Nick Freitas: The real crisis isn’t too many fathers ruling — it’s the ones who refuse to



Feminism has sold women the lie that “patriarchy” is a crisis that’s followed their female ancestors throughout the centuries — but BlazeTV host Nick Freitas believes the real crisis isn’t too many men ruling.

Rather, it’s those who refuse to.

And author Jeremy Pryor couldn’t agree more.

“The word patriarchy is actually very recent,” Pryor tells Freitas. “It’s sort of like less than 100 years old. It was actually invented by people on the left to really attack the idea of there’s too many men. And so they came up with this word.”


“The word patriarch is extremely old. The word patriarchal is very old. The word patriarchy, that’s a fairly new word,” he explains, noting that he’s “wrestled” with whether or not to “embrace” it.

“Because part of what they mean by that is the oppression of a class of people, primarily powerful men over women and over everyone else in society, and we got to smash the patriarchy,” Pryor says.

The word means “ruling father,” and he says he “cannot imagine something more important” than “helping fathers understand that they need to begin to rule families.”

“There’s nothing better for women and for children,” he tells Freitas. “The worst thing that happens to women and children is when men decide to abandon that responsibility.”

“And so what a patriarch is, is somebody who takes that responsibility very personally and very seriously, somebody who doesn’t just protect and provide but also sets a vision for the family,” he adds.

And this is a natural way for men to behave, as Freitas notes that “men crave legacy.”

However, modern culture has seen family legacies take a hit.

“When you turn the family into something that basically is a temporary occupation,” Freitas says, “that eventually breaks down, and then your kids put you in a home. ... If I want to build something that’s going to last, well then I build where I think it’s going to last, not where I know it’s by design supposed to break apart and do its own thing.”

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Texas pastor issues two challenges for men today: 'Putting it into action bears fruit'



A Texas pastor who previously served as director of vocations for the Diocese of Dallas and now sees over 9,500 people show up every Sunday at his church in Coppell recently discussed the need for men to assume leadership roles, the challenges they will invariably face, and two challenges fathers should take on today.

Fr. Edwin Leonard noted on the episode of "The Catholic Gentleman" podcast published on Thursday that when he took on the role of pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church during the pandemic, he observed that "everyone had been separated from their church community" long enough for some men to have "gotten used to the loneliness."

'He also knew that you would be reading that Gospel.'

Gospel and grill

To combat this pervasive sense of alienation, strengthen the community, and "more purposely target the hearts of men" so that like King David "they could be men after God's heart," the parish under Fr. Leonard began holding an annual men's summit.

"We just got a bunch of guys together, and we had barbecue. We had some bourbon, some beer, and some cigars, and just like hung out in the courtyard of our church," the priest said. "And it was about, you know, a 20-minute talk that first year from our key presenter."

Feeling inspired by the Holy Spirit to go beyond consuming content that filled their bodies and minds, the attendees broke into groups and shared what the Lord was doing in their lives and how that had impacted them.

The parish recognized that this summit and similar initiatives focused on fortifying the hearts and minds of men in the community were not only the way to cultivate Christian leaders but to strengthen the faith of multiple generations.

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Test your mettle

The priest noted, after all, that the likelihood of successful religious transmission is greatly increased when children receive and grow in their faith in the presence of their father.

"The fact that he is leading in some way, shape, or form — it astronomically increases the opportunity and the chances for your children to have their faith," Fr. Leonard said. "So we said ... if we're going to pour forth effort, we can do anything, we just can't do everything. Let's build up some leaders."

The aim behind the men's summit evidently became helping men not just serve their community but point in their service "towards the Lord whom they know."

Over the course of the podcast, Fr. Leonard raised several issues he has observed negatively affecting young men and undercutting their leadership prospects, not least of which is passivity and "delayed adolescence," which he clarified is the result of a lack of exposure to adversity.

To rectify these problems, he repeatedly advocated for controlled adversity — for engaging with and surmounting challenges of the kind that test mettle and build muscle.

Action items

After discussing the need to be challenged, Fr. Leonard was asked to provide those men listening with at least one challenge that if met could help them become better over the next week and into the more distant future.

The priest instead issued two challenges, the first of which was for fathers to "pray over your children every night. Make a sign of the cross on their forehead like you did at their baptism. Bless them."

The second challenge Fr. Leonard issued was for men to "practice listening to the Word of God. So you need to read the Word of God — I would suggest reading the Daily Gospel."

