquish these for the sake of the good. Hence, following Aristotle, St Thomas says that the vice of softness, properly speaking, refers to those who “withdraw from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure” so one who is “accustomed to enjoy pleasures” finds it hard to “endure the lack of them.”

    Among the vices of inordinate pleasure that affect many people (but especially men) today are the vices of pornography and masturbation, and both of these lead to the more general vice of softness. For the boy who discovers these vices is habituated to enjoy pleasures, and he will not endure the lack of them, and so he withdraws from the good of chastity and, if unchecked, he withdraws ultimately from the supreme good of wanting to please and obey God, the good of spiritual friendship.

    Carnal sin, therefore, has a deep spiritual root that keeps us from the good and can even keep us from heaven. Reinhard Hütter observes that in fact the vice of pornography “arises from the roaming unrest of the spirit rooted in a spiritual apathy that, again, despairs of and eventually comes to resent the very transcendence in which the dignity of the human person has its roots. The lust of the eyes that feeds on Internet pornography does not inflame but rather freezes the soul and the heart in a cold indifference to the human dignity of others and of oneself.” (cf Pornography and Acedia).

    The antidote to the poison of pornography, Hütter suggests (following St Thomas) is “an active and persistent discipline of prayer”. In particular he recommends the Angelic Warfare Confraternity that is promoted by the Dominican Order, and of which I am the Promoter in this Province of England! I agree with Hütter, unsurprisingly, but I also want to keep the antidote of disciplined prayer in mind when I go on to speak about the traditional Liturgy. I also wanted to highlight the problem of unchastity which leads to softness, and we shall see in due course how one can and must be formed in spiritual chastity.

    Returning to the vice of softness, there is the related vice of delicacy, whereby one seeks to avoid hard work and toil because these hinder pleasure, comfort, and ease. St Thomas thus concludes: “It belongs to mollities to be unable to endure toilsome things, so too it belongs thereto to desire play or any other relaxation inordinately.” Here, I want to draw attention to the inordinate desire for play and relaxation that St Thomas says belongs to softness.

    The Peter Pan syndrome to which I alluded includes these inordinate desires. It is found among men who perpetuate the university student lifestyle; shirk commitments; avoid responsibilities and accountability; play juvenile computer games and waste time online; who live life from one holiday to the next, or from one pub crawl to the next club. The solution is to focus on true manly virtues, to learn from St Joseph the Worker, and above all, through prayer, to be focused on him who is “true Man”, Jesus Christ.

    The Christocentric focus of the Mass, and the seriousness of liturgical ‘play’, particularly as it is the Sacrifice of the God-Man, is vital in this regard.

    Manly Virtues

    Ablestock

    The virtue to which softness is opposed is the virtue of perseverance. St Thomas defines this “as denoting long persistence in any kind of difficult good.” (cf ST IIa IIæ, 137, 1 ad 1) Perseverance is related to the cardinal virtue of fortitude because every virtue that involves the “firm endurance of something difficult” to the end is secondary to the primary virtue of fortitude (or courage) (cf ST IIa IIæ, 137, 2). As a reminder, fortitude is the virtue of patient endurance, standing firm in the face of difficulties, following the counsel of reason and not the passions, even unto death.

    Christ, who suffered and died for our salvation, because of the depth of his love for us, and because of his perfect obedience to the Father, is thus, for us, a perfect model of fortitude. In his Passion and Death, Christ exemplifies manly virtues, the truest Friend giving his life for his friends; the heavenly Bridegroom offering himself in sacrifice for the sake of his spotless Bride.

    Fortitude, therefore, is, to my mind, chief among the virtues of a man. In particular, fortitude enables the man to endure difficulties and pain for the sake of the good, to endure mortifications and suffering, even death, with a view to their redemptive power and for the sake of the final good who is God. Hence, St Thomas says ”There is none that does not shun pain more than he desires pleasure. For we perceive that even the most untamed beasts are deterred from the greatest pleasures by the fear of pain.” (ST IIa IIæ, 123, 11) And among the pains of the mind and dangers those are mostly feared which lead to death, and it is against them that the brave man stands firm. Therefore fortitude is a cardinal virtue.”

