Misomasculinity, Virophobia, and the Reign of the Smothering Mother

Disclosure: Notwithstanding the apparently misogynist theme, this writer is a passionate, extravagant, devoted philogynist. He was only slightly smothered by his own mother whose fierce maternity was, happily, purified and corrected by the conjugal love she shared with her husband who told her: "Do not put your son on a pedestal!"

In the real order, every person, relationship, family and community draws its integrity, vitality, harmony, creativity, and joy from the interaction of the feminine and masculine as spousal, tender, reverent. If one pole or the other is denied, dominant, feared or despised, life becomes toxic. The denial of gender bipolarity is the collapse into chaos; andryogyny is sterility. Our society and Church, in its flight from toxic masculinity and patriarchy as tyranny, in its fear and hatred of virility, is not being liberated, but falling under the despostism of the the controlling, devouring feminine.

The Smothering Mother is:

- Motherly love as excessive in compassion, inclusion, acceptance because it is unbalanced by and hostile to fatherly love as demand, obligation, authority, boundary, tradition, truth, honor.

- A moral sense that is emotivist and anti-intellectual.

- Quintessentially: the Evil Mother swallowing her unborn, innocent and helpless.

A militant femininism hostile to femininity as form, as purpose, as beauty-truth-goodness, in a degenerate mimesis of toxic masculinity as careerism, loneliness, individualism, sexual license, and fear of the father.

- Safetyism as global, pervasive anxiety; flight from death, risk, adventure, challenge, combat, engagement; compulsive construction of a protected, maternal bubble; covidophobia, over-masking, extreme social distancing, hypermandating; conspiracy theories and dread of vaccines; helicopter parenting.

- A presidency and political party that is rabidly anti-paternal and anti-maternal in its genocide of the unborn, innocent and powerless; that desecrates the human body in its denial of the sacrality of sexuality as conjugal, fruitful, iconic; that abandons its allies in Afghanastan in a debacle of shameful disloyalty and startling incompetence; that is unwilling to protect its borders and so lures countless poor southern neighbors into a dangerous pilgrimage of hope; that spends the money of our children/grandchildren in its "boomerish" insistence on consumpiton NOW; that propagates a narrative of powerful/powerless, rich/poor, black/white, male/female, hetero/homo, and cis/trans that dehumanizes an alleged "oppressor class" as it infantilizes a "victim class" (e.g. black men are emasculated by the allegation that they are victims of "the man" and unable to protect their women and children); and so provokes, from the underclass, an anxious, raging populism-nationalism that tends to crude toxic masculinity.

- The expansion of the "mommy state"; tolerance of, indeed indulgence of moral decadence and sexual depravity; systemic deconstruction of traditional itineraries into noble masculinity; immersion in a tyranny of technology and bureaucracy; the predominance of unbalanaced femininity in crucial arenas of education, entertainment health care, media and law.

- A pontificate that is emasculated in an excess of compassion-acceptance-nurture bereft of fatherly demand, accountability, responsibility, chastity, authority, holiness, justice and truth; that is allergic to manly sturctures of dogma, law, tradition, authority, hierarchy; that embraces immigrants but is indifferent to the need for boundaries, rule of law, and national identity; that abandons the martyred Church in China in cowardly submission to vicious communists; that urges inclusion and dialogue but then resents criticism and lapses into catty resentment of traditionals (suppression of Latin mass) and conservatives (destruction of the John Paul II Institute in Rome"); that unleashes a confused, disorienting "synodality" in a vague resentment of tradition bereft of clarity, direction and purpose.

- A gay movement that, in a classic oedipal drama, camouflages its wounded masculinty, by recoiling from the paternal viewed as hostile-judgmental-shaming-rigorous and embraces the maternal as accepting-approving, and rages (in an elaborate liturgy of pride, parades, rainbows, coming out, etc.) like a petulant child for unconditional moral approval.

With this we understand the nature of our civilizational and ecclesial crises: a classic oedipal drama. In suspicion and resentment, son and mother collude together against the paternal experienced as tyranical and evil. The key protagonists are the gay and the femininist; the antagonist is masculinity as paternal. The structures of modernity...contraception, sexual liberation, deconstruction of gender, bureaucracy, technology and scientism, expansive state, demise of the family and intermediate institutions...all collude in the disparagement of paternity and the empowerment of a Smothering Motherhood.

