Fathers, priests and kings

Images of masculinity on the Feast of St Joseph

The feast day of St Joseph can prompt a flurry of macho reflections, especially from Catholic apologists perhaps overly alert to bearded online Protestants’ sniffiness at Mariolatry and lace. So, I will start with the caveat that I am more Jacob than Esau, an eager Priest Associate of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, and have been known to show up some brides with the frilliness of my cotta. Let’s just say, I am unlikely to be mistaken for an inked-up, man-hugging Evangelical bro (though “some of my best friends” etc.).

Some people like to makes shows of masculinity in ways I find off-putting. In a recent speech, a British government minister hailed 2024 as “the year of democracy.” Over fifty nations intend, at least in theory, to open their polls to the people this year. These include some of the most populous in the world. Yet the fact that the minister gave his grandiose proclamation over a soft-rock backing track while exhorting his own people to prepare for war against some of those at least nominal democracies suggests it might be hollow.

On the allied front, the United Kingdom’s most special of friends is currently engaged in a contest of unprecedented gerontocratic credentials. The combined age of the two top contenders is 157. Both are men, and this does not stand in their favour. They represent what many consider the worst aspects of their sex, standing accused of greed, nepotism, irascibility, unearned privilege and irrepressible hubris, a combination amounting to the infamous charge of “toxic masculinity.” Yet they stand against the backdrop of a political culture which seems to condemn masculinity itself as inherently toxic, as though the problem were not men being bad men, but men being men at all, a problem to which the only solutions are feminisation or sterilisation. It’s a contention at least as old as the Lysistrata, but at least in the days of Greek drama, the negative characteristics of the hairier sex, including our warmongering propensities, were offset by the positive.

The Christian man has never been considered a saint by virtue of his sex, but it alone does not make him a sinner. Sin is shared by both sexes alike. Yet if certain sins are more representative of one sex than the other, so, corresponding to each, are their redeeming virtues. Greed can be tempered into proper ambition, nepotism into loyalty, anger into courage, privilege into charity and responsible stewardship, arrogance into decisiveness. These can be recognised in certain types or roles within Scripture, and the success of particular men and women to live up to them.

Three key roles ascribed primarily masculine status in Scripture are those of Father, King and Priest. They are key because they are attributes of God Himself, given full expression among humans in Christ. Though Christ as God the Son is not God the Father, He alone perfectly bears the Father’s image. This is reflected in the parable of the Prodigal Son, where Jesus Himself is the father who welcomes the lost son home and throwing him a feast. Like Melchizedek, Christ is also both priest and king. Crowned in thorns, He offered Himself as simultaneous priest and victim on the Cross, that He might sit at the right hand of the Father and rule from the heavenly throne. The ideal son, He does not usurp the Father, but rules on His behalf.

All three of these aspects of Christ-like masculinity, the aspects of Father, Priest and King, are viewed by many moderns as comprised, perhaps fatally. Patriarchy is presumed to be inherently wicked. The father is recognised to be the most likely abuser in any household. Many priests, too, called to be the spiritual fathers of the household of God, have so publicly and wickedly erred against their spiritual children, including literal ones, that the clerical state itself invites suspicion. Kings, seen as an embarrassing offshoot of a less civilised age, are restrained from direct political power for fear that they will become tyrants. In short, because men have failed as fathers, priests and kings, those roles themselves face scorn; or, more pointedly, because men have failed as men, manhood itself stands condemned.

But this is a mistake. Condemning people for failing to reach a certain standard should not entail condemning the standard itself. Failures of doctors do not lead to calls for the instant closure of all hospitals. Failures of teachers do not lead to calls for the closure of all schools (though the way things are, I sometimes wonder). Failures of the police, however, have called for their “defunding,” with calamitous effects for exactly the people who most need their protection. I hope, too, that failures in democracy will not result in its abolition, however much activists want to recall every vote that does not go their way until they have re-educated us all into compliance. By the same token, failures of Christians to be good Christians should not furnish calls for the abolition of the Church, failures of leaders for the abolition of leadership, or failures of parents for the abolition of the family. Nor, then, should men’s inadequacy as men demand the destruction of masculinity.