    St Joseph is thus called a “great lover of God” because he was “afflicted by much suffering which he endured with a wonderful fortitude.” This should give us pause for thought because many of us today might pray, when afflicted by suffering, that it should be taken from us. But the Saint, the lover of God, prays, rather, to endure his sufferings with fortitude and to persevere in virtue.

    St Thomas Aquinas, when describing a manly saint, chose St Andrew, whose name in Greek is derived from the word aner meaning ‘man’. St Andrew is remembered for having preached the Gospel with fortitude, and he would be martyred for his brave preaching of the Truth. St Andrew also committed his life to the Gospel right from the start: he was the first-called, and he persevered in following Christ to the end.

    Hence, perseverance, commitment, and fortitude are the chief manly virtues that I think are as necessary as ever today, especially because they stand in opposition to the softness to which we are prone in the modern world with its many conveniences and comforts.

    Scouts of Europe and Manly Virtues

    Gathering for a Mass in the woods with Scouts.

    How are we formed in these virtues? I said earlier that the Scouts of Europe are an excellent movement for the formation of boys in manly virtues. Scouting, properly understood, is about the formation of character, as Baden-Powell called the virtues. Much of modern Scouting has become soft because it has not persevered in the Christian principles that, Baden-Powell and Fr Jacques Sevin SJ (founder of ‘Scoutisme’) insisted are at the heart of Scouting, because it has abandoned the difficult task of forming boys in Christian virtue in favour of teaching them practical skills; our age tends towards technological and skills-based knowledge rather than moral and practical wisdom.

    However, the Scouts of Europe champions three main virtues that characterise the Scout, namely honesty (or integrity); self-sacrifice; and purity (or chastity). These three virtues I have already alluded to in my discussion of vices and virtues related to a holy masculinity. Cardinal Sarah, in his exposition on the virtues of the Scout of Europe, said that these three Scout virtues means that the Scout of Europe, and thus the Christian man, is called to be “always true, courageous and full of dedication for your country and for the Church, up to the total gift of your life.” We are called to “be happy and proud of the purity and virginity of your heart and of your body, in the middle of a selfish society obsessed by sex.”

    What applies to the Scout of Europe, I would say, applies to all of us as Catholic men. We’re called to love and embrace the Truth, not only as propositions but as a relationship with One who changes us, to whom we conform our lives so that there is an integrity and honesty about our being called ‘Christians’. We’re called to give ourselves even to the very end, with fortitude and perseverance, for the sake of this Truth who is the person of Jesus Christ. Thus we’re also called to love his Bride, the Church. And, as St Paul says, “love endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7) Thirdly, we’re called to love chastity, which isn’t just a purity of the body, but also a purity of the soul and of the mind and intellect. Chastity is thus integral to our primary love of Truth. As St Thomas says, “if the human mind delights in the spiritual union [with God] and [so] refrains from delighting in union with other things against the requirements of the order established by God, this may be called a spiritual chastity.” (ST IIa IIæ, 151, 2).

    To be ready to be formed in virtue, therefore, requires that one, first of all, delights in God, and thus longs for union with him. To this end, it seems to me, the traditional Liturgy, which brings us to delight in God and long for the glory of heaven, has been proven to be a wonderful and excellent school of virtue. Unsurprisingly, many Scouts of Europe are drawn to the more traditional expressions of the Liturgy, and their hearts are easily inclined towards the traditional Mass because they intuit its seriousness, and its conduciveness to those three Scout virtues.

    The Traditional Liturgy as School of Virtue

    How does the traditional Liturgy lead us to masculine virtues and form us in them?

    Dominican rite Mass with the Federation of North American Explorers from Virginia (USA)

    Time permits me to just gesture at an answer, but I think we can identify three essential traits or strengths in the traditional Liturgy that correspond to the three virtues above, and which lead us to delight in God and to long for union with him in heaven.

    Firstly, the traditional Liturgy is chaste. Externally, there is a sense of modesty and chastity in the veiling one sees in the traditional Liturgy. Firstly, women are veiled, following the injunction of St Paul. Likewise, other precious things are veiled, particularly those who have direct contact with the Sacred, namely, the chalice and the paten. And indeed, in a good medieval church, the entire sacred action is veiled either by a Rood Screen or by curtains suspended from the baldachino. In more modern churches, the sacred action is veiled by the sacred Ministers themselves who stand facing the Altar.

