If masculinity becomes mature, complete and fruitful only in union with the feminine, normally in marriage, what are we to make of the male-only, celibate Catholic priesthood? How does the priest fulfill his virility without intimacy with a wife or lover? Consider the custom of past generations in which a young man as young as 13 or 14 would leave his family for the minor seminary and live out the remainder of his life in the male-only environment of the rectory or its equivalent. Normally, such priests would be cautioned to avoid private, intimate, one-on-one relationships with attractive women as near occasions of sin. Are we to assume that such priests were destined for a sterile bachelorhood, permanently expelled from closeness with the feminine? Consider also that men are less adept at intimacy and relationships than are women so we can easily imagine a typical priest as lonely and isolated: friendly with his fellow clerics but in a shy, distant manner, devoid of real intimacy. Recall the classic injunction in seminary formation against “particular friendships” and we seem to have a sure-proof recipe for a lonely, isolated, sterile and one-sided masculinity.
Clearly, the sterile and desiccated virility of the bachelor is a danger for the celibate. And surely we have known fine priests who have suffered in this condition. The prevalence of alcoholism in an earlier clerical culture was surely symptomatic of this deeper loneliness. And much of the animus against mandatory celibacy draws from an aversion to such virginity as sterile, misogynist and dysfunctional.
But the reality proves this anxiety to largely mistaken: so many priests are balanced, virile and appreciative of the feminine. How can this be?
A preliminary observation is that many priests are close to their mothers and even attribute their vocations to mom’s faith. It is not unusual for a daughter to identify quite closely with the values and aspirations of her father and the son with those of his mother. Think of Augustine and Monica.
We can see then that many men are drawn into the priesthood from a close, nurturing, affirming relationship with mother. If they successfully complete the oedipal transition into mimetic identification with the father they carry through their life a liberated closeness to and appreciation for the feminine. It is true that inordinate attachment to mom may itself be a sign of immaturity and an incomplete oedipal passage but surely a healthy attachment-to-and-detachment-from mom is the first building block for a healthy priestly identity.
Consider also that a priest’s ministry is mostly with women. Certainly in our culture, women are more religious and more attracted to the Church. Daily mass, in my experience, usually shows at least a 2-to-1 ratio of women-to-men. So a priest may be far more involved with women, on a daily, basis then with men.
At least some of this involvement, in confession, spiritual direction and pastoral counseling is of a most intimate nature in that the woman unveils her interior sufferings and longings. Imagine such a reception of confession of sin, suffering and longing and the dispensation of absolution, comfort, guidance and encouragement…Is it possible to imagine a more tender, virile, donative, generative and even spousal intimacy?
A harder case would be the priest who works only with males: in an all-boys school , a seminary or the military. Note, however, that the priest is usually in the role of father, pastor, healer, guide, protector, consoler and encourager. It is especially important that for us Catholics the priest is always “Father”… this indicates that he is paternal, masculine in the fullest sense of nurturer, giver of life, tender, protective… He is, in other words, the embodiment of virility in its maturity, including the feminine dimension. A recent study showed that testosterone levels of men decrease when they become fathers; no doubt a similarly wholesome development occurs in ordinary fatherly ministry.
The priest sacrifices (“makes holy”) and sublimates his own spousal and paternal urges to express the uber-virility, the hyper-spousality, and the super-paternity of Christ. He surrenders himself to a virginal, fraternal , but also bridal, intimacy with Christ in order to become himself an icon of Christ the Groom and Father. He allows himself to be filled with Christ’s love for his bridal Church. He assumes the most masculine of roles as father, authority, governor, guide, groom, teacher, law-giver, disciplinarian, leader, and sanctifier…in relation to the Church and each person as bride, son or daughter, and beloved. The priest surrenders his virility…his sexuality, his autonomy, his time and resources…in sublime appreciation for and donation to the feminine… the virginal, maternal, bridal, Marian Church.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Interiority of Masculinity
Even before birth, each of us is created into a web of relationships as a gendered person, in order to image the Trinity precisely in relationality. Our destiny is to share, eternally, in that Absolute Relationality of Love, God. Gender is an image of and pathway to God. It is creation’s primary icon. It is the first and fundamental “sacrament” (“physical sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace”) of the human personality. Gender is oriented to generativity in that it always gives out of its abundance (Being) or elicits, by its poverty, the generosity of the other. Virility, like its complement, femininity, has four distinct, but mutually interpenetrating forms: filiality, fraternity, spousality, and paternity. My every relationship as a man combines these four dimensions. Virility, like relationality, constitutes my identity. A non-virile or un-gendered relationship, decision, action or aspiration is not possible for a masculine person. A human person cannot be neuter: “Male and female He created them.”
