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The gospel is vitally important to Christians. It’s at the core of the Christian faith. But what, specifically, is the gospel?
The word’s roots mean “good news.” That’s the meaning of the Hebrew term bsorah and the Greek equivalent euangelion. But people have been giving and receiving numerous kinds of good news all through history, so what kind is meant in the Bible?
Previously, I looked at how the word gospel <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/misunderstanding-the-gospel">is used</a> in different groups—particularly Protestant ones—and some of the problems with these uses.
You may have noticed that in our previous discussion, we didn’t look at how Scripture itself uses the term. So that’s what we’ll turn to now.
Is the gospel really all about sin and salvation, about being rescued from hell and brought to heaven through the death of Jesus on the cross? Or is the gospel about something else?
The concept of the gospel leaps to prominence in the New Testament, and one of the things that’s clear about it is that it’s not coming out of nowhere. St. Paul writes that he is
<blockquote>a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures (Rom. 1:1-2).</blockquote>
If we want to understand the New Testament’s gospel, it’s important to look back into the Old Testament to see what was prophesied.
When the Old Testament speaks of good news being announced, it frequently has in mind the announcement of a military victory (2 Sam. 4:10, 18:19-31; 2 Kings 7:9; etc.). In other words, God has given his people victory in battle, and this meaning needs to be borne in mind.
The term good news becomes particularly prominent in the book of Isaiah, which—together with the Psalms—is one of the books that Jesus quotes most frequently in the four Gospels. Since Isaiah is a prophetic work, it is here that we would be most likely to find material directly prophesying the emergence of the gospel in the New Testament.
It is thus no surprise when we consult Isaiah and discover that the end of the book—which frequently deals with the coming age of the Messiah—has multiple references to good news. For example, we read this:
<blockquote>Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; 
lift it up, fear not; 
say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” 
Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; 
behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him (40:9-10).</blockquote>
Here the good news that is announced to Israel is the arrival of God as king. He comes with mighty power, and his right arm is going to rule. This hooks into the theme of military victory that we have already seen associated with the idea of good news.
Next, we read this:
<blockquote>How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, 
who publishes peace, 
who brings good news of happiness, 
who publishes salvation, 
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isa. 52:7).</blockquote>
Here the good news being announced is that there will be a time in which Israel’s God reigns, resulting in a time of peace, happiness, and salvation—the last of these being a common Old Testament reference to salvation from one’s enemies in battle, again hooking into the theme of military victory.
Finally, we read this:
<blockquote>The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; 
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Isa. 61:1-2).</blockquote>
Here the good news being announced includes encouraging the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to those who are captive or in prison, and the reason for this is the arrival of the year of the Lord’s favor—so once again, God brings about a new and improved state of affairs for his people.
We thus see Isaiah building up a picture of a coming time when God will arrive with powerful might and a strong right arm; he will reign and bring peace, happiness, and salvation from their enemies to his people; and in this time of the Lord’s favor, he will encourage the brokenhearted and announce liberty to captives and those in prison.
That is the essential content of the good news or gospel that Isaiah focuses on.
How well does Isaiah’s understanding correspond to the way the concept is handled in the four Gospels? The earliest reference we find to Jesus preaching the gospel is in Mark 1:
