A Book Review . . . Raising Boys With Heroic Virtues In An Age That Venerates Vice

By DEXTER DUGGAN

Raising Chaste Catholic Men: Practical Advice, Mom to Mom, by Leila Miller, LCB Publishing, Phoenix, Ariz., ISBN 978-0-9979893-0-4, 142 pages paperback, $11.95, 2016, raisingchastecatholicmen@gmail.com.

Raising children always has been a challenge of filling in the blanks. Innocent little ones may ask many questions without grasping how much they truly need to learn. And their new souls quickly become a target of the Devil’s designs. Look no further than the Bible for ages-old stories of young people gone astray, then, one hopes, redeemed through God’s grace.
Instilling moral wisdom was a demanding task when social rules stayed the same for generations or centuries. How much harder today, when aggressive secularism overthrows millennia of truth in a generation.
Author Leila Miller, a Catholic “revert,” blogger, and mother of eight children, writes that when she first became a parent only 25 years ago, she never could have imagined the day when she’d be raising offspring in surroundings where “gay marriage” is put on par with natural marriage. Families are immersed in a society often sundered from tradition. What to do?
In this, her first book, inspirational blogger Miller focuses on one aspect of the challenge, raising chaste young men — six of her children are male — but her insights apply more generally. And she repeatedly reminds readers of encouragements to go forward in trust, beginning with the words of our Lord Himself against wasting time in worry.
In a world that didn’t come into existence by chance, it’s no accident that each of us is alive at this particular time. Miller cites Pope Benedict XVI, “who reminds us that we were made for this moment, and we are meant to be here on this planet right now.”
Toward the end of the book, Miller counsels against despair for lack of a perfect situation, because discouragement comes from the Devil, not Christ: “…take every opportunity to make yourself an amateur expert on the teachings of human sexuality, on the vision of the Church, and on the design of God’s creation. Be sure to enlist others around you for support.”
Fearful of loose ends and unrealized goals? Miller concludes her thoughts with the powerful words of the woman born Edith Stein, put to death by the German National Socialists but triumphant in history and in Heaven as the canonized St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross:
“And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands, and leave it with Him.”
That kind of encouragement is exactly what’s needed in a world not simply adrift from reality but determined to overwhelm and crush its inhabitants into conforming to its evils.
Take permissive abortion. The dominant elite’s message pounded into everyone every day is that this abomination actually is a sacred, fundamental constitutional right, the most precious and delightful of rights, never to be questioned in the least but always to be loved and promoted.
In her pro-life household, Miller writes, the time arose when each of her children had to have an explanation of what this thing is they were praying against. Somehow, the innocent little ones didn’t react to abortion with the ardor and enthusiasm of jaded Supreme Court justices and almighty dishonest editors.
Perhaps because little ones are closer to babyhood themselves, even a softened explanation of what abortion means — making the baby come out too soon — left them recoiling. “Disbelief, confusion, denial, horror. . . .
“They really get the evil of it,” Miller writes. “You don’t have to paint a picture or get graphic. Children are naturally pro-life, and the idea of someone deliberately killing a child in his mother’s womb is so foreign to small children as to be absurd, nonsensical, insane. Their little minds sense the disorder immediately, and reject it.”
To the accusation that the Catholic Church is obsessed with sex, Miller suggests that idea comes from outside the Church, not within a Church where people hardly ever may hear the topic mentioned in a homily — even though the unreligious, fixated culture at large assaults everyone with sexual provocations daily.
Miller offers parenting advice with the understanding it’s not a magic or guaranteed formula, but “the equivalent of one Catholic mom sitting down over a cup of tea with another mom in my kitchen, to talk informally but quite seriously about navigating this culture with your boys’ morality and chastity intact — and to give you the confidence you need to do just that.”
She says being both a parent and a friend to one’s children isn’t mutually exclusive. Based on her personal trial and error, “parenting and friendship can coexist, so long as the parenting part stays firmly in place and takes priority if there is a conflict between the two.”
It’s no surprise that raising eight children isn’t a breeze, but she seems to have sipped from the Fountain of Youth along the way. Also, her return to an active practice of the Catholic faith gives her confidence and a grasp of life that she almost let slip away.
This is how Miller concludes “My Reversion Story” at her “Little Catholic Bubble” blog (littlecatholicbubble.blogspot.com.tr):
“While I lament that I never knew my own Faith until I was 28 years old, I know that I cherish it so dearly precisely because I almost lost it. I know that God’s ways are not man’s ways, and I am forever grateful that He chose this way to lead me back home. I pray that He might lead all other lost Catholics home as well.”
Dominant modern culture takes the view that religion may be tolerated mildly but not taken seriously. But it’s inescapably imperative to regard sexual identity as so fluid that it may be changed at will or whim.
Miller laments a feminist blogger who grounds her six-year-old son when he dares show a heroic masculine trait like rescuing a princess. Miller writes: “My heart broke when I read this! This primal, vital, God-given instinct of a boy to be protector, provider, and hero is disparaged and made grounds for punishment by the first woman in his life.”

Impoverished Masculinity

Steady doses of such alienation exert serious harm throughout society. Barack Obama is an unfortunate major example, a lonely little boy longing for the father who abandoned him but victimized by the propaganda of his radical feminist, left-wing mother whose first name was Stanley.
We’re all responsible for our acts, but when God sits in judgment of people who have just died, He is aware of what has twisted people like Obama into choosing to be narcissistic, cold, lying lawbreakers.
Miller writes that she doesn’t mean to “pick on” Obama, but gives an example of a man “trained out of manhood (who) champions abortion, gay ‘marriage,’ ‘gender fluidity,’ no-fault divorce, and the radical feminism of today. . . . He is left with an impoverished masculinity, and the whole world suffers for it.”
Yes, the morally traditional person faces difficulties today, but, Miller writes, “God honors our efforts more than we realize.”
As I was multi-tasking by reading this book on masculine heroism while listening to a conservative radio program on November 4, God showed His hand again, I think, as Phoenix’s KKNT talk host Seth Leibsohn cited a bit of Talmudic wisdom: “Where there is no man, be a man.”