Dude Week: Father Bill Labbe

Dude week continues as we ask Father Bill Labbe...

Father, you have pews full of gadget and sports obsessed dads who don't want to socialize much. How do you address the spiritual side of men?


A church full of sports and gadget obsessed guys would be a Sunday morning surprise. It would be akin to Lazarus coming out of the tomb. There is from my observation seat fewer dudes at Mass then there are woman. And the excuses guys give for missing Mass are sometimes very creative. I once had a man tell me he missed Mass because there was a NASCAR race he had to see. That having been said I do not believe that men are any less spiritual than woman. Like most thing a man lives his spirituality, his relationship with God inside himself, in his inmost thoughts and desires.
So how do we get a guy to share his faith and to show his spiritual side? First affirm his relationship with God. Affirm his desire to be faithful and to be in relationship with God. Then engage him where he is. I’ve often thought of having Bruins and bible nights. In between periods we can discuss the readings for the weekend or talk about a moral issue. Having a beer and wing night at a local watering hole and again incorporating our faith in our conversation does a couple of things. It requires the men to live their faith publicly and may give others the courage to do the same.
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have stated that technology is great way of doing evangelization. Helping our men to find web sites that speak to the masculine mystique, that speak to a man’s way of thinking can go a long way in helping a man become more comfortable in expressing his faith. The web site www.bustedhalo.com comes to mind immediately.
The bottom line is that there are men of great faith in our midst. Encouraging them to share that faith is what is needed. Inviting them to Mass, inviting them to bible studies, inviting them to pray with you in ordinary times and ordinary ways may indeed lead them to express their extraordinary faith. As with all things it may take time as we men move quickly only when there are good seats or good food involved.