<blockquote>Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (vv. 14-15).</blockquote>
This fits very well with the understanding of the gospel in Isaiah. Here the gospel is presented as being “of God”—that is, it is good news from or about God—and it is announced that “the time is fulfilled”—meaning that what has been previously prophesied is now arriving. The thing that is now arriving is “the kingdom of God.” And the appropriate response is to repent or turn away from one’s sins and believe in the gospel, or good news, of God’s arriving kingdom.
All this fits with the vision of the gospel presented in Isaiah of a time when God would arrive with power and begin to rule in a new golden age, in which God’s people—those who have repented of sin and allied with God—will be blessed.
We also find a connection with Isaiah’s understanding of the good news in Luke, where we read this:
<blockquote>[Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:16-21).</blockquote>
Here Jesus quotes Isaiah 61—a passage we read earlier—and he announces that it was being fulfilled in his ministry. So Jesus was directly hooking into Isaiah’s understanding of the coming time of good news in which God would reign and bless his people.
This understanding of the gospel as the arrival of the kingdom of God is a common theme in the New Testament.
If you search the New Testament for references to “gospel of” or “good news of,” you’ll turn up more than thirty references where the concept is qualified to indicate where it comes from or what it is about. Of these places, seven passages speak of the gospel “of God” (Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1, 15:16; 1 Thess. 2:2, 8-9; 1 Pet. 4:17), and six passages speak of the gospel “of the kingdom” of God (Matt. 4:23, 9:35, 24:14; Luke 4:43, 8:1, 16:16).
These references are consistent with Isaiah’s presentation of the gospel as the time when God arrives and begins to rule in a golden age, and they reveal a strong New Testament linkage between the idea of the gospel and God and his kingdom.
You may notice that something has been missing from the passages we’ve just covered. Starting with Isaiah and continuing in the New Testament passages just mentioned, there has been a focus on the gospel as being about God coming to rule and establishing his kingdom. But there has been no mention of his Son Jesus Christ, his death on the Cross, heaven or hell, or anything like that. All of those concepts have been missing.
We can’t chalk this up to the individual passages simply failing to mention them. That proposal won’t work for the passages referring to the gospel and the kingdom in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
The reason is that Jesus did not begin his ministry and immediately announce his death on the cross. He was preaching the gospel. Mark 1:14-15 and Luke 4:16-21 both portray him doing that early on. But he didn’t reveal his coming death until much later (Matt. 16:21, Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22), and even then, the disciples didn’t understand what he meant (Matt. 16:22-23, 17:23; Mark 8:32-33, 9:32; Luke 9:45, 18:34).
Also, it wasn’t just Jesus preaching the good news. Before him, John the Baptist had done the same thing (Luke 3:18).
We thus see that—early on—there was a proclamation of the gospel that did not focus on Jesus and his death on the cross. Instead, the focus was on the time arriving for God to come and inaugurate his kingdom. That’s why the gospel is so frequently referred to as the gospel of God and the gospel of the kingdom.
What role Jesus would play in these events had not yet been revealed.
This has important implications for how the New Testament understands the idea of the gospel.
It is true that Jesus died on a cross so that we could be forgiven our sins, saved from going to hell, and brought to be with God forever. However, sin and salvation are not what the gospel is about. That is a fundamental misframing of the concept as the New Testament understands it.
Instead, the New Testament initial understanding of the gospel is as the good news that the time has arrived for God to begin to reign and inaugurate his kingdom.
This is done through his Son’s death on the cross—so Jesus has the pivotal role in bringing God’s kingdom about—but it is the arrival of God’s kingdom that is the good news itself.
It’s to the relationship of the gospel and God’s Son that we’ll turn next.

