Happy Father Bashing Day!

June 19th was fathers day. Happy Father's day! You guys have earned it!  You're putting up with a lot and you deserve some refuge!

It's Male Bashing Season

Our cultural obsession with bashing fathers doesn't get much press, but it's widespread.  This goes way beyond deadbeat dads, whom many people think the bashing is justified.  There's women criticizing them for not helping more around the house.  Feminists claim abuse from fathers and husbands in divorce proceedings and are granted restraining orders on dubious grounds.  There's complaints that they're not being sensitive enough or not strong enough.  Father's are told that they aren't ambitious enough while women compete with them for jobs.  Father's are spending too much time at the office or not providing enough for a middle class lifestyle. Men are depicted in movies and sitcoms as buffoons and dunces for the comic relief, or as rapists and violent abusers in more drama-filled stories.  At best, they're portrayed as shallow tropes that represent an establishment that must be resisted or rebelled against.  The list goes on and on.  It seems that only men in uniform garner any sort of respect in today's society, but even then, it seems to have more diminished value today than it did in the past.

Father bashing has even made it's way into the church.  As a disclaimer, I was raised Catholic but haven't been to church or observed and practiced my faith since I graduated high school.  But in recent years, I've been finding my way back to it.  Part of my journey has been reading Christian blogs and lurking on discussion boards that revolve around Christian themes.  If a man thinks that he can find refuge in the church from the hostile social and political environment that has subsisted on male bashing, he would be mistaken.

Sunshine Thiry writes in her blog:

My husband and I went to church shortly after I read IB’s post, where I was shocked to hear my first ever Father’s Day sermon...where my pastor says [emphasis added]:

"I have to tell you, it’s our goal on this Father’s Day weekend to lift you up and encourage you.  And I have to tell you from history I’ve learned that often Father’s Day is one of the worst days that dads can ever choose to go to church.  Because often it’s the only time churches feel like they’re going to have the ears of dads and so what they do is they plan to beat them up royally for all they’re not doing right.  Ever been to one of those Father’s Day services?  Oh man, I have.  In fact, here in the early days of my ministry here, you know what we’d do?  Oh man, we planned.  We planned for you guys.  And then what we did is we’d sing “Cats in the Cradle and the Silver Spoon”.  And we’d talk about how you have so royally blown it, the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, and then we’d try and help you recover.  And we wondered why dads didn’t like Fathers Day at our church."

Sunshine's testimony is interesting, because her pastor's sermon (video included in her post) strongly implies that the father bashing on Father's day isn't confined to a few radical churches on the fringes.  He acknowledges that this bash fest is widespread, has been occurring for a long time and the pastors knowingly encourage it.  Father bashing is the norm in church.

And they wonder why people aren't coming to church anymore.

In a way, this is strange.  I know that corporations and military organizations don't dress down a boss, manager or Sergeant in front of his subordinates.  It greatly diminishes his ability to lead and effectively instill discipline and cohesion among his subordinates.  So why does a pastor think he can bust down a man in front of his wife and children and expect any results?  Churches view men as the spiritual head and leader of the family while undermining them at the same time.  Strange indeed.

Criticism and correction should be done in private and away from the eyes and ears of subordinates, and always with the intention of making the person better at his job.  In the church environment, this can be done in confession if a denomination practices it or male retreats where the women are excluded.  I personally know that many Catholic churches host these retreats for men a couple of times each year.

Yes, I'm plugging for my faith.  Sue me!

Most certainly, men in the church are generally aware of self-improvement.  I rarely see a spiritual man that doesn't want to be a better husband and father.  The reason we don't hear more than a dull roar about the male bashing in church is because most men are taking their lessons to heart.  You'll often get a grimaced look, a slight nod and a muttered apology if his errors are brought to his attention.

Queens of the Pulpit

This attitude  toward self-improvement among men seems to be a polar opposite of the attitude exhibited by women.  Dalrock's blog documents a cultural trend of women in the church actively rebelling against the church and the family while their enablers in the church bash men for not being worthy husbands. Dalrock has a conspiratorial view of the situation that one may have trouble accepting, but a major theme is how churches are orienting themselves to placating and even raising women on pedestals while giving them a free pass to sin, break up their families and behave disrespectfully to the men in their lives.  However, if you're skeptical about his views on the subject, research has also documented a growing feminizing in the church. This cultural trend in the church isn't on the fringe either, but mainstream. The churches are turning a blind eye to frivolous divorces.  Women are being elevated and lionized as perfect beings, even promiscuous women and women who have broken their marriage vows.  Redemption from the sins of the past is one thing, placing a woman on a pedestal as some sort of Divine being is approaching idolatry.

