“I’m just like you, Daddy,” says my little boy Peter to me one day, looking up at me with luminous eyes, as if being like Daddy were the greatest achievement possible. I had just put on my tie for Mass, and Peter had too. We looked surprisingly similar, a fact that brought great happiness to […]

It’s not about the deer, or birds, or rabbits. It’s about our sons, and what they need from us, their fathers. My youngest child, a boy of 3 years, has been begging to go hunting with me this year. It gives me occasion to reflect on the challenge of raising sons, especially today. Having taught […]

“The Great Adventurers of the modern world.” With these words Charles Péguy, the great French Catholic poet of the early twentieth century, honored the fathers of families. Péguy was killed in the first of the modern world’s global wars, but if he were alive today, he would probably feel the need to underscore his statement. […]

Forget the dads you see on Television: selfish, workaholic, lazy, absent, bullying, pushover dads. They do not deserve the name. Real dadness is bigger than that. It’s as big as Our Father who art in Heaven. The call to be a Catholic dad is a call to suffer—as a husband, as a father, as a […]

This post is part of a three part series. See parts one and two. Of all the duties of fatherhood, it is the munus regendi —the duty to shepherd, based on Christ’s role as King—that is most likely to offend modern sensibilities. The father has authority? The father is a king? Come on! That’s outdated chauvinistic patriarchy. […]

This post is part of a three part series. See part one here. As we continue our look at the three munera, or duties, of fatherhood revealed to us in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, we today turn our attention to the munus sanctificandi, or the father’s duty to sanctify his family. The Priesthood of Jesus Before we […]

In the introduction to this series, I wrote about how each father is entrusted with three duties, or munera in Latin, and that these three duties are modeled by Christ himself. While traditionally associated with the ordained priesthood, these duties just as much apply to the fathers of families, who also share in a priestly role, albeit […]

There are few roles as mocked and derided as that of the father. Watch any TV show or movie made in the last 40 years or so, and you will see fathers portrayed variously as buffoons, domineering jerks, or at best, good-hearted but clueless simpletons. What you’ll never see is a father portrayed as loving and […]