When my wife gave birth to our first child, a boy, my world changed. Present for the labor and delivery, I witnessed what can only be described as a miracle, however commonplace. A new person, body and soul, came into the world, and the world changed. It was, Sharon said later, “as if the universe was pushed six inches sideways.”
We began the stressful routine of round-the-clock crying, diaper changes, and feedings. In time, as sleep deprivation set in, Mom and Dad needed a break. Arrangements were made to leave the baby with Grandma. We went to a party given by Renée, an acquaintance from college. Though not married, Renée was expecting a baby, a decision she told us was “thought through very carefully.” She had no intention of marrying or changing her “lifestyle,” but the relentless ticking of her biological clock couldn’t be ignored. She wanted children.
I tried to disabuse her of romantic notions about baby care. “One person really can’t do everything,” I warned. “What about the baby’s father?”
She fixed me with a determined look and laughed. “A child doesn’t need a father!”
I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach. Intentional or not, it was a shot at me personally—just a single shot in a war waging against fathers.
In the last fifty years, fatherhood has been under attack. The father has been redefined from the biblical figure of compassion and justice at the center of the family to a frivolous and expendable shadow. Television portrays fathers as self-righteous autocrats in dramas and ineffective buffoons in sitcoms. The father who is too dull-witted to do laundry or change a diaper is a staple in advertising, raised to the level of a cultural icon, a touchstone immediately understood and recognized.
When fatherhood is devalued, what reason does a young man have to rearrange his life, curtail his freedom, and shoulder a burdensome responsibility? Begetting is easy, raising a child is hard; yet sex is glorified, fathering devalued.
Ironically, society has reached this conclusion at the same moment that research has pointed to the opposite. Since the 1950s, psychology has produced studies that confirm the father’s role. Writing in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Drs. Constance Ahrons and Richard Miller state, “Frequent contact with the father is associated with positive adjustment of the children.” James Dudley, a research professor at the University of North Carolina, notes that “fathers have much to offer their adolescent children in many areas, including their career development, moral development, and sex role identification.”
In fact, the positive effects fathers have on their children are most easily seen by looking at cases where fathers are absent:
- 85 percent of all children with behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.
- 71 percent of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.
- 75 percent of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes.
- 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes.
- 85 percent of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes.
- 70 percent of those serving long prison sentences were fatherless.
- Fatherless children average significantly higher in teen suicide, illegitimate birthrates, incarceration, and unemployment.
- Fatherless children average significantly higher in illegitimate birthrates.
- Fatherless children average significantly higher in incarceration rates.
- Fatherless children average significantly higher in unemployment rates.
- Fatherless young men are more likely to commit serious crime, including rape and murder.
Perhaps it is in recognition of these consequences that the Old Covenant ends with a warning: if we don’t turn “the hearts of fathers toward their children and the hearts of children toward their fathers,” Yahweh will “strike the land with a curse” (Mal. 3:24). Our conclusion must be that fathers are not expendable, but absolutely necessary to the developing human person.
Then whence arise the attacks, denigrations, and dismissals of fathers? As Christians, we need to apply the biblical principle: “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt. 7:16–20). The results of this war on fatherhood is the destruction of souls. There is something diabolical in it. Paul warns us that it “is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, but against principalities and powers who bring darkness to this world” (Eph 6:12). There is no mistaking the spiritual dimension of this attack, but it is only a reflection of a greater war, a war against the fatherhood of God.
The Catholic Church always has taught that God has no sex. The Catechism puts it in the clearest terms: “In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective ‘perfections’ of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband” (370).
All the same, today, many feminist theologians are waging a battle against the “image” of God as Father. They wish to “depatriarchalize” the God of Scripture. In their critiques, the Father image is wedded to complaints of sexism in the Church. One such writer, Mary Daly, puts the complaint in a nutshell: “If God is male, then male is God.” This formula gets right to the marrow of the feminist’s bone of contention. Images of God as Father, they argue, imprint God with an indelible “maleness” that elevates males to some divine status unavailable to females. To correct this perceived problem, much ink has been spilled in recovering the latent feminine images of God in Scripture.
The measure of a metaphor is its usefulness, derived from what one already believes—hence the feminist call for images of God which “match our experience.” Once untethered from revelation, imaging God is an open market. But God’s Fatherhood is not a mere image, nor is it just a metaphor. It is a transcendent truth.
Jesus himself often refers to God as “my Father.” This is not an exclusive relationship between Jesus and God, but one that God extends to all his people. In fact, this fatherhood is primary, the rule by which all other fatherly relationships are measured. Paul writes, “I pray, kneeling before the Father, from which every paternity, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name” (Eph. 3:14-15). God alone is the real Father. All other fathers are reflections or distortions.
“Father” describes a relationship. It denotes two parties joined together in a familial bond. As Thomas Aquinas notes, “The name ‘Father’ signifies relation” (ST I:33:2:1). Moreover it is a relationship which is chosen by God. He invites us to “call out to me saying, ‘My Father, my God.’” (Ps. 89:26).
Those who have suffered from their own fathers need this good news. Instead of being excused from accepting God as Father, they need to be strengthened and encouraged to enter into a healing relationship with their one true Father. For those who have been abused or abandoned by their human fathers, the image of a heavenly Father may be an obstacle, but overcoming the obstacle will bring God’s great gift for us. Because “Father” is more than image. It is the way God has chosen for us to be bound to him in love.
The name by which Jesus lays bare the nature of God is “Abba” (“Daddy” or “Father”). Jesus used it consistently. He taught it to his disciples. And we affirm it every time we say the prayer he gave us; “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” To hallow God’s name is to bless it. The name we bless is “Father.” When Jesus speaks God’s true name, he does not “free us to use whatever metaphor best expresses our confidence in God.” He frees us from picking and choosing among competing images that necessarily fall short. He reveals God in his essence.
Aquinas tells us that a name is given to that which “perfectly contains its whole signification, before it is applied to that which only partially contains it; for the latter bears the name by reason of a kind of similitude to that which answers perfectly to the signification of the name” (ST I:33:3). God is the only one who contains and fulfills all that the name “Father” signifies. This is why Jesus warns us, “Call no man father” (Matt. 23:9). To put other fathers before God, the true Father, is a form of idolatry. Earthly fathers are worthy of the name only when, by his grace, they reflect the true fatherhood of God.
It cannot be said too plainly. When we reject “Father,” we reject God.
This article is adapted from “Call No Man Father,” originally published in Catholic Answers Magazine. You can read the full original article in our archives.