Bridal mysticism and Catholicism's man problem

Picking up from last week, one of the possible explanations of the low appeal that Christianity has for men is that it is, or has become, a feminized religion. One issue unique to Catholicism is what is called Nuptial or Bridal Mysticism. It's an idea with deep roots: the old testament talks about God marrying Israel and Paul uses marriage as a metaphor to explain the union between Jesus and the Church.

The thing to remember is that this only is a metaphor, only one metaphor of a number that appear in the scriptures. We also need to be careful about how metaphors are used. It's one thing, as the old testament and Saint Paul do, to speak metaphorically of God marrying a community and another thing altogether to speak of the sought for bond between individual Christians and God as a marriage. If nothing else, the second choice suggests vanity on a very grand scale.

It's also individualistic. Like the beatific vision, bridal mysticism suggests and intense bond between two beings. It doesn't require anyone else. It's weird that we're to spend our lives showing love for Jesus in the way we treat others only to enter into a state where others are irrelevant.

Finally, and most pertinent to the subject at hand, there are all the implications that go along with the word "bridal". It's not just that it suggests that feminine receptivity is the only legitimate spiritual life. Think of boys. Thirteen-year-old girls will sit around and gossip about their imagined wedding day. Boys will not.

If we look at what goes on in the church, I see enough smoke that I begin to think there must be a feminized Catholicism fire somewhere.

Consider the extremes of high Mariology. The major sin that turns Mariology into Mariolatry is when people forget that Mary is a member of the Church and make her representative of the Church. You get a lot of clergy who understand their vows as a commitment to Mary and not Jesus. They always subtle language to create enough nuance to avoid open heresy but you don't have to spend a lot of time with priests and lay people who have strong Marian devotions before you begin to see that a significant subset of them have made her into something she is not.

Consider also the sheer number of gay priests. Rates of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church are about the same as you find in your average school board but there is one huge difference in that the same-sex abuse is far more prevalent in the Church. The very highest estimates for the number of gay men in the overall population run at about 4 percent. The number of gay priests is much higher. What is it about the Catholic priesthood and religious that attracts a disproportionate number of gay men? And there is good reason to suggest that this has long been a problem. In his rule, St. Benedict sets very clear lines for the allotment of beds for young monks. It was already an issue in the sixth century.