Blog post reproduced on Conservative Woman

A post from this blog about Feminism, weeds and jerks has been re-published on Conservative Woman: go over there to read it.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

More on Men and Women at Mass: the Hebrides

A Traditional Requiem Mass in the chapel of St Benet's Hall,
Oxford, in 2015. On the right the small statue is a scale model
of 'Our Lady of Isles', a huge statue constructed on Catholic
South Uist in the Hebrides in 1958. The model is I believe
a working model made by the artist, Hew Lorimer.

I've been reading about the Church in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Here is something worth sharing. Fr Allan MacDonald, Parish Priest in the Scottish Hebrides in the late 19th century, was a Gaelic speaker and a great collector of folklore. I quote John Watts, the historian, referring to Fr MacDonald's notebooks (which have been postumously published, in part):

‘Though the island people as a whole were devout, he found that it was the men rather than the women who ‘practised’. He reckoned that throughout Uist and Barra men outnumbered women at Mass by as much as five to one. He believed that this situation had developed over many generations, in a society in which the women were often left at home on Sundays to tend the cattle and look after the house, and as a result were not only deprived of the sacraments but of any deep instruction in their religion.’

John Watts, A Record of Generous People: A History of the Catholic Church in Argyll and the Isles (2013) p156

The longer term background of this observation, if (as seems plausible) the situation in Fr MacDonald’s time did reflect many generations’ practice, is the dependence of these communities on itinerant priests visiting them, sometimes very infrequently, and celebrating Mass on ‘Mass rocks’ and in private houses: not because of an active persecution, for the most part, but simply because of the acute shortage of priests and funds. The parochial system was still only in embryonic form in Fr MacDonald’s time. 

'War on boys': people are starting to notice

Policy-makers have actually been worrying about 'failing boys' for a while. Pope St John Paul II noted the absence of men from church back in 1988 (Christifideles laici 52). But the debate and the facts are now becoming mainstream.

As I have noted before, the connection between what I've called the 'secular' man-crisis and the Church's 'man crisis' must be taken into account. It can hardly be a coincidence that boys and men are falling short in school, university, and marriage, and also in vocations and in church attendance.

This little video is about boys in school. It is welcome, and the remedies are welcome too. The more fundamental issue, however, is not addressed. What used to motivate young men and, by their influence, boys down the age-range, to put in the hard work at university and school was the prospect of being a bread-winner, and being respected for it. The very term 'bread-winner' is regarded as tantamount to a profanity today, but the incentive must be restored or replaced if men are going to pull their weight in society.



Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Does the Church want Catholic men to be weeds?

This blog post purportedly about the 'traditional Catholic wife' quickly degenerates into 'man up' man bashing, and now I've started noticing this phenomenon I think I ought to attack it, especially since it creeps into traddy blogs and FB feeds.

My challenge to people who write like this is simple. Are you man enough to say what the Church actually teaches about the role of the father in the family? If you aren't, I suggest you stop writing on the subject.

Here's a post from my recent series of posts on the subject, in February this year. Click on the labels 'masculinity' and 'patriarchy' to see more.

-------------------------------

In some of the earlier posts of the series, I referred rather vaguely to things being said by Catholics about these matters which I thought unhelpful, so it behoves me to give some detail.

All kinds of things can be found in the more marginal sources (in which category I place this blog, for example). Looking at the more mainstream sources - blogs, bishops' statements, magisterial documents and the like - we find, in the more conservative ones, a pattern.

First, there is here and there a recognition that there is a problem of manhood. The Tablet had a minor breakdown when Cardinal Burke made his statement about the loss of men to the Church, and the underlying social causes, but the observation has been made before. The bare fact of male absence is lamented in Pope St John Paul II's 1988 Christifideles laici. In 2014 Mgr Charles Pope, in a much-linked to blog post, explicitly links the problem with feminism.

How Feminism made men into jerks

Continuing this series, I am going to try another way of approaching the central problem, to see if this is helpful.

Once upon a time, there was a certain masculine ideal, which had strength of character in a central position. The ideal man might be intellectual or practical, he might be introverted or extroverted, he might be dark or fair, he might have limitations and even serious faults, but he was not a weed. Let's leave reality for a moment, and think about perceptions, expectations, and fantasies: what we can see in fiction.

