New: ‘Men Answering the Heroic Call’ podcast targets Catholic ‘man crisis’
Hosts Tom Hornacek and Dean Patterson say loneliness, isolation and lukewarm faith are pulling men away from the Church — and they want to offer a way back.
This opening episode lays out the heart of Men Answering the Heroic Call: the crisis men are facing, the loneliness setting in, and how easy it is to drift into a lukewarm faith without even noticing.
Tom talks honestly about his own years of coasting, and Dean shares how losing his eyesight forced him to stop relying on himself and finally lean on God. Together they look at why men fall away, how phones and isolation pull us out of real brotherhood, and why every man needs prayer, accountability, and a few good brothers to walk with.
They close by inviting listeners to take the first step, stay with them on the journey, and hear Dean’s full story in the next episode.
Opening call to arms
“I’m Tom Hornacek with Dean Patterson,” Hornacek says at the top of the first episode. “Dean and I want to help equip you for this battle of life that we wake up to each day.”
“The word heroic refers to actions or qualities that demonstrate great courage, bravery, and self‑sacrificing love,” he continues. “These actions rise up during difficult situations in our lives requiring a heroic response.”
“No one goes to battle alone,” Hornacek adds. “As men of Christ, we answer the call together.”
Patterson says the show will return each week to that basic mission.
“Each episode, Tom and I will share stories and truths about our Catholic faith that help us grow as the men that God has made us to be,” he says. “So journey with us, come back week after week. We’ll talk about the challenges and pitfalls in life and help us all grow in wisdom, faith, and grow as Christian men answering the heroic call.”
Naming the crisis: loneliness, isolation and lukewarm faith
From the first episode, Patterson links the show to what he calls a “man crisis.”
“You might be a man, and I’m guessing if you’re a man tuning into this show, you’re following your Catholic faith to a large degree, and that’s wonderful,” he says. “But you’re also likely to know men who aren’t.”
“We have women that may be joining us too, and you may realize that we have a man crisis in this country, and maybe in the world,” Patterson says. “It’s been often termed as a loneliness epidemic or crisis. A lot of reasons for that, and Tom and I will go into that over the weeks that we’re with you.”
He points to early research.
“Matthew Kristoff is one of the early researchers in this here in Minnesota and he’s talked about it being a man crisis, a Catholic man crisis,” Patterson says. “Certainly it is a man crisis largely, but it’s also affecting the Catholic faith.”
“What we really want to do is share a little bit of the wisdom that we have,” he adds, “because we think there’s a lot of hope for men to grow in Christ and to pull out of this loneliness and isolation epidemic we find ourselves in.”
Hornacek: ‘I thought I was a good Catholic’
Hornacek tells listeners that he once fit the pattern he now warns against.
“Twenty‑five years ago I was a really lukewarm Catholic,” he says. “I looked at our Catholic faith like this big beautiful pool, and every weekend I would go and just dip my toe in it and say, that feels nice, that’s great, but I never dove in.”
“At that time I thought I was a good Catholic,” he says. “I was a father, a good man. I was faithful to my wife. I looked at porn — that’s okay, all guys do that, it’s just to get the motor running. I didn’t pray much unless I needed something. I didn’t go to confession since I was confirmed. If I got a problem, Jesus and I, we’re buds. I’ll just talk to him and I’ll try to do better next time. I didn’t know the Ten Commandments. None of that stuff. And I thought I was a good Catholic.”
He uses the language of Scripture to describe that state.
“I was neither cold nor hot, as Jesus said,” Hornacek recalls. “How I wish that you were cold or hot, but because you are lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth. I was on the highway to hell drinking the cocktail of life that I mixed. And I thought I was a good Catholic.”
“Then I had an encounter with Jesus — a number of things — and I was just a grocery store owner, hardware owner,” he says. “God has so much more for our lives. When we really understand the plan he has for our life, why he created us, because every single one of you listening out there, God has a plan for your life. And it’s much greater and much better than you could ever imagine.”
“But we have to take those steps of faith,” Hornacek adds. “We have to develop our prayer life. And that’s what we’re going to do in this series. Dean and I want to share with you the experiences we’ve had, the pitfalls we’ve overcome, and give you hope.”
Patterson: blindness, surrender and a new way of living
Patterson says he shares the same basic story of lukewarm faith — until crisis hit.
“I grew up very lukewarm in Milwaukee and moved here to Minnesota some nearly four decades ago and found a parish home that really helped me learn for the first time as an adult what it meant to be a leader of a house and really be obedient to the teachings,” he says. “And I’m grateful. Have I done it perfectly? No, absolutely not.”
