Graduation speeches transcend time and place, resonating in culture long after their original listeners have settled into the disappointments and compromises of adulthood.
Now it’s no exaggeration to say that it’s Harrison Butker. No such speech was given.
Typically, speakers make a lasting impression by including bite-sized, whimsical nuggets of wisdom that appeal to the wide-eyed, driven 21-year-old in all of us. is the best. These may be cute, non-binding reflections on the meaning of life (David Foster Wallace: “This is water(Steve Jobs:”your time is limitedso don’t waste your time living someone else’s life,” or a vague, religious exhortation to self-expression (Neil Gaiman: “Make good art”).
Instead, Butker opted for this boring statement: “Never be afraid to put your faith in the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church, for this is the Church that Jesus Christ founded, and it is through this Church that we receive sanctifying grace.”
Don’t get me wrong, this was very well received by Butker’s intended audience: the devout Catholic young men and women who make up Benedictine’s Class of 2024.
However, non-believers were perplexed when they encountered such words on social media. Benedictine College could have avoided the confusion by having a simultaneous interpreter on stage. “Jesus Christ” doesn’t sound so threatening when you realize that it’s just a Christian term meaning “universe” or “living the truth.”
Butker misinterpreted the mission because he was so carelessly honest: instead of the usual harmless platitudes, he dared to give actual advice.
Oddly enough, many Catholic observers also found Mr. Butker’s comments alarming. Primarily, his argument is that most of the young women in his audience would be happiest if they emulated his wife, Isabel, by giving up their career dreams and staying at home to raise their children.
Again, the Catholic audience didn’t seem to mind: The audience applauded for the full 18 seconds as Butker choked up on words about how much he and his family owed to Isabel.
But the older and wiser members of the church were appalled at Butker’s audacity to think that his wife’s example would lead to a formula that would apply to all young women. Billionaire professional athletes are insulated from the economic and social conditions that make it increasingly difficult for single-person families, especially those with many children.
More importantly, Butker doesn’t seem to understand how hard it is to find a suitable husband in the first place. The residual effects of the sexual revolution, newly invigorated by app-based dating, are encouraging men’s reckless, noncommittal behavior. The marriage market is collapsing, and even the most enterprising brides must reckon with the possibility of remaining single into their 20s or even 30s.
These are all great points, but I feel some of the criticism is a hint of disdain for Butker’s lack of nuance and sophistication.
It’s like the valedictorian’s contempt for the returning king. Who is this stupid good-looking sportsman who is heavily beholden to a secular society who talks about the difficulties of living a truly Catholic life? Does this collection of half-baked clichés, delivered in formal, halting speech and punctuated by inorganic sentimentality, pass as wisdom?
The same question arises for me, and as someone who has been Catholic for only a few years, I humbly suggest that we examine our own pride here.
Catholics with unconventionally many children (I’m not counting myself, as three is relatively modest) may be accustomed to a kind of passive-aggressive defensiveness beneath well-meaning comments from strangers: “Oh, I couldn’t handle that many kids. At this rate I’ll go crazy with just two!”
It’s as if the mere choice to live differently, to rebel against the tacit agreement of what “normal” is, is a personal indictment.
Of course, we are accustomed to thinking of this defense as running in the opposite direction: Puritanism, as H.L. Mencken famously defined it, is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.”
Well, that’s fine, but it suggests the following definition. LiberalismCertainly more so these days than the lingering fear that someone, somewhere, has challenged your assumptions about what happiness means.
Guilty
I vividly remember my confusion the first time I seriously encountered such an alternative belief. That it didn’t happen until I was in my early 40s is a testament to either divine providence or my own arrogance.
As the 2016 election approached, I reconnected with an old high school friend only to discover that the goth, rebellious drama girl I fondly remembered had somehow become a Catholic pro-life activist.
She promoted her beliefs with the same indomitable, unapologetic vigor with which she adhered to punk orthodoxy, and after a few pointless skirmishes in replies, I decided it was better to agree than to disagree.