    Moreover, the sacred is veiled by silence, by gestures and symbols steeped in history and tradition; mysterious but necessary, by a hieratic language and song with cadences and solemnity from an ancient culture onto which we are grafted.

    All this made the Church’s Liturgy something mysterious and complex – like a woman! – to be approached with reverence; with the excitement of there being more to discover; to be treated with chaste longing and love. I recall (although I regret that I cannot now find the reference) Louis Bouyer or one of the champions of the Liturgical Movement saying that, after the Liturgical reforms of Vatican II, the Bride of Christ had been stripped and exposed for all to stare at – there is a nakedness about the modern Liturgy that causes the chaste of heart to look away, or to close one’s eyes.

    St Thomas says that the virtue of chastity makes man capable and ready for contemplation. So, a chaste liturgy, enveloped in silence, invites contemplation. Indeed, in our sensationalistic age, it fosters a kind of fortitude and patience. On the other hand, an unchaste age creates an unchaste liturgy, it seems to me, or risks rendering even the traditional Liturgy ‘unchaste’ so to speak.

    We should be mindful of this danger when we are tempted to incessantly photograph every aspect of the sacred Liturgy, and to then publish the photos online. Likewise, we must beware of what Dietrich von Hildebrand called ‘aestheticism’, that is, an excessive love for the pleasures of liturgical beauty, music, vestments, gold accoutrements, and so on, for their own sake. For as Josef Pieper says, “an unchaste man wants above all something for himself; he is distracted by an unobjective ‘interest’; his constantly strained will-to-pleasure prevents him from confronting reality with that selfless detachment which alone makes genuine knowledge possible.”

    Any Catholic lay man must therefore examine his motives and conscience: What is it about the traditional Liturgy that attracts him? Is it one’s delight in God, in the beauty of the Mass that raise his heart and soul to God? Is it a deep desire to know Christ and to be conformed to him, united to the Blessed Trinity spiritually? Or is it an inordinate love of something more superficial? Although many of us were drawn to the beauty of the traditional Mass, and the glory of our traditional Catholic culture, there should be an examination of conscience so that, detached from worldly goods and temporal distractions, we might deepen our love for God and long for his grace.

    Dominican rite Mass in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC.

    In Washington DC, a young man I know frequently drove for over 45 minutes (each way) to serve a Low Mass, often at great personal inconvenience, and he did this out of love for Christ and the Mass. This shows fortitude and perseverance and commitment. Perhaps there are more traditional Masses, and more beautiful Masses available in London, but my experience has been that it is quite difficult indeed to find men who would give up so much time and effort for a Low Mass, or who would inconvenience themselves to travel to Our Lady’s Shrine either as an act of penance or an act of devotion.

    My hope and my prayer is that the discovery of the traditional Liturgy by more and more Catholics will lead to a discovery of traditional Catholic virtues, mortifications, and spiritual exercises so that they will be formed by the Liturgy, and conformed to Christ through an increase in virtue and sanctifying grace. Hence, the traditional Liturgy fosters a holy asceticism that requires self-sacrifice on our part.

    There are, of course, the Ember days and the traditional fasts that one can undertake, and the traditional Liturgy has this richness that is lacking in the modern rite. However, speaking more generally, there is also the fundamental asceticism of being obedient to the rubrics, of care and moderation with one’s gestures and postures, and, finally, the austerity and discipline of unaccompanied Gregorian chant. Many people, I know, love sacred polyphony and the Baroque. However, the Church has only one song that she calls her own, and this “plainsong” she prescribes for her Liturgy.

    The givenness of the Church’s Liturgy, especially in her music, requires obedience and perseverance and self-abandonment from us, helping us order our passions, to discipline our emotions, and so to learn to conform ourselves to another, and to receive the gift of another, namely the gift of Christ’s Church and her sacred Liturgy in all its fullness.

    Finally, the traditional Liturgy, if it is approached in this way, will teach us integrity of life. How? By first schooling us in humility, which puts us in our place especially in relation to God. For us men, who are called to lead and to be head of the Christian household, the Liturgy schools us, first of all, to acknowledge a divinely established hierarchy, and thus we’re brought to kneel before the One who is Head. From such humility, according to the order established by God, comes the grace, then, to become paterfamilias.