The good news is that the Real, the True, the Good, the Beautiful are all irrepressible: masculinity/femininity, paternity/maternity, filiality, spousality, fraternity...these are superabundant, generous, resilient, captivating, charming and engaging. They share a certain invulnerability to The System. They will triumph! Thanks be to God!

Root Cause of Our Civilizational Collapse: Demise of Virility as Paternity

Description of PaternityAs a prime reality, a Mystery, Paternity cannot be defined in terms of other realities. At the level of biology it is clearcut enough: the donator of seed in sexual reproduction of life. But in the sacramental, iconic cosmos of Catholicism, that is an image of profound realities: social, psychic, ontological and theological. At the depth level, Fatherhood...like truth, being, love, beauty, goodness...is not definable in other terms. It presents itself directly, simply, intuitively to the intelligence. If someone has no spontaneous sense of love or beauty it it is futile to define it.

Nevertheless, as "super-intelligible" rather than "non-intelligible" it can be described, however inadequately. (Here, we need the poet. This writer is nothing if not prosaic!)

Fatherhood is generosity, graciousness, gratuity, extravagance in the giving of life. It is authorship, initiation, origination. It is provision, protection, pedagogy. It is authority as sacred, holy, or "super good." It is order, intelligibility, purpose, structure. It is transcendence...infinite distance...that is overcome by tenderness and mercy...to an infinite degree. Fatherhood is at the very heart of God as Trinity so Fatherhood in its purity is God, is Trinity, is the Father loving the Sonl Just as Sonship is the Son loving the Fatherhood. Our eternal destiny is to love the Father...in the Son...as the Son...in response to the Father's love for us. So it is simple enough: the purpose of life, of creation, of the cosmos: to receive, embody, share, delight in, and magnify the love of the Father, as Father, for us who are sons and daughters.

Paternity and MaternityHuman paternity, as a reflection or analogy of divine Fatherhood, is essentially related to maternity. Human paternity is always representational; by contrast, maternity is substantially distinct unto itself...different from God...quintessentially creaturely, the woman has her own solid, definite identity in a way that the man does not. The male, in all he does, is always pointing toward our heaveny Father; or sacriligously defacing His face. The woman's role as mother is different; complementary; reflective of God but in a manner distinct from Fatherhood and therefore closer to the Son and the Spirit in their distinction and distance from the Father. Maternity is likewise generosity, graciousness, gratuity...as reception, surrender, intimacy, compassion, inclusion, union, mercy. Maternity and Paternity include each other within each other; they are the same in so many ways, but mysteriously different and distinct in so many ways. Both are rooted in a prior spousality, of bride and groom, which creates a unity as it strangely preserves a limitless distance and distinction. Spousality, Paternity and Maternity all involve intimacy within distance and so relfect the interior life of the Trinity.

Original Sin Against Fatherhood Eve's primal sin was a direct rejection of Divine Fatherhood, an act of suspicion and distrust, a preference for autonomy and control rather than communion and surrender. On the face of it, Adam's sin was secondary and derivative as he followed her lead. She, the woman, apparently, has the primacy in sin and evil. A more contemporary interpretation, however, faults Adam for his absence from Eve in her moment of temptation: he failed in his vocation of spouse and father by abandoning her to her own resources; he left her alone and vulnerable. One might argue that his failure in paternity and spousality was the opening that Satan needed to seduce Eve. By this logic, Adam's dereliction in paternity led Eve to doubt the fatherly love of her heavenly Father and sieze control herself.

Purpose of Virility: PaternityThe destiny of every man is to become a father, to mirror the paternity of the Father. The itinerary of masculinity is: filiality (sonship) into fraternity (brotherhood, friendship) into spousality (groom to his bride) into paternity (fatherhood, in some form.) The source of paternity is filiaity: one is first a son, receptive of fatherly love, like an open receptacle; and later this love develops, clarifies, deepens and strenghtnes into the love of a father. One who is not fathered (in some form) cannot father.

