All-boy, Jesuit prep schools are a precious, invaluable asset to our Church in the USA. I am personally indebted to them for the education received by two sons, a son-in-law, and a grandson. I taught in one for a short period. The ones I know are probably typical: they provide a solid academic program but more importantly a wholesome, positive, stimulating environment in which the young man can mature. This includes athletics and other activities as well as an overall "cura personalis," attention to the person of the student. Well endowed financially, they have successfully handed leadership over to competent, motivated laity. I am unaware of any schools I would prefer for our young men.
They are perfectly positioned to address the crisis of virility that this blog has repeatedly identified as the defining catastrophe of our time. Unfortunately, however, very specific systemic defects, theological and spiritual, inhibit them from successfully engaging this cultural tragedy. This essay will describe a wholesome Catholic virility in Christ and then identify the pertinent underlying defects in Jesuit secondary education.
Catholic Virility in Christ
1. Virility. Virtue or goodness in manliness we will understand as paternity: the capacity to give life, to provide and protect, generously and heroically. As such it contrasts synergistically with femininity as maternity. It entails, first and foremost, virtues of: humility, chastity, fortitude, sobriety, prudence and justice.
2. In Christ. For us, such virtuous masculinity flows not from virtue training or moral effort, but from a mystical communion with the Divine/Human Person of Jesus Christ. By virtue of original sin, every man inherits a toxic masculinity...inclinations to cowardice, violence, pride, lust, self-indulgence, injustice...which are only healed in the ongoing, dramatic relationship with the crucified/risen Christ in his Church.
3, Catholic. Life in Christ is never individualistic, but always personal and corporate. It is at once communion with the entire Mystical Body of Christ, in heaven and on earth, present-past-future: the sacramental life rooted in Eucharist, the commandments as well as the precepts of the Church, the evangelical gifts of poverty-chastity-obedience, identification with the poor, purity of heart and chastity of the body, devotion to Mary and saints, prayer, corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and the entire symphony of Catholic tradition and life.
4. Specific Manly Virtues. These are foundational of the masculine mission and also address the core vices of toxic masculinity. First of all, humility as "being loved" deflates the expansive, frail male ego and frees the man of compulsive selfishness to contemplate and serve the other. Secondly, sexual chastity liberates from the many compulsions of concupiscence and give the freedom to give the self to the other. Third, fortitude is the prime virtue of strength, courage, perseverence, ferocity and fearlessness in the service of the other. Forth, sobriety is freedom from the fog of inebriation, of substance abuse, lust, fear, anxiety, narcissism, and such. It allows for calm, prudent consideration of reality. Fifth, prudence flows from sobriety and temperance and enables clarity and accuracy in practical judgment. Sixth, justice gives to every participant what is properly owed.
Systemic Defects in Jesuit Secondary Education
1. Denial of the Form of Virility. Inhaling a soft feminism, there is an implicit denial of the distinctive form of virility, in contrast to femininity, to overcome the allegation of chauvinism and male superiority. The equality-as-uniformity of 60s feminism is embraced so that women must be treated identically as men in all things. The vile "separate but equal" slogan that justified racial segregation is identified with any meaningful contrast of the two sexes. This is not so much articulated as assumed. The rich Jesuit heritage of heroic masculinity is unconsciously replaced by a dull, leveling, androgyny of the now-neutered individual. And so, to speak of "virility" at all is shunned as somehow contemptuous of women. A traditional, Catholic and Jesuit approach would be to dig deeper into masculinity as the strong-gentle gift to the bride and children. But what has happened, since the 60s, is that "virility" has become the "null curriculum" of the schools: it dare not be even mentioned. There is irony here: the single sex school tradition continues, out of intuitive wisdom, but cannot be fully developed because of the cultural progressivism.
2. Non-Evangelical, Low Christology. The person of Jesus is honored as a moral model, a "man for others." To be Christian is to emulate Jesus in care for others. He is not presented as Savior from sin because there is little sense of sin. Underneath, there is an optimistic evaluation of the human person as inherently good and capable of virtue, without divine intervention. This is already a soft secularism. Jesus is seen in his humanity, but not so much in his divinity. The Gospel, the evangelical proclamation of Jesus, God become man to save us from sin, is not clearly proclaimed. There is a sense of prayer, of gratitude, and a strong moral concern for the poor and suffering. But it is largely a moralistic, therapeutic, deistic religion. Jesus as in love with his Father within the Trinity is not adequately communicated.
3. Weakened Catholicism. A diluted, thin, "Spirit of Vatican II" prevails: disconnect with traditions (precepts of Church, stations of cross, adoration of Blessed Sacraments, confession of sin, concupiscence, rosary, cult of saints, belief in last things of heaven-hell-purgatory-death-judgement; more informal liturgy of meal rather than solemnity of sacrifice and silence.) There is a preference for a spirituality acceptable to non-Catholics in an ecumenism that fails to value what is specific to Catholicism.
4. Chastity. This most difficult and essential virtue for the adolescent male is ignored. The pandemic of pornography/masturbation is not confronted. The confession of sexual sin, so urgent for the growing male, would be disparaged if openly advocated. Here we see an accommodation to the sexual revolution in a largely indeliberate mimesis of cultural liberalism. This is catastrophic for the chaste virility of the growing adolescent.
5. Social Justice. The primary aim of the "prep school" is to advance aspirational middle class students to better colleges, closer to the Ivies the better, and onto bourgeois security, comfort, and status. Implicitly, it is supportive of the social order: meritocratic, technocratic, bureaucratic, and viciously divided between the upper, educated, affluent class and the lower, uneducated, poor class. There is an awareness of this and an admirable, compensating emphasis upon immersion trips, service projects, and care for the poor. However those activities are sidelines: the main purpose of the school is to get into a good college. Additionally, there is a distraction from the class structure of injustice into progressive causes including identity politics, BLM/CRT and collaboration with the crusade to legitimate homosexual and other transgressive life styles through LGBTQ clubs. We find here the type of the "limousine liberal": sequestered from the poor; enjoying bourgeois privilege; championing homosexuality as a rationalization for the license of contraception-pornography-cohabitation-divorce; and righteously protective of racial, gendered and sexual minorities. Actual injustice against the underclass, of all ethnicities, is thereby ignored.
I Have a Dream...
That every Catholic school student:
Encounter, in the proclamation of the Gospel, the Divine/Human person of Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior from sin.
Engage the entire Catholic heritage of prayer, liturgy, doctrine, and way of life.
Aspire to sexual chastity in preparation for fidelity to a state of life, marriage or religious life/priesthood.
Identity with the poor, suffering and disenfranchised and develop an accurate, sophisticated critique of bourgeois modernity free of progressive fashions.
Jesuit schools have a clear mission here...as they become free of the contagions unleashed in the 1960s Cultural Revolution and return to the authentic Jesuit legacy of heroic, chaste virility in Christ within his Church.
Pray for us...you virile, holy, chaste, humble, wise Jesuits...Ignatius, Xavier, Ricci, Jogues, Brebeuf, Campion, Pro, Delp, Bellarmine, Colombiere, Miki, DeLubac, Danielou, Dulles, Whelan, Dougherty, Azzarto, Wrynn, Ciszek, Dougherty and Companions.
Pray for Jesuit and all Catholic schools, educators and students!
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