Writing Columns

Phoenix’ Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted has written an amazing document to the men of his diocese that has much to teach women as well. The lessons for women are peripheral to the text, but essential nonetheless, and so abundant that I’d like to unpack the wisdom therein.

He begins his work, “Into the Breach,” by reminding his readers that we are all engaged in a massive two-pronged battle. The spiritual realm–in which lies assault eternal truths, darkness seeks to quench the light, and death stalks life at every turn–manifests itself in the concrete realities of everyday life. Unfortunately, without understanding the larger narrative, distinguishing both the importance of the struggle and how various choices play into the dichotomy becomes muddled. Only with a true devotion to Christ and the spiritual gifts provided by the Church is a soldier able to distinguish the authentic battle lines.

The Bishop never devolves into stereotypes, but does rely on a key theme: Men are encouraged by the call to heroism. We have noticed this in recent times, as most people were riveted by the firefighters rushing to help those trapped in New York’s Twin Towers, are edified by young men who protect their weaker peers from bullies, and are wholesomely entertained by good literature in which a man on a quest perseveres against tremendous odds. The fact that much of our toxic culture has been invested in corroding the ideal through cynicism and deconstruction is telling; furthermore, distracting men through materialism, sloth, and lust is a pernicious tactic in pulling them away from the ultimate battle to which they’re called.

It’s not that women don’t rise in the face of an important challenges, but their inclination is slightly different from that of men, who are usually more mission-oriented. When women act heroically, it usually reveals a dedication immediate to the person himself, and the necessary tasks become relative to the love involved. This establishes a key area of collaboration, for men—who do remarkably well in tactics–benefit by the vision of women, which should be focused on the individual needs of those around them. If he understands where the breach is and how to defend against it, it is often because she has pointed out the harms—particularly as they relate to those entrusted to her care. She senses the urgency and the damage, he flies into action to safeguard in practical terms that which they both believe to have serious moral and practical implications.

There is a long, sordid history of why this template is so foreign to contemporary ears, but suffice it to say that with two generations seriously damaged by the sexual revolution, trust and collaboration between men and women are in shreds. At this point, to suggest that women should simply trust men often invites sneers, ridicule, or outright hostility—but it cannot be stressed too strongly that both are at fault. Each has been guilty of manipulation, betrayal, and failure to love. For every anecdote of men failing to meet their responsibilities is another example in which women have taken advantage of men. Despite monumental damage, the challenge remains: Society is in a death spiral. There is one template that works, and we must return to it or descend further into alienated chaos.

Statistics Don’t Lie
Bishop Olmsted is not exaggerating the threats, given that fatherhood and motherhood—and sexual identity itself—have been under siege for many decades now, and moral chaos has followed. He cites alarming statistics that document the decline of the Church in America, showing that the number of those attending Holy Mass and receiving life-giving sacraments—including Holy Matrimony—is plummeting. It is the word “matrimony” that should concern us here. While dictionaries define that word as simply “the state of being married,” one can easily see that its root is in the word, mater (Latin for “mother”).

Despite the conventional wisdom that marriage is simply a lifestyle choice and how those who opt to enter it is irrelevant, the fact is that naturally and supernaturally speaking, marriage is primarily ordered to children. The Second Vatican Council echoed the ancient teaching, noting:

Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. … true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminished of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day (GS, 50).

Increase and enrich. That is what we are called to do—and a man and woman’s burning desire to embrace each other is the inborn drive to do what God intended from the start. The primary goal is to increase, and the family setting is intended to enrich all its members—but primarily the children. It’s so simple, and yet most young people shy away from this truth as though it’s an obstacle to happiness. The irony is that when we avoid God’s will for our lives, we reject the happiness that comes with it—and for what? Our own short-sighted ill-conceived ideas that attempt an end-run around a fundamental truth.

Amidst the chaos in the wider culture about all the different ideas on what marriage is, or should be, or isn’t, or used to be, the Marriage Reality Movement has shifted the discussion in a very refreshing way—a way that reflects more closely the primary purpose of the institution. Rather than beginning with the husband and wife—who often spend an inordinate amount of time naval-gazing about all the choices open to them—MRM begins with the child and his dignity. When we think about it, not only were we all once children, but consider the stunning fact that marriage is the only institution that firmly ties a child to his biological parents.