Modernity: Desecration of FatherhoodThe Cultural Revolution that exploded in the West in the late 60s is, even more than a sexual revolution, a rejection of Paternity. The contraceptive tearing of sexuality from procreation, gender and spousality was the linchpin that deconstructed Fatherhood, but along with that was the deep renunciation of authority, of the sacred and the holy, of the past as tradition and revelation, of the primal relationships of man-woman and father-mother-child as analogues of the creator and the creature. The rich, profound cosmos of interwining relationships (God and creation, man and woman, father and child) was diabolically replaced by the autonomy and hegemony of the lonely, isolated, unrooted and purposeless individual. Individualism...the heart of liberalism!

The Tortuous Journey to Noble VirilityFemininity, in its destiny of maternity, is natural, organic, hormonal, biological, resilient, irrepressible, largely efficacious and almost infallible. Femininity, however violated, abused, despised, and repressed has about it a deeper invulnerability underneath the vulnerability. The mother's instinct is the most powerful force in the natural realm. In my neighborhood I have known homeless, drug addicts who were nevertheless passionate, tender, faithful mothers. Not so with fathers! Virility is an impossibly fragile, difficult, laborious project. It is NOT spontaneous,organic or hormonal. It requires a long, detailed, sophisticated itinerary of formation: instruction, modeling, correction, encouragement, testing, affirmation, more correction, more modeling, more affirmation. The formation of good men is the most difficult, complicated and significant of cultural accomplishments.

I would say that in our civilization the status of manhood reached a certain high point in my father's generation: the Great Generation who suffered the Depression, defeated the Nazi and Japanse imperialisms, contained Soviet Communism, and fathered large families. At the very apex of their achievement, however, in 1965, a diabolical dramatic turn occured across our culture but primarily at the level of the elites: the desecration of Fatherhood. The pampered boomer generation...so doted on by their adoring parents...listened to a soft, seductive voice: "You are better, stronger wiser, kinder than your stupid fathers!" They believed it. They turned against their fathers. They regressed (symbolically) to a narcisssitic and infantile immersion in the warm, safe maternal "womb." And the half century since than has been a collapse into decadence, unchastity,irresponsibility, infantilism and anti-paternity. It has become a dark world. A world without fathers.

St. Joseph Pray for Us!

USA 2021: A Darkening, Dystopian World; A Great Time to Go Catholic...Deeply, Radically, Fiercely Catholic

The moderate, reasonable middle no longer holds...decadence prevails...hysteria, extremism, irrationality exploding on the right and the left...our world has become dystopian! A fantastic time to be Catholic...true, profound, passionate, inflamed in our faith!

In 1960 the critical mass of American Catholics were in love with the party of John Kennedy which was overtly Catholic in its defense of the working family, civil rights, the poor, an idealistic internationalism and a fierce global resistance to communism. In 1989, right-leaning Catholics could proudly champion the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan...pro-life, victorious (in alliance with John Paul II) over Soviet Communism, champion of the freedoms of man. In 2020, the left has gone Cultural Libertarian, quasi-Marxist, and big-state-big-corporation fascist. The right has degenerated into Trumpian demagoguery. It is inconceivable to me how any alert, awake, practicing Catholic could vote for a Biden or a Trump! Our political world, along with the entirety of elite culture, has gone berserk in one direction while the underclass is vulnerable to toxic populism in a contrary way. Where do we find Sanity? Stability? Serenity? In a deeper surrender to our Catholic faith!

Our world reminds me of the Europe of the 1930s. Not the Depression, but the political polarization into extremes: Stalinism was facing rising fascisms of the right. Think Spain, Italy,Germany! The middle did not hold. At the same time, consider three humble Poles: Sister Faustina quiet in her convent, the young Karol Wojtyla maturing in his own hidden life, and Father Maximilian Kolbe championing the Immaculata as he prepares for his gory, glorious martyrdom. (See video Ocean of Mercy for an inspiring review of these three lives.) All three are now canonized saints. All three lived humbly, generously, prayerfully. All three greatly influenced our world.

It is an immense grace to live in the wake of these three. To surrender ourselves in prayer...to Mercy...to the reception and distribution of the Divine Mercy.

It is a terrible time to be a Democrat or a Republican! It is a wonderful time to be a Catholic!

