Masculinity and Men’s Formation w/ Dr. John Bishop | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Bonaventure Chapman
March 31, 2025
This transcription was generated using AI technology. Please note that there may be errors or inconsistencies.
This is Father Gregory Pine,
and this is Father Bonaventure Chapman.
And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to the podcast. It is funny because like there are a variety of nouns and most of those nouns cover the same nominative territory.
Yes. So Godsplaining podcast show you have to do them in the right cadence. Otherwise you get yourself like, Yeah. Okay.
Showing the podcast to others.
Yeah. Show the latest to others by subscribing to something else. Right. So for this episode,
It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. So Dr. Jon Bishop, a recent graduate of the Catholic University of America. There you go. So something that you and Father Bonaventure share.
Okay. I did not know, but also two eyes. Yeah. Good to be a cardinal.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Academic pedigree. Yeah. And I got to know you through focused summer project formation program. That focus runs, as you might imagine, over the summer with projects so as to form students kind of in that that build stage in the faith through a variety of cool outdoor and indoor resources. But yeah, for those those who don’t know you, those who haven’t been on focused summer projects with you, could you say a word of introduction, who you are, where you’re from, what you do?
Yeah. So from the Moines, Iowa, I’m married, I have three kids and it’s really I do. And that’s why since the last time I saw you, okay.
I think I knew you had one. But three is two more.
That’s awesome. Yeah, we have a we have a four and a half year old. A two and a half year old and a half year old and a 11 month old. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
So runs down to have four parallel structure.
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, exactly. And I was thinking so. Yeah. So I graduated from Catholic who I did spend the last eight and a half years prior to about the last year. So up until January 1st of 2024, I worked for Focus in a variety of capacities. One of the things that I did was to kind of help summer projects get off the ground, go to other places around the country.
It was fun getting to know you in the very early days of summer projects. We were in Colorado for several summers climbing mountains and teaching kids about theology and everything in between. Exactly. But yeah, I run an apostolate now called Forge Forges, fundamentally an organization that fights for the family. But we do so with a strategic emphasis on men.
So we take inspiration from groups like Focus on the Family and also focus the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. But the way that we go out. Yeah. So I say that.
And you named it if.
You just take a few letters.
Right.
Academy.
Five letters. It’s got to start with an F and so. Yeah. So yeah, Forge is a blend of two folk in going after the family with an emphasis on men’s with.
That’s not a focus.
And emphasis on the head. Yeah, that’s right. So, yeah, Forge has been going now for about 14, 15 months. We did our first public event in November of 2023 and here we are recording now in February of 25. It’s been an adventure. We’re growing very, very quickly. We do work fundamentally, most especially in Des Moines, Iowa, where I’m from, But we have people all over the country who are picking up our curriculum now, and it has it’s gotten a degree of traction to the extent where just a few months back we were recognized by an organization called Saint Ventures to be a top five emerging Catholic nonprofit in the United States, so gotten some traction.
We work with men seeking to reverse the negative trends of men in the faith and the negative trends with respect to fatherhood and both in the church and outside the church. So that’s force we’re fighting the for the family with a strategic emphasis, not focus on men. And yeah, thanks again for having me on today.
00:04:15:01 – 00:04:34:05
Speaker 2
I’m thinking so usually like what comes up y I suppose. But so you talked a little bit what forge is for the men, but what? So how or you should say or what? What are the pieces of it? That’s not for it. So we’ve got some. This sounds like the curriculum. Is this a Yeah. Classroom kind of thing or is this a study kind of thing or is it multifaceted?
00:04:34:05 – 00:04:36:04
Speaker 2
What is the what does it what does it consist?
00:04:36:06 – 00:04:58:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. Good question. So when when you think of forge, I think it’s best from truly from 30,000 feet to say that Forge is fundamentally a movement. We do make curriculum, we make content of a variety of different kinds, including podcasts, full blown courses, so on and so forth. But all of the tools that we make, the content that we make are geared towards an interpersonal setting, if you will.
00:04:58:11 – 00:05:15:00
Speaker 3
So what we do in Des Moines during these first two years, which we’re kind of viewing, is our sort of our incubation years, what we’re doing really is just founding a million small groups. We do host a lot of large events, retreats, conferences, things like that. But the purpose of all of those large events is to feed the small events.
00:05:15:01 – 00:05:33:11
Speaker 3
So right now we coordinate about 50 to 53 small groups of men in Des Moines. So those are groups of on average seven or eight men. Average age would be guys in their probably like late thirties, early forties who are they’re in the thick of things. That is, they’re they’re married, they have children in the home and they’re seeking to be better dads.
00:05:33:13 – 00:05:55:16
Speaker 3
So the curriculum that we make, usually what a piece of curriculum will look like is it’ll have a video explaining some aspect of fatherhood or coaching guys to be better fathers or alerting fathers to a particular kind of threat to their families and then helping them tackle it. So there’ll be a video that they can watch together, a discussion guide, a written guide.
00:05:55:18 – 00:05:59:15
Speaker 3
And yeah, I’m hopelessly biased, but they’re exceptional resources.
00:05:59:18 – 00:06:08:20
Speaker 2
But it’s because you were you were a perfect man, and so you just sort of like record yourself for a couple of years. And then those are the videos are just like spliced out the daily experience of your life with your kids.
00:06:08:22 – 00:06:14:17
Speaker 3
That’s right. Yeah. So I can I mean, really, I did it in about an afternoon and the whole organization came back.
00:06:14:23 – 00:06:38:19
Speaker 1
It’s actually just a out program. Yeah. Flexen with Bishop. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Okay, so the first the first time that I was introduced to, like, well, specifically, your passion for men’s formation was at summer projects and it was you were drawing on some of the research that you had done for your dissertation. That’s right. And I remember you haven’t, you know, like two books and the one book in particular written by Walter on some of the insights that you drew from that really resonated.
00:06:38:21 – 00:07:05:07
Speaker 1
But I think folks, you know, like, they kind of hear the things on the Internet and they have some vague kind of notion that maybe complementary gender roles have been somewhat undermined by three waves of feminism and by the current confusion with like gender dysphoria or gender ideology. And so they might be looking for purchase, but they’re worried about a kind of characterization of masculinity which might fall afoul of the contemporary cultures allergy to toxic masculinity.
00:07:05:07 – 00:07:18:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. So it’s like what? What have you found in your research and what are you able to present in your curriculum but also in, you know, like these small events that you host which can like help people to discover and grow in a genuine masculinity?
00:07:18:05 – 00:07:39:07
Speaker 3
Yeah, So I’m really happy to be on specifically on this podcast because there’s I feel like I can kind of speak in a greater degree of detail about first the crisis of masculinity, which which was laden in that the preamble to your question and then and then what I take to be the solution of it. So I’m going to describe it here really briefly.
00:07:39:07 – 00:07:41:10
Speaker 1
You don’t have to be brief. You can do that thousand years.
00:07:41:10 – 00:07:41:22
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:42:03 – 00:07:47:03
Speaker 1
Buckle up, listeners. You have a seatbelt on, whatever you might not be sitting there might keep going here.
00:07:47:03 – 00:08:16:00
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. The solution which was, which is I think most especially what you’re asking for is that I think there needs to be a positive image of masculinity, especially for young and adolescent boys, but even for, you know, millennials who are getting older, baby boomers to to go after the world has done a great job of deconstructing masculinity and several different spheres, whether it’s in academia, in popular culture, or just in ordinary relationships that you would have in your parish.
