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Authority Conjoined with Love

Understanding Fatherhood from Its Source (Part 2)

by Dawn Eden 

Crunch! ... Crunch! ... As I wandered through the Georgetown Jesuit Cemetery on the first day of Advent, praying the Divine Mercy chaplet for the Holy Souls, the only thing marring the tranquil scene was the indecorous sound of my Sunday shoes attacking the frost-laced grass.

Seeing a middle-aged woman enter through the wrought-iron gate, I brought my pacing to a halt, to afford her a moment of silence. The stranger walked a few feet before stopping at a not-yet-marked grave where several people had left flowers, including a large wreath.

Something made me tiptoe as best I could – making crunches that were piano rather than forte – to the woman’s side. Without a word from me, she began to speak, telling of the priest buried at our feet, Father Thomas King, S.J., – who passed away last June at the age of 80 – and how she came to know him.

The mourner was born in South Korea and was received into the Catholic Church seventeen years ago. Having lost her father when she was ten, priests were like fathers to her. She got to know Father King while she was working at Georgetown University Hospital – attending his 11:15 p.m. daily Mass and going on retreats that he led.

Gesturing with her right hand towards the grave, she said, “Father Tom, he didn’t have any children of his own ...”

Her arm swept out in an all-embracing gesture: “... but he had thousands of spiritual children.”

With those words, the stranger encapsulated what I had in mind when writing my previous column on the meaning of fatherhood. God’s Word tells us that “all paternity in heaven and earth” receives its name from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:15 DRV). It follows that the priest, possessing – in the words of the Catechism – “the authority to act in the power and place of the person of Christ himself” (CCC 1548), is in a mystical way even closer to the Source of fatherhood than a biological father. In that light, he plays a key mediating role in healing the culture’s understanding of both the fatherhood of God and the fatherhood of men.

Catholic author Anthony Esolen believes that if priests were to strengthen their preaching on fatherhood, men would better understand the privilege and responsibility of fatherhood – and would be more likely to hear the call to priesthood. Interviewed via e-mail, the Providence College professor who has spoken of the need for men to recover masculine virtue observes, “If we could understand that God is our Father, then all at once we understand, in healthier and head-clearing terms, what it means that He is the Lord of Hosts – the Lord of Armies, as none of my students seem to know – and that He establishes a Church militant, on the offensive, against which the gates of Hell shall not prevail.”

“Young men relish the battle,” Esolen adds. “They are those strange creatures who fail to clear the low bar, but raise it high, and challenge them with a stern and loving look, and they will clear it. They rise to meet bold challenges, and slump beneath the mediocre.”

Father Angelo Mary Geiger, the Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate I previously interviewed about Marian chivalry, says that such preaching, to be effective, would have to counter cultural claims that masculinity and femininity are mere social constructs, devoid of metaphysical significance.

“The feminist critique of the abuses of women by men has ultimately called into question the very differences between the sexes, and between fathers and mothers,” Geiger says. “Unfortunately, this leveling has also been introduced into the liturgy through inclusive language and mushy theology. Even the seemingly innocuous ‘sister and brothers’ liturgical greeting is based on the false assumption that giving a certain priority to the father is unjust. If there are any homilies on fatherhood at all, they are usually so carefully worded as to not offend the most strident feminist.  When such tendencies toward inclusiveness make priests uncomfortable with preaching on the fatherhood of God, the emasculation is fairly complete.”

As a remedy, Father Geiger says, “Just acting contrary to this malaise and actually preaching positively on fatherhood would go a long way to address the spiritual neglect of men.  A good homily on Ephesians 5, proclaiming the goodness of fatherly authority, while interpreting it as the sacrificial and selfless love of Christ, would affirm men in their vocation while guiding them away from the excesses and defects of masculine energy.”

It is that “sacrificial and selfless love of Christ” of which Father Geiger speaks, and which the woman I met at the Jesuit cemetery saw in Father King – a love that abides and bears fruit even after death.

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)