Last week, we chatted with Jeff Shiefelbein from Undivided Life about culture and using the Catholic social thought tradition to help construct a positive, healthy and truly Christian culture of work. Check out the episode here if you haven't yet!
This week, we're joined by Amanda Achtman who heads up ethics education and cultural engagement at Canadian Physicians for Life, an organization that is on the front lines in Canada's culture wars, specifically in the battle between the prevailing culture of death and the Catholic vision of a culture of life. The episode includes hard facts and sad stories about the comfort level with death-on-demand in Canada and other nations, and we hope you will check it out (and support Amanda's very important work).
These two episodes have me thinking a lot about my responsibilities as a committed Catholic Christian in a hostile secular culture, especially as my wife and I await the birth of our (first, God willing) child. This has me particularly thinking about my position as a role model, example and mentor to young men (first and foremost my nephews, godsons and the children in my parish communities) of what it means to take the Christian faith seriously, what it means to pick up one's cross and follow Christ and what it means to be a good man. I want my nephews to be good men. Here I am with them in January 2024 in Villavicencio, Colombia...
I read an article recently from a teacher in an all-boys school where he relayed a story about a presentation that was given on sexism, during which the presenter used the example of the gender wage-gap. Many students were deeply unhappy about what was presented. The teacher subsequently had discussions with students in the school who often shared that while they accept sexism exists, they felt they had all been painted as villains without any appreciation for or acknowledgement of nuance in complex situations. The boys knew they were not responsible for the wage-gap or any other historic ills perpetrated by men against women and yet they felt they were being told to believe that because they're male they're intrinsically bad, should apologize for being men of the future and that men are responsible for the world's evils.
The rise of social media star Andrew Tate in 2016 brought about what we can now call the internet "manosphere". It is, generally, a pushback movement against the prevailing cultural narrative that since man = bad and boy = future man, boy = bad. There is tons of this content online now, including for example YouTube channels committed to showing men being rejected by women or women explicitly despising or being strongly prejudiced against men simply because they are men. Awful examples include street interviews in which men and women are asked if they need each other (the men say things like, "yes, of course we need women" while the women say things like, "of course we don't need men"). Other videos show the heartbreaking moment when a man learns his girlfriend is cheating on him.
So, the boys in our culture today are being told they're evil and sexist and watching videos applauding immoral behavior in some alleged war between the sexes. At the same time.
The teacher's point in the article is that the same education system that punishes boys for mentioning Andrew Tate (or other popular social media influencers in this poisonous manosphere) is the same system pushing already confused boys further into the misogynistic online world (which is deep and disturbing for those willing to look...).
And should we be surprised boys are confused?
Should we be shocked by the "transgender" insanity that doesn't spare boys?
In an effort to gain respect, boys are seemingly presented two options:
Embrace social liberalism's obsession with self-identification and relativism (which is antithetical to the Christian faith and indeed to human flourishing) to fit in; or
Reject it and turn inwards, usually opting to be or finding oneself unintentionally as either a so-called "incel" (i.e., involuntarily celibate), a "red-piller" (i.e., a boy or a man who deliberately removes himself from what he perceives to be a female-dominated society which doesn't want him anyway) or a "sigma male" (i.e., a hyper-masculine male who is also typically anti-female).
Oh, and this is all being dumped on a demographic group that is already overwhelmed due to shockingly high rates of fatherlessness, divorce and pornography which result in shockingly low rates of good male role models.
I know from speaking with my nephews and the children of good friends that adolescent boys know that males can't become females, that males aren't intrinsically evil, and that males aren't all rapists, abusers or oppressors. Yet this is what they are told basically from infancy in many corners of our culture (and increasingly so).
Hard and truthful conversations about the nature of sexual difference, statistics surrounding long-term falling education attainment rates for boys relative to girls, and men's issues such as homelessness, suicide and child custody following divorce have been dismissed by third/fourth-wave feminism and LGBTQIA+ agendas (which are, of course, deeply anti-Christian).
Where does this leave us? What options do we have for our boys?
Christianity. The Gospel. The God-man Jesus Christ.
In 2023, Jordan Peterson released a video titled "Message to the Christian Churches" in which he stated that young men are disenfranchised and longing for responsibility and purpose. He encouraged churches to "ask more, not less" of them. I believe he was spot on.
Christianity, and Catholicism specifically, offer boys the challenge they actually long for. Pursuit of virtues and selfless roles such as father, priest and monk can offer boys the positive responsibility that society isn’t and seemingly has no interest in offering.
And I think boys especially (I think of my own nephews as I write this) need the Jesus who:
faced injustice by flipping tables in the temple;
faced the devil for forty days in the desert and won;
said hard things and didn't back down when the people around him disliked it; and
sweated blood thinking about His pending suffering and death yet willingly sacrificed Himself for us anyway.
That is the Jesus we should be showing boys.
Instead, we often only offer boys the gentle Jesus who "loves you just the way you are". Yes, that is true. Yes, that is part of the character of the God-man who came for the salvation of all. But that is not enough. Our boys need more.
As I ponder this, I am convinced that if you're (like me) a man with the opportunity (and responsibility) to be a role model to boys, you should take it seriously. I am committed to doing so with my nephews and, God willing, I am ensuring when they spend time with my wife and I that they see:
God comes first (we always take them to Mass, no matter what else we're doing);
men are not superior to women and good men honor, respect, earn the trust of, and defend women;
women are not superior to men and good women don't belittle, take for granted, behave as though their success comes at the expense of, and deny the importance of men; and
Jesus embodied a proper masculinity that we are all called to learn from and mimic, especially in service of others.
I think they appreciate this. And if they don't? I'll try anyway. Like I did last night when I forced them to go to Mass before we took them out for a surprise dinner above the city during the Calgary Stampede.
God bless,
Travis
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