OPINION: A Defense of Harrison Butker
Harrison Butker? According to news accounts, you would think he is the chief contributor to the decline of Western civilization.
Au contraire. Butker, a lowly NFL football kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs has, in his TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) Catholic context has: uplifted women who chose to be full time work-at-home wives and mothers; has reinforced that men should revel in their kind and loving masculinity within traditional marriage; and, the unborn and their mothers should be protected (is 1.4 million abortions in the USA not enough?).
What many do not realize, statistically speaking from listening and reading the entry of Butker’s commencement address at a TLM-friendly Catholic college, the bulk of his works were aimed more at the cowardice of this current Catholic gaggle of priests and bishops. Butker dropped a smart bomb right down their ecclesiastical chimneys.
Funny that only the Sisters of Mt. Scholastica, affiliated with Benedictine College, are the only Catholic institution that has responded negatively to the speech, calling it “divisive.” And of course, it is divisive since Butker, in his personal capacity, has pointed out the craziness of some aspects of our current culture. And by the way, Butker did say that the Catholic Church has been counter-cultural, aka culturally divisive, from the very beginning and that would be around 33AD, the day that the Sisters should remember that Jesus Messiah was sent to death for His divisiveness.
But the anti-Butker commentators, for whatever reason, are reticent to mention that, by the bulk of his words, Butker kicked the teeth of those priests and bishops who are not living up to their priestly vocation and their/his Catholic Catechism. The ire of those priests who love the adulation of the people in their parish versus those priests who love biblically relevant Truth being applied to our 21st Century are surely the kickers’ fans. Perhaps his biggest fan is his wife, upon whom he lauded and heaped a NFL tailgate party game helping of encouragement of being, God forbid, a “homemaker.” Butker was assuming that somebody has got to stay home and raise children-how revolutionary!
A revolutionary thought that someone, somebody, somewhere, must raise children not to be wolves. A Mrs. Butker? Perfect for the job in the humble culturally twisted estimation of kicker Butker.
Butker’s naysayers may be probably the same folk that decry the fact that we are losing our children and teenagers and communicators of our value system to social media. Do they not know that the greatest teacher and communicator of our value system, either right or left, is a mother, supported by a physically present and emotionally connected father.
It must be said, in agreement with Butker, that our Creator, has hard-wired into women of our species a maternal instinct to bear, nurture, protect and care for their little people. To disagree otherwise is to deny cosmic reality, Darwinian evolutionary and, take your choice, Biblical instincts. Women have a uterus for a reason while men do not in contradistinction to current cultural parlay. So really what is the problem for Butker praising the woman he is married to for being the chief executive of the home these two have created? Is being the CEO of a corporation more important than being the CEO of a home-base family?
The wife and daughter of Chiefs owner Hunt have vigorously supported Butker. Thankful these women are as courageous as Butker. And where are these sportscaster weirdoes who are saying nothing and have said nothing about the physical abuse of Tyree Hill to women who has, a new record in the NFL, fathered ten children with five different women per CBS Sports. You go, Tyree. At that point in time when Hill played for the Chiefs and was let go, all that was said by his agent Drew Rosenhaus according to CBS Sports, the wide received was “underutilized.” But big guy Hill certainly had utilized his time to abuse viciously physically his then girlfriend. Where were you sportscasters then?
In our so-called enlightened American culture, does this person have the permission to speak his views? According to the DEI-enlightened NFL honchos, not at all. Butker is being savaged , tackled and straight-armed Heisman-style for his biblical and common-sense view. Can we not agree that this influencer has the permission to challenge the graduates of a Catholic colleague and to reinforce probably what the grads have been taught over the last four years?
Finally, for all of us, Catholics or not and we are not, should we not listen and read Butker and live out these time-honored principles?
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