    Thus even our Lord, in the Holy Family of Nazareth, learnt to live under the authority of St Joseph, the paterfamilias. The crisis of fatherhood and genuine masculinity in our time, therefore, stems from the crisis of faith, in which God is not acknowledged, let alone worshipped and adored. However, in the traditional High Mass, the hierarchical nature of the Liturgy and of the sacred Ministers arrayed around the altar, rightly makes evident the household of God the Father in which all is fittingly ordered towards the divine paterfamilias – and we are taught by God, nourished by God, and established in virtue by God.

    Moreover, as Catherine Pickstock has observed, one of the features of the traditional Liturgy is a salutary fear of God and a genuinely humble approach to the divine Mysteries, in which man is repeatedly conscious of his fundamental unworthiness, drawing near and yet withdrawing because he has a holy awe before God. The truth of who I am before God, and the truth of my profound metaphysical need of God are, it seems to me, vital lessons that we all need to learn if we’re to advance in virtue at all. For as St Benedict’s Rule tells us, humility is the ladder through which we are “cleansed from vices and sins” and then ascend to a “love for Christ [and a] delight in virtue”.

    The Dominican rite Mass, therefore, begins with a succinct ancient prayer that rightly envelops the whole sacred action in God’s grace, and reminds me that, as every good Thomist knows, every good human action depends on God as the Cause of all the good that we are and do.

    The prayer, Actiones nostras, therefore says: “Prompt our actions with your inspiration, we pray, O Lord, and continue them with your constant help, so that every one of our works may always begin from you, and through you be brought to completion.”

    With this prayer, let my talk also be brought to completion!

  • Is There Such a Thing as Authentic Catholic Manhood?

    Is There Such a Thing as Authentic Catholic Manhood?

    Definitions of the word ‘manhood’ more or less agree that we’re talking about a state or condition of being an adult male with the associated qualities and responsibilities.

    Today’s debate on masculinity has come about because we have lost a fixed point of reference for those qualities and responsibilities. Being a man is no longer about virtue and duty, tough physical work, commitment to marriage and a family or sacrifices for the greater good of society.

    Modern attitudes – and luxuries, often in the form of technologies – have removed many of the requirements for men to perform their traditional duties. Modern thinking tells men to detach themselves from ‘out-dated’ aspects of being a man, and sadly equates – and broadcasts – the expression of negative male behaviours with the sum of the essence of manhood.

    True, men exploit their masculine characteristics and strengths through violence: to abuse, rape, intimidate, rob and murder. Good men must do their utmost to prevent this exploitation and, on behalf of all men, should ask forgiveness from our women for the uncountable occasions where this behaviour goes unchecked and unpunished.

    But this is not manhood! This is not what authentic masculinity is. Those many individuals who do abuse their power, strength, wealth and sexual desires aren’t men. They are boys. We aren’t suffering a crisis of masculinity so much as a crisis of boyhood, where more and more men in our society are crowding around the doorway of mature manhood unable to step over the threshold.

    These immature boys are leaving their wives and families because they can’t handle their manly duties; these boys are turning to violence and crime to prove their manly worth; these boys are only interested in pleasure and entertainment; these boys remain depressed and anxious in their 20s, 30s and 40s because they haven’t been initiated into their true masculine roles and responsibilities. 

    Males gravitate towards extremes. When we allow extremes to become our expectations for behaviour, we turn away from our real purpose. On the excessive end of those extremes, manhood is equated with brutality. But on the deficient end we have mediocrity—being unmotivated, bland and weak. Both of these extremes are considered by one group or another to be the norm for manhood and both result in an inability to take on real responsibility, to commit to a job or to a relationship.

    So, having lost our points of reference about what it means to be a man, where does that leave a Catholic understanding of manhood?

    Firstly, Catholic manhood knows its roots

    When masculinity is so cut adrift from its purpose today, we need to find some absolutes. Is it possible to reach back to a fixed point where we can say, this is the basic principle for what manhood is meant to be?