He then describes the day things changed.
“It was a routine eye appointment,” Patterson recalls. “At this point I was a consulting account manager with some phenomenal clients and a great lifestyle. Little did I know I had a rare genetic condition that among other things is causing me to lose my eyesight. For 20 years, I’ve been more than legally blind. No more driving — you don’t want me to drive.”
“What it really did was it began to show that I’m not in control,” he says. “I had a wonderful pastor who helped me pray through that for the first time in my life, reading some of the Psalms, taking on that language. And I still do that today.”
“I’m grateful every day,” Patterson says. “I’m blessed, because now looking back, so much has happened that I can’t even explain how blessed we are. Blessed in the sense that family, happiness, joy, peace — all the fruits of the Holy Spirit that are present — have evolved from this journey of mine.”
“God took away the things that I was relying on to be provider and protector,” he adds, “and now I lean into him. Do I do it perfectly? No. And I pray every day that I do that better.”
He says one practice anchors that trust.
“I’m very fond of something called the surrender novena,” Patterson says. “I just finished day eight yesterday. I’ll do day nine today and start over with day one tomorrow. It’s given me a mindset each day that tells me, you know what, God is in control.”
“We’re made for relationship, with God and with each other,” he says. “We’re happiest when we dive into that. We have expectations on our end to pray and to endure at times, not question, just trust and faith that God’s got us.”
‘Men just don’t take sin seriously’
Patterson ties the wider crisis to a fading sense of sin and responsibility.
“I just saw an interview with Cardinal Burke and the one question asked of him is what’s causing this man crisis,” he says. “And he said men just don’t take sin seriously. And what we see in this culture right now — and parish numbers really bear this out — is that men are lukewarm, falling away.”
“It’s a slow fade,” he continues. “All of a sudden the families aren’t going, they aren’t following and they’re not leading their homes. And this has huge implications not only for the men themselves, who might be in their man cave or in their parents’ basement night and day gaming or doing something, but it has big implications on family and the future of the Church.”
“Right now, men are dropping off in parishes,” Patterson says. “Men are not as committed to the sacraments. They’re feeling lukewarm. Thirty‑one percent of men who do go to church don’t have a best friend there. Over half of men that go to church and have been surveyed can’t name ten other men by their first name. We’re not getting in the game and we need to be in brotherhood.”
“The slow fade to Catholicism means one in three men who proclaim to be Catholic go weekly,” he says. “That means more than 60 percent do not. Why is that important? Then you’re missing the sacraments. Do you know what the sacraments are? We’re going to talk about that. We’ll talk about all the aspects of the Catholic faith, which is quite beautiful.”
Brotherhood at the center
The show repeatedly returns to one solution: brotherhood.
“Building brotherhood is a really essential part of what heroic men is all about in our point of view, because that’s what Jesus did,” Patterson says. “He had 12 apostles, they lived together essentially, and then when Jesus left, Paul and Peter and all the Apostles built little communities, brotherhoods and even sisterhoods in some cases to help shed light on the gospel and share and grow the Church.”
Patterson presses the point concretely.
“I’m really fond of the idea that you’re the average of your five best friends,” he says. “Everything changed for me when I started hanging with guys that were serious about their faith. They averaged me up. They were candid. They pulled me up because I needed it. And we’re still together 30 years later in a weekly group.”
“It’s gonna take some effort, guys,” he adds. “You’re gonna have to get out of your man cave, out of your office, out of your garage, out of your tool shed, and maybe go to a retreat, maybe go to a conference, maybe meet a pastor for coffee.”
Hornacek connects brotherhood to practical evangelization.
“Brothers, you don’t have to go to Africa to go on a mission trip,” he says. “Just walk out your door. Just go to work. Go to school. Anywhere out there.”
Phones, manners and the loss of connection
Patterson says the crisis also shows up in daily habits.
“All you have to do is Google loneliness crisis in men and you’ll see it,” he says. “In the secular world and in the Church, the research shows that men just aren’t stepping up in a way that is heroic.”
He notes how technology often replaces real presence.
“I interviewed single women and then I did a focus group with some older married women too,” Patterson says. “The younger single women were struggling with how the men who they might be interested in would interact with them. One woman said she and a man were talking and when she held up her end of the discussion, he went right to his phone and checked out.”
“People are constantly tied to their phones and technology as opposed to people,” he says. “It’s getting to the place now where that’s replacing a lot of what should be human interaction.”
