Connor S. Curley | Updates

Becoming Father

Connor S. Curley — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:46:28 -0400

*This article first appeared on my Substack. Check it out - plus many more - at the link below*

I was in college back when the Middle East conflicts had reached a second or third-round apex. In 2014-2015, Iraq was pretty hot (again), Afghanistan was warm, Iran was always in the background (as always), and, most relevant for me, the terror group ISIS was ramping up activities in Syria and the surrounding territories. I had friends who were in the military, relatives who had received Purple Hearts in these and other conflicts, and a developing mind who could not help but watch it all unfold - as the whole world did - in almost real time. It was a Hell of a time to be a young man with a bad temper and a proclivity to watch the news. Among the events monitored from the safety of my dorm was one that would hit home pretty hard - and would bear surprising weight years later as my wife and I began to build our own family according to God’s design.

2015 was, as I said, a tumultuous time in the Middle East, but especially so for Christians. The up-and-coming terror group called ISIS (ISIL at different times, depending on US political affiliation talking) was singling them out in the Syriac regions, martyring them, and creating video productions of the executions. These productions were graphic, explicit, and, most disturbingly, relatively well constructed as far as video goes. And to narrate the entire affair was one whom the world knew as “Jihadi John,” a masked spokesman who issued his threats against the Pope, America, and the Infidel almost always while clutching what looked (to me) like a steak knife. I will spare you the description of how that knife was employed mere moments before these addresses. This much to say: if you were unfortunate or foolish enough to watch these videos, the images stayed with you.

Now I, hothead that I was and emotionally invested in these events (for reasons I will share momentarily), spent much more time than was healthy watching these videos before the internet took them down. And yet, even after YouTube restricted them and banned them (which took a surprising long time to do, by the way), you could still find these full videos on various fringe websites were you given the means and drive to find them. And those haunting images burned themselves into my mind such that I simultaneously felt helpless to defend these Christian martyrs and yet was interiorly urged to seek them out. “If I cannot kill these murderers,” I told myself, “I will at least make sure that their victims are not forgotten or unnoticed.” And so, egged on by my anger and encouraged by a few others who were also emotionally tied to these events, I fooled myself into thinking the damage I was doing to my psyche was for the greater good. And I will confess: to this day I cannot hear certain songs without feeling a rage well from within my bowels as those images reappear in my mind.

Not everyone was blessed to have these videos accessible only by remote internet search, however. I am not inclined to share much more about this particular factoid at the moment, save for this. A local church I was accustomed to attending was, as it happens, also attended by several Syrian immigrants, each of whom still had family in Syria while this was happening. Some of these individuals even, as I have been told by one who would know, had family members who had been featured in the videos described. And had received personalized copies direct to their address. On occasion, I was told, with every new video, you could see some cousin, nephew, brother, or sister sitting quietly at the back of the church weeping as they mourned the (now witnessed) death of their loved one.

This was enough to, in my mind, justify my fevered searches for these videos online. Vengeance or remote companionship, I told myself, as time and again I saw the horrors, set to the music, perpetrated by humans of all ages to humans of all ages. And in January 2016, as I was at a friend’s house in Rock Hill, SC to play some games, the TV showed ISIS confirming the death of Jihadi John from the November 12 drone strike, I am not sure you would have been able to find another soul more jubilant than I.

Jihadi John now gone, no more videos that I know of were released. At least, his death was the capstone event I personally must have needed to find catharsis enough to graduate.

I finished up my college years, married the love of my life, and moved to a new territory. There, with a new wife, no job, no marketable skills, and (from other past experiences) a strong sense of the need for healthcare, I turned to the military myself. I joined the National Guard, which has been one of the most beneficial decisions of my adult life. I cannot stress how much the Guard has helped my wife and I: from healthcare issues to home-buying, paying off loans years ahead of schedule to weekend retreats, (and not to mention education benefits!) there have been plenty of things that God has provided us from this experience. But underlying my military service was always that subconscious chase for vengeance: I had seen loved ones from (what I considered) my religious community be executed. So, I chose a job that (at the time) had a pretty high deployment rate but wasn’t strictly combat, and settled in for what I thought would be the inevitable call to pack my bags.

That call did come. Twice. Both times to the Texas/Mexico border. Those calls were hardly the Syrian vengeance tours that I anticipated. And I will not go into those deployments in too great detail here. There was intelligible proximity to danger, and there were hardships enough to deal with, but they were not the heroic doling out God’s justice upon executioners of Christians that I always envisioned myself doing. But it turns out that that was God’s intention, anyhow.