00:08:16:02 – 00:08:46:16
Speaker 3
But the world and and and I would say this and this is one nuance that I think I can add to the conversations on masculinity that is helpful to articulate here, especially in a podcast of this nature, that when the world through masculinity out there kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater, but there was some bathwater, you know, that the I think a lot of people, especially in devout Catholic circles, sort of think if only we could go back to 1950s masculinity, that would just solve all of our problems.
00:08:46:18 – 00:09:17:04
Speaker 3
But I think my take on this is that there are facets of what might be referred to as tradition or masculinity that were kind of thrown out for good reason, you know, and I can I can speak about a few of those facets here in a moment, but my call to Catholics would be that, yes, we need to reclaim a a new version of masculinity and that the kind of raising of the foundations, the cultural foundations of the masculine picture is indeed a crisis, but it’s a crisis that presents a beautiful opportunity, as is the case with any crisis that the church encounters.
00:09:17:06 – 00:09:46:06
Speaker 3
This blank slate that we have now is hopefully an opportunity for us to kind of, you know, sketch a picture of masculinity anew, that that shines forth more beautifully. So what we need to do as a culture is to re-embrace not necessarily a carbon copy or an exact copy of of masculinity as it was 70 years ago. But but masculinity as it as it flows directly from the anthropology revealed by our faith, by science, so on and so forth.
00:09:46:08 – 00:10:07:23
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. But the before you we kind of you asked the question about the kind of the solution, I think it’s maybe worthwhile to just rest for a minute on, on what I call the crisis of masculinity, what that is what the, you know, what the sources of that problem might be. And then I think we could more clearly see what a solution looks like.
00:10:07:23 – 00:10:09:16
Speaker 3
So if it’s all right with you, I think I might jump in.
00:10:09:18 – 00:10:11:03
Speaker 1
I’m here for it. Yeah, yeah.
00:10:11:03 – 00:10:41:10
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. So I you know, you asked Father Pine, what do people call you these days? So your father. Pine Father Gregory. What? Typically Father Gregory. Father Gregory. Yeah, Yeah. So is there a real crisis of men and masculinity, or is that just, you know, some I remember thinking as a graduate student, you’re you’re suspicious of are these just, you know, maybe is it maybe something that is present in my social media echo chamber or in the particular news outlets that I read?
00:10:41:12 – 00:11:10:09
Speaker 3
Or is there actual evidence to support the fact that men are in trouble, both in the world at large and in the church? And the resounding answer to that question is that there is truly a problem, and that problem is recognized increasingly, actually on both sides of the political aisle. It’s recognized in and outside the church. I saw just a few weeks ago that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave Richard Reeves a very large sum of money to found an institute, you know, for the healthy cultivation of boys.
00:11:10:09 – 00:11:37:18
Speaker 3
And then I remember in the process of my graduate studies, talking to a guy that headed up the American Psychological Association’s Society. Yeah, that’s right, Society for Men and Masculinities. And he was just deeply concerned about this problem. And when I say the problem of men and masculinity from a nonreligious perspective, usually what you’re talking about is things like decreasing rates of male education, success in education.
00:11:37:20 – 00:12:06:18
Speaker 3
Yeah. So obviously universities are approaching a 2 to 1 female to male ratio across the entire country. So over 60% of university students are female these days. If you look at job success, interest of particularly men in their twenties and entering the workplace period is declining. Male incarceration rates are skyrocketing. The success that the interest, rather that men have in marriage is plummeting.
00:12:06:20 – 00:12:31:08
Speaker 3
And so society wide, there’s there’s certainly downward trends in really every relevant sociological statistic when it comes to men and masculinity and even even started talking about the church yet. Right. And this like those are all statistics. But I think it’s it’s worthwhile here to kind of maybe make those statistics a reality if they’re not already for the listeners.
00:12:31:08 – 00:12:50:22
Speaker 3
But when I first got interested in this problem, it wasn’t so much that I’d seen a lot of statistics, but more that I’d just seen a lot of sad people, you know? So I like you said, I worked for a long time at Focus, which for people who don’t know it, it’s a collegiate organization, Catholic organization, that reaches out to college students.
00:12:51:00 – 00:13:13:18
Speaker 3
And I just saw hordes of women and almost no men. And as a single guy at the time that was I mean, it was a wonderful thing, right? You know, But but now, as I as I get older and I see so many of my friends who are women in Catholic circles climbing the ladder of their twenties, their thirties, their forties, with no good men to marry, that crisis really kind of comes home.
00:13:13:18 – 00:13:42:22
Speaker 3
And if there are men to marry, it’s often, you know, men who aren’t interested in getting a job, men who are struggling in their life at large. You know, maybe they’re struggling with various different sexual addictions. Maybe they just have lack, they lack interest and drive whatever it might be. They certainly lack or they also lack an interest in their faith that it’s really tragic, you know, just to see so many people who are heartbroken and whose lives have been negatively impacted by what you’d call the crisis of masculinity.
00:13:43:00 – 00:13:56:23
Speaker 3
Yeah, all of the statistics that I say there certainly apply to the church as well. You know, so 2019 Pew Research says that 61% of your average U.S. Catholic congregation on any given Sunday is female and it’s only 39% male.
00:13:57:05 – 00:13:57:22
Speaker 2
It’s that high. Okay.
00:13:58:01 – 00:14:38:14
Speaker 3
Yeah. Horrible stat. And it’s a horrible stat not just for this generation. It’s an even worse that when you when you kind of factor into that whole picture the at this point sociological fact that perhaps the best predictor of faith in the next generation is what the fathers of this generation look like. You know, so there’s at this point a mountain of sociological evidence to show that if you if you if you’re going to hone in on any specific factor that that could predict whether or not a child is going to someday grow up to be a faithful Catholic adult, look at their father, you know, so you’ve got you’ve got a church that’s been
00:14:38:14 – 00:14:57:03
Speaker 3
drained of men and men standing as the primary religious predictor of their children. Those those two factors together are deeply problematic. So when I talk about the crisis of men in masculinity, in the church and in the culture, those are some of the things I’m talking about. You know, it’s on.
00:14:57:05 – 00:15:19:06
Speaker 2
And so know the statistics are there and sure, people can see them on this. But of course, if the causes of those statistics are those things are institutional or cultural or geological or what have you or scientific or whatever. Male Yeah, if it was tectonic plates just mean we’re not going to go to college as much. Yeah, So, so probably.
00:15:19:07 – 00:15:19:12
Speaker 3
We.
00:15:19:12 – 00:15:42:08
Speaker 2
Find, yeah. Do you do what do you make sense of. And then the causal analysis so tricky, but what are the, what are the what do you get the sense of the like big causes, the pillars that are holding up this kind of crisis, masculinity? Like where did that? It could have been like just a number of small things add up or there are a couple in your research like, no, these are actually the real roots of this crisis and therefore the things we need to deal with directly change.
00:15:42:13 – 00:15:56:22
Speaker 2
Do you get a sense of it? This could be in secular, just the, you know, anthropological sense or in the religious sense as well. Any sense of like, yeah, you can tell this is the smoking gun. Here’s one of them. Two of them, three of them, that kind of thing. Or do you think it’s just we’re not because sometimes in crises, it’s hard to tell.
00:15:56:23 – 00:16:03:20
Speaker 2
You just know something’s wrong and we don’t we don’t know exactly what the cause of it is that stage or is it a mix of the two or what do you think?
