Fatherhood – Part II

How do we reclaim authentic fatherhood without succumbing to counterfeit versions of it?

The only way we can discover true fatherhood is to go back to its true source: God the Father and the eternal communion of love that is the Trinity. The Father is the source, the eternal font, without being “greater than.” The Son is from the Father, yet they are coequal in dignity and majesty. The Son eternally receives from the Father; he has his very identity from the Father. Yet he is just as fully and perfectly God as the Father is God. All that is the Father’s is his. The loving communion between them, the eternal delight they share IS the Holy Spirit.

I have been relishing Jacques Philippe’s new book entitled Priestly Fatherhood. He rejects all abusive forms of fatherhood while gently but firmly inviting his fellow Catholic priests to be icons of God’s Fatherhood. Icons are not God; rather, they draw us into the divine. Priests are invited to be loving shepherds, loving in a fatherly way as we accompany the flock into the heart of God the Father. How beautiful it is when we Catholic priests embrace our ordained identity as “another Christ” – one who manifests the love of the heart of Jesus so that others can come to see the face of the Father in heaven.

Often, we falsely exalt priestly fatherhood – putting priests up on a pedestal, pretending like we are not truly human. Our fatherhood is genuine, but it is only a sharing or a participation in God’s Fatherhood. It remains a heavenly treasure held in vessels of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7-11). When we priests forget our humanity, we begin abusing power and harming people. When people expect us priests to be superhuman, they will wear us out. Both happen far too often! God is the true Father people seek, and that means renouncing any idolatrous versions of priestly fatherhood.

Jacques Philippe names well some of the distortions of fatherhood. I would like to consider three of them: severity, absence, and chumminess. I think they are the most common abuses – not only for shepherds and spiritual fathers, but also for dads in family life!

Severe fathers harm their children, who live in fear of missteps or mistakes. The children feel like their efforts will never be good enough; they will never measure up. Sometimes the abuse is blatant: name calling, belittling, yelling, screaming, interrupting, or assaulting through physical violence. Other times, the abuse is subtler – not loving the children for who they are, expecting them to fit a certain image or mold, only showing them love or affection when they behave a certain way or play their proper role, reacting with anger or fear if they somehow bring shame on the family or expose the family’s problems to others.

Absent fatherhood is every bit as damaging, perhaps even more so. Fathers who abdicate their authority leave their children alone to face the harshness of a fallen world, to figure things out for themselves. When children feel alone, unseen, unheard, and uncared for, it doesn’t take much for them to internalize a lie of worthlessness. Something must be wrong with me.

What Jacques Philippe describes as “chumminess” is a third failure of fatherhood. Yes, it gives lots of attention to the children. Perhaps they even like it – much of the time. But it becomes a using and an exploitation – meeting the emotional needs of the father in a way that ultimately sucks the life out of the children rather than strengthening them, holding them accountable, and helping them discover their true identity.

As I read Jacques Philippe, I found myself immediately thinking of another favorite book of mine, Unwanted by Jay Stringer. It is, to date, the single best book on unwanted sexual behaviors, why they happen, where they come from, and how real transformation happens. Jay conducted research with 3,800 individuals and found some common denominators in their family of origin: rigidity, disengagement, and triangulation.

“Rigidity” is another way of describing severe parenting, just as “disengagement” is another way of describing emotional absence or lack of connection. The term “triangulation” is unfamiliar to most, but we need only turn to Genesis to find examples. Isaac and Rebekah are in a marriage covenant, but Rebekah prefers emotional intimacy with her son Jacob, while Isaac prefers their twin son Esau. Jacob continues the pattern into the next generation, choosing his own favorite son Joseph.  Joseph, at first, rather enjoys the power and privilege of this special relationship with daddy – which incites much envy and violence from his brothers. They make him pay by selling him into slavery.

Fatherhood, in its authenticity, is a humble exercise of authority that helps children to know who they are. Consistent and loving fatherhood allows children to be secure in their identity. If you read the writings of John Paul II on Theology of the Body (please do!), you will discover that our identity and our sexuality cannot be separated from one another. God created us male and female in his own image. The devil immediately and furiously assaulted that identity, seducing us into a ruptured relationship with God, others, and ourselves. We have been wounded ever since, both in our sense of identity as children of God and in our sexuality – which, more broadly speaking, includes how we relate to anyone and everyone. Most of us struggle to some degree in having healthy and holy relationships. We wear masks and hide parts of ourselves; we resist vulnerability and true intimacy – because we are wounded.

Only God the Father can restore us in our true identity, through Jesus his Son, in the Holy Spirit. Earthly fathers (both dads and priests) are given authority for the purpose of helping the children to experience God’s Fatherhood. Earthly fathers harm, but we can repair the harm. We can recognize and confess that we have been severe or rigid, that we have abdicated or abandoned, or that we have used others to meet our own needs. We can become authentic fathers who are truly icons of God the Father. We can shine the love of the Father in a world that needs it.

But how?

