The National Register portal reports on a commentary by Matthew Becklo, who argues that fathers need “the gift of faith” more than material gifts like ties or golf clubs. Becklo cites studies linking religiosity to happiness, health, and civic engagement, noting that men suffer disproportionately from loneliness, “deaths of despair,” and lack of deep friendships. He claims that a father’s church attendance is the single biggest factor in determining whether his children will attend church as adults. Becklo laments that “men have largely turned their backs on religion,” citing Pew Research Center data showing only 37% of men attend religious services monthly. He references a so-called “Quiet Revival” among young men and suggests practical gifts to “open fathers to God” — from religious books to engraved pocket knives with the Chi-Rho Christogram. The entire commentary reduces the supernatural gift of faith to a therapeutic tool for male well-being and treats the Church as a social service agency rather than the one ark of salvation.
Faith Reduced to Self-Help: The Naturalistic Captivity of the Article
From its very first lines, the article commits a fundamental error that pervades every sentence that follows: it treats faith not as the supernatural virtue by which we believe all that God has revealed because of His authority, but as a beneficial lifestyle choice, a psychological buffer, a social lubricant. Becklo writes that “actively religious people tend to be happier, more civically engaged, and, in key measures, physically healthier.” He adds that religion “has also proven to be a buffer against loneliness and social isolation.” This is the language of sociology, not theology — the language of the conciliar sect that has spent six decades reducing the Church to a humanitarian NGO.
The article’s thesis is built entirely on utilitarian grounds: religion is good because it produces measurable benefits. But faith, properly understood, is not a means to earthly happiness. Our Lord Himself warned: “If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you” (John 15:18). The saints — those men of true masculinity and spirituality that Becklo claims to admire — did not embrace faith because it made them happier. They embraced it because it is true, and they were willing to suffer every torment rather than deny it. St. Augustine did not convert because friendship circles were lacking in Hippo. St. Anthony did not enter the desert because he needed better health outcomes. They surrendered everything — everything — because they encountered the living God and recognized that “what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
Becklo’s framing is not merely incomplete; it is a direct inversion of the Catholic understanding of faith. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that faith is “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification.” It is not a tool for longevity or civic engagement. When the article treats the Church as a solution to male loneliness, it commits the same error that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors — reducing the supernatural order to the natural, the eternal to the temporal.
The “Quiet Revival” and the Silence About What Must Be Revived
Becklo references a so-called “Quiet Revival” in Christian faith, “most strikingly in the Catholic Church,” led by young men aged 18 to 24. He notes that Gallup found “for the first time in 25 years, more young men than women are saying that religion is ‘very important’ to them.” But the article never once asks the most fundamental question: what religion? What faith? What Church?
This is the telltale silence of the post-conciliar mentality. The “Catholic Church” that Becklo references is the same conciliar sect that has systematically dismantled Catholic doctrine since 1958. It is the Church of the New Advent that professes religious liberty — condemned by Pius IX in Quanta Cura as error number 77, that “it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State.” It is the Church that practices false ecumenism — condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos. It is the Church that replaced the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with a Protestantized memorial meal. What Becklo calls a “revival” is at best a stirring within the abomination of desolation that occupies the Vatican — and at worst, a recruitment drive for the paramasonic structure that has led millions to perdition.
The young men drawn to this “revival” are not being given the faith of Constantine, Augustine, or Anthony. They are being given a simulacrum — a Catholicism stripped of its supernatural claims, its exclusive salvific mission, its propitiatory sacrifice, its uncompromising doctrinal demands. They are being offered community without communion, belonging without belief, tradition without Tradition. This is not a revival; it is a substitution — the very essence of the conciliar revolution.
The Missing Supernatural: Sacraments, State of Grace, and Final Judgment
The most damning omission in the entire article — and there are many — is the complete absence of any mention of the sacraments, the state of grace, or the final judgment. Becklo speaks of “faith” as though it were a self-help program, a gift you can give alongside a pocket knife or a movie about “a boxing Catholic.” He writes: “Faith, of course — at least, in the Christian tradition — is ultimately a gift of God; it’s not something we can give to each other directly. But as St. Thomas Aquinas observed, we can act as secondary causes of divine grace in one another’s lives.”