Filiality is the first, last, foundational and essential form of masculinity. Prior even to birth, I am a son. I am son of a specific mother and father, of a distinctive family, tribe and nation. At a deeper ontological level, I am son of my heavenly Father. At baptism I am restored to intimacy with my Father through immersion into our Mother the Church. As a creature, I am first, always and already received. That I exist at all and every aspect of my being is gift. Before I am conscious, decisive or active I am received…with an utterly unique DNA, physique, historical and familial and cultural circumstance. As I grow into consciousness and action and decision my foundational and primal movement must be humility, gratitude, loyalty, reception and obedience. Filiality entirely dominates the early stage of life, before we are capable of spousality or paternity, and the last years of decline, if we live that long. It is the basis for, indeed the interiority of, the later stages of masculinity. Because I am a son I can become a father, emulating my own father (or father surrogates) who love me and model masculinity for me.
Fraternity is the bond of loyalty to sister/brother and friend. In contrast to the deep asymmetry of the parent/child union, this bond is rooted in similarity and equality but entails a symphony of difference, hierarchy (big sister), complimentarity, and conflict. Fraternity is already informed by a shared filiality: you are my sister because we share a mother and a father. I recognize the stranger, the foreigner and even the enemy as my brother to the extent that I sense his filiality in my own creator Father. Genuine spousality as well as paternity is rooted in fraternity. My ability to surrender myself into nuptial union depends upon the depth and strength of my prior fraternal bonds, with women and men.
Spousality infuses shared filiality and fraternity/sorority with the energies of erotic longing, the depth of self-gift and the permanence of promise. It arises from a synergistic explosion of intensified need (eros) and fullness (affection, friendship, charity.) If not rooted in genuine filiality and friendship it degrades itself quickly into lust, use, dominance and deception. If properly rooted in the prior and foundational loves, it moves spontaneously and exuberantly beyond itself into paternity and maternity.
Paternity is the goal and purpose of virility: the engendering of life and love. As originator I most closely emulate and participate with God in the creation of an eternal (bodily and en-spirited) person; in our desperate dependency upon the feminine and maternal we recall our creaturely, needy, beggarly nature. The thrill of paternity is in the surprising newness and startling difference of the child who carries on one’s blood line and cultural inheritance but in an excess of novelty, abundance and alterity.
Masculinity is open to, inclusive of, and defined by femininity. As the Father lives in the Son, so my masculinity is interiorly constituted by the feminine. The human person is bi-polar by virtue of gender: my virility is a limitless longing for, dependency upon, fascination with, and gift to the feminine. My masculinity is mature and fruitful to the extent that it accepts, cherishes, admires and self-donates to the feminine. As male, I am reception of, hunger for, and goodness towards the feminine. Prior to birth, as a fetus and embryo, I am enclosed within, nurtured, protected, and cherished by my mother. Ontologically and ultimately I am always son of my heavenly Father; but within the created realm I am primarily son of my mother and only secondarily of my father. In created filiality, the maternal is primary; we see this even in Jesus who has a real human mother but a only foster father in Joseph. Creaturely paternity is representative but maternity (which is only creaturely) is substantial. So my masculine filiality is first constituted in relation to the feminine, the maternal, the Marian. Fraternally, my male identity depends primarily upon peer friendships with other young men; but fraternal love for my blood sisters and female friends is also constitutes my masculinity which is always directed to the feminine. A man without (non-erotic) female friends would become a cipher, a caricature, a cartoon monster. In the spousal embrace, I the groom receive my bride into myself: physically, emotionally, spiritually and every which way. I “take” my wife…she comes to dwell within me and I in her. One cannot encounter me without encountering her. And finally, the paternal is always a partnership with, a compliment to the maternal.
