The Church Feminine: Where Have All the Good Men Gone?

Rorate Coeli has a terrific article related to this on the feminization of the liturgy after Vatican II. Very insightful. Here's the beginning: 

The correspondence between Cardinal Heenan of Westminster and Evelyn Waugh before the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Mass is well known, in which Waugh issues a crie de coeur about the post-Conciliar liturgy and finds a sympathetic, if ineffectual, ear in the Cardinal.[1] What is not as well known is Cardinal Heenan’s comment to the Synod of Bishops in Rome after the experimental Mass, Missa Normativa, was presented for the first time in 1967 to a select number of bishops. This essay was inspired by the following words of Cardinal Heenan to the assembled bishops: 

          At home, it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men               who come regularly to Mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw                 yesterday we would soon be left with a congregation of women and children.[2] 

What the Cardinal was referring to lies at the very heart of the Novus Ordo form of the Roman Mass and the attendant and deep problems that have afflicted the Church since the imposition of the Novus Ordo form on the Church in 1970.[3] One might be tempted to crystallize what Cardinal Heenan experienced as the feminization of the Liturgy. But this term would be inadequate and ultimately misleading. Read the rest here.

And if you want to explore this topic even more check out Leon Podles book, The Church Impotent.  A big thank you to Leon Podles for making this book available on his website at no cost.

Read the Passion narratives in the Gospel. Jesus was a MAN, a man, in fact, who suffered extreme torture and death to save us from our sins. He was a manual laborer as well and he walked from one end of Israel to the other seeking the lost sheep. The ascetic Jesus on the girly holy cards is a figment of the imagination. May God bless us with holy shepherds in the real image of Jesus Christ, the God-Man!

A Good Question

Where is the Vatican document Vocatio Vir Christi?

A priest once told a friend of mine that the crisis in the Church won't be solved until women come down off the cross and men climb up. What exactly did he mean? I think Leon Podles got it right when he wrote The Church Impotent: the Feminization of Christianity. He devotes his last chapter to "The Future of Men in the Church." 

Christianity is a manly religion, one that requires struggle and discipline. St. Ignatius, in his spiritual exercises, envisions the battlefield where the army of Christ and the army of Satan gather. And think of all the martyrs who stood up boldly against incredible evil.

 But often the manly aspects of the faith are almost invisible. In some churches the only man in the sanctuary during Sunday Mass is the priest. And what a ridiculous sight his parishioners suffer in a congregation where everyone holds hands at the Our Father. There, behind the altar, Father stands hand in hand with his harem of helpers.

I agree that there is a crisis of masculinity in the Church. When more of our clergy start acting like men, perhaps we will begin to see its resolution.