빠르게 변화하는 현대 사회에서 발생하는 수많은 문제들 가운데, 사회적 고립은 전 세계적인 사회 문제로 대두되었다. 고독사, “우정의 약화,” 친밀한 관계의 부족, “외로움의 위기” 등 많은 사회 문제가 “사회적 고립”과관련되어 있지만, 특히 소년과 성인 남성들에게는 이러한 문제들이 더욱 심각하고 부정적인 영향을 미치고있다. 이러한 고립으로 인한 결핍된 의미와 소속감의 부재는 개인과 사회 전반에 걸쳐 여러 면으로 해롭다. 코로나 이후 인공지능 중심시대에 우리 사회에서 부족해진 중요한 가치로 ‘친밀감’이 부각되고 있으며, 이는현대 사회에서 무엇보다 절실히 필요한 덕목이 되었다. 가톨릭 교회의 관계적이고 사회적인 인간 본성에 대한 이해는 이러한 친밀감에 대한 절박한 필요성을 더욱 깊이 이해하는 데 도움을 줄 수 있다. 따라서, 이러한절박한 필요성을 고려할 때, 사회적 고립이라는 현대 사회의 교묘하고 해로운 경향에 맞서기 위해서는 다양한 분야에서 공동의 노력이 필요하다.
According to the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, South Korea recorded 3,924 solitary deaths[1] in 2024, a 7.2% increase from an already high rate of such deaths from the previous year. Men accounted for the vast majority of them (81.7%), with the highest concentration of deaths among men aged fifty and older, which is more than five times the rate of women (15.4%). While no single factor caused this trend or drove this recent increase, social isolation[2] is the common global factor, often from “friendship recession,”[3] the culture of digitalization, and post-COVID realities[4] that “weakened face-to-face relationships.”[5] As one can imagine, such weakened in-person relationships and their side-effects including loneliness[6] are a global phenomenon.[7] Furthermore, such loneliness is predominantly linked to “perceived existential threat” that legitimizes violence as self-defense.”[8] In the United States, as more men are isolated, feel lonely,[9] or in a “crisis of loneliness,”[10] and do not have close relationships,[11] they seem to pour their energy into things like online games, gambling, pornography, and conspiracy theories that lead to misogyny and sometimes even (political/domestic) violence.[12] Already in the 1950s, Hannah Arendt argued that people who are isolated and lonely are more likely to gravitate toward extreme ideologies, as they offer a sense of belonging that gives them more meaning and help them feel recognized.[13]
For these reasons and others like them, physical closeness is emerging as a valuable modern quality. In the age of AI and anonymous, superficial communication, there is a great need to go beyond physical closeness and toward genuine human intimacy and emotional connection in general. Moreover, since cisgender men tend to react to social isolation negatively and disproportionately, intimacy has become an urgent virtue, a modern cardinal virtue of a sort, for boys and men. My initial Catholic exploration of intimacy here emphasizes human connectedness and our innate relational nature, with a particular attention to masculinity in the digitalized world. At its core, I aim to introduce intimacy as a modern cardinal virtue that complements and enriches masculinity in the AI-ridden world. However, there are many questions within this theoretical arc: How does the Catholic tradition understand the relationship amongst intimacy, social isolation, and masculinity, particularly in terms of virtue? What do these insights mean for human relationships and personal growth in contemporary society? What other new and modern-day virtues are essential for today? I cannot do justice to all these questions in this short contribution. However, this work is meant to be an entry point for further discussions and research.
Intimacy
Intimacy is difficult to define[14] because it has multiple dimensions. My usage of the term intimacy here is not limited to physical/sexual intimacy. Rather, it includes “close connection.”[15] Intimacy can signify a deep emotional, psychological, physical connection and mutual affection[16] between individuals. It involves mutual trust, shared vulnerability, and authentic expression of the self, which requires openness, acceptance, and relative proximity. From the vantage point of Catholic social teaching, I suggest that intimacy can also be social, a fundamental mechanism of social connection that forms and strengthens societal bond between individuals. Taken together, the Catholic construction must consider intimacy to be a core element of human relationships and closeness that contribute to genuine connections, including individual’s emotional, psychological/mental, physical, and spiritual growth. Thus, however one understands intimacy–i.e. emotional, psychological, physical/mental, spiritual, and/or social–it appears that the common denominator is this genuine connection. Despite the increase in digital communication that makes us the “most connected” society in history, the absence of genuine connection or intimacy makes us the “least connected” in many ways. “Synthetic intimacy” or synthetic companionship is taking the place of genuine connection without the “requirement for pre-market evidence on developmental safety.”[17] This prevalence of superficial interactions poses a serious threat to our emotional and physical health, our social cohesion, and the safety of individuals.
