In our time, the family is undergoing an unprecedented crisis. Marriage rates have plummeted, divorce rates remain high, and many children grow up without the stable presence of both parents. Cultural forces demean the significance of marriage and family life, replacing them with transient relationships based on convenience or personal fulfillment. Economic pressures and ideological movements have further weakened the bonds that unite husbands and wives, fathers and children. The results are seen in the rise of loneliness, depression, and social fragmentation. The crisis of the family is a crisis of civilization itself. Without the stabilizing, nurturing influence of the family, individuals and communities lose their way.

The crisis in fatherhood has received special attention from Catholic scholars and authors. At the University of Virginia and beyond, recent works have explored the deep wounds caused by absent or passive fathers. Authors like Devin Schadtin his book Joseph’s Way: The Call to Fatherly Greatness (Ignatius Press, 2014) emphasize the importance of modeling fatherhood on Saint Joseph’s virtues of humility, sacrifice, and steadfast love. Similarly, Fr. Gerald E. Murray has written powerfully in essays such as “The Crisis of Fatherhood: Confronting Our Failure” published in The Catholic Thing (2021), highlighting the moral and societal collapse that follows from the abdication of paternal responsibility. Although not specifically Catholic, David Blankenhorn‘s influential book Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (Basic Books, 1995) has been widely cited by Catholic thinkers for its sober assessment of the societal impact of widespread fatherlessness. These authors collectively argue that reclaiming the vision of fatherhood rooted in service, leadership, and love is essential for renewing both the Church and the broader society.

Mid 80-90s Daniel Moynihan, African American community, late 60-70 25% fatherlessness. Now, 75-80% fatherlessness.

Hopefully pendulum has swung as far as it can.

Children as adult can articulate harms of divorce.

As an adult, be an adult. Keep mouth shut instead of arguing in front of children.

No fault divorce, whims, great harm.

Harm the family, large flesh wound for all.

Brad Wilcox, go 5 years out from crisis point, the couple stayed together are happier than those divorced. Stay, learn to adapt.

Not extreme cases of abuse. Leave to safety and help

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Modern society increasingly elevates rugged individualism, where the self is seen as an isolated and self-sufficient entity. This view contradicts the Catholic understanding of the person as fundamentally relational. The modernist exaltation of personal autonomy, disconnected from duties to family and community, has contributed to a weakening of family structures. Men are often portrayed as either unnecessary or even harmful to family life, and their responsibilities toward their wives and children are diminished. The Catholic vision reminds us that true freedom is found not in isolation but in communion—with God, with family, and with society. Saint Joseph stands as a corrective to the modern image of the isolated individual. He is deeply bound to Jesus and Mary, living his vocation through service, not self-promotion.

Classical understanding of personhood, Aristotle, political animal, lives in society

Politics social relationships man engages with

Rugged humanism, Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand’s philosophy of rugged individualism, central to her Objectivism, champions the primacy of the individual’s rational self-interest, autonomy, and productive achievement over collective or altruistic demands. She articulated this through her novels, like The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), and non-fiction works such as The Virtue of Selfishness (1964).

Individual cannot continue society. No life-giving element. One person cannot carry on his own seed. Need a couple, to create children, to sustain and maintain the state.

And within the heart of the Church.

Masculine & feminine.

Rugged humanism, unicycle

3-legged stood man, woman, God greatest stability

III. Integral to a Family are Both a Father and Mother

The family thrives when both a father and mother are present, cooperating in their complementary roles. The masculine and feminine are not interchangeable. Each brings essential gifts: the father offering strength, provision, and protection; the mother offering nurture, tenderness, and formation. Children flourish when they witness the loving unity of their parents. They learn the meaning of love, sacrifice, and duty from the daily interactions of father and mother. The absence of either figure creates a deficit that is deeply felt in the emotional and spiritual development of a child. Thus, the Church affirms the vital importance of both fatherhood and motherhood in building strong families and healthy societies.