The grumbling that we're hearing from men like Dalrock seems to be rooted in the fact that women aren't being called out and held accountable for sinful behavior in the fashion that men are.  Men are being called out for being less than the ideal husband while women are encouraged and enabled to rebel.  Apparently, many churches think that the woman is rebelling instead of submitting because the man isn't being a good enough husband.  How can a family union exist in such a cultural setting? Aren't we all imperfect?  Aren't we all sinners?  Don't we all need God's guidance?

Dalrock posted recently about the difficulty of confronting women about their sin. He quotes from an article by Pastor Doug Wilson, who has counseled many married couples:

When a man mistreats a woman, the current climate still allows a pastor to confront him, and to deal with it thoroughly. Even though the world gets conviction of sin all wrong, this climate does mean that the simple message of repent and believe is one that can still be delivered to men. The men usually expect it, which is good, because they deserve it.
But that is not the case anymore with women. Any counselor who actually tries to address feminine shortcomings in a dysfunctional relationship is a brave counselor. One of the things that happens is that any such an attempted address is immediately construed as “taking the side” of the abuser. And to anticipate an objection here, this is not a function of the counselor being male — my wife has seen the same reaction that I have, and sometimes more quickly.

Both Wilson and his wife have observed that it's a lot more difficult to reproach women about their sins in the church than the men.

Sheila Gregoire and her husband speak at marriage conferences all around the world and gives marriage advice in her blog, To Love Honor and Vacuum.  In one article, Sheila talks about the reception she typically gets from women at these types of conferences:

One of the interesting things about giving the wife talk is that, as I start to talk about what a woman can do to make marriage great, I see many in the audience looking distinctly uncomfortable and shifting in their seats. So, just like clockwork, about seven minutes in, I stop my talk, and say:

I know you women are uncomfortable with me saying all these things that you should do. But let me reassure you that right now my husband has all of your husbands in another room, and he is blasting them and telling them what they need to do, too, in no uncertain terms. So don’t worry. Your husbands are hearing an important message. So get your minds off of them and let’s just spend this time thinking about what we as women can do to make the marriage great.

After that, the women laugh, visibly relax, and I can go on.

The trends documented from various different Christian observers seem pretty clear:  Women don't take well to criticism within the church.  If they accept it at all, it seems only begrudgingly after they are assured that the men are also getting an earful.

I remember being invited to a Promise Keepers conference.  The theme was Making of a Godly Man.  It was a men's only conference that was so large it filled up a football stadium and lasted the whole day.  There were keynote speakers to motivate and encourage all of us to be better husbands, fathers and sons.  They payed tribute to our veterans and civil servants, they gave suggestions about how a divorced man can still be a father to his children, how men can mentor our youth, etc etc.

Where are the football stadiums full of women encouraging each other to be better wives, mothers and daughters?  Seriously, I can't think of one. If women do assemble, it's usually to discuss how victimized and pissed off they are.  The twitter hashtags and memes born from such female assemblies always seem full of neurosis and self-loathing.  It's no wonder to me why so many women are unhappy.  It's as if they're angry that all those equal rights laws and tax dollars they get didn't automatically make their lives better.  But somebody has to pay, and it's usually the guy snoring next to her in bed.  What has he done for her lately?

Catholics Stand the Gap

With all this weighing heavily on my mind, I attended mass at my local Catholic church for over a year, including on Mothers Day and Fathers day.  I was pleased to see that there was no male bashing at the masses.  Other practicing Catholics that I've talked to also haven't seen male bashing at their churches.  I've tried to search on Google for examples of male bashing in the Catholic church--including Catholic Answers-- and couldn't really find any examples.  There was some references to male bashing in pop culture and the media, but nothing in the church.  If anybody has an example of male bashing in the Catholic church, leave a comment.  For now, I'll tentatively conclude that male bashing doesn't occur in the Catholic church.  The Church observes the Fathers Day and Mothers Day holidays by giving fathers and mothers a blessing and a few kind words, but that's it.

So why is this the case?  The male bashing phenomenon hasn't infiltrated the Catholic church (yet).  Is there something about the church that makes it more resilient to modern influences that include male bashing?  I think there might be and here are some of my ideas why.  Call them hypotheses if you will.