If a young woman’s search for a spouse is understood as choosing her children’s father, would that change the way she looks for him? The venues she’s using? The criteria she holds in her heart? And for the parents of sons, will an emphasis on their future fatherhood change the way they are being raised? Bishop Olmsted implores all men to embrace their call: “If you do not embrace the spousal and fatherly vocation God has planned for you, you will be stuck in the impotence of the ‘seed’ that refuses to die and refuses to give life. Don’t settle for this half-life! The question for every man is not, ‘Am I called to be a father?’ but rather, ‘What kind of father am I called to be?’” We all have a stake in the response—none more so than the next generation. Fatherhood is neither optional nor an obstacle, but the answer. Women need to embrace that fact.

Eyes on the Holy Family
In the well-worn tale of the Nativity of Jesus, we do well to examine the threads related to Joseph, and wonder anew at how pivotal his paternal care was to salvation history. Truly, Mary’s trust in the plan of God was intricately related to her trust in Joseph’s dedication to her safety and that of her divine Son, for her husband provided essential support, security, and shelter when she and the Word Made Flesh were most vulnerable.

In contrasting the capable strength of Joseph and the vulnerability of his family, we find the heart of fatherhood, which Pope Saint John Paul II outlines in Familiaris Consortio:

A man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family … 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 (25).

From this we can can draw two conclusions: first, the family has enemies who sow seeds of anxiety, instability, and division (surely all of us—since childhood—can attest to that!); and second, the faith is ordered to combat each of those things.

Faith has two levels. We can embrace the tenets of our creed, attesting to the fact that God is a Trinity of love, and that the Son was sent for our salvation; but there’s another kind of faith: the trust that following the contours of that creed, its sacramental economy, its prayer life, and the guidance of the Church will bring about the stability of life that allows families to thrive. While Jesus as Redeemer is irreplaceable, he is also the Way in a practical sense. That means that not only does his blood ransom us, but his life provides a model for living—and to that end, we look not only to the lessons of his public ministry, but to the hidden years within the Holy Family. If Jesus and Mary—both sinless—were vulnerable, how much more are we?

We can best understand the security and peace attached to the family by taking stock of the dangers and snares that undermine it. Too often, cynicism sets in and the family is seen as a pious ideal, or a sentimental construct from the distant past. Women have been taught that motherhood is an oppressive institution that squanders their true gifts, and men have been taught that their chivalric instincts are brutish anachronisms. Both are lies meant to weaken the family, and the degree to which they’re considered true is the degree to which the family as God designed it is made unstable.

Bishop Olmsted writes: “in original sin, we find a primordial rebellion against God’s fatherhood, a desire to remove fatherhood itself. This is our enemy’s underlying plan: to remove our reliance on God, the benevolent Father.” We must reject this primordial tendency, and work to strengthen fatherhood, so that “life conceived under the heart of the mother” is safeguarded and treasured by the man responsible. Just as the inconstancy of parents is reflected in the angst of their children, the renewal of the sacred mission of the family will lead to peace and security for all its members. Meditating on the vocation of fatherhood is key to that mission—providing the straightest path to understanding the fatherhood of God, and his own gift of unsurpassing love.

Bishop Olmsted’s letter is a lifeline to Catholic men everywhere, and women should trust that it will lift men out of the quicksand of depravity and ruin. Our best response is to be grateful for his wisdom, to pray for its widespread dissemination, and to step back so that men can do what they’re called to do—shore up a battered civilisation so that the family can flourish in the task entrusted to it, namely to create a shared life of love and collaboration that gives proper glory to God.

[Into the Breach has a study guide as well, for the benefit of men’s prayer groups. Doesn’t take much feminine genius to realise it would be nice to slip this link into the hands of the priests and men in your life!]

Most Americans are pondering the darker side of Planned Parenthood. The dark side has always been known: it was founded by Margaret Sanger to eliminate the poor and people of color through contraception, sterilization, and abortion. The darker side is that the industry has evidently managed to piggy-back a chop shop on top of the wanton destruction — selling body parts to augment its profits. Admittedly, the country is split: some find it deplorable, some find it tediously boring. How the numbers fall out on either side is debatable, but it’s important to recognize that not everyone is appalled. Now why would that be?

