"That Man Is You" Feb 3, 2023

That Man Is You!

Divine Mercy Parish is preparing to launch a Men’s Ministry group entitled That Man is You! That Man is You! honestly addresses the pressures and temptations that men face in our modern culture, especially those relating to their roles as husbands and fathers. The program harmonizes current social and medical science with the teachings of the Church and the wisdom of the saints to develop the vision of man fully alive! An informational session will be held this Friday, February 10th, at 6:15AM in the Parish Center. For more information and details on signing up, Click Here.

Why is Men’s Ministry and Men’s Formation so important in the Church today? The leaders of this emergent movement say the goal of programs like this is nothing less than complete restoration of the Catholic man. Think “band of brothers” over pockets of loners; would be-martyrs instead of has-been quitters. Virtue and service over vice, sin, and addiction. Every Catholic Caspar Milquetoast is being called to emulate Don John of Austria, who with the Holy League saved Christendom from the Ottoman Turks. Yesterday’s average Joe is being remolded as priest, prophet, and king—a bold and self-sacrificing leader in the model of Jesus and St. Joseph. The call has gone out: real Catholic men wanted. Rosary-praying, faith-defending spiritual warriors. Education and training will be provided. 

“Men need support and friendship of other Catholic men,” said Steve Ray, Catholic author, apologist, and creator of the Footprints of God documentary series. “We’re in a war, and men are starting to realize it. Life is getting tougher. We can no longer consider ourselves part of the flow of American culture.” Ray said the timing is right for men to reclaim their Catholic faith and be prepared to defend it. 

“Our society today is becoming very anti-Christian and especially anti-Catholic,” Ray said. “Our steeples go very high. We have very strong standards on morals and the world is going to hate us for it. Any man who stands up and says he is a Catholic and he believes what the Church teaches, he better be ready for a fight. That is why men are banding together. They are realizing we are going into a very difficult time in our country.” 

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, host of “Behold the Man” on EWTN, said Catholic men need to be challenged to embrace leadership roles. Faith-based Catholic men’s groups are starting to accomplish this sizable task. “The Holy Spirit has been working in the hearts of men for a number of years now,” said Burke-Sivers, a deacon at Immaculate Heart Catholic Church in Portland, Oregon. “Men’s conferences are popping up all over the country. We are finally responding boldly and courageously to the Holy Spirit’s call to serve, protect, and defend what God had entrusted to us as priests of our homes, families, church, and society.” 

The move toward more men’s faith formation and fellowship comes at a time the culture presents deadly serious challenges. Popular media portray men as weak, effeminate, dull, and indecisive. The culture celebrates homosexual lifestyles and actively encourages dissent from Catholic magisterial teaching on sacramental marriage, human sexuality, and the dignity of all human life. There are continuing ripples from priest sex-abuse cases. Confusion and scandal are spread by prominent Catholic institutions and politicians that brazenly defy Church teachings. Pornography wreaks havoc on men, their brains, and their souls. And what Pope St. John Paul II called the “culture of death” continues its assault on the most defenseless through the horrors of abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. 

“Men are, ironically, starved by the over-consumption of popular culture,” said Dave Durand, a business consultant, motivational speaker, and co-founder of Lighthouse Catholic Media. “They try to find satisfaction in utterly unsatisfying entertainment. In their core, they know there is more to life.” Durand said men can grow strong in their faith based on a simple invitation to a men’s group event. “I have learned that once the spark is lit, men take the learning by storm,” he said. “More than ever, there are excellent resources to feed their hunger, so lighting the spark is the great need. This only happens effectively when men tap each other on the shoulder and invite them in.”  

Burke-Sivers said while “Catholic men were created for greatness,” many have abdicated their roles by choosing to be “purveyors of immorality and mediocrity.” He said it’s time men took their Catholic faith more seriously and embraced their roles as leaders in the divine example of Jesus Christ. “The Catholic man is an endangered species,” he said. “Unlike other species who can trace their path toward extinction back to an extrinsic cause, Catholic men are destroying themselves by their own free-will choice. We choose pornography and masturbation over the one-flesh union of the conjugal act in marriage or the intimacy of celibate life. We choose abortion and contraception over serving, protecting, and defending a woman’s dignity. We choose spiritual sloth and laziness over witnessing to the truth of our faith with passion and conviction. We’ve become timid. We’ve stopped leading.” 

An examination of the “man situation” in the Catholic Church presents a dark picture, but also highlights major opportunities. Matthew James Christoff, founder of an apostolate called the New Emangelization, said between 11 million and 15 million adult men in the United States were raised Catholic, but have left the faith. Men are under-represented in the pews. About 60 percent of Catholic men are “casual Catholics” who might be at risk of leaving the faith, Christoff said. Three-quarters of Catholic men rarely go to confession. Just one-third go to Mass every week, and one-third don’t formally belong to a parish, Christoff said. Only half believe it is important to hand on their Catholic faith to the next generation. Less than half have any kind of prayer life. 

Christoff gathered statistical data to quantify the man crisis in the Church. He interviewed more than 70 people involved in the Church’s “New Evangelization” efforts to gain perspective and ideas. He conducted a 2,000-man survey on how to help priests become better at evangelizing men. “The whole project is geared to raise awareness of the fact there is this man crisis, that it’s widespread and it’s serious,” Christoff said. “Ultimately the crisis has a huge negative impact on the Church, on women, on children and greater society. You’ve got to make the case that the crisis exists, you’ve got to make the case for why it’s important and you’ve got to make the case that there are some clear and simple things we can do about it.” 

“If men get involved in their parishes, their parishes are going to grow,” Christoff said. “There is a direct correlation between men’s activity and involvement and the health of the parish.” The stakes in this crisis are huge. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, there are 28.9 million adults in the United States who were raised Catholic but left the faith. The number of former Catholics rose 51 percent between 2005 and 2014. Since men make up 46 percent of Catholic parishioners and 49 percent of the US population, that puts the number of former Catholic men at between 13.3 million and 14.2 million. Factor in millions of casual Catholic men who don’t go to Mass regularly and don’t know the faith and you have enough population to fill several small countries. 

Catholic leaders have called for men to embrace an authentic male spirituality, with Christ and St. Joseph as the models for holiness. “For many men, Jesus Christ is conceptual, abstract, or a distant historical figure. Far too often, Christ is portrayed as a ‘lady with a beard,’ a softish, false portrayal that men will not follow,” Christoff said. “What’s needed is for men to get to know the true Christ, the heroic and powerful Son of God who battles Satan and sin and is victorious. Men will follow the true Jesus, they always have.”

A disciple is one who hears, accepts, and puts into practice the teachings of Christ and His Church every day. The solution is for men to be real men and take leadership and ownership of their roles as servant leaders of our households, Church, and society.

Fr. Robert T. Cooper, Pastor
Divine Mercy Parish and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School