Priests and the importance of fatherhood

Priests and the importance of fatherhood |  Paul C. Vitz and Daniel C. Vitz | Homiletic & Pastoral Review | December 2008

Priests are not just "hosts" to the parish community; they are really fathers and consequently the heads of their parish families.

Many thoughtful people today recognize that the United States—and indeed much of Western society—is in a cultural crisis. It takes little reflection to note that this crisis is centered in the family. The increase in divorce, the decrease in the number of marriages, increased numbers of cohabiting couples, plummeting birthrates, an increase in single mothers, abortion, the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples, numerous biological manipulations of maternity and paternity—all are clearly the result of a profound disorder in the understanding of the family.

The crisis in the family, however, can be further understood as stemming from a crisis in the concept of fatherhood and the very notion of manhood. For it was men—despite what some would like to think—who pioneered the intellectual and social changes that ushered in the family crisis. It was men who first proposed the ideas and who then expressed the behavior of the so-called “sexual revolution”; it was men who first began to reshape society to view women simply as sex objects, which led to the search for new and improved contraception and to the public acceptance and pervasiveness of pornography; it was male scientists who led the experimentation on human embryos and have aggressively pursued human cloning. It was men who first pushed for homosexual “unions” and then “marriages,” and it is men who are already pushing for polyamorous groupings such as polygamy. It was also men who developed the social and political ideas that created our modern notion of the state as an answer for fatherless families—ideas that, when implemented, simply created more fatherless families. In short, men, by withdrawing their allegiance from the traditional concept of fatherhood and by seeking biological and social means of avoiding that responsibility, have been at the very center of our cultural-family crisis. The absence of fathers results in boys and young men who are formed without any understanding of what it is to be a father, and so the problem continues to grow. Thus it is of importance to understand not only the importance of fathers within the family, but also how young men and boys are formed in their attitudes toward the responsibilities of fatherhood and of manhood generally, so as to better understand how we can help to repair the broken family.

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Comments

[Todd]

The problem of father absence is well-documented. We might also look to assign blame to the switch from agrarian to industrial society: the removal of men from the homestead for labor for most of a child's waking hours.

We can't skirt society's problem with authority in general, either. It began with the American Revolution and has continued with inept and uninspiring leadership in monarchies, in militaries, in corporate industry, and even the Church.

If pastors are to be spiritual fathers for their flocks, what change will be needed in seminaries to prepare men for this role? And will this be a "dealbreaker" in the discernment for priesthood? In other words, if a young man lacks the qualities will he be sent home, sent to a monastery, told to grow up and come back in ten or twenty years?

One start for the Catholic Church, one that doesn't depend on finding these ideal "father" candidates, is to more aggressively promote adoption. If lacking a father is bad, we should gravely consider what it means to miss having a mother as well. Well over 100,000 American children are now in foster care with no legal obstacles to being adopted. When will the fathers and mothers needed for these kids step forward to answer the call?

[Drjs]

It is very heartening to hear from two Catholics about the importance of fatherhood, and as they so aptly bring out, its fundamental relationship to family formation, and ultimately, how people view God himself. When properly modeled in the family and the world, as all men are called to do, fathers help families fulfill their roles as "modern Churches" and God is honored as He becomes mirrored in a self-sacrificing, loving father in the home. Without this critical bulwark of the family providing leadership and stability, a basic building block of a functioning society becomes cast aside, and the role of masculine leadership becomes enervated and discarded. This has deleterious impact in society at large, as well as the Church, as its messengers of peace, Her priests and religious, become viewed as agents of oppression and patriarchy, in lieu of their true roles.

We all can agree out the outcomes of family dissolution has far reaching implications, both in the secular realm and within the Church, as documented in their article. However, I must point out that causation regarding family dissolution and the changing role of families in modern society over the last 50 years is far from determined. The Vitzs promote a somewhat inaccurate and media-friendly version of the causes of family break-up, blaming men primarily for the main phenomena associated with the rise of single-families: out-of wedlock births, the increasing acceptance of such "alternative" family forms, as well as the increases in the divorce rate. They quote David Blankenship, a well-known social scientist who has made a career of ignoring other causative agents such as: the increasing role of women in the workplace, no-fault divorce laws, and the growing acceptance of gender feminism both as a cause and the resolution of the "problem" of male patriarchy.

Blaming men for circumstances out of their control is not only counter-factual, it charges men for responsibility for the problems of divorce and the rise of single-families. Ask any man who's gone through divorce court in America over the last 20 years: many "modern" women accept as natural their "right" to divorce related custody and subsidized single parenthood. Gay-rights groups are attempting to redefine family quite successfully, unfortunately. To the extent that any man - or woman- reneges on their God-given responsibilities to his family, we must educate and exhort them as to what a privilege it is to raise a family. But we must acknowledge that when rights are separated from associated responsibilities, problems arise. It must be pointed out that all problems related to family formation over the last few decades should not solely be laid at the feet of fathers, whose role as head of the family has come under fire from a variety of sources.

God bless you and all Christians in their search for Truth.