What We’re Up Against

I found this two and a half year old video on YouTube a couple of weeks ago and have been wanting to post about it, but the timing just never seemed right to me.  I watched it again today and have some thoughts to share.  The video is below, but before you watch it, please be forewarned that many, if not all, of the elements of the video are incorrect.  Blatant disregard for the respect of men is apparent and falsehoods are rampant throughout.  Take a look and then we’ll discuss the problems.

First off, men are portrayed as lower-than Neanderthals in this video, that all we want is sex.  This perception comes from the large numbers of men who make this true.  For those of us who defy this stereotype, we have a long road ahead of us.  Men, if you fall into this stereotype, I challenge you to change your thinking, make better choices and being striving for virtue.  Come on, get with the program.

Secondly, many men have a hard time being friends with women because they 1. don’t know what friendship is, 2. are selfish, 3. have a vastly skewed view of the true beauty of women and 4. have never had an honest and pure relationship with a female.  All of these issues may, in many cases, stem from a man’s use of, exposure to or addiction to pornography.  Pornography has a devastating effect on men, their psyche and their ability to relate with other members of society.  Some men simply don’t know how to interact with others, specifically, women, but pornography creates a serious impediment to having healthy relationships.

Next, the video portrays men as liars.  If we want a solid relationship, we can’t lie.  Honesty, with prudence and tact, is always the best way to go.  Which brings us to the next part of the video… the questions from women.  As a married man, with lots of experience with this, let me help you out.  When the woman you are involved with (courting, engaged to, married to, etc.) asks a question (usually in the form of a rhetorical question), she may be looking for something specific from you in the answer.  If you’re married, and your wife asks “Do you think Angelina Jolie is prettier than me?” you quickly answer (truthfully) “No way.”  Simple.  The reason you’re “supposed to say no” is merely a way of affirming your wife’s beauty.  She shouldn’t really care if Angelina Jolie is prettier in reality or not, and neither should you.  (Personally, I don’t find Angelina Jolie pretty at all, so that answer is easy for me.)

“Do these jeans make me look fat?” – the answer is ‘no’.  You’re not lying, you’re affirming your wife’s beauty.  If the pants aren’t flattering, say so, but do it with charity and prudence, talking specifically about the jean’s deficiencies and never about your wife.  With both of these questions (prettier women and looking fat) they aren’t really asking you for your opinion on the matter, they may be trying to validate the relationship or your deep love for her.  Instead of letting it get to that point, I recommend affirming, complimenting and encouraging your wife well before these sorts of questions come up.  This should happen regularly.  I’m not perfect at it, so take it from me, you can make a lot of ground by answering quickly and positively.  This is always good to say – “I love you.  You’re incredible.  You’re beautiful and I’m lucky to have you.”  To some, this might sound like a canned lie response.  Let’s be clear here, I’m not saying that you should lie to her.  I’m suggesting that you believe those things and get to a point in your relationship where you really see the inner and outer beauty, the incredible nature of your wife and realize just how lucky you are.  Again, as I said before, if we want to be in a solid relationship, we cannot lie.

As for the last part of the video, if you “hear” this way, you’ve obviously got issues.  Don’t let anyone treat you like this, it’s degrading and disrespectful.  I encourage all men to not only hear, but listen.  Listening is the act of being attentive to what is being said.  Hearing is merely allowing your ears to do what they were created to do.

Men, this sort of video is rampant on the internet, in movies and television shows, in emails, songs and printed media.  If we want to change the perception of men, and challenge the men who are the way the video portrays all men to be, then we better get to work.  Start by cherishing your wife and encouraging her.

TrueMan up!

CatholicTV.com Interview

I am blessed to have been interviewed on CatholicTV.com today.  Thank you to Bonnie Rodgers, as well as Jay Fadden and Fr. Reed.  The interview flew by… I wish I would have had a bit more time to discuss men’s issues, as well as promote my talks and retreats that are available for men’s groups, parishes, youth progams, young adult programs, Catholic high schools & colleges and men’s conferences & events.

Here’s the video of the show.  (My segment is around 9:25-15:18.)  If you can’t view the video, click HERE.

TrueManhood.com on CatholicTV.com

I’m excited to announce that TrueManhood.com will be featured on CatholicTV.com on Friday, August 27, 2010!  I am honored and privileged to have been invited onto their program called “This is the Day”.  The show airs on Friday, LIVE at 1030am EASTERN, with rebroadcasts all week.  Please join me in celebrating this new endeavor for our ministry!