What Does Scripture Say About the Gospel?

<div>What is the origin of evil?</div><div>God’s creatures—beginning with the devil and his demonic confrères, and then mankind, beginning with our first parents—not the creator, are responsible for the moral evil in the world. Moral evil results from the misuse of the God-given gift of free will, first with the fallen angels and then mankind, and associated general disorder results from that moral evil.
For more on this general subject, please see our responses on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/can-free-will-thwart-gods-plan">how the free will of creatures can’t thwart God’s plan</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/to-hell-with-heaven">the devil’s creation and related consequences</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/augustine-had-it-right-calvin-did-not">how St. Augustine had it right on free will and John Calvin didn’t</a>.
</div>

How Did Evil Come to Be?

Tim Staples discusses the practice of receiving Communion in the hand with a caller on Catholic Answers Live.

Communion in the Hand

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Debate tip: don’t strawman. Steelman.

In this podcast, Catholic Answers senior apologist Jimmy Akin will take up a different challenge to Catholicism every day of the year and show how you can defend the Faith and give answers to skeptics. It’s the perfect podcast for the thinking Catholic on the go—less than five minutes a day to learn a new apologetic argument.

Daily Defense Podcast

Trent Horn briefly outlines the Church&#8217;s teaching on capital punishment and how it differs from other end-of-life issues such as abortion and euthanasia.
Transcript:
Host: So why do you reject Catholic morality? That is the question. We go now to Doug in Michigan listening on 990 AM. Doug, why do you reject Catholic morality?
Caller: Well first, thanks for taking the call, it&#8217;s not so much I reject the morality as I have a question about how the Church approaches capital punishment. We seem to be very vocal when it comes to assisted suicide or <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/abortion">abortion</a>, but am I missing the conversation, the dialogue, on how we view natively the capital punish—or what the right moral teaching is on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/capital-punishment">capital punishment</a>.
Trent: Sure, what I would say is that when people get the impression of the Church is &#8220;not as strong&#8221; quote-unquote on capital punishment, I would say that&#8217;s because capital punishment is not intrinsically wrong. It&#8217;s not something that is wrong in and of itself like abortion and euthanasia. It&#8217;s always wrong to directly kill a baby who&#8217;s growing in the womb. It&#8217;s always wrong to directly kill someone who is in the process of dying just so they can die. Now, it&#8217;s okay to discontinue life support if a person is near the end of life and that&#8217;s not helping them, but you can&#8217;t just simply inject someone with poison and end their life because they&#8217;re in pain or you just can&#8217;t directly kill a baby in the womb. You can&#8217;t directly kill innocent people in that way.
However, it&#8217;s not intrinsically wrong for the state to use its authority to protect society by ending the life of someone who&#8217;s committed a very serious crime like murder. So the Church has supported capital punishment in the past and the Catechism says there may be cases where capital punishment is acceptable today; though the Catechism and people like Pope St. John Paul II have offered prudential judgments about moving away from capital punishment, it&#8217;s not intrinsically wrong and there&#8217;s other theologians who put forward very strong cases that capital punishment can be used morally by the Church and actually should be promoted. A good book on that that just come out is called &#8220;By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment&#8221; by Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, so if you&#8217;d like to look at a great treatment of the issue from that perspective, &#8220;By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed&#8221; by Ignatius Press, the authors are Feser and Bessette. I think you would find that to be very helpful. So thank you very much for calling in.

How Is Capital Punishment Different From Abortion and Euthanasia?