So what I have in mind are men like John Bold in Trollope (The Warden), Gabriel Oake in Thomas Hardy (Far From the Madding Crowd) - the names rather give the game away - Mr Darcy in Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Shakespeare's Othello, and Duke Theseus (Midsummer Night's Dream) - you get the idea, there are masses of examples.

Should Catholic men be losers or jerks? A response to comments

Latin Mass Society Walking pilgrims enter Walsingham

My series of posts on chastity and chivalry (the most recent one is here) have been something of an experiment, in topics I have not previously tackled. The response in the comments box has been very interesting, with a lot of very positive feedback, but also a persistent tendency to misunderstand the issue in a particular way. In essence, when I say that it would really be quite a good idea for Catholic men (no less than for men in general) to avoid behaviour that brands them, without their realising it, as losers, a significant number of people respond by saying: oh, so you want them to be jerks?

I have avoided saying 'Catholics should be Alpha men' because the association between 'Alpha' and 'jerk' is so close. But the point of my most recent post was to argue that you don't have to adopt the morally bad behaviour of the jerk in order to stop being a loser. Let me make the point more explicitly.

The classic 'Alpha jerk' or 'Alpha bad boy' is someone successful with the ladies, while treating them badly. Promiscuity is part of the background to the discussion, but it possible for men to treat women badly in societies where promiscuity is not the norm (though the damage they inflict will be infinitely less). A century ago, in very different social conditions, these men were called 'cads', and two centuries ago it was all about 'leading on' women, and not (usually) going to bed with them, but the phenomenon was in essentials the same. It is a human universal, even if in some eras it is vigorously repressed. The question is: Why do women find these ghastly men attractive?

Chastity, chivalry, and avoiding ridicule

Noli me tangere: Do not touch me.

One serious problem for young people attempting to live a chaste life, and therefore bucking the hugely powerful trend of modern western culture, is that they can too easily be seen as losers. A good deal of prestige goes along with sex and relationships, and those who miss out on these tend to lack prestige. I've been talking about women in the last couple of posts, in response to one article I quoted, but here I'm going to focus on men, and I am partly inspired by this article here.

The author, John Mallon argues that part at least of the reason some women don't get asked on 'dates' is because they are giving off some rather hostile vibes, quite probably without meaning to. He says that men prefer women who are 'kind', and these can be hard to find; a lot of women seem to make a point of negativity and cynicism in dealing with men. This is true. But his description of men and of their needs presents an image of the 'Beta' man. A man who can't really deal with women, who lacks the characteristics which women admire and find attractive. But this is a problem, and the ladies are not to blame for not giving off warm vibes to men they don't find attractive.

The Traditional Mass and Men: a new Position Paper

The congregation at a Traditional Sunday Mass in St Bede's, Clapham Park

Over on Rorate Caeli I have publishing a new Position Paper for the FIUV (Una Voce Federation), on the Traditional Mass and men. Go over there to read it.

On this blog I have discussed related issues over quite a few posts; you can see them under the 'masculinity' label. It is a fascinating and, as far as I can see, an under-researched subject. I don't get the impression that many people in positions of authority in the Church want to hear about it. They are too caught up in the imperative to 'reach out to women' to notice that it is men who are the most alienated from the Church today.

The issue is ultimately related to the question of the role of men and women in the Church and in society, but it should be possible to make Mass less unfriendly to men without committing oneself to any very controversial views about those matters. There are a number of simple correlations which have been made over many years and ring true.

The Economist on the man crisis

A short time ago The Economist reported on the OECD report on the 'man crisis': a statistical report on how boys are falling behind in school, women outnumber men at University, and so on, which I blogged about here. Clearly stimulated by this, the current issue's cover story is a five-part 'essay' (an odd genre for The Economist) on men, entitled 'Manhood', with an accompanying Leading Article.

It's not as enlightening as one might hope; it is anecdotal and rather meandering. It has some amusing little titbits, like this:

Some liberal Scandinavian men find their new roles demoralising. Karl Ove Knausgaard, a Norwegian novelist married to a Swede, writes of walking “around Stockholm’s streets, modern and feminised, with a furious 19th-century man inside me”.