"Read it once and then, you know, ask yourself two questions: What is the Lord trying to say to me? This isn't like a historical, critical method Bible study where you're like, 'What was the original source material? What was God trying to say 2,000 years ago?'" Fr. Leonard said. "God is omniscient, so as He was inspiring this to be read, He had a literal first-century meaning, but He also knew that you would be reading that Gospel reading in 2026."

"The second question is the real crux of what I want people to do," he continued. "Think how you can put that scripture verse or what the Lord said to you into action that day."

The priest added, "The more that you listen to the Word of God, the more that you're going to be able to hear the Word of God" and emphasized that "the practice of putting it into action bears fruit."

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Fatherhood under attack: Allie Beth Stuckey calls out media's latest ​hit pieces on dads



This past Father’s Day weekend, an article on fatherhood in the New York Times went viral.

However, it wasn’t about a great father. It was about a woman who transitioned and calls herself a father.

“You might be thinking, ‘Really? In the year of our Lord 2026, this is what the New York Times is talking about? I thought we were over this madness. I thought we realized and successfully stigmatized roping kids into being sources of affirmation for gender delusion,'” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.”

The headline reads, “To my daughter, my gender was never complicated.”


The article contains cartoons to help describe the relationship between “father” and daughter, including one where the daughter asks, “How long did you have breasts for Dad?”

“What a tragic, tragic line for a child to utter. The daughter is later shown at school with friends where a friend says, ‘You can’t grow a beard. You’re a girl.’ And the daughter responds, ‘My dad did, and he was a girl,’” Stuckey explains.

“And this is supposed to prove that this is super simple. Or maybe it proves that it is so delusional that a child who still believes that there is a fat man that can circle the universe in one night, fit down their chimney, and put presents under the tree like that. They believe it because they believe all kinds of fantastical things,” she continues.

But the New York Times isn’t the only publication to do the opposite of celebrating fatherhood.

“There was also this piece in the Toronto Star: ‘A modest proposal: Why it’s time to abolish Father’s Day,’” Stuckey says, pointing out that the article is a bit of a “bait and switch.”

In the article, the author laments the pressure put on children to buy gifts, claiming that the real gift is quality time.

“If your problem is materialism, that's one thing. Or you just think it’s, you know, a made-up reason to buy Hallmark cards, that’s fine,” she says, adding, “But the title, we need to abolish Father’s Day, or we need to abolish Mother’s Day, another thing that I’ve heard in the past due to some undue burden that’s just perpetuating this idea that celebrating fathers and positive fatherhood is not something that we need to do.”

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What we lose when we mock fatherhood



To some in our modern society, the holiday celebrated on the third Sunday in June may seem archaic. Father’s Day may even invite calls to downplay or mock the role fathers play in our culture.

But the holiday provides important lessons in honor, respect, sacrifice, and long-term responsibility — lessons our 21st-century world badly needs to recover.

Father’s Day gives us an opportunity not only to recognize the imperfections of our earthly fathers, but also to honor and bless them in whatever small ways we can.

Consider the parable of the prodigal son, as Jesus recounts it in Luke’s Gospel. The younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance, effectively seeking to end his relationship with the man who gave him life. Upon receiving his portion, he journeys to a foreign land and promptly squanders it in debauchery.

Our world provides far more opportunities for temptation than existed in the time of Christ, and many of them now sit in the palms of our hands. Social media, online gambling, pornography, and endless distraction are instantly available with a few clicks. Little wonder Western society seems more individualized and more alienated than ever.

Fathers, when they embrace their proper role, can stand against those prevailing currents. With God’s help, fathers can model upright living for their children and give them an example to follow.

As the head of a business founded by my parents half a century ago, I cannot thank my father enough for the lessons he gave my brothers and me. The Christmas I turned 13, he gave me a pocket-sized Bible. His note inside included these words: “The solutions to any problem are in this great book. Try to read a chapter each day of your life, and you will be happy.”

My father did not merely surrender his own life to Christ’s will. In his own way, he taught me to do the same — to pursue a personal relationship with God and try to align my life with God's word. The way my father loved my mother and lived his faith helped shape me into the man, husband, father, and business leader I am today.

A culture that devalues fathers threatens to leave future generations without the broader perspective and discipline they need to flourish — inside the family home and in daily life with neighbors, friends, and co-workers.

