While reading Father Z's entertaining blog yesterday I came across an excellent post containing a lot of red pill truths. This is in relation to the vocations crisis the Church is facing but it but it applies to life beyond that.
The subject matter of the blog post is another article from Lifesite. Here's the relevant bit from the original:
Think. Open your eyes. Remember a little history. Men fight. Many of them really enjoy fighting with their fists, but many more enjoy the spirit of intellectual or spiritual combat for something to which they will devote their goods, their lives, and their sacred honor. So what have we done?
We have eliminated from most hymnals every single song that had anything to do with fighting the good fight. A boy may attend Mass for ten years and never hear one hymn that calls him to the soldiership of Christ.
Men are gamblers, for good and bad. Many of them court risk. They are the inventors of backgammon, cribbage, poker, “fantasy sports,” billiards, and chess. They are the ones who will risk ruining themselves for an idea or an invention. So what have we done?
We have lowered the stakes. If everyone is saved – though our Lord clearly warns us against that sluggish sureness – then why sweat? Where's the adventure? No real boy says, “I want to grow up to be a fat bishop sitting in the chancery while the real world goes on its merry way,” or, “I want to grow up to be a man without a wife and children, who spends his days being nice.” Is that it?
Men thrive in brotherhoods. Not peoplehoods, but specifically brotherhoods. See Tom Sawyer, Gilgamesh, the Germanic comitatus, the Japanese samurai, the monks of Saint Benedict, the fishermen of Newfoundland, the Plains Indians, the cristeros of Mexico, and, in a human sense, the apostles of our Lord Himself. So what have we done?
We have obliterated the brotherhoods. We got rid of most of our high schools for boys. We got rid of every one of our colleges for young men. We dissolved the brotherhood of acolytes – the altar boys. We did this at the worst imaginable time, just when everybody else was doing the same thing, so that now in most places CYO Basketball is but a memory, Boys' Clubs are Boys' and Girls' Clubs, which means Safe Small Children's Clubs, and the Boy Scouts have been sued clear to the precincts of Sodom.
Men understand authority and flourish in it. If you doubt this, you have never come near the locker room of a football team, nor have you troubled to consider whether that team could run a single play, let alone win a game, without strict adherence to a chain of command established for the common good. “I am a man under authority,” said the centurion to Jesus. He did not say, “I insist upon equality.” Men are the ones who invented orders. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts, understood the principle. What have we done?
We have obliterated distinctions between the clergy and the laity. We have turned a suspicious eye against the fundamental virtue of obedience, instead teaching that every man may do what appears right to him in his own mind.
Men are inspired by discipline. They are the ones who invented Boot Camp – and are disappointed now to find that it isn't any longer any great deal, not if you've been a wrestler or a football player in high school. Find out what the boy in the American prairies underwent to prove himself a man. What have we done?
We have eliminated almost every strenuous practice of self-denial from the common life of the Church. All we say is that if you are chewing gum during Mass, please to move it to the left side of your jaws so as to clear a space on the right to receive the Lord at Communion.
No ascetic life, no hierarchy, no brotherhood, no risk, no battle – no priests. And then there are the supernatural concerns, about which I will have more to say next time.
Father Z adds his own thoughts to the above among some of his gems:
I will now add to his point about serving Mass in corps of altar boys what I usually add when things liturgical come up: No initiative we undertake in the Church will succeed without a revitalization of our sacred worship.
We have to get all women and girls out of our sanctuaries and return to our Roman Church worship in our Roman, Latin Church parishes and chapels.
The above-mentioned Msgr. Schuler ran a parish famous for liturgical excellence and for sacred music. I mentioned the number of vocations. The door to the sacristy was open for young men to come in and don the cassock and serve. Boys, both from the K-12 school and from elsewhere, moved up year by year in the ranks, enrolling in the Archconfraternity of St. Stephen (the first chapter outside of England). Their tasks changed. The color of the medal cord changed. They taught the younger ones. The schola cantorum was open. The choir benches in the sanctuary were open to men when we sang Vespers on Sundays. The door of the rectory was open when seminarians and young men met. The priests acted like priests. The men saw the life. They were near the altar. They formed a corps and the corps formed them. Those who didn’t go into seminary wound up, usually, married and with great families.