In the years immediately following the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Pro-Life advocates spent long hours crafting arguments to prove that the so-called “clump of cells” was actually a baby, and that each “product of conception” constituted a human life. Through fetal models, scientific arguments, and grisly photographs, they pressed the issue that polite society would rather ignore: to end a life in the womb was akin to murder, and their “silent screams” should haunt us as long as the unborn were legally shredded under the guise of choice.

Over the decades, Pro-Life arguments were strengthened by advances in ultrasound technology and the viability of younger and younger babies, and yet contrary forces were at work — selling a “liberated” lifestyle of consequence-free sex. Whereas previously, sexual intimacy was reserved for Marriage (because of the probability of it succeeding in its natural end — new life!) now fertility could be set aside. Restraint and discipline gave way to myopic indulgence, and public schools linked arms with the entertainment industry to trumpet the news to our young: sex was for bodily pleasure, full stop.

Two generations of men have been encouraged — by the culture and by women — to pursue sexual intimacy without commitment, without openness to life, and without further obligations. In this insidious way, men have lost an essential dimension of their vocation: to protect and provide for those entrusted to their care. Furthermore, they have been taught that reproductive freedom is strictly a woman’s issue (admittedly, a relief to many!) and that men are to be engaged in the outcomes only at the express invitation of the woman. Fatherhood is no longer integral to manhood, but an option subject to the whims of women — no wonder then that men have neglected so many of the virtues attached to it.

If there’s one thing feminists clearly despise, it’s patriarchy — the institution by which the strongest care for the weakest, and in which family welfare is entrusted to the guidance of fathers. Through caricature, ridicule, and distortion, patriarchy has been linked to all that is evil in the world, and women will have none of it. Having successfully wrested control of their lives from men, and marginalized men from monumental decisions concerning the family, women have charged ahead, believing that their independence will bring about freedom and happiness.

And yet despite how they railed at the previous construct, how many women now suffer from objectification, utilitarianism, disparagement, and abandonment — not to mention the impoverishment of single mothers and their living offspring? There should be no surprise, then, that the children that they refuse to mother will be objectified as well, with a higher premium on their parts than their personhood, for their mothers had already succumbed to that lie. Every week, thousands of these women find themselves at clinics, dealing with the fallout of their “liberation” — and allowing Moloch to turn a profit by their choice.

With every meaningful relationship severed from its purpose, with men Spiritually castrated by bitter women, it only stands to reason that their children’s inheritance is sterile and loveless — and without fathers to protest, the mothers hand over their flesh to the beast. Perhaps we should rethink patriarchy, and the proper concern at its core, because the feminist alternative has proven a suffocating embrace.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, most rejoiced in what they thought was a victory over the Marxist-inspired despotism that had harried the world for decades. That event, which Pope Benedict XVI called an “elegant symbol,” was a turning point of sorts, but not one that led to the full flowering of human freedom. On the contrary, it marked a disturbing turn from a failed economic structure to its cultural stepchild, founded on an insidious lie that stalks our society on any given day. Indeed, the victory we thought we had attained was only a skirmish in a more long-standing war, the war over the dignity of the human person and where he finds his salvation. 

Understanding the Dialectic
The Eastern Block nations (under the boot of Soviet Russia) believed that man was a tool of the state, and his salvation was in the marketplace. In their strictly materialist view of the world, the class struggle would culminate in crushing capitalism through the dialectic. By pitting thesis against antithesis, a new synthesis would accrue: the classless workers’ paradise. 

While the Marxists seemed to have lost the battle in the marketplace, they have persisted on the cultural level and are winning battle after battle. In that sense, the fall of the Berlin Wall was only a small setback. It is through this lens that we must take stock of the pro-life movement and the status of the family today. 

All who have fought for the dignity of the unborn are quite familiar with feminists, who have never wavered in their attack on marriage and motherhood. “Biology is not destiny!” is their battle cry, and to understand their agenda you must understand that they are cultural Marxists at heart — indeed, they are key players in the next level of the dialectic. Just as the Marxists of old fought for control over the “means of production” feminists have always framed their arguments in terms of controlling the “means of eproduction.”

 It began with the equity feminists, who eventually morphed into radical feminists, and yet now we are facing the gender feminists who want nothing less than an all-out deconstruction of all sexual differences. It is here that we find the power of the dialectic: they believe that men were the oppressors and women were the oppressed. Thus, it’s not enough that women rise up, but there must be a new synthesis, the eradication of male and female, which allowed the oppression in the first place.