I Stand Corrected...on Afghanastan

Regarding an earlier blog "A Catholic Case for Staying in Afghanastan" (Oct. 7, 2021) my JAG lawyer son pointed out a number of realities I underestimated:

1. In contrast to Syria and Iraq, Afghanastan has no Christian or Catholic community at all. The only chapel was in an embassy. I checked the numbers: some countries have a Catholic population at .01% (North Korea, Cambodia, Kyrgystan, Mauritania, Niger, North Macedonia, Tajikistan); Somalia comes in at .001%; but Afghanastan is by far the smallest at .0003%. Their Muslim culture is fiercely hostile to Christianity. While the urgency to bring the Gospel to every nation may make Afghanastan number one priority, there is a question about prudent use of scarce missionary resources.

2. Afghanastan might also be the most resistant and hostile to Western culture. An anecdote: our military built a courthouse for them. Shortly after it was handed over to the locals a visit showed that it was being used to house sheep and goats. So much for "rule of law" and "due process!"

3. The immense dangers of placing our 18-year-olds with heavy gunnery in violent circumstances: they may perform admirable 99% of the time but that one mistake evokes a tidal wave of hatred for the foreign invaders. It is not fair to our young men and to the locals.

4. Paradoxically, the countryside there is more peaceful now that we are out of there. The Taliban is in control and there is less conflict.

These are serious, sobering realities so I change my mind. I am about 60% confident that withdrawal (however badly executed) was the prudent strategy. Of course, future events may change our evaluations. A single terrorist attack from a base there will be a game changer, but I agree that the Taliban, as rational deciders (we hope), have learned a lesson and will suppress any bases that might provoke another invasion.

The "neoconservative-leaning Catholicism" underlying my earlier argument remains in its fundamentals: first, the imperative to plant the Church everywhere, second the importance of education and dignity for women, and thirdly the broader global cold wars against Sharia law and Communism and the need for vigor, strength, agressiveness.

The Uncles Club

Uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces: all underrated!

They are entirely ignored in sociology and psychology, theology and philosophy. They deserve attention!

I am a certified member of the Uncles Club! If we could measure the happiness and pride of uncles I would test in the top 1 % of the top 1 %. I LOVE being an uncle!

I think of my own uncles often. I had five. All were related by blood, not by marriage as my mother's siste married my father's brother so he was uncle in two ways. They basically formed the masculine world in which I grew up. They (along with aunts, grandparents) were the pillars of my world. I think of my Mom and Dad as huge, central pillars holding up the world I inhabited; but they were not alone. Around them were these important figures who added support, strength, stability, variety and flavor to our world. My uncles (and uncle-like friends) mirrored to me what masculinity is; they imaged for me my future identity. They were big, strong, confident, funny, intelligent, interesting, fun. On my father's side, heavy with men: Frank the oldest overflowed with good will, generosity, humour, fun; he and his family had a special affection for my family as my Dad was the youngest. Ed, a bachelor, was very good to us; an athlete, a man's man, quiet, humorous in a subtle way. Uncle Jack was different; somewhat distant, he was a loner; he had fought with Patton; when I would see him (he and I both caddied at a local country club) I felt a gentle affection flowing both ways. Charlie was close in age to my own father; he was like him, even funnier; to be with him was to be laughing or smiling nonstop. On my mother's side quite a different story: Uncle Billy travelled around South America; a brilliant man, wildly eccentric; fascinating to us; after his death we learned he was an intelligence officer, covert, for the army all those years after his service in WWII where he was wounded and honored. We would not see for years but we thrilled whenever he came around.

I was blessed with two Aunt Marians and Aunt Grace. The former were both mothers of their own families but overflowed with fun, humor, and affection for my family; Aunt Grace, single, was very, very close to us.

Some years ago, I at the finale of a parish-based "Discovering Jesus" program, I found myself being prayed over by two young women...devout, intelligent, attractive...who knew my nephews and so identified me as Uncle Matt. I have been prayed over, perhaps a hundred times, and expected the normal: Jesus, make Matt a good man, husband, father, pure and strong. But no: they surprised me and asked an anointing on my unclehood...that I be a good uncle. I was delighted with the thought. How many uncles are so anointed? Since then I have claimed from the Holy Spirit special gifts of unclehood.

