Holy Grit: Why Catholic Men Need Faith, Brotherhood and the Courage to Do Hard Things
Author and speaker Paul George says Catholic men are not called to choose between holiness and masculinity. They are called to bring the two together — confronting fear, suffering, isolation and medio
For Paul George, the challenge facing Catholic men is not simply that too many have stopped going to church or stepped away from spiritual leadership.
It is that many men have forgotten that holiness and masculinity belong together.
George, a husband, father, author and speaker from Lafayette, Louisiana, joined Tom Hornichek and Dean Patterson on Men Answering the Heroic Call to discuss the ideas behind his book, Holy Grit, and the search many men are making for purpose.
“The genesis of the book is a heart and a desire to help men connect their own desire to know God and yet their own authenticity to be masculine and to be fully human in their masculinity,” George said.
Too often, he said, faith is treated as something separate from manhood.
“We’re not a man over here and then we live a faith over here,” George said.
Instead, Holy Grit argues that God created men both for holiness and for difficult things.
“God created us to be men of faith, to be holy, yet not exempt of our masculinity,” George said. “We have grit. We’re built to have virtue and to do hard things.”
For George, a man begins discovering his purpose when those two realities meet.
“Our greatest purpose in our life is when we merge those two things together — our faith and our grit together.”
Why Men Retreat
George pointed to several reasons men can become disconnected from the faith, including broken families, absent examples of faithful fatherhood and a lack of mentorship.
“A lot of men, young boys, come from broken homes, maybe not a father who lived their faith and kind of showed them how to live that faith,” George said. “And so they’ve kind of been sent out into the world just isolated, alone, trying to figure it out.”
Men need more than instruction, he said. They need other men close enough to watch.
“The way Jesus taught was not just from the pulpit,” George said. “He rubbed elbows with his disciples. He walked with them. He taught them by the way he lived and acted and lived out his faith and virtue.”
That model matters because men often learn through participation and example.
“Men learn hands-on,” George said. “They learn by doing. They learn by being with other men.”
Without strong examples, men will still look for something to imitate.
“If I’m around a bunch of men who don’t live their faith and live sinful lives, I’m more apt as a man to kind of learn that behavior,” George said.
The deeper problem, he said, is not that men lack a desire for meaning.
“Man’s desire to find purpose is at the core of his heart,” George said. “They don’t always find it in the right places.”
The Fear of Going All In
One of the themes of Holy Grit is the danger of allowing the bare minimum to become the standard for Christian life.
George believes fear often keeps men standing at the edge of a deeper relationship with Christ.
“There is a certain fear in men of like, what would happen to my life if I just totally went all in with Jesus and my faith?” George said. “What would I have to let go of and leave behind?”
The irony, he said, is that men often become most alive when confronting fear.
“I think men come most alive in conquering and overcoming fear,” George said.
But in faith, that same man may hesitate.
“When it comes to faith, it’s sort of like, if I go all in, what does that look like?” he said. “So men kind of stand on the edge oftentimes and just do the bare minimum.”
That hesitation can have consequences inside the home.
“When a man doesn’t take his rightful place as a spiritual leader, what ends up happening is usually the wife or the girlfriend takes the place spiritually, kind of takes the lead,” George said.
The man then begins retreating further.
“Men, I’ll use this word, feel inadequate,” George said. “And when a man feels inadequate, he kind of retreats back and pulls back instead of taking the lead.”
Saints Were Real Men
George did not grow up immersed in Catholic devotional life.
He was baptized Catholic, but his parents divorced when he was young and his family stopped attending church. He said he knew little about the saints, Mary or the rosary.
That changed through his own conversion.
As he studied the saints, George became convinced that their humanity makes them especially important models for men.
“The thing that I think is most interesting is that they were human,” George said. “They’re not divine. They’re just like you and I.”
The saints struggled, suffered and grew.
“They grew up. They had original sin. They had a life of suffering, pain, joy, conversion,” George said.
