BLOG POST | Hey Deacon!

Why do we call priests ‘Father’?

This question refers to Jesus' teaching found in the Gospel of St. Matthew, when He said, "Do not call anyone on earth your father. Only one is your father, the One in heaven." (Mt 23:9)

Taken literally, we would have to wonder why we do use the title "Father" when Jesus seems to forbid it.   We must remember the context of the passage.  In this passage Jesus is addressing the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees; the learned religious leaders of Judaism.  These religious leaders demanded an unreasonable level of loyalty and lived lofty lives of self-righteousness and hypocrisy.

Jesus says not to call anyone on earth by the title, "Rabbi," "Father" or "Teacher," in the sense of claiming to oneself an authority that rests with God and of forgetting the responsibility of the title.  As Jesus said, only the heavenly Father is the true Father, and the Messiah, the true teacher, and rabbi.

In all our churches we should be on the lookout for the kind of leader who puts himself on a pedestal, demands unreasonable loyalty, dominates his flock, and manipulates and abuses his people. These religious hypocrites will gather wherever there is religion, and insecure people who long for religious certainty will always be their gullible sheep.

On the other hand, the positive religious leader is one who is a Good Shepherd and a wise father. The idea that the pastor is a good and loving father is woven throughout the rest of the New Testament where we see that the apostles saw themselves as spiritual fathers.

The apostles Peter, Paul, and John acknowledged their own roles as spiritual fathers. In support of this truth, we see that Paul explicitly refers to himself as a spiritual father to the believers in Corinth, “I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.  Although you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.  And I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (1Cor. 4:14–15)

Since the Bible frequently speaks of this spiritual fatherhood, we Catholics acknowledge it and follow the custom of the apostles by calling priests "Father.” Catholics know that as members of a parish, they have been committed to a priest’s spiritual care.  Consequently, they have great respect and affection for priests and call them “Father.” Priests, in turn, follow the apostles’ biblical example by referring to members of their flock as “my son” or “my child”.

All of us, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, should remember that the priest points us to Christ the True High Priest. The pastor points us to Jesus the Good Shepherd, and our fathers in the faith should reflect on earth the strong and radiant love of our Father in heaven.


Author Bio:
Deacon Dan Vaughn