Fatherhood I

A Threatened Though Vital Vocation

John Paul II was grateful to his father for his early religious formation. Captain Karol Wojtyla was a prayerful man who regularly prayed the rosary and read the Bible with the younger Karol. In Witness to Hope, John Paul II biographer George Weigel quotes John Paul II's autobiographical writings concerning his early religious formation: "We never spoke about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary."

The great influence of Captain Karol Wojtyla will come to no surprise to those who have read the book Faith of the Fathers, psychologist Paul Vitz's account of his study showing the importance of the father in influencing their children’s religious/ faith formation

The Children's Trust Fund reports that a 1998 study revealed that nearly twenty-five million US children lived in homes where the fathers were absent. That is, more than one in three children in the US live apart from their fathers. Among these children forty percent hadn't seen their fathers in at least one year. Fully fifty percent had not even been inside their father's homes. This does not even count those fathers who are living in the family home with their children but who are emotionally and functionally absent. We may ask, so what, the child still has his or her mother? The Children's Trust Fund and the group Fathers.com have answered that question by reviewing the literature on the impact of life without father.

If a father is absent the child is:

• More likely to experience depression and other emotional disorders
• More anxious, hostile and withdrawn
• Less popular with their peers
• At much greater risk for suicidal behavior
• At much greater risk