In Holy Grit, George intentionally tells the stories of male saints in a way designed to make their lives recognizable.
“What was their story like growing up? What was their conversion like? What did their life look like once they really kind of gave their life to Christ?” George said.
He also deliberately included married saints.
“I tried to find married saints as well just to make it more relatable to men,” he said.
The point is not to make saints less heroic, but to remind men that sanctity was lived by actual human beings.
“They’re not mythical characters,” George said. “They’re real people.”
Men Will Search Until They Find the Answer
George believes every man carries a desire for peace, joy and purpose.
“I’ve never met a guy, young guy or old guy, who says, ‘I just want to be a horrible human being. I just want to do horrible things,’” George said.
“There’s a deep desire for purpose.”
The question becomes where a man searches for it.
“We are seekers and hunters and gatherers, and we will seek to discover what it is inside of us that is aching,” George said.
That search can lead through careers, sports, hobbies, relationships and countless other pursuits.
“We will do that with work and sports and hobbies and women and whatever things that can just satisfy this deep longing in our heart,” George said. “And the search is endless. It will keep going until we find the answer to it.”
For George, the turning point is an encounter with Christ.
“When men finally do find the Lord, they encounter Christ, just like you did, I did, it opens up this, ‘I finally found the answer. I finally found what I was looking for,’” he said.
But conversion is not the conclusion.
“It begins a journey and a path of discovery that is really the greatest adventure of all time.”
Virtue Without Christ Is Not Enough
George said he is encouraged by what he sees happening among Catholic men.
Through conferences, retreats, parishes and men’s groups, he sees men beginning to understand their vocation and responsibility.
“Men are really just stepping up and having real encounters,” George said.
But he cautioned against reducing the solution to self-improvement.
“If we’re just living a life of virtue without Christ, we eventually end up on this road of self-sufficiency,” George said. “I can do all things on my own instead of all things through Christ who gives me strength.”
George said his own life has repeatedly shown him the limits of self-reliance.
“When I try to do things on my own, I end up failing pretty bad,” he said.
The result can be exhaustion in marriage, fatherhood and work.
“When we don’t rest in Jesus and we’re constantly going, we end up relying on ourselves a little too much.”
The Enemy Wants Men Alone
George strongly believes that sustained brotherhood must follow moments of spiritual inspiration.
“We are who we hang out with,” he said. “That has a real effect on us.”
He has seen that principle play out across generations.
Recently, he joined a men’s group in Michigan using Holy Grit, spoke by video with a college-age group studying the book and received an invitation from a small group of high school boys.
“To me, that is amazing,” George said. “Cross-generational, just seeing men desiring to be together and journey together and know that they need each other is extremely important.”
There is also a spiritual battle behind that need, he said.
“The enemy seeks to isolate us,” George said. “That’s one of his greatest tactics.”
Isolation takes many forms.
“Isolation can be, yeah, I’m living in sin. Isolation could just be I’m detached from good relationships. Isolation can be I’m lonely. Isolation could be I’m just living mediocre, apathetic. I’m not fully engaging.”
A man does not have to completely leave the faith to become vulnerable.
“As long as we’re sort of just a little bit away from the flock, that’s where the enemy wants us,” George said.
The image of the Good Shepherd, he said, offers the answer.
“It’s not only to save that one, but it’s to bring it back into the flock where it’s safe — where it’s together with the others.”
Christ Does Not Erase Suffering
Coming to Christ did not remove the pain from George’s life.
His parents’ divorce and other wounds remained part of his story.
“What I didn’t realize is some of the suffering, maybe pain, trauma, wounds that I’ve experienced in my life were undealt with,” George said.
Christ begins bringing those wounds into the light.
“Jesus says, ‘I’m the light of the world.’ I’ve come to bring light into the darkness,” George said. “Shine the light on places in our hearts that need healing, restoration.”
One misconception, he said, is that faith will make suffering disappear.