From an early date, the Church in the West has used Latin—not only for administration, study, and communication, but for prayer. This was natural for regions where Latin was the majority language, but as the centuries passed, the Western Church persisted with a Latin liturgy in evangelizing peoples on and beyond the edges of the Roman Empire not conversant with it, such as the North African speakers of Punic and the speakers of Celtic and Germanic languages in western and central Europe. By contrast, the Eastern Churches sometimes made use of the languages of their new converts, even when these had to be specially developed in their written forms for this to be possible, as with Ethiopia’s Ge’ez and Russia’s Church Slavonic.
There is thus a close association between the Western Church and the Latin language. Even today, when the liturgy can be celebrated in a huge range of languages, this relationship has left its mark, and Latin remains an option for both public and private prayer—not only in celebrations of the pre-Vatican II liturgy, but also for the reformed Mass.
Why has the Church been so attached to Latin? The answer is that liturgical Latin is not just a convenient language, but a sacred language. Many religions have sacred languages, or a sacred register of an ordinary language, for use in their liturgies. Islam has classical Arabic, a language not widely understood by its many millions of non-Arabic believers, and some distance from the Arabic spoken today in the Arab world. Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Jain religion share the very ancient sacred language of Sanskrit. Judaism has biblical Hebrew, and the languages of many Eastern churches today are specialized sacred languages: the Church Slavonic and Ge’ez already mentioned, and the koine Greek of the Greek churches.
Sacred languages, like sacred garments, sacred forms of music, and the styles associated with sacred buildings and sacred art, may derive from the non-sacred, but even in their origins, they often have distinguishing features. Koine Greek and Church Slavonic were literary creations rather than natural languages. No one ever spoke the sacred English created by Anglicanism and found in the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible: it includes archaisms and deliberately exotic syntax to mimic Hebrew and Greek. The High German of Luther’s Bible and liturgy was the language of the imperial court, not the language of most German-speakers. Similarly, the form of Latin found, first in the early Latin translations of the Bible and then in liturgical texts, is distinct from ordinary Latin. No Roman ever said, “Amen amen dico vobis”: “Truly, truly, I say to you.” The first word of many Latin prayers, “quaesumus,” “we beseech,” was already archaic when it was first used in them.
There is a powerful religious instinct to have special, separate words, things, buildings, and music for worship. These are intended not to exclude worshippers, but rather to draw them in to something supernatural, to introduce them into a sacred zone for communication with the divine, a communication that transcends mere words. Hearing a sacred language, like entering a sacred building, is a clear signal that we are leaving the ordinary world behind. In common with other religions, the Church still insists on special vestments; sacred vessels not to be used for anything else; and distinctive furnishings, artistic styles, and language, even in the context of the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_liturgiam-authenticam_en.html">vernacular liturgy</a>.
Latin is the Church’s superlative means of creating a sense that we are communicating with God and not with human beings. Even in the act of announcing the liturgical reform that would largely displace Latin with vernacular languages, Pope St. Paul VI <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/changes-in-mass-for-greater-apostolate-8969">described</a> Latin as “sacred utterance” and “the language of the angels”. The effect of Latin on the worshipper was noted by Pope St. John Paul II, who <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19800224_dominicae-cenae.html">remarked</a> on the sense of worldwide unity it inspired and also “the profound sense of the Eucharistic mystery” it elicited.
There is a parallel with the use of silence in the liturgy. This has a place in the reformed Missal of 1970 (for example, for the “priestly prayers”), and its importance was <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2003/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20031204_spiritus-et-sponsa.html">emphasized</a> by John Paul II and Pope <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/messages/communications/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20120124_46th-world-communications-day.html">Benedict XVI</a>. In silence, nothing is communicated by words, but when worshipers are united in an act of adoration, a period of silent prayer can communicate at a deep level, both horizontally, in terms of a sense of solidarity, and vertically, to and from the object of worship, God. Latin does something similar in creating a meaningful frame for prayer.
It is relevant, therefore, that Latin prayers are meaningful. The liturgical formation that all adult Catholics should have should equip us to understand in general terms what is going on in Mass regardless of the language. Even people without formal Latin education know what gloria in excelsis, agnus dei, and the like mean. The Church has always encouraged the study of Latin, and this can provide us with a dimension of liturgical participation that goes beyond what we get in a vernacular translation, since (at least with prayers of ancient origin) it puts us in touch with the words used by our predecessors in the Faith, often from the time of the Fathers of the Church. We can, however, choose to focus on the words, or on the general thrust of the liturgy, just as someone praying the rosary can focus on the words of the Hail Mary or instead on the mystery being considered in that decade. Liturgy in the vernacular tends to be more insistent and demanding of our attention, word by word, particularly when we have to make responses and change our bodily posture.
The Latin of the liturgy has something special to offer those with a knowledge of Latin, since they can understand it better and be directed in their engagement with the liturgy in a more detailed way. Paradoxically, it also has something special to offer those with limited knowledge of the vernacular used in the liturgy they happen to attend. These include the speakers of minority languages and migrants. Many tens of millions of Catholics are obliged to worship not in their mother-tongue, but in a second language: in Africa, usually the old colonial language; in China, the “standard Chinese” favored by the State. The use of a vernacular inevitably favors those most at home in it, and also those who prefer verbal communication over non-verbal communication: adults over children, the more educated middle class over the working class, and even women over men.
In this way, Latin can be a leveler, like silence. As Pope St. John XXIII <a href="https://www.papalencyclicals.net/john23/j23veterum.htm">expressed</a> it, Latin belongs to no one in particular, but is “gracious and friendly to all.” The experience of the sacred that Latin makes possible has been appreciated by saints and scholars, soldiers, peasants, and sinners, and even small children, since the Church’s early centuries. It remains available to us today.

How Dead Is Latin, Really?

