If you haven’t seen enough rebarbative assholitude enough lately, there’s always Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. The lovely man did an interview with a lovely site called The New Emangelization – see what they did there?
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke: I think there has been a great confusion with regard to the specific vocation of men in marriage and of men in general in the Church during the past 50 years or so. It’s due to a number of factors, but the radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.
Unfortunately, the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men; the importance of the father, whether in the union of marriage or not; the importance of a father to children; the importance of fatherhood for priests; the critical impact of a manly character; the emphasis on the particular gifts that God gives to men for the good of the whole society.
The goodness and importance of men became very obscured, and for all practical purposes, were not emphasized at all.
Yup – men are the forgotten sex now. Why, look at the Catholic church itself! The pope is a woman, almost all the cardinals are women, most of the bishops are women, more than half of all priests are women –
Hahahaha totally kidding. The real numbers are zero, zero, zero, and zero. No Girls Allowed.
But outside the church though – yeah, there, women have stolen everything. Look at movies – it’s so hard to find a movie where a man even gets to talk, with all the women crowding them out. And in government? Corporations? Tech? Women women women, as far as the eye can see.
A child’s relationship with their father is key to a child’s self‑identification, which takes places when we are growing up. We need that very close and affirming relationship with the mother, but at the same time, it is the relationship with the father, which is of its nature more distant but not less loving, which disciplines our lives. It teaches a child to lead a selfless life, ready to embrace whatever sacrifices are necessary to be true to God and to one another.
The good cardinal seems to be confusing his religion with his memories of sitcoms from the 1950s.
I recall in the mid-1970’s, young men telling me that they were, in a certain way, frightened by marriage because of the radicalizing and self-focused attitudes of women that were emerging at that time. These young men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a constant and insistent demanding of rights for women. These divisions between women and men have gotten worse since then.
Because marriage just can’t work unless it’s between a superior and an inferior. Equality is a non-starter.
Sadly, the Church has not effectively reacted to these destructive cultural forces; instead the Church has become too influenced by radical feminism and has largely ignored the serious needs of men.
I’ve noticed that! The church is so influenced by radical feminism – its attitude to abortion, its attitude to allowing women to be priests and bishops and cardinals and popes, its generosity toward nuns – it all adds up.
The Church becomes very feminized. Women are wonderful, of course. They respond very naturally to the invitation to be active in the Church. Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women. The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.
Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church’s effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.
That’s a pleasant way of seeing things – that if there are more women around, men will be so grossed out that they’ll leave. Thanks, Card.
Aspects of the Church’s life that emphasized the man‑like character of devotion and sacrifice have been deemphasized. Devotions that required time and effort were simply abandoned. Everything became so easy and when things are easy, men don’t think it is worth the effort.
Ah and women are lazy, too.
That’s enough Cardinal for me for the moment.
Assholes in the catholic church!?!
Say it ain’t so….
They played the Pantages last month, but I was down with the flu.
Yet I don’t feel at all marginalized, and I never saw any evidence of an assault on the Church, though there were a lot of church folk complaining about this imagined assault.
The importance of fatherhood for priests?
What? I thought that wasn’t allowed.
…the radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.
Whereas the forcible rape of boys by men within Catholic Church schools, and the systematic and long-running covering-up and enabling of such crimes, had no bad effects at all on boys or men. None at all. No matter what men do, the worst harm is always the fault of women.
He needs to get pregnant and see what true sacrifice is.
“These young men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a constant and insistent demanding of rights for women. These divisions between women and men have gotten worse since then.”
Equal rights = division. Interesting, I would’ve thought the opposite.
I don’t see any problem. They can just rework the marriage vows to leave out the ‘ til death do us part’ and substitute ’til she disobeys and then I can run back to my Fortress of Assholitude and cry.’
“Aspects of the Church’s life that emphasized the man‑like character of devotion and sacrifice have been deemphasized. Devotions that required time and effort were simply abandoned. Everything became so easy and when things are easy, men don’t think it is worth the effort.”