But I remained fascinated by the posts and articles she shared. Who were these people, and how could they believe such nonsense? I was struck by the oddities: a hipster atheist woman who thinks abortion is misogynistic, a cheery black man who sarcastically proclaimed “all lives matter” when describing the skewed demographics of aborted pregnancies, and a gay man who wholeheartedly believed his faith called him to remain celibate.
What first drew me to these characters was the hate-filled joy of reading. Their opinions were not only outrageous, but also deeply serious and expressed in banal language. I have never been able to agree with a writer whose writing lacks so much subtlety and brilliance.
I didn’t realize at the time that my obsession with style was often inversely proportional to my belief that I had something important to say. The more I admired their redneck nonchalance, the more I had a sneaking suspicion that their sheer faith was what kept me reading.
If I wasn’t so sure I was immune to religion, I might have walked away. But I wasn’t going to let this heightened awareness ruin the fun. This was too fun and uncomfortable to stop. So I kept reading, clicking, watching, savoring the utter misguidance, until one thing led to another, and I was received into the Catholic Church during the 2019 Easter Vigil.
Looks like you showed them!
benefit of the doubt
Any Catholic convert who spends any time on the Internet quickly discovers that the Church is no refuge from the ideological debate and name-calling that is dividing the world. In fact, the situation may be even worse.
I try to stay away from such things for the sake of my soul’s health, but I’m only human. I’m hardly “trad” in life. My wife earns more than me and travels a lot for work. We were married until age 34 (after living together for several years) and didn’t have our first child until age 36. I did not try to drag her or her children into the “one true faith” with me. I go to mass every Sunday. it’s not.
Still, I realized that my way of thinking leans toward the “conservative” side. I faithfully attend Novus Ordo Parish, pastored by a priest I deeply respect, but in the back of my mind I wish there was a local Latin Mass closer to home. I’m allergic to anything that suggests “outreach” or “changing with the times,” from recruiting women priests to calling priests. James Martin’s Bridge Construction.
For the most part, I believe I’m right, but I freely admit that despite reading voraciously, I’m still a relative novice. And my stubbornness may be revealing some kind of insecurity. If the church is wrong about divorce and same-sex marriage, what else is it wrong about?
Nevertheless, the twists and turns of my “journey of faith” (as it was called in Christian coming-of-age rituals) led me to give men like Harrison Butker the benefit of the doubt. I did. I remember a long-forgotten Facebook post that started it all off.
If my old friend had stated his beliefs more moderately, I would hardly have noticed. If she had taken the words of a prominent liberal Catholic and framed abortion as a “complex” issue that required “dialogue” and “listening to women’s experiences,” I would have said, “That’s fine. He would have happily moved on with his intellectually inferior people. Enjoy their crazy little hobby.
But someone I knew, someone I thought was one of us, came out right away and said abortion is murder? The aggression was intolerable.
Many of Butker’s critics Including the Benedictine sisters Some academics associated with the university appear to have interpreted his remarks as a tacit declaration that working outside the home is fundamentally incompatible with femininity.
Even if this were a perfectly reasonable interpretation, young Catholics exposed to Butker’s rhetoric would surely be categorised enough not to mistake his opinions for the Church’s official teaching, and certainly they have seen enough of the modern world in their 20 years or so to realise that while he may not be exactly right, he isn’t necessarily wrong either.
In any case, Butker’s speech was addressed to them, not to us. In speaking so flippantly and honestly, Butker misunderstood the mission. Instead of the usual harmless “live in the moment, but be kind” cliché, he ventured to give actual advice.
The problem with advice is that it mistaken It’s something to do. It’s always going to ruffle feathers. But if we truly believe that college is a time for students to engage with ideas that challenge their habits of thought and their cherished assumptions, then there’s nothing wrong with giving them something to grow at the end when we send them off.
Even the unlikeliest of smarts, like the player with the second-highest field goal percentage in pro football history. If something good can come out of Nazareth, there’s no reason it can’t come out of the NFL.
Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the Benedictine Sisters as the founders of the Benedictine University.