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests it is. It states:

    In creation, God laid a foundation and established laws that remain firm, on which the believer can rely with confidence, for they are the sign and pledge of the unshakeable faithfulness of God’s covenant. For his part man must remain faithful to this foundation, and respect the laws which the Creator has written into it. [CCC 346]

    So, what firm laws did the Creator write into the foundation of manhood? Let’s go back to the beginning, to Genesis. Here are the laws: God told Adam to procreate (be fruitful and multiply); God gave him primacy or dominion over creation; He told him to protect (to keep or guard) His creatures and the creation covenant, and to provide for himself and his people (to till the land). Procreation, primacy, provision and protection. Those are the laws stitched into the fabric of manhood.

    And what does that still mean for men today? Scott Hahn develops this in his book, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, by stating that God’s first and foundational covenant was a marriage covenant between Adam and Eve, the first couple. The fruit of their covenant love was children. It means that men are meant to be a father of a family (biological or spiritual); men are meant to lead that family, to provide for them and to protect them, within the covenant of love established by God. By default, fatherhood also means commitment, responsibility and fidelity.

    Those are your absolutes for being a man. Manhood is not defined by occupation but by vocation.

    Catholic manhood knows its reason

    Why is it that men are created to be fathers? Pope St John Paul II tells us in Familiaris Consortio that human fatherhood is meant to ‘reveal and relive on earth the very fatherhood of God’ [FC 25].

    What does this mean? It means that we men have the inconceivably terrifying and breath-taking task of transmitting the reality of God’s paternity to others – specifically to the children in our care – so that they come to know who God the Father is! Through us! God has let us loose with His paternity! We are the primary manner by which others upon this earth come to know God the Father.

    The human father is a link between God the Father and His children. He is the voice of the Father that our children cannot hear, the face of the Father that our children cannot see, and the touch of the Father that our children cannot feel. If fathers turn their hearts to their children, their children will turn their hearts to God. If fathers listen to their children, their children will know the listening heart of God. If fathers show mercy to their children, their children will discover the merciful heart of God. The human father is indeed the visible icon of the heavenly Father.

    Why do we so desire a father’s approval? Because we want to be approved by God the Father. Conversely, when we struggle with our belief in the presence of God, in the love of God and in the faithfulness of God, it is because we have struggled to see presence, love and faithfulness in our own fathers.

    Paul Vitz, in his book, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, discovers a startling pattern: atheism arises in people with absent, deceased or abusive fathers. Disappointment in one’s earthly father frequently leads to a rejection of God. By contrast, prominent defenders of religious belief – and he includes Blaise Pascal, John Henry Newman and G.K. Chesterton – were blessed with attentive, loving and caring fathers.

    Look around at the world today. An increasingly fatherless world is an increasingly secular world. Look at the absence of men in church, and the ease with which their children disappear from it once they hit their teens. Look at the research which shows that, if the father is the primary church-goer and living example of faith, his children have a greater likelihood of practising the faith into adulthood than even if both father and mother regularly practise their faith. Where just the mother attends church, there is the least likelihood that the children will continue practising their faith into adulthood.

    Why? Echoing St John Paul the Great, Cardinal Ratzinger provides an answer:

    “Human fatherhood gives us an anticipation of what [God the Father] is. But when this fatherhood does not exist, when it is experienced only as a biological phenomenon, without its human and spiritual dimension, all statements about God the Father are empty…” [Palermo, 2000]

    ‘Fatherhood experienced only as a biological phenomenon’: this is sex without considering the consequences, feckless fathers leaving behind single mothers, sperm donors turning fatherhood into a commercial transaction. Any biological act that is not followed up with the commitment and duty of fatherhood.

    ‘All statements about God the Father are empty’: how can we say that God the Father is good, when our own father abused us? How can we say that God the Father is loving, when our own father left us when we were children?

    Cardinal Ratzinger continues:

    “The crisis of fatherhood we are living today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity. The dissolution of fatherhood and motherhood is linked to the dissolution of our being sons and daughters.”

    Interestingly, one of the antonyms of ‘dissolution’ is ‘inauguration’. It’s a wonderful thing that true manhood helps inaugurate – invest or initiate – others into the family of God. It’s a very majestic term and a very stately activity. Indeed, St Paul says, “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom all paternity in heaven and on earth takes its name”.

