The other day I found myself praying for my daughters’ husbands. Yes, my 13- and 11-year-old daughters. No, they’re not married yet. But it occurred to me as I now teach young men — much like it did when I taught young women — that our world’s future is truly in the hands of those we call children today. And the families they will one day keep will be the cornerstones.

In a recent exhortation, Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted spoke of the need for strong men in our culture, and the increasing attacks against genuine masculinity, not unlike those on femininity we’ve seen throughout history. He says that today our culture is replete with “father famine,” the idea that men have lost their sense of spiritual leadership. He even goes so far as to highlight the first attack as having occurred in Genesis: “In original sin, we find a primordial rebellion against fatherhood, a desire to remove fatherhood itself.”

Fatherhood has been under attack for a while, beginning with the whole “sexual revolution” and extending to the over-deifying of our sports figures. We’ve been forced to bear the marks of absent, detached and weak fathers. And it’s all coming to a head in the form of confused young men … and women.

I’ve said before that after 24 years of police work, and a few years teaching, the most difficult, albeit rewarding job I’ve ever had is as a father. Inherent in every man is the desire to be a “road-forger,” one to whom people look for direction. But this does not mean women are not leaders. In fact, some of the greatest leaders I’ve known have been women who have stepped up to become the spiritual leaders in their homes, often because we men have dropped the ball.

I sometimes like to imagine I’m an island, that I can do it all alone. That’s when I usually stumble. Perhaps God, in His mercy, allows me to wallow in my own hubris so that I might be forced to turn to Him. When I do, I always find the strength to be the man I should. When I don’t, I fail.

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” — those words of Jesus hit home. I talk to my students often about my time as an officer, and how I’ve seen what the “weakness” of humanity can do. Fact is, most of the time my job wasn’t like an episode of “Cops” with gunfights and chases. Much of the time I felt like an adult babysitter. Many of the calls I encountered weren’t fodder for CSI episodes, but responses to entitlement-minded adults acting like children. In some form, I suppose we’ve all acted that way once or twice. But our culture has now become used to justifying it. And we need good men to step up and say “enough.”

I remember answering many calls in which parents couldn’t control their teenagers. And more than once, I remember being criticized because I didn’t “fix it” the way they liked — a problem that had taken them years to create.

How does this play into our culture today? Well, for starters, it seems like far too many people line up to point fingers these days. From the Oscars to the Flint water crisis, allegiances are forged based upon who gets blamed rather than who gets helped. They blame teachers for their kids’ failings, police officers for criminals’ ends and firearms for murders, conveniently acquitting themselves of any responsibility. We often sound a bit like the parent who hasn’t bothered to discipline their child, then blames the establishment for “not fixing” it. What’s happened to common sense?

Bishop Olmsted’s words remind me that as men — in fact, as a society — we must allow God to be the center of our actions. And we don’t have to go it alone. I can lean on others to hold me accountable. Without counsel from other leaders, I couldn’t hope to be what God would have me be as a man — and my daughters couldn’t hope to find that “feminine genius” implicit in them as girls.

So yes, I pray for my daughters’ future husbands, but also for my daughters, our Church, and our world. Our kids need direction from an objective moral order, not more relativism from a culture that seeks tolerance over truth. There’s a reason I send my kids to a Catholic school. And I’m glad I teach at one, too.

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Paul Stuligross is director of campus ministry for Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Preparatory High School and is a former police officer.