By <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/the-call-on-the-field-is-reversed">giving an award</a> to the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” the Los Angeles Dodgers have declared to the whole world that Dodger Stadium, once a venue for America’s Pastime, is now a stage for blasphemy against Almighty God.
Either the execs in Dodger management don’t know what blasphemy is or they don’t care. I invite them to call Catholic Answers. We can explain <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/blasphemy">sins against the First Commandment</a>. We can explain the consequences, too.
I don’t think I’ll wait by the phone for that call.
Meanwhile, I invite all Catholics, and indeed all Christians, to ask themselves, “If I attend a Dodgers game, if I give my dollars to the blasphemers, am I cooperating in blasphemy?”
The answer is “yes.”
I know that theologians who are anxious about not burdening the consciences of the faithful will rush to make distinctions between formal and material cooperation, immediate and mediate, proximate and remote. Very well. I know that baseball fans are not intending to cooperate in blasphemy when they head to the ballpark. I know that the dollars they spend on bleacher seats are not essential to the funding of the blasphemy. I also know that it is well-nigh impossible to spend a dollar anywhere without some of it funding the destructive plan of some agent of devil.
However, when the offenders are so aggressive in their contravening of the Divine and Natural Law, (I think of Starbucks, Disney, Target, Anheuser-Busch and now the Dodgers execs)—Christians can decide to simply stop enriching the enemies of Jesus Christ. Don’t stop there. Encourage one another in refraining from underwriting evil. Offer a little fraternal correction to your brothers and sisters in Christ who can’t let go of that latte. Remind them they won’t be holding it at their judgment.
One thing more: I wish no ill on the multinational corporations mired in the consequences of their self-inflicted wounds (Target stock has shed $9 billion, I’m told). In fact, I invite them to renounce their promotion of wickedness and to undergird their resolution with a large donation to a worthy Catholic charity. Target, send a check to <a href="https://couragerc.org/">Courage International</a>. Dodgers Management, send a check to the <a href="https://benedictinesofmary.org/">Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles</a>.
Attach a yellow Post-It note asking them to pray for your immortal souls.

