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To Be a Man

What does it mean to be a man in this confused time, especially if you deny, as I do, virtues applicable only to men, and which, supposedly, allow us to crack the code and know what it means to be a man? I don’t think it’s that special, actually, and I certainly don’t think it is recognizable only in some stereotypically masculine form.
Again we keep Thanksgiving Day; again we have the chance to become grateful, and not just for this single day. Again we are able to hold those we love, to feast in body and soul, and to become attuned to the freshness deep down in all things.
A self-governed people are not merely those who are allowed to vote. More than that, a self-governed people direct their own judgments, attention, choice, and emotion.
If today we are tempted to gloat or despair, curse or mock, it would be far better for ourselves and our children to quietly pray or study, rake the leaves, invite a neighbor to dinner, play a game, or work in the garage: all the things that a self-reliant, free, and sober people do.
This election will come and go, and the results will be, as usual, a mixed bag. There are better and worse alternatives, of course, and I have my own judgments and evaluations about such things, as does everyone else. Rather, I’m thinking about a mood too prevalent among conservatives in our time, one where gratitude, patience, caution, and fidelity have given way to anger, panic, urgency, and bile. Such are not conservative, nor are they good for us or our opponents, and they are likely to make things far, far worse. 
These essays are not provided out of callousness or a lack of empathy, but if we are to be responsible, we must be well-informed so that we can judge and choose in keeping with the truth of things.
Sex, while personal, isn’t private. Another person is involved, so it’s of interest to society and the state, as are children and family. The whole human dynamic, all of it, wouldn’t exist without people—to state the obvious—and the decline of marriage and fertility affects the future of everything and everyone.
Social conservatives serve a noble cause, and any populism ignoring their concerns is a populism not worth supporting.
The protests are not simply about Gaza, but concern incompatible ways of life and value. They are another moment in the long rejection of Western metaphysics, anthropology, ethics, and epistemology by Westerners coming of age in a culture that teaches them to despise their own civilization.
It’s a good day for sorrow, a habit sustaining our decency, humanity, patience, and courage for all the other days yet to come. All days bring their challenges, and there is much in our day to bemoan and condemn. Fair enough, but to have the courage and steadfastness needed to continue on, day in and day out, our sorrow serves us well.  
Thomas Aquinas had an intellect fully alive. We might not share his title of Doctor of Humanity, but we have the same obligation: to cheerfully explore all, in service of all, for the good of all.
The antidote to despair is not perfect politics, an impossibility, a mere ideology; the cure is hope. Moral panic reveals despair at the state of things: craving the fullness of the kingdom of heaven now, but upon discovering decadence and depravity—and who can deny our time’s troubles—responding with the sadness of despair. Despair cannot be overcome with certainty or perfection, but only by hope and the truth of concrete action undertaken in the light of hope.
In the past fifteen years, we’ve published articles on the moral, cultural, religious, and political issues of our time, including the most controversial and sensitive; but we have done so in a manner of which we can be proud, respecting the intellect and personhood of our readers, interlocutors, and intellectual contestants.
There is no romance without the real presence of God, no sacramental imagination without the sacraments, and the wonders of fantasy cannot be asserted of primary reality itself.
The coalition of the sensible is not a coalition of the soft, the weak, the “can’t we all get along?,” or the squishy moderate. This is not a mood calling for peace, peace, when there is no peace; neither is it compromise for its own sake or a winking cynicism about the possibility of moral rights and wrongs. The coalition of the sensible is statecraft, and the realization that statecraft is not found in imaginary utopias, dreams of perfection, or big, brash theories of politics, but in the actual details of human action.
We are attempting a struggle against a dehumanizing revolution—but we are all attempting to overcome the same common threat. City building isn’t pretty, and it isn’t all that calm. At the same time, in our efforts against revolution, we should not respond with our own revolution.
“What I see in modern America is something maybe a little bit different than what other folks see. I think the nation vis-à-vis its laws is far more just than it has been at virtually any point in its previous history. Racial discrimination is outlawed de jure. You have an extension of the First Amendment to all American communities. You have greater religious freedoms in a concrete way than we’ve ever enjoyed in the history of the United States. We have a lot of problems, but we’re better than we’ve been.”
Benedict lived in a faithless time when people lost themselves and their hope. He reminded them of who they were, and who they could be—children and heirs of God. What good fortune we had to have lived at a time when a man such as this taught us.
Reading recommendations from Public Discourse and the Witherspoon Institute.
For too long we’ve imagined the rights of parents, rights of conscience, and religious freedom in overly-individualistic ways, which has encouraged a privatization of these rights. But the rights of the natural family and the rights of the Church are among the most important rights. Therefore, the rights of the natural family quite easily trump the claims made by the pornographers and drag queens to access the public library.
North Park isn’t the only Christian university with inner turmoil about human sexuality. Not just colleges and administrations, but denominations and pastors have collapsed and caved on these teachings as well. Some of this is a lack of courage, a failure of spine in the face of cultural disdain; some of this is personal, an experience of a child or friend whose sexual appetites do not easily fit doctrine, and so doctrine must change. But it is always a loss of faith.
For the rationalist or fundamentalist character, hope cannot but seem inadequate, even corny. Such a character has a rage for order and cannot but suffer an anxious repulsion for disorder. Hope, on the other hand, is not blind, or merely optimistic, nor is hope something we churn up in ourselves as a kind of subjective attitude. Hope, rather, is a virtue. It is a state that perfects us, makes us well, capable of thinking, living, and acting in the freedom of excellence.
Perhaps maturity requires moderating our admiration for the intellectuals, the clerks, and the clever types. Surely a person of good judgment, stolid character, and immoveable rectitude is every bit as praiseworthy as the inventive and the quick—and in political and social life far more important.
It is a day to praise those stalwart men and women who kept faith, for half a century kept faith, and who today might cite the words of the poet, “now the great vision which we dared believe through slow and savage years is our own.”