Two deployments in a 5-year period is a lot by almost any military metric, even if they are not to a combat zone; it is especially so for a National Guard Soldier. The National Guard typically operates as a one-weekend a month, two weeks in the summer force, ready to stand by in case of emergencies or federal utilizations. I, having the drive I have already shared and in communion with my wife, volunteered for the second one. So it is not as though I am a victim in these deployments. If anything, I am a perpetrator. And besides, I have already shared just a few of the amazing benefits that frequent deployments have, in the long term, blessed my wife and I with.

All this being said, just because I signed up to do a job that both needed to be done and less than 1% of the population wishes to do does not mean that it was easy, enjoyable, or without cost. Families are supposed to live together, and spouses are called to live in unity and in the home with each other. The separations were incredibly hard, the reunifications sometimes rocky, and the baggage lingering. If you are interested in some of the finer points on this front, be sure to return over the next three weeks or so to hear my insights, relating it to several popular media pieces you may be familiar with. At any rate, perhaps most tragically of all, physical separation means postponement of building a family life.

My wife and I always knew we wanted to open our home to foster care and adoption. It was a conversation we had even before we became engaged. When, in our first few years of marriage, certain health issues brought children into the forefront again, our conversation about adoption became that much more proximate. As we began to explore the process, we found inspiration from a specific John Paul II quote, (the exact citation of which escapes me) encouraging families to allow God to build each family in the way and by the means He sees fit to do so. But, as you can imagine, having one spouse gone all the time can throw a wrench on building a family regardless of the method. So while both the deployments allowed each of us to take advantage of Tricare in order to address the underlying issues related to health, it was, for a long while, a hard inhibitor to our pursuing an adoption license. And, to make matters worse, administrative errors from the different agencies we were working with at various times caused our progress several day-zero restarts - to include the many, many hours worth of required trainings. All this to say: pursuing adoption, for us, has been intentional, sacrificial, and long.

In the midst of my last border rotation, I picked up a promotion - to a unit which promised proximity to that deployment I had been chasing. After my promotion order posted, I received a phone call from my new unit’s readiness Non Commissioned Officer. He told me that the unit was scheduled to deploy overseas - but ship date was a mere 7 months after my return from my current. Since I was already engaged, I had the option of sitting it out or going.

I looked at the list of Soldiers gearing up. Some names I saw were friends from my first unit and first deployment. I could imagine myself finally having the type of military story I had dreamed of having, of hanging my hat on something no one would question the validity, political stance, or difficulty of. I envisioned myself along with a few old friends braving the desert, getting the chance at heroism - and, there was a tiny, tiny part of me that would not have been mad to relive my aspirations of vengeance for the executions of community family members years before.

I couldn’t do that to my wife. Nor could I do that to, as we used to say, “our hypothetical, abstract, as of now non-existent children.” We had come so far, worked so hard, and dealt with so much in the process of introducing children; I could not in good conscience pursue that life anymore. God had, for the longest time, both militarily and in my civilian career, distanced me from that kind of life. At that moment, I knew that chasing those heroics had to be over.

I did not place myself on the deployment list. I felt like the dirtbag who gets left behind while others go and do hard labor, but there are times where emotion simply does not reflect the metaphysical reality of the situation. For at this moment, not providing for my own family was not sufficient; actually building that family with my wife had taken a drivers seat. And, as it turns out, not long after that phone conversation I took a job which took me out of that unit into a role which is permanently stationed Stateside.

As my wife and I worked through the struggles of reunification after separation, we were also preparing our home to welcome a child not so “hypothetical, abstract, and non-existent.” Our son came to us within that first year of being home. That first year, there were many firsts - for him, for us, and for all of us together. Though I will not share some of the finer points of the struggles that followed, I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard, been so rewarded, or reminded so harshly that I went out of my way for this life. Intentionally choosing with my wife to become parents, and watching her tenacity in all the struggles that led to this path, has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.

I thought at the time that the story would sort of end there, a “happily ever after” sort of thing (even if happily ever after looks like being content with chaos!). But God had one more trick up His sleeve for me. He had led my wife and I down this path to parenthood and asked us to choose it quite emphatically; now, He would ask us once again to be committed to what we had already chosen.

This last test came one weekend where my wife and I were required to attend training in order to keep our license. These trainings are state mandated, cover a variety of topics, and are essential in order to keep your license. So, my wife and I always go - even though there are some predictable elements to these trainings. Typically, there is a block of training about protecting the identity and cultural heritage of children; inevitably there is someone or other who insists that someone like me is incapable of understanding nuances and importances in the hygiene needs of other demographics (as if Google, friends, and experience were not a thing.) Usually there is someone who asks, “can I speak honestly for a moment?” After which you just know they are about to insert two or three swear words into their next sentence (as if somehow swearing makes you more genuine). So on and so on go the predictables; so on and so on my wife and I sit there, taking maybe one nugget of helpful info from the 6-8 hour training, and then happily go home.