Hornacek adds that small acts of courtesy are part of heroic manhood.
“Heroic men have manners,” he says. “When’s the last time you saw a guy open the door for ladies? Years ago I had this encounter with Jesus at Mass, and that started everything. I started to open the door for my wife and doing things for her and not keeping score.”
“If you’re out there and you’re keeping score — ‘I picked her shoes up again and put them back,’ or ‘she always leaves dishes in the sink’ — go wash them,” Hornacek says. “You don’t have to keep score.”
Prayer, sacraments and spiritual battle
Hornacek and Patterson frame the whole effort as spiritual combat rooted in prayer and the sacraments.
“Do you have a relationship with Jesus? What does that mean? How do I do it? How do I improve my prayer life?” Hornacek asks. “Those are things we’re gonna help you with. How do I focus on my final goal? Really, our final goal is to get to heaven and then bring your family with you and everybody with you you can.”
“Brothers, if you really knew what God had in store for you, if you just saw a snippet of the glory of his kingdom, you’d sell everything,” he says. “So many people say, well, we have the Ten Commandments, we have all these rules. Yes, because he loves us. And when you really embrace them and you understand what they mean, it just changes everything.”
“In a lot of cases, whatever’s going on in your family or in the world, it’s good to see what’s going on,” Hornacek adds. “But say, ‘Lord, this is your problem, but what do you want me to do about it today? How am I to respond? How am I to pray? How am I to love people?’”
He also points to spiritual warfare and sacramentals.
“I follow everything the exorcists write, because when they’re engaging the demons — which is very uncommon — they have to tell the truth, and all of it is the truth of our Catholic faith,” Hornacek says. “Sacramentals, holy water, all those things in our faith — they’re all real. They’re all true. The Eucharistic miracles. Once you dive in, you can’t swim to the bottom. There’s no end to it.”
Marian devotion is part of his daily life.
“Maybe you’ve never prayed the Rosary, because I didn’t. I just thought that was for older Catholic women,” he says. “When you pray the Rosary, it’s because in ancient times you always went to the Queen when you needed something, because she had the King’s ear. I’m a mama’s boy now. I pray the Rosary every day. I pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy every day. I pray the Memorare when something happens. Prayer works.”
“We just want to share those basic things with you,” Hornacek says, “because we know the pitfalls we’ve had and maybe it’ll save you some of those things.”
Prison ministry, the Heroic Men app and a practical next step
Patterson says the same message is carried into prisons.
“I was in prison last night,” he tells listeners. “We had a Christmas event. We read the Scriptures to them. Some of the guys coming in are even Muslim now. We’re giving them the good news. We sang Christmas carols. Then we prayed for them. We had prayer teams and that was really powerful too.”
He and Hornacek also point men to digital tools.
“We would encourage every man listening and every man out there to download the Heroic Men app,” Patterson says. “If you have an iPhone, go to the App Store. If you have the other thing, go to the Play Store. Type in ‘Heroic Men’ and you’ll find two platforms. One has programming that’s been provided by donors — exceptional programming directed to Catholic men. It’s not stodgy stuff. It’s good, dynamic programming.”
Hornacek adds that it can be a simple way to reach the next generation.
“If you’re listening and maybe it’s your son or grandson who isn’t very engaged in his faith or not at all, just text them and say, hey, check this out,” he says. “Go there yourself and watch some of these. There’s so much content there, you could run a men’s group off it for years and not run out of content. And it’s free.”
“Maybe you put the QR cards in Christmas cards this winter,” he suggests. “There are very simple things you can do that are practical. Then you just pray, ‘Lord, open their heart to go there and put this app on.’ And then it’s up to him. You’ve done your part.”
‘Join us. Journey with us.’
As they close the first episode, the hosts say they want listeners involved.
“Questions that the audience may have will drive some of our podcasts as well,” Patterson says. “Because this is our first episode, we’re building that page, but you can go to the program description, there’s a link there and submit questions. Heroic Men does produce a bunch of podcasts. This just happens to be our first one together in a series that we expect will endure for a while.”
“We want to have interaction and relationship with all of you that are listening,” he adds. “Feedback is welcome and wanted, and we want to do a good thing here for the Lord. Join us in that effort. Join us. Journey with us. That’s our hope.”
Hornacek previews the next episode.
“You’re gonna want to join us for our next podcast because Dean’s gonna share with you his journey, his story,” he says. “You’re not gonna want to miss it.”