00:16:03:22 – 00:16:31:08
Speaker 3
Yeah, well, Father, I think you’re right. And in saying that the cause of the crisis of masculinity is probably multifaceted. So I think you can look at things in the church. You know that about the liturgy, for example. And I think they’re interesting conversations to have about that. I think, you know, there are there’s interesting things in the world of education, you know, that pertain to a sort of lack of sensitivity to particularly for very young boys, masculine learning styles.
00:16:31:09 – 00:16:36:15
Speaker 3
Right? There’s there’s things in the media that they call like toxic masculinity movement.
00:16:36:15 – 00:16:44:12
Speaker 2
That are they’re tonic. Masculinity is what we should go for. And I kind of like that. I like that strong masculine and I forget where I’ve heard that. But like, we don’t we’re not toxic, we’re tonic masculine.
00:16:44:14 – 00:16:48:04
Speaker 1
You know, like a bass note of a scale or like the water that has quinine, both.
00:16:48:06 – 00:16:50:06
Speaker 2
It’s helpful and also reassuring.
00:16:50:10 – 00:16:56:23
Speaker 3
You know who I heard say that for the first time on Bill Donahue over at the Theology of the Body Institute, I think it might be the source.
00:16:56:23 – 00:17:00:16
Speaker 2
That’s that’s okay. I think that. Yeah, I think that might be true. Right? Yeah. I’m with Bill the other day. Yeah.
00:17:00:19 – 00:17:41:19
Speaker 3
Yeah. But I want to actually zero in on what I take to be a kind of like seminal negative toxin, if you will, that influenced all of masculinity, I think. I think the root of it all is contraception. And I’m really deeply convicted of that. And I became deeply convicted of that first actually reading a non-Catholic author. So though the Catholic Church, I think has a unique contribution to make here in so far as it’s we are more or less the sole major religious denomination that is held to the classic teaching on contraception.
00:17:41:21 – 00:17:53:20
Speaker 3
I was reading an author who had a rather unfortunate name. He’s an evolutionary sociologist out of Rutgers University named Lionel Tiger. So Dr. Tiger not making that up. It’s actually his name.
00:17:53:21 – 00:17:54:09
Speaker 1
There are worse.
00:17:54:09 – 00:17:55:03
Speaker 3
Names.
00:17:55:05 – 00:17:56:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, he’s crushing it.
00:17:56:12 – 00:18:16:04
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah, certainly memorable. But I saw I was I was reading this guy and he was talking about I he’s sort of coming at the problem of the decline of men in a book that was literally called The Decline of Males. And he was kind of going through what might be the cause of the crisis of men in masculinity.
00:18:16:06 – 00:18:40:18
Speaker 3
And he says, You know what? I kind of want to like, approach this problem in the same way that Karl Marx would approach this problem and for lack of a better way to put it, he’s like, I think men are kind of like the Disenfranchized masses, you know, that they’ve, they’ve, they’ve lost their stake in the not the process of production, but rather the process of reproduction.
00:18:40:20 – 00:19:07:18
Speaker 3
And a very sort of like core thing is that society has always and everywhere had an interest in upholding that is the bond between fathers and their children has been weakened by the contemporary sexual revolution and especially by contraception. And so he sketched the process like this. He says, look, I you know, of all societies in all places, well, that’s too strong.
00:19:07:18 – 00:19:32:18
Speaker 3
Many societies in many places have been very focused on cultivating strong father child bonds. Right. For all of the million and one reasons that a strong father child bond benefits children. But our society has kind of like produced an atmosphere that weakens that bonds by taking even more of what he calls the sexually predictive power and placed it in the hands of the female.
00:19:32:20 – 00:19:56:17
Speaker 3
So it’s always been the case that when, you know, a woman gets pregnant, the biological mother has a more ready vested interest in the child. It’s literally in her womb. She’s you know, she is the child’s sole source of sustenance. When the child first comes into the world so that the father can more easily leave. Right. And that’s certainly the case in our days.
00:19:56:21 – 00:20:16:05
Speaker 3
It used to be the case in the early 1960s that about 9% of the American child population didn’t have a resident father. That stat is now gone up to 25%. So one in one in four American kids does not have a resident father. By the time kids reached the 17th birthday, less than half of them have a resident father.
00:20:16:07 – 00:20:48:19
Speaker 3
So men leave in droves or they they never form the bond in the first place. And he, Lionel Tiger says that that really kind of what happens here is in the same way that an individual who works at McDonald’s kind of has no ownership in the company at large and doesn’t really feel any affinity, you know, to the process of production that they’re a part of, you know, in their in the big corporation that they work for in the same way when even more of the kind of the ability to predict whether or not you’re going to have a child, whether or not a particular sexual act is going to be open to life.
00:20:48:21 – 00:21:12:08
Speaker 3
And then, of course, the child custody laws, the abortion laws that the proceed from contraception place more and more power in the hands of the woman and disenfranchize a child, the man more and more and more men do the same thing that a worker at McDonald’s does. And they say, well, I don’t really care about McDonald’s. I’m kind of just here to get the things that are readily utilitarian, you know, a valuable for me money, right?
00:21:12:10 – 00:21:13:15
Speaker 2
You know, used to be pleasure. Yeah.
00:21:13:17 – 00:21:42:12
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I think the at the beating heart, the kind of the wealth spring of the alienated male is the sexual revolution at large. But the thing that that brought about that sexual revolution as a kind of core toxin is contraception. I don’t think there’s anything that hurts men more, even though it might be subtle. It’s like an invisible poison that is causing the crisis.
00:21:42:13 – 00:21:59:00
Speaker 2
And I think you’re right. It seems to me that the this focus on family, the first the first of the folk folk I know that whether you take the family unit, it’s the husband and wife. This is the kind of household code skips back to the Greeks. And of course Paul picks up the Ephesians like that husband and wife are for male and female, are like a unit, right?
00:21:59:00 – 00:22:17:19
Speaker 2
And any time you start to separate out and you see individuals like an atomized sense, then you’re going to have to have other reasons to stay together. When you talk about the bond here, not just between the the child and the father, but really the fundamental bond between the man, the woman that then allows for that other bond to be formed, because they’re together.
00:22:17:21 – 00:22:39:09
Speaker 2
And it’s right to say that contraception strikes against that bond because it now becomes a possibility that I can see myself as we can make decisions about our union and about what will produce of that and what kind of union will be, whether it’ll be a a life giving union potentially, or whether we’re going to exclude that it’s going to be another kind of union institution.
00:22:39:15 – 00:23:12:07
Speaker 2
So contraception allows the man, the woman in the relationship to now treat each other as partners in some kind of utilitarian or some transactional. And it’s not that anyone and it’s not the people are using contraception that’s not understand this kind of stuff. I think that’s right. It’s a it’s a symbolic. And it’s also a structural principle. But you when you start to make decisions about what’s going to outcome from this, whether it actually be united in a child, potentially from this, then you see yourself not as together as a unit, but rather as two people doing something together.
00:23:12:07 – 00:23:32:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, but not being together in the most literal sense. And that that is, you know, people say, well, what’s the the pill or the contraception thing. It’s none of that’s symptomatic of the of that breakage of I take it the male and female union as as one which is has to be the central of any sort of society in making sense as spokesman saying this for a while.
00:23:32:11 – 00:23:34:15
Speaker 3
But you know it.