This particular training, however, the unit I was supposed to deploy with was the object of an attack. The particular location they were based out of received incoming fire, with several of them becoming wounded. None of that unit were casualties, but they were on hand to minister and aid the more seriously wounded in adjacent units. It was a nasty affair; lives were tragically lost, and my old unit’s time in theater was extended.

In that moment I could not help but see myself as the dirtbag who copped out. I was supposed to be there. I knew Soldiers who were there. I chose, my brain went, myself over the needs of my comrades. And, as if to add insult to injury, rather than helping out where heroism was needed I was sitting in this room, listening to yet another person speak “honestly for a moment,” and trying to keep my cool “so that the state would allow me to have children” is what my agitated brain told me.

That last part isn’t strictly true, by the way. To anyone wanting to adopt, DO IT! And trainings are not held over your head in such a way as “do this or we will take your kids;” that is just how my brain capitalized on the tragedies of others to make it about myself.

I had a hard time reconciling what had just happened. In truth, I cannot communicate to you the thought process, the effort, and the struggles that weekend - and the following weeks - had in store for my wife and I. All I can tell you is that God’s grace used this narrative of events to highlight the decision my wife and I had made those years before (the exact year of which, incidentally, was the same year our son was born unbeknownst to us). Parenthood for us was intentional; alternate monitoring (that is, watching the sidelines for what is happening that we are missing or might be better options than our current fare) simply could not stand. No matter how perfect the situation outside of our family might look, no matter how much alternatives aligned with our desires, original longings, what have you, none of these were real. Real life for us was now tied to our first child; we were now most ourselves when we were his parents.

There have been several instances since that weekend where, in a previous life, I would have been the “first responder,” whereas at that moment I was incapable of rendering aid with a child on my arm. But there has always been someone else there to respond where before I would have. Those are others stories, now. I am, to the world, largely a bystander in these situations, for what seems like the first time in my life. And that is alright by me. My son needs a father - not a hero. He needs someone to be present when the world around us crumbles, to ensure that he is safe and, ultimately, that he is best set up to recognize and accept God in this world. But more than that - and perhaps most humbling of all - my son does not need merely someone; he needs me, specifically, because I am his father. He needs me to be present, not perfect. And God Himself knows well - as does my wife - that I am far from perfect. But, here as I write this as it is every day, there is no one else. Nor is there anyone else but my family and my beloved, long-suffering wife whom I desire to be needed by.

Have you read Remembering Freedom yet? It is a book for the modern defender of truth. Designed to be both engaging and practical, this book articulates abstract concepts while providing real-life stories from married life, military deployments, and more to illustrate how “abstract” things look in the real world. If you are looking to enter into discussions, or if you find yourself wondering how on earth we got to the point we are at now, Remembering Freedom is the book for you.

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Fire and Song: One Impossibly Small Moment

Connor S. Curley — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:43:46 -0400

* This Article First Appeared on my Substack. Check it out for this and more articles, with a new one published every Saturday morning.*

Not so long ago, (though long enough that the chill was in the air,) my family and I had such a wonderful evening - an evening born of effort and pain, an evening short lived in that moment, but which captures where we are, where we've been, and what we'd like to run towards. In some ways, this evening was genuinely unremarkable; in fact, unless you were immediately involved, I would wager the magic of the evening would be completely lost on you. I almost wonder if me recounting it here isn’t an exercise in futility. And yet, sometimes the most human of moments are of such silent magnitude, so soft in coming and unremarkable in their narratives, that it is precisely by trying to relate them as a narrative that we can remember them best.

Let me try to recount the evening I have in mind. It began like so many other evenings, with each of us doing our own thing. I had a fire going in our very large family room and was probably writing something. More than likely there was a glass of Bourbon nearby. My wife was sitting across the room on the separated sectional, wrapped in a cozy blanket and reading, if I remember correctly, some Pieper on Virtues. If I had Bourbon, she either had Canadian or Wine; that much I do not remember. Our son likewise was independently engaged, playing and dancing with his Bluey family dolls (I think they are called the Heeler family? Australian Heelers and all that, so that makes sense). Our son did not have a similar beverage to his parents.