“The myth is if I come into my faith or relationship with Christ, all my troubles and sufferings will go away,” George said. “But the reality is all our sufferings begin to make sense because of the cross.”
The suffering remains, but now it has somewhere to go.
“I have a place to bring my sufferings, my pain,” George said.
That is one reason the crucifix remains so important to Catholic life.
“Although Jesus rose from the dead, we’re reminded of the crucifixion because our sufferings don’t go away,” he said.
Christ does not pretend that his followers will never hurt.
“All of us can relate to pain and suffering in our life, and we have healing through Jesus. We have purpose in that.”
Nothing Is Lost in Christ
George recalled a lesson from his spiritual director, Father Bob Usilio, that became central to his understanding of suffering and regret.
“With God, nothing is lost. It’s all for gain,” George said. “God uses everything for our good.”
George used to replay his own life through a series of “what ifs.”
“If my parents wouldn’t have gotten divorced and I wouldn’t have experienced this broken family, I would be much better off,” George recalled thinking.
Then came the other regrets — choices, mistakes and relationships he wished had unfolded differently.
His spiritual director continued pointing him away from regret.
“The Lord takes all that and uses it for your good,” George recalled him saying.
George said men must understand that their past does not place them outside the reach of redemption.
“No matter where they are in their life right now, nothing that they’ve done up to this point can keep God from redeeming them and using their whole story for his purpose.”
St. Joseph and the Discipline of Waiting
Holiness, George said, also requires patience — something he readily admits does not come naturally to him.
“I’m not a very patient person,” he said. “I love things very immediately.”
That is one reason St. Joseph has become such an important example.
George focused on Joseph not simply as a saint, but as a husband and father who repeatedly obeyed God without receiving the entire plan in advance.
“God speaks to him in his dreams and through angels, and Joseph is obedient,” George said. “That’s a virtue. Do what God asks you to do.”
When Joseph was told to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt, he was not given a detailed timeline.
“Joseph just gets up and goes and does the next thing that God asks him to do,” George said.
For men who want certainty about careers, finances, marriages and the future, Joseph offers another model.
“There’s times and seasons of waiting, of patience, of just doing what God asked me to do today and trusting that when the Lord wants me to do something else, he will open the door and he’ll let me know,” George said.
Even seasons that feel unproductive may be formative.
“If I’m in a season of waiting, I’m in a season of suffering, if I’m in a season of, man, I need a job change, I need a breakthrough financially, I need a breakthrough in my marriage — sometimes that season of waiting is exactly the season that God wants to teach us something, prepare us for the next step.”
Mentorship Is Simpler Than Men Think
Men often complicate the idea of mentorship, George said.
They imagine that being a mentor requires a formal program, special expertise or the perfect words.
“I think in reality, put yourself out there to rub elbows with other men and we learn from each other,” George said.
Some of the most important lessons he has received from other men came through observation.
“I’ve learned a lot through just watching godly men — just how they act, just how they live, how they communicate,” he said. “I didn’t really ask them questions. I just was around them.”
Years ago, George and his wife, Gretchen, regularly opened their home to college students and young adults for Bible studies.
Years later, George met one of those young men again while traveling to Virginia.
The man thanked him.
George assumed he was referring to the Bible studies.
He was not.
“The thing that I appreciate the most and I learned the most is just being around you and your family,” George recalled the man saying.
The young man told George he had watched how the family lived and interacted.
“It was the first time I ever saw a family, and it gave me a deep desire to be a husband and a father,” George recalled him saying.
George joked that none of his teaching had apparently registered.
“He’s like, ‘No, I really didn’t pay attention. I didn’t pay attention to the Bible studies. I was just observing how y’all lived life.’”
For George, the story captures something fundamental about evangelization.
“What does it mean to live a life for Christ?” he said. “That’s sort of the missing thing.”
The answer may be less complicated than Catholics sometimes make it.
