Forceful Words

On May 11, Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. The Kansas City Chiefs’ star kicker understands our present situation. We live in a society dominated by a post-Christian elite that ignores the principles of natural law and is hostile to the teachings of the Catholic Church. He offered the graduating seniors sound advice (for the most part), and his words were unvarnished by the usual softening pieties about diversity and inclusion.

Seemingly channeling Pope Francis, who often slams priests, Butker criticized clergy for failing to live their vocations. I must demur. I’m more often inspired than discouraged by the priests and bishops I meet. Butker chastised the leadership of the Catholic Church for its widespread and sometimes eager conformity to the COVID lockdowns. Here I agree. He told the students, “We cannot buy into the lie that the things we experienced during COVID were appropriate.” Amen. He also commended the traditional Latin Mass, noting that a young person who goes to the Latin Mass is likely to find a community that will support his efforts to live the fullness of the Catholic faith—a true statement, although my own parish is not TLM and provides exactly that kind of support.

For the most part, though, commentators ignored these provocations. They focused on Butker’s remarks to the female graduates. In so many words, he told them that they have been told “diabolical lies” about what will bring happiness and fulfillment in their lives. Rather than harkening to the secular world’s claim that they should covet careers, promotions, titles, and awards, the women graduating should recognize that the most important vocation for most of them will be as mothers and wives.

One organization objected that talk of mothers and wives advances “harmful stereotypes that threaten social progress.” Another lamented, “Butker reinforced toxic stereotypes about men, power and control.” And so on, and so on. Women of the world unite! A tall, bearded football player is scheming to keep you barefoot and pregnant!

Butker introduced his remarks about marriage and motherhood with a general observation: “Each of you [men and women] has the potential to leave a legacy that transcends yourselves.” Few of us are Nobel Prize winners, famous writers, or even respected community leaders. For the overwhelming majority, sustaining a marriage and having children, nurturing them, providing for them, and launching them into adulthood constitutes the most profound enterprise of self-transcendence. Marriage and children draw us out of our me-centered existence. It requires us to serve rather than be served.

One might object that this truth holds for husbands and fathers, not just wives and mothers. Quite true. However, Butker reads the signs of the times correctly. Yes, young men are messed up in many ways: basement-dwelling, video-gaming man-children. But when it comes to family life, the progressive propaganda is directed toward women (and often against men). Women are told that career success matters more than marriage and children.

Is it “harmful” and “toxic” to counter the “female empowerment” rhetoric with frank, unnuanced statements about the supreme vocation of motherhood? I don’t think so. In truth, Butker is sounding a fair warning to women who believe the lies, and there are many women who need to hear it. Women in the United States are not being socialized into traditional female roles. They are not getting married, and they are not having children. One study shows that nearly 20 percent of women in America aged 40 to 44 are childless. Rates of infertility rise along with professional success. Among high-achieving women in that age cohort (those earning $100,000 or more per year), close to 50 percent do not have children. This is not a formula for happiness. Butker was right to speak bluntly.

Not everything Butker said hits the mark. (He made a strange remark about federal legislation that criminalizes saying “who killed Jesus.”) But on the whole the speech was a welcome broadside. As Flannery O’Connor observed, when society is in the grip of false and distorting ideologies, “you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” I’m grateful to Harrison Butker for following her advice.