Everything we’ve been taught about what it means to be a successful man, about achieving status, authority and riches is turned on its head by this otherworldly defendant: “If my kingship were of this world”, he says, “my servants would fight that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world”.

Anecdotally, it seems that the traditional Mass attracts proportionately more men than modern forms of the Mass. Why is it that Catholic lay men in particular are drawn to the traditional Mass? What is there about its form that appeals to Catholic men of our time?

Why is it that men are created to be fathers? Pope St John Paul II tells us in 'Familiaris Consortio' that human fatherhood is meant to reveal and relive on earth the very fatherhood of God.

We Catholic men have a choice before us. Either we arise from our stupor and put our houses in order, then pick up our weapons and join the battle, or we let the effluence of fear and despair creep deep into our souls and we give up entirely. Each, individual man, in his own environment and with his own particular set of circumstances, has that singular choice to make: get a grip or give up.

According to Thomas Aquinas, effeminacy is an unwillingness to put aside one’s pleasure in order to pursue what is arduous. This is also his definition of sloth, but the difference is that sloth is the aversion of what’s hard whereas effeminacy is the disordered attachment to pleasure.