Although I’ll only be visible via internet video (hopefully the technology works properly!), it will be a big step and lots of exposure for us!  Tune in.

For more information, please visit CatholicTV.com.

Sweet Spot Between the Sacred and the Secular

“God, Sex and the Universal Longing”…

An incredible event is happening in my hometown in just about one month. It’s already happened in a few cities around the country, and will most likely be coming to a city near you in the coming months. The event is called Fill These Hearts (FTH). FTH is a four hour long info-concert, centered around beauty, art, music, philosophical teachings on the “Theology of the Body” and an all around incredible night that will open eyes and win hearts.  Christopher West and Mike Mangione & The Union Band will present an awesome night that is sure to please.

I don’t promote every event that comes along, but want to promote this event for a few reasons:

1. Everyone needs to hear, learn and live the Church’s beliefs found in Theology of the Body.  (Christopher West makes these teachings/principles livable, relevant and understandable.)
2. Men, especially, enjoy visually stimulating images.  This event has that.  This event is great for men of all ages and for men at every stage along a faith journey. 
3. Beauty, in our society, has been so distorted.  Christopher and the rest of the FTH team are diligently working to win back beauty.   Beauty raises our hearts and our minds to God, the source of all true beauty.
4. Theology of the Body has converted hearts, won over marriages, encouraged births, saved men from pornography and many other wonderful things.  Theology of the Body is not just a set of teachings but is a way of life. 

I highly encourage everyone to get to the next Fill These Hearts event that is in your area.  For more info, or to buy tickets, go to the FTH website at http://fillthesehearts.com/.  (Check out the trailer on the TrueManhood.com Home page.)

TrueMan up!

GUEST POST – “What Our Culture Has to Say about Fatherhood”

THIS IS A GUEST POST FROM PREVIOUS TRUEMANHOOD.COM GUEST POSTER, AND US ARMY HERO, RYAN KRAEGER.  THANKS RYAN!

Earlier this week, when I had no time to write, this post about whether men want to be daddies anymore caught my eye. Fitting as it did into my current musings on fatherhood in general, I read the post. It wasn’t bad, it made some good points, although it went a little too far the other way in some spots, but I’ll accept the hyperbole as that. Then, I scrolled down to read the comments. The poor kid got flamed. Some college kid somewhere stands up and calls out the men of our generation for failing at life and he gets three basic responses:

1) Who would want to be a father if that’s what it means? All that responsibility! You have to think about yourself. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

2) I don’t fail at fatherhood/I won’t fail when I get out of college, stop partying and hooking up and settle down to it. You have to have your fun first, then you settle down and do the whole dad thing.

3) Awwwww, that’s so cute! (Take it from me, that ubiquitous female accolade is ten times more annoying than the worst insults of the most hateful men out there.) If more men were like you, me and my girlfriends wouldn’t keep ending up with losers.

I counted only two rational response that acknowledged the good points and politely corrected the exaggerations.

I’m not even going to address #3. Yes, I lament the number of losers in the world, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that any woman ever has to “end up” with one. That makes it sound like it just sort of happens to you somehow and you just don’t know how. Responsibility goes both ways.

But the other two are male problems, and those I will address. #1 and #2 are two sides to the same coin. #1 is just a little more honest than #2. The first one simply acknowledges, “Hey, I just want to have fun and do my own thing. I don’t want to have kids, because kids would cramp my style. And if I did have kids by accident, well, I can keep them off to the side while I do the really important stuff.” The only self-deception comes when they call it something other than plain, ordinary selfishness. “Looking out for myself, taking care of number 1, etc.” These are all euphemisms for selfishness. And while the original poster did exaggerate a little, saying that fatherhood should be a father’s only vocation, it certainly should be his primary vocation and the reason and source for all his other vocations.

#2 is a little more subtle. It’s quite true that there are freedoms a single man enjoys which are not available to a married man. In fact, that is the major reason why I have not married. However, it does not follow that these freedoms are simply carte-blanche to enjoy yourself any way you want to. Take this as a principle: If you are single, that is your responsibility. Just as marriage is the responsibility of married, so singleness is the responsibility of single people. It is not just a free pass to goof off, it is a vocation. It is just as much a style cramper as being married with kids. If not, then either your style is so perfected it needs no cramping, or you’re not doing it right.

