It is no secret, Kanye West struggles with his dad. Whether he is mad, disappointed or frustrated, his […]
fatherhood
By Paul Koch – I listened to the radio on a recent Sunday afternoon as the reports came […]
By Tim Winterstein – Imagine having a six-year-old son, who has just been admitted into a prestigious elementary […]
By Paul Koch – Today is Father’s Day. To be sure, it is not as significant as Mother’s […]
By Scott Keith –
“Traditionally, masculinity is what stands between the innocent and the wolves.” – Ben Shapiro
Well, I’m back. You can call me Pappy or call me Cantankerous. At this point it doesn’t matter. What I am today is mad, outraged, and oddly—at least for me—a little sad. The Gillette commentary on masculinity which was closely followed by Harry’s not-so-subtle jumping on the bandwagon has pushed me over the edge. I didn’t want to be the Cantankerous Critic, but apparently someone needs to be.
By Paul Koch –
The raising of a son is a noble and daunting task. In these days of safe spaces on college campuses and SJWs arguing over proper pronoun use, it is easy to get overwhelmed as to what is the best course of action. The time-honored traditions handed down from a father to a son are now often portrayed as being out of touch with modern sentiments and no longer needed in a modern society. The traditional understanding of what makes a man a good man and what makes him good at being a man are viewed with a certain disdain and uneasiness.
By Joel A. Hess –
We need more Josephs!
You don’t hear much about Joseph. He just disappears after the birth of our Lord. He reappears for a moment when Jesus scares his parents by staying in His real Father’s house, but then he is gone again. We call him Saint Joseph, but what did he really do?
By Paul Koch –
I have noticed over the years that the people who seem to care the least about a day set aside to acknowledge fatherhood are, in fact, fathers. The men who are honored on this day don’t tend to think all that much about it. When someone asks a father what he is going to do on Father’s Day, he usually hasn’t given it much thought and probably doesn’t really expect anything in particular. Sure, your family may have a certain tradition that is carried out every year but that is not usually some great expectation that a father desires for himself but is something that has worn in by time and habit. Father’s Day is a difficult day of sorts. It is one that we are expected to observe yet no one is really sure what we are supposed to do with it. It is a day that is all about fathers but turns out to be as complicated as the men it honors.
By Paul Koch –
Now today is a great day. It’s Mother’s Day! And if there was ever a cause worthy to observe, I think that motherhood is a great one. Now, truth be told, sermons on Mother’s Day can be a bit dicey. See, while we all may want to honor our mothers on Mother’s Day, it sometimes goes awry in practice. So, on Mother’s Day you will have those who will be consumed with guilt for how they have treated or mistreated their own mothers, and a sermon highlighting how mothers ought to be honored will only drive them further into despair. Then there are the mothers who will hear the glowing praise of motherhood in a sermon only to receive it as some impossible standard that they have not kept.
By Paul Koch –
Sometimes it seems as if I’m living in some sort bizarre parallel universe, where the things I learned from my childhood, the things that have helped defined me up to this point no longer seem to matter. Or perhaps a better image would be that of a modern-day Rip Van Winkle. I often find myself wandering through my world, confused by what I see and unsure of how we got here. Perhaps I was asleep while everything was changing, or I didn’t keep up with times. Perhaps I didn’t really care. And now I’m at a loss to explain just what the hell is going on.
