A recent controversy was stirred up on social media when Russel Brand, one of several celebrities to endorse the Hallow app, tweeted about Andrew Tate:

As usual, there was a firestorm of tweets about how Andrew Tate was not actually a good role model for men, or how Tate's brand of aggressively sexualized masculinity was a necessary corrective to feminized modern society, and such. Because of Russel Brand's recent public conversion and association with the Catholic app Hallow, a lot of Catholic figures took up the argument:

There are a number of questions that I think are very important to consider, here. First, Tate is undeniably popular. Something about his message and image is attractive to the broader public. What, specifically, is attractive? Second, there is a common apologetic tactic to recognize the good in secular media and affirm that good so as to bring the Church's wisdom into conversation with modern society. How does that work in this case? And, finally, what can we learn from this about authentic Catholic masculinity in the current day? I can't answer all those questions fully in a blog post, but I do have a couple thoughts that I think are significant.

First, Tate is undeniably popular, indicating some attractiveness or other about his “message” or “image.” He has 10.5 million Twitter followers. But what is his image? Tate performs as an aggressive, confident, dominant figure in his social media. I use the word “performs” on purpose, here: social media is a performance, for an audience. It is carefully curated and shaped in order to appeal to that audience. This is in the nature of the medium itself, and not merely a misuse of a neutral platform. Being a social media influencer, like Tate, is a performance art. And the product being performed by Tate is an image of a particular kind of masculinity. He talks about having perfect discipline as a means to be immune to external opposition. A good example is how he responded to the recent release from house arrest:

Tate's "image" also includes domination of women in a flagrantly abusive and selfish manner in a way that even common, secular morality finds appalling, let alone Catholic sexual ethics:

This performance of aggressiveness, discipline, strength, and sexual dominance is explicitly done to appeal to young men. The message is one of liberation from weakness and societal constraints. Feminism, according to Tate, has weakened society and left young men disenfranchised. He thinks that women are incapable of exercising power or authority, and need men to be dominant. For example:

So, Tate's message is one of self-liberation through discipline, aggressiveness, confidence, and strength. I don't think it's a stretch to view it as a Nietzschean expression of the will to power dictating morality. Might makes right, and men are naturally stronger than women. His message to young men is to work out, be in control of yourself and others, never cede any authority to women, do not be constrained by traditional sexual ethics. And, apparently, a decent number of young men find this message attractive. Why?

I think it is important to recognize that many young men do feel disenfranchised, powerless, alone, and unwanted. Tate's response to this reality is that men ought to free themselves through their own strength. Be too disciplined to get depressed when you're alone. Take back the authority and power that feminism has taken from you. Be strong enough to get your way with women, even if they don't want you. This narrative provides an answer to the suffering that many young men feel. Young men feel powerless, and Tate claims to offer them power. They feel like they have no control over their loneliness, and Tate offers them control.

This leads to the second question. It's a common apologetic tactic to recognize the good in some example of secular media as a way to converse with the world and bring out the truth. Bishop Barron is famous for this with Word on Fire. Both Russel Brand and Eric Sammons, as quoted above, are making this kind of claim. There is something appealing about Tate's message, and in order to appeal to the same young men to whom Tate appeals, the Church needs to recognize this apparent good. But what specifically is appealing, and is that apparent “good” something which the Church can actually affirm?

I would argue that Tate's assessment of the suffering of young men is accurate. Many young men do, in fact, feel that way. The attractiveness of Tate's message comes from its resonance with a particular sort of suffering in a particular sort of young man. Tate claims to have a cure to what ails them. But, in medicine, the diagnosis is not sufficient. Identifying the pain needs to be followed by prescribing the right cure. And the cure which Tate offers for loneliness and powerlessness is absolutely empty and worthless. There is no amount of aggressive discipline which could satisfy the aching longing of the human heart for love. As a result, I think we can affirm the suffering that young men feel, but we absolutely should not point to Tate as an example of how to respond to that suffering.