1.  No strong tradition of rebellion or revolution

The Great Schism that divided Rome and the East Orthodox churches was about a thousand years ago and wasn't really a rebellion as much as disputes over procedural matters.  A lot of the core beliefs remain intact and you can still see many similarities in doctrine between the two churches--more similarities than other Christian religions.

But other Christian faiths such as Calvinism, Protestantism, Episcopalians and Lutheranism were created in the spirit of rebellion against the church.  Whether the rebellion was justified or not is not the point.  The point is that such rebellion became bodily incorporated into the doctrines of the religions that spun off from Catholicism.  So is it a surprise when certain parishioners of those faiths rebel?  Even rebel against their own families?

2. Papal Authority

All Catholic churches are subordinate to Rome.  Churches that don't tow the line from Rome rapidly find themselves closed down or losing members.  This top-down organizational approach tends to foster consistency with how doctrine is incorporated and preached.  A Catholic can go to any Catholic church in the world and attend the same mass, structured the same way and even listening to the same Gospel readings as his home church--even if the mass was spoken in a completely different language, he can follow along.  There's something to be said about consistency.

There's only one point where a priest has some liberty in conducting his service and that is the Homily.  Sometimes they can be quite long but the priest only discusses the Gospel reading and how we should apply it to our daily lives in these modern times.  It's very much a "What would Jesus do?" type of speech.  So there isn't really room on the agenda for male bashing.  What's keeping a pastor in line at the other churches?

3. The Virgin Mary

Catholics raise Jesus' mother, Mary to a special status level in the church.  We venerate her.  She is the only woman that wasn't born with original sin, she gave birth to our savior by the power of the Holy Spirit and was bodily incorporated into heaven when her time on Earth was finished.  So arguably, Mary never died.  She's perfect!

So the idea that we can place women on a pedestal or regard them as being more pure and spiritual than men like other churches have done is bordering on sacrilege and idolatry.  That level is for Mary, and Mary alone!  Until a woman gives birth to the Messiah for the second coming, she's a wretched sinner just like the rest of us.  So we don't even try to raise them up to that level.  We forgive them and move on.

4. The Catholic church is a patriarchy

Yes, I can here the feminists grumble as I write this.  I think I'm on solid ground when I say that there will never be female priests, bishops and popes in the Catholic church.  Certainly, there are readers and servers that are female, but that's about it.  Don't forget that biblically speaking, women weren't even allowed to speak in church.  And this was actually the practice for many years until relatively recently.

This shouldn't even bother feminists because the church is big on marriage and opposed to icky stuff like abortion and gay marriage, so it's not like they want anything to do with the organization.  So the veneration and elevation of females that happens in other churches doesn't really happen that much in the Catholic church.  And there's the whole separation of church and state thing.  The government can't force the issue on us with any of that equality nonsense.  So women priests aren't going to happen anytime soon.

But if you're curious how a women-led church would function you can visit the Episcopalian churches.  It makes me wonder about the survivability of any liberal institution in general.

It's not that the Catholic church is against "equality".  It's  been preaching that for a long time.  But the priesthood is the only exception.

5.  Priests don't marry

There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not we should allow priests to marry.  A common complaint is how a priest can counsel a married couple when he hasn't been married himself.  But he is already married.  He's "married" to the church and submits to it.  And he's suppose to counsel husbands to love their wives like he and Jesus loved the church, and for wives to submit to their husbands like he submits to the church.

Jesus and his apostles were also unmarried--and I think this is important to note, and not only for tradition's sake.  How effective do you think Jesus and his crew would be in spreading the good word if they were anchored home with their families?  Not very.  A wife and children would get in the way of that objective.

Also, have you noticed that the churches that have the worst problem with male bashing (and divorce rates) are the ones that allow their pastors to marry?  I can imagine a pastor giving a very rousing sermon on the importance of being a good wife and avoiding the temptations of our modern age and then coming home to a wife tapping her foot and giving him the stink eye about what he said.  And that's if he's lucky!

It's not difficult to imagine that a priest being married will end up watering down the message he's suppose to be preaching, at best.  At worst, there comes the undue praise of people for being born with a uterus and using it outside the institution of marriage.  Then the male bashing starts.

So rest assured, a Catholic priest has submitted and is one with Jesus.  That is all the moral authority he needs to consul a married couple.


Personally, I'm relieved that there are some enclaves that can treat men and fathers with respect and keep women on equal footing with them.  Such places still exist and you might hear a good message or two.