By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Trying to live faith without love and baffled by the struggle to persevere and is like showing up for a game without practice and expecting to win.
In last week’s column I wrote about Steve Wood’s dire assessment of the scandal caused by the interim synod Relatio Disceptationem. Although there are dissenters like Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, plenty agree with his view, including Raymond Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., that the use of the document is a Trojan horse to the get the camel’s nose of heterodoxy further under the tent of the Church.
Others are joining the chorus of protest, like Msgr. Charles Pope who blogs under the banner of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Last week he decried the feminization of the liturgy and in the life of many parishes.
The following from his column, “In These Dark Days, the Church Needs Her Men To Be Men,” develops Wood’s theme and gives it further credibility:
“It has often been observed that men are rather disengaged from the practice of the faith and attendance at the Sacred Liturgy. Frankly, there is a reason — not a politically correct one, but a reason nonetheless. Most of the men I talk to find the Church rather feminized. There is much talk in the Church about forgiveness and love, about receptivity and about being ‘nicer.’ These are fine virtues, all of them necessary. But men also want to be engaged, to be sent into battle, to go forth and make a difference.
“After years of radical feminism, men are shamed for seeking to take up leadership and authority in their families and in the Church. It starts early. Any normal boy is full of spit and vinegar, is aggressive, competitive, and anxious to test his wings. But many boys are scolded, punished, and even medicated for these normal tendencies. They are told to behave more like girls and to learn to be nicer and to get along, etc.
“It will be granted that limits are necessary, but the tendency for boys to roughhouse is normal. The scolding and ‘socializing’ to more feminine traits continues apace into early adulthood. And then there are other cultural phenomena such as the slew of ‘Men are stupid’ commercials, etc.”
Men are called to be the leaders in their families and, first things first, must be leaders in the family’s practice of the faith. The dad has the role of making sure everybody gets up, dressed, and out the door on time. Many Catholic families associate failure and struggle more with their faith than they do the joy of victory.
This is because there is division within these families about the priority of placing first things first. God is the first among all priorities if He is in fact to be God for us. Anything less than that and He is forced to compete with idols.
A home-schooling family in my parish with a total of nine children, seven of the them still at home, manages to get all seven young ones dressed in church clothes and out the door, after which they then proceed to travel at least a half hour each Sunday in order to get to the Traditional Latin Mass that they prefer at our parish. They also attend Mass on solemnities such as All Saints, which fell on a Saturday this year.
Some other families with one or two children often are seen, on the other hand, dragging themselves in, dressed in very casual apparel which requires little time or effort, looking halfhearted and sometimes even miserable. They do not appear to know or care why they are there.
What is going on at home that leads to this quandary of a halfhearted and lackluster practice of the faith that often ends in complete falling away? God is obviously in these cases also not a priority in daily life. How this is to happen is a somewhat more difficult subject to touch on for the reason that there are so many options offered to families for bringing God and faith into the home.
Prayer certainly must be the priority among Catholic methods for Godliness at home. I would suggest that the standard prayer before meals is not enough. Families can pray the rosary together, led by the father with all members present, perhaps on Sunday evening before everybody prepares to go in different directions in anticipation of the coming week. Members can take turns leading the decades while the family meditates further on the celebration of the Lord’s Day and its role of living out the covenant of faith.
There are many ways that the family can practice during the week in order to prep for the “big game” at Mass on Sunday. Practice makes perfect: “Be perfect for your heavenly Father is perfect.”
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(Follow Fr. Cusick on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. Father blogs occasionally at APriestLife.blogspot.com and mcitl.blogspot.com. You can email him at mcitl.blogspot.com@gmail.com.)
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