00:23:34:15 – 00:23:47:11
Speaker 2
Just seems true you know, and to say it bears it out. You’re right, that breaking that bond, I think, leads to so much of this. Right now. We’re off because there women are doing what we’re doing. Great men are just floundering. Right. You know, I’ve got to I’ve got to follow up on that later. But keep going.
00:23:47:12 – 00:24:09:01
Speaker 3
Yeah. And for men, precisely the thing that called most of them to greatness, which was their marriages and their families, is now sort of an optional add on. Right. You know, so the thing that enticed them to get married, which was a woman, is disconnected from the thing that oftentimes truly called them to greatness, which was their children.
00:24:09:03 – 00:24:45:03
Speaker 3
And of course, that downward spiral just continues, you know, And here we are today with all the statistics that I mentioned to you earlier. So I don’t think contraception is is kind of the only influence. I think it’s if if there’s any specific thing that you could target to have a kind of multiplier effect and positively influence the culture, I would say, you know, bring back the whole scale vision for the church’s vision on sexuality, including what was kind of like the original deviation big type one, not the original, but the the the wholesale deviation of the church from that vision.
00:24:45:05 – 00:24:46:11
Speaker 3
And that was at the invention of the pill.
00:24:46:12 – 00:24:50:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, yeah, you get you can say you get the most bang for the buck right.
00:24:50:04 – 00:24:51:04
Speaker 3
You sort of for.
00:24:51:08 – 00:25:21:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think that’s and that’s, I mean JP too had this kind of vision, this sense and repackaged and we understood in the sort of the, the love and responsibility and the onto the bond he was going for this was trying to this and then we got see I don’t know it’s efficient the history of how the re embracing of this vision, the nuptial vision you could say is are we are we heading up another are we on the way to something higher in this doing this again like I because it was a big in the in the nineties and JP two is talking about the age the body all this stuff and then it
00:25:21:10 – 00:25:37:00
Speaker 2
seemed like it kind of weather just petered out or something. We focused on maybe we got to political but now it’s like, Oh yeah, if you’re going to do political stuff, can’t be unless you’re the family stuff. So maybe coming back to this, do you think, or do you think it’s we always we were always just ascending in it.
00:25:37:05 – 00:25:41:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. Feel like it. We gave up for it. And now you’re saying like, Hey guys, seriously though, let’s get back to in a new way.
00:25:41:19 – 00:25:59:23
Speaker 3
Yeah. So let me, let me kind of split that question into two. And let’s talk about the sort of state of the American, or at least I’d say, of the Western church when it comes to contraception and the church’s vision for sexuality and then the theology, the body. QUESTION okay. Which I think are two very interesting questions to spend some time with.
00:25:59:23 – 00:26:41:22
Speaker 3
So when we talk about the the sort of wholesale embrace of the church’s vision for sexuality, I think that amongst the active Catholics in the United States, the number of people who are onboard with that is skyrocketing. I just I think there’s there’s a genuine organic growth where if you are the kind of individual who attends mass on Sunday and you’re below 50 years old, the likelihood of you not using contraception, your marriage, that that sector is is quadruple what it was say for your active maybe baby boomer Catholics.
00:26:41:22 – 00:26:49:14
Speaker 2
And what was it like if it’s quadruple one then yeah, for like what do you do? You have this statistic. You have any sense of the statistic? No.
00:26:49:14 – 00:26:51:02
Speaker 3
This is hard to get.
00:26:51:02 – 00:26:53:01
Speaker 2
This one of yours accurate about it. I’m just wondering.
00:26:53:01 – 00:27:09:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, I’ve I’ve searched for the statistic of what percentage of, for example, American Catholics are obedient to the church’s teaching on contraception. And to my knowledge, I don’t I’ve never found that stat. So that what I’m talking about here is. Is sort of the anecdotal sense.
00:27:09:21 – 00:27:11:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27:11:11 – 00:27:33:20
Speaker 3
I do think it’s the case that the the, the number of, of what you would just call active Catholics. Okay. Is declining in general. Right. And that just sort of, you know, bears out in the statistic. Yeah. But of those active Catholics, the percentage of individuals who are kind of like right down the line orthodox, including on the issue of common sense is is on the rise.
00:27:33:20 – 00:27:40:00
Speaker 3
Yeah, church is smaller but sort of like more devout, more orthodox, right? Yeah. I think a lot of people would readily recognize.
00:27:40:00 – 00:27:40:21
Speaker 2
That because right.
00:27:40:23 – 00:28:07:14
Speaker 3
Now the theology, the body thing is interesting. You know, it’s. Mm hmm. I, I, I first encountered theology of the body in 2000 and, gosh, 2002, probably as a sixth grader. I remember picking up Christopher was all right. The good old theology, the body for beginners. Fascinating reading that and and being very, very excited about the whole thing.
00:28:07:14 – 00:28:41:04
Speaker 3
You know, and and to this day, I’m a huge proponent of of theology, of the body. I think it’s a wonderful thing. What’s interesting to me about theology of the body is that, you know, in my anecdotal experience, the same statistics of individuals who are interested in the church at large and they kind of general, you know, I scarcity of men certainly plays out in the theology of the body count, you know, where it’s like you go to kind of like a theology of the body retreat or people who are interested in theology, the body, and you once again, you oftentimes find mountains of women.
00:28:41:09 – 00:28:59:01
Speaker 3
Yeah, but less men. Sure. That’s and that’s an interesting problem because I think theology, the body has been kind of the best tool that the church has used to bring people back to complete orthodoxy on sexuality. It’s the best that we’ve had.
00:28:59:01 – 00:29:15:10
Speaker 2
But it was used as a replacement for it, right? What it can be is like, Oh, no. Well, the other thing was the church’s teaching tradition. It was not but theology. But aha. Give to us is instead of as a means to the church’s full teaching, a sense you can be seen as like the alternative or replacement or like this is the new.
00:29:15:10 – 00:29:17:17
Speaker 3
Thing or the only option on offer.
00:29:17:17 – 00:29:18:23
Speaker 2
I think more or no, it’s exactly right.
00:29:18:23 – 00:29:25:09
Speaker 3
It’s just like, what does the church think about sex? The theology of the body? You know enough. There is nothing else. No, that’s right. There’s no Thomas. There’s no, no and.
00:29:25:13 – 00:29:27:02
Speaker 2
No history of the church. Yeah, right.
00:29:27:02 – 00:29:49:08
Speaker 3
Just we articulated our vision for sexuality between 1979 and 1984 in a series of perfect instances. Perhaps nothing existed prior to that time. Right. So that’s that’s oftentimes the case. That’s right. And as a lover of theology of the body, it’s still consoling for me to know that there are there are a lot of other beautiful kind of treatments of the topic that are on offer out there.
00:29:49:10 – 00:30:23:02
Speaker 3
Nevertheless, I worry about the theology of the body thing if it’s if it doesn’t also include a kind of like a healthy masculine angle and perhaps more than other theologies, it’s really in grave danger of not possessing that healthy masculine because what is theology, the body? Well, you might think theology the body as an application of the spousal analogy, right to the topic of sexuality, the spousal analogy being, you know, basically the the the position that the love of God is like the love of a good spouse.
00:30:23:03 – 00:30:32:00
Speaker 3
Obviously, as Thomas would say, it is so much better than that. But some little glimmer that we can get into the nature of God’s love is that God’s love analogical is like the.
