ST. JOSEPH, MAN OF THE CHURCH

FALL 2021 / UPDATED MARCH 2022

MASCULINE GENIUS

Seventy-five years ago, the qualities that define manhood were widely agreed upon in our culture. “Real” men were laborers, craftsmen or warriors – on the battlefield or in the marketplace – strong, courageous, independent, assertive. They took no prisoners, never gave up, never shed a tear.

Since then, a lot has changed. Women CEOs have become commonplace, as have male nurses. Still, confusion remains. In a world where a man can be anything he wants, what qualities should he strive for? Who should his role models be? Many of today’s political and business leaders seem to embody sinfulness and pride, and too often our entertainments celebrate criminal behavior and moral relativism.

“Resources to support an understanding of manhood have been pretty lacking,” says psychologist Dr. Greg Bottaro, founder of the CatholicPsych Institute. “In the 1980s, Pope St. John Paul II started a major effort to build up resources in support of femininity, introducing the notion of the ‘feminine genius.’ That was an important first step, but it also opens up an awareness that, 40 years later, we could use something like that for masculinity.”

[To help guide Catholic men as they navigate these shifting currents, the Adult Faith Formation Office of the Archdiocese of New York sponsored Man Up New York, a daylong conference at St. Joseph’s Seminary, on October 23, 2021. The event, which sold out well in advance, was introduced by Cardinal Timothy Dolan and featured talks by Dr. Bottaro, Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC, and New York Mets catching legend Mike Piazza. The central theme of the day was “St. Joseph, model of true manhood,” and the focus was to support and encourage men to be better sons, fathers, and husbands by living out their faith and leading their families by example.] 

In recent years, a consensus has formed among many Church leaders and thinkers that Jesus’ earthly father may be the best role model for today’s Catholic man. In December 2020, Pope Francis declared the start of the Year of St. Joseph, lauding Joseph as “the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence” who fulfilled “an incomparable role in the history of salvation.” In this, the pope echoed the sentiments of Church scholars throughout history, including St. Francis de Sales, who wrote in the 17th century, “Valiant and strong is the man who, like St. Joseph, perseveres in humility; he will be the conqueror of the devil and of the world.”

“It’s that humility that brought about St. Joseph’s greatness. He never pointed to himself,” says Fr. Calloway, author of Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father. “That’s the mark of a good man and a good father. He isn’t quoted once, not a single word, in the New Testament. And yet, when God wanted the Holy Family to do something – like to avoid Herod, or to move back out of Egypt to Jerusalem – He spoke to Joseph. And Joseph didn’t say, ‘He spoke to me, Mary, not you.’ He just said, ‘Okay. If that’s what you say, that’s what I’ll do.’ Humility is victorious over selfishness. You don’t have to be Conan the Barbarian or Rambo. You can be a simple, humble man doing your daily duty. Humility has power.”

But Joseph wasn’t only humble; he was a man of action. “What I love about the masculinity of St. Joseph is that he knew how to take charge when it was his call to do so,” says Dr. Bottaro, author of Consecration to Jesus Through St. Joseph: An Integrated Look at the Holy Family. “The silence of Joseph in the gospels shows a clear mark of his deep inner life, his prayerfulness. He was a serious man of prayer who at the same time had the leadership and the courage to take care of his family. He took the charge from God to put his newborn baby and wife onto the back of a donkey and go out into the desert – which sounds pretty much insane – but he followed God’s will and courageously protected his family.”

Another key trait of St. Joseph that speaks to contemporary men is his purity. “We live in an age where all men – whether married, not married, ordained, not ordained – are going to be exposed to the flesh,” Fr. Calloway says. “Lust is going to come their way at some point, even if it’s just through the media. Yet all men are called to have chaste hearts. St. Joseph did live a unique marriage, for sure, a virginal marriage. Nonetheless, it was a true marriage. He and Mary really loved each other, yet there was such chastity, such dignity, such respect. If men, no matter what their vocation, seek to have a pure heart with good intentions, society will benefit. Because we live in a culture that is just saturated with pornography. This is a huge challenge for men today.”

We cannot hope to attain the purity and sanctity of St. Joseph, but we can strive for them. To follow in his footsteps, Dr. Bottaro says, we should start by “number one, praying to St. Joseph, to build a relationship with him and receive him as a spiritual father. Too often when we look at the qualities of St. Joseph and how to emulate them, we’re missing the fact that Joseph should be primarily a father to us. It’s a correlate to Our Lady being a model of femininity for women. It’s more important that Mary is actually our mother, and she’s loving us into our sanctity. It’s similar with St. Joseph. He raised Jesus, and through Jesus’ human perfection, he raises us as well.”