 The arc of their agenda has been steep and swift. These are the supporter of same-sex marriage, claiming that families can be configured in a variety of ways. And immediately on the heels of approving same sex marriage came the demand for transgender rights — and not only content with “bathroom bills” and re-configuring birth certificates, they will have made their impact on the Olympics games, where biological men may compete in the women’s events this very summer even without gender reassignment surgery.

 Outmanoeuvring the Pro-life Movement
If you look at this chaos in terms of cultural Marxism, it becomes clear, especially as we review the stages of confrontation specific to the pro-life movement. The first battle was enormous and urgent — to save the life of the child. It took years, but technology was on our side. Education about fetal development was key, and what fetal models did at the outset, the ultrasound perfected, so that there are very few people who have not seen the marvelous images of the unborn child: they are in scrap books, on refrigerators, and even in a handful of television commercials — this is a tremendous a victory for life! 

The second battle was for motherhood, which was to underscore the strength of women everywhere, to show that they were strong enough to handle pregnancy in a host of adverse circumstances: while still in school, while working stressful jobs, after having suffered abuse or rape, while encumbered financially, while feeling emotionally fragile, while responsible for other children, and even when facing special needs or medical emergencies — this is a tremendous victory for women!

But the greater battle has yet to be won, and this is where Marxism and its insidious lies have prevailed, even here — despite the political changes that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall, its cultural footprint remains. The majority of millennials are pro-life — in that they want the unborn child to be given the benefit of the doubt, a chance at life. Gone are the days of stigma, where a woman would have an abortion because of the shame of a child out of wedlock. Schools and workplaces accommodate pregnancy no matter what the particular details of the situation, and in this realm we see that choice has won.

Having a baby at any stage of life, within marriage or without, has so prevailed that we now come to the root horror of our predicament: fatherhood is no longer an essential component of family life. The quest to defend life and to empower women has left men completely out in the cold, and few people see their value — even though a woman cannot be a mother without a man: the child exists only because of his seed.

 Abandoning Patriarchy
This is where we as believers have to acknowledge that our Judeo-Christian culture is inherently, historically, existentially patriarchal. Since that key truth has been soft-pedaled and hidden in our places of worship, we now discover that it has been abandoned even by most Christians. This is partly because of men behaving badly, but also because of a growing — already widespread — disdain for masculinity. 

We must understand that fatherhood can be maligned in three different ways: a father can be compromised by apathy or indifference towards those entrusted to his care; or he can abuse his authority by using excessive force in the execution of his duties. In this regard, he is more of a tyrant than a father. But there’s a third way that fatherhood is undermined, and that is permeating our culture today: behold androgyny — the blurring of the distinction between male and female. We find this phenomenon everywhere, seeping into popular culture, changing our vocabulary, and trying to establish a new normal. This is the victory of cultural Marxism: the deliberate sowing of confusion, replacing male and female with “gender identities,” and exposing our children to vulgar and perverse ideas even in their earliest years.  

The demise of fatherhood over the past few decades now means that the father is not legally bound (or otherwise committed) to help the mother of his children, the collaboration between men and women is undermined, and children are far less exposed to complementarity, which is both at the heart of male-female relationships and the foundation of the family. This means that boys increasingly will not be mentored properly as boys (mothers cannot do this!); girls, without a protective and loving father, will seek self-destructive attention in the wrong places from the wrong men; and no one in these situations will understand the fatherhood of God. 

That is the ultimate harm, and it’s not only a sociological problem: we have now arrived at the root tragedy: attacking patriarchy is blasphemy. Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians: “For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (1 Eph 3:14). To attack fatherhood is to malign God himself. Moreover, this primal blasphemy has crept up on us while we were valiantly busy trying to save babies and support their mothers. 

All of this is no accident, because it was in the original design of Marxism:

Marx’s writings on gender and the family are significantly more substantial and more valuable than is usually acknowledged. Marx showed considerable insight into the gender relations of his own time, pointing to the need for a total transformation of society that would necessarily involve new relations between men and women … Since both nature and society are not static entities, Marx argued that there can be no transhistorical notion of what is ‘natural’” (The International Marxist-Humanist).   