    Catholic manhood knows its responsibilities

    Let’s return to St John Paul the Great and the quote from Familiaris Consortio. Here is the line in context:

    “In revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God, a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family: he will perform this task by exercising generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother, by a more solicitous commitment to education, a task he shares with his wife, by work which is never a cause of division in the family but promotes its unity and stability, and by means of the witness he gives of an adult Christian life which effectively introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church.”

    Let’s pick this apart for the next few paragraphs. What actual duties of mature Catholic men are described here?

    • He ensures the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family

    A Catholic father corrects, disciplines, teaches, treats everyone justly and with fairness; he exhorts, encourages and provides opportunities to experience new things in life. He allocates chores and duties and provides rewards and celebrations. He looks for the strengths in his children and develops them; he looks for their weaknesses and strengthens them. He establishes a family culture, family times and seasons and helps to contain any extremes in the ebb and flow of family life.

    • He exercises generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother

    A Catholic father is present and committed. He welcomes conception. He kicks his selfish boyish habits and gives the ensuing time and energy to his family. He settles the baby, feeds it, wipes its bum and changes its nappy. He gets down on the floor to play; he takes the children into the garden, the workshop, the countryside; the resources he has and the money he earns he pours into their needs rather than his own.

    • He has a solicitous commitment to education

    A boy’s successful transition to manhood comes about from learning how to be a man from other men, and then having his masculinity affirmed by those men. A girl will learn likewise from her mother. In practical matters, a father and a mother should teach skills and virtues necessary for the rounded education of both sons and daughters.

    However, it is in spiritual matters that the father has a primary responsibility to educate.

    St Augustine emphasises the father’s spiritual headship of his family in his Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament. He goes so far as to compare the father’s role in the home to that of bishops in the Church:

    “Discharge our office in your own houses. A bishop is called from hence, because he superintends, because he takes care and attends to others. To every man, then, if he is the head of his own house, ought the office of the Episcopate to belong, to take care how his household believe, that none of them fall into heresy, neither wife, nor son, nor daughter… Do not neglect, then, the least of those belonging to you; look after the salvation of all your household with all vigilance”. [SSL XLIV]

    Or St Paul to the Corinthians, if you like:

    “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16: 13-14).

    • His work should never be a cause of division in the family but promotes its unity and stability

    The modern working world doesn’t make it easy for us, but a Catholic father will try to find a job close to home, a career that allows flexible hours or opportunities to work from home. He will make prudent decisions about how much overtime he does, about how much travel he undertakes, about whether the extra cash from that promotion is really worth the additional hours away from the family. Men have a tendency to define and affirm their masculinity by their careers and incomes, or use their hard work to excuse their lack of presence to their families. Man is not defined by occupation but by vocation.

    • He gives witness of an adult Christian life

    An adult Christian life is a life of virtue. Did you know that the Latin word for man is vir, which is at the root of the words virtue and virility? In using vir to denote ‘a man’ it also implies those qualities and properties which constitute a man. Vir is used in the Latin as a term of respect and it often signifies, emphatically, a hero.

    Virtue and virility are the core foundations of becoming an authentic adult Catholic man. Virtue is about being a good man, and virility is about being good at being a man. Virtue is what makes virility noble. Virility is what makes virtue active. 

    Aristotle’s Golden Mean states that any virtue – let’s take courage as an example – sits between two extremes: a deficient vice and an excessive vice. The deficient side of courage would therefore be cowardice and the excessive side, recklessness.

    Giving witness to an adult Christian life is a continuous, heroic determination to move away from those extremes and towards virtue – or, as The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it, “a habitual and firm disposition to do the good.”

    Virility brings us back to the four divinely appointed laws of primacy, procreation, provision and protection and to some extent also describes our capacity in each area. The degree to which we have developed our capability in all four roles is the degree to which we might be considered virile, or good at being a man.

    • He introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church.

    What is the living experience of Christ and the Church? It is the unrestrained, limitless, unbidden and unprompted, gratuitous abandonment and sublimation of oneself and one’s own desires for the good of another. In short, complete self-sacrifice.

    And how does a father introduce his children into this living experience? Through his love of their mother.

