They Just Don’t Get It!

I took another hit the other day. I have a very popular podcast called The Cantankerous Catholic. I’ve had all sorts of Catholic luminaries on the show: Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Bishop Joseph Strickland, Fr. James Altman, Fr. Robert Altier, Michael Hichborn, Terry Barber, and Michael Voris, to name a few.

Recently I invited an expert in Natural Family Planning to come on the show to discuss the evils of contraception and the benefits of various NFP methods. I have listeners of all ages and at least two of the thirty-seven genders recognized in America today, but 61% of my audience are Catholic men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, so certainly I’m interested in exposing them to this topic. She accepted the invitation, and I was looking forward to the interview.

Then she decided to listen to my show. She sent me an email disinviting herself. The reasons she cited were that I’m nothing like Jesus, and I’m divisive, insulting, and that I’m not nice. Well, there’s no denying truth. I am certainly divisive, insulting, and I’m not at all nice. Not like Jesus, though? Has she never read the gospels?

A sad reality in Christianity over the last sixty years is that we’ve remade Jesus in our own image and likeness, due largely to radical feminism, by making Him Jesus the Warm Fuzzy instead of accepting Him as Jesus the Incarnate Word of God. Jesus never came to bring about a namby-pamby feminine-sissy sort of religion, which is how the Church is perceived today. No, far from it. In Matthew 10:34-38 He said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Somehow that doesn’t sound like the warm fuzzy Jesus we’ve made him out to be. And just in case you think this was a fluke in scripture, let’s take a look at a few things Jesus did and said.

Jesus publicly called men hypocrites (cf Matthew 15:7), liars (cf John 6:55), white painted sepulchers full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23:27). He drove people from the temple with a whip (cf Matthew 21:12-13). This doesn’t sound at all like the Warm Fuzzy we’ve turned Jesus into, but rather a very manly way of conveying truth. 

Jesus is pure charity and love. So how do we justify everything cited above? Simple: truth, by its very nature is harsh—so harsh, in fact, that most people hate and reject it.

Certainly Catholicism has all of the elements that make it appeal to women—it’s a very feminine religion. Because it’s a divinely established religion, it’s also a very manly, masculine religion. In fact, Jesus made it such that only men could serve at altar, and become deacons, priests, and bishops. So if anything, the Catholic Church is a masculine religion, no matter what some women and lavender mafia priests and bishops say.

Why did Jesus set up the Church to be masculine? Because the man is the head of the family, and the family is the very core and heart of society—including the Church. Something’s happened over the last sixty years, though. Since the bishops stopped teaching the fullness of Catholic truth sixty-plus years ago and began inserting namby-pamby platitudes in place of truth, they watered down and feminized the what has been taught. Consequently, men have been leaving the Church in droves because they don’t feel welcome. Guess what, men, you haven’t been welcome. And guess what else: the Church was established to accommodate your virile masculinity. It’s time to reassert your masculine role in the Church and in your families. In other words, it’s time to be real men again, despite all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from heretical feminists and lavender mafia clerics.

Do women have a role in the life of the Church. Certainly: in the ladies altar society, varied ladies sodalities, and other non-liturgical roles. But from the very beginning only men were intended to be involved in the liturgy, and women were forbidden to even be near the altar except for marriage and to keep it clean for Holy Mass. All it takes to see and understand this is a cursory reading of patristics—the extant writings of what the early Christians believed and practiced.

People will say this is toxic masculinity. So? Toxic masculinity is the very nature God gave men, and any attempt to replace it with some feminized toned-down version of masculinity is an abomination to Almighty God.

Feminine nature is soft and tender, because a woman’s nature is to be a nurturer. Masculine nature is to be aggressive and hard, because men are the hunters and gatherers, thus making nurturers possible. That’s why throughout the history of mankind men have been the warriors. If you’ll notice, everything that Jesus and the new testament writers said about the Church was in warrior language. When Jesus established the Church, he said, “…and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” implying something we are to attack. Paul called the Church Christ’s body (man). Timothy referred to the Church as a bulwark, something else regarding a military defense. The Catholic Church herself refers to the Church on earth as militant. Paul, in Ephesians, and Peter, in I Peter, admonishes wives to be subject to their husbands and husbands to care for their wives. This isn’t some social custom of the first century, but rather a law of God.

Here’s the bottom line: Men, return to a full participation in the Church, asserting your God-given rights, regardless of the pushback you receive. This includes becoming the head of your household, leading your family to spiritual perfection. Of course, that means working on yourself first.

Wives, be subject to your husbands, as Peter and Paul command. Women in general, renounce your participation in liturgical roles. If need be, ask a man or men to assume the role that is rightly the place of men at the altar.

I’m going to be getting a lot of flack for the things I’ve written here. That’s okay. Just make sure that when you pushback your arguments have nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with facts, because you can be sure that I’ll be well armed with scripture, patristics, and the constant 2000 year teachings of the Catholic Church.