The ancients knew this. Even restricting yourself to Greek and Hebrew literature, seldom will you find perfect archetypes. The saints and heroes are flawed, whether they are male or female. Agamemnon is both a great king and a despicably failed father, who offers his own daughter in sacrifice. Clytemnestra kills him and his looted prophetess Cassandra in recompense on their return from Troy, but she is as much the type of the dutiful mother as murderous adulteress or scheming queen. David is a scheming and murderous adulterer who has his own officer killed in pursuit of his lusts on the target’s wife, and yet provides the Old Testament’s most memorable type of the king, of whose line the King of Kings will be born. Kings are ambiguous figures throughout the Old Testament, but while that ambiguity may lead to individual kings’ deaths or deposition, it does not translate into a call for the destruction of their office. Rather, their office is to be perfected by the grace of God.

The way towards this perfection is Christ. We sometimes speak of Christ as though he were merely the “model” of a set of moral attitudes given as a textbook for Christians to copy. And yet, attempts to excise an appendix of“Christian values” from the life of the Church have proven historically fruitless in the long run. Schools, hospitals and nations proclaiming their adherence to Christian values within a mixed economy of beliefs (“welcoming those of all faiths and none”) inevitably end up absorbed into the values of the secular clients who pay the bills. “Values” belong in the marketplace, dictated by what the highest bidder is willing to pay. “Values” are not what Christ transmitted to His Church. He offers Himself as the singular Way – not of values, but of virtue, which leads to the fullness of life and truth.

The Way which Christ both is and offers is the way of participation. As the divine Son, He participates in the kingship and sanctifying priesthood of the Father by nature. Through the grace of Baptism into His Body, Christ invites all people, women and men, Jews and Greeks, to participate in the life of the Trinity that He enjoys. Through the gift of Himself in the Eucharist, He perpetually renews that participation, the we may dwell in Him and He in us. By Word and Sacrament, Christ imparts His virtues mystically through the cultus of the Church liturgically offered and so lifts the faithful into union with God.

So, through the Eucharistic sacrifice, all the baptised share collectively in His image-bearing of the Father, His kingship and His priesthood. This does not, however, mean that all Christians are individually fathers, kings or priests, any more than all Christians are mothers or queens. Such are particular roles entrusted by Christ to certain members of His Body. These are not restrictions, but gifts. Consider the simple fact (simple enough for me, anyway) that men cannot bear children. This is not a limitation waiting to be overcome by technological solutions or social redefinition. Still less is it a “ban” on male parturition, for although that word is bandied about very loosely by those seeking iconoclastic political ends, one cannot ban what has never been. To ban something is to prohibit what is already possible, not to prevent what has hitherto not been. Childbirth is not “banned” to men, but rather is a gift given to women alone. I have no more right to it than I have to someone else’s Christmas present or lottery win. What’s more, the resentment of others’ happiness because they have gifts that I do not would be counterproductive to my own happiness, as well as theirs.

There are certain gifts, however, which are quite right for me to envy and to desire. These are those gifts which are within my capacity, aided by God’s grace, to acquire. There is no point in me desiring to be an astronaut or professional athlete. I am well aware that these lie outside my capacity. I will never be fit enough and am not gifted with a mathematical mind. These are gifts not meant for me, and so be it. But fatherhood: well, I may not be the best at it (and God knows I am not), but that is something towards which I can legitimately aspire and for which I can legitimately pray.

But the greatest gifts are those available to all: faith, hope, and love. These three virtues have the power to suck out all the world’s sinful toxin. Even masculinity is not immune to God’s restorative grace. So, on his feast day, may St Joseph pray that men rediscover the godly gifts of our sex. This does not necessarily demand a trip to the gym.