00:30:32:02 – 00:30:32:19
Speaker 2
Bread breaking.
00:30:33:00 – 00:31:03:10
Speaker 3
Of a bride In the bridegroom came well, who’s the bride and who’s the bridegroom? Well, humanity, the church is is obviously the bride in the Lord is the bridegroom. And I think then when you talk about theology, the body, it can consciously or subconsciously be repulsive to men, if you like. I’m not a bride, You know, I’m, I, I, I understand that I’m supposed to have a kind of receptivity, but this doesn’t speak to me as a man in the same way that it might as a woman.
00:31:03:10 – 00:31:18:03
Speaker 3
So I think there’s something at the core of theology, the body that can make it susceptible to even more effeminacy than as president of the church at large. Yeah, I was actually so concerned with this topic that I wrote a dissertation on it.
00:31:18:05 – 00:31:29:00
Speaker 2
Oh, there it is. Perfect. Yes. And then supposedly until that dissertation, you had to grab Jose Maria Shriver or something the way and just put injecting hardcore masculinity into it. If you did this together, you’re okay.
00:31:29:04 – 00:31:31:23
Speaker 3
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. You know. Yeah. So I, I.
00:31:32:04 – 00:31:46:00
Speaker 2
Think that’s that that yeah that’s, that’s right about the bridal imagery in the bride and the church as having this feminine we always talk about this the church as a sort of feminine age because a receptive Mary of course Vatican to Mary is the the you know the key moments right away so of course yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:31:46:00 – 00:31:54:15
Speaker 2
But within that there’s still also the male and female dynamic in within the church And then the men were where do they fit in that. That’s right. Yeah.
00:31:54:17 – 00:32:21:10
Speaker 3
Yeah. And so whereas somebody, you know, speaking very practically like let’s just say that you have, you know, like a seminarian who’s been in formation for a long time. I used to teach at the Catholic seminary in Denver and given a certain maturity of the interior life, I think you can explain things like the spousal analogy in a way that really amplifies one’s understanding of God and is is good and wholesome and healthy and helpful.
00:32:21:12 – 00:32:44:14
Speaker 3
Yeah, right. But the audience, that theology of the body is most commonly given to specifically like, you know, a group of middle and or high school boys and girls sitting on a gym floor and trying to deal with their hormones. That group might not be like that, especially the boys in that group. It doesn’t get the same purchase.
00:32:44:15 – 00:32:45:17
Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, in Jupiter.
00:32:45:18 – 00:33:02:16
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that’s that’s where I. It certainly is. I know a lot of of deeply masculine men who are in love with theology, the body. I personally love theology of the body, which is not to say that I’m a deeply masculine man, but that I am aspiring to be one.
00:33:02:18 – 00:33:04:08
Speaker 2
But you got those tapes. You’re good.
00:33:04:09 – 00:33:27:22
Speaker 3
That’s right. Yeah, but I, I think there’s there’s room for development there. And, and the development is in the same way that theology of the body and the corpus of John Paul the second at large certainly has a deep reverence for the feminine. There’s, there’s room for development when it comes to to use kind of some cheesy terms here.
00:33:27:22 – 00:33:29:11
Speaker 3
A masculine genius. Oh, no.
00:33:29:15 – 00:33:43:21
Speaker 2
This is this is fascinating. Father Greg is going to jump in at some point here, but it’s because I could talking But it’s fascinating me, the jumbles I didn’t write in very much dedicated to. Oh, no he did know some people say oh what’s the Joseph encyclical about.
00:33:43:23 – 00:33:45:19
Speaker 3
The apostolic exhortation.
00:33:45:21 – 00:33:54:00
Speaker 2
Yeah but it doesn’t the masking genius is is it’s taken for in a sense in a way it’s taken for granted, such as you write. So it is is lacuna.
00:33:54:02 – 00:33:54:16
Speaker 3
Yeah that’s.
00:33:54:16 – 00:33:55:11
Speaker 2
Really nice thing.
00:33:55:13 – 00:34:14:11
Speaker 3
Kind of to, to be as charitable as we can to obviously the extraordinary pope who was Pope Saint John Paul the second Who is he speaking to at the time Like what was he trying to address? And I got to think that what was in the center of John Paul, the seconds ministerial sites was something like Third way feminism.
00:34:14:11 – 00:34:31:11
Speaker 3
Right. You know, and they’re cashing out of third way feminism into the ranks of the church. Right. So that’s you know, that’s very heavily on his mind, which is, you know, why he writes a letter to women, why he writes clear signals out to him, so on and so forth. Yeah. He does these Yeah, yeah. On the, on the, on the virtues of Saint Joseph, you know.
00:34:31:11 – 00:34:42:20
Speaker 3
Yeah. And, but there’s not anywhere near the development in his thought on the masculine than there is on the feminine and that’s not what. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like Yeah. You don’t have to write.
00:34:42:21 – 00:35:00:22
Speaker 2
And the tradition had developed you know, you could say that version has developed some of this already. Yeah. It was being thrown away and he just didn’t think that it was. As you say, we need to develop the feminine one correctly because the thing on offer opposed to it is totally incorrect, but there’s nothing on offer opposed to the masculine one, whereas that the circumstance today.
00:35:00:22 – 00:35:02:08
Speaker 2
That’s right. There’s a.
00:35:02:10 – 00:35:06:07
Speaker 3
There’s a sort of like frontal assault, you know, on masculinity in the same way, not.
00:35:06:07 – 00:35:07:07
Speaker 2
The same for him that time.
00:35:07:07 – 00:35:28:15
Speaker 3
Yeah right. Yeah. And in the seventies and eighties it was, it was more, you know, women’s liberation in the various confusions that are going on in the wake of of that cultural moment. And even though the seeds of the crisis of masculinity were certainly, you know, like in the soil, they’re not as apparent. Yeah, right, right. As as the issues with women were at the time.
00:35:28:17 – 00:35:30:22
Speaker 3
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:31:00 – 00:35:53:04
Speaker 1
So quick question. I’m thinking specifically about the point you made earlier apropos of Lionel Tiger and whether not, you know, Marxism is the best way by which to approach this. This isn’t whatever, you know, you got it. I’m thinking, too, like it seems like feminism has won or it seems like feminism has many of its putative goals, at least as conceived by those who pertain to the movement.
00:35:53:06 – 00:36:09:11
Speaker 1
That’s. But it seems like it’s one within a broad based Marxist understanding as to the disposition of nature. Because it’s like if all you have here on the surface of the earth is just push and pull, you know, or just up and down, then when women win, men lose.
00:36:09:13 – 00:36:10:15
Speaker 3
That’s right.
00:36:10:17 – 00:36:28:18
Speaker 1
So it strikes me that like part of the understanding, it’s like seems like a jump game. Yeah. Seems like Saint John Paul. The second is trying to advocate for something after the matter of complementarity precisely as a way by which to lift up both men and women. He’s more preoccupied with lifting up women insofar as traditionally that’s been a bigger task or perhaps a more urgent task.
00:36:28:21 – 00:36:51:04
Speaker 1
Right. But it seems like we’re in a position where we can lift up men or we we ought to lift up men. But the temptation is just to find ourselves in the same Marxist revolution of push pull up down. That’s right. And then women will lose. And so I’m thinking too, like the way that you see a lot of these chats moderated on the Internet, It’s just this is crass, you know, it’s just like real ugly.
