Though Manny Pacquiao is now an apostate, Tyson Fury remains a hardcore believer and practitioner. Sorta?
?Other sports such as baseball, tennis and squash racquets have their place, but their common drawback is that their players get to strike each other only inadvertently.??Father George Rutler
My title is a takeoff of Allen Bodner?s When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport. Of course, boxing was never really a Catholic sport, per se, except in the sense that it was once dominated by the Irish and Italians. Impossible as it is pointless to name all the names, but some obvious ones come to mind, including John L. Sullivan, Gene Tunney, James J. Braddock, the two Rockys, Graziano and Marciano, and Floyd Patterson, who said, ?If the Church bans boxing I would quit boxing immediately.? Though Manny Pacquiao is now an apostate, Tyson Fury remains a hardcore believer and practitioner. Sorta.
Did Sullivan take the easier road by becoming a boxer instead of heeding his mother?s wishes that he enter the priesthood? Maybe, given Know Nothing America?s pathological and downright homicidal hatred of all things Romish, especially if the Romish was Irish. Perhaps The Great John L. knew even before Al Capone that you can accomplish more against a hibernophobic nativist with a crucifix and a (right) cross than with a crucifix alone.
As the champ who could ?lick any man in the house,? the Irish Catholic Sullivan proved an enormous influence on Catholic fathers and Fathers in teaching young boys the manly art of self-defense, an influence that spread far beyond Irish homes and parishes. Up until the 1960s, almost all Catholic lads were taught how to use their fists. It?s only in relatively recent years that sinister and insidious elements within the Church have condemned boxing, calling for it to be cast into the exterior darkness, oblivious to the resultant weeping and smashing of teeth. God save us from the Jesuits!
By the same token, God bless Father George Rutler, who wrote an article for the April 8, 2013, edition of Crisis, in which he extols the benefits and virtues of the Sweet Science.
In ?The Christian Boxer,? Father writes, ?Sane moralists insist that neglect of self-defense can be moral dereliction.? A lesson Father knows only too well, having once been kayoed by a future crispy critter robbing the poor box. ?It was then that I began instruction in boxing, which I still try to keep up about once a week.?
While Father appreciates many aspects of the King of Sports, including its physical and cerebral demands and rewards, he just plain likes hitting. Or, as he puts it, ?the immediate instinct to punch someone who has punched you, issues in a thrill when you do so.?
Football is all right, he writes, ?but banging into one another is not as graceful as using fists.? Shuffleboard, badminton, billiards, and golf can ?be played in a state of physical neglect or advanced pregnancy,? while ?Fencing may match boxing for mental elegance, but the use of protective devices has made it a shadow of ancient duels.?
Father does speak highly of wrestling, however, impressed by its venerability. He?s dismayed and disgusted that wrestling will no longer be an Olympic competition, ludicrously replaced by such ?sports? as ping pong. ?The degradation of our culture has entered its fin de si?cle phase of the Decadents,? he observes.
Father Rutler neither advocates nor condemns professional boxing. A priest, after all, he recognizes that ?There is a real moral doubt about professional boxing,? just as there was in the days of John L. Sullivan. ?This is based both on its deliberate intent to inflict serious injury and on the corruption of promoters, which has figured in the decline of its popularity.? But while he calls for pro boxing, particularly at the heavyweight level, to be monitored, he doesn?t seek to have it abolished or even restricted. After all, ?In a fallen world there always will be excesses.? Father does draw the line, however, at MMA, ?which should be banned for its incitement of bloodlust.?
Father doesn?t train young lads in the art of fisticuffs, but he does quote the Apostle Paul: ?I so fight, not as one beating the air,? noting that ?No young man should venture into the larger world without having sparred with his peers, and boxing should be required of every seminarian who would preach like Paul.?
Father Rutler is pastor at the Church of St. Michael at 424 West 34th Street in Hell?s Kitchen. There?s a poor box there, I?m sure, and maybe a sign, ?Beware of Priest.?
