On Addressing the Dignity of Man and Masculinity

On Addressing the Dignity of Man and Masculinity | Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. | HPR Editorial

How would men today be more able to live out their own unique discipleship and role in both the world, and in the Church, if we were able to articulate how men embody the Christian vocation to holiness in exclusive and particular ways?

Holy Father Francis’ opening World Youth
Day,  and his first trip back to his beloved South America, were
truly victories for Christ and his Church.  The trick the popular media
oftentimes tries to pull, in the face of such successes as this, is to
avoid reflecting and reporting on the actual events, and instead
grabbing one or two peripheral (and hopefully incendiary) events or
comments. (We see this every January 22, when major networks and papers
refuse to report on the thousands upon thousands who march in protest
against abortion every year in our nation’s capitol.)   That is why most
of the news stories coming out of World Youth Day did not focus on the
millions who came to pray with the Church universal at Mass on
Copacabana beach, or on the many conversions to Christ experienced by
the young people (evident in their own blogs and Facebook pages), but
rather news reports concentrated on Pope Francis’ answers to two
“loaded” questions on his return flight.

One question had to do with his
understanding of women’s vocations in the Church today, to which he
responded that “we don’t yet have a truly deep theology of women in the
church. We talk about whether they can do this or that—can they be altar
boys, can they be lectors, or can a woman be president of Caritas—but
we don’t have a deep theology of women in the church.”  This is the
context and the call during which Pope Francis also offered how: “A
church without women would be like the apostolic college without Mary.
The Madonna is more important than the apostles, and the church herself
is feminine, the spouse of Christ and a mother.”  The Holy Father thus
sees a need to develop a particular theology of women that goes beyond
the wearisome and worldly question of women’s ordination—of what women
can “do”—and to bring this conversation into something more
foundational, more fruitful—of what woman “is” (for a beautiful analysis
of this exchange, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/08/05/2079/).

The other topic that the media keeps focusing on is Pope Francis’
response to their questions concerning gay men.

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