The subject matter of the blog post is another article from Lifesite. Here's the relevant bit from the original:
Think. Open your eyes. Remember a little history. Men fight. Many of them really enjoy fighting with their fists, but many more enjoy the spirit of intellectual or spiritual combat for something to which they will devote their goods, their lives, and their sacred honor. So what have we done?
We have eliminated from most hymnals every single song that had anything to do with fighting the good fight. A boy may attend Mass for ten years and never hear one hymn that calls him to the soldiership of Christ.
Men are gamblers, for good and bad. Many of them court risk. They are the inventors of backgammon, cribbage, poker, “fantasy sports,” billiards, and chess. They are the ones who will risk ruining themselves for an idea or an invention. So what have we done?
We have lowered the stakes. If everyone is saved – though our Lord clearly warns us against that sluggish sureness – then why sweat? Where's the adventure? No real boy says, “I want to grow up to be a fat bishop sitting in the chancery while the real world goes on its merry way,” or, “I want to grow up to be a man without a wife and children, who spends his days being nice.” Is that it?
Men thrive in brotherhoods. Not peoplehoods, but specifically brotherhoods. See Tom Sawyer, Gilgamesh, the Germanic comitatus, the Japanese samurai, the monks of Saint Benedict, the fishermen of Newfoundland, the Plains Indians, the cristeros of Mexico, and, in a human sense, the apostles of our Lord Himself. So what have we done?
We have obliterated the brotherhoods. We got rid of most of our high schools for boys. We got rid of every one of our colleges for young men. We dissolved the brotherhood of acolytes – the altar boys. We did this at the worst imaginable time, just when everybody else was doing the same thing, so that now in most places CYO Basketball is but a memory, Boys' Clubs are Boys' and Girls' Clubs, which means Safe Small Children's Clubs, and the Boy Scouts have been sued clear to the precincts of Sodom.
Men understand authority and flourish in it. If you doubt this, you have never come near the locker room of a football team, nor have you troubled to consider whether that team could run a single play, let alone win a game, without strict adherence to a chain of command established for the common good. “I am a man under authority,” said the centurion to Jesus. He did not say, “I insist upon equality.” Men are the ones who invented orders. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts, understood the principle. What have we done?
We have obliterated distinctions between the clergy and the laity. We have turned a suspicious eye against the fundamental virtue of obedience, instead teaching that every man may do what appears right to him in his own mind.
Men are inspired by discipline. They are the ones who invented Boot Camp – and are disappointed now to find that it isn't any longer any great deal, not if you've been a wrestler or a football player in high school. Find out what the boy in the American prairies underwent to prove himself a man. What have we done?
We have eliminated almost every strenuous practice of self-denial from the common life of the Church. All we say is that if you are chewing gum during Mass, please to move it to the left side of your jaws so as to clear a space on the right to receive the Lord at Communion.
No ascetic life, no hierarchy, no brotherhood, no risk, no battle – no priests. And then there are the supernatural concerns, about which I will have more to say next time.
Father Z adds his own thoughts to the above among some of his gems:
I will now add to his point about serving Mass in corps of altar boys what I usually add when things liturgical come up: No initiative we undertake in the Church will succeed without a revitalization of our sacred worship.
We have to get all women and girls out of our sanctuaries and return to our Roman Church worship in our Roman, Latin Church parishes and chapels.
The above-mentioned Msgr. Schuler ran a parish famous for liturgical excellence and for sacred music. I mentioned the number of vocations. The door to the sacristy was open for young men to come in and don the cassock and serve. Boys, both from the K-12 school and from elsewhere, moved up year by year in the ranks, enrolling in the Archconfraternity of St. Stephen (the first chapter outside of England). Their tasks changed. The color of the medal cord changed. They taught the younger ones. The schola cantorum was open. The choir benches in the sanctuary were open to men when we sang Vespers on Sundays. The door of the rectory was open when seminarians and young men met. The priests acted like priests. The men saw the life. They were near the altar. They formed a corps and the corps formed them. Those who didn’t go into seminary wound up, usually, married and with great families.