This is a half-truth deployed to mask a wholesale evasion. Yes, we can be secondary causes of grace — but how? Through prayer, yes. Through example, yes. But above all, through leading souls to the sacraments — to Baptism, which regenerates the soul in grace; to Confession, which restores the soul to grace after mortal sin; to the Holy Eucharist, which nourishes and sustains the life of grace; to Confirmation, which strengthens the soul for battle; to Matrimony and Holy Orders, which confer grace for one’s state in life. Without the sacraments, there is no supernatural life — no faith that saves, no hope that endures, no charity that burns.
And yet Becklo’s practical suggestions for “opening fathers to God” include: a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, a movie about Rocky, a “memento mori skull,” a “day trip or pilgrimage,” and an engraved pocket knife. Not a single word about getting a father to Confession. Not a single word about ensuring he receives the true Mass. Not a single word about the necessity of being in the state of grace to avoid eternal damnation. This is not merely an oversight; it is a revelation of the article’s spiritual bankruptcy. It treats faith as a lifestyle accessory rather than the difference between Heaven and Hell.
The article even quotes 1 Timothy 4:8 — “both the present life and the life to come” — but in context, this verse is speaking of bodily exercise profiting little while godliness profits all things, “having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” Paul is not offering a self-help formula; he is demanding total commitment to the supernatural life. Becklo plucks the verse from its context and uses it to sell the idea that faith is a nice addition to a well-rounded life. This is precisely the kind of manipulation that St. Pius X warned against in Lamentabili sane exitu — treating dogmas according to their “practical function” rather than as principles of belief (proposition 26).
The “Greg on Oak Street” Problem: Condemnation Without a Call to Conversion
Becklo acknowledges that most fathers are “Gregs on Oak Street” — men who “only go to church at Christmas” and treat faith as a punchline. He writes: “They would never want a religiously themed present and wouldn’t know what to do with it if they got one. Why bother?” His answer is to “meet men where they are” with subtle, non-threatening gifts that might gradually open them to God.
But meeting men “where they are” is not the Gospel. Our Lord did not meet the Pharisees where they were; He called them “whitewashed sepulchres” and “a generation of vipers.” He did not meet the rich young man where he was; He told him to sell everything and follow Him. He did not meet the Samaritan woman where she was; He revealed her sins and demanded worship “in spirit and in truth.” The apostles did not meet the pagans where they were; they preached Christ crucified — “to the Jews indeed a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor 1:23).
The article’s approach is the approach of the conciliar sect: accommodate, don’t confront; suggest, don’t command; hint, don’t preach. It is the approach that has produced six decades of apostasy — because it refuses to tell men the truth that they are in mortal danger, that their souls are at stake, that “the narrow gate and the hard way which leads to life” (Matthew 7:14) demands nothing less than total conversion. Becklo’s gentle suggestions — a book here, a movie there, an engraved tie — are not merely inadequate; they are complicit in the spiritual ruin of the men they claim to help.
The Masculinity Mirage: Constantine Without the Cross
Becklo invokes the “strong link between masculinity and spirituality” throughout Western history, referencing Constantine, Augustine, and Anthony of the Desert. He laments that men today lack the religious passion of their ancestors and suggests that a “turn toward that fascinating world” would mean “turning toward a male passion for religion.”