Put ourselves in opposition how and order created. Society demands responsibility for self.

Called to live in community, beauty of Church sacramental marriage.

3-legged stool. Ride unicycle very hard, God adds absolute strong foundation family & society at large.

Despite the ideal, life in a fallen world often results in circumstances where one parent is absent—whether through death, abandonment, or other causes. In such cases, the broader Christian community has a sacred duty to step forward. Grandparents, godparents, mentors, and the parish family should strive to supply what is missing to the best of their ability. No child should feel completely bereft of paternal or maternal love. The Church herself, as Mother, seeks to enfold the wounded within her arms. Spiritual fatherhood and motherhood remain possible and are vital ministries within the Body of Christ. Saint Joseph himself was not Jesus’ biological father but was nonetheless a true and loving father. His example reminds us that true fatherhood transcends biology; it is a vocation of service, protection, and sacrificial love.

Unique reality God becoming man, how engages in humanity while maintain who He is.

St. Joseph fulfills natural role.

Paternity can be both natural and supernatural. Boyhood become premier into man in society. Become fully what you are is paternal in the best case.

St Joseph became premier, arch type what a true father is. Know what a father ought to be. Learn to love St. Joseph

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The Catholic Church has long taught that the family is the fundamental cell of society. It is within the family that children first encounter love, responsibility, sacrifice, and the knowledge of God. As Saint John Paul II affirmed, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family” (Familiaris Consortio, 86). Families are the first schools of virtue and the original communities of faith. Without strong families, the broader structures of society become fragile, susceptible to disorder, and eventually to disintegration. Fathers and mothers serve as the primary educators and protectors of their children. It is through their example and care that the next generation learns how to live virtuously and work for the common good. This ecclesial vision sees the health of society tied intimately to the health of family life.

Witnessed destruction of fatherhood often portrayed in sitcoms (cultural education)

Incompetent, buffoon, predator type of husband.

30-40s years

Ratzinger Crisis of Fatherhood

Advent Sermon (Second Sermon, December 10, 2021): “The Holy Spirit’s Role in Our Prayer as Children of God”

Being aware of cultural deficits, makes proactive action possible. Know better do better.

Culturally, Roseann Barr Kramer, ship is off kilter, need to right the ship.

LA rioting, sign of absence of holy good Fatherhood in these peoples lives

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Caryll Houselander “The Reed” (pg 359)

The Virgin Mary as a hollow reed, ready for the Breath of God to make music in her.

As she wrote to wartime Londoners, “Because he [Christ] has made us ‘other Christs,’ because his life continues in each of us, there is nothing that any one of us can suffer which is not the passion he suffered.” In this way, her intuitive religious vision anticipated Pope Pius XII’s encyclical on the “Mystical Body of Christ.”[1]

Mary is presented the great agent of change. Mary answers for the whole world, Be it done unto me”. Houselander’s desire was to have her lines out into the world, even if bombs were falling. She counseled many of those traumatized by the war. She was hyper attuned to other’s suffering and vulnerable herself. Though single and childless, these are her lullabies to us, her prayers.

Being precede thought, action

Hollowness, Augustine, late have I loved thee. Man is a shell without Grace

Word of God, think Scripture, part but not the whole

WOG Christ, infinitely more than the words on paper

Residual empiricism through modernism. Strong hold can’t love that which is not measured. If its not in the Bible, not to be loved. God can’t be contained within the written word

Sola Fides, answer to the poem, seems concrete form for sake of abstraction. Go from paper to the Person, a hard transition.

VII. Hesitancy & Gratitude for this topic

Cover flap, many devout believers recoil from poetry, even though it is deeply Catholic. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote poetry, was ambivalent about poem’s ability to speak truth.[2] These selections would make a fitting Lenten &/or Easter season devotion.

Nice for a person hold a key to open a door we can’t. We need a mentor then we can understand.

He wants man to live in communion with others. Someone needs to assist especially in these profound endeavors.

