Consider a twenty-eight-year-old family man, a devoted Catholic, a handsome, celebrated NFL kicker, invited to offer words of encouragement for twenty-two-year-olds finishing college at a Catholic institution. He knows the cameras will be rolling. A commencement address is a public event—in a manner of speaking. But
to whom
is he speaking? To you, and to me? To critics? Influencers? The world? Or to those graduates? The latter of course, and it makes all the difference. How we speak to others is determined by who they are. It’s the price of holding onto the small communities most critical to the survival of the West: families, churches, women as women—and men as men. Communities must have a language of their own.