Harrison Butker and His Strange Bedfellows

You Know He Thinks You're Going to Hell, Right?

Last week we began a series of responses to Harrison Butker’s 2024 Commencement Address at Benedictine College. I addressed the low-hanging fruit, his words about women’s primary vocation as homemakers.

This week we dig deeper and start to hit on more of his points which are worthy of thoughtful consideration. Except this week I mention a point he didn’t, but one some people have ignored. It’s an unspoken but factual reality about Harrison Butker and his speech.

To begin, let’s start with a quick story.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…

…well, unless you live in or near Stotternheim, Germany, in which case this wasn’t too far away.

But it was in 1505, so it was a long time ago.

Anyway, there was a young man traveling on a road when he encountered a terrible and intense thunderstorm. It was probably a microburst, but science wasn’t a thing yet and nobody understood what “microbursts” were. So, this seemed like an act of God. Almost as if God was testing the young man, who’s name was Martin.

Martin was quite scared. He was afraid he was going to die and that his only hope to live was God. So, he did what any son of a miner would do. He prayed to Saint Anne, the patron saint of miners. He made a vow, “Help me, Saint Anne! I will become a monk!” You know, if he only survived the storm.

He did survive. And true to his word, he became a monk.

He was a good monk. He studied hard, and travelled wide eventually visiting Rome to see all of the best, most dedicated Catholics. What he saw concerned him. It didn’t look much like a church dedicated to the God he learned about reading the Bible. Over the years, Martin began to see things that didn’t make sense to him. He wrote this stuff down. It happened over and over again.

He grew very angry, and concerned the church he was learning to serve was guiding him and others away from the God he wanted to serve.

After a dozen or so years he’d grown so angry that he came up with 95 different talking points he’d written down (which must have been hard without a laptop) and posted them to the door of a church in Wittenburg, Germany, which was the only option because Twitter X didn’t exist yet.

As it turned out, some people agreed with him. They agreed with him so much that they protested against the Catholic church. They started an entire movement of people known as “protestants.” It kind of became a way of life.

Actually, it became a way of life and death. People were so adamant about which way of understanding God’s salvation was accurate that they were willing to die for their understanding and kill others who didn’t agree with it.

**************

Yeah, yeah… you get it.

That’s a story about Martin Luther and how his 95 Theses began the reformation, split the Catholic church and created protestant Christianity.

So what does it have to do with Harrison Butker?

Here’s what-

As the fallout about his speech began in the week or so after he delivered it, I found his supporters in my part of the world seemed to fall into one of three groups of people, or perhaps a combination.

The first was hard-core, conservative Catholics. This is logical.

The second was women who wanted nothing more than to be homemakers. Their affection for Butker’s comments is understandable and I’m not here to suggest there is anything wrong with their desire. There’s not. I hope they’re able to be homemakers in whatever manner they might define the role. I hope they found a suitable spouse who was able to be an emotional and financial support for the effort. I’m sorry if they felt shamed for doing so. There’s no shame in raising a family. It’s laudable and should be celebrated.

However, the third group was somewhat ironic, albeit completely predictable. It was my more conservative, fundamental, protestant friends. This is the community I grew up in. This is the group of people who raised me. The ones who were careful to point out that Catholics were going to hell because they prayed to Mary and depended on the church for forgiveness instead of going directly to God. These were the people who told me I was going to heaven because I’d “asked Jesus into my heart” myself. This is the same group that celebrated my personal walk with Jesus; my personal decision.

But after Butker’s speech? These were the people who were engaged in passive-aggressive posts on social media about how correct Butker was. They posted pictures of Harrison fully decked-out in his Kansas-City Chiefs uniform, holding his children and wife tight as they celebrated a Super Bowl victory. They wanted to show their appreciation for what Butker said during his speech.

Here’s my problem with this last group, (which I’ll address directly): Harrison has no love for you.

He wasn’t even addressing you. This was a speech from a Catholic, to Catholics. We might consider it inside baseball, and you (we) are playing church softball. You’re an outsider sticking your nose into a conversation where it doesn’t belong. His speech was delivered at Benedictine College, a Catholic institution.

Make no mistake about it; Harrision Butker believes you’re an apostate, doomed for an eternity of damnation to include the conscious torture of hellfire.

Consider his words here, all italicized words or words have been highlighted by me to emphasize my point.

• “I want to take stock of how we got to where we are, and where we want to go as citizens and, yes, as Catholics.”

• “Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith…”

• “He is not alone. […]they all have a glaring thing in common. They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn't cut it.”

• “As members of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, it is our duty and ultimately privilege to be authentically and unapologetically Catholic.”

• “Our Catholic faith…”

• “But make no mistake, before we even attempt to fix any of the issues plaguing society, we must first get our own house in order, and it starts with our leaders. The bishops and priests appointed by God…”

• “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…” [← If this isn’t an anti-protestant statement, then anti-protestant statements don’t exist.]

He goes on, making point after point about Catholicism. From what I could decipher on X, his strongest voices of support repeatedly pointed out the speech was strictly a Catholic one, and that if you didn’t like it, too bad. Real Catholics do.

I offer one more quote that should have ruffled your conservative protestant feathers:

[His wife] …is the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation. [Emphasis added.]

A rhetorical question, my Protestant friends… How does one “attain” salvation?

I mean, what happened to the Protestant belief that salvation comes by grace through faith alone? How one “attains” salvation was the issue for Martin Luther. All 95 of his “talking points” were about how the Catholic church had gone astray. It was the fundamental reason we have protestant Christianity today. It was the heart of the issue.

Butker believes Luther, the person who kicked off the protestant reformation and made more changes to the Christian faith than anyone but Christ himself, was an apostate. Yet you’re willing to set this little misunderstanding aside. Why?

Your full-on support for Butker is in fact, selective. And what you’ve selected as important is not salvation, but his homophobic and anti-abortion rhetoric. Add, “women are naturally and foremost homemakers,” and we’ve found the hook-line-and-sinker you’ve swallowed.

Next up, why we don’t kiss the rings of Catholic bishops.

Any guesses?