While there are other factors[18] that contribute to the stifling of intimacy, a principal factor is the social expectations of traditional masculinity, including those from Catholicism, that come into conflict with intimacy.[19] These types of heteronormative, dualistic, hegemonic male stereotypes have inhibited men from meeting the requirements of genuine intimacy. At the very least, genuine intimacy requires expressing and sharing by trusting and accepting others and being open and social. Conversely, concealing emotions and not seeking help can only exacerbate medical and interpersonal problems and behavioral health issues, such as substance use, anxiety, and depression.[20] With such impairment of psychological and social well-being, deep and meaningful intimacy, by definition, is impossible. It is urgent, therefore, to take multipronged approaches, including one from a Catholic vantage point[21], to reintroduce intimacy as an important social value.
A Catholic Case for Intimacy as Modern Cardinal Virtue
The Judeo-Christian tradition maintains that God created humans as relational beings, and this relationality reflects divine love. In the Christian tradition, the trinity expresses this absolute and intimate relationality as a fundamental model of human relationships.[22] In the Catholic tradition, the sacraments reveal the deep theological meaning of relationships, with the eucharistic presence as “the highest, the most intimate;” “[T]he presence of Christ in and through the sacraments is relational or a ‘presence to us.’”[23] More particularly, the sacrament of matrimony reveals the intimacy between couples as sacred covenant, reflective of the absolute and intimate trinitarian relationship. While this matrimonial understanding often refers to physical intimacy in Catholic sacramental language of marriage,[24] the Catholic understanding, particularly a post-Vatican II understanding, includes spiritual, psychological, and emotional mutual self-giving, as in genuine friendship, that goes beyond merely the physical and toward fuller, unitive intimacy.[25] Moreover, relationality and intimacy extend to encompass ecological and social relations beyond the private and personal dimensions. It is within this Catholic sensibility, which stresses both personal growth and the interconnected and relational social dimensions, that one can address the critical need for intimacy as a modern cardinal virtue.
Virtue, of course, has long and different philosophical and transnational traditions. What is common amongst them is the concept of inner character and/or right cultivation toward human excellence. Thomas Aquinas’ theory of virtue offers Catholic theological and philosophical insights into our spiritual and moral growth. He says that virtues, whether acquired or infused, are a habitus or disposition.[26] For him, virtue is not a temporary action, but an internal disposition (habitus) that forms the essential character of a person. While I do not have the space here to go into detail about his divisions of virtues, one can say that each virtue has unique yet interconnected characteristics. These virtues form a cohesive system of interconnections for a more complete growth of intersubjective human persons.
The development of intimacy as this kind of Catholic virtue needs more attention and labor. There is a rich, inexhaustible Catholic intellectual tradition to help to expand and strengthen it. One can create a harmonious dance amongst the Catholic theological tradition; its attention to the saints, particularly the saints of intimacy; the legacy of the sacramental principle; the biblical, intellectual, literary, and artistic traditions; and the most obvious example par excellence, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, to construct this virtue for emotional depth and socio-spiritual strength of intimacy. While I have done related work on these fronts elsewhere,[27] our modern realities demand more work and space to develop a robust understanding and application. Suffice it to say for now, the Catholic concept of the virtues is not a mere historical relic. It can serve to guide human growth and realization of social values. Intimacy ought to be elevated to a modern cardinal virtue that revives the vitality of genuine human connection and mutual understanding in a technology-driven, AI-manufactured, superficially connected world of shallow and impersonal relationships that beget detrimental effects, particularly for boys and men. After all, the Latin root of “virtue” is vir, meaning “man,” and associations of many virtues (strength, courage, and moral excellence) are tied to manliness then and now. Thus, intimacy functions as a corrective, a balanced virtue, a right “mean” if you like, for today’s world, and more particularly and poignantly so for boys and men.
Intimacy as modern cardinal virtue will surely evolve in the future. I hope it does. More creative fusion of traditional and modern virtue can enrich the moral growth and social solidarity among diverse groups, including many demographics within Catholicism. Indeed, this contribution serves as a call for further conversations not only about intimacy, but also about in-depth discussion on “modern virtues” vital to the realities of our changing world.[28]
No one should die alone. We are innately social beings. We ought to take care of each other, because loneliness is not just a sad reality of our world, but also a dangerous one. It behooves us, then, to work together. A conversation about modern virtues will make an important contribution toward collective human flourishing against the current of social isolation and artificial relationships.
