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The Gift of a Father: How love leads to vocations

We find the crisis of fatherhood at the base of a vocational crisis both for religious vocations and marriage.

(Image: Jochen van Wylick/Unsplash.com)

In the beginning is the Father. He is the source and goal of all life. From him flows communion through the gift of his entire life to the Son, his perfect image, and from them proceeds the love of the Spirit. Likewise, within creation, life itself is a gift, and therefore it is love. This is the secret to life, without which we cannot be happy. God made us not only to receive his life but also to give our lives back to him and to others.

This is what fathers must model to their children. The father provides security in body and mind by being “there for them,” to care for and protect them, helping them to come to the maturity needed to grow to the “full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). Both parents serve essential and complementary roles. Mothers, among many other things, provide the nurturing that younger children need, while the influence of fathers increases in adolescence as children venture into the world. He provides confidence through his stable presence that guides his children to discover their own vocation. His presence must do more than model the right thing to do. He must offer fatherly love, affirming the goodness of his children and investing time in them.

It bears repeating that fathers are by far the number one influence on their children’s faith. Another recent study, this time from the non-profit Communio, confirms this:

The decline of married fatherhood created a shock to our culture leading to increases in the number of bad outcomes for children, and it has caused the rapid decline in Christianity over the last 40 years. Marriage rates have dropped 31 percent since 2000 and 61 percent since 1970. This study concludes the religious nones are likely to continue their growth for two to three decades after the number of married resident fathers stabilizes. Therefore, churches must immediately adopt new strategies and approaches to restore marriage and improve fatherhood.

We find the crisis of fatherhood at the base of a vocational crisis both for religious vocations and marriage. Too often, young people do not imagine life to be a gift they have been entrusted and which, in turn, is meant to be given for others. They are not experiencing the reality of this gift from a father. Self-sufficiency plagues the fatherless, creating an illusion of autonomy that masks deeper needs of communion and dependence. Unmoored youth try to find happiness by focusing on the self, which only leads to misery. Fatherlessness essentially constitutes societal suicide, stemming from an identity crisis and lack of purpose. The love of a father grounds us in reality, helping us to know that our lives are good and we belong within a community greater than ourselves.

Gil Bailie makes the connection between fathers and culture in his new book, The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self (Angelico, 2023):

It is the fatherly responsibility . . . to provide the child with a cultural, moral, and historical patrimony—an inheritance: an appreciation for the transgenerational drama in which the child’s life is situated. The father prepares the child to perform whatever might be his unique role as a bridge connecting his ancestors and descendants. His message is ‘You belong, and this gift of belonging will require something from you, and I am here to help you learn how to meet your responsibilities’. (249)

Without a father, one is cut off from the past and, therefore, cannot stake out a clear future. Belonging brings spiritual and psychological security, which in turn inspires the freedom and joy needed to pass on this blessing.

Our culture rages against patriarchy, the rule of the father, although we are finding that without it we are also losing hierarchy, the holy rule of Christ in his Church. In the end, the hierarchy exists for patriarchy because the Father has gifted life to us and wants us to use it to express his love. This is what patriarchy means — not domination but an order that flows from the source of life and guides toward the goal. We do not name the heavenly Father after earthly fathers. Rather, they take their name from him because they are meant to provide a glimpse of his love in giving life and guiding his children to happiness.

Although the role of a strong biological father can never be replaced, the love of the heavenly Father can still come to us through the mentorship and friendship of father figures. Often, God works through a spiritual father or pastor to draw us to greater faith, love, and maturity. Fatherhood entails relationship, dependence, trust and love, all of which are crucial to the psychological and spiritual development needed to embrace a vocation.

If fatherhood plays a central role in faith, family and our culture, manifesting the love of the heavenly Father, then we must raise up new generations of fathers in the Church. Only this will restore a proper patriarchy, a manifestation of the Father’s love in our lives and culture.

(Dr. Staudt’s column is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)


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About Dr. R. Jared Staudt 87 Articles
R. Jared Staudt PhD, serves as Director of Content for Exodus 90 and as an instructor for the lay division of St. John Vianney Seminary. He is author of Words Made Flesh: The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education (CUA Press, 2024), How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization (TAN), Restoring Humanity: Essays on the Evangelization of Culture (Divine Providence Press) and The Beer Option (Angelico Press), as well as editor of Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age (Catholic Education Press). He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate.

9 Comments

  1. I am puzzled by the suggestion, implicit in “He provides confidence through his stable presence that guides his children to discover their own vocation. His presence must do more than model the right thing to do,” that mothers don’t do this.

  2. Staudt concludes: “If fatherhood plays a central role in faith, family and our culture, manifesting the love of the heavenly Father, then we must raise up new generations of fathers in the Church.”