In the middle of this scene, a very small request brought the three independent worlds suddenly all into one unified cosmos: son came up to me and asked to play guitar. Didn't matter what song; he just wanted to hear the strumming. Who am I to refuse such a request? Ignoring whatever work I was engaged in at the time (how poetic that I can remember my wife engaged in Pieperian liesure, but cannot for the life of me remember what mundane work I was doing that kept me from doing the same), I began to strum and pick out the tune of You Are My Sunshine. Sad lyrics notwithstanding, that song is deceptively comforting, and my wife joined in. Second verse we were singing in harmony; when the song had finished we began a new one together, to the delight of our little boy.

And so, with the fire going, a child running back and forth, my wife and I singing soft songs, in the peace of our own home a hard-earned moment was born. Every bit of that moment took months of effort to pull off, months which paper cannot properly recount. The fire was only possible from all the work I'd done that summer splitting the maple tree so we'd stay warm. The presence of our son was the result of over 3 years to prepare and process our home and our lives for his coming. And then, once he did come, more lengths of time to acclimate to this new life and say goodbye to our old. How many more effort and time was put in, with such heartache and sacrifice, to introduce words in such a way he could speak them in a request. All this and so much more effort went into the buildup of that one moment, lasting perhaps 30 minutes at maximum. And then, unforetold, unlooked for, and unrepeatably, life came together and we could look out from the peak we had climbed. "Tis good, Lord, to be here."

Initially, I had intended to have a moral to this story. My little sister recently came up to visit us in our humble home, and we had many such familial experiences while she was with us. Initially, I was going to write a bit about her visit, and the circumstances which allow for her to travel to so many of her siblings, in one sense tying us all together from across the literal corners of this nation. I was going to write a bit about familial roles, and how not everyone within that family is an autonomous being who has equal trajectories, but rather settles in relation to each other a role or function such that at any given time there is still a dynamic that is at least reminiscent of the relationships of youth. So, going into this paper, the intent was much more lofty, philosophical, and heavy-handed than how I am leaving it.

How was I going to relate such a standalone story to such heavier philosophical morals? I am not actually sure. Knowing me, I would have found some way, however tenuous, to segue into a soapbox. And perhaps I will write about all that one day still. (If you are reading this, dear sister, know that you were almost the main subject of an article. I will accept monetary tribute as thanks for sparing you the spotlight…) But, as the great Dwight Schrute said (I will paraphrase): Not everything is a lesson; sometimes, you just live. And that, dear readers, is the hardest lesson of all to learn. Sometimes, our efforts pay off, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, our stories don’t have tangible protagonists, antagonists, character arcs, or points. Sometimes - perhaps, even, at the best of times - our stories are the end in themselves. Because it is in moments like this that God can whisper to us and give us a glimpse of the interpersonal communion that is to come.

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What Are We to do With the Aliens?

Connor S. Curley — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:40:45 -0400

*You can find this article and more on my Substack, “Remembering Tomorrow*

Recently, my wife and I have started watching the “reboot” version of the long-running TV show Dr. Who. For the longest time, I held out from watching it based on principle: it was a really big deal while I was in college, and since everyone around me was into it and I had never heard of it, I constructed an ego wherein the “whovians” were they in this relationship and the never-seen-its were the us. For me, that little childish sense of superiority you used to get when you can contrast what your family does vs finding out your friend’s family is one of those families survived for a time into my adulthood and latched on Dr. Who as the manifestation of differentiation. In other words: I saw rejecting Dr. Who as a way of setting myself apart from the masses, at the very least so that I could pretend it mattered to my peers whether I saw the Dr. or not. Now, late in the game, I find myself drawing parallels between a central theme of the show and recent global events of 2026, occasionally-corny-early-2000s-BBC cinema notwithstanding.

Why the sudden change of heart, so many years later? YouTube shorts got the better of me. I saw several short clips of what were only referred to as “the angels,” and the people in the shorts seemed really scared of them. It was intriguing enough for me to begin watching the reboot, and then after getting a season or so in, to restart with my wife so that we both could enjoy the British humor as best we can, and marvel at the occasional screenwriting gem found among the episodes (if you start an episode written by Stephen Moffat, you’re in for a treat). And now that I’ve begun watching the show, though I still can’t consider myself a “whovian,” I’ve enjoyed how the show deals with one very specific and recurring SciFi theme: in a multi-rational species cosmos, is there anything special about being human? It’s a question clearly relevant to a recent announcement from the Pentagon.