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[1] Solitary death is defined as “People who die alone in social isolation, cutoff from family, relatives, and others close to them.” Park Ung, “Solitary deaths rose 7% in 2024, disproportionately affecting men,” The Korea Times (Nov 27, 2025); Low-income individuals are about 14 times more likely to die a solitary deaths compare to high-income individuals; Lim Myung-Soo, “Low-income individuals face 14 times higher risk of solitary death than high-income individuals… Alcohol-related illnesses are 5 times higher,” Hankook-Ilbo (January 7, 2026); https://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/A2026010713470005448.
[2] Social isolation means “having a small network of kin and non-kin relationships and thus few or infrequent interactions with others.” Mareike Ernst et al., “Loneliness Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis,” American Psychologist (2022), 2; https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001005;
Ruta Clair et al, “The effects of social isolation on well-being and life satisfaction during pandemic,” Humanities and Social Science Communication vol. 8.28 (January 2021); https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00710-3; While I disagree with him in other areas, Scott Galloway also point to helpful data on which I rely for some of the following. Scott Galloway, Notes on Being a Man (New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2025).
[3] The percentage of the public that has no close friends went from 3% in 1990 to 12% in 2021; Daniel A. Cox, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,” Survey Center on American Life (June 2021), 4; Cf. footnote 11 below.
[4] Ben Smith and Michelle Lim, “How the COVID-19 pandemic is focusing attention on loneliness and social isolation,” Public Health Research and Practice vol. 30.2 (2020); https://doi.org/10.17061/phrp3022008
[5] Ung, “Solitary Deaths.”
[6] Loneliness is the painful feeling—or ‘social pain’—as a result from having less or poorer quality social connections. Ernst et al., “Loneliness Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” 2.
[7] Manuela Barreto, et al., “Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness,” Personality and Individual Differences Vol. 169 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110066.
[8] Sanna K. Tirkkonen and Ruth R. Tietjen, “Loneliness and radicalization,” Philosophy & Social Criticism (2025), 15. https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537251334550
[9] “The rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019. In addition, lower-income adults are more likely to be lonely than those with higher incomes.” Office of the US Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” US Department of Health and Human Services (2023), 19.
[10] Online content creator like the self-described misogynist, Andrew Tate, “who was arrested on charges of organized crime, human trafficking, and rape, was quite effective at reaching boys, for example, at a moment when they are in a well-documented crisis of loneliness, isolation, and inhabitation…” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025), 87. See also Miller-Idriss, 84, 108.
[11] “Percentage of men without any close friends jumped from 3 percent to 15 percent, a fivefold increase. Single men fare the worst. One in five American men who are unmarried and not in a romantic relationship report not having any close friends.” Daniel A. Cox, “American Men Suffer a Friendship Recession,” Survey Center on American Life (July 6, 2021); Miller-Idriss, 186.
[12] “…young men who seek help with depression, isolation, or anxiety…” find it in many of the outlets, including pornography, memes, and videos that often police, “disparage, humiliate, and degrade women and girls. They also become a gateway to scientific racism, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and calls for violence against an existential threat.” Miller-Idriss, Man Up 84. “Gateway” is used here not as a term of slippery slope but “to refer to hateful ideas that are so ubiquitous online that they draw ordinary users in.” See also 95.
[13] Hannah Arendt, The Origin of Totalitarianism (Berlin: Schocken, 1951), which was originally published as The Burden of Our Time. She added the final chapter, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” to Part III in 1958 and it is in this chapter (Chapter 13) that she links loneliness, which is different from “solitude,” with the “essence of totalitarian government, and the common ground of terror.” Cf. Tirkkonen and Tietjen, “Loneliness and radicalization.”
[14] “Intimacy often implies a romantic or sexual dimension” while “closeness appeared to be a richer, more inclusive term than intimacy.” Malcolm R. Parks and Kory Floyd, “Meanings for Closeness and Intimacy in Friendship,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships vol. 13.1 (1996), 85; https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407596131005.
[15] Ibid. 85.
[16] “…a certain mutual love is requisite, since friendship is between friend and friend…” Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 23, a. 1
[17] Rupert Gill, “Synthetic Companions, Real Risks: Why AI “painkillers” for loneliness need evidence before scale,” The American Institute for Boys and Men (Dec 8, 2025).