Stop Buying Blasphemy

A common charge against the rosary is that it violates Jesus’ prohibition of “vain repetition” (Matt. 6:7, KJV). Catholics often answer this charge by pointing to the fact that Jesus isn’t condemning repetitious prayer as such, but mindless prayer—prayer that involves repeated words with no attention, no intention, and no engagement of the heart. This makes sense, given that Jesus instructs his disciples not to pray “as the Gentiles do,” which involved repeated prayers aimed at appeasing their gods rather than forming the heart.
But you might wonder, “How attentive do we have to be in praying the rosary?” And what’s the point of the repetition to begin with, even if it’s not bad as such?
These are great questions. And they need answers. So let’s see what we can come up with.
Concerning the first question, I think we can look to St. Thomas Aquinas for some help. In the second part of the second part of his Summa Theologiae, question 83, article 13, Aquinas explains that when it comes to the end of prayer being better obtained—which is devotion (a movement of the will to readily subject oneself to things pertaining to God)—Aquinas says that conscious attentiveness is necessary. But when it comes to the effects of prayer, sustained attentiveness is necessary only for one of the three.
For meriting an increase in grace (the first effect) and obtaining what we ask (the second effect), the original intention with which one begins the prayer is sufficient. But for what he calls “spiritual refreshment of the mind” (the third effect), continued attentiveness is necessary. For support, he quotes 1 Corinthians 14:14, where St. Paul writes, “If I pray in a tongue . . . my understanding is without fruit.”
Now, you might be asking yourself, “What kind of attentiveness does Aquinas have in mind here?” He lists three kinds.
First, there is attention to words—making sure we don’t say the wrong thing. Second, there is attention to their meaning. Third, there is attention to the end of prayer—namely, God—and what we’re asking for.
For Aquinas, all three matter. But the last one is most important, especially because when prayers are committed to memory, the first and second senses of attention are easily fulfilled.
Here’s another important question: even if repetition is okay, what’s its purpose?
I can think of four things repetitious prayer achieves.
First, it orders the will toward God. Every Hail Mary and Our Father that we pray involves a new act of desire for the spiritual goods we’re asking for in the prayers. Such repetitive requests keep the will fixed on these spiritual goods, which in turn keeps the will fixed on God, because we recognize he’s the source of these goods.
Second, repetition intensifies love—for Jesus and for our Blessed Mother. Each repeated prayer expresses renewed trust in God’s grace and renewed trust in our Lady’s assistance, thereby deepening our love for both. As St. Augustine says in Epistle 130, his Letter to Proba, “by means of words and other signs [in repeated prayer] we arouse ourselves more effectively to an increase of holy desires.”
Third, repetition provides a stable verbal framework, freeing the mind to contemplate the mysteries of Christ’s life rather than scramble for new words, while at the same time willing the requests that each prayer expresses.
Fourth, the repeated pursuit of the good in and through each prayer forms virtue, building stable dispositions of faith, hope, and charity. That shapes the soul over time into a saintly soul.
So there we have it: a fourfold purpose of repetitious prayer.
Okay. There’s one last thing I want to share. And it’s not so much a theological question, but more of a pastoral point. Again, it comes from Aquinas.
In article 14 of that same question mentioned above, Aquinas provides us with a helpful principle: the quantity of a thing should be commensurate with its end. 
In layman’s terms, that just means you use as much of something as the goal calls for—no more, no less. For example, you use only the amount of medicine that’s needed for restoring health. You don’t use ten painkillers for a mild headache—the amount should fit the purpose.
Applied to prayer, Aquinas says prayer should last long enough to arouse devotion—but if it causes weariness, it should stop. Here’s what he says:
<blockquote>Prayer should last long enough to arouse the fervor of the interior desire, and when it exceeds this measure, so that it cannot be continued any longer without causing weariness, it should be discontinued.</blockquote>
If we apply that to repetitious prayer, Aquinas would have us stop the repetition and employ another form of prayer if such repetition is causing weariness within the soul—a loss of fervor of devotion.
That matters pastorally. Some Catholics feel guilty for not wanting to pray the rosary. But they fail to recognize that it might be due to the simple fact that they’re weary of the repetition and need to foster devotion in some other way. Perhaps at that moment the Holy Spirit is moving them to another form of prayer for a season. Just like in human relationships, our relationship with the Lord involves a variety of different ways in which we express love for him.
So here’s the wrap-up!
Catholics would do well to continue being prepared to answer the “vain repetition” charge. But we’d also do well to equip ourselves to explain the spiritual benefits of repetitious prayer and the pastoral counsel surrounding it. This isn’t just for the purpose of persuading others about the rosary; it’s for our spiritual benefit as well.

When NOT to Pray?

Can Mary Save Us?

