Friday, March 29, AD 2024 7:39am

Men Wanted

“MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.

SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON”

The above ad placed by Arctic explorer Shackleton received an overwhelming response.  Shackleton said that it seemed that every man and boy in England was desperate to go with him.  Attracting good men to a cause has never been difficult.   You must be completely honest with them.  Convince them that they will endure hardship and danger for a worthy cause.  Appeal to their senses of honor and adventure and that the sacrifices they make will be remembered and cherished.  Like so many simple and true things, the World and the Church have forgotten this.  Professor Anthony Esolen seeks to remind us of how we can foster vocations to the priesthood:

 

Do the obvious things that will attract men. You want men? Go get them. Tell them that you need them to do the job, which is true. Set up a men’s reading group, and read real works of theology and Catholic philosophy, works that are daunting in their significance for a deadening secular world. Read Romano Guardini, The Lord. Read Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Read C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man. Those, for starters. Invite teenage boys to join in, and treat them as absolute equals. Set up a weekly morning prayer in the rectory for the men of the parish, early enough to catch most of them before work. Let them pray on their knees, on the floor, as I’ve seen done at one extraordinarily vibrant parish in Connecticut. Let them hear a sermon that takes the truth to them and gives them their marching orders of the day. Notice how quickly and completely all the differences of class and education are forgotten.

Let them forge friendships in the vicinity of the sacraments. Announce a monthly meeting for men, for confession, discussion, and fellowship. Make sure there is food and beer.

The hymnals have been neutered. Get rid of the neutered hymnals. If you do not have the funds to replace Worship III, Gather, Glory and Praise, and others of that ilk with real hymnals, then incorporate into your worship some of the old manly hymns of the Church militant. We have copier machines; this can be done. At least once a month, sing one of those hymns. That is not much to ask! Sing Soldiers of Christ, Arise, or Fight the Good Fight, or Rise Up, O Men of God. The women will be happy to sing these too, if truth be known.

Return all attention at Mass to the action of Christ. What good and true man wants to give his life to a coffee klatsch? And Mass is not a coffee klatsch. It is not a comfy gathering of nice people with a taste for spirituality. It is the sacrifice of Christ, reenacted by the priest in persona Christi; it is the single holiest thing in the world. When J. R. R. Tolkien was writing to his son Michael, during the dark days of the German bombing of Britain, he told him to bind his heart to the Eucharist: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death.” Yes, Death, which on earth ends all, but whose foretaste in the Eucharist, says Tolkien, gives the dimension of depth and reality to all that we seek and love on this side of the grave.

So put the tabernacle where it belongs, in the central place of honor. Get every layman out of the sanctuary after the prayer of the faithful. Put the chair of the priest on the side. Get the singers out of the view of the aud –, I mean, the congregation. If you don’t have baritones, find one.

Do not reduce the Catholic faith to a political appendix. Preach Christ and Him crucified. Remember that human beings are unified only from above.

Men by and large have very little tolerance for bovine droppings and there has been a great abundance of that within the Church for the past half century.  Tell men that Christ is calling them to save souls, to suffer greatly for Him, and to lead the fight of the Church Militant with Him, and a shortage of priests will be a quaint artifact of a time best forgotten.

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Karl
Karl
Thursday, February 5, AD 2015 7:56pm

Nice dream.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, February 5, AD 2015 8:28pm

I am so impressed with Professor Esolen. I wish he would get a chance to talk directly with the Pope.
I guess there would have to be a translator from English to Spanish, and more importantly from conservative realism to nebulous progressivism. How would you get the pope, so soaked in his Argentinian viewpoint, on the footing to even understand where the professor is coming from.

Hanawaiman
Hanawaiman
Thursday, February 5, AD 2015 9:27pm

Amen . . . a big amen!

Philip
Philip
Friday, February 6, AD 2015 4:19am

This is what should of been said at the National Prayer Breakfast instead of a moronic discourse from a nit-witted sociopath dumbing down humanity with his arrogance and lies. Himself is the reason these young men will step up. So that we never again vote into the Presidential office a traitor Islamic cheat who can’t see his own nakedness as he tells the world how fashionable he is.

Great post. Great call to men!

Father of seven
Father of seven
Friday, February 6, AD 2015 5:20am

It takes humility to see the truths expounded above by Professor Esolen. That is why you will never hear such things from his Holiness and most of the Bishops.They know better. They have substituted something far superior to the 1900 years of misogynistic history they replaced. Just ask them.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Friday, February 6, AD 2015 6:32am

Well put. (I think I emailed this thought to Don) This call is especially important in these times of aggressive Islam and the calls for “militant Christian” are more important than we might think.

The fact is, all of us Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, need to realize that our enemies don’t distinguish between us, that we have to take evangelism more serious because if we don’t fight for the souls of the lost today, we’ll end up fighting (for real) their bodies tomorrow.

We’ll need men at some point. Either we get them to hold Bibles today, else we’ll beg them to wield rifles tomorrow.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, February 6, AD 2015 8:11am

It is Christ – His Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension – that inspires men, not this effeminate, limp-wristed, yellow-bellied cowardice that is called liberal progressivism. I am sick of the 1960 elevator music at Mass, and the clapping for the choir, and the weak-kneed luv-sloppy homilies of hippified nonsense.
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Jesus Christ was a REAL man. The Bible says that He set His face like flint to do what had to be done. He stood before the powerful Roman Governor Pontius Pilate and never waivered from His ground, doing so with neither whimper nor pleading for mercy. With nary a concern for His own fate, He told the women of Jerusalem that they were the ones to worry, for if these things are done now when the grass is green, then what will happen when it is dry? He knew what a real man had to do, and He did it. That’s what I want to be like.
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I hate today’s godless effeminate, gender-equality liberal progressive apostasy. And I am reminded of what that real MAN will be like when He returns (Revelation 19):
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11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but himself. 13 He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. 15 From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords.
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That’s what real Christian men want. Let the pink lavender clerics take their elevator music and their gender-equality homilies to hades with them.

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Friday, February 6, AD 2015 3:19pm

In which piece did he write this? I’d like to have a copy on hand, as well as whatever surrounded it.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Saturday, February 7, AD 2015 12:35pm

Nate, “We’ll need men at some point. Either we get them to hold Bibles today, else we’ll beg them to wield rifles tomorrow.” Too many today know little of the Bible and cannot tell one end of a rifle from the other. The remedy recommended herein is desperately needed.

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