The betrayal of the Butker commencement speech
Unruly thoughts on the commotion
Gentle reader,
As a teacher, commencement marks the happy point in my yearly rhythm when I have grades wrapped up, and my summer goals still feel achievable: the point where the schedule yields a bit to longer days.
It also stirs my hopes for my students; all the feels come up: my care for them, my gratitude for the ways they’ve encouraged me to hope for the church and witnessed to me about the nature of the kingdom, my prayers that said hope and witness won’t be crushed as they continue their work in the world.
Kansas City Chiefs player Harrison Butker spoke this month at commencement for Benedictine College in Kansas, and his speech has drawn attention for encouraging young women to become homemakers. For me as a teacher, the commencement speech is personal. It’s about education and what it is for, and Butker’s speech is a betrayal of that.
The commencement speech is its own genre, known for being terrible but not in the manner of the Butker speech. It’s generally dreaded for length, narcissism, and the way it oddly seems to have nothing to do with the students graduating.
I’ll quote from a transcript of Butker’s full speech here. I won’t link to it, but you can find it by means of the googling.
Image from the brilliant title sequence of the 1997 film My Best Friend’s Wedding. Brilliant, among other reasons, because it has Ani DiFranco singing Dionne Warwick’s 1962 “Wishin’ and Hopin’.”
In both content and writing quality, the speech reads like it was written by a rad trad AI bot (that’s a “radically traditional” Catholic). Butker presses a bunch of buttons for the tribe; American exceptionalism, the specter of abortion (with no reference to, say, capital punishment), Joe Biden as Catholic traitor, covid lockdowns, “the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and a quick knock on Taylor Swift.
Some complementarian Protestants leap to defend Butker; they too advocate homemaking over other careers for women. But they should take note of how very Catholic (or heretically Catholic, but still Catholic?) is the cocktail Butner’s peddling.
In light of point two, Protestants of any stripe who want to adopt Catholic natural theology on marriage, sex, and birth control had best be cognizant of the pieces of Protestantism they’ll need to discard to do so, not least, the doctrine of sola scriptura. Yup, I’m feeling feisty.
Butker also knocks the Scorcese film Silence (based on the extraordinary novel by Endo.) Butker cites Bishop Robert Barron’s take on the film as “what the cultural elite want to see in Christianity—private, hidden away, and harmless.”1 This betrays a remarkable inability to read or watch well: a complete blindness to literary device, character, history, context, or even plot. In a commencement speech, this is alarming because it fails to rise even to the level of anti-intellectualism, settling for illiteracy instead. How can an educator do other than react in horror?
On ways Butker’s speech will be illegible to most Protestants, he emphasizes separate states for laypeople and clergy; “It is not prudent as the laity for us to consume ourselves in becoming amateur theologians so that we can decipher this or that theological teaching — unless, of course, you are a theology major. We must be intentional with our focus on our state in life and our own vocation. And for most of us, that’s as married men and women.” Here, classic Protestant theology would critique the clericalism and the conflict with the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Butker advocates against literacy in the faith. Don’t ask questions. Make money, and have babies. Unless you’re a theology major?
Butker is deeply un-Catholic and un-Christian in his view of the church. His version of Catholicism is only made possible in rejecting basic ecclesiology in favor of an individualist understanding of the faith (which sits oddly with the authoritarianism in point five). A chunk of the speech lauds the traditional Latin mass, and Harrison directs graduates to choose to live somewhere said mass is accessible, but one can only call the Latin mass “traditional” by rejecting a Catholic understanding of tradition. In a confused paragraph, Butker warns laypeople away from being too active in the church, as it is not the laity but the priest as father (an authoritarian father!) who is responsible for the good of the parish. At the same time, (illiterate) laypeople are responsible for finding the right kind of church and the right kind of priest; “it’s up to us to seek them out.”
If you’re waiting for me to get to the homemaker stuff, here it is: “I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation [and embraces] one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” Isabelle’s life didn’t start, say, in Christ, or with her baptism. Nope. Her new birth came in wife-ing and mother-ing. (In works, not grace; I know I’m oversimplifying, but also…not.)