A report came out a few weeks ago that some US pastors were briefed in secret by the Pentagon about the upcoming government disclosure that we are not alone in the cosmos. Now, the credibility of such a secret evangelical meeting is dubious at best; I tried to do a little research on what was actually said at this meeting, and it looks like it’s been billed one way to the public via social media but is in fact another way in real life. So who knows. But purportedly, the caution followed along these or similar lines: there are extra-terrestrial life forms out there, such that the entire Christian/Biblical worldview is in question. Pastors should prepare for the backlash of potential civil uprising in their congregations.

Now, again: whether the Pentagon actually issued such a caution and call for preparation, I cannot verify at all. Actually, with the evidence such as it is, I am inclined to think that any such claims to the truth of this caution are nothing more than clickbait. But be that as it may: UFOs are, by definition, existent; and the growing sentiment is that intelligent extra-terrestrial life forms are their authors. More evidence is expected to be released to support this supposition in the coming months, though the certitude of the conclusion remains to be seen.

Notwithstanding the dubious nature of an official Pentagonal caution to Christian leaders, many have already felt the tremors of doubt in the face of evidential intelligent, non-human biological life. And, true to form, we can already find a milieu of “explanations” for what is being released. From the corner of fragile faith and preservationism of caste historicism, any alien life that might be evidenced is discounted in the same way the Dinosaurs are discounted: demons, fallen angels, Satan himself, or maybe just our own government is interfering with reality to shake our faith in God - but none of what is evidenced is actually real.

The opposing corner of fragile faith - but this time of inescapable adaptation to new claims rather than preservation of old - we can find a supposition that religion must have been lying to us this whole time: Christianity in its traditional sense has always been false, we just didn’t realize it before. People from this corner fall into two categories: faith abandoners and faith clingers. If you are in this corner, you either become an atheist in light of “new” evidence, OR you cling to the Christian faith in one form or another because it is better for society, it is patriotic, it is a force of habit, etc. But one thing remains: the Christianity you knew yesterday is simply untenable if there are aliens.

The third corner is filled with those who have always been atheists, and who now point to the skies as supporting evidence of what they have always believed. God never existed in their worldview anyhow, and evidence of alien life forms confirms their rejection of Christianity - especially their rejection of Christianity found in the first corner. What these people do with this newfound evidence, I am not entirely sure of; I do not interact with many atheists in this capacity these days. And, since Faith is a gift of Grace from God anyhow, is anyone actually surprised that every waking moment is confirmation of a worldview founded on rejection of grace? But I do have to wonder if the worldview of materialism and opportunity so grounded in the social contract and Baconian philosophies isn’t at least a little shaken.

In the final corner, you’ll find me. I’m not alone over here; there are a lot of level-headed individuals here with me. What is our response to potential alien life forms? Well, it really imitates my response to “end of the world” cries. In this corner, the prevailing question isn’t reactionary: it’s inquisitory. Think a child asking “so what,” but on steroids. Are we curious to know whether they are real or not? Sure. I want to see the evidence, the footage, and the captured three-fingered Joes just as much as anyone. But what has that to do with me is the question. Christ became human, and it is by virtue of His humanity that we have been elevated to Divine heirs. The happy fault of Adam that merited us such a Savior applies to humans alone. And if it didn’t - if Christ also became fully Martian - then the divinity of the Martians has no bearing on what my Salvation depends upon. The die has been cast for humans, and the rules have been set. If God deemed the creation and redemption of another planet necessary, of what bearing does it have on my response to Christ’s exhortations and commands? None at all.

Maybe alien life is real, and maybe it isn’t. The existence of intelligent life that is not human has exactly zero bearing on the reality of Christianity, though: we already know that Angels exist, and they certainly are not human. What’s one more species of intelligent life in the face of God? Heck, if Aquinas is to be believed, there are already an infinite number of intelligent species of beings, since every angel is a species to himself. Further, if you read my book Remembering Freedom, you will find a curious claim: that conscience, not consciousness, is the hallmark of personhood.

Reason by itself, and even a subjective experience (which these days is erroneously boiled down to limited and individual data collection) are not enough to denote personhood. If that were true, we would have to grant personhood to dolphins, elephants, AI, and some levels of robots. All of these things have individual subjective experiences, and even can reason on one level or another. But this is not where we mark personhood. Rather, personhood is marked by an innate image of God imprinted upon the soul of the individual being. This imprint is more than mere logic and rational thought; it is rational thought and experience in such a way that God Himself is the object of that experience. And if God saw fit to create an infinitude of creatures with personhood in the Angels, who are we to deny Him our response in Faith if He also created biological beings in His image? As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

It has been fun to watch Dr. Who. Currently, my wife and I are on the episode called “The Planet of the Ood.” In this episode (though my wife doesn’t know it yet), we travel to a planet filled with rational creatures whom the world has only known as a slave race. They live to serve, is the claim, and without masters they would perish. Come to find out, they are not slaves but have been enslaved: their centers of individuality and drive for freedom (their “conscience,” as it were) has been replaced with a bauble that makes them subservient and removes them from the center mind. This replacement isn’t invincible, and that subliminal response to a changed nature every once in a while causes an Ood to become violent; and the episode continues. It’s all convoluted, complex, timey-wimey stuff, and I can’t quite explain the mechanics in such a short paragraph. But in the end, the Dr. frees them all and they go back to being a free race.

