Becoming Men of Virtue

Beginning with what we know by nature and through the Scriptures, men, first of all, are called to fatherhood, and thus to exemplify on earth and through various vocations - as priests, husbands, fathers - the one Fatherhood of God, the God from whom “all paternity in heaven and earth is named”, as St Paul says (Eph 3:15). The increase in single mothers who are abandoned by irresponsible men; the increase in children who thus do not know their fathers; the perpetuation of the Peter Pan syndrome among men; the clerical abuse crisis; and the refusal of priests to lead people in faith and to teach the Gospel in all its fullness: these are all some of the signs of a sinful failure to exemplify the Fatherhood of God. For the call to fatherhood is a call to lead, care, and protect a household as paterfamilias. There is a crisis of virtuous leadership, of genuine paternity in our society, and thus, also, a crisis of genuine holy masculinity in the world and in the Church.

Consequently, the family itself is in crisis today. Like the gender ideology that plagues us, the crises of fatherhood and the family is diabolical. In 2016, Cardinal Sarah exhorted some two thousand Rover Scouts of Europe in Vézelay to lead the way in virtue, for the Cardinal rightly warned that a more virile people, that is, those who are more manly, more committed to their cause and more willing to suffer for its success, will eliminate Christendom if we remain weak-willed and drunk on ideology and hedonism; if the Christian men of today do not rise to the challenge of being strong Catholic men, and if we do not work now to form our boys to become men of virtue. It is opportune, then, to turn now to the one whom God the Father chose to be father to his incarnate Son: be consecrated to St Joseph, and so receive his paternal love and guidance and leadership to become Christian men of virtue. Considering masculine virtues, it may be helpful to look first at contrary vices. St Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Church, refers to a vice called mollities, often translated as ‘effeminacy’ but a better, more helpful, translation is ‘softness’ since the vice is not gender-specific.

Softness is manifest as an inordinate attachment to pleasure and comfort and ease. Following Aristotle, St Thomas says that softness causes one to “withdraw from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure” because one is “accustomed to enjoy pleasures” and finds it hard to “endure the lack of them”. The vices of pornography and masturbation, which are endemic in our times, habituates the boy to enjoy pleasures, and leads to softness in the man. For, unwilling to endure the lack of sexual pleasure, he withdraws from the good of chastity and, if unchecked, he withdraws ultimately from the supreme good of wanting to please and obey God, or even wanting to know and serve him. Indeed, St Thomas concludes that “it belongs to mollities to be unable to endure toilsome things, so too it belongs thereto to desire play or any other relaxation inordinately”. Thus, our culture experiences the phenomenon of men remaining in boyhood: perpetuating the university student lifestyle; shirking commitments; avoiding responsibilities and accountability; playing juvenile computer games and wasting time online; living from one hedonistic sensation to the next.

Virtue of Fortitude

The virtue to which softness is opposed is perseverance, which St Thomas says is “long persistence in any kind of difficult good”. (cf ST IIa IIæ, 137, 1 ad 1) Perseverance is related to the cardinal virtue of fortitude which enables one to endure difficulties and pain for the sake of the good; to endure mortifications and suffering, even death, with a view to their redemptive power and for the sake of the final good who is God. St Joseph is thus called a “great lover of God” because he was “afflicted by much suffering which he endured with a wonderful fortitude”. This should give us pause for thought because many of us today, when afflicted by suffering, might pray that it would be taken from us. But the Saint, the lover of God, prays, rather, to manfully endure his sufferings with fortitude and to persevere in virtue for the sake of the Church and the salvation of others. Thus, St Dominic would apply the discipline to himself each evening for the salvation of sinners. How are we formed in these virtues? The aforementioned Scouts of Europe are an excellent movement for the formation of boys in manly virtues; Scouting, properly understood, is about the formation of character, as Baden-Powell called the virtues. Much of modern Scouting has become soft because it has abandoned the difficult task of forming boys in Christian virtue in favour of teaching them practical skills; our age tends towards technological and skills-based knowledge rather than moral and practical wisdom.

The Scouts of Europe champion three main virtues that characterise the Scout: namely honesty (or integrity); self-sacrifice; and purity (or chastity), and what applies to them, I would say, applies to all of us as Catholic men. We’re called to give ourselves even to the very end, with fortitude and perseverance, for the sake of the Truth who is the person of Jesus Christ, who is the Friend we love and serve with integrity of heart and life. As such, we’re called to love chastity, which isn’t just a purity of the body, but also a purity of the soul and of the mind and intellect. Chastity is thus integral to our primary love of Truth. As St Thomas says, “if the human mind delights in the spiritual union [with God] and [so] refrains from delighting in union with other things against the requirements of the order established by God, this may be called a spiritual chastity” (ST IIa IIæ, 151, 2). To be ready to be formed in virtue, therefore, requires that one, first of all, delights in God, and thus longs for friendship with him, loving what he loves. I suggest that these three virtues can be correlated to three essential strengths in the traditional Liturgy, which thus serves to form them in masculine virtues.

Veiled by Silence

Firstly, the traditional Liturgy is chaste. Externally, there is a sense of modesty and chastity in the veiling of precious persons and things in the traditional Liturgy. Moreover, the sacred is veiled by silence. St Thomas says that the virtue of chastity makes man capable and ready for contemplation. So, a chaste liturgy, enveloped in silence, invites contemplation. Indeed, in our sensationalistic age, it fosters a kind of fortitude and patience. We must beware of what Dietrich von Hildebrand called ‘aestheticism’; that is, an excessive love for the pleasures of liturgical beauty, music, vestments, gold accoutrements, and so on, for their own sake. For as Josef Pieper says, “an unchaste man wants above all something for himself; he is distracted by an un-objective ‘interest’; his constantly strained will-to-pleasure prevents him from confronting reality with that selfless detachment which alone makes genuine knowledge possible”. A certain mortification of the sense pleasures, therefore, is necessary. There are, of course, the Ember days and the traditional fasts that one can undertake, and the traditional Liturgy has this richness that is lacking in the modern rite. However, there is also the fundamental asceticism of being obedient to the rubrics, of care and moderation with one’s gestures and postures, and, finally, the austerity and discipline of unaccompanied Gregorian Chant. The Church has only one song that she calls her own which she prescribes for her Liturgy. This givenness of the Church’s Liturgy, especially in her music, requires obedience and perseverance and self-denial from us, occasionally sacrificing the melodious tunes of Baroque polyphony in favour of the purity of chant that helps us order our passions, to discipline our emotions, and so to learn to conform ourselves to Another, and receive his gift of the sacred Liturgy in all its fullness.

Crisis of Fatherhood

Finally, men, who are called to lead and to be head of the Christian household, are schooled by the Liturgy to acknowledge a divinely-established hierarchy, and thus we’re brought to kneel before the One who is Head. From such humility, according to the order established by God, comes the grace, then, to become paterfamilias. Thus, even our Lord, in the Holy Family of Nazareth, learnt to live under the authority of St Joseph, the paterfamilias. The crisis of fatherhood and genuine masculinity in our time, therefore, stems from the crisis of faith, in which God is not acknowledged, let alone worshipped and adored. The truth of who I am before God, and the truth of my profound metaphysical need of God are, it seems to me, vital lessons that we all need to learn if we’re to advance in virtue at all. For as St Benedict’s Rule tells us, humility is the ladder through which we are “cleansed from vices and sins” and then ascend to a “love for Christ [and a] delight in virtue”.