One of the main reasons men want this is because they want to be able to pass on authentic manliness to their sons. Not only do they fear not being a “real man” but many men also fear not being good fathers. They dread the prospect of losing or failing their sons in some way. Men just want to be good men and good fathers. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, but something has “snapped” in the long history of masculine wisdom, and today most men are lost and lonely.
Theories abound these days about the present “man-crisis” and what’s causing it, but very few people are talking about what we can do to solve it. Too often, it seems much easier to identify a variety of traits that are “manly” without actually proposing a path or way of life that makes those traits attainable. If we want the critical identity-building time of adolescence to be a time when boys are formed into men of virtue, we have to better understand how a boy transitions to manhood. And if we want to define masculinity and challenge men to maturity, then we have to understand the stages that a male passes through on the way to manhood, no matter his age.
The poor presentation of men in popular culture (Homer Simpson is the prime example) is not so much about presenting men as “buffoons and idiots,” but about presenting them as self-centered and immature. These caricatures of men are not simply stupid (though they are that) — they’re little boys in adult bodies, playing adult roles. Everything in our culture today — from the entertainment industry to sobering criminal statistics to the tantrum-like riots and demonstrations across America — shows that we are desperately in need of manly initiation. The “problem” is a problem of potential. Males are not achieving the potential within themselves to be men. And, sensing it, they are grasping at anything that will allay the fear, or else they give up in passivity.
Catholic men are not exempt from this crisis of mature manhood. In working with men and boys since my own conversion to Christ as a teenager, I have been troubled at how little Catholic literature there is on masculine maturity and mentoring (i.e., becoming a man). But through studying the universal practice of male rites of passage, I have come to see clearly that boys and men today have the same needs as ever — we’re just not meeting them. Traditional cultures were on to something. By “traditional cultures” I mean those peoples and places that continue a shared way of life that is passed through strong intergenerational bonds, a deep sense of rootedness, and an unmistakable identity. Such cultures had (and some still have) deep wisdom about how to bring about the “death” of the boy through meaningful challenge that gives way to the “birth” of a man who lives for things greater than himself. Such a man lives for the good of his community in a fraternal spirit.
As I have learned about the distant and ancient rituals that help this death-to-life transformation occur, I have also come to realize that the same spirit and wisdom of initiation is all around us. Yes, meaningful and shared ways of life may be slipping away, along with their accompanying rites of passage, but it is not yet an unreachable goal or unworkable principle. Men have what it takes to change the tide. Especially in the Church, we have everything we need for true and authentic masculinity, because we have the “true man and true God,” Jesus Christ. And that is what I hope you realize through this book: that you can understand these principles and enact the simple ideas in your own life in ways that are natural and authentic.
We need to understand the wisdom behind rites of passage, because, as Jesus said, “wisdom is justified by all her children” (Lk 7:35). In other words, these ideas must translate into a common way of life — a culture. They have done just that in the not-too-distant past, and they can now. I am going to walk you through each stage of initiation, dwelling more heavily on some, but ultimately showing how males are separated from boyishness, shown their strength and identity through initiation, and then incorporated into the brotherhood of men so that they can be prepared and strengthened in their vocations as husbands and fathers (whether in the physical or the spiritual sense — a distinction we will discuss in more depth later). You will see very quickly how today’s society impedes this maturity at every step, not so that you can become another voice complaining, but so that, together, we can do something about it. For men who love to solve problems, pointing these impediments out is synonymous with a call to action. We have to recognize the problem first of all so that we will be empowered to turn the tide of confused boys and immature men.
Chapter 1
A Crisis of Maturity
Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of sons is their fathers.
Proverbs 17:6
Just posing the question “are you a real man?” can elicit anxiety or even anger from men. There seems to be an overarching insecurity about masculinity today at best, and debilitating confusion at worst. So many questions arise when we begin to speak of masculinity. Is “manliness” really something we can and should distinguish from, say, womanliness or humanity in general? If it is real, doesn’t it just happen? Doesn’t talking about it make it sound like an affectation? Is there anyone who can really say someone is a “real man” or not? Is that not silly and antiquated? Is it just preferences and tastes that land somewhere on a spectrum between sensitive and aggressive? If masculinity is really something so separate and distinct from childhood and femininity, where and how do we make that distinction? Does that not communicate, somehow, that women can’t do something men can do? Is that okay? Much of this confusion is cleared up when we receive willingly what God has communicated to us about being men and women through nature and divine revelation. “Male and female he created them,” and we know that all of creation was created good. God said so. Further, after the creation of man, God said it was “very good” (Genesis 1:27, 31).
In short, a Catholic happily and easily distinguishes femininity and masculinity. In creation, God divides things out of other things, not for the sake of division but for the sake of union and communion — they are divided out in the act of creating but then brought back into the communion of the whole of creation itself. He divides the light from the dark, but they are in communion in the day and night, with dawn and dusk showing their beauty in union. Woman was divided from man, but they, too, are brought into union and communion in the “wholeness” of marriage.
This book is not primarily about the distinction between man and woman, but between boy and man. There’s an obvious difference that we can view in the physical realm between a small boy and a grown man, but there are also cultural and even spiritual differences we can observe as well. Saint Paul describes how he recognizes two different stages of life in the boy and man, and how he is confident in his transition from the former into the latter. “When I was a child,” he explains, “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Cor 13:11, emphasis added). This distinction does not seem as easy for us today. Our society, with its increasingly grotesque masculine identity crisis, cannot define “the things of a man.” What exactly is given up when a boy becomes a man?
Cultures and societies in other times and places, including Saint Paul’s society in the ancient world, had clear demarcations of manhood. Even today, many cultures in the world have established rites of passage from boyhood to manhood. For men in the West, however, the course to manhood today is murky, unattractive, or completely obscured. I’ve been involved with intentional mentoring of young men for a decade, and many of them have looked me in the eye and asked bluntly: “How will I know when I am a man?”
The fact that this question is so difficult to answer today reveals our deeper problems. Often, we demand that boys “grow up,” but then we continue to treat them like boys and do not provide ways for them to grapple with and understand masculinity. Boys and men in our society today are unfinished, and masculinity is more confused than ever.