Being an uncle is fun, delightful, effortless, unmerited, gratuitious and serendipitous. It is organic, spontaneous, entirely indeliberate. Between uncle and niece/nephew there is a gentle, pleasant affection, interest, respect. It just comes freely. It arises, of course, out of the affection between brother and sister which the children drink in like mother's milk. I don't remember ever having to correct a nephew; nor have I ever spent a penny on a niece. The thing is entirely free, light, and joyful. It is part of the nature of things. In this it resembles grandparenthood and cousinhood...all joy, no effort.

I have 18 nieces and 13 nephews. But it is not the quantity, it is the quality that matters. If I had only one I would be a happy uncle. My nieces are all feminine, intelligent, competent, maternal, kind, faithful, and lovely in every dimension...each in her distinctive, unique fashion. My nephews are fun, funny, interesting, athletic, virile, stimulating...dear "little brothers."

Happiness is...being an uncle!

The Uber-Catholics

I was flattered several years ago to learn that some more liberal family members referred to me and mine as "uber Catholics." It may not have been intended as a complement, but cock-eyed optimist that I am I receved it that way. I would never want to be lukewarm, milk-toast, lackadasical, accomodationist Catholic lite. I aspire to be flaming, profound, fierce, passionate,counter-cultural, radical, and yes extreme in my faith. If that is perceived as unbalanced, fanatical, and unhealthy...so be it!

So I will define an "uber-Catholic" as one for whom the faith and life in Christ is EVERYTHING! Everything else...family, work, romance, health, wealth...EVERYTHING else comes under this love for Christ. So, in various ways, the ubers are counter-cultural, they fervently embrace different dimensions of Catholicism. As an aspiring uber-Catholic, I like to hang out with other ubers, extravagants, extremists. Here are my preferred groups.

CharismaticsThis is my favorite group. They are weird, even from a traditional or mainstream Catholic point of view: praying in tonques, holy laughter, casting out of demons, healings and prophesies. In the wake of the Council when elite Catholicism was emulting late secularizing Protestantism this movement moved in the contrary direction, incorporating hard, contrarian principles of evangelical Pentecostalism: awareness of sin, centrality of Christ as Lord and Savior, literal reading of Scripture, strong gender roles, appreciation of obedience and authority, and in general a lively, graphic supernaturalism.

Neocatechumenal WayThis is the most intense, the most "uber"...the Marine Corp or maybe the Navy Seals of Catholicism. Within the old, they create a new Catholic civilization around: Jesus Christ as victor over death, small-intimate communities around the Word and liturgy, large families, a distinctive aesthetic in music and iconography and a unique catechesis which is orthodox and yet innovative. This "way" appeals largely to lower-economic groups, especially Hispanics in my NYC area. A la the "Benedict Option" its energies are focused interiorly on strenthening and sharing the faith of their communities and familes rather than on the battle for the Culture.

Traditional, Latin Mass GroupsThese, of course, retrieve elements of Catholicism that have been largely lost after the Council: the Latin mass, a vibrant Thomism, traditions of piety. These seem to have a strong appeal to young people who are disappointed with the secular drift of society and much of the Church. My impression is that the demographic is largely the educated and comfortable, if not affluent.

Catholic Worker CommunitiesThese are extreme in ways entirely different from the first three: anarchistic and pacifist, they identify strongly with the poor, and firmly reject our social order and the bourgeois way of life. In Day and Maurin there was an unusual marriage of Catholic faith with political radicalism; I am not sure how widely that admirable, if eccentric, legacy endures although Larry Chapp is true to it.

Academic CommunitiesIn strongest contrast to the secularizing momentum of mainstream, especially elite, Catholic academies, there are a handful of exceptions which develop their own distinctive, eccentric-extravagant cultures. My favorite is the John Paul Institute for the Family in Washington DC which carries on the "Communio Theology" of John Paul, Benedict and Balthasar in an American context. The small body of congenial scholars embody a "kneeling theology" that combines holiness of life with brilliance in scholarship. They are exceptional. On the undergraduate level Franciscan University of Steubenville is unparalled: under a strong charismatic influence, this community attracted disparate groups which reacted against the liberalizing trend in Catholic higher education: pro-life, home-schooling, Thomism, etc. It too combines the desire for holiness with serious learning. IPS (Institute for the Psychological Sciences) in Arlington, Virginia, is a serious graduate think tank for the dialogue between scientific psychology and a Catholic anthropology.