    Marriage, as someone once said, is an ongoing, vivid illustration of what it costs to love an imperfect person unconditionally … Just as Christ loves us. Through a selfless love of their mother, the father shows his children how Christ loves us and His Church. As the Venerable Fulton Sheen says, “Suffering and responsibility – these are the hallmarks of masculinity”.

    And it ain’t easy – my wife can be as annoying as hell, and I struggled for many years of our marriage expecting her to love me as I wanted to be loved and resenting her when she didn’t. Love became conditional – I would only repay it if I felt I was receiving it.

    What I didn’t realise is that, to love as a man like Christ is to always make the first move: to be the first to express sorrow, the first to forgive, the first to show a sign of affection, the first to break the cold wall of silence. St John the Evangelist writes: ‘We love, because He loved us first’!

    St. John Chrysostom exhorts husbands:

    “… And even if it becomes necessary for you to give your life for her, yes, and even to endure and undergo suffering of any kind, do not refuse. Even though you undergo all this, you will never have done anything equal to what Christ has done. You are sacrificing yourself for someone to whom you are already joined, but He offered Himself up for one who turned her back on Him and hated Him.

    In the same way, then, as He honoured her by putting at His feet one who turned her back on Him, who hated rejected, and disdained Him, as He accomplished this not with threats, or violence, or terror, or anything else like that, but through His untiring love; so also you should behave toward your wife.

    … So the Church was not pure. She had blemishes, she was ugly and cheap. Whatever kind of wife you marry, you will never take a bride like Christ did when He married the Church; you will never marry anyone estranged from you as the Church was from Christ. Despite all this, He did not abhor or hate her for her extraordinary corruption …” [Homily XX]

    It’s easy to wallow in resentment and self-pity in our relationships. It’s easy for men, like the first Adam, to blame the woman for all the trouble and strife in their lives, but that’s a boyish response. The battles between the sexes will only ever be over when we men love first, when we take our computer games, our fast cars, our banter, our addictions, our lewdness, our desire for power, and nail them firmly to the Cross of self-discipline and self-denial. Then with our arms wide open and our hearts pouring out our love, we will hear our wives and our children say, “Behold the man!”

    Afterword 

    Like committing to the gym after years of inactivity, committing to authentic manhood after years of juvenile indolence is a challenge.

    Firstly, we don’t feel like we have the energy! This all sounds exhausting! Where do I start?! Secondly, once you hit the gym, it’s depressing how much further ahead other people appear to be, and how much work you have to do to get there. And finally, it’s not until we put ourselves in a position of duress and vulnerability that we find the righteous anger and the inner wherewithal to deal with and root out our apathy.

    But start small. St Josemaria Escriva writes:

    “Will-power. A very important quality. Don’t despise little things, for by the continual practice of denying yourself again and again in such things — which are never futile or trivial — with God’s grace you will add strength and resilience to your character. In that way you will first become master of yourself, and then a guide, a chief, a leader: to compel and to urge and to inspire others, with your word, with your example, with your knowledge and with your power”. [The Way, 19]

    If you’re reading this feeling the inertia and the exhaustion of what you need to do to be a man, know that someday, somewhere down the line, those innate masculine laws will break through and you will go, dammit, something has to change! I will get off the couch, I will go to the gym – I will step up and become a man.

    Even if you are not yet a father, or that time seems a long way off, there is much you can do to prepare, to cast off your boyish habits and to take up your responsibilities.

    But know this also, to take your fitness for manhood seriously, you need to be taught how to do it correctly, you have to start light, you need a coach to guide you and to hold you accountable, you need to work on areas that are injured or weaker than others – and you will plummet to depths you never knew were there and rise to summits you never imagined. And you’ll need buddies along the way to cajole and motivate you, to laugh at and with you and who push you to achievements beyond your expectations. Manhood is a challenge, but men are built for challenges

    Let me end by paraphrasing a quote from Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Illinois. Where he is speaking of Catholicism, let me reference manhood:

    “The age of casual Manhood is over, the age of heroic Manhood has begun. We can no longer be men by accident, but instead be men by conviction!” [cf Sermon, 14th April, 2012]

    Adapted from a talk given to the Catholic Medical Association young peoples’ retreat, St Dominic’s Church and Rosary Shrine, London, 9 Feb 2019

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