[18] To be sure, even for younger men, “who are far more likely to reject traditional notions of masculinity, struggle the most with developing enduring social bonds.” Cox maintains, therefore, that there is some truth to men feeling “less comfortable sharing their feelings, being vulnerable, or seeking emotional support from their friends,” compared to women, “the story is more complicated.” See his “American Men Suffer a Friendship Recession.” He argues that “declining religious involvement, lower marriage rates, and changes in the workplace” make developing friendships difficult. They “work longer hours, switch jobs more often, and increasingly avoid coming to the office at all” giving them less time to do what is necessary to develop meaningful relationships. I agree with Cox, but those three factors are not unrelated to social norms of masculinity.
[19] Young men find answers to their dissatisfactions about life or themselves in “a rigid gendered worldview that promises them dominance, status, and power over all others.,” Miller-Idriss, Man Up, 84; Adding to the problem of lack of close relationships in general, such a patriarchal world view makes men have particularly hard time with women because in “male supremacy, which is a toxic expression of patriarchal systems, …sexism and misogyny… underpin [those systems].” Miller-Idriss, Man Up, 95; This male supremacy “intersects with other forms of supremacist belief, including white supremacy, Christian supremacy, and Western supremacy.” People with male supremacist beliefs and attitudes are “more likely to be socially isolated, express greater mental distress (loneliness, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress), more support for racist and antigovernment ideas, and report more viewing of gun-related media… They also tend to espouse conspiratorial thinking, irrational suspicion, narcissism, and expression of entitlement, while embracing a victimization-grievance narrative… within a broad conspiracy of male harm orchestrated by feminist and women.” Miller-Idriss, Man Up, 97. Some even “gravitate toward revenge thoughts against those who they believe have wrong them.” 114. See also 100.
[20]Michael E. Addis James R. Mahalik “Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking.” The American Psychologist vol. 28.1 (January 2003), 12; https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.58.1.5. They found that it is “likely that a variety of masculinity ideologies, norms, and gender roles play a part in discouraging men’s help seeking.”; In a smaller size qualitative study of 35 participants show that traditional masculine sentiments can lower emotional development in adulthood. In fact, being consider less manly can create stress that “can lead to increased medical issues such as cardiovascular disease and increased behavioral health issues such as substance use, anxiety, depression, and issues within intimate relationships.” Jessica Dennis and Tara Zolnikov, “Demystifying Male Emotional Development: Exploring the Implications of Forced Gender Roles on Black American Males.” Journal of Black Psychology vol. 50.1 (February 2024), 68; https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984231191868; And these problems are nothing new. Cf. “Fear of intimacy with a romantic partner was associated with both masculine gender role stress and gender role conflict (especially emotional inexpressiveness and restrictive emotionality).” Anne R. Fischer and Glen E. Good, “Men and psychotherapy: An investigation of alexithymia, intimacy, and masculine gender roles.” Psychotherapy vol. 34.2 (Summer 1997), 167; https://doi.org/10.1037/h0087646.
[21] The irony here is not lost on me. The very approach that I am proposing is also part of the traditional patriarchal gender scaffolding that stifles intimacy. In my view, it is exactly because Catholicism is part of the problem that it is necessary to see it within a Catholic perspective to develop and enrich it. What I want to demonstrate is that it is possible to make significant and positive dents toward intimacy within what is good and true about the tradition and advocate and combat against patriarchy and what is harmful and inadequate about it.
[22] “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §221.
[23] Gerald O’Collins, “Vatican II on the Liturgical Presence of Christ,” Irish Theological Quarterly vol. 77.1 (February 2012), 3-17; https://doi.org/10.1177/0021140011427223.
[24] Catechism, §2360.
[25] Paul VI, Humanae vitae, 12; Gaudium et spes, 48, 50; USCCB, Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan: U.S. Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on Marriage (2009), 12-13.
[26] Summa Theologiae I.II 55.1
[27] Hoon Choi, “Brothers in Arms and Brothers in Christ? The Military and the Catholic Church as Sources for Modern Korean Masculinity,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 32.2 (Fall/Winter 2012), especially 34-38; https://doi.org/10.1353/sce.2012.0045.
[28] See for example, Reinhard Hütter, “The Virtue of Chastity and the Scourge of Pornography: A Twofold Crisis Considered in Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theology,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review vol.77.1 (The Catholic University of America Press, January 2013), 1-39; https://doi.org/10.1353/tho.2013.0036.