Man stuff

I am not sure I believe what many traditional Catholics say about the old Mass being more appealing to men, than the new. Lace and brocade certainly have a superficial appeal to a small percentage, the historical 'rootedness' and symbolism to a larger percentage. What is pretty obvious is that men don't come to Mass, and possibly working class men come less than other men. When men do come to the old Mass, some at least seem to respond to it in a rather amazing way, it sets light to their faith. 
In some parishes it seems that lectors and everyone else on the sanctuary, except the priest, are women or girls, and that in our Catholic schools the majority of our teachers are women, especially in our Primary Schools. In that sense the Church of today is really, if not feminine, it is dominated at parish and diocesan level by women. I think that accounts in many ways for the breach between the 'local Church' and what is invariably nowadays called the 'institutional Church'. The faith is invariably transmitted through feminine perspective.

After the first celebration of the Novus Ordo at the end of the Council Card Heenan famously said that men of England wouldn't put up with what the Council Fathers had just witnessed in the Sistine Chapel, but his complaint was actually not about the changed liturgy but the chanting and psalm singing, something above the normal fair of Englishmen: Low Mass, Mass in its simplest and most unadorned form, a reasonably brief and peremptory Rite.

As a man, I hate fuss. I like clarity, yes I respond to beauty, like the well designed lines of a piece of efficient machinery, which is why I like High Mass. I prefer Trooping of the Colour to the ballet, a Beethoven quartet to symphony, a classical painting to a piece of Cubism, a Modrian painting to a Jason Perry tapestry. 

I suspect like most men I could well be descried slightly autistic, I prefer the clarity of a legal document to the airy- fairiness of the Spirit of ... Give me the Canons of any Council rather than the pages of canonised ambiguity and contradiction, give me the hard edge of Thomas or Bonaventure rather than the fluffiness of modern feminist theologians.

I remember a sermon once on the healing of the Centurion's servant, in which preacher compared the Centiturion to Our Lady, the Centurion want orders, Our Lady was willing to 'ponder these things in her heart', we men do ponder but against clear guidelines of 'do this', 'do that', I remember a young man at Sandhurst, who loved all that marching up and down because it gave him the chance to pray, obeying orders came naturally to him,

The Lectionary of the Old Rite certainly seems to be clearer than that of the New, quite a lot about the evils of fornication and unchastity in the Epistles, and quite a lot about how to live a 'good' life in the Gospels, whereas the New Rite Lectionary, certainly on Sundays, presents morally ambiguous extracts from the Old Testament, a rather massaged series of extracts from the Epistles and Gospels. The theology is different, the selection of readings rather than organically developing over centuries gives us a very definite 'Christ of the Council', or at a least a Christ, a Christology and Ecclesiology taken from the decade or so over which the Lectionary was compiled and of those involved in its manufacturing. It comes from a time when ambiguity was fashionable, the Christ that is presented to us is ambiguous, or at least it is different from the morally and theogically directive Christ of the old Lectionary. That is not surprising considering the old Lectionary came into being in a time of real theological debate and ecclesial growth whilst the new Lectionary was put together by men who were essentially conciliatory towards what was then the 'modern world'.

I am not suggesting the Lectionary is 'unmanly' but the Christ it presents is of its time. Dr Shaw, interestingly, says of Pope Francis that he isn't interested in  philosophy or the theology, that he is essentially a politician. I think that is a fair description. In that sense I think he is indeed a conciliatory Pope. The words of Cardinal Kaspar, "the Pope's theologian" ring true in this context, when he speaks about ordinary Christians not being given to heroism, “But it's a heroic act, and heroism is not for the average Christian.” It is this absence of heroism that seems to be problematic for men (and boys) today. My Muslim friends, who are not wild sword wielding Islamic terrorists, see Christianity as wimpish and unmanly: The effeteness of the West, the destruction of the family, sexual ambiguity, amorality, materialism they put down to Christianity. Islam presents manliness in terms of heroism, a man is someone willing to die to defend his faith, his family and his country. A true man despite other pressures will pray five times a day and fast strictly during Ramadan. He will submit to the will of God and teach his family and neighbours to do the same. 

The post-Concilliar Chuch is very much one of, "Who am I to judge", it is seen as morally ambiguous: "gentle Jesus meek and mild" puts up with and accepts everything and anything, except and absence of gentleness, meekness and mildness, for most men this is profoundly unsatisfying.and is more likely to savage or criticise members of his household than act as leaven or source of change. >It is this kind of conciliatoriness that the Church n this country has been pushing for decades t has led to social acceptance, and reasonable relationships with those in power and the 'Establishment' but it has actually lost any power to change society, an often alienates its most committed members and leaves confused and ill informed those less committed, most especially men.