By Ann Burns, Crisis Magazine, May 18, 2024
Ann Burns is a wife, mother, and the founder of The Feminine Project.
It needed to be said: Our careers are not our vocations.
“We must always speak and act in charity, but never mistake charity for cowardice.”
—Harrison Butker, Commencement Speech at Benedictine College
Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College has certainly caught the attention of many. And while it’s not surprising that the secular media is proclaiming his speech as “ugly,” many Catholics are also up in arms, stating that he represents a dangerous “new face” of Catholicism, or is wildly out of touch, calling us to live in some fantasy 1950s utopia.
All of these claims are unfounded. Butker is not advocating for a new face of Catholicism, nor is he promoting the 1950s. After all, if the 1950s were so idyllic, the heinous push for birth control, abortion, and sexual license would not have followed in the 1960s. Reading this kind of agenda into his speech reveals our own misconceptions of what it means to be traditional. Tradition has nothing to do with poodle skirts or watching Leave It to Beaver and everything to do with rejecting the heresies of modernism. Or as Butker explains, it means fearlessly living out our Faith, knowing full well it is wildly countercultural. …