Oh, totally! Actively watching three football games on television every Sunday is more appealing than just sitting in church. In the first case, they’re actively doing something — watching! In the second, they’re just passively watching!
Yah, I used to be Catholic. I stopped going to Mass because I was tired of the constant pro-choice, pro-abortion sermons. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. “Blah blah blah power to the Sisters! blah blah blah”. Every freakin’ week! And when they started passing out free birth control in the church lobbies? Sorry, that was a bit too much for me.
Women do go to church more than men do. I think Amanda Marcotte’s theory is right. Taking the kids to church on Sunday morning is just another one of the thankless chores that women get stuck with.
Just for fun, read replacing every instance of “Church” or “family” etc. with “video games” or “hobby”.
Ibis3, 🙂
Spiritual fatherhood, the good father means. You know, that distant-but-loving quality that disciplines our lives. It’s a guy thing, which is why women can’t be priests.
Well, this is the guy who got demoted by Pope Francis last November. What we’re seeing, I think, is exactly the sort of attitude that got him shuffled off to Malta.
Not that I’m saying Pope Francis is any icon of feminism himself – at best, he’s the least worst. But Cardinal Burke is exactly the opposite of an influential voice among the Cardinals.
So it’s official, then? The church has cooties?
Spiritual cooties. Possibly exacerbated by their spiritual Alzhheimers.
Something about “shuffled off to Malta” is cracking me up. It’s like a number from a Vatican vaudeville revue.
I can’t find the cite right now, but didn’t he also blame feminism for child-raping priests? Because Real Men (TM) didn’t enter the priesthood because the church was so feminized, or some such?
Well, I am a man, and I am reluctant to become active in the church…
…but I think it’s probably because of the whole I-don’t-believe-in-gods thing rather than some theoretical “feminization” thing. I might be wrong though! 😉
I’d be fascinated to know what golden age of manly involvement the demoted Cardinal is referencing. The church has always* been cast as an emasculator of men and a masculinizer of women. The demoted Cardinal will find that the traditional male attitude to the church and the men who ran it was one of respectful contempt; the priesthood made up of “mama’s boys” or not “real” men.
And the work of the church – the cleaning, the candles, the flowers, the prayers, the choirs, mass attendance – was the purview of women and children.
*I say “always” but I must admit that I only really know that these attitudes were held among the peasantry and working-class of modern (ie. post-1801) Italy. I’m sure the same is true for Ireland and other predominately Catholic countries though.
Anecdata time: I remember being a young girl, in the late 1960s, and remembering how much I hated going to church because it was quite obvious to me even as a preschooler that as a girl, I was 1) expected to go to church all the time *and* expected to hope to be picked to clean the church when I was older, and 2) looked down upon simply because I was a girl. My parents’ church was Catholic, but as I got older, I went to different churches (Baptist, Church of Christ) with friends, and know what? The anti-woman crap was every bit as loud there, too.
Actually going to church regularly was what made me realize it was all misogynistic baloney in grade school (even though I didn’t know the word misogynist then), and that I wanted no part of it.
The summer I was 12, my parents made me read the Bible. That was the final nail in the coffin–the Bible itself is the most women-hating, violent piece of writing I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.
Well, he is forced to wear a frumpy red satin dress. So: women!
The demoted Cardinal will find that the traditional male attitude to the church and the men who ran it was one of respectful contempt; the priesthood made up of “mama’s boys” or not “real” men.
Literally, the spares. In the Ancien Regime, the first son was assumed to take over the family business. The second would go into the military, and the third (the spare) into the clergy. Which is why Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Duplessis) wound up being a cardinal, when he was really pretty much born a soldier. Of course Richelieu was a manly man who accessorized his red satin cardinal’s dress with front-and-back armor. He was kind of a badass. I’m sure that’s the kind of manly man the Cardinal is swooning over.