To elucidate this, I would like to turn to St. Augustine's Confessions. The saintly bishop's account of the good in this work is foundational for the apologetic approach of recognizing the good in secular media. In Book II, St. Augustine talks about the rationale behind sin in Chapter V, “Why men sin.” He articulates that our worldly existence “has its own allurements, which come from its own particular mode of beauty.” There is a particular beauty to the body of a woman; a particular good in having fame or wealth or authority. These things are “good” in some lesser, worldly sense. And so, St. Augustine asserts that human beings sin by pursuing some lesser, worldly good in a disorderly way. We ought to use worldly things in a manner consistent with God's will, for the sake of pleasing Him. But instead, we pursue worldly goods out of order, without reference to God's will. Thus, every sin is motivated by some misplaced desire for something actually good, but used wrongly.

Thus, the apologetic method of recognizing the good in secular media revolves around affirming that which is good and calling those pursuing that good wrongly to love it better. “You are chasing the attention of women in a lustful way,” the apologist says. “Women are good. You're right. But let me teach you how to love them better.” Thus, the message of the apologist profits off the misguided appeal of sin. It finds common ground, and then calls to something better. But, this is not the end of St. Augustine's discussion in Book II. He goes further to a deeper reality of sinfulness.

The characteristic story in Book II is the tale of young Augustine and his friends robbing a neighbor's pear tree in the dead of night. St. Augustine points out that the pears weren't even ripe. They couldn't eat the fruit of their thievery. Reflecting on this, the saintly bishop recognizes that there was no proper, worldly good as the motive for his action. Instead, he desired sin itself. “Those pears I gathered only so that I might steal. The fruit I gathered I threw away, devouring in it only iniquity.” The specific “good” which Augustine sought in that sin was his own pride, expressed in the action of sinning specifically because it was wicked. A false service of the self, one's own “freedom” to break the rules and seize power, is the ultimate apparent “good” behind sin. This is not the kind of good that can be affirmed. There is no common ground between arrogant, self-serving pride and the moral order. It might seem “good” to someone who feels disenfranchised and powerless. But it neither solves that problem nor produces happiness.

I would argue that Tate's performance of aggressive masculinity is like St. Augustine's robbery of pears. It is an impotent masquerade of power, pretending to achieve self-realization through self-assertion, but ultimately being left entirely alone and empty. His message of discipline and domination do not produce the happiness that they pretend. Happiness comes from living in accord with our nature in this world, and serving God in obedience to Him as the ultimate, supernatural Good. Transgressing the laws of God in self-aggrandizement does not even properly value the worldly goods it claims to desire. For Tate, women are not desired as good in themselves - they are tools for exercising his own pride and will to power. The “good” proposed by Tate's brand of virility is nothing more or less than the pride of the devil. It is the pathetic attempt to define good and evil by our own power, and it produces nothing beyond emptiness and misery. We cannot be disciplined or powerful enough to outrun the constraints of our own nature. We cannot determine our own happiness. No amount of serving ourselves actually does us any good.

Thus, a proper response to Andrew Tate necessitates pointing out the wickedness he peddles. Recognizing the suffering of young men in our society is good, but self-aggrandizing “masculinity” is part of the problem. It abuses the longing for love in the hearts of young men to sell them a false image. Tate has gotten rich off of selling young men a lie. A model of "masculinity" like him is opposed to the authentic good of the young men who turn to him. Instead, they need a truly divine Physician who can actually heal their wounds. As Gaudium et Spes points out, it is only in Jesus Christ that man is truly revealed to himself. On the Cross, we see what real strength looks like. In Christ, we see real authority, real power, real discipline, exercised constantly in seeking the salvation of the other. Jesus' gentleness and meekness are truly united to his sharp criticism of the sinfulness of the pharisees and his cleansing of the wicked commerce that was going on in the temple. Many great saints have imitated Jesus in the authentic Catholic masculinity He reveals, like St. Maximilian Kolbe dying for another man in the concentration camp, or St. Moses the Black giving up his violence in order to die a martyr. In all things, we must die to ourselves and learn to live only in and for Jesus Christ. This is the proper response to the suffering young men feel in our world today, as it is the only ultimate answer to all of the problems which afflict the human heart. As St. Peter makes clear in his speech to the Jews in the book of Acts, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”