Why You Need Your Men’s Group

After reading the two previous articles on men’s groups, Why They Will Fail and Why They Should Fail, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring and perhaps shed additional light on the worrisome issue. As someone who has produced a program for small group ministry (don’t worry, no one bought it!), ran a men’s group from his house, has done Exodus 90 three times, and who now works for a national men’s ministry, I speak with some credibility on the issue.

Good answers start with a solid question. The question we need to ask is, “What is the problem towards which men's ministries are the solution?” As someone who has witnessed the birth and death of many ministries in my 17 years at large parishes, I can say that most folks are very busy in ministries that are the answers to questions no one is asking.

Men’s ministries, however, are the attempted answer to a very pernicious problem. Behind the confusion of our contemporary culture, there is a deeper issue with the rise of industrialism and individualism that, while not consciously referenced, is hovering in the background of any conversation about Catholic men and their manner of groupings. We can acknowledge that men’s ministries are a recent and artificial ecclesial phenomenon, but that does not make it un- or anti-traditional. Rather, the real newness is the alienation of men today.

In the past, the location of home and work as being essentially the same place meant men were always near their families, relatives, and friends. Since most humans for almost all of history died within five miles of where they were born, and since most social arrangements across the globe were agrarian, we can see how thoroughly integrated work and home relationships truly were in the average man’s life. They were deeply overlapping spheres, even in medieval cities, as homes were built over shops that lined the densely packed streets.

Work and home were life, not two radically different and conflicting segments of life in constant need of balance. A man’s place was in the home, on the farm or in the shop, as was his wife’s and his children’s. He was surrounded by Christians. He was known and knew his place. Thus, there was no need for men’s ministries because work and life, family and community, were all blended into a single whole. Moreover, there were dozens of guilds, associations, and societies, both secular and religious, that fostered fraternity throughout Christendom, so that a man’s craft was grafted into the life of the Church.

Another item to note: men and women, outside of familial relations, did not intermingle often. That was the cultural norm. The new thing of male and female coworkers is commonplace, but historically that is simply not the case. Men and women belonged to their own separate groups that grew organically from their preexisting relationships. Men belonged with other men in familial, social, religious, and economic spheres that informed their identity and the roles they played in their society.

And now, they don’t. Industrialism moved men from their homes or neighborhoods to the factory miles away. Work was no longer familial or domestic and life was bifurcated.

The stopgap from the 1850s to 1950s existed with fraternal organizations, such as the Elks, VFWs, Knights of Columbus, etc., existed in the tens of thousands across America a century ago in order to supply what modernization has taken away. Men flocked to these groups because they were getting pulled further and further away from familial ties, history, and one’s roots. Fraternal associations not only did things like provide for widows and orphans in case of your death (hence the Knights of Columbus insurance), but they also supplied a hall, a place to go that wasn’t work or home where men could congregate with other men. As modernity marched on, however, these associations have all but disappeared in America and they took with them the fraternity they encouraged. In the span of 70 years, fraternal organizations went from over 30,000 in the 1920s to less than 1,000 by the 1990s.

We can now return to the question: What is the problem towards which men’s ministry is the solution? The problem is the lack of Catholic social cohesion that leaves men friendless outside of work relationships.

Looking at the literature of classical antiquity, we see the centrality of male friendship in myth and philosophy. As Aristotle said, “For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods”. He gave us the three categories of friendship: pleasure, utility, and virtue. Most men only have pleasure and utility friendships. Virtuous friendships are rare, but necessary to living a virtuous life. Men’s ministries are trying in various ways to fill the gaps by putting the gospel at the center of their relationships with other men.

Yes, there are obstacles: men bond around doing things, not talking through things; many men are too busy with their families and careers; formation should be done by qualified teachers; the interior life is deeply personal and not easily generalized; accountability implies confidentiality, which doesn’t always happen.

But the real reason we all feel ill at ease is because trying to deliberately make fraternity feels artificial and forced. And it is. Someone has to lead, put on the coffee, get the DVDs, or set up the projector. Volunteers are trained, or not trained, to lead small groups that rarely go as planned. It’s sometimes painful, most of the time it is barely tolerable. We can acknowledge this and yet still soldier on. Why?

Because you cannot live the Christian life alone. You need Christ’s Church. You need the Kingdom to follow the King. A life of virtue cannot be lived alone because, at the very least, you are a terrible judge of you. Men who are virtuous have friends who are virtuous because you have moral blindspots and they are unwilling to comply with your blindness. Good friends are mirrors held up so we can see ourselves better and change for the better. They call us to account. Sanctification requires it.

Yes, men’s ministries are terrible. But they are better than going to Hell.

The artifice of community-building ministries lies in the fact that our home life and our work life are violently segregated, a great and unfortunate divorce. Such ministries are a fiddly bridge that attempts to span this chasm modernity erected. No ministry is perfect, but that does not mean it is worth giving up on. After all (get your tweed jacket out), as G. K. Chesterton says, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”

Should men’s ministries either be about formation or fellowship? This is a false dichotomy. Catholic men’s ministries must first focus on formation if they want to build fellowship. This applies doubly so to service ministries. As Saint John says, “That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). The failure of evangelization in the last 50 years has produced coloring-book Catholicism and Nice-guy Jesus, who no man wants in times of crisis.

And crisis there is! The typical Catholic man is awash in heresies, degrees of apostasy, and probably habitual mortal sin. We can no longer rely on one’s neighbor, one’s neighborhood parish (they are rapidly supplanted by regional parishes), or one’s parish priest (too few!) to communicate the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Good media exists that can address heresy, apostasy, and convict us of sinful habits. But these are supplements, not substitutes, for we can read all the best books and not apply a single principle, exhortation, or rebuke to our lives. The same is true for videos, podcasts, and homilies. Application is where the society of men becomes absolutely critical.

St. Paul speaks to this when he says,

“Brethren, and if a man be overtaken in any fault, you, who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens; and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:1-2).

We men now find ourselves in a radically new social situation. We are rootless cosmopolitans who know not Christian fellowship in the slightest. And that is truly damning. Christ says the world will know we are His disciples by the love we have for one another. One another! Pristine liturgy and beautiful churches are not enough for the new springtime of the Church.

So excuse me when the coffee’s gross, the DVD doesn’t play, or the loud guy dominates the conversation about what he read on the Internet last week. Men still need community, founded on Christ, and ordered towards Heaven. Anything less than that, you’re standing on sandy soil. Take heed, lest you fall.

“It is better therefore that two should be together, than one: for they have the advantage of their society: If one fall he shall be supported by the other: woe to him that is alone, for when he falleth, he hath none to lift him up.” (Eccl. 4:9-10)