What is the point of bringing up the Ood? Everything has a telos, and an orientation to their being which gives them identity. Reason alone is not the defining point of humanity, and it is not that which makes one human. Reason itself isn’t even an end in itself, but rather all reason has knowledge of God as its object. Humans share this with the angels - and maybe some Ood, we may come to find. But no matter how many rational animals there truly are, the Incarnation changed everything for humans. That God would become one of His creations in the precise way He did is simply incredible, and is as unique a dignity as can be found. And even if it isn’t - even if God also became an Ood - all that means is that the same God that became Man also became an Ood, and the same rules and ethics apply.

The die has been cast by the most perfect Craftsman. That He may have crafted a bigger world than we originally thought ought to be no more a trial to our Faith than it was when we found out the created world and application of morality extended beyond our front door.

Be sure to check out Remembering Freedom, and perhaps enjoy some of the delicious beverages brought to you through our Thirsty Thursdays series! Talk to you all next Saturday.

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Forsaking Our Families

Connor S. Curley — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:13:32 -0400

Growing up, my family was a sort of central-hub for social gatherings. Our friends would come down for an afternoon, a weekend, or an extended length of time not only to socialize but to help us out with some homesteading tasks. If we were not hosting a formal square dance, we were inviting families over for a pig slaughter. If we were not offering a background for a homemade movie, we were welcoming family friends who just wanted to stop by, and potentially spend several nights. We were something of a spectacle at times, and offered some other families an opportunity to work with their hands, be outside of the city’s constrictions, and enjoy some fireside music. But our family was well equipped for it: hospitality was undeniably a charism of our family. And while my siblings and I may be starting our own families with our own charisms, the subsequent charisms we create in our own families can never truly be absent of hospitality.

The family my parents created manifested the charism of hospitality well, and that charism has influenced myself and many of my siblings in how we have begun our own families. My parents have continued their charism of hospitality as their children move away and their children’s friends stop coming over. The drive to host and give of themselves has caused them to not only continue hog roasts, square dances, and teaching opportunities; knowledge of their hospitable charism has caused them to adapt their implementation of this charism to open their home to some who, whether it be vulnerability or family circumstance, may even need longer term hospitality. The Curley Family Prime, as it were, is an outward-facing family who changes their activities and involvement to adapt to the calling which Mother and Father Curley heard for themselves and passed on to their children.

You might think that the subsequent generations would follow strictly in the footsteps of the parents. As my parents were of the charism of hospitality, so too my own family would therefore be driven to open-door policies concerning social gatherings. And, for the first several years of my married life, I sought to directly replicate that charism into my own family. We tend towards that which we know; starting off, all you have is a relation to your parent’s family, either replicate some way or reject it. More than that, even: personal identity is formed and is a sort of reflection of the identity of your parents. This much to say: in trying to replicate the charism of hospitality in my own original family, I was not merely reflecting or copying that which my parents had done as much as I was trying to act upon something that, as child, had become part of my own personal identity. And all this is well and good - if you end up marrying yourself.

To read the rest of this article, check out my Substack! It is available under the free subscription!

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Is America’s Military on the Road to Demise?

Connor S. Curley — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:11:34 -0400

On Opinions and Articles

It is a curious phenomenon indeed that Conservatives and Liberals alike, in trying to communicate their personal opinions on our country’s decline, always insist on somehow bashing our military. Be it labeling us potential extremist/insider threat breeding ground or lamenting the decline and warning we are “in trouble,” everyone has an opinion they simply must share - all while considering themselves objective third party in their observations. And all these people find themselves qualified on some similar basis as, “I almost served, but this one thing wasn’t perfect about it [or, my personal favorite, I had gnostic knowledge about the military’s trajectory that my recruiter simply can’t see because he drank the koolaid] so I took the high road and did other things.”

