Clerical Virility

 The Masculine Form of the Catholic Priesthood

The Catholic priest is two things:  our spiritual father and a living icon of the spousal love of Christ the bridegroom for his bridal Church. Prior even to this, he is son, in the Son, of our heavenly Father and our mother the Church. He is our brother-in-Christ.

The interior masculinity of the priest is as intuitive for the Catholic imagination as is the maternity of Mary and the Church herself. It is incoherent and retrograde to a modernity that has deconstructed gender to reconfigure the human person into an androgynous individual, identically replaceable as units of production and consumption. 

 I call priests who could chronologically be my grandsons "Father......." At ordination, in receiving the priestly blessing, we kiss their hands because they will feed us the Bread of Life. They administer, regardless of their personal moral merit, the efficacious sacraments which make us holy. They are trained and ordained to share in the Church's faithful proclamation of the Gospel. Irrespective of age, erudition, maturity, or personal holiness...we are their spiritual sons and daughters.

Christ loves the Church, St. Paul tells us, as a husband his wife. We, the Church, all of us, men and women, are loved by Jesus our Lord to his death. In forgiving our sins, in celebrating the Eucharist, in proclaiming the Word, the priest is not only himself, but is representative of Christ. In this light, the priest must be male and generally needs to be celibate, manifesting the chaste love of Christ for his singular bride, the Church.

Masculinity itself is always representative of that which is greater than the man himself: primarily the Fatherhood of God, but also tradition, authority, truth, justice, safety, stability. Virility is most itself in a uniform: fireman, police, judge, priest, soldier. By contrast, the feminine personality has a substantiality and interior integrity of its own, especially as maternal, and represents nothing other than her generous, generative, delightful, irrepressible person. The male psyche, fractured-dispersed-explosive-egocentric, becomes unhinged and toxic unless surrendered to a higher Good.

The Manly Catholic Priesthood of Post War America

In the Catholic revival after WWII, a critical mass of veterans returned home, not with post-trauma-stress-disorder, but with a profound sense of evil, the supernatural, the Lord Jesus and his Church. Battle-hardened, these were tough, confident men of honor, of gravitas. Stand-up guys! There was a vocation boom that peaked at 1965 (the year I graduated high school and entered seminary) and then collapsed entirely.

 A typical parish had about four priests: the pastor, possibly in his 70s and semi-retired; the second-in-charge, in his 50s or 60s, seasoned and competent, who often ran the parish; a third priest in charge of organizations and lots of priestly duties; and oftentimes a younger man who worked with youth in school, religious instruction, CYO and athletics. In my grammar school days (1950s) all of us boys, even the delinquents among us, wanted to be a priest at some point. The priest was the most fascinating, virile, educated, funny and high-status man we personally knew: the singular alternative to our own father who, however sterile in character, seemed bland and boring by comparison.

The Dissolution of Priesthood and Masculinity as Iconic of God the Father

The core, the interior form, of the catastrophic Cultural Revolution that exploded in the late 60s, in all its elements (sterilization of sex, break with Tradition, triumph of the therapeutic and narcissistic, dissolution of the person into an isolated individual, hegemony of the technological-meritocratic-bureaucratic, demise of the supernatural, decay of the family, rupture of community, tyranny of mega-government and global capitalism, politics of self-pity and resentment) can best be understood as contempt for Fatherhood, in all its dimensions, as expressive of the first person of the Trinity.

A host of historical, cultural, intellectual, and financial dynamics converged to form this "perfect storm." But this synchronization was so overwhelming that it could only be the handiwork of a Supernatural Intellect, that of Lucifer himself.

The entire cacophony of evil that fell upon the globe, especially the West, after 1965 is rooted in some way in the loss of the Father: the absent, addicted, abusive, unavailable, egocentric, unfaithful, raging, lusting or lethargic Father.

Lucifer's strongest resources, clearly, focused on the Catholic priesthood, which he finds especially odious. So we now see, looking back: the priest scandal in all its horror, an increasingly effete priesthood, and a crisis in vocations.

Alliance of the Feminist and the Gay Against the Paternal or Patriarchal

In the ancient world, a young priest pointed out, powerful kings and lords entrusted their harems, wives and concubines to eunuchs, neutered-castrated men incapable of competing for feminine attention. These impotent, sterile men formed a quiet alliance with the women in resistance to the distant, dominant overlords. You had the hyper-masculine world of the warriors and the opposite, an emasculated culture of eunuch-with-women.

The Church today, my young cleric argued, especially in its more progressive forms, is a similar alliance. Aggressive, confident, energetic men stay away from Church and operate in business, the military, police and fire departments, construction trades, athletics and such.  The ancient/medieval reality of a warrior-priest is a contradiction in a world in which gay priests collaborate with women in resentment against "patriarchy."

In the 1960s, two emergent movements came together in their contempt for the masculine priesthood: feminism and gay militancy. Increasingly we have a Church lacking a strong paternal and virile influence. Even in mitigated forms, like normal parish life, we sing sweet, sentimental songs often repugnant to masculine taste; we hear tiringly about unconditional love and a mercy without truth, wrath or justice. Much of Catholicism has become repugnant to a robust masculine sensibility.

Virility as Paternity

We encounter in "Fatherhood" a dense Mystery that defies categorical definition but can be described: a certain distance and transcendence that is iconic of God; strength with gentleness; stability and steadfastness; clarity and certainty in thought and behavior; emotional sobriety; humility, chastity, fortitude, prudence and justice; tenderness with rigor. 

We might consider the striking virility of our previous two popes. John Paul was, of course, athletic, robust, expansive, and dramatic in his masculinity. Benedict, on the superficial level, was quiet, meek, gentle. Underneath this serene temperament was a sterling character of strength, clarity, certainty, sobriety, restrain, purity, generosity.  He may have been, by temperament, the meekest man, since Moses, to walk the earth. His brother said of him: "He does not look for a fight but he will not walk away from one. Hans Kung described him as "sweet but dangerous." He was slandered and demonized across the progressive Church as "God's Rottweiler." We have here, below superficial differences, two "stand up guys" or men of honor, reliability and strength. 

Radiance of the Father

In three manners the human and priestly father radiates the Fatherhood of God.

1. Naturally, he is big, strong, protective and tender to the mother-with-child. He provides an ambience of safety, trust, peace, hope and abundance. Concretely he manifests the love of the Father. Additionally he is a distant, transcendent figure from the objective world and so he represents that world as he assures of its ultimate benevolence.

2. By the key virtues of masculinity (humility, chastity, fortitude, fidelity, prudence, justice) he images God.

3. In his failings, he points beyond himself to One Greater by his confession of sin and request for forgiveness. He thereby shows that the final source of safety, rest and joy is beyond him.

Vocation Crisis

Our current ecclesial dilemma is less one of quantity (of priests) than of quality. A single holy, virile priest can do more good than a dozen mediocre ones. Our situation will not be resolved by married priest or women priests or temporary priests. 

We know that "grace builds on nature." The supernatural efficacy of the sacraments and the infallibility of the Church are both illuminated, enhanced and strengthened by the virtue and holiness of masculine men.

Raise up, for us, heavenly Father, strong, pure, holy priests in the image of your Son Jesus!