Help Me Publish My Book on the Crisis of Fatherhood & Faith

"An examination of the ideas and cultural forces that have hollowed out church and parish life in some communities — investigated with the same methods an architect applies to a failing structure — and the principles connecting this to breakdowns in how fatherly stewardship is or is not handed on from one generation to the next."

Something is happening in American Catholic life that demands serious investigation. Whether or not you are Catholic — whether you even care about what happens in your nearby parish, or in the roughly 20% of American households that are Catholic — take note. The same forces shaping the trajectory of parish life may be shaping yours. As goes the Catholic Church, so goes Western culture. While parishes in progressive cities hemorrhage parishioners, close buildings, and quietly abandon faith, nearby communities offering the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) are filling pews with young families. What explains the divergence? Is the "spirit of Vatican II" the diagnosis, the disease, or the cure? What does a failing building tell us about a failing institution — or about a failing ideological framework? And what does any of this have to do with fatherhood — with the crisis of masculine identity, the collapse of catechesis, and the fraying of the bonds by which culture is handed from one generation to the next? These are the questions driving this book. Not merely Catholic concerns – liturgical reform, sacred architecture, Catholic identity, the patriarchal structures at the heart of the Church's mission and at the center of its controversies are all pressure points where the crisis of fatherhood and masculinity that is reshaping every institution in American life is most visible, most legible, and most instructive.

I'm Kent Wilson — architectural designer, consultant, and writer based in Berkeley, California. I hold a Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley, and my work has ranged from design consulting for major institutions and brands to teaching at UC Berkeley, San Jose State, and West Valley College. I've spent most of my professional life thinking about how buildings and the spaces we inhabit are shaped by the ideas of the people who make them.

For the past several months, a slowdown in client work has become an opportunity to refocus attention on writing a book from ideas that have been brewing for years. My father's death last year and my hands-on work at my church have helped me distill those ideas into a coherent thesis — something I believe will be genuinely useful to other people. The book looks at the crisis of faltering Catholic parishes to understand the ideas, decisions, and failures that lead to breakdowns in the buildings, the community, right worship, and faith. I apply the same "forensic" methods of investigation that I'd apply to any failing structure.

The book traces a chain of transmission. Some of the names and documents along that chain will be unfamiliar to general readers — the book explains them as it goes, and the story they tell is accessible to anyone willing to follow the thread. It begins with Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School, moves through the feminist theology and progressive ideologies that reshaped Catholic formation after Vatican II, and arrives at the looming closure of a parish in Berkeley, California — in a case now typical throughout the Western world — where the consequences are visible in the buildings, the worship, the vocations, and the families. Along the way it examines the debates over patriarchy and Church authority, the liturgical reforms negotiated by bodies like ICEL, and the attempt to recover what was lost through documents like Summorum Pontificum and Pope Benedict's broader project of ressourcement. Traditional Catholicism and the TLM movement are not the subject of the book so much as its evidence — communities that retained what others discarded, and whose health tells us something important about what was lost.

Alongside the writing, I volunteer twelve to fifteen hours a week at my local churches with lectoring, Mass preparation, hospitality, building systems assessment, maintenance, and even cleanup of a flooded basement. I bring professional expertise and hands-on work that the parish couldn't otherwise afford. It matters to me, and I know it matters to the community. It is real work that takes real time, and I believe it is important.

I have come to a major pivot in my life. The architectural design and consulting work pays very well when it's there, but a recent slowdown has put me seriously behind financially — and has opened the space to reassess, clarify my calling, and reach out for your support to launch a new direction: writing, and eventually speaking and teaching from this work. This committed decision comes with clarity and purpose, rooted in prayerful discernment about how I can best be of service. Right now, I'm two months past due on rent, with another month due within days. This is more than a temporary shortfall: it's a crucial moment of transition. I don't have children depending on me at home — but I do have two very sweet bunnies who rely on me for a stable home, and whose wellbeing is one more reason to find a way through this without losing my footing.

It would be tempting to borrow, or to abandon the book project and the church work to chase after higher-paid full-time work. But I hope people who know me will see that I have something important to contribute and a crucial new direction to follow. Please help me bridge this gap while the writing continues and architectural projects supplement the income. The book is progressing. I aim to publish an excerpt article soon while seeking a publisher for the book. The volunteer work is ongoing. What I need now is a few people who can believe in my work and will help me see it through.

At its core, this book is about the crisis of fatherhood. But why look at Catholic parishes? Because the Church is the oldest continuously operating institution in Western civilization — an ancient ship ploughing through the waves of culture and giving us something to measure them against, a vantage point from which the interplay of currents reshaping American life can be observed with forensic clarity, and where every "new" contemporary problem turns out to have been well understood and debated already for centuries. The erosion of masculine identity and leadership, the breakdown of intergenerational transmission, the dismantling of the structures by which culture and faith are handed on — these are not new, nor are they uniquely Catholic problems. But the parish is a place where their trajectories are legible. It is a portal into the ancient institution that has already litigated every imaginable human dilemma. Regardless of where you find yourself spiritually or religiously, this book offers a way of seeing what is happening around us — and why our relationship to fatherly authority, or our embodiment of it, shapes our destiny and the destiny of our families, churches, communities, and civilization.

The fundraising goal I've set represents five to six months of stability, supplemented by income from my architectural design and consulting work. Any support beyond that extends that stability and brings the book closer to publication. With your support, the work will become self-sustaining — a resource for others navigating crises of fatherhood and faith. If you feel moved to support that mission on an ongoing basis, you'll find a way to do that at my website.

Every contribution, at any level, is received with deep gratitude and none of it is taken for granted. If you know me from my church, you know what this work looks like on the ground. If you know me personally or professionally, you know the work I'm capable of — that I'm a man of purpose, commitment, and perseverance in service of something larger than myself. If you're arriving here without knowing me personally — welcome, and thank you for reading this far.

With gratitude,

Kent