HTS PT1 Masculine Identity

Masculine Identity goes hand-in-hand with Beloved Sonship.

Everything about diocesan priesthood is about Pastoral Charity: Identity, Spirituality, and Ministry

• Deeper reality: love
  • not so much for flock or even for God
  • being open to and able to receive love.
• Only when we're resting in the heart of Jesus can we then love God
  • Then can we love our neighbor

From the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla (before he became Pope John Paul II):

1. Self-awareness: get to know yourself as a beloved son (or daughter, for the ladies)
2. Self-possession: embrace your (whole) self
3. Self-donation: only after the prior two are you free to give yourself away

It all comes back to identity, identity, identity.

Quotations on Identity

Conversion is claiming again and again the truth of myself.

What is this truth? I am God's beloved child, long before I was born; before my parents, teachers, and church got involved. I will be God's beloved child long after I have died.

I go from God's intimate embrace into God's intimate embrace.

God says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love,
I've loved you before you were born …
I love you and I've written your name in my hand—
you're safe in the palm of my hand …
and I'm sending you into this world for a little time … so that you'll have the chance to say, 'I love you too.'"

Henri Nouwen

Growing phenomenon: grown men who have grown up without a father or even a father figure

• they grow up solitary: masculine isolation and insecurity
• this insecurity causes an irritability, restlessness, or anger
• they concede that "this is the way things are"
• they have to get it right... on their own — fatherless perfectionism
• a boy can only become a man through the guidance of another man

Maleness vs. Masculinity

Maleness

something we carry in our bodies

Masculinity

always bestowed by someone else through an initiation process

The usual way of raising boys to become sons (that has worked for thousands of years) has almost disappeared over the course of two generations:

• Teaching of a set of skills; a trade
• Now we have a world of "uninitiated" (partial) men
  • boys walking around in the bodies of men
  • not every man is broken; there are a few well-formed individuals, but the problem is worse now than it ever has been.

Coming-of-Age Process

From the perspective of the priesthood

1. Separation: saying goodbye to family
2. Liminality ("threshold")
   • usually some type of ordeal (study useless topics, wake up at the butt crack of dawn, etc.)
   • seminary draws this out over several years.
3. Initiation: ordination

Developmental Psychology

Stages of Moral Development

Why do (don't) you do ...?

According to Lawrence Kohlberg:

1. Pre-conventional
   • avoid punishment
   • expecting reward/benefit
2. Conventional
   • wanting to be a "good boy"
   • it is objectively right
3. Post-conventional
   • doing things out of respect
   • a reflection of my inner self

Hierarchy of needs

by Abraham Maslow

1. psysiological needs (foundational)
2. environmental safety and security
3. love and belonging to a community
4. self-esteem needs
5. self-actualization

Psychological Stages of Development

by Erik Erikson

1. hope: trust vs. mistrust (0–18 months) - maternal relationship
2. will: autonomy vs. shame (18 months to 3 yrs) - "all by myself"
3. purpose: initiative vs. guilt (3–5 yrs) - if at first you don't succeed, try, try again
4. competency: industry vs. inferiority (5–12 yrs) - comparison with other children
5. fidelity: identity vs. role confusion (12–18 yrs) - finding where they fit in
6. love: intimacy vs. isolation (18–35 yrs) - develop relationships
7. care: generativity vs. stagnation (35–64 yrs) - career and raising a family
8. wisdom: integrity vs. despair (65+) - acceptance of life in its fullness

Stages of Masculine Journey

by John Eldredge

overlapping "archetypes":

1. boyhood [childhood – 10 yrs]
   • being a beloved son
   • affirmation
   • Do I have what it takes to be a man?
     • Under the hood: Am I prized, delighted in, beloved?
2. cowboy
   • adventure: doing things for the first time
   • hard work
   • [teens – early 20s]
3. warrior
   • gets a cause worth fighting for (career, etc)
   • passivity and masculinity are mutually exclusive
   • [late teens – 30s]
4. lover
   • best if preceded by warrior: women seek, receive, and affirm strength, but cannot give it
   • awakening to the transcendental Beauty
   • desire for intimacy
   • [same as warrior]
5. king
   • crisis of leadership: men are given power but are unprepared to handle it
   • best use is to benefit others through service
   • best time to pass on masculinity to younger warriors
6. sage
   • mission is to counsel others from life experience
   • "kingdom" shrinks

Centered around three activities:

men need a battle to fight

• failure in warrior stage will affect all of the other stages
• it's written into the masculine DNA
  • "God is a warrior" (everywhere in Old Testament) and we are made in this image
  • However, foremost image is of communal love: most fundamentally represented in being made male and female
• know who you're fighting: we fight the wiles of the devil
• know your surroundings: the war is over; Jesus has already triumphed
  • we still experience this cosmic battle against sin and death in our person (Rom 7)
    • we are naturally oriented toward unity with God
    • sin corrupts us and makes it possible for the devil to snatch our souls from our journey to Heaven.
  • crucify the false selves that the devil tries to make us believe

men need a beauty to rescue

• women too are made in image of God
  • embody God's exquisite beauty (Core psych. question: Am I beautiful?)
  • conjugal union calls for selfless receptivity and courage on Woman's part (complementary to strength on Man's part)
• typical story/fable is of strong man rescuing beautiful woman
• How does this relate to celibacy? (note: celibacy is all about love, chastity is about sex)
  1. invitation to solitary, intimate union with Jesus
  2. free and joyful spousal relationship with the Church
  • End of our sexuality (not to be confused with genitality) is mutual relationship, even in celibacy
    • celibacy is just a mystical participation in our identity / the nuptial meaning of the body
    • nothing unnatural about celibacy at all—it's supernatural
• priests rescue the beautiful church from the threats and evils of the age: sin, relativism, etc.
• spousal love calls for sacrifice and death to self
  • these should never be seen as "burdensome" if they are done truly out of love

    “In his spiritual life, therefore, he is called to live out Christ’s spousal love toward the Church, his bride. Therefore, the priest’s life ought to radiate this spousal character, which demands that he be a witness to Christ’s spousal love and thus be capable of loving people with a heart which is new, generous and pure - with genuine self - detachment, with full, constant and faithful dedication and at the same time with a kind of “divine jealousy” (cf. 2 Cor. 11:2)”Pope St. John Paul II. Pastores Dabo Vobis

• spousal love is also receptive
• this celibate spousal love is (spiritually) generative
  • priests save themselves by saving others
  • care for the congregation does not distract from the priest's spiritual life; care for the congregation is his spiritual life in pastoral charity

men need an adventure to live

… [life is] not a problem to be solved

Masculine vocation is an adventure

• Something worth giving entire life to
• begins when we "leave our nets and follow him"
• like men from another world
• adventure implies risk
  • Spiritual life is abound with uncertainty
  • uncertainty vs. confusion?
  • "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." — Howard Thurman
• priesthood is not for the "mediocre;" you need a fire within
• heart's desire will never be fulfilled… not in this life. Not by the priesthood nor by marriage

Spiritual manhood goes hand-in-hand with physical manhood.