I am puzzled by the crisis of manhood we are currently experiencing in the United States – the same nation that forged alphas out of the wilderness, spearheaded efforts to defeat the Nazis, stepped up to the communists, and held out its muscular arms to welcome all of those seeking safety and shelter. Once upon a time, teenage boys vied over who would get to sit shotgun, were quick to the contest, and determined in the race. Now, they barely want to get their driver’s licenses, choosing, instead, to let their mothers cart them around while they sit in the back seats, fused to their phones. I am, of course, not the only one to make this sad observation. Jason M. Craig’s book Leaving Boyhood Behind is a thoughtful meditation on the state of men and boys in our current culture from the standpoint of the Catholic faith. A convert himself, Craig laments the fact that so many boys cling to their immaturity, having no rite of passage to make that crucial separation – number one – but number two, having no brotherhood of men to welcome them in. Both men and boys are left to bob around on the vast sea of our society with nothing to hold on to, nothing to define them, nothing to grow them into persons they were created to become.
Or, at least, that is the assumption. Craig points to a solution that has always been present, though swept under the rug by the forces of secularism.
Everybody needs meaning and purpose. Remove either and despair and angst will always be the result. When I came of age in the early 1990s, grunge bands like Nirvana were all the rage. Looking back, I can only conclude that the angst they were all projecting was a sign of the times. Their lyrics only made sense insofar as they didn’t. They were lost. Future suicides, many of them. Drug addicted. Checked out.
Now, the drugs have only become more potent. The reality in which we live more twisted. Where are the men? Where have they gone?
Pornography. Video games. Away from the universities and into the gun shops.
Why are there so many shootings? Voiced angst has become physically manifested. What once threatened the soul now threatens our schools and churches – nearly everywhere people congregate.
What, then, is the remedy? Craig has an answer. True masculinity can be recovered by a return to the rites and traditions that made this country strong to begin with. Not toxic. Not stereotypical. But real. Authentic in Christ. Authentic as Christ. Self-sacrificial and unapologetic. Boys and men must rediscover themselves in God’s design, for not to do so would be to relinquish a very noble responsibility. We cannot afford to sidestep this any longer. It is really as simple as that.