But here again, the article offers a caricature of true Catholic masculinity. Constantine’s conversion — whatever its sincerity — led to the establishment of the Church as a public, imperial institution, but it also planted the seeds of caesaropapism that would plague Christendom for centuries. Augustine’s conversion was not a triumph of male passion; it was a surrender — “late have I loved Thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.” Anthony’s flight to the desert was not an assertion of masculinity; it was a renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
True Catholic masculinity is not about passion, dominance, or cultural influence. It is about the total gift of self to God — in obedience, in sacrifice, in suffering. It is the masculinity of Christ Himself, who “became obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” (Phil 2:8). It is the masculinity of the martyrs who refused to offer incense to Caesar, of the confessors who chose exile over apostasy, of the fathers who taught their children the catechism at the risk of their lives. It is not the masculinity of a man who needs a pocket knife with a Chi-Rho to remind him that God exists.
The article’s vision of masculinity is, in the end, the same soft, therapeutic, consumerist masculinity that the conciliar sect has been peddling for decades. It wants men to be “spiritual” without being supernatural, “religious” without being committed, “faithful” without being faithful. It wants the appearance of Catholic manhood without the reality — because the reality demands everything, and the conciliar sect has spent sixty years teaching men that they need give nothing.
The Deadly Omission: No Warning About the Abomination
Perhaps the most unforgivable silence in the entire article is its complete failure to warn fathers about the spiritual dangers of the post-conciliar Church. Becklo speaks of “church attendance” as though any church will do, of “religion” as though all religion is equal, of “faith” as though it can be found in the structures occupying the Vatican.
But the faithful who hold to the integral Catholic faith know that the conciliar sect is not the Church. We know that the “Mass” celebrated in most parishes is a counterfeit — a Protestantized memorial that denies the propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary. We know that the “sacraments” administered in these structures are suspicious at best and invalid at worst, given the changes to the rites of ordination, confirmation, and extreme unction. We know that the “catechesis” offered in these institutions is Modernism pure and simple — the very errors condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu.
And yet Becklo sends fathers directly into the jaws of the wolf. He tells them to “go to church” — any church, apparently. He suggests setting up the “EWTN+ app” — a network that, whatever its merits, operates within the conciliar framework and never challenges the legitimacy of the usurpers in the Vatican. He recommends gifts that will lead men into the arms of a Church that has abandoned the faith, betrayed the saints, and opened its doors to the enemies of Christ.
This is not charity. This is spiritual negligence of the highest order. If a man is dying of thirst, you do not lead him to a poisoned well. If a man’s soul is in peril, you do not send him to a Church that teaches religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the evolution of dogmas. You give him the true faith — the faith of the Roman Catechism, the Council of Trent, the Syllabus of Errors, the encyclicals of the pre-conciliar popes. You lead him to a valid Mass, a valid confession, a true priest. You tell him the truth: that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), and that this name is professed fully and exclusively by the Catholic Church — not by the conciliar sect that currently occupies its buildings and usurps its authority.
Conclusion: The Tie That Binds — or Strangles
Matthew Becklo’s commentary is a perfect specimen of the post-conciliar mentality: well-meaning, socially aware, statistically informed, and spiritually bankrupt. It reduces faith to therapy, the Church to a social service, and the supernatural to the natural. It offers men everything except the one thing they need: the truth about God, about their souls, about the state of the Church, and about the necessity of the true faith for salvation.
The “tie that binds” is not a Chi-Rho on a necktie or a pocket knife engraving. It is the bond of the true faith — the faith that demands total commitment, that promises suffering in this life and glory in the next, that refuses to compromise with the world, the flesh, or the devil. It is the faith of the martyrs, the confessors, the fathers and mothers who taught their children to die rather than sin. It is the faith that the conciliar sect has abandoned — and that Matthew Becklo, for all his good intentions, has failed even to mention.
Fathers do not need another tie. They need the truth. And the truth is that the Church they are being urged to attend is not the Church that Christ founded. It is the abomination of desolation, the paramasonic structure, the neo-church of the Antichrist. Until that truth is spoken — clearly, unequivocally, without apology — no gift, no book, no movie, no engraved pocket knife will save a single soul. God grant that someone, somewhere, will have the courage to tell them.
Source:
Fathers Don’t Need Another Tie; They Need the Tie That Binds (ncregister.com)
Date: 19.06.2026