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Regarding Harrison Butker’s recent <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/harrison-butker-speech-at-benedictine">commencement speech at Benedictine College</a>, I’m inclined to agree that a great deal of the controversy surrounding the talk wasn’t over what the Kansas City Chiefs kicker said, but over <a href="https://emilystimpsonchapman.substack.com/p/the-heresies-of-the-manosphere-part-db1">what exactly he meant</a>. (Full disclosure: Butker is my favorite player on my hometown team, and he deserved the MVP award in every Super Bowl the Chiefs appeared in. Yes, including the one they lost.)
For instance, were his remarks about there being “nothing natural about Catholic birth control” a reference to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/catholic-contraception">contraception or NFP</a>? When he said that his wife &#8220;would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,&#8221; was he implying that every woman&#8217;s life doesn&#8217;t truly start until that point? It’s so easy for people to read or hear the same words and come to different interpretations.*
But I think that all Catholics can agree on the true theme of the speech: vocation. From the Latin word for “calling,” vocation is Catholic jargon for the idea that God is inviting you to live in a certain way. As <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/vocations/documents/20230430-messaggio-60-gm-vocazioni.html">Pope Francis</a> has observed, there’s always something invitational about God’s call:
<blockquote>Vocation is “the interplay between divine choice and human freedom,” a dynamic and exciting relationship between God and the human heart. The gift of vocation is like a divine seed that springs up in the soil of our existence, opens our hearts to God and to others, so that we can share with them the treasure we ourselves have found.</blockquote>
We respond to God’s call in our life not because we’re forced to, but because we believe that God knows and loves us perfectly and has good plans for us. As Butker put it, “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.”
We can think about “vocation” in three levels. At the broadest level, it’s easy to discern God’s vocation for our lives: each of us is called to love, to be holy, and to be saints (CCC 1533, 1998, 2392). More particularly, some of us are called to pursue the vocation to holiness by a particular vocation like marriage, or priesthood, or celibacy, or religious life (CCC 908-945). And at the most granular level, we should be discerning God’s will in our life each day.
Pursuing our vocation is rewarding but it’s often not easy. In <a href="https://youtu.be/Qm1jR2b398k?t=198">interviews</a>, Butker has described some of the sacrifices he has experienced as a working father: from putting the phone away in order to be present to his family, to getting up early on Sundays to  have Mass and family time before the afternoon game.
Often, vocation includes our career pursuits. But other times, being faithful to our vocation can require professional sacrifices that the world doesn’t understand. I left behind a career as a lawyer to go to seminary to discern priesthood. And—in an experience to which I know many homemakers can relate—I had well-meaning people who worried that I would “waste” my law degree. That’s a bad view of both education (a college education should be more than job training) and vocation. Pursuing God’s call may be costly, but it’s never wasteful.
Those of us similarly tempted to judge smart women who choose to marry, have children, and stay at home should resist that temptation. In his 1910 book What’s Wrong with the World, G.K. Chesterton observed a strange paradox: that society praised women for caring for other people’s children (for instance, as a schoolteacher) while denigrating women who care for their own children. This led him to ask,
<blockquote>How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.</blockquote>
In different words, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html">Pope St. John Paul II cautioned</a> us against this same type of thinking:
<blockquote>The mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home.</blockquote>
Some women are called to work outside of the home, and in doing so, they’re serving God and their families. That’s wonderful. Other women desire, and are called to, serve God and their families within the home, and this fidelity is something that should be praised and encouraged.