![]() ![]() Their coming of age, making the necessary steps toward manhood, naturally entails greater demands, since traditional Catholic boys have to get along and stand firm in a world that is savagely inimical to what they have received at home. A girl can safely go from the happy home of her parents to her happy home with a well-chosen husband–from home to home, not from home to world as boys must.īoys must leave the home to find their fulfillment in a world gone mad. Traditional Catholic families can do what they want in their homes no matter how wretched the world is, they can make their homes godly places and, for girls, that is usually sufficient. ![]() If a girl is happy at home, then she has no problem. The home is small and local we have more control over it. (This is why homeschooling for boys is often a disaster: upon leaving home, they are either bound to be wild because their manhood has been crippled in the home environment, or they are dishrag-like and under-achieving because they have never faced the challenges that “make a man out of you.”) Thus, boys must find themselves in the world, achieving independence outside the home. Men sanctify themselves primarily through their work, and their primary setting is outside the home. The reason, as far as I can see, is this: girls are made for the home that is their natural setting and where they are to mature and gain the strength to leave that home one day and in turn establish their own family circle. Traditional Catholic boys seem to have more problems “finding themselves” than the girls. There is a profound crisis of manhood today, 1 and this crisis extends to the traditionalist camp. ![]() This article will give some principles for parents to help give their teens that all-encompassing answer to supply the certainty they need to face life. To guide safely their children into full-fledged adulthood, then, parents must provide two things: conviction by way of an all-encompassing answer to the problem of life and courage in the strength to live that answer. In our last article, we saw that adolescence is a time of great uncertainty, and that this uncertainty left unsolved or wrongly solved leads to all of the pejorative characteristics which we link to teenagers. ![]()
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