By “Francesca”
When God chose a father for the most holy family of all time—a man to be one of the most brightly shining examples of masculinity—He chose Saint Joseph. “Great, thanks for the twee little religious sentiment,” you might well say, but here’s why Saint Joseph matters to everyone: he is the worst nightmare of the destructive cult of masculinity, their stupid little red pills and their bizarre obsession with the slur “cuck.”
Everything that keeps red pill poppers and alt-right windbags up at night was Saint Joseph’s life. He raised a child who was not his. His marriage was celibate, and he was chaste. He could defer to his wife, acknowledging her goodness and rightness. He used wisdom instead of violence to keep his family safe. Saint Joseph is known for his deep humility, generosity, and self-control.
He was not chosen by accident. He is not venerated by holy tradition for no reason. This is God’s clear message about masculinity. There’s no remotely reasonable way to say that God supports a vision of dominance, lust, selfishness, and violence as natural masculinity—to say that men are just “made that way” is ludicrous. We were all made good; all husbands and fathers were made to imitate Saint Joseph, however much they stumble in the task, as we all stumble along the path to our most virtuous selves.
Thanks be to God for the gift of fatherhood, of healthy masculinity, and the example of Saint Joseph. Saint Joseph, pray for fathers and husbands and all men that they can ignore all of the hateful voices in the world that call their cooperative and selfless love anything but perfect.
(image via Wikimedia Commons)
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