[1] https://www.ncronline.org/culture/book-reviews/new-biography-caryll-houselander-illuminates-20th-century-catholic-writer  accessed March 3, 2025

[2] Read xx

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TOL “To Scatter Flowers” (pg 289) Language of flowers an ancient metaphor for transcendent ideas. TOL famously promises, “a shower of roses”. Written a year before her painfully suffering death from TB, her DNS, she uses the metaphor of flowers as her language of love speaking to God and things she “offers up” to God.

Stumbling block for some the language of flowers, can sound syrupy

Decipher TOL language of flowers, offering up suffering, DNS

ICS Institute of Carmelite Studies very helpful to orient understanding

Flower girl at every wedding, counted the radicalness the separation of the petal from the stem.

Her self-recognizing through her suffering to pluck the flower from the stem. Intense pain separation from the flower from the root.

Charming metaphor as well, Doctor of the Church.

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Thomas Aquinas “Adoro Te Devote” (pg 90) Latin translated by Victorian Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ

The faculty of hearing serves us, we have heard the Truth from Christ himself. In terms of sight and being blind 2 ways

Incarnation, the God man real, objective, individual did touch and hear God.

Greater awareness through abstraction than through senses. TA pondering of Eucharistic species profound grace filled understanding, read Aristotle, immediate awareness of nature, offer to us a way we can engage with accident and essence.

Open eyes to that

Hume, couldn’t measure it, not real. If tree falls does it make a sound? Trust vaguely what they could see touch smell

Pascal “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

Faith seeking understanding.

Engage the poem with belief that something is there.

Drawing out of meaning goes beyond concrete meaning is a personal process. Human heart hears in its own pitch.

[1] https://aleteia.org/2025/03/01/indianapolis-archdiocese-investigates-claims-of-eucharistic-miracle  accessed March 3, 2025

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Great

1/3 of the selections written by converts

Shakespeare’s poetry has a beating heart of Faith. He like all of the poets elected was authentically formed with the Traditional Latin Mass. A liturgy, according to Popes (Pope Pius V one example)[1], has no parallel in beautiful worship of God

Resides in unflinching witness of historical events

ToL master of poetic ideas.

Looked for mostly English language, in spite of inclusion by ToL French, or Dante, Italian. These great texts merited inclusion.

Endured the test of time, no living poets included.

Augustine “Late have I Loved Thee’ (pg 22), translated from Latin by Frank Sheed

Beautiful synopsis of the pear tree sin. Stole for the vivifying thrill. Stark honesty.

Could be read on beauty, loss of years lack of relationship with his Creator.

Read does not relate Augustine’s Conversion. He had studied and been taught by the great Ambrose, but he could not leave behind (so he thought) his concubine’s embrace.

One day in a garden, Augustine heard, Take up and Read. In that moment of a sing song child, he knew God and completely followed Him from that moment on. Hearing this as a Divine Command to read Scripture his eyes fell on these verses read an injunction against “indecencies,” a command to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts.”[2]

God permits the encounters is a mystery.

[1] https://www.saintjeromechurch.org/mass/historical-roots-how-old-is-the-traditional-latin-mass/  accessed march 3, 20205

[2] https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/confessionsaug/section8/  accessed March 3, 2025

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Catholic

 -The Real Presence is more than a metaphor, but it does have similarities to it

Bread & wine become (instead of being like and yet are linked to the accidents remain) the Flesh and Blood.

Mary, litanies to Our Lady a replete with metaphors of her. Not just in a similar sense but in a real and concrete manner. She is the Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, mystical rose,[1] etc…

The metaphors are more like her

If a poet is honest in their quest for scalpel precision truth, then sooner or later, they will encounter the Truth. A consequence of this encounter integrity in creation will become self-evident. To paraphrase Frank Sheed, the more one sees the world as God (Theology) sees it, the greater the sanity (truth) that the person will understand, encounter.

