A month ago, a football player whose name I’d never heard before crashed into the ongoing culture wars when he gave a passionate commencement speech at a small Catholic college in Kansas.
My 19-year old daughter, who generally doesn’t follow sports, was indignant.
“He told the women graduates they should stay home and be housewives!”
“So don’t be a housewife.”
“That’s not the point! Can you believe it? He’s so sexist…and his mother is a physicist! How can he say this?”
Now my daughter, a college sophomore, is not the stereotypical social justice warrior whom our schools are churning out by the millions. She is not a blue-haired, tattooed aspiring social worker or teacher wanting to play Lady Bountiful Groomer, and she rolls her eyes at them. She wants to make oodles of money, so she’s an economics major. She likes makeup and clothes. She likes Nikki Haley. She hasn’t even registered to vote.
She is a smart, low-information female undecided probable voter. And so she is a perfect target for whipped up faux outrage by the Left. With so little real evidence of actual discrimination against women (as a class), the narrative must be maintained that sexists and supremacists continue to plot against women. When the left must seize upon a speech by Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker at the commencement at a small Catholic school to buttress their narrative of the religious-right who hate women and want them to bear babies for the patriarchy, you realize how few real obstacles face women qua women.
The actual speech is a call to live in a way that glorifies God and pushes back against the degraded society. It criticizes prominent Catholics who share the blame for the disorder. It is far more incendiary than the section on women, which comes in the second half, and perhaps constitutes one-tenth of the overall speech. As Butker says,
“Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.
Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the Sign of the Cross during a pro-abortion rally…from the man behind the COVID lockdowns to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common. They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it…But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history, we need to stop pretending that the “Church of Nice” is a winning proposition.
Butker talks about Catholic vocations. He lambastes priests and other clergy who care more about being liked than about saying difficult and unpopular things. “The chaos of the world is unfortunately reflected in the chaos in our parishes. As we saw during the pandemic, too many bishops were not leaders at all. They were motivated by fear, fear of being sued, fear of being removed, fear of being disliked. They showed by their actions that the sacraments don’t actually matter. Because of this countless people died alone, without access to the sacraments…”
Men and women who do not take religious vows also have a vocation, and that is to bear and raise families together. That is the context in which Butker, while noting that many female graduates will go on to have successful careers, and congratulating them on their achievements, tells the class that they all have “the potential to leave a legacy that transcends yourselves…in the small ways, by living out your vocation, you will ensure that God’s Church continues and the world is enlightened by your example.”
For both women and men, this daily vocation is more than earthly glory, promotions and paychecks. Butker suggests to the women that their highest vocation is as wife and mother, but he also tells the men that if they have a choice between doing something easy and enjoyable, and something harder that glorifies God, they should choose the latter. In other words, neither sex should be indulgent and self-serving in their lives. Men have been told a lie that they are “not necessary in the home or in our communities.” You need to be there for your family, he says, noting that the absence of men from our culture has led to disorder, dysfunction, and chaos. “Be unapologetic in your masculinity,” he says.
According to the transcript, eighteen seconds of applause followed his description of his wife Isabelle following her vocation as wife and mother. The audience clearly had no objection to his viewpoint.
But the nuns down the road denounced the speech afterwards, rather ironically for women who have forgone marriage and children to pursue their vocation. They have a nice website, and as you might suspect, are not the kind of nuns who wear habits. Not being a Catholic, I will simply observe that they seem to pursue social justice as defined by the Church of Liberalism, including seeking a ceasefire in Gaza.
The nuns’ response got more air on social media than did Butker’s actual speech, the transcript of which was difficult to find. (Thank you, National Catholic Register). It was important for the pundits to discredit Butker by countering him with Catholics who will echo the conventional woke view, and who better than nuns? Attempts were made to convince the NFL to cancel Butker or intimidate him into silence; they did not succeed thanks to coaches and other players who defended him. After all, Butker had not given the speech at a football game, although political activist cum players such as Colin Kaepernick have caused great mischief on the field with no consequences.
In my disco-tinged youth, this speech would not have sparked controversy. It might have been a touch “old-fashioned,” especially with Butker’s expressed fondness for the Latin Mass, but no one would have taken offense. Now we have reached a point at which a traditional-minded speech, vigorously and thoughtfully stated, AT A CATHOLIC COLLEGE’s graduation, in KANSAS, is cause for national agitation.
Possibly this is due to Butker’s prominence as the placekicker on the Kansas City Chiefs, and his incidental mention of the celebrity girlfriend of another Chiefs player, a singer who has a passionate following among young women. An obscure speaker, perhaps a local businessman, who gave this same speech, might not have attracted any attention. But Butker, as part of the institutions through which the Left have marched and subjected to DIE ideology, could not be allowed to openly violate its code of conduct.
Well, they didn’t fire him, my daughter might contend, as if this outcome was a sign of our civilizational wellbeing. Butker did not back down. But will other athletes be so quick to speak so honestly again, at least while still playing for the NFL or MLB? And we normals take our cues from our public figures.
Butker should take heart from the flak he drew, because he is indeed over the target. If his detractors had read and understood the whole speech, they would have been even more infuriated. The call to vocation in response to societal disorder and the disdain for the Church of Nice is far more incendiary than suggesting that the majority of the female graduates are “most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into the world.” In the rearview mirror of middle age, that is the most obvious statement I’ve heard in months.
https://www.ncregister.com/news/harrison-butker-speech-at-benedictine