"Nunc Dimittis" Simeon prayed upon encountering the Christ child in the temple, "Now, Lord, let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled. For my eyes have seen the salvation you have prepared in the sight of every people." Luke 2:29-30
With Simeon, I can now go in peace. In the current resurgence of conservative, religious virility I see the restorative work of the Lord. A light is shining. I can go in peace!
With Gen Z, more boys are religious than girls. This was unheard of in prior generations. Politically men across all ethnicities are becoming more conservative. Donald Trump is many things (some good, some bad, in my view), but he is masculine (if toxically), a renunciation (however crude) of the cultural liberalism that denies the forms of femininity/masculinity, and a resurgence (in large part depraved) of masculinity. His electoral victory was in part the preference of young men for his machismo over the eunuch-like impotence offered by the party of Biden.
The Intention of the Sexual Revolution
The Luciferian target of the Sexual Revolution was the iconic, natural, sacramental, heteronormative family in it triune form: destroying the newly alive; transitioning the mother into homo-phobe (in the literal sense of "suspicious of men") and murderess-of-the-unborn; and reconfiguring the male as rapist or impotent eunuch. For over half a century, we have been inhaling the noxious atmosphere of cultural liberalism, the sexual revolution that targeted the family by contra-ceptively liberating sexuality from fecund, faithful conjugality; torturing/murdering the innocent, powerless unborn; dislocating the now isolated individual from nature/family/community/tradition/transcendence; technologizing the sacred mystery of the spousal union; ; violating the feminine in its formally interiority as virginal and maternal; and (most importantly for this essay) castrating masculinity.
"Men want to be men" my son-in-law Joe told me yesterday. I would add "Women and children want men to be men." Everyone (who has not been brain-washed into resentful, androgynous masculine-o-phobia) wants men to be men.
What is a Man?
Guest in classroom of boys in a Jesuit prep school, I asked: "What is a real man? A good man? What is real virility?" They looked pensively, wonderingly, quietly at me. This is not a question that had been asked of them before. I recalled the refusal of now-Supreme Court Justice Brown to answer the question "What is a woman?" A student raised his hand and said: "One who takes care of his family." Bingo! Extra credit for him! A man takes care of his women, children, and the suffering, poor, oppressed!
By design of nature and the Creator, masculinity and femininity face each other in the mutuality of tenderness, desire, reverence, purity, sacrifice, generosity, fidelity and fecundity. Together, as one, they face and embrace the newborn, the unborn, and those entrusted to their care. The male itinerary is through being son, brother, bridegroom to father. The female from daughter, sister, bride and mother. They are not the same. In contrasting, complementary ways, they express the True, the Good, the Beautiful and the Holy Trinity.
The Latin vir for man is the root for virtue and virility. Ancient traditions of chivalry, drawing from heroic cultures of warrior honor and the imitation of Christ, understand virility as the sacrificial, even to death, gift of self to those who are threatened, involving gentle strength, courage, chastity, sobriety, prudence, humility, and justice.
The most decisive assault of the cultural revolution was upon virility as paternity and all that entails: protection, provision, generativity, heroism, authority, tradition, chastity, humility, and devotion to God the Father in his Son and the Holy Spirit. The suspicion of and resentment towards the masculine, in code language of "patriarchy," (even as it is not without basis in male violence against women) has worked to deconstruct gender, rendering the woman also isolated, fearful of her newly conceived, and hostile toward masculinity. This cultural ambience has intensified male tendencies to violence or weakness or both.
The Current Resurgence and the Church
This resurgence is not entirely a supernatural, Holy Spirit inspired happening. It is a natural eruption. The masculine/feminine is inherent in Creation, by God's design. It is NOT merely a social construct or personal option. It is like a volcano that is flaming under the ground. Masculinity can be despised, repressed, dismissed.... only for so long. Eventually, it erupts. It is erupting now. These virile energies need to be channeled, disciplined, encouraged, corrected, guided. Thank God for Jordan Peterson and others like him.
But I fear that our Catholic Church is not well positioned for this task. In the world of my childhood, the 1950s, the Church was brimming with virile priests, many of the veterans of WWII. The entire generation had returned from the war as "made men": tested in the fire of combat, quiet, humble, modest, religious, loyal in marriage, unpretentious, confident, generous, grateful. Most of my peers, even the very bad boys, wanted at some point to be a priest. But today the Church, like the broader society, is in crisis of masculinity. We are getting few vocations. We are scandalized and devastated by the sex scandal which continues today in high profile cases like Rupnik. There is a hidden but pernicious gay culture within the clergy including at high levels. At elite levels there is acceptance of theological progressivism with its distrust of virility. A style of effeminacy prevails across progressive leadership in society and the Church.
But: Not to worry! The Church is, always has been, always will be a boundless font of vital, fruitful masculinity/femininity. It is already baked into the cake of Catholicism. It is hardwired into the machinery: dogma, liturgy, sacraments, religious life, matrimony, everything. To be immersed into the (efficacious) sacramental life and the (infallible) announcement of the Word is to be enlivened in filiality, fraternity/sorority, maternity/paternity. The Church is our Mother, we her sons and daughters. The Church is the bride, Christ the bridegroom. The femininity of the Church is deeply, passionately, intimately lived in vowed religious. The priesthood is masculine in its representation of the Groom. The Protestant Reformation was already a desecration of the masculine/feminine in its devaluation of matrimony and holy orders, abolition of religious life, iconoclastic violence, and disenchantment of the entire sacramental universe. The romantic enchantment, natural and supernatural, of the Romance and Drama of the masculine/feminine is the very life of the Church. In the biological order, we know that by our chromosomes, each of us is in form masculine or feminine, whatever accidental irregularities occur. So, the DNA of Catholicism is the life of the Trinity now expressed in the romancing of Christ, the virile Bridegroom, of his womanly Church.
Conclusion
Virility is irrepressible and unstoppable. It is like the Spring that is bursting forth, as I write this, in the daffodils and tulips. It is an invincible force of nature, when it is indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
In my encounters with young men, in my family and beyond, including random engagements, I sense a powerful hunger for virility. They want to become men. Not androgynous eunuchs! Not rapists! Virile, virtuous men. Strong in a gentle mode, reverent, chaste, tender, generous, serene and confident, fruitful. Filial, fraternal, paternal...expressive of the Love between the Father and the Son!
Heavenly Father, through Mary our mother and St Joseph, send upon our virility the Holy Spirit, that we may manifest the glorified masculinity of Jesus your Son.