In his letter to the early church in Ephesus, the apostle Paul reminds children to “honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land.” By their nature, honor, respect, and obedience require sacrifice, traits our popular culture rarely celebrates.

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martin-dm/iStock/Getty Images

But I would not have done as well in my roles as a husband, father, and business leader without the discipline and values my father helped instill in me. Those life lessons extended far beyond the four walls of our family’s home and business.

Father’s Day gives us an opportunity not only to recognize the imperfections of our earthly fathers, but also to honor and bless them in whatever small ways we can. And for those of us who are fathers and grandfathers, it offers a chance to pass on the values our fathers — earthly and heavenly — have given us.

That may be the greatest inheritance we leave our children.

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Every child needs to hear: Daddy’s here



Father’s Day can be complicated.

For some, it is a day of gratitude. For others, it is a day of grief, anger, regret, or longing. Some remember fathers they dearly loved. Others struggle to remember a father at all.

The best fathers point toward a greater Voice. The worst fathers cannot eclipse it.

Thinking about Father’s Day recently, a friend sighed and said, “I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to honor my father.”

The hesitation said more than the sentence.

Years ago, a caller to my radio program spoke of caring for his aging father, an abusive alcoholic who at that point required assistance. The caller was 52 years old, yet he confessed that whenever he was around his father, he felt 11 again.

The years had passed. The wounds had not.

Another friend put it more bluntly: “My father was a pedophile.”

No explanation followed. No attempt softened it. Just the stark reality of a life marked by a father’s betrayal.

I once heard a well-known minister recount standing at his father’s grave at 16, feeling as though he were losing his mind. Looking at the headstone, he cried through his tears, “You can’t leave. You didn’t tell me what you think of me.”

He was not grieving the loss of money, advice, or even protection. He was grieving the loss of a verdict.

For all our confusion about identity, one truth remains stubborn: People know when something essential is missing. Despite endless debates about who we are, millions spend their lives searching for the same thing — a father.

Men sire children every day. Being a father is something else.

A father forms. He blesses. He corrects. He protects. He teaches. He commissions. With a word, he can instill courage or fear. He can strengthen a child for the journey ahead or leave wounds that linger for decades.

A father’s voice can penetrate places explanations never reach.

Forty-three years ago, my wife awoke from a three-week coma following a catastrophic automobile accident. Broken, disoriented, and in unimaginable pain, she did not know where she was. She did not understand what had happened. She could not comprehend what lay ahead.

The first words she heard were spoken by her father.

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Krishan Kariyawasam/NurPhoto/Getty Images

“Daddy’s here, Gracie. Daddy’s here.”

She did not know where “here” was. But she knew her father’s voice.

Years later, one of our sons fell on a playground and split his chin open. I rushed him to his pediatrician, where he needed stitches. As I held him while the doctor sewed him up, he looked at me with fear, confusion, and the unspoken question every hurting child eventually asks: Why are you letting this happen?

He knew nothing about infection, wound care, or why stitches mattered. No explanation I offered could bridge the gap between what he experienced and what I understood. So I kept repeating the only thing I knew to say.

“It’s OK. Daddy’s here.”

The explanation would have meant nothing to him. Presence meant everything.

There are fathers who leave too soon. Fathers who abandon. Fathers who wound. Fathers who spend a lifetime trying to repair the damage they have done. There are fathers whose voices still comfort decades later and fathers whose words still wound.

Many spend years trying to wipe their father’s face off God.

But Scripture does not ask us to measure God by our fathers. It asks us to measure our fathers by God.

Even when his only begotten Son cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the Father had not surrendered his authority, abandoned his purpose, or ceased loving his Son. The darkness was real. The suffering was real. But the cross was not chaos. It was the predetermined plan of God for the redemption of his people.

Life eventually leads all of us into terrifying places we do not understand: hospital rooms, funeral homes, gravesides, cancer centers, long nights, and hard diagnoses. In those moments, we want explanations. Yet faith does not require complete understanding.

The older I get, the more I understand how my son felt lying on that examination table. He was too small to grasp what was happening to him. He could not understand why I allowed it. He only knew I was there.

Living in Montana, I am reminded daily of how small we all are. The mountains were here long before any of us arrived. The rivers carved their courses before our names were spoken. The wind that sweeps across this valley pays little attention to our plans, fears, or accomplishments.

We are smaller than we imagine.