00:36:51:10 – 00:36:55:13
Speaker 3
Including the chats moderated on the Internet in the church. Yeah, right.
00:36:55:16 – 00:36:56:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. So there’s like.
00:36:56:13 – 00:37:02:07
Speaker 3
They tend to various reductions of of all positions, including what masculinity ought to be.
00:37:02:09 – 00:37:27:02
Speaker 1
So and so it seems like like there has to be some way by which to at least, you know, broaden the mental or broaden the spiritual horizons of those who partake in these conversations to admit like there’s such a thing as transcendence, not just like an abstract or vague transcendence. That’s right. But there is a way by which to get beyond the limited material conditions of your present state and see a higher like union after the banner of.
00:37:27:04 – 00:37:40:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, like what Saint Paul describes in Ephesians five or something like that. So it’s just seems like we are all born materialists, or at least in the United States, we’re like born materialists and we have great difficulty with anything after the manner of transcendence. So like where do you, where do you go?
00:37:40:07 – 00:38:20:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. So John Paul, the second has a great line. This is familiar as can source here that it’s only in the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds its fullest realization. And that line, I think, presents a bit of a guiding star as to this entire conversation on masculinity and femininity that contrary to the Marxist push pole position that you mentioned, Father Gregory, we must adhere to a version of masculinity and a version of femininity that is synergetic that, that is, you know, whatever your version of masculinity is and whatever that your picture of femininity that you paint, that picture has got to be the kind of picture that is
00:38:20:11 – 00:38:47:16
Speaker 3
helpful to the opposite sex. And if it isn’t, then I think you can just kind of squarely say, at least from a Catholic position, that the position must be false, right? So if you if you, for example, adhere to a position where, you know, with respect to masculinity that says, hey, you know, men are really are just supposed to dominate their feminine counterparts in a way that probably will negatively affect women.
00:38:47:16 – 00:39:09:03
Speaker 3
But if the only way for men to flourish is that, you know, if you don’t explicitly say that if your theology, if you’re anthropology implies, I don’t think that that that’s a Catholic position. Right. You just sort of have to reject it out of hand. Now the what is the higher, you know, kind of anthropology to which we can subscribe.
00:39:09:05 – 00:39:35:10
Speaker 3
Well, obviously that higher anthropology, you know, is one that’s theologically informed. So I when I was writing on masculinity, I said, gosh, well, if there’s if there’s any kind of proposition of the church that I want my theology of masculinity to live up to, its that same position that guided the whole of John Paul. The second pontificate, that that man only finds himself in a sincere and complete gift of self.
00:39:35:12 – 00:40:01:01
Speaker 3
And that’s particularly true of our sexuality and thereby of masculinity and femininity, that if what is masculine flourishing look like, which is another way to say like what is authentic masculinity look like? Well, whatever it is, it must be the kind of thing that results in and finds fulfillment in a gift of self, right? In a way that is synergetic to women.
00:40:01:03 – 00:40:21:06
Speaker 3
And if you’ve got something like that, then you’ve got a picture of masculinity that is at least probably, you know, has a it meets muster for being true. Right. So that’s those I think are the kind of like the starting things that you have to have in place. You know, when you’re setting the table and doing theology on, on, on masculinity and femininity.
00:40:21:08 – 00:40:54:21
Speaker 3
Another thing that you have to have in place is a is a I think a a a anthropology informed by sound science, by the church’s teaching that precisions kind of goes above the particular cultural eye waves of your time. Okay. So there’s I think a lot of people, particularly those who don’t come from any theological tradition, kind of throw their hands up when it comes to what masculinity is and what femininity is.
00:40:54:22 – 00:41:18:09
Speaker 3
Because there is a real sense when obviously these things look different across time and place, you know, So a man in, you know, Spain in 1572 expressed his masculinity in a very different way than a millennial or baby boomer. American expresses his masculinity in this time and in this place. Okay. And people say, well, they’re so different, so you’ve got to just throw it all out the bathwater.
00:41:18:09 – 00:41:45:14
Speaker 3
You know, it’s all kind of culturally influenced bunk. Okay, so what is that thing? And when I was when I was delving into masculine ity in a more robust way, this is where I found Walter on that. For those who don’t know Walter on background, Yeah, Walter is a Jesuit priest and kind of polymath, wrote a lot on literature, but also he did a lot of sociology.
00:41:45:16 – 00:42:14:03
Speaker 3
St Louis University had a lot of prominence in the eighties and nineties, and one of the actually little known books that Walter Ong wrote was a book actually on I it was called Contest in Sexuality, and it was a book more or less on masculinity. And in this book, Walter Ong basically examines what evolution has to say when it comes to kind of the the bare bones nature of men and of women.
00:42:14:05 – 00:42:41:02
Speaker 3
And that was really cool to me because it’s like, okay, well, gosh, you know, like masculinity looks different, you know, on the Spaniard, you know, in the 16th century than it does on the baby boomer in 2025 in the United States. But what’s common across these two things, what might be that the cross-cultural foundation on which we build masculinity and I think evolutionary biology is about as sort of rudimentary, you know, is as you can get.
00:42:41:04 – 00:43:17:18
Speaker 3
Right. And so he’s at the at the heart of his treatment on on masculinity pertain to evolutionary biology. Walter on focuses on a few qualities of masculinity that I think are just brilliant and have enormous value for the conversations about the feminine genius and about the masculine genius, the quality that he that I think is kind of the the core quality upon which like the whole rest of the book is built is something called masculine Expandability Okay, think of her dynamics.
00:43:17:18 – 00:43:52:22
Speaker 3
You know, in our evolutionary predecessors, I when you I of course, we’re not talking, you know, about, about full blown humans here that have been imbued with, you know, a will and an intellect and, you know, are existing in the image and likeness of God. But where if you think of the the organisms that that conditioned humanity in our evolutionary predecessors, you didn’t need as many men or as many males, rather, to achieve the same degree of reproductive fruit, if you will, than women.
00:43:52:22 – 00:44:22:17
Speaker 3
That is, you know, without being too crass, you can have the same male reproduce with 50 females. Right. But the reverse isn’t true. You can’t have a single female reproduces 50 males. Yeah. So for that reason you don’t have the kind of the split right of the sexual binary of our evolutionary ancestors. You have half of the population that at least when it as it pertains to reproductive fitness, is much more expendable than the other half of the population.
00:44:22:19 – 00:44:48:04
Speaker 3
And that right there results in so many fascinating male psychological traits. Right? So it’s like we know that we can achieve the same, you know, thinking with the mind, you know, of of natural selection. We know we can achieve the same degree of reproductive fitness if, let’s just say 90% of the males die. And in fact, it might even speed the process along.
00:44:48:10 – 00:45:16:05
Speaker 3
So we’re then going to select for those males who have a greater disposition towards risk, for example, and that quality in the masculine psyche, which is a a greater aptitude for taking risks, is certainly at play in the present day, right? I mean, if you don’t believe me, look at a 16 year old’s insurance rates, you know, that there’s there’s there’s certainly a difference between the kind of the appetite that your average man has for risk.
00:45:16:05 – 00:45:51:06
Speaker 3
And so then when you circling all the way back to I a theology of males, a theology of masculinity, authentic masculinity probably looks something like a man who risks but risks. Well, say a man, for example, who’s perfected his practical reason, you know, and that man who not in a not in a kind of a miserly or a wimpish fashion or anything like that, but a man who really sees the right risk takes that risk and takes it courageously is kind of universally recognized by somebody to be a masculine man.