But the overall tone and conclusion have interest as an insight into how a deeply 'establishment' and conventional publication, with a socially and economically liberal angle, sees the problem. (The same issue contains a ferociously anti-Catholic diatribe about abortion in Latin America; this certainly isn't part of a socially conservative echo-chamber.)

More on segregated seating in Church

(A pre-scheduled post. Follow me on the Chartres Pilgrimage on Twitter: @LMSChairman )

Thanks to interactions on Twitter and in the comments of this blog, I've learnt a bit more on the history of seating in Catholic churches being segregated by sex. (For my previous post, see here.)

One of the things which has puzzled me about it is that, although recommended in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 1262.1), I've come across no literary references to segregated seating in churches. But I think that the practice was never re-established in Catholic churches in England after the Reformation; the disruption of having to worship in secret and so on caused the custom to disappear, and it was never something which people felt strongly enough about to make a special effort to restore. (I read in Archer's Two Catholic Churches that eyebrows were raised by some English Catholics at the restoration of such 'Italian' practices as the Asperges before Sunday Mass, in the early 19th century.)

As I've already mentioned, I myself have seen segregated congregations: in 1990, in the Cathedral of Tabora in Tanzania. At that time it wasn't practiced in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

I've now heard from several people in Ireland who can vouch for it surviving in rural districts up to the time of Vatican II, and even later: the 1980s and 1990s. It is worth noting, as several did, that it wasn't enforced: like mantillas today, it just happened, where it was a custom, with the odd person in the wrong part of the church either through ignorance or out of conscious defiance.

Here's a blog post talking about segregation in a church in Nova Scotia, Canada, up to the time of the Council.

A few statistics on gender ratios at Mass

I have had some response to my appeal for statistics about the participation of men and women at Mass in Extraordinary Form and the Ordinary Form. I'd like a lot more, but the few statistics I have allow me to illustrate what this is about in a way which is perhaps easier to understand.

The first line represents the situation from one part of Ireland, 2 and 3 are from two are different parts of England, and 4 is from Wales. The bottom of the line shows the percentage of men at the Ordinary Form, the top the percentage of men at the Extraordinary Form.

The line shows the difference the form of the Mass makes.

The percentage of men shoots up when a church hosts a Traditional Mass.

To make a proper statistical case - even the beginnings of one - I need a lot more figures. For the same or similar church, I need to see the percentage of men at the Traditional Mass and the percentage of men at the Novus Ordo.

It is a bore, yes, and it may have to wait for a week or two as the Sundays pass but it would be worth it to show this is a real effect, wouldn't it?

Please send your statistics to info@lms.org.uk with the subject line 'Statistics'.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Sex ratios at Mass: a call for statistics

Part of the Palm Sunday congregation with the FSSP in Reading: waiting for the Blessing of Palms

I'm appealing for help from all over the world: if you have the chance to observe the congregations attending the Traditional Mass and the Novus Ordo, in the same or comparable churches on the same or comparable days, to count them and how they are made up and let me know, as an informal empirical study of the phenomenon of both the proportions of men and women, and of the presence of children at Masses in the two Forms.

Please send your observations to info@lms.org.uk with the Subject line 'Statistics'.

To illustrate what I want, here is my own report for this project.

In SS Gregory and Augustine's Church, Oxford, England, the 9:30am OF Mass on Sunday 19th April was attended (including clergy, servers, and singers) by 74 people: of whom 22 were male, and 11 under 17. 

The 12 noon EF Mass in the same church on the same day was attended by 39 people, of whom 21 were male, and 12 under 17.

The Church and the secular man-crisis

A liturgy displaying seriousness: High Mass at Holy Trinity, Hethe, in Oxfordshire.

I blogged the other day about the 'man crisis' identified by the OECD. Now that this bastion of the mainstream has identified the problem, I think we can all talk about it openly. Boys and young men are not motivated to work hard at school and university in the way their fathers and grandfathers were. Given that, it is not too scary to observe that schools and universities have become feminised in certain ways. Boys are less free to be boys; school sports have declined; female teachers don't always understand or sympathise with their male pupils; boys get marked down in their work.