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Boonyachoat/Getty Images

Yet older than the mountains, older than the rivers, older than the wind itself, is a Voice that has never fallen silent.

When Gracie’s father sat beside her hospital bed and whispered, “Daddy’s here,” he gave a frightened young woman waking to a world she could not understand a gift beyond explanation.

But even that voice was only an echo.

Every good father is.

The best fathers point toward a greater Voice. The worst fathers cannot eclipse it.

When explanations fail, that Voice still calls to his children.

Perhaps that is why those words still move me after all these years.

“Daddy’s here, Gracie. Daddy’s here.”

In a frightened world, they remind me of a greater promise.

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Do you matter? Does what you do matter? Are you doing anything at all? Does your will have any impact on the world? Are you living with vitality?

Or are you just a hamster on a wheel in a little cage in the back of a middle school classroom thinking you are doing something when really you are just wasting your time here until lights out?

Because we can all do it, we forget that it’s special. It’s so ordinary, we forget it’s extraordinary.

To answer the first question: You do matter, and what you do matters. It doesn’t matter who you are; you matter, and you have an impact on the world. Maybe it’s a big one, or maybe it’s a little one. But even something as simple as saying good morning and smiling to the cashier who rings up your pack of cigarettes and full tank of gas is some kind of something or some kind of impact on someone else’s world.

Hamster wheel

But are you living with vitality? That’s not quite as simple. That bit about the hamster wasting time dinking around on the wheel — that’s certainly a depressing scene, but it’s a feeling all too common in a world in which many of our physical needs are satisfied whether we really do anything at all.

Everyone matters in our world, and everyone matters to someone. That’s a fact. But everyone doesn’t feel like they do, and many don’t feel like they are living a very vital life either. The hamster-wheel job that’s stable and hard to lose, the climate-controlled car that tells you when to slow down. An uneventful and seemingly predictable life finished off with some controlled simulated struggle at the gym three nights a week without an end, a shock, or a surprise in sight.

Some people dull the pain of the malaise with drugs, others zone out with Netflix or the internet.

Family matters

Still others seem to think that the only way to feel alive in our age is by seeking out extremes: dangerous travel, feats of endurance, and any other pursuit risking life and limb.

Fine for those who have the opportunity, I suppose. But honestly, vitality can be found much closer to home.

The real truth is that the most vital thing you can do in the year 2026 is something that just about everyone can do: raise a family.

Falling in love, getting married, having children, and raising a family is the last real, and completely real, thing on planet Earth.

It doesn’t matter if everything becomes entirely fake. It doesn’t matter if everyone has fake jobs, if no one owns anything for longer than six months, if all the food is processed, if all the appliances are designed with planned obsolescence in mind, and if AI takes care of just about all our needs. The entire world could be completely fake. But one last real thing will remain: family.

And it is the realness of the family that matters and that makes it so vital. When we raise a family, we are completely crucial. Our decisions determine real-world outcomes, both short term and long term. The family is not a theory or spreadsheet. It’s not a surrogate activity that stands in simply for the sake of simulating some kind of other struggle.

The family is real.

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Royal reproduction

A looming intuition in our postmodern, anti-vitalistic ennui is the feeling that we don’t have any control. Our health insurance policies, our jobs, the new charges that don’t make any sense on the phone bill, the screwed up politics, the fact that you can’t even talk to someone who speaks English on the phone anymore when you need something fixed, and that nothing seems to last very long either, and no one cares.

But of course, there is one domain where we are monarchs no matter how lowly our job or how faceless the large systems that govern our society may be.

The family.

A mother is a queen, and a father is a king. What Mom and Dad say goes. Mom and Dad don’t answer to anyone. They don’t need to ask permission, and they won’t be reprimanded by HR. When you are a parent, you are a monarch of a micro-kingdom. That might sound weird, but that’s the way to think about it. You dictate the religion, the calendar, the diet, the schedule, the language, the attitude, and everything about family life.

Dynasty building

It’s here, in this domain, where the most potent and impactful kind of vitalism still lives and will always live. Cultivating new life is the definition of impacting the world and the future. Yes, your kingdom might be small, but your impact is total, and it’s all yours.

Your vision is what matters. You are in control. What could possibly be more vital than conceiving children, naming them, raising them, teaching them, and then eventually sending them off to do the same things with the tools and ways they learned from you? You are creating a dynasty.

