Reaction to Harrison Butker

 From the National Catholic Register Website: Editor’s Note: Harrison Butker, 28, the placekicker for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League, delivered the commencement address at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, on Saturday, May 11, 2024.  What followed was a transcript of the speech.

Here is the part that has been getting the press attention, from that transcript:

"I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I'm on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker."

I have a lot of responses to that, ranging from the theological to the visceral.  But I would like to answer this statement with one by Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin,

'The moment Christianity became about confessing the "right things" rather than simply practicing love and inclusion was the moment it became a tool of the powerful rather than a movement that lifts up the people Jesus spent the most time with."

But that's not the part that really got to me.  It was not until I read the whole transcript and went back to reread it that this popped:

"It is not prudent as the laity for us to consume ourselves in becoming amateur theologians so that we can decipher this or that theological teaching — unless, of course, you are a theology major. We must be intentional with our focus on our state in life and our own vocation. And for most of us, that's as married men and women."

It is not prudent as the laity to decipher this or that theological teaching...

Not prudent as the laity for us to consume ourselves in becoming amateur theologians...

We must be intentional with our focus on our state in life and our own vocation...

Is not our state in life, as Christians, to love God and love Neighbor?