Exactly when it became fashionable to bash the military as filled with either extremists (liberal’s claim) or morally misguided simpletons (the conservative claim), I do not know. I know that it was at least ten years ago, since at that time my younger brother (now proudly serving as a full-blown jarhead Marine, by the way!) wrote a very long article/email explaining why he in good conscience could never join the armed forces of America. And 10 years ago sounds about right enough to mark the start of this phenomenon: it was back in 2015 if I remember correctly that Obama opened all jobs of military service to both males and females alike.

This decision was, without a doubt, a controversial one at the time - and remains so even to this day. What I mean by that is precisely this: people have and had mixed feelings and opinions on the decision. Many females within the ranks of the Armed Forces still receive comments about their service.

But simple controversy on a philosophical level is not the end of it. Almost predictably, the branches of service have struggled to seamlessly incorporate the homogeneity of the genders into military service. There have been data-driven criticisms since then accusing the military of falling standards and discipline. Take, for example, the recent attempts by the US Army to administer the service’s physical fitness test.

Very soon after lifting all barriers to women serving in combat roles, Congress directed the Army to develop a physical training test that was gender-neutral but scaled to reflect military jobs. A Soldier who was primarily in a combat role would, according to the new test, have more stringent standards to be compliant than a Soldier with an administrative role. Millions of dollars and years of development later, the Army introduced the six-event Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) to replace the Cold War era, three-event Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT).

The test really is more than adequate at what it sets out to do. Mimicking many real-life activities both on and off the battlefield, the ACFT is a full-body workout, and it is designed to be. At the time of the initial rollout, the test was as originally conceived: gender neutral. However, the disparity between the scores of men and women in each category was quickly noted and deemed unfair towards women without any further development. One event in particular—the leg tuck—returned exponentially different results for men and women. The immense disparity in this event resulted in a 60% failure rate for women, while for men, it was a mere 8%.

The response to the disparity of gender scores in the ACFT was guttural, political, and quick. Congress began fielding complaints against the test (before it was even approved for use) based on allegations of gender discrimination from these testing results. It did not matter that shortly after the initial results—when the branch had sufficient time to train—the initial 60/8 failure ratio dropped to a 22/2 failure rate. Complaints against the leg tuck as an event ranged from using the initial data as evidence of a test inordinately weighted against women to positing that the event itself was inherently unfair to female Soldiers regardless of the data and success rates. The relative ease males could train and complete the one required repetition over the amount of work females would have to put in to accomplish the same was consistently pointed to as evidence supporting these critiques.

The mere accusation of inherent sexism and gender discrimination supposedly enshrined by the leg tuck was enough. Congress gave a knee-jerk reaction to these negative responses, with no further discussion or study. Though they first added an alternative event, Congress ultimately discarded the event altogether. The gender-neutral scoring system, which was such a key part of the test’s development, was abandoned, as were the job-specific scores. Passing scores reverted back to the easiest on the chart and were once more different for males and females. One Army Reserve Officer wrote in an Op-Ed piece, “One way to fix [the disparity of gender scoring] would have been to give soldiers time and resources to rise to the challenge. Instead, under significant political pressure, the Army chose to remove the leg tuck, and to rewrite score charts to guarantee most soldiers passed.”

So much for the controversy of a genderless military. And, whether this domino in 2015 was the start of all this or not, let this example serve as proof of the continued struggles within the military - and the opinions on the matter from those both within and without the ranks. The exploration of a genderless military is well beyond the scope of this paper; you will have to return and read my upcoming book on the gender roles for that discussion. But it shows that 2015 (and it’s rippling affects) is as good a place as any to put the blame on generating the newest fashion of military elitism and criticism from civilians.

Fast forward to a mere 3 months ago, the American Conservative published a piece by one Mr. Michael Vlahos called “America’s Military is in Big Trouble.” Now, I have no idea whether Mr. Michael Vlahos ever considered military service. I assume he never served, since his bio omits mention of past service. But he possibly could have. This being said, while he may or may not have done the, “I didn’t serve, but if I had I would definitely have done Marines or maybe SF” dance, one thing is on par with my expectations: some civilian doesn’t like his country and to prove his point has opinions about the military. His recent article from the end of July claims that America’s fighting strength is one in a long string of nations whose, “peak war force [has lost or is losing] its edge, and fast.” This article walks his readers through four, “non-tech roads to rapid onset military decline, with historical examples that should feel familiar” in order to prove his point.

Opinions are not automatically wrong simply because the opiner has an ax to grind. Nor is it impossible for a non-initiated to have correct opinions about something they are, in fact, on the outside of. If these were true, there would simply be no overcoming that initial solitude into which Man was created in the Garden: Adam is not Eve, after all. No, the nature of discussion and encounter with the human person actually necessitates two perspectives, and often the perspective of an outside view. With this in mind, I am disinclined to dismiss Mr. Vlahos’ article out of hand merely on the basis that he has opinions and his very brief bio has no mention of military service. But does his argument hold up on its own right? Let us take a look and see.