Particularly telling is one commentor who said, “I don’t think this post is addressed to college age guys. It said ‘men’ not ‘boys’.” What?! What is wrong with our society? There is no way you can tell me that a guy is a “boy” until he graduates from college. If he isn’t a man by the time he graduates highschool, then his father is setting him up for failure because out here only the men survive. No one expects him to be an old man, or a middle-aged man, or even a fully mature man. He’s a young man, but a young man is still a man. For certain, he’d better not be some irresponsible boy. No one is knocking college kids for not assuming the responsibilities of married life. I’m knocking these guys for not assuming the responsibilities of their current state. The point is not which responsibilities you are shirking, the point is that if you are shirking responsibilities now, that is part of your character, and it will still be part of your character when you get married, or irresponsibly father a child out of wedlock.

So what does a father with three kids and a minivan have in common with a late teen, early twenties kid who still has pimples on his face, and rocks a falling apart beater full of textbooks and McDonalds bags? What they have in common is that they are both men. The vocation of manhood is always, in all cases, a vocation of self-gift, and so to the extent that either man gives of himself, he is living that vocation. To the extent that he is not giving, he is quite literally failing at life. The only difference is how and to whom he gives. A father gives himself to his wife and children. A college kid gives himself in a ton of other ways. The freedom from the responsibilities of married life are intended to give him the freedom to give himself in these other ways, whether as a student, campus minister, volunteer, missionary, soldier, worker, seminarian, or even simply by praying. The “simple” act of prayer is an act of self-gift, even of total self-gift since it is a total surrender to God’s will for the sake of another.

Our culture tells us that it’s normal and healthy to spend a few irresponsible years between highschool and thecommencement of the American dream, in order to “find yourself” “sow the wilds oats” or “get it out of your system.” The idea is that having had your fun you’ll be ready to take on the responsibilities of your chosen vocation when college is over. Well, that is a damning lie. It’s damning us as a culture. Even if that wild time doesn’t leave you with STD’s, a number of illegitimate children who may never have a stable family, if they even make it into this world, and alcohol or drug addictions, isn’t it quite likely that, instead of getting all the wildness out of your system, it might just leave you with an itch for that sort of thing that might just tug at you in the midst of your newly wedded bliss. You don’t magically become a mature, self-sacrificing, responsible man simply by virtue of fathering a child, or getting married. You can only build on the foundation you have, and if the foundation you have laid by the time you reach that milestone is rotten, you’re going to have some tearing down to do before you can build anything worth building.

The failure of fatherhood in the West, is not the problem it is the symptom. The problem is the failure of manhood. Our culture asks who would sign themselves up for the “prison sentence” of fatherhood. It’s a just question because the vocation is not for wimps. Only a man could look it in the eye, count the cost, and step forward. As long as we are not expecting our young men to be real men, we will continue to have broken homes, broken hearts, and fatherless children. We reap what we sow.

The Rosary – A Life Saver

Glenn Hockton, a 19 year old British soldier, claims that a rosary saved his life in battle while deployed to the Middle East.  The rosary was a gift from his mother “for protection”.  Apparently, Glenn noticed that the rosary he had around his neck had fallen off and so he bent down to pick it up.  At that time, he noticed that he was standing on a land mine.  He stood on the mine for 45 minutes while his fellow soldiers disarmed it.

I normally wouldn’t write about anything British, but I found this story interesting.  Hockton claims to also have been shot on a previous deployment, although that time, his body armor saved his life.

The power of the Rosary is incredible.  For those who don’t know, it’s a mixture of repetitive prayer mixed with meditative prayer.  The repetitive prayers are mostly made up of the Hail Mary (all Scriptural, by the way) and the meditative prayers are made up of thinking about (aka: meditating on) the various periods of Christ’s life; ie, the Incarnation and His childhood, then the heart of His ministry, then His passion & death and then the Resurrection and Heavenly imagery of Mary’s Queenship, as Queen Mother (also Scriptural).  The Rosary is an incredible prayer and has played a role in the conversion of many hearts, including mine.  I urge you to dive into the Rosary and see what happens!

Back to the story of Glenn Hockton… his great-grandfather, a soldier in the British military, also claims to have been saved in battle during WWII by the rosary.  Interestingly enough, Hockton’s great-grandfather’s last name was Truman (TrueMan).

TrueMan up!