In December of 2023 I posted The Second Civil War #61: the FBI Relentlessly Pursues Radical, Traditional Catholics.  The SMM Second Civil War archive is here.  The article is the story of the revelation of the FBI’s efforts to infiltrate Catholic churches, and FBI director Chris Wray’s serial lies about those efforts.

To the FBI’s way of non-thinking, there are no terrorists more dangerous than American Catholics who appreciate the Latin Mass and who are serious about practicing their faith.  From that article:

To the shock of no one, the FBI had ‘no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship.

Yes, the FBI wanted to place ‘federal law enforcement into places of worship and support outreach efforts to the Diocese of Richmond and other Catholic parishes.’

One rogue FBI office? Nope. The FBI offices in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Portland gave Richmond reports, which helped form the memo.

The two agents who wrote the memo relied on pure leftist sources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic. The agents knew the sources had a political bias.

The FBI picked out ‘Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.’

I ended that article, in part, with this:

One might wonder why, with thousands, even tens of thousands, of potential terrorists from enemy countries streaming over our borders, the FBI has the manpower to try to entrap a 15-year-old altar boy?  The FBI has admitted, thus far, they’re looking into some 300 illegals on the terrorist watch list.  Why any illegal, let alone illegals on the watch list, are allowed into the country or allowed to remain, as always, goes unanswered.

Fast forward to Spring, 2024.  The place: Atchison, Kansas.  The event: Benedictine College Commencement. The speaker: Harrison Butker, a devout Catholic and 28 year-old kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs.  As one might surmise, Benedictine College is a Catholic institution, as serious about the Catholic faith as Butker.  I’ll provide only some of Butker’s comments.  The entire speech is available here. 

While COVID might have played a large role throughout your formative years, it is not unique. Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.

Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the Sign of the Cross during a pro- abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.

These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up. You know, the difficult and unpleasant things. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history, we need to stop pretending that the “Church of Nice” is a winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity, but never mistake charity for cowardice.

Butker was equally forthright in taking the church to task for its spiritual and personal failings.

Because there seems to be so much confusion coming from our leaders, there needs to be concrete examples for people to look to in places like Benedictine, a little Kansas college built high on a bluff above the Missouri River, are showing the world how an ordered, Christ-centered existence is the recipe for success. You need to look no further than the examples all around this campus, where over the past 20 years, enrollment has doubled, construction and revitalization are a constant part of life, and people, the students, the faculty and staff, are thriving. This didn’t happen by chance. In a deliberate movement to embrace traditional Catholic values, Benedictine has gone from just another liberal arts school with nothing to set it apart to a thriving beacon of light and a reminder to us all that when you embrace tradition, success — worldly and spiritual — will follow.

For Democrats/Socialists/Communists (D/S/Cs) and others of the Self-Imagined Elite (SIE) any attack on faith, and particularly the Catholic faith, is mother’s milk, or would be if they knew what women were.  Butker does:

For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.

Those comments, remarkable only by their contemporary rarity, provoked sustained applause, and more sustained outrage, but more on that shortly.

She is a primary educator to our children. She is the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. She is the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation.

I say all of this to you because I have seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life. Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, ‘Heck, No.’

Butker’s political heresy extended to men as well:

To the gentlemen here today: Part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction, and chaos set in. This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the U.S., and a correlation could be made in their drastically lower violence rates, as well.

Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy. You might have a talent that you don’t necessarily enjoy, but if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. I speak from experience as an introvert who now finds myself as an amateur public speaker and an entrepreneur, something I never thought I’d be when I received my industrial engineering degree.

So what did Butker say?  Being a homemaker is a vital and rewarding choice, a choice with which his wife is well pleased.  He congratulated women for obtaining degrees.  Men ought to suck it up, act like men, and seek God’s will for them.  What he didn’t say or so much as imply—take the link and read the whole speech; it’s not very long—was all women must choose to be home makers and there is something wrong with them if they don’t.  Nor did he suggest men must somehow dominate women.

Perhaps, to the D/S/C-SIE left, the worst thing he said was women might be excited about their marriages and their children rather than careers or—this was implied—leftist political activism.

It was an entirely Catholic speech, delivered by a Catholic at a Catholic college commencement.  Butker challenged no one so much as the Catholic hierarchy, but even those comments were appropriate to the audience and occasion.  In a sane nation led by sane people, Butker’s speech would have been unremarkable other than it could easily be seen as an exception to the stereotype of the stupid, thuggish, inarticulate, even criminal, professional football player.

Which is why the Left has gone bull goose looney against Butker (you can view the speech at this link):

Living in a culture where mentioning that women can become mothers is offensive, Butker’s praise of motherhood is an offense beyond toleration. At least it is for progressives.

I was going to stay away from this controversy, but two things inspired me to write about it: the NFL–the employer of some truly depraved players–apologized for Butker’s speech, and his hometown paper The Kansas City Star published an opinion piece calling for him to be fired and replaced with a female kicker. [skip]

The Kansas City opinion piece–and no, it was not the editorial board of the paper calling for Butker’s firing, but a Washington-based male PR guy for Democrats–was nothing but performative feminism.

The Chiefs need to make a strategic call about Butker’s future with the team. If he could agree to shut his mouth, the current story might fade. There are, after all, plenty of athletes with backward cultural views, but they’re tolerated if they can mostly stick to sports cliches in interviews. If they’re superstars, they sometimes can keep yapping and get away with it. Harrison Butker is not Patrick Mahomes. He’s a special teams player. That gives him less leverage with the team. They could trade him for a solid kicker, or they could make a statement by signing a woman to kick. Liz Heaston, Ashley Martin, Katie Hnida or Sarah Fuller might take a call. Maya Turner would likely give serious thought to an offer. And the farm system for talent is rich. There are more than 300 players on the 14 teams in the National Women’s Soccer League. That’s more than 300 women who are professional ball kickers and don’t currently choose to be stay-at-home housewives. It would be delightful if one of them cost the Kansas City Chiefs kicker his job.

Even Bill Maher found little to criticize in Butker’s speech:

Fortunately, innumerable Americans are coming to Butker’s defense.  Increasingly, Americans who simply want to be left alone are realizing they no longer have that luxury, not if they ever have a hope of being left alone to live under the rule of law.

Robert A. Heinlein said it well:

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.

The NFL, and other American institutions, routinely cover for anti-American actions and rhetoric.  They cover for players who act out the worst, stupidest and most violent manifestations of masculinity.  Wife beaters, rapists, actual misogynists are lauded and protected, at least so long as they can produce wins.

Harrison Butker dares to suggest men and women who follow God’s law, and who do as He wills, might be happy and fulfilled, and the SIE go berserk.  This tempest in a teapot will soon blow over, but it reveals the depravity of a considerable part of contemporary American society, and it reveals the danger about which this series continually warns, as Axexander Solshenitsyn warned:

The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of men who wanted to be left alone.  They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love.  They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it.  They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over.

The moment the men who wanted to be left alone are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide.  They are literally killing off who they used to be.  Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these men who wanted to be left alone, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives.  They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror.  TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream and beg for mercy… but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the men who just wanted to be left alone.

The SIE would be wise to heed the words of Solshenitsyn, and Harrison Butker, a man wise beyond his years and current occupation.  How can a mere football player be so inspired?  With God, all things are possible, perhaps even the salvation of the United States of America.  It might all be as simple as listening to such as Butker and honestly asking: “where have I fallen short?  How can I be a better man or woman?  How can I be a useful servant of God?”

If all Americans did that, this series would be unnecessary.