One Fundamental Aspect of Male Leadership That Most Catholic Men Overlook

Aren't you forgetting something?

Constantine’s Conversion, Peter Paul Rubens

The rapid decline of society’s moral standards hasn’t appeared out of a vacuum. It’s not like people woke up one day and decided to reject God and let themselves follow a lifestyle of vice and sin. The degeneration of our culture follows a breakdown in virtue that began many decades ago, even if we’re only now starting to see the consequences manifested in the external world around us.

Virtue began to disappear when men allowed themselves to become comfortable. All civilizations suffer cycles of comfort that make men weak, effeminate, and childish, and we’re precisely in one of those cycles. And when men cease acting virtuously, society starts to degenerate.

The many comforts of modernity —some good, some bad— make it increasingly easy for men to pursue pleasure and forget that God made us men for a specific purpose, a purpose beyond enjoying a life free of trials and difficulties, and a purpose that always requires some form of servant leadership.

It really isn’t difficult to understand why we see so many men choosing mediocrity over their God-given duty of leadership: leadership requires effort and sacrifice. It requires a great deal of self-denial. It demands a level of sacrifice that many of us are too lazy or effeminate to accept.

Many also justify their weakness by saying that only some, very special men are called to lead, but I don’t believe that’s the case. Leadership, under natural law, and within the bounds of Christian life, isn’t something that only some men are called to, but an undeniable duty of all men.

Leadership is Our Duty

The leadership that we’re all called to isn’t the self-serving, prideful “leadership” commonly pursued in a secular context.

The Christian kind of leadership is something else entirely, because our model of leader is not some self-worshipping world leader, but the Word incarnate, the Savior of mankind, God become flesh: Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

And just like Christ, in His own blessed words, came to serve, so we, as imitators of Him, have to base our leadership on service and sacrifice. We need to accept our call out of love for God, in humility, knowing that proper leadership will always require pain, suffering, and to deny ourselves for the sakes of those we love.

All Catholic men are called to accept their duty of proper sacrificial leadership, which is vastly different from the self-serving, respect-demanding, “leadership” that is commonplace in a world that’s moved away from the example of Christ.

This confusion about leadership is not accidental. The virtue of leadership and discussions surrounding it have been infiltrated by corporate jargon, secular psychology, and the dumb little soul-crushing illustrations that are just a perfectly painful description of corporate life:

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/top-leadership-skills-2063782

The point is that leadership as a virtue has been hijacked by corporate life, and now when most of us think about leadership, we get a “corporate” vibe, like the one above. These approaches reduce leadership to technique and psychology, stripping away its sacred character as a participation in Christ's own mission.

But as we’ve said, true leadership is much deeper, much more exciting, and also much more dangerous than just “being open to feedback”.

True leadership is the Cross. True leadership is willingness to die for the sake of those we love.

So, any talk about leadership that seeks to remove the sacrificial aspect from it will always fall short. Which is why we cannot truly learn how to lead from secular sources. Maybe some of the “skills” and “leadership practices” that modern psychologists and other sources recommend might be somewhat useful, but they always forget the single most important aspect of proper leadership as a man: