Vort-2012-01-17
Hello everyone and welcome to The Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and
exposed. I’m Michael Voris.
It’s really only talked about in hushed tones these days because of fear or worry over being labeled chauvinist or whatever .. but no matter how you slice it up .. the
Christianity in general and Catholicism specifically has been reduced to a faith which appeals much more to the feminine.
The masculine is pretty much outright rejected or told to be subject to the feminine and this has had a devastating effect on the faith. Of course, we see this same cultural occurrence as well.
Every where the societal norm is that men .. or more specifically .. the masculine is
denigrated. Men are made to appear as weak or buffoons in everything from TV
commercials .. where the “smarter, hipper, more with it” woman almost always bests the man .. to TV programs where the male is often just nice loveable dunce who has
engaging smile and that’s about all.
Men have been robbed of their masculinity and with that theft .. the entire notion of
masculinity and ALL that comes with it has been reduced to little else than a video game where young boys shoot and kill zombies or whatever.
It’s fair at this point to ask – what is masculinity? First off .. maleness and masculinity are not the same thing. Being an adult male is simply not enough. One must BE A MAN. Being a man is a CHOICE to live a certain way. It comes from the will.
Maleness is a biological .. physical quality .. masculinity is a spiritual and cultural quality that does have SOME connection to the biology of being male, but there is more to it. A male must be brought into .. taught .. initiated into the life of masculinity. This being brought into masculinity .. moving from a boy to a man is a current which flows through vast amounts of western as well as world literature .. from Homer and Hamlet .. to Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald. In fact .. much of the plots and narratives of the most famous stories we have as a culture revolve around the successful or failed attempts of young males striving to become men. So what is masculinity? The first thing to express is from the realm of the biological. The female is the norm .. the baseline .. the standard. It is from the female that the male must biologically be differentiated. Science has concluded and proven that in the womb the small embryo will develop into a female naturally .. unless certain “chemical baths” wash over the developing human being. So the male comes about only through a positive action.
This biology has far reaching effects in the infant and young boy. Unlike the young
toddler girl who only needs to differentiate herself as merely a separate being from
mother .. the young boy must differentiate himself as not just separate but ALSO of a
different kind altogether. Hence the male has to “leave the feminine” and go in search of what he actually is.
He needs to be taught and learn what it is to be masculine. As an aside, History may
well record this signal fact as the overriding condemnation of our age .. that when young males turned to find out who they were .. there were no masculine men or authentic fathers to teach them or from which to learn.
Growing into manhood .. the rite of initiation .. has been a staple of every civilization right back to the beginning of recorded history. In more tribal times .. boys were taken from the protective embrace of the feminine and led by the village men into a various rites almost always involving hardship, danger and bloodshed .. from which they emerged as men.
They then returned to the community which the feminine had gathered together .. and
protected it. This then becomes the defining understanding of the masculine that the
feminine the community must be taken leave of .. and hardships must be borne so that
the bit becomes a man and comes back now to feminine not to be protected by it .. but
indeed to protect it. If you think about this .. it is precisely what the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity did.
The people of God .. Israel .. were like a bride to God .. it was the feminine. God
indeed .. often spoke of the collective people as His spouse.
The Second Person departs from the feminine .. in a manner of speaking .. and moves
from infant male to manhood through blood and suffering .. through sacrifice in other
words .. and then returns to the feminine as protector .. to His Bride the Church.
Our Blessed Lord then becomes the example of masculinity par excellence. He is the
perfect male .. willing to depart from the community so that he may return to it as
protector and provider. What defines the masculine therefore is one phrase .. a
willingness to sacrifice for the other. It is in this way that we can say God is masculine ..not male .. but masculine.
But what happens to our understanding of God if our understanding of masculinity is
abolished swamped by an over emphasis on the feminine. Within the Church herself ..
much disaster arises. In liturgy, the Mass for example the notion of sacrifice the masculine is overcome by the feminine which is much more oriented to the community. The emphasis has shifted from the altar to the people. And we have seen this in parish after parish all over the Western World.
Women run everything and men leave .. from altar girls to lectors .. to every kind of
ministry there is in the Church. In a 1987 University of Notre Dame study of Catholic
Parish life since Vatican II .. the following facts emerged.
85 percent of those involved in social justice work and tending to the poor and sick are women.
80 percent plus of those involved in CCD and RCIA work were women.
80 percent of prayer groups are women. 75 percent of bible study religious discussion
groups are women. 60 percent of the time youth groups are headed up by women.
In country after country in the west and culture after culture .. poll after poll suggests that men view being outwardly religious or spiritual as feminine. This has robbed the faith of one of its most foundational and vivifying truths .. that the faith is ultimately about sacrifice for the sake of community .. the willingness to shed blood if necessary. This notion appeals to men at their core .. we are hard wired for it .. and when it is absent from the daily life of the Church .. men sense they have nothing to identify with and they leave.
Tomorrow .. more on men, masculinity and the faith.
GOD Love you.
I’m Michael Voris
