If you haven’t watched KC Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech delivered at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas yet, you should. It’s an absolute tour de force. Butker fears NO ONE, and I say that not because he went after the cult of sodomy, or the recent so-called Antisemitism laws. I say that because he went after something that is controversial even within the Trad Catholic Community: “Natural” family planning, aka “Catholic Birth Control.” Like I said, the guy is an absolute unit.
A key theme is Butker’s speech is “staying in one’s lane” in the sense of living out one’s vocation or station in life, fulfilling one’s own responsibilities, and not incurring into “lanes” that aren’t yours.
I hear this, and broadly agree. HOWEVER, I would hope that Mr. Butker also consider that Our Lord does sometimes call people “out of their lane”, and asks them to do unexpected and occasionally even great things. If St. Peter and St. Andrew had “stayed in their lane” as fishermen, and likewise with the other Apostles, and they humbly declined to go conquer Rome and spread the Gospel to the corners of the earth because such an undertaking was “out of their lane”… well. I don’t need to say how catastrophic that would have been.
The same goes for such giants as St. Catherine of Siena, perhaps the best example of a person “not staying in her lane” – to put it mildly.
God works in mysterious ways. He does WHAT He wants, WHEN He wants, WHERE He wants, HOW He wants, WITH WHOM He wants. He pulls people out of their lanes quite a bit, and uses the seemingly “unqualified”, and CERTAINLY “uncredentialed” precisely in order to prove a point and manifest His omnipotence and goodness. And so, here we sit today in May of ARSH 2024, and the placekicker of the KC Chiefs is THE current voice and de facto leader of the Remnant Church Militant.
We are in a war, and all of the Flag Officers are either: Dead, Traitors, Cowards, AWOL, injured or imprisoned. So what happens? You just keep working down the chain of command. If the General is out, then it falls to a Colonel. If there’s no Colonel, then to a Major. If no Major, then to a Captain. If there be no Captains, then to a Lieutenant. If there are no Lieutenants, then to a Sergeant Major. If no Sergeant Major, then to a Sergeant. If no Sergeants, then to a Corporal. If no Corporals, then to a Private. When a situation is so dire that you get down to the level of a Private having to step into a leadership position, natural leaders within a squad EMERGE. Or, it could be said that God “raises men up.”
Mr. Butker is wealthy from his lastest 5 year, eight-figure compensation package with the Chiefs, AND he is already a diversified entrepreneur. If the NFL cuts him tomorrow, which is possible given the media uproar, and the frothing, spittle-flicked nutty that the Uber-promiscuous autotuned pop tart cult leader, Taylor Swift’s minions are throwing, Mr. Butker will probably chuckle and shake the dust from his sandals. All the more reason for him to consider the very clear fact that he is now, already very much one of, if not THE most forward leader of the resistance to Clown World, aka the cult of Antichrist.
Sometimes, some people are called by God out of their lane. Heck, some people are called to drive on the shoulder. A few people are called to leave the road entirely and drive cross-country.
The answer lies in the words of Our Lady at the wedding of Cana: DO WHATEVER HE TELLS YOU.