Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Part of the outrage over McQueary’s failure to stop the child rape he was witnessing is caused by the sense that he violated the canons of masculinity. A male’s strength is given to him to protect the weak. If he fails to do that, even if he did not technically violate a law, he has [...]

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After the disgusting displays of pusillanimity in the football program at Penn State, it is refreshing to turn to a real man, the Austrian priest Carl Lampert.
The German Resistance Memorial Center gives this biography:

Born in Vorarlberg in Austria, Carl Lampert was ordained as a priest in Brixen in 1918. After studying [...]

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We are supposed to be living in a heterosexualist culture which leads men to “patrol sexual boundaries” involving sexual contact between males. This was lacking at Penn State.
Alfred Doblin of The Record asks:
For starters, what the hell was wrong with Mike McQueary? A 28-year-old man allegedly sees a 10-year-old boy being sexually assaulted and walks [...]

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There’s my daddy. Let me ask him what I should do.

Mike McQueary, the 28-year-old aspiring coach at Penn State,  the  one who saw Sandusky butt-fucking a ten-year-old boy, left the scene of the crime and called his daddy. McQueary needs to take remedial masculinity courses.
DeeGee suggests this as a scenario that should be studied in [...]

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In working in my new book, Meek or Macho? Men and Religion, I have been reviewing all the many, many ways that masculine development can go wrong.
Wolfgang Schmidbauer a German psychoanalyst, wrote a book, The Psychology of Terror: Why Young Men Become Assassins. He has these comments on Breivik:
Fanatical criminals like the Norwegian Anders [...]

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When cultures collide, sometimes they borrow good ideas from each other, and sometimes bad ideas.

The encounter of Islam and the Christian West has given us algebra, but we have also taken over some of the unlovelier products of Islam.
Islam spread the idea of jihad as meaning not only an interior struggle against evil [...]

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Plato’s Republic and the Christian Church face the same problem in integrating the thumos, the firry spirit, of young men into the community. The political community cannot ignore it. The explosion of the Arab world in 2011 was set off  because one young man felt that his masculinity had been dishonored. He immolated himself, and [...]

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I often wonder at what age the male mind starts functioning in a rational manner (some women say never).
 
The NYT has an article on a young song writer who thought it would be hilarious
 
·       To sing an innocuous children’s song to a grade school class
 
·       Video their response
 
·       Go home and on his computer [...]

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I am revising my first book, The Church Impotent, and I am including a new section on the struggle  with masculinity that Jews have had in the modern world. For two millennia the Torah scholar was the ideal Jewish man; his exercise was not physical but mental. After the Fall of Jerusalem rabbis regarded sports, [...]

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 Supi, celibacy is going to disappear,and you can marry me - or?
 
German Catholics have long manifested a discontent with clerical celibacy. One of Luther’s first acts was to abolish clerical celibacy; Germans currently criticize Zwangszölibat, compulsory celibacy, forced celibacy. As Cardinal Brandmüller points out, the term Zwangszölibat misrepresents the discipline; no one is forced to be celibate.
 
Now [...]

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Israel is experiencing a growing tension between secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, the Haredim. The National Post has an article on the phenomenon. The men of the Haredim are exempt from conscription and spend all their time studying Torah – and fathering children. They do not work, but live on welfare.

About half of ultra-Orthodox adults [...]

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In his comment, Joe makes the point 
·        Strength is not the absence of tears. Strength is the presence of resolution in the midst of crisis. 
Men should be able to show emotion: Jesus wept.
 
My mother died in my arms. I arranged the funeral, and a friend of mine led his choir. I kept my composure until [...]

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You Tube has given show-off adolescent males further motivation to engage in spectacularly self-destructive behavior. Teenagers have filmed themselves wearing a protective suit in a bathtub full of fireworks and throwing a flaming basketball soaked in gasoline – with predictable third-degree burns as the result.
 
In Spanish island resorts the sport of balconing has become popular.. [...]

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The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen notes: 

First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of [...]

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Nicholas Kristof has an article in the New York Times (The Boys Have Fallen Behind) about the growing alienation of boys from education and about the consequent decline in their academic achievement. This decline is disguised by the fact that the people at the top of most professions are still male; but under them the [...]

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