Within the Church, I have followed the argument made by Leon Podles that, over a period of centuries, men are demotivated and excluded by the model of spirituality presented to them, which is somewhat feminine. It is easy to find examples from the 20th century of popular religious art presenting the Faithful with very girly-looking male saints, and feminised depictions of Our Lord. Quite who these was supposed to appeal to, I don't know: these aren't the kinds of men women tend to find attractive, and the same popular art gives us androgynous-looking female saints. But it reflects the idea that the good Christian is feminine, in the debased sense of meek and mild. Even the Penny Catechism is at it:

347. What are the principal virtues we are to learn from our Blessed Lord?
The principal virtues we are to learn from our Blessed Lord are meekness, humility, and obedience.

The Man crisis according to the OECD

The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) produced a report on 5th March on the relative performance of boys and girls in education. There has been a good deal of discussion on this over recent decades; this study gives a solid empirical basis for it to continue.

(Summarising article in The Economist; OECD page with links to the whole report and other materials.)

On the right is part of an 'infographic' presenting some of the key findings. Another finding, which some readers will find surprising, is that women now outnumber men at university across the whole world, and by a big proportion in rich countries. In North America, the proportion of women is astonishing, though the trend has leveled off in the last few years: see the graph below, put together by The Economist.

Is the Church 'losing women'?

A congregation with a healthy sex-ratio: the Traditional Mass on Ash Wednesday in
SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford

A splendid illustration of my point about the focus on women within the Church (see here, here, and here) has been offered by the National Catholic Reporter (the institution Fr Zuhlsdorf likes to call the 'fishwrap').

Surveys have long shown women lead more active lives of faith than men, and that millennials are less interested than earlier generations. One in three now claim no religious identity.

What may be new is that more women, generation by generation, are moving in the direction of men -- away from faith, religious commitment, even away from vaguely spiritual views like "a deep sense of wonder about the universe," according to some surveys.

What is fascinating is that the NCR doesn't deny the obvious - that today women are by every measure more religious than men, and found in greater numbers in Catholic churches. But the only point they draw from this is how dreadful it is if women turn out to be 'moving in the direction of men'.

The Eastern Churches: 'it's a guy thing'

The Traditional Mass through a Pugin Rood Screen, at St Edmund's College, Ware

I've given a lot of space on this blog recently to the question about men being lost to the Church, and a reader kindly mentioned a book which notes the contrasting situation in the Orthodox Church. This is the testimony of an American, female, convert to Orthodoxy. She begins with a reminiscence about attending Vespers when she was new to it.

The struggling choir was weak and singing in an unintelligible language that may have been English. The few other worshipers weren't participating in the service in any visible way. Why did they hide the altar behind a wall? It was annoying how the priest kept popping in and out of the doors like a figure on a Swiss clock. The service dragged on following no discernible pattern, and it was interminable.
...

Something about Orthodoxy has immense appeal to men, and it's something that their wives--especially those used used to worshipping in the softer evangelical style---are generally slower to get. The appeal of joining this vast, ancient, rock-solid communion must be something like the appeal of joining the marines. It's going to be demand a hell of a lot out of you, and it's not going to cater to your individual whims, but when it's through with you you're going to be more than you ever knew you could be. It's going to demand, not death on the battlefield, but death to self in a million painful ways, and God is going to be sovereign. It's a guy thing. You wouldn't understand. 

On men taking back the Church

Solemnity, discipline, beauty, awe. The Dominican Rite in Oxford.

Further to the debate about masculinity and the liturgy, and an article about Cardinal Burke's remarks on related issues (which quotes me) by Tim Stanley in the Catholic Herald, Madeleine Teahan asks a pertinent question:

An implicit difference in expectation is the glaring irony at the heart of Cardinal Burke’s argument: namely, that men are passive victims of radical feminism, bad liturgy and poor catechesis. It’s as if they are a sex who are done unto; totally enfeebled and powerless to fight back. Doesn’t this portrayal undermine the typically masculine capacity for chivalry and strength that Cardinal Burke also refers to?