Why is this battle so important? We are fast approaching the end game, which is now unmasked. The battle for the life of the child and the dignity of the mother were real, but only a softening of the target: In winning those wars, we were actually out-manoeuvred by those who wanted to deconstruct the family, because a family cannot thrive without a father. The father, the mother, and the children all benefit by living in a stable family — this is obvious by reading every sociological study properly rendered, but more importantly, only then can each person begin to understand God the Father. 

Why is the Fatherhood of God essential?
Of course God is not male, but He asked us to call him Father: Elsewhere, Saint Paul wrote: “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’” (Rom 8:15). God must be at the centre. The very opening of our Catechism begins with: “FATHER, . . . this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent …” The first word in the prologue is Father! And then the text begins with God:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church.

See how it immediately pairs his creative work with the Church, which is precisely the nuptial reality currently under attack, showing that the Divine Mercy radiates outwards — from the center out to creation — by means of his fatherly love, to man who receives it in relation to his humility and reverence.

How is patriarchy properly understood? To know, we must look at the love of God the father, whose actions are life-giving, who is faithful to that which he has created, who creates in a nuptial fashion (through another, although he remains the principal); who points to complementarity, and whose love is sacrificial. Fatherhood most faithfully reveals the truth about divine generation and how God relates to his creatures. Our faith is supposed to be grounded in filial piety, which requires trust — and this is where the three ways that fatherhood is compromised come into play: this trust is massively difficult for those who have suffered either the neglect of fathers or from male tyranny, but it is impossible for those who buy into the androgynous lies that are swallowing our culture.

 Saint Cyprian famously said “you cannot have God as your father without the Church for your mother,” but both are lost to our children if fatherhood and motherhood become alien concepts — as is seriously becoming a distinct possibility. Until we understand this truth, internalise it, and lay it as the foundation of our very lives, we cannot properly rebuild our society. The followers of Christ have always known that the truth will set us free, but what we may not have known until now is how important patriarchy properly understood has been to flourishing of the human family.

 So what shall we do?
If this truth is problematic to you, take it to prayer and beg for healing from those scandalous obstacles that may have harmed you in the past — you cannot share what you do not believe. This begins by forgiving all those who have fallen short in their fatherhood — whether physical or spiritual — and teach others to do likewise. And pray for all men; theirs is a heavy burden and they face a tremendous accounting before God. 

We must pray intently for ways to incorporate this truth into our pro-life endeavors, and pray for men who have been marginalised from their very vocation. We must be very attentive to encouraging all men to provide a fatherly witness — especially to children without their own biological father to turn to. This may mean mentoring young men to be better fathers, or by including confused children into healthy family activities. 

We must defend marriage as the best environment for children, for only marriage provides an institution in which they can know that their parents are committed to each other and to them. We must reject the stories and jokes offered at the expense of men, who are only discouraged by nonstop parodies of their efforts. We must offer spiritual and moral support for priests and pastors — our spiritual fathers who lead their flocks to Christ. We must also speak the truth about male and female, which is how God wished to share his image on earth and bring new life into the human family. This means praying intently for wisdom and courage to stand up to the insidious lies that go to the very heart of who we are as persons. 

Ultimately, patriarchy is the proper filter by which to measure every decision, every ideology, and every mandate. This means adopting a principle which asks: does this strengthen or weaken authentic fatherhood — that singular icon that helps us understand the One True God? Every obstacle we face, every lie we encounter, every ideology we are fighting on every front in this age is an attack on fatherhood. Cultural Marxism is only one of a convergence of ideologies today, but it is the one that most affects us through media images, manipulation of the language, and legal boon-doggles. Furthermore, although all these ideologies contradict one another on every other level, they have one thing in common: they all despise patriarchy — and so that must be our touchstone: the fatherhood of God. 

There was another fall, more recent than the collapse of the Berlin Wall: the malevolent destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, but that was nothing compared to the effort to take down fatherhood and motherhood. Let that image be seared on your brains as an emblem of this important truth. This is the battle of our age, and we must not waver in regards to the fatherhood of God. Understand the dialectic, the lies, and the strategy – and fear not. If we reject the blasphemies that lie about fatherhood, prepare for a ferocious spiritual backlash, but what will ensue is an authentic renewal of culture from its very core. Hold fast, walk boldly in light of this essential truth, and know that God’s is the true victory in the end.