I think we all recognize that there’s something wrong with manliness in our society today. So, if you’re looking to figure out what true manhood is, stay tuned because we’re going to be talking to Dave DiNuzzo from truemanhood.com.
What is the problem with manliness today? Like, what’s the big deal?
Dave: Great question, and thanks again for having me. Um, man, where to even begin on this topic? There are so many problems in our world, and I really, in a way, believe that where the man goes, so goes the culture. It’s similar to where the family goes, so goes the culture. But ideally, we have males, okay, so the male gender that we are actually living as a man, as men, and there’s a big difference. I’m either being a man or I’m being a child; I’m being a boy, yeah. There’s a big difference in the world where we see lots of grown males that are not living like men, yeah, and it’s because, I think, of a lot of different things. So, there’s a definition of what the world believes is manly, and it’s a term that I coined years and years ago, and it’s actually morphed and it’s actually changed. When I founded True Manhood in 2008, I was watching and I was looking at what is the culture saying about masculinity. At the time, I came up with this term, cultural manliness, and the definition of it is that the more power, money, sex, and stuff that a man consumes, the more manly he is. Yeah, so again, the more power, money, sex, and stuff that I consume, the more manly I am. It’s like how much stuff can I just get for myself? Okay, so power, money, sex, and stuff; we understand all these. Well, what’s actually occurred in the culture? How so? Well, when we look at between 2008 and 2021, the landscape of the world is so different. Yeah, the things that used to be a giant stumbling block for men have either, certain things have just seemed to go away, yeah, but some things have grown exponentially. So, one of the big ones is our pornified culture, and I think we’re going to do that on another video, so stay tuned. Make sure you come back for that video as well. But when a male doesn’t know who he is or what he was created for, we’re going to have problems, and I really think overall that that’s what we’re dealing with in the world, is the things that are childish that a boy would do are being praised, and now there’s even the confusion of, wait, females don’t have to be female; they can do what boys can do. Well, we don’t want, we want boys, adolescent children, to do boy things, yeah, like my son. He’s probably out jumping on a trampoline, riding a skateboard, jumping off of something, he’s jumping off the top into the pool, yeah, he’s being a boy and he’s ten, yeah, and that’s what we want him to do. We want him to be wild; we want him to be full throttle; we want him to be wide open. But in that, I don’t want him to stay doing the things a 10-year-old does when he’s 20 and 30 and 40. We want him to do what a man does, and so in the process, I’m trying to teach him that, yeah, but what we’re missing in the world, and maybe this is a whole other topic as well, is just fathers, yeah, manly examples. See, in our culture, the idea of manliness, as soon as it’s said, it’s so off-putting to so many people because they have it wrong, yeah, they don’t know what manliness is, so it’s become a bad word, yeah, so it’s kind of gets all jumbled up, and people don’t know what to do with it, so I want to pull on this thread a little bit and kind of see where it goes.
Chaos vs. Order.
Why do we need boys to step up to be men? Like, what is the delineation and why does our society need that versus the childishness of boys?
Dave: Great question. I think the answer really exists in the understanding of chaos versus order. The world was created in a way that it works in an ordered, proper way; things occur the way they occur, yeah. It was made in that beautiful, intelligent way of just take a seed, goes down in the dirt, there’s nutrients, the rain, the sun, the plant, the photosynthesis; this is not random, yeah. If the world was chaotic, that would never occur the same way, or maybe it would, yeah, but it wouldn’t be able to be a process of order. So, when we talk about this, when it comes to what a boy does versus what a man does, we need a man to do things that a man does, like lead, yeah, like be a leader but a servant leader. This is what Christ exemplifies for us; it just all comes back to what Jesus does every single time, blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man, he is the model. So, we want to do what Jesus does. When it comes to the other things that a man does, is we, you know, I was created, if I’m not going to give myself to the Church as a priest to be completely self-sacrificing, then I’m called to give myself completely in a self-sacrificial way to my wife and for us to raise and educate and love our children, yeah. And so, that process, which is the whole point of covenant and of love and the scripture stories and ultimately of heaven, that’s what I’m called to do as a man, so when we have boys, they’re allowed to do manly things, and it’s under a facade, it’s this chaotic facade, yeah, that, well, I could impregnate somebody; it doesn’t have to be my wife, well, but that’s chaotic and that’s problematic, and so, I, people, people start to get really touchy, yeah, like what about this person I know? What about my dad? This way, what about my teachers? It doesn’t matter what’s happening, there’s a right way and a wrong way, so when a boy is just living this chaotic lifestyle, if that transitions into adulthood and he’s just an adult boy, people are going to get hurt, yeah, and it’s going to be chaotic, and the order of how things are supposed to go.
Reccommeded Reads On Catholic Manhood
Holy Grit: A Saintly Guide to Becoming a Man of Virtue
Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality
Being a Man: Masculinity Series Part 2 – Catholic-Link
10 Qualities Of A Godly Man – Catholic-Link
