Mark Shea weighs in on the issue of masculinity and femininity of the Catholic Church in this article.

Mark Shea is saying that Catholic spirituality is more feminine and evangelical spirituality is more masculine and both need a healthy dose of a corrective, i.e., Catholic spirituality could use some masculine spirituality and evangelicals could benefit from the feminine spirituality of Catholics. I find this interesting, if not somewhat truthful, of course it is over-simplified. But I don't think Mr. Shea's intention was to give the fullest and most comprehensive treatment of the issue.

I don't like the phrase "feminization of the Church." It sounds like a terrible thing and as though women and the feminine mystique, spirituality, presence, etc have been negative to the Church, which would be a ridiculous assertion. The point is not to make the Church more masculine or feminine, but how do we project a Church that maintains an intrinsic appeal to both sexes.

I do think that the Church lacks in its appeal to men.

I think men are drawn to power, exertion, aggression, status, and hierarchy and th e like. I say this at the risk of over-generalizing

First of all, one weakness of the current Catholic Church culture is that Catholicism is removed from Scripture. Scripture is mediated to Catholics by the Church and her theology and so we have not learned to think or be Scripture. The Scriptures have a very masculine undercurrent to them, so much so that the gentleness and love called for in them seem less of a threat to a man's masculinity because there is always the masculine current to draw on. The early Church was much closer to Scripture than we are now, and this coupled with early Church stringent asceticism and martyrdom, the Church had a militant appeal, which appeals to men.

For instance, in my pentecostal days, the common wisdom was that Luke appealed more to women because of his approach and John appealed to men because of his very direct confrontational, black and white style. The beauty of direct exposure to the Bible is that one can immerse one's self in both approaches without contradiction. The problem in Catholic culture is that everything is sent through the filter of the Church's hierarchy and while the content may remain untarnished and, may even be enriched, the original voices of Scripture are missing and thus the appeal of many Scripture favorites of men are lost.

When the bible says things like, "O Lord, destroy my enemy and crush his children," (I made that up but the Psalms are full of this kind of stuff), words like "let me wash my hands in the blood of my enemies," or "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn, the lord shall have them in derision," there is something aggressive in these verses, and many more like these that just don't seem to have any place in the Catholic canon of thought. But I contend that men need to hear words like this which abound in Scripture. This is the reason I think Handel's Messiah is so popular, even with men, because it captures the full range of emotion and expression the bible has to offer. So while we may hear "I know that my redeemer liveth," at one moment, the next moment we hear, "Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Men eat this stuff up. Again, i say all this at the risk of casting too broad a net

I have more thoughts on this, I just have to organize them in my head. But I think it is an issue of utmost concern, i.e., that we are losing our appeal to men and we need to attract them back into the Church.