Butker, about his wife: “She is a primary educator to our children. She is the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. She is the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation.” Lots of doozies here. I hope Isabelle loves literacy, for her sake and that of her children. She has the misfortune of being married to a man she needs to manage, who purportedly would ignore her and the kids, if she didn’t keep at him. And, you know, they’re attaining salvation through their marriage. See points 2, 3, 5, 6, and a rant about sacramental theology I won’t include here.
Butker would like to put men in unbiblical boxes too. “Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things.” But, whose hard things? Which masculinity? Football things and football masculinity?
Butker thinks he knows womens’ hopes and dreams. He presumes we long for babies, not careers. He iterates false bifurcations between work and home and between faith and work. He does not ask how he thinks he knows this. He does not need to interrogate the economics of homemaking, as his salary averages over 4 million a year. Homemaking is good. Reducing women to homemaking is not good. Barring men from homemaking is not good. Homemaking does not mean one thing. Also, as noted by
, homemaking is not traditional. (See also, Stephanie Cootz’s The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.)
Like most U.S. colleges, Benedictine enrolls more women than men. The women hearing that commencement speech were celebrating an academic achievement. A commencement speech is not only subject to the rule of “free speech.” It is subject to the school and to the students. The identity of a commencement speaker says something about a school’s identity.2 These things are vetted, and so school officials betrayed their students and their educational mission. They betrayed the women and men who earned their degrees that day. Their school betrayed them. Butker betrayed them. All who rose to cheer for his speech betrayed them; I have no doubt many betrayed themselves. The women at Benedictine’s commencement had to endure this public betrayal of their academic achievement on one of the most celebratory days of their lives.
Nuns are awesome. “As a founding institution and sponsor of Benedictine College, the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica find it necessary to respond to the controversial remarks of Harrison Butker as commencement speaker.” Their statement:
The sisters of Mount St. Scholastica do not believe that Harrison Butker’s comments in his 2024 Benedictine College commencement address represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested.
…One of our concerns was the assertion that being a homemaker is the highest calling for a woman. We sisters have dedicated our lives to God and God’s people, including the many women whom we have taught and influenced during the past 160 years. These women have made a tremendous difference in the world in their roles as wives and mothers and through their God-given gifts in leadership, scholarship, and their careers.
Our community has taught young women and men not just how to be “homemakers” in a limited sense, but rather how to make a Gospel-centered, compassionate home within themselves where they can welcome others as Christ, empowering them to be the best versions of themselves. We reject a narrow definition of what it means to be Catholic. We are faithful members of the Catholic Church who embrace and promote the values of the Gospel, St. Benedict, and Vatican II and the teachings of Pope Francis.
We want to be known as an inclusive, welcoming community, embracing Benedictine values that have endured for more than 1500 years and have spread through every continent and nation. We believe those values are the core of Benedictine College.
We thank all who are supportive of our Mount community and the values we hold. With St. Benedict, we pray, “Let us prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he lead us all together to life everlasting.”
My commencement day, at Duke University 19ish years ago. With our babies in our arms, you bet I was dreaming about a career, alongside with my husband. Together, we’ve made a home.
For some genius Catholic writing, read Endo’s novel, Silence. For some wonderful Protestant theology about such, grab Makoto Fujimura’s Silence and Beauty.
Grace & peace,
BFJ
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The quote is from Butker’s speech. I don’t know how faithful he is to Barron’s words.
Witness the controversy when Taylor University had Mike Pence as commencement speaker. Taylor’s new president has, purportedly, decided he’ll give all commencement speeches himself from here on. Which is … a move.
Thank you! This is so good. You address all the problematic things so well.
Edited to add: I was also bothered by his whole paragraph on absentee fathers and especially these lines: "This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the U.S.," Even if one is generous and assumes that to be the case (I'm skeptical of both these assertions), He doesn't address any of the key reasons that could be the case. For example, the high rate of incarceration in the US compared to other countries, and the unjust incarceration policies that target minorities in poverty.
I love it when you get feisty!!