Childless Yet Fruitful
This article was previously published in Sword & Spade magazine. by Tom Frazier Responding to questions about a marriage with the inability to have children. How does a childless married man find his vocation in today’s fatherless world? First of all, being a father is not essential to finding my vocation; because following ...
Words Can Crush or Build Up Boys: Use Them Wisely
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can completely crush you. Like red and green signs over a road, an understanding of their power is necessary for life. They should be like darts aiming for a target, not like a released balloon flailing about getting spittle-filled air everywhere. When you become a mentor, your words take on a ...
You Can’t “Make” Men Out of Boys. Maturity Is Begotten Not Made.
Lately I can’t stop mulling over the words “begotten not made” from the Creed. The eternal Son is born of the Father - God from God, light from light, true God from true God – not made. If modernity is good at anything, its making things. And judging by the infanticide and obsession with sterile forms of “sexuality”, we are not into thi...
What Becoming a Father or Mentor Will Do to You
Be forewarned. If you decide to deepen your fatherly identity in some form of mentoring it will not just affect young people. It will also have a profound effect on you. Why? Firstly, you are making real and explicit your core identity as a man, which is a father. Fatherhood is matured masculinity, which has been passed on through fathers befo...
The Transgender Movement Is Especially Dangerous for Boys
It is a bit ironic that the “bathroom wars” began in Charlotte, NC, my home state.[1] While we war over whether or not a man is a man, or just seems that way, North Carolina’s motto remains engraved in stones around the state: Esse quam videri, which is Latin for “to be, rather than to seem”. Like I said – ironic. Of course, I th...
8 Ways to Put the Fear of God in Your Children
The concept a man has of God guides his whole life. If he considers God a far-off being with no concern for mankind, he will return the favor and have no concern for God. If Jesus is a softie who advocates a spineless resignation that he calls “love,” a man will never stand up to defend the truth of the faith. If he perceives God to be a ...
Dear Men, Without You Boys CANNOT Be Virtuous – Here’s What to Do
We think of friendship as an “add on” to life - nice but unessential. However, for the young especially, friendship is dispensed with to the peril of their growth into a man. And no, not friendship with peers only, but trusting friendship with adults. Why? Because the inexperience of young men, if mixed with a life without mentors, make...
The TRAUMA of Divorce and The Struggle of Pornography Addiction
When Chris came to me for help for his pornography addiction he sincerely wanted to uncover and resolve the root causes of his addiction. He had read stories about people addicted to pornography and sex who as children had been abused, neglected, or were raised by alcoholics. Because he had experienced none of these traumas in his life he could...
Danger First: The Education of Men
Nothing worth doing is free of peril—including education. Education is often considered most perilous when it comes to boys. Adolescent boys are creatures on fire, the word “adolescence” being derived from a word meaning, “to burn” or “be kindled.” Governing the fires of adolescence is everything in the process of maturation, and educ...
Who Is YOUR Son’s Mentor?
In the growing movement to re-emphasize fatherhood and masculine formation there is – rightly – immense focus on biological fathers. For boys especially, as they grow into adolescence they are growing away from their childhood and the world of women represented by their mother and teachers and into the world of men. The father is the one wh...