Hello, and welcome to Focus. The Catholic Dance was podcast for living, understanding, and

defending your Catholic faith. I'm Sy Kellet, your host, Carl Rusard, our guest this time.

And we're going to talk a little bit about religion as it relates to men because it does

seem, I don't know, the last time you were in a Catholic church, but that more women

are taking seriously the call to participate in the faith and to live the faith than men.

That might be a misimpression, but it certainly seems to be the case. It doesn't seem to be

the case at the synagogue. It doesn't seem to be the case at the mosque or at the Buddhist

temple, but it certainly seems the case among Christians that we have lost some of the

sense of the manliness of religion. And so we thought, who should we ask? How about

the manliest man that we know? Carla Rusard. Hi, Carla. Thanks for coming. Hey, Sy, it's

great to be with you, brother. So why are you a Christian? If you're such a manly man,

like is I am a Christian because I love Jesus. Amen, brother. Amen. But even that, I think

that even that, some people see that as not very manly to love Jesus. So can you help us

out with why it is manly actually to be religious to embrace religious faith? Yeah, I think

immediately answering the question that you just posed, if it were not a manly thing to

be in relationship with Jesus or it would not be a manly thing to be in love with Christ,

then it would not be a manly thing to be in relationship with Jesus. As if somehow being

in a relationship with someone is excluded from being a man. And in particular, in this

case, a relationship with our Lord who has God made flesh. And this actually tees up nicely,

Sy, this topic of the manliness of religion. I've been trying to think through this issue

quite a bit. And so I'm basically just sharing with you some of the fruits of my thinking so

far. And I do acknowledge that I need to think more about it. Oh, this is going to be a great

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