Because we can all do it, we forget that it’s special. It’s so ordinary, we forget it’s extraordinary. We might devote so much time and energy to thinking about money, influence, stability, the markets, the Middle East, geopolitics, sports, and work, but by far the most real and most vital thing you can do in 2026 is a seemingly most ordinary thing.

Raise a family.

The night of the gun was never-ending — until the day I surrendered to Christ



I remember the night my legs gave out.

I woke up to my sister standing in my doorway. She was scared. Our parents were arguing behind a closed bedroom door, voices raised, something different in the tone this time. We walked down the hallway together and knocked.

Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship.

When the door opened, my father was standing there with a loaded gun pressed to his head.

My legs went numb. I collapsed onto the floor.

Long night's journey

It wasn’t an isolated moment.

Our home was marked by ongoing conflict and instability, the kind that teaches you early how to stay alert, how to read a room, and how to survive without ever really feeling safe.

I didn’t have words for what I had just seen. I only knew something wasn’t right in a way I couldn’t fix and that whatever I thought “normal” was, it wasn’t this.

That kind of moment doesn’t always explode your life right away. Sometimes it just sits there, quiet and unprocessed, and follows you.

It followed me. It bled into my personal and romantic relationships and ultimately skewed my view of the world and of myself. I learned to survive rather than connect — to perform rather than belong. I struggled to understand friendship, trust, and emotional safety. And over time, resentment toward my parents, especially my father, became part of my identity.

Seeking 'normal'

As I got older, that disconnect showed up everywhere. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I struggled to form real friendships. I was made fun of just for being myself, and after a while, you start to believe there’s something wrong with you. I didn’t know what the problem was. I just knew I felt it.

So when drugs and alcohol showed up, they didn’t feel like destruction. They felt like a solution. They quieted something I couldn’t explain. They made me feel normal, or at least closer to the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be.

That’s the trap, because it works — at first. What I didn’t understand was that I wasn’t fixing anything. I was covering something I didn’t want to look at.

Later, when things got worse, it was labeled a "mental health" issue.

My father struggled with mental illness, and for many years I wrestled with my own diagnoses, some of which, in hindsight, did not fully capture what was truly happening beneath the surface.

I was prescribed medical marijuana. But instead of helping, it began triggering severe adverse reactions, including escalating instability, mania, and psychosis that distorted my judgment and sense of reality.

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ptsdusa.org

Not broken

Looking back now, I don’t believe there was something fundamentally broken in me. I believe there was something unaddressed. There’s a difference.

I kept looking for something to fix the symptoms, but nothing was touching the root. And that only works for so long.

Eventually, everything catches up. It did for me.

Addiction did not destroy my life overnight. It unfolded through cycles of defiance, denial, and relapse. Each time I tried to regain control on my own terms, I fell deeper into chaos.

It culminated in a destructive spiral that led me to a reckless and disorienting bender in Atlantic City. The consequences I now faced were legal. There was no talking my way out of this or pretending it didn't exist. I had reached a point where I could no longer outrun the reality of what my life had become.

Brought to my knees

In hindsight, I believe God had to bring me to my knees.

The illusion of control was gone. I finally realized there was no way I was getting out of this under my own power. And that's when change finally became possible.

It became possible because faith became real — not something I grew up around, not something I understood intellectually, but something lived.

Scripture says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” And also, “You shall be called by a new name.”

I used to hear that and think it sounded nice. Now I understand it.

Redeemed and reconciled

Because my identity did change — not overnight, not perfectly, but fundamentally. I was no longer defined by what I had been through or how I had responded to it. Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship. Through prayer, God revealed to me that I was not meant to be ashamed of my past but to embrace it, bring it into the light, and allow it to help others.

One of the most profound outcomes has been reconciliation with my father. The man I once viewed as the source of my wounds became part of a redemption story marked by grace, forgiveness, and healing.

Today, I live a life that is sober and grounded in faith. I’ve worked the Twelve Steps and now help guide others through the process. I am actively involved with Chain Breakers and bringing Christ-centered recovery to those who need it.

If there is one message I hope to share, it is that unhealed childhood trauma, misunderstood mental health struggles, and substance abuse are deeply interconnected. Healing requires both spiritual surrender and honest conversations about mental health.

I share this with humility, knowing I too remain a work in progress. It's my hope that the more we bring stories like mine into the light, the less power shame and isolation will have over those who are still struggling.