To be concluded…

Fatherhood

Fatherhood is under fire today. Even to talk about it can be taboo. I will take that risk. Authentic fatherhood cuts into the core of Christian faith, because Jesus reveals God as his Father. Read John’s Gospel. Read his three letters. You will hear again and again that Jesus is from the Father. He is in communion with his Father – not just as a human being now in time – but in an eternal communion of intimate love. The bond of love between them is so perfect that it IS a third person, the Holy Spirit. Jesus repeatedly expresses his desire that we come to share in this communion; he invites us to experience God as “Our Father,” to pray and relate to him in that way, both individually and communally.

This poses a problem in a world (and a Church) in which fatherhood has so often failed or harmed. Almost all of us have a distorted view of God the Father, because we are looking at him through the lens of our earthly experiences of fatherhood.

We tend to take the analogy backwards. We are thinking, “God is a Father sort of like these earthly fathers.” It is the other way around! Any authentic earthly fatherhood is rightly called fatherhood only to the extent that it is a sharing in and revelation of God’s Fatherhood.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church warns us against projecting our earthly views of fatherhood onto God:

…we must humbly cleanse our hearts of certain false images drawn “from this world.” Humility makes us recognize that “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son” … The purification of our hearts has to do with paternal or maternal images, stemming from our personal and cultural history, and influencing our relationship with God. God our Father transcends the categories of the created world. To impose our own ideas in this area “upon him” would be to fabricate idols to adore or pull down. To pray to the Father is to enter into his mystery as he is and as the Son has revealed him to us (n. 2779).

These days you will find anti-patriarchy and pro-patriarchy camps in Christianity. The Catechism here offers sympathy and caution to both sides! Both are speaking certain truths that need to be heard. Both sides also have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. On the pro-patriarchy side, you will often find culture warriors who are defending, not God, but worldly structures. Those structures are much more about privilege and power than they are about a true sharing in God’s Fatherhood! God is always on the side of the poor and the oppressed, and if we find ourselves blindly defending oppressive fathers (whether dads or spiritual leaders), we may find ourselves far from God! But on the anti-patriarchy side, there is an over-reaction against these abuses. They are right to acknowledge that many men have victimized, dominated, intimidated, used, exploited, excluded, and silenced. Such acts belong not only to isolated individual men, but have often been embedded within structures that silence opposing voices and blame the victim: including governments, businesses, schools, families, and our own churches. But throwing out fatherhood altogether means cutting off our access to the true Fatherhood of God. We are created to receive his blessing, and will remain miserable without it.

Without God as a Father, Jesus himself would have no identity! He simply IS the Son – eternally begotten of the Father. He invites us to discover our own true identity by receiving fatherly blessing. We need fatherhood to remember our story and to know who we really are.

Any authentic expression of fatherhood is a true sharing in God’s Fatherhood. The apostle Paul puts it this way: “For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named…” (Ephesians 3:14-15). More commonly, it is translated “every family,” but in Greek the wordplay is obvious: God is Father (pater) and all patria is from him. Without God’s Fatherhood, there is neither fatherhood nor any other sense of family belonging.

We begin our understanding of Fatherhood by connecting with and meditating on the Trinity. This weekend (eight weeks after Resurrection Sunday), many of our Christian liturgical traditions celebrate “Trinity Sunday.” Jesus is the Son. He is from the Father. He depends upon the Father, and draws his true identity from the Father. When Jesus is baptized, the Father claims him as his beloved Son, in whom he delights.

There are layers of truth here. The Father anoints the humanity of Jesus with the Holy Spirit and declares this human being to be truly his Son. But he is also speaking of their eternal relationship. He is eternally God’s Son – even had he never become one of us, even if he had never created human beings or a universe at all!

The Son is eternally from the Father, yet they are co-equal in dignity and majesty. There is no “greater than” or “less than” in the Trinity. If there were, then Jesus and the Holy Spirit would not truly be God! They would be somehow less than fully God.

Can you see the relevance for human versions of fatherhood or patriarchy? If our fatherhood truly reflects and draws its substance from God’s Fatherhood, then there will be no opposition between equality (on the one hand) and being a source of identity and blessing on the other. That means that we must renounce any counterfeit versions of fatherhood that want to exalt someone on a pedestal. Fatherhood is never about power or privilege. Properly understood, there is an authority there – but it is an authority that lifts others up. True fatherhood pours identity into others, helping them to discover in God the Father who they truly are.

This is true of husbands and dads, but it is also true (in a parallel way) of spiritual fathers: priests or bishops. Each in different ways are a sharing or participation in the Fatherhood of God; each causes grave harm when the God-breathed authority is usurped for the sake of power or privilege.

Perhaps that is why Jesus gave such a stern caution, “Call no man on earth your father – you have only one Father, and he is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9). In point of fact, we do call men our “fathers” – both biologically and spiritually. Paul referred to himself as a spiritual father (1 Corinthians 4:15; 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12); the Letter to the Hebrews exalts Abraham as our patriarch. Jesus is not condemning earthly fatherhood, but reminding us of its true source.

Dads are fathers. Priests are fathers. Others are father figures as well. Like it or not, we who are fatherly have a massive impact on how others form their view of God the Father. We can heal or harm their relationship with God, depending on how we embrace our calling.

To be continued…

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