Manhood

Yesterday, my housemates and I marked the first annual "National Man Day." Apparently the "holiday" was started by a couple brothers from the Midwest who felt there needed to be a day to call attention to manhood and to reclaim manliness for a culture that has seemed to have forgotten what it's all about. They describe "Man Day" on the "Official" Facebook page as:

"This day is the day for all men to stand up and say, "Yes, I am a Man." And "Yes, I will step up and do manly things and whatever I want to do on this glorious day!"
Come, make history! Be a part of National Man day. Take the world by the throat and tell them it's ok to watch Rocky movies all day. Tell them it's fine if you sit in your favorite chair and scratch yourself. Tell them it's normal to go shoot stuff or blow something up. Why? Because YOU ARE A MAN!!!
You aren't some nancy that likes to frolic in the fields, unless it's a field of mines and you have an AK47 and a hand full of grenades... Then you really are a man!
Yes on this day, men across the nation will be saying, "Screw you salad bar, with your salad and light dressings!" Men will step up and say, "I'll take that 20 oz steak, and yes, I'll eat it all. Because I'm a man!"

I'm not asking you to throw some sissy party, or to go buy a new power tie because you're a man. All I'm asking you to do is step up live this day like a man would. Blow something up, shoot some animal, punch your buddy in the face for no reason, be a good father, play football and literally knock someone's head off... Do something manly. Be a man like God intended you to be...
Take this day and celebrate your manhood."

And so we celebrated. We went and bought the most beautiful steaks I had ever seen. Not from some chain grocery store, but from a real family owned butcher shop. We drank whiskey and beer, grilled those steaks to perfection, and then spent the evening watching Rocky IV and Braveheart. Real typical. I know.

However, this whole celebration of our masculinity got me thinking about what it actually means to be a man. To be honest, there doesn't seem to be a clear definition anywhere. John Wayne certainly would be someone who most people could agree on as someone who embodied manliness. (at least the characters he played in the movies, anyways) He was tough, shot guns, drank, smoked, stood tall, had his way with women, always seemed to have the right answer, and could stare the world in the eye without flinching a muscle. John Wayne = man.

But what about someone, for example, like John Paul II? Substitute JPII into the roll played in any of John Wayne's movies and it just wouldn't work. But I challenge anyone to say JPII wasn't just as manly, read the dude's life. JPII didn't mess around. This man not only survived the Nazis while organizing underground resistance movements that would have him sent to a concentration camp if caught, he was a Catholic priest during a second totalitarian regime and challenged the attempts of the atheistic government to build a town without a church. (Nowa Huta) By the way, the church got built. This guy took on the Nazis and the Communists and won. Last I checked, no movies were made where the hero beats both. (Especially without shooting a gun.)

Now, this is not to claim everything I just said about John Wayne to be a mute point. I think there is something about him that grabs our attention and we instinctively can point to him and say, "yeah, that's a man."

So what is it? What does it mean to be a man? It seems our gender is forever trying to answer this question. And as individuals we are always trying to prove that we are, that we really have what it takes. We try to prove it to our women, our other guy friends, and most of all to ourselves. And everyone seems to have an answer. Our culture is full of examples of what manhood is about and capable of. And yet, those answers always seem to miss the point - by light years.

So, again, I ask, how do we know what it is to be a man? Is there a satisfactory answer? I think there is.

John Paul II spent most of his life pondering what it means to be human. The question permeates almost everything he wrote or spoke about and his Magnum Opus seems to be a work that he delivered as a series of speeches over a five year period at the beginning of his pontificate. The Theology of the Body (TOB) is a series of 133 addresses (some of which were never actually delivered) which delves into the meaning of being human and the meaning of human love. To do this, obviously, he had to speak a bit about what it means to be a man.

In TOB John Paul makes a few statements that I believe we can use to begin to formulate a type of "plan for manhood" around. The first is that "masculinity confirms itself through femininity." (no. 10:1) And the second is that "masculinity [is] for femininity." (no. 14:4) So, are we supposed to take from this that we are supposed to be some sissified girly-men? Or that women have it all together and we just need to go to their all powerful wisdom and beg them to show us how to be men? No. Not even remotely close. Even though, admittedly, it may sound like that from these quotes taken out of context. John Paul II's point is that humanity exists embodied in two ways, male and female and this difference in gender does not simply imply a difference of the two but exists precisely so that there may be unity between the two. John Paul II even goes so far as to say that "Man (human being) becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion." (no. 9:3) All of this to say that there is a lot we can learn about what it means to be male by looking at what our maleness is ordered towards: our relationship with women.

In our very bodies there is the obvious characteristic of men that we initiate the relationship. In the spousal relationship it is the man who primarily gives and the woman who primarily receives. (The relationship is reciprocal, obviously, but there is a primacy for each. And each, giving and receiving, is a way of perfection.) Therefore, while generosity is a virtue for every human being, male and female, to develop, there is a specific masculine generosity which, when lived out, perfects the man and in a way makes him "more" of a man.

Generosity is the catalyst that radically changes everything for men. Take strength, for example. If a man builds his muscles and uses his strength merely for his own vanity or advantage, that which we instinctually recognize as manhood would be significantly less than a man who uses that strength for the betterment of another, say a fireman or the father killing himself at his industrial-type job for his family. Generosity is, in a certain sense, the key virtue for a man. Just think of all your personal examples of true manhood: that really good father, the holy priest, the hero in a major disaster, what defines their manhood? 10 chances to 1 generosity is the key.

Generosity is particularly key for the development of manhood because it is precisely that which moves out toward the other. The male body, which is expressive of the male person, expresses this nature of man to move toward the other, to exist as one giving. In addition, at least from my own experience, practicing any other virtue such as temperance, patience, justice, or fortitude, is so much easier and fulfilling when it is infused with generosity. It transforms every virtue and in a way perfects it. Which would be better, a fortitude for oneself, or fortitude for another? Each is still fortitude, but when lived for another it takes on a distinctive character which is decidedly better.

Therefore, while I completely promote the savoring of the perfect steak and the cold "brewski" while watching Rocky beat the crap out of that Russian pumped up on steroids, on this first "National Man Day" a return to real masculine generosity must be the first ingredient to restoring manhood, and as a result, society as a whole.