In the United States, in England, and across the developed world, <a href="https://www.capterra.com/resources/where-are-all-the-men-exploring-the-gender-gap-in-church/">women outnumber men</a> in Catholic churches on Sundays. (Figures over time in the USA can be seen <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/05/13/gender-gap-in-religious-service-attendance-has-narrowed-in-u-s/">here</a>; a worldwide study can be seen <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/22/the-gender-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/">here</a>.) The phenomenon got a mention in Pope St John Paul II’s 1988 post-synodal exhortation Christifideles laici 52: “various sectors in the Church must lament the absence or the scarcity of the presence of men.” Despite this, there seems to be much more <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/04/19/church-crisis-why-do-catholic-women-stay">discussion</a> of the lapsation of women in the Church, and far more concern is expressed about teachings and liturgical practices that might put women off.
Male Catholics might be forgiven for forming the impression that the Church’s hierarchy and commentariat do not, in general, view their disappearance from Mass as very important. Certainly, there are some voices that seem more eager to use the absence of men as an <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/now-time-married-priests">argument</a> for the ordination of women than to do anything to redress the imbalance.
This month of the Sacred Heart reminds us that the Church is founded on love. This is not maternal love, vitally important though that is, but a specifically masculine, self-sacrificial love, like that of a husband, as St. Paul exhorts husbands, “Love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it” (Eph. 5:25). Christ’s love for us and for the Church, symbolized by his sacred heart, fits into the image of God as a father, and the chosen people as his wife or son, found throughout the Old Testament.
This is just to say that the masculine should not be written out of the Church’s life, any more than the feminine.
It is sometimes said that women are naturally more religious than men, but this is not supported by the evidence. Men are more religiously observant than women in Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, even as those traditions are practiced in the West. On the other hand, the more liberal a Christian denomination is, the more difficulty it has retaining men. The 1936 United States Census (before the relevant questions were dropped) <a href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodles.org%2Ffiles%2FChurch-Impotent%2FChurchImpotent_Chapter1.pdf&amp;data=05%7C02%7Cdbelsky%40catholic.com%7Cadfb44f8baad4fc14bb808dc8497d542%7Cdd9faf74765b495cac09cabd182c95a7%7C0%7C0%7C638531036010142118%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=3kOYfkZpOchL1IH4FHT%2F%2BUS%2Bsl8Pev5wCKIzlLiNOys%3D&amp;reserved=0">found</a> (see pg. 11) that the sex ratios among religions varied from Eastern Orthodoxy (slightly more men than women) and Catholics (very slightly more women than men) to the other extreme, of Unitarians (1.4 women to every man), Pentecostalists (about 2 to 1), and Christian Scientists (3.19 to 1). Mainline Protestants were in the middle.
It is not difficult to understand what happened. In 1936, Western Catholic liturgy was more comparable to that that of the Eastern churches and had important things in common with the liturgies of Orthodox Judaism and Islam: ritual, solemnity, the use of a sacred language, and so on. The liturgy typically encountered today in Catholic churches has clearly moved in the direction of the female-dominated denominations: it is more spontaneous and emotional; it is not primarily concerned with evoking a sense of the sacred, but a sense of community; and it relies more heavily on verbal communication.
The last point is useful because it allows us to connect this process with another area of research. It is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7186802/">well established</a> that women are more verbally oriented than men: baby girls start talking sooner, girls are less likely to be dyslexic, women score higher in measures of verbal ability, they outnumber men in college foreign language departments, and so on. Men rely more on, and are often more comfortable with, non-verbal communication.
Evidently, the liturgical traditions of Islam and Orthodox Judaism, which use chant and sacred language (ancient Hebrew and Classical Arabic) not readily understood by most worshipers, are not primarily concerned with getting their message across by means of verbal communication. Instead, though their texts, postures, clothing, and ceremonies, they raise heart and mind to God by creating a sacred atmosphere and a feeling of historical continuity, and by the worshiper’s sense of inward, intentional participation in the act of worship. The same can be said for traditional religions from all over the world, including the Eastern churches and the traditional Latin Mass of the Western church. They are all examples of effective non-verbal communication.
The liturgical alienation of men has been an unfortunate unforeseen consequence of theological fashion. As the Jesuit sociologist (and theological liberal) Patrick Arnold <a href="https://archive.org/details/wildmenwarriorsk00patr">expressed it</a>, “as liberal religion stresses increasingly the immanent and ‘horizontal’ dimension of faith to the exclusion of the transcendent and ‘vertical’ reality, it inadvertently ignores the voracious appetite of men for the Great, the Wholly Other, and the Eternal” (pp. 77-78).
Some attempts to get men back to Mass have successfully used male-friendly retreats and group activities, only for the men involved to discover that when they do return to church, it is just as male-unfriendly as before. Others attempt to create a sense of religion as something tough and masculine, solely by berating and humiliating men and blaming them for all the problems of the Church. Those who try this need to understand that men are already given far too much of an impression that they are “toxic” and unwelcome.
What is needed for men to return to their places in Mass is for them to find a congenial atmosphere and a compelling message. This is not going to happen if the sanctuary looks like an almost exclusively feminine zone, if Mass lacks dignity, and if spirituality is presented as all about sharing our feelings with strangers. Indeed, it is quite clear to most priests, I suspect, what changes they could make to their churches, parish activities, and liturgies that would make them more masculine, and I doubt most female Catholics would object, especially if they saw the results. Nevertheless, there seems to a psychological barrier against doing anything along these lines. Anything male-friendly seems to be understood as traditionalist, rigid, and even misogynistic.
I don’t think Catholic women want a Church without their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. The Church needs to appeal to both sexes.

Getting Men to Mass

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