tensions arise, and a frantic sequence of identities are “tried on” until something sticks or seems to work. According to popular “culture” and the media, the things that grown men can do are basically debaucheries: adult beverages, adult movies, adult clubs, adult language. We communicate to boys that to be a man, an adult, is to have the license to sin. Some men find ways to do this without hurting others, but the really manly men are the ones who are able to thrive on and display their sins without consequence — think rappers, womanizing tycoons, or gangsters. When we tell boys to “grow up” and “act responsibly,” they picture work, worry, and dysfunctional relationships. If this is all there is to mature adulthood, why bother? Why not avoid responsibility and enjoy a carefree life of sin? In other words, why not remain in ongoing adolescence? Young men are debilitated by the modern world’s inability or unwillingness to affirm or define true masculinity.
Men aren’t Optional
The crisis of fatherless boys compounds the problem, and the problem goes both ways. Men who refuse to embrace fatherhood (both physical and spiritual) are less mature, and boys can’t become men without fatherly guidance. “Fatherlessness” can take a variety of forms. The most obvious and damaging is the total absence or abandonment of a father. In 2014, about a quarter of all households were without a father.28 Among African Americans, the rate of fatherlessness is more than half.29
Fatherless boys cannot “make it on their own” with mothers around but not fathers (or fatherly mentors to fill the void), meaning they cannot mature fully into their masculinity. Only mothers can be mothers, and mothers can be many things to their sons, but they will never be a father. Yet that’s exactly what our culture wants them to do when it pretends a home is just fine without dad around. Merle Haggard, “The Poet of the Common Man,” expressed it best in his classic song “Mama Tried” — describing, from prison, how his mother wanted to raise him right, but it was just impossible, because his daddy wasn’t around.
This is not an indictment of single mothers, who give their sons everything they can. The point is that fathers and male mentors give to boys, in a way, their own manhood, and mothers simply don’t have manhood to give. No one can give what they do not have. Fathers (or male mentors when a father is absent) are indispensable for a boy’s becoming a man.
We see a great example of this in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, cannot achieve manhood while his father remains far away from home following the Trojan war. Athena, a goddess who loves Odysseus and his family, knows she has to intervene and separate Telemachus from his mother and home. To do so, she disguises herself as Mentor, the friend of Odysseus, and sends him off on an adventure of learning more about his father’s greatness. Even a goddess knows that a man has to intervene in a boy’s life. The feminine can’t tread that ground. Fatherless boys today need their own Mentors to send them out on adventure and mission. (And yes, this is where the word “mentor” comes from, although the term was only popularized by the French bishop and poet François Fénelon in the eighteenth century.)30
What to Do?
Whenever this topic is brought up, men want to act. The first action they seek to take is to reinstate the initiation aspect of a rite of passage. They want a “fix” to make sure members of the next generation get the information they need to be real men. But lack of information is not the problem we’re facing. We have content and information more readily available than ever. The problems we need to deal with first are the other two phases of the traditional rite of passage: separation from boyhood and incorporation into a brotherhood of men. Content is not the issue; the issue is the context and culture we live in. We need to connect with other men in meaningful ways, yes, but we need more than that. We need a cultural revival as Catholic men, not just guides we hope will “make” men. Maturity grows organically in a meaningful culture, because the birth into manhood is a lot like our birth into this world as infants — it comes from love and relationships. In other words, maturity is begotten, not made.
Chapter 3
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