To read the rest of this article, check out my Substack!

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Remembering Freedom at your local library!

Connor S. Curley — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Proud to announce that Remembering Freedom is now available at the Cuyahoga Falls Public Library. Check it out now! https://fallslibrary.aspendiscovery.org/Record/.b23290274?searchId=1453934&recordIndex=1&page=1&referred=resultIndex

Library address: 2015 Third Street Cuyahoga Falls, OH, 44221.

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Speakers Bureau

Connor S. Curley — Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Invite me to speak at your next event! Find information through the Catholic Writers Guild:

https://www.catholicwritersguild.org/speakers-bureau/connor-curley-tradition-in-a-non-traditional-world/

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Remembering Freedom Available Now!

Connor S. Curley — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is a surreal experience to search for your own name and see something you worked hard and passionately on come up. Such was the case for me when I first looked up Remembering Freedom and its availability. The book is available for pre-order now!

The sport of public debate is back. Look everywhere around you: conversation is beginning to take place again. From the “prove me wrong” of Steven Crowder to the college campaigns of the late Charlie Kirk to the return of the street preachers, we see the public once again becoming enamored of real discussion. Debate is back; human nature is ready to be human once again, joining together for discourse, discussion, and constructive critiques of the philosophical inheritance we have been handed - and what reality is actually made of so that we can act within and upon it as good stewards.

As exciting as it is to see discussions happening again, we still have the ills of relativism to contend with. Too often, the worldviews and fundamental beliefs of the modern human are too far removed from our own to have meaningful discussions, and who is to say who is right? How are we to communicate and have discussions when everything is boiled down to mere point of view? Or how are we to discuss human flourishing when happiness is considered the fulfillment of fleeting pleasure? And how are we to respond when our cries to outlaw evil are met with protestations that we are inhibiting personal freedom? The ultimate question for the American - indeed, for every human today - is: how is it that I am free, how do I defend eradicating evil as still upholding individual freedom, and - perhaps most damnably - how is it that I can know I am right in these matters?

If you find yourself met with these challenges in the crazy modern dialogue, you are not alone. And this book is just for you.

Remembering Freedom reclaims a coherent anthropology of Freedom, Happiness, and Knowledge. This reclamation is at once rooted in Thomistic philosophy without devolving into mere historicism - a simple turning backwards in time and thought. This book articulates an essential premise of productive discussions: that there is an objective truth, and that Truth is Personal in nature. We do not simply encounter truth as subjective individuals with senses, opinions, and personal backgrounds: rather, encounter with truth is a response to a Person Who beckons us come, recognize Him in the created nature we perceive around us.

Remembering Freedom is unique on the public stage in that it is rooted in classical philosophical premises, while at the same time not falling prey to historicism as the only way of reclaiming coherency. It offers a synthesis of complex intellectual traditions in a way that is timely, coherent, and pastorally relevant, giving clarity through integrating traditional ideas to a coherent worldview - something sorely lacking in modern discourse. This book is designed to be at once engaging and practical: though some technical distinctions like those between anamnesis, synderesis, and conscience are present in the book, each one is accompanied by practical story aimed at illustrating what this more “abstract” thing looks like here in the real world - and offers a synthesis as to why this distinction matters, and how we are to apply it.

Knowledge is not an abstract or merely scientific in its composition, nor is freedom a license to do what I wish so long as I do not harm anyone else. These positions are hard to hold and defend here in the year 2026; but without the ability to articulate these premises, we are left with that false humility that causes us to end each apology of our Faith with the dreaded “I don’t know, though,” just in case we’re wrong - or, worse yet, “you do you.” If you are looking to enter into discussions, if you find yourself wondering how on earth we got to the point we are at now, or if you find yourself trying to reconcile the American identity of freedom with something more conservative than libertarianism, this book is for you.

Welcome to the discussion.

https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Freedom-Connor-Curley

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Find me in the Spoken Word!!

Connor S. Curley — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I have begun to post several thoughts per week on YouTube. Reading can sometimes be rough in our busy modern life; check out my YouTube page to hear some of these same things I write about!

https://www.youtube.com/@connorscurley

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Interview from The Catholic Bard!

Connor S. Curley — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I was privileged to be interviewed on Patheos by the Catholic Bard. Head on over and check it out!

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicbard/2026/03/meet-the-writer-philosopher-connor-curley/

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