Transcendent Truth- Essential Catholic Idea. Metaphysical would be theologians or philosopher would enter into conversation. Catholic Poetry aims to express truth that is beyond (metaphysical) ourselves in way that we can comprehend it somehow.

Defining God, a huge project within metaphysics and theology, is something all of us do. The Incarnation is pivotal in our understanding of God.

Pare down sense perception to the marrow, see it in its essence

Science, don’t know the essence, its abstraction.

Essence of the person remains even after a passage of time.

Poetry

Start with what it says, then consider the metaphor

Poetry & logic need one another

[1] https://www.catholicgallery.org/prayers/litany-of-mary/  accessed March 3, 2025

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Admire her defining terms. A simple glossary is found at the back of the book.

Ex/ I had a recent conversation with a person about different forms of government. I immediately began in this manner. A loved one watching said, “I don’t this individual knew what they were getting into”

Synonyms and antonyms important for types of Poems, Catholic and Great (this is akin to discussing music, a personal decision albeit with good reasons)

Poems–

Synonyms

Images, metaphors, music of language lifts the senses beyond the mundane

Metaphors- couple two separate realities by something in common. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Summers day beauty, colors& flowers. The lady does not become the day. Two distinct ideas.

Poets look for Form & Connection, use of metaphor

Shock and discomfort. It has to be new.[1]

Antonyms

Prefers Controlled poetry with rhyme and meter. Not music.

Psalms rhythmic quality. More pleasing to ear, easier to remember.

Conducive to other human interactions, loved for its own sake.

Moden hymnody, lost love for poetry. Content for anything that rhymes. Meter & rhyme creates a mood.

Precision in own work, indicative.

Poetry is in subjunctive.

Both help the other, but each have their own spheres.

More than nursery rhymes

Ex/ Arius, use of popular ditties of the day, heresies swept Christendom

All art is cheap, due to laziness.

Enlightenment in a lot of ways gateway to inferiority, inferior quality.

Ex/ Impressionist art, all original artists, were classically trained, true artist. Little more permission to experiment with craft. Each generation gets dumber,

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Mary contemplating the eucharist

Gerard Hopley manning, he was highly trained, liberties

Love and then do what you will. Love first. Then tinker

Music writers form 70’s, 80’s didn’t love the form, loved the innovation

[1] Read xxviii

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Some ways,

Ex/ “No other literary genre is so concerned with truth”

– this is a portion of a quote and is encountered within the text at times. The quote ends

“scalpel-precise rendering of things that humans cannot otherwise articulate.”

It is an opinion which I do not share at this time.

I know the difficulty in good scientific studies and their craftmanship. Scalpel precise rendering of truth is foundational and the style of writing is certainly prose. Within Sacred Scripture and our Liturgy, there is poetry, but a much greater use of prose. Theology & Philosophy also struggle to use scalpel precision language.

Others, who write legal opinions, face this same Herculean task of scalpel precision rendering of things in pursuit of truth. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot speak to this personally, as I can with science, engineering, theology and philosophy.

The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric

Sr Miriam Joseph

I have read it and its excellent. Sara is correct in referencing it.

Scientific vs artist writing different perspectives for truth.

Scientific best in abstract forms, real concrete examples. Abstraction leads to concrete. Do not use many synonyms, muddy water, unclear.

Poet begins with concrete, multiple synonyms, then leads to explore abstraction of the language.

I leave it to the reader to decide for herself, if this is the case for them. It does not detract from her excellent selections & analysis.

However, as a nod to the use of poems within science, is the various mnemonics I have used over the years to memorize scientific facts. A reduction of the prose to its essence. The best strategy would be the use of music as well. Homeschooling my children showed me their strength.

Philosophy language, not the Germans, French and Greek, Latin seems to hold it well. Way the authors sees things different. Poet mind can enter into ideas from these backgrounds.

Right & left brain both brings truth into focus.

Poetry divine encounter through language.

Great philosophers there is not divine language, need a body, angels have no bodies, no sense perception, no language

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