In my masculine poverty, especially the desperate longing for the feminine, I know my creaturely humility; in my virile magnanimity, I image the goodness and greatness of God.
Filiality is the first, last, foundational and essential form of masculinity. Prior even to birth, I am a son. I am son of a specific mother and father, of a distinctive family, tribe and nation. At a deeper ontological level, I am son of my heavenly Father. At baptism I am restored to intimacy with my Father through immersion into our Mother the Church. As a creature, I am first, always and already received. That I exist at all and every aspect of my being is gift. Before I am conscious, decisive or active I am received…with an utterly unique DNA, physique, historical and familial and cultural circumstance. As I grow into consciousness and action and decision my foundational and primal movement must be humility, gratitude, loyalty, reception and obedience. Filiality entirely dominates the early stage of life, before we are capable of spousality or paternity, and the last years of decline, if we live that long. It is the basis for, indeed the interiority of, the later stages of masculinity. Because I am a son I can become a father, emulating my own father (or father surrogates) who love me and model masculinity for me.
Fraternity is the bond of loyalty to sister/brother and friend. In contrast to the deep asymmetry of the parent/child union, this bond is rooted in similarity and equality but entails a symphony of difference, hierarchy (big sister), complimentarity, and conflict. Fraternity is already informed by a shared filiality: you are my sister because we share a mother and a father. I recognize the stranger, the foreigner and even the enemy as my brother to the extent that I sense his filiality in my own creator Father. Genuine spousality as well as paternity is rooted in fraternity. My ability to surrender myself into nuptial union depends upon the depth and strength of my prior fraternal bonds, with women and men.
Spousality infuses shared filiality and fraternity/sorority with the energies of erotic longing, the depth of self-gift and the permanence of promise. It arises from a synergistic explosion of intensified need (eros) and fullness (affection, friendship, charity.) If not rooted in genuine filiality and friendship it degrades itself quickly into lust, use, dominance and deception. If properly rooted in the prior and foundational loves, it moves spontaneously and exuberantly beyond itself into paternity and maternity.
Paternity is the goal and purpose of virility: the engendering of life and love. As originator I most closely emulate and participate with God in the creation of an eternal (bodily and en-spirited) person; in our desperate dependency upon the feminine and maternal we recall our creaturely, needy, beggarly nature. The thrill of paternity is in the surprising newness and startling difference of the child who carries on one’s blood line and cultural inheritance but in an excess of novelty, abundance and alterity.
Masculinity is open to, inclusive of, and defined by femininity. As the Father lives in the Son, so my masculinity is interiorly constituted by the feminine. The human person is bi-polar by virtue of gender: my virility is a limitless longing for, dependency upon, fascination with, and gift to the feminine. My masculinity is mature and fruitful to the extent that it accepts, cherishes, admires and self-donates to the feminine. As male, I am reception of, hunger for, and goodness towards the feminine. Prior to birth, as a fetus and embryo, I am enclosed within, nurtured, protected, and cherished by my mother. Ontologically and ultimately I am always son of my heavenly Father; but within the created realm I am primarily son of my mother and only secondarily of my father. In created filiality, the maternal is primary; we see this even in Jesus who has a real human mother but a only foster father in Joseph. Creaturely paternity is representative but maternity (which is only creaturely) is substantial. So my masculine filiality is first constituted in relation to the feminine, the maternal, the Marian. Fraternally, my male identity depends primarily upon peer friendships with other young men; but fraternal love for my blood sisters and female friends is also constitutes my masculinity which is always directed to the feminine. A man without (non-erotic) female friends would become a cipher, a caricature, a cartoon monster. In the spousal embrace, I the groom receive my bride into myself: physically, emotionally, spiritually and every which way. I “take” my wife…she comes to dwell within me and I in her. One cannot encounter me without encountering her. And finally, the paternal is always a partnership with, a compliment to the maternal.
In my masculine poverty, especially the desperate longing for the feminine, I know my creaturely humility; in my virile magnanimity, I image the goodness and greatness of God.
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