By Leila Lawler & Leila Miller, Crisis Magazine, April 7, 2021
Leila Marie Lawler is a wife, mother, and grandmother. … Leila Miller is a wife, mother, grandmother, writer. ….
We’ve been writing for years about the crisis of manhood, and that crisis has come to a head within the past year, particularly in the Catholic Church. Now we write to call our men to be what God created them to be.
The faithful have been abused through a year of cancelled Masses, locked churches, and denial of sacraments. We have been harassed by ushers, segregated by diktat, unable to bury loved ones, and/or kicked out of Mass (sometimes with police escort) for not wearing a mask; we are encouraged to see each other as walking contagions, not as our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Those not succumbing to this new normal are shamed as selfish and uncharitable for daring to question the unprecedented suspension of worship and freedom, which in many cases went, and still goes, far beyond what the state requires, even were we to grant that the state has authority in the matter. …