The Year in a Day

The Catholic Thing

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.
It was one year in a single day. On 11th May, the year 2024 unfolded for American Catholics. In the space of a few hours, two commencement addresses were delivered: Jonathan Roumie at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
Much of what marked Catholic life in America - ecclesially, culturally, politically - in 2024 can be heard in the different approaches offered by the two speakers on that day.
If there had been a Time magazine Catholic of the Year for being newsworthy, it might well have been Butker, who is adjacent to the celebrity world of Taylor Swift (who actually was Time's Person of the Year 2023, her second time, though in 2017 she was part of a group).
The Butker speech got more attention than Roumie's by several orders of magnitude. That itself was a telling sign of who shaped the national conversation in 2024.
Butker began by castigating "bad leaders who don't stay in their lane," and presenting himself as one who "preaches more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it."
But who is in which lane when dispensing Catholic advice: Roumie, a veteran actor who plays Jesus in the stunning theatrical phenomenon of The Chosen, or Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs?
The lanes are certainly shifting. Presidential candidates in 2024 frequented podcasts rather than the mainstream media. Those who no longer stay in their lane had a prominent role. The Republican National Convention, for example, featured Amber Rose - whose work includes a "digital strip club" and the Los Angeles "Slutwalk" promoting "sex positivity" - in a primetime speaking slot.
Perhaps there are no lanes anymore. In 2024, public discourse seemed more demolition derby.
Butker's speech sparked a national controversy for his encouragement that young women seek fulfillment as mothers and homemakers, noting that his own wife's life "truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother." There were other musings against natural family planning and choosing where to live based on proximity to the traditional Latin Mass.
Yet the heart of Butker's address was inveighing against bad leaders. He castigated President Joe Biden as "delusional," Catholics who "fear speaking the truth," and "bishops and priests misleading their flocks."
In the category of bad leaders, Butker notably did not mention NFL owners, a group that tends to prioritize private gain over the common good, or sports celebrities, two groups that would be very much in Butker's lane.
Butker offered a combative Catholicism at Benedictine, which is intensely attractive to many, especially young men, as any campus chaplain will report. He represents a source of vitality and energy in the Church, and the broader culture.
Combative men in digital media emerged in 2024 as an important cultural influence. The trend has been evident for some years, but their influence on the presidential race gained them more attention. Many of them are not Christian and some even anti-Christian, but there are prominent Christian "content producers" as well.
Butker's approach was more evident in an interview he gave to EWTN on 15th March 2024. Speaking about the previous month's transgender funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Butker said he refused an invitation from Cardinal Timothy Dolan's radio program because he found Dolan's response to the funeral lacking: "I was waiting on someone to come out and say that this is outrageous, this is an abomination, this should have never happened, this should have been stopped. . . .And nothing came."
In fact, a statement did come from the rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral several weeks before Butker's EWTN interview. Father Enrique Salvo expressed his "outrage over the scandalous behavior at a funeral here at St. Patrick's Cathedral." Stating that the cathedral's welcome had been "degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way," h...