This stat should shake every Catholic father awake: 85 to 90 percent of kids raised in Catholic homes will leave the faith by adulthood. We've somehow accepted that as normal. It's not. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Greg Popcak, a Catholic counselor with over 30 years in the trenches and author of more than 20 books, to talk about what the families who beat those odds are actually doing differently. Greg walks me through the 12 research-validated habits that families who successfully pass on the faith all share in common, what he calls the Liturgy of Domestic Church Life. We get into why just dragging your kids to Mass and white-knuckling the family Rosary isn't enough if there's no joy behind it, why your kids need to experience the Faith as the source of the meaning in your home and not just the source of the rules. He breaks down what headship actually looks like when it's modeled after the ministerial priesthood rather than a dictator, and he tells a story from his time in Hong Kong about a father who tried to hug his daughter for the first time and she didn't even know what he was doing.

Unmarried men have the potential to be extremely selfish. There is no one depending on them, no child to take care of in the middle of the night, no wife to force compromise on a TV show. Single guys make their own schedule, and even when they do acts of charity or apostolic work, they make it fit into what they want to do.

Unmarried men have the potential to be extremely selfish. There is no one depending on them, no child to take care of in the middle of the night, no wife to force compromise on a TV show. Single guys make their own schedule, and even when they do acts of charity or apostolic work, they make it fit into what they want to do.

There is much talk about being a ‘real man’: the warrior man, the man without emotions or sympathies, the rival of all things deemed weak. Yet this kind of polemic is a form of extremism—and extremism is the devil’s playground. Satan thrives in extremes. He despises virtue and constantly goads us toward deficiency on one side or excess on the other.

Being a great leader, provider, and protector is everyman’s mission. It doesn’t matter how old you are, your vocation (single, married, priest, religious), or your career. If you’re a man on this planet, God calls you to be a strong leader, provider, and protector.

The way a Father interacts with their child is different than a Mother. Both are good, but the way of the Father can be hard because it often involves discipline. We need to renew the way we parent to have a heart of love amidst hard punishments and conversations with our children.

The call to masculinity is a tall one. From fear or lack of masculine formation, young men feel they do not 'measure up' to this call. Secular society offers an easy and cheap way out of this battle: transgenderism.

A father’s work is cultivated in the home, doing the difficult things like creating order, discipline, and structure. A father’s work demands that we engage in family life, not just be casual observers.