It's not that Miss Teahan denies that men are absent from our churches, it is just that she thinks the blame should be assigned squarely to the victims of poor catechesis and bad liturgy, and not to those who create those things. Perhaps she has in mind that passage in the Gospel where Jesus says that anyone who causes scandal to (i.e., causes to sin), one of these 'little ones' puts a millstone round the little ones' necks and gets away scot free.

No, wait...!

Patrick Arnold on masculine liturgy

A liturgy with gravitas. Bishop Schneider in West Grinstead.

Leon Podles, who inspired a series of posts in this blog about the loss of men from the Church, doesn't have much to say about the liturgy, but he quotes the Jesuit theologian Patrick Arnold on the subject. I've tracked down the source and here below is the passage at length.

Arnold's book Wildmen, Warriors and Kings is surprising because he is a theological liberal. He thinks that the ordination of woman is obviously right and that clerical celibacy is bad. He thinks that feminism is good but that men need to have their own, parallel, 'men's movement' and 'men's spirituality'. He is a disciple of Robert Bly, who even contributes a preface to the book. Bly has some interesting things to say (for example in his Sibling Society) but is on occasion extremely negative about the Church. Bly and Arnold owe a lot to Jung, something which - without going into details - should set off a lot of alarm bells. (A good introduction is this MP3 talk.)

I give Arnold credit, nonetheless, for thinking about an issue most people then, and now, don't want to think about. Particularly impressive is his confrontation of the misandry, the hatred of men, which is found in the liberal theological environment he himself inhabited. Here are his reflections about modern liturgy: it is clear that the traditional Mass is not on his radar at all, but is nevertheless the answer to the problem he identifies.

Patrick Arnold: Wildmen, Warriors, and Kings (1992), p77-78
For many years liturgists felt that highly formalized worship services bored people and turned them off; "creative" liturgies were proposed as the solution. Unfortunately, the resulting Butterfly, Banner, and Balloon Extravaganzas severely alienated many men. The most saccharine outbreaks of forced liturgical excitement featured fluttering dancers floating down the aisles like wood-nymphs, goofy pseudo-rites forced on the congregation with almost fascist authoritarianism, and a host of silly schticks usually accompanied by inane music. It was exciting all right; any men felt exciting enough to rise from their pews and walk right out the door. What was their problem? It seems that most men are instantly turned off by surprise spontaneity in ritual circumstances; moreover, ceremonies that are entirely nice, sweet, and happy usually strike men as phoney and completely unconnected with the harsh world they experience every day.

The loss of men from the Church: the Traditional Catholic response

Walking pilgrims in Canada: Traditional pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Cape

I don't want to leave the subject of the lapsation of men without going beyond the question of Mass attendance. There are many other things which can and do happen in the Church which have an important effect on this question.

Leon Podles is very interested in the male sodalities and brotherhoods characteristic of Spanish and Latin American Catholicism, which have maintained the respect even of men who think, or are close to thinking, it is a bit wimpy to go to Mass. I must leave it to others to discuss these associations, as I don't know enough about them. There are many less formal parallels, however, in the Church all over the world.

More on the female Pastoral Administrator

The story I reported here a few days ago has been reported in the Tablet (30th December), with some additional commentary from one of the local priests. Read it and weep.

Fr Paul Hardy said Sr Yvonne Pilarski, whose official title is “pastoral administrator” of Christ the King Church in Milton Keynes, had been universally accepted by the people.

“I’ve seen the congregation treating her exactly as if she was their parish priest,” he said. “They’ve taken it very well – she is obviously their resident person and that’s how she’s treated. If she wants something to happen, it happens.”

Sr Yvonne, who also administers the parish of St Bede’s in Newport Pagnall, does all the administration work connected with her parishes, as well as any pastoral care that does not require a priest, such as taking Communion to the sick or visiting the elderly. “She is very much the boss,” said Fr Hardy. “She’s a very good parish priest – she has that feminine quality that parish priests don’t have.”

Fr Hardy said he thought Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, who appointed Sr Yvonne to her new role in the autumn, had been very courageous, adding: “We can’t replace priests who die or retire any more, and this is a way forward.”
'She is a very good parish priest'. Yup, 'this is a way forward', said the lemming to the lamppost...

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.