00:45:51:08 – 00:46:19:18
Speaker 3
And I think that flows right out of his kind of evolutionary pedigree, if you will. And it’s that kind of man, that culture, that culture at large has it has a very real interest in cultivating. Right. So if there’s any kind of cross-cultural quality that we might look at to be part of the cocktail, you know, one of the one of the things that we throw in to to produce a good, wholesome theology of masculinity, I think evolutionary biology is as good a candidate is.
00:46:19:19 – 00:46:47:05
Speaker 2
As yeah, you know, I mean, this is I haven’t done a mosaic in a while, but E.O. Wilson, Intel, Charles Murray, I guess recently was the only E.O. Wilson, of course, a great social psychologist, worked most with ants, but plenty of other stuff too. Human nature book. He was, of course, one of the intel. Charles Murray, the only intellectual while have been like assaulted on stage by some feminists or something because his he’s just studying, you know, he’s just studying evolutionary psychology and group dynamics and all this kind of stuff.
00:46:47:05 – 00:47:09:03
Speaker 2
And it just kind of panning out to be a kind of standard troglodyte ish fashion right out men in this way. But in even from the in from the philosophical kind of a Greek conception of things I mean what’s the virtue, the key virtue, virtue art you know, of that, that, that Aristotle all these goes to is going to male virtue.
00:47:09:03 – 00:47:36:10
Speaker 2
Right. And it’s always courage. It’s kind of classic. It’s not this is the one if I’m going to it’s the first one and that could be an ethics he goes to. It’s the one he always goes to. That’s right. I’m going to give an example why it’s a virtuous mean. How so? How you balance prudence, Art, there’s something about the mask so virtue in its clear sense, at least outwardly in its masculine form, ends up being courage, which is this sacrifice in daring, you know, suppressing right book coming out on this, I suppose.
00:47:36:12 – 00:47:42:06
Speaker 2
Look out listeners and viewers for the Gregory will put out a book on courage coming out so he will correct all this.
00:47:42:06 – 00:47:43:14
Speaker 3
But that that’s exciting.
00:47:43:16 – 00:48:03:11
Speaker 2
It’s coming but like but it’s important courage it’s it is the kind of masculine you know, virtue. I wonder if the we of temperance is a well, think about it in the feminine. Okay. But that this sacrifice giving and I like the I the risking and the giving and the action and all of the kind of masculine terms like active stuff for another.
00:48:03:16 – 00:48:05:09
Speaker 2
That’s right. Right. So that’s not right because I.
00:48:05:09 – 00:48:07:11
Speaker 3
Still ordered towards a gift of self. Well, that’s.
00:48:07:11 – 00:48:23:15
Speaker 2
What I like. I like because I was going to say and Father Gregor brought it right let there’s a zero sum competitive game people if women might think we present this masculine stuff, I’m sure they’re just hearing that like you guys just, you know, you just want the top again. You know, he’s going to be back in the top of the of the chain.
00:48:23:16 – 00:48:39:05
Speaker 2
You just don’t feel like you can compete anymore. So we’re going to go, You guys want us to be subjugated again and you to all this domination language sounds threatening to us, but when you bring in it’s no, no, it’s not domination for domination. Sex not active for active sake is not this for this sake, It’s for the gift of I’m.
00:48:39:07 – 00:48:50:00
Speaker 2
I’m active for giving. That’s right. That kind of thing. So we want to talk. Maybe a little brother and, like, what does that look like? Put some rubber on those.
00:48:50:00 – 00:49:18:23
Speaker 3
Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the things that is sort of lost that it does look like is is chivalry. You know, it’s interesting. I think there’s the the traditional male is so readily critiqued by broader culture, but also so potently longed for, you know, that it’s it’s still seem to be a very attractive thing when in a non chauvinistic, domineering way like men hold open doors for women, you know.
00:49:19:04 – 00:49:21:02
Speaker 2
Every once in a while they’re they.
00:49:21:03 – 00:50:00:12
Speaker 3
Every once in a while you do get that reaction. But more often than not, still, it’s I think it’s admired, you know, and I, I think it looks like the kind of dad who is willing to not just put food on the table, although that’s certainly part of it, but also the dad who’s willing to to lay down his life and in it kind of initiate for the good of his family on the home front, you know, actively participating in the life of the family, initiating like ideas for what you’re going to do on the weekend, you know, and dads who are deeply engaged, you know, with that domain of the human experience.
00:50:00:14 – 00:50:24:00
Speaker 3
A lot of times when people talk about that like there’s a there’s a scholar out of Steubenville University named Deborah Savage, who has a lot of wonderful things to say about masculinity. One addition that I would make to her wonderful thought is she talks a lot about part of good, wholesome, healthy masculinity is a kind of specialization with things, right?
00:50:24:00 – 00:50:58:22
Speaker 3
You know, so you might think of Adam in the garden. You know, he encounters things before he encounters people. And there seems to be in male psychology, starting at the infant level, all the way through the entirety of the male psychological development, a kind of interest in things, not a greater aptitude, mind you, but a greater disposition to like towards working with things, which is why, of course, you see, like, you know, so many more males and females and things like engineering and architecture departments, you know, then in that in the soft sciences, okay, I part of healthy masculinity is an interest in things.
00:50:58:22 – 00:51:31:12
Speaker 3
And you might think of Adam as making a contribution to the world by ordering the things of the world. But Adam’s kind of full flourishing as a man doesn’t really come to life until he enters and interacts with the person of the garden. Right? And I think there’s really something like deeply important there, you know, that masculinity comes alive most fully when it enters the domain of people.
00:51:31:14 – 00:51:53:01
Speaker 3
And in the experience of most males, when it enters the domain of romance and of a family, then as it exists in, you know, a corporate environment or in an engineering firm or an architecture firm, what have you. And when men, you know, after doing those beautiful things that they do in workplaces, come into the home and do what Adam did for Eve and affirm her.
00:51:53:03 – 00:52:13:12
Speaker 3
Right. You know, Adam says to Eve, you, alas, are born of my bones in the flesh of my flesh. And in that way acknowledges her common humanity, affirms her. And it’s and by virtue of that affirmation gives her strength. When men do that kind of servant self gift thing for their wives and for their daughters. Mm hmm. Wow.
00:52:13:12 – 00:52:32:05
Speaker 3
There’s power there, You know, So, like, to all of the men listening to the podcast, one of the things that I often say when I give more popular talks is, you know, are the are the people of your life more important than the things of your life? Yeah. And is your masculinity coming alive with the people of your life, or are you a distant dad in distant lover?
00:52:32:07 – 00:52:56:08
Speaker 3
Right. If you can be an intimate father and lover, that is the kind that is deeply involved in initiates within your domestic church. That’s right. Is is where I think the real power of masculinity lies. Mm hmm. I remember a lot of listeners might be familiar with. There’s a popular Christian psychologist named Meg Meeker, and Dr. Meeker has a book called Strong Fathers Strong Daughters.
00:52:56:10 – 00:53:17:17
Speaker 3
And one of the things that she one of the things that she talks about in that book is that in the psychological development of a young woman, there’s kind of like a transition point in early adolescence where young ladies start to value the opinion of their father a little bit more than they value the opinion of their mother, where when they’re younger, they’re looking to their mom for everything.
