There is a powerful and beautiful phenomenon going on with young men. They are encountering Christ through Our Lady and the Rosary. These men wash up on the Church’s shores, storm-beaten, and exhausted from the hostile culture they are a part of; one in which they are simultaneously villain and slave. The culture treats them as “toxic” while demanding they answer every whim of women until they are discarded. While there are distressing strains of toxic masculinity, it is toxic feminism that dominates the cultural milieu.
When I started serving in campus ministry, there were limitations in what I could offer due to the circumstances. It became clear to me that I needed to bring Our Lady, so I started an evening Rosary once a week that I committed to showing up for even if no one else came. When I got the call that my father was dying, I had to leave town rapidly. A couple of young men were attending the Rosary, so I left it in their hands.
During the time I was gone, Our Lady drew these young men into her Immaculate Heart. I saw profound changes in them as they committed more and more to Our Lady and the Rosary. Another young man, who is set to begin OCIA in another part of the diocese, told me the story of how Our Lady rescued him from darkness. It was reminiscent of Fr. Donald Calloway’s encounter with Mary at the darkest point in his life, which led him into the Catholic Church. Something incredible is going on.
The more I have pondered this phenomenon, the more it makes sense to me. These young men are surrounded by women who in many ways have been taught to hate or demean them. These young women—victims of the lies of toxic feminism—have turned men into enemies, idiots, and slaves. These young men cannot find women to date because too many women are turning away from the Faith towards political ideologies and activism, the occult, or are convinced that they don’t need men at all. The more progressive the college, the more entrenched this reality is.
In the face of this hostility comes Our Mother. The perfect woman who is the example par excellence of authentic femininity. The sexes are meant to be complementary in marriage, but also within every other realm of our lives. I see this very clearly in the way I minister to young people versus the way the male priest-chaplain ministers to them. Young people need both male and female disciples of the Lord to guide them on the way. It is not a competition. Rather, it is meant to be a harmony of complementarity.
There are multiple changes I noticed when Our Lady got ahold of these young men. The first thing she did for them was lead them to a deeper desire for Christ. The more they committed to praying the Rosary, the more fervent their desire grew—and continues to grow—to live their Catholic Faith in a more authentic way. Worldly things that were getting in the way started to be less appealing, and I noticed these young men start jettisoning areas of distraction and dysfunction in their lives.
Second, they began to hunger to know more about the Faith and were able to engage in fruitful discussions amongst themselves and with me. I noticed more openness in discussions. I was able to explain vocation to some of them in a way they had never considered before. True to what I have noted over the last few years among seminarians, these young men became more open to both priesthood and sacramental marriage through Our Blessed Mother.
When I told them they should discern both vocations side-by-side in order to be fully open to God’s will, they took my suggestion seriously and started seeing that the priesthood could be a possibility if it is God’s will. This previously would not have been the case until Our Lady awakened in their hearts an openness to God’s will and a deeper hunger for Christ.
Third, she is the healing remedy for the wounds men carry from decades of radical feminism. She is the holy woman they all desire in the depths of their hearts. This is simultaneously why Mary should be the woman of every priest’s heart or man’s heart and why every woman should strive to be more like Mary within their marriage, religious vocation, or in the lay state. She shows both men and women what true femininity is meant to look like and how to live it well.
Women are meant to draw out authentic masculinity. Due to our God-given intuition and sensitivity to the needs of others, we can help men live more fully their calling to be men after God’s own heart. This translates down the line to becoming a husband and father (or spiritual father). When we berate men and seek to dominate them, they cannot fully become who they are meant to be. The same is true for women. The desire to dominate men is the curse of Eve, which leads to all kinds of evils.
These young men, who are coming to the Catholic Church from different backgrounds, are seeking an authentic way of living that allows them the freedom to be the men God made them to be. Our Lady reveals to them how and why they are called to chastity, self-sacrifice, service, intimacy with the Lord, and courage. She helps shape them into other Christs so they can go out into the world to draw people to the Lord, including the young women, who, whether they realize it or not, are being smashed against the rocks of radical feminism. They are anxious, unhappy, and angry, and they need Our Lady and the young men she has formed into true gentlemen to help lead them to Christ.
I know this to be the case because it was multiple men who helped me when I found myself slammed against the rocks. I had bought so many of the lies of radical feminism. When I enlisted in the U.S. Navy, I believed that I had to be tough, and I could never break. One of my drill instructors in boot camp made it his mission to try to break me. I was too strong-willed, so he gave up. My guy friends would tell me I was so tough I should have been a Marine. I took that as a compliment.
The Lord had other plans, however. It took a massive terrorist attack to break me. After serving as a 9/11 relief worker to the families of the 184 people murdered at the Pentagon, I went back to work as a linguist. I became a workaholic. I eventually was named Lead Petty Officer (LPO) with 12 direct reports, which led me to work even more. I was suffering but ignored it for nearly 3 years.
Eventually, I was sent to England. The pace was much slower, and with that slowdown everything I had been avoiding from 9/11 began to creep in through night terrors, sleep paralysis, nightmares, panic attacks, and a deepening depression. I couldn’t run anymore. The military’s mantra that you can’t hit a moving target was revealed for the lie it was, and I collapsed.
No 20-year-old, no matter how tough, is prepared for the level of agony, horror, and evil that I witnessed as a 9/11 relief worker. Like these young men coming to the Church, it was Our Mother who came to me. I would feel her presence in the middle of the night alone in my Lincolnshire row house when the night terrors came on. At the same time, she sent me two men who were spiritual fathers and friends to me.
One of them died a few years ago. He was my first experience of spiritual fatherhood (may he rest eternal). He understood my agony because he served in five combat zones. He was suffering with severe PTSD as well, but he adopted me as a daughter and helped me walk that lonely path. It was precisely because he had been broken open through suffering that the strongest aspects of his masculinity were revealed to me. It is Christ Crucified who reveals true masculinity, not machismo or pretending to have it all together. Both are lies covering for pride.
The other man was a supervisor who did everything in his power to protect me from what was a very dysfunctional environment in the military at that time when it came to PTSD. He was willing to sacrifice his own position in order to help me. In a way, he laid down his life—livelihood—to make sure I got the help I needed. He showed true courage. The scandal of what so many of us suffered thankfully was blown wide open in the Obama years.
These two men were able to break through my hardened exterior and reveal to me that my suffering and vulnerability were points of strength. In a manner of gentleness that stems from authentic masculinity, they were both able to protect, defend, and guide me through one of the darkest periods of my life. These are the same kinds of men Our Lady is building up through the Rosary. It is these men who will be able to go into the dark places where women are trapped in the lies of radical feminism. These two helped show me a new way with Our Lady’s help.
Our Lady is doing amazing things in the lives of young men, which will lead to a much-needed rescue operation of young men and women trapped in the lies of our culture. We need to encourage young men to turn to Our Lady. We need to encourage them to consider both the priesthood and sacramental marriage and to seek God’s will for their lives. We need to encourage men to be who God created them to be, and that includes protecting and leading women to Christ. Young men are taking up the sword of the Rosary in Our Lady’s army and being transformed. May God be praised!
Photo by Jack London on Unsplash