“Let’s just live life together with Christ,” George said. “And in that, we really learn the art of living, what it means to fully live.”
The Evangelizing Power of an Open Door
That kind of mentorship naturally leads to hospitality.
George pointed to the life of Christ as a model.
“If you look at even the Holy Family, the manger was open to the public,” he said.
The same pattern continued throughout Jesus’ ministry.
At the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus was simply present among people.
“That sense of just authentic love of the human person is what Christ does,” George said. “And that’s what opens up a person to receive the Gospel oftentimes.”
Hospitality does not require turning every gathering into a sermon.
Sometimes it begins by opening a house, sharing dinner, lighting a fire or sitting with neighbors.
The relationship creates space for something deeper.
Wives Can Encourage Without Shaming
George also addressed the difficult situation of a wife who desires a stronger spiritual life for her husband.
There is a role for women in encouraging men toward faith and brotherhood, he said, but the approach matters.
“When a wife is wanting her husband to really come around to the faith, a lot of times in her own hurt or frustration, she can really be accusatory or shaming her husband,” George said.
Statements such as “You’re not a spiritual leader” may contain a real concern, but George said they can produce the opposite result.
“What that does is it rejects the man and the man pushes further and further away,” he said.
Instead, he encourages wives to pray and encourage.
“Just be someone who is an encourager for them,” George said.
Encourage him to attend church. Encourage him to try a retreat. Encourage him to join a men’s group.
“Don’t shame them or accuse them or reject them,” George said. “When you leave the door open, I think eventually it just really opens the man’s heart.”
A Husband’s First Mission Field
For married men, George said the first responsibility after loving God is not career, ministry or even children.
It is their wife.
“Your first priority and vocation is to your wife — to love her,” George said.
He encouraged men to lean intentionally into that relationship.
“The more that you can lean into that and love your wife unconditionally, the more that her heart softens,” George said.
He described a wife’s desire as being seen, loved and known.
“When that begins to happen by the love of her husband, she begins to receive her husband in a way that she’s never received him before and then therefore encourages him to be fully who he is.”
Men can easily get the priorities backward.
“I’m going to love my kids, my work. I’m going to provide,” George said.
But children eventually leave home.
“One day your kids are all going to be gone out of the house and you two are going to be staring at each other,” he said.
That reality makes the marriage itself essential.
“At the end of our life I think what we’ll be remembered for the most is how we love the people in our home,” George said. “How we sacrificed and loved those people first.”
Career achievements eventually fade.
“We’re so replaceable,” George said.
Then he made the distinction.
“Where we’re not replaceable is in the family.”
There Is No Retirement From Purpose
George believes that message is especially urgent for older men.
Retirement can create a dangerous vacuum when a man’s identity has been built primarily around his work.
“One of the saddest things that I come across are men who are close to retirement age or in retirement who have no purpose,” George said.
His message to them is simple.
“You have purpose until your last breath.”
Decades of experience are not meant to disappear when a career ends.
“How is the Lord asking you to use your life, all your wisdom of your whole life, to give back to the world until you have nothing left?” George asked.
That could mean serving a parish, mentoring younger men, joining a men’s group or finding another way to give.
“There’s so much to be done in the world,” he said.
A Christian man, George said, does not expire when his professional usefulness ends.
His vocation continues.
Take the Leap
Near the end of the conversation, George returned to the basic message behind Holy Grit.
Men do not need to have everything figured out before moving closer to Christ.
They need to move.
“Just take the leap into your faith,” George said. “God’s got great plans for you.”
The path will require patience.
It will include suffering.
It will demand relationships, sacrifice and courage.
It may force a man to confront the places where he feels inadequate and the failures he would rather forget.
But for George, that is precisely where holy grit begins.
God does not ask men to abandon the strength, courage, competitiveness or desire for purpose he placed within them.
He asks them to surrender those things to Christ and allow them to be transformed.
Holiness and grit were never meant to be enemies.
They were meant to become one life.