00:53:17:18 – 00:53:42:14
Speaker 3
Obviously, when they come out of the womb, they just kind of everyone starts that way. But then they start looking to their dad, especially as they kind of traverse the years of their adolescence. And Dr. Meeker just exhorts fathers to say like your words and specifically your ability to affirm your daughter. She doesn’t say this, but in the same way that Adam affirmed, Eve has so much power and power that is uniquely yours as a male.
00:53:42:16 – 00:54:07:13
Speaker 3
And so if we don’t harness that power as a culture, then we’re not only of doing dads a disservice and doing males a disservice, we’re doing women a disservice as well. And that, of course, falls directly in line with the synergy that we were talking about earlier that that if we squash down males in an attempt to push pull to lift up females, right, in the end, the strategy backfires, right?
00:54:07:13 – 00:54:20:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, it’s not a zero sum game. If we can produce good, healthy, flourishing males, then we actually also produce good, healthy, flourishing daughters, wives, mothers, women in general.
00:54:20:13 – 00:54:36:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. I like this image in the garden where I feel this kind of suspicion of Adam, like, you know, hoeing the ground and things before he shows up. And it’s going, well, I guess I better go home and eat some Mexican food or something. For who? You know, like. That’s right. A guy. He’s probably, like, hanging out in the trees, like, not eating or something.
00:54:36:02 – 00:54:54:09
Speaker 2
But like when he asked Ashley tend the garden for his wife or a person like you have to do things for for a person. Yeah. Then those things take on a real different character or different significance. And that’s where as you say, the masculine that the late again laying down your life for what a cause no land in your life for another person is about to.
00:54:54:09 – 00:55:19:23
Speaker 2
That person is the highest thing in the universe, you know whatever. And and therefore that lane doing things for the highest things, of course, are the things that actually enliven and bring you out. And that’s what the mail is supposed to do and bring out masculinity. I think that’s right. That’s like beautiful image about Yeah, yeah the garden this it’s as if I mean that’s that story Whoever came up with that that was a good one.
00:55:19:23 – 00:55:22:02
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know like and so the.
00:55:22:04 – 00:55:22:11
Speaker 3
Real.
00:55:22:11 – 00:55:29:20
Speaker 2
Work that’s on level one here of the kids, right, That’s like that, that’s like the prodigal son parable. I wonder if they knew each other because that’s a good one too.
00:55:30:02 – 00:55:31:03
Speaker 1
Yeah. They’re up to something.
00:55:31:04 – 00:56:00:18
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it’s to kind of take this one step further. You know, we talk about the good that that healthy masculinity can do for femininity. Mm hmm. One kind of chilling angle to take on this a little bit is that I think a lot of people, when they approach topics in in well, to be really specific here, when they when they think about masculinity and femininity, they think that’s kind of like a nice thing to have conversations about and to, you know, to cultivate.
00:56:00:23 – 00:56:27:21
Speaker 3
I if if you want to, but it’s not really like the core important stuff, you know, that people should, you know, devote causes to and money to and so on and so forth. Yeah, but I think especially at our cultural moment today, we’re just really going to continue to lose until we risk match, repaint a healthy image of masculinity and and here’s why.
00:56:27:23 – 00:56:41:10
Speaker 3
So I’ll say it this way. There’s there’s an old saying that goes that boys want to be boys, right? Everybody’s heard this before. Boys want to be boys and usually that’s said is kind of an excuse to just sort of hand wave away, you know, like some kid.
00:56:41:10 – 00:56:44:21
Speaker 2
Sets house on fire, grab boys. What these boys, you know, right.
00:56:44:23 – 00:57:05:17
Speaker 3
But underlying that deep innate psychological drive is is something else. And that’s it. I think, you know, boys want to be men. And usually when they’re being boys, when they’re doing the risky things, there’s there’s like some sort of like assuaging this is what Walter would say of, of self-consciousness. Right. In order to kind of like demonstrate to the world at large that they are men.
00:57:05:18 – 00:57:47:16
Speaker 3
Yeah. Boys crave this in a way that that girls don’t like. You hear young boys talking to one another like I’m to take away your man card, you know, like, are you man enough? Right? And you don’t hear a girl say, like, are you woman enough? You know, like, it’s not true, it’s not a thing. And so there’s a way and, and there’s there’s deep work again, in evolutionary biology, evolutionary sociology, psychology that has been done in this that shows that, that there’s there’s actually anthropological reasons why boys want this more, you know, and that manifests itself in things like initiation rates across time and across place, perhaps more prevalent than any single like a
00:57:47:16 – 00:58:02:05
Speaker 3
male behavior. There’s latent in men across cultures globally, a desire to prove oneself, to be a man and say and to have, you know, like an image of what a man looks like in your culture and something of an initiation. Right? We don’t have those today.
00:58:02:07 – 00:58:08:07
Speaker 2
And what needs to be done right now don’t have it naturally. And if you don’t do it right, any problems you have too. Yeah. Yeah.
00:58:08:07 – 00:58:29:06
Speaker 3
And in that sense, it’s it’s the case that that young boys are actually kind of more dependent upon the culture that they grow up in. Yeah. Than right. And they, they don’t follow this steady biological trajectory that their feminine counterparts do, you know. Okay, so boys need that. They need that image, they need that initiation. We know that that’s the case.
00:58:29:10 – 00:58:48:23
Speaker 3
And if all that we are doing as a culture is saying that masculinity is bad without simultaneously sort of showing what a good version of masculinity looks like, then you just kind of produce more of the same kind of problematic man that you’re trying to combat. You know, it looks like I oftentimes say that toxic masculinity is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:58:49:01 – 00:59:10:14
Speaker 3
That is, if you only kill toxic masculinity without upholding authentic masculinity, then you end up with a whole society of confused boys that don’t know what it looks like to be a man. So there’s not just an option, but a responsibility to uphold good, healthy, wholesome masculinity in the highest echelons of society, particularly, there are places of education in our churches.
00:59:10:14 – 00:59:12:14
Speaker 3
Yeah, if going to flourish.
00:59:12:14 – 00:59:27:11
Speaker 2
So so like, I mean, obviously the cause of men is the cause today we man. So but one way is to give just money. When you see a man, just give him money. But that seems to be an effective bed. Is there any way that people this are program I think tap in it would definitely.
00:59:27:13 – 00:59:29:22
Speaker 3
Uww that my dawg there it.
00:59:29:22 – 00:59:30:03
Speaker 2
Is.
00:59:30:09 – 00:59:30:22
Speaker 3
Perfect touch.
00:59:31:00 – 00:59:32:18
Speaker 2
Yes that is a good way to.
00:59:32:20 – 00:59:57:05
Speaker 3
Yeah so yeah sincerely if people are interested in checking it out what we what we’re really obsessed with is is forming great men and not men who are kind of, you know, subscribe to some reductive, you know, simplistic version of masculinity, but one that’s good and healthy and wholesome and 100% Catholic. And so yeah, check it out. W WW dot m.y f rg dawg.
00:59:57:05 – 00:59:58:14
Speaker 3
My forged Jordan That’s great.
00:59:58:17 – 01:00:21:06
Speaker 1
Tremendous. All right. Thanks so much for making the time, John. And for those of you listening or watching back at home, be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining and find your way over to my Forge dot org by following the links in the description and or show notes in those same descriptions and or shownotes. You’ll find other links for merchandise for upcoming events and for opportunities to support the podcast on Patreon.
01:00:21:11 – 01:01:13:16
Speaker 1
All right, know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.