To be sure there are other strong Catholic cultures which may not be so "uber" in the sense of extravagant, extreme, or contrarian. Communion and Liberation is a lively, highbrow Catholic movement out of Italy that reflects a distinctive, almost neo-Renaissance confidence, positivity, lack of defensiveness and openess to the broader culture. First Things is deeply Catholic with a a pronounced Republican, neoconservative and even sometimes pro-Trumpian political ideology. EWTN, The Catholic Thing, Crisis, New Oxford Review and others reflect a fierce Catholicism.

Other Catholic academies lack the dominating Catholic ethos but foster smaller communities of vital Catholicism. My own family has experienced this at Mount St. Mary's (Emmitsburg), University of St. Francis DeSales, Assumption, University of Notre Dame and our local Seton Hall University. It is not unusual that secular universities, even the Ivys, foster small, intense countercultures in response to the militant secularism around them.

I have been blessed to participate in varying degrees, in the above communities, without becoming a fullfleged member of any. Catholicism has been, for me, a rich smorgasboard in which I taste some fruit, the fish, some vegetables, a variety of meats, and leave room for dessert. SO FUN! SO INTERESTING1 SO INSPIRING!

To Change the Church: Bad Idea!

The Synodality Process was initiated by Pope Francis with this purpose: "To change the Church." Bad, bad, bad idea!

I confess: I can't stand the reformer, the progressive do-gooder who is out to "change the Church"...to modernize it, update it, remake it in the image of his enlightened, fashionable ideas...in a stance of condescension, superiority, moralism, righteousness. Think the German synod!

Let's start with: What is the Church? It is a gathering of sinners, first and foremost. Now if you think you can change sin, or the sinner, or the conglomerate of sinners, then you need to change your medication!

More than that, though, without removing the dimension of sin, the Church is the Bride of Christ. She is passionately, tenderly, reverently, longingly loved by Christ. To be joined with Christ is to love His Bride: to cherish, serve, venerate, protect, and exult in her. NOT to change her!

Imagine a young woman is in love and engaged to a man with a drinking habit, and anger problem, and a history of promiscuity. She isn't worried: she loves him so much that she is sure her love will change him. Bad idea!

Imagine a Prince who is in love with a Princess. She has her problems but he sees in her loveliness, innocence, generosity, elegance, modesty, purity and holiness. The king's advisor has a different view: that she needs a lot of work...tutoring for sure, diet and exercise routine to lose weight and firm up the body, an entire makeover in fashion and hair style, and more. What would the Prince do? Obviously, he would have the advisor tarred and feathered, shackled, tortured, and thrown in prison.

Imagine you have a historic building: Washington slept here. It is a monument. You are NOT allowed to change the basic structure, rather you are obliged to maintain and protect it. That requires, of course, regular cleaning, preserving, and minor repairs. Yes you may rearrange the furniture. Were you to try to change the basic structure you would be arrested and imprisioned...and you would deserve it.

Of course the Church in her human dimension is sinful and in need of constant reform and conversion. But that mysterious process is the intimate relations of Christ Himself with His Bride which includes each individual soul and the Body itself. Jesus Himself, through the Holy Spirit, does indeed reform the Church, meaning each and every one of us. It is not for us to do so, even through some vague, global discusion group called synodality.

In his introductory remarks to the synodal process our Holy Father speaks about "the reception of new elements." New Elements? Bad, bad, bad idea! We can easily imagine the kind of "new elements" eager to intrude: cultural liberalism, critical race theory, LGBTQ pride, and the usual suspects.By contrast, authentic reform is always a return to the sources...ressourcement...to scripture, the fathers and doctors, martyrs and saints. It is a deepening, a purification, a growing of our already-given baptismal identity in Christ. It is simple: becoming holy, close to God, through all the standard Catholic practices of prayer, sacrament, service, fraternity.

On this journey into holiness, it is for us to join Christ in loving, contemplating, admiring, enjoying the Church. And to allow ourselves personally to be reformed and sanctified...by Christ through the Church, our mother, His bride and body.