    About the “culture,” the decline in fatherhood CORRELATES with the rise in homosexuality. According to Gallup, 7.1% of the United States population now identifies as LGBTQ, up from half that only ten years ago, and with 20.8% of Generation Z (born 1997-2003) as compared to 0.8% of those born before 1946. https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx

    Might the synodal illuminati FOCUS more on cause-and-effect, and on unwinding the “signs of the times,” rather than on rolling with the times? That is, any evidence of the TERM “father” in the Instrumentum laboris? Shows up eleven (11) times, but never in reference to biological fatherhood. How about “marriage”? Shows up three times (3)—twice and only in reference to “polygamous marriages” and once in terms of “inter-Church marriages” (plus once for “divorced and remarried”). The term “vocation” appears 24 times, but never in reference to marriage.

    Might the “experts” be capable of better integrating the “aggregated, combined and synthesized” Instrumentum laboris with the Catholic Social Thought/Teaching? The BIOLOGICAL FAMILY is the DNA and cell of society, central to both solidarity and subsidiarity and to societal flourishing, or at least survival. Instead, chandeliered management, and the collective “synod, synodal, and synodality” mentioned 382 times. Very intercultural: as in Chinese water torture…

    And so, related to Staudt’s “patriarchy,” one school of ANTHROPOLOGY explains….
    In a letter to Charles Darwin, dated February 3, 1874, researcher McLennan differed with Darwin and proposed that monogamy generally came after a period of polyandry, and that it is not explained by jealousy and a feeling of female property: “As a system [polygamy, or polygyny] can have had less to do than any other with the history of marriage on the whole. . . . Polyandry [supported by group opinion], in my view, is an advance FROM [italics], and contraction of promiscuity [!]. It gives men WIVES [italics]. Till men have wives they may have tastes, but they have no obligations [!] in matters of sex” (John Ferguson McLennan, “Studies in Ancient History: The Second Series comprising an Inquiry into the Origin of Exogamy,” and “Studies in Ancient History: Primitive Marriage,” 1886 and 1896).

    So, today the real “backwardists” are those who understate the post-primitive value of marriage and families. (Surely, it goes without saying!)

    The societal drift is away from the vocation of marriage and BACKWARD toward promiscuity, random cohabitation, sequential bigamy, and homosexuality; all appealing to the pastoral eyes of clericalist shamans. Not much on ever addressing the causes of homosexuality: e.g., absentee or abusive fathers, kindergarten sexualization in government schools, a culture of porn and getting locked-in by early sexual experimentation.

    Can’t risk appearing too “rigid” or “bigoted”! Humanae Vitae, Veritatis Splendor, and the Theology of the Body…

  3. How can a Church that is commandeered to reevaluate God’s creation and homosexual relationships, morally disordered relationships, scripturally condemned, as a justifiable dimension of God’s planning for family be a spokesman for manly fathers? Men who do not despise or excuse their masculinity. Men who hold valor a virtue.
    This Vatican refuses to consider the beatification of Father Vincent Capodanno because he was involved in violence. The violence of giving his life for the marines he served in Viet Nam. Effeminacy reigns at the Vatican with this pontiff’s endorsement.

    • Father Morello – Thank you for mentioning the case of Father Capodanno, although being reminded of it does get me upset. A year ago, the Vatican halted the process of canonization for him giving the following reasons:

      Did not think it was a good idea to canonize a chaplain while a war (Ukraine) was going on.
      There were some reports that he paid too much attention to his appearance (He wore the Navy uniform!)
      There was no evidence that he grew in spirituality during his last year of life (during his last year he was in Vietnam!)

      He was hit 27 times by a machine gun while trying to protect one of the wounded. He received the Medal of Honor.

      I am sorry, I know that this is not the main point of the article, but the Vatican action on this really gets me upset.

      Semper Fi on this 248th birthday of the United States Marine Corps.

  4. Further evidence of a sharp turn in moral doctrine: “The DDF in answer to a question about whether a cohabiting homosexual person can be a godparent, the document cited the Church’s Code of Canon Law, paragraph 874, to say a godparent can be anyone who possesses the aptitude and who leads a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on. It stated that a homosexual person living, not a simple cohabitation, but a stable and declared more uxorio in the manner of a husband and wife well recognized by the community, is a different case” (Hannah Brockhaus for CNA in NCR).
    To say a stable homosexual relationship is more uxorio in the manner of husband and wife is a different matter for consideration as godparent, is equivalent to declaring equivalency. There is no such equivalency in fact, nor in any manner of inference. That understanding of equivalency is transferred to the mind of godchild and parents. A form of indoctrination. How does this impact standing doctrine? The DDF is not the infallible arbiter of perennial Church doctrine. Although it certainly is capable of egregious temporal error.

    • Note that the DDF did in fact approve transgender persons as witnesses to marriage. That approval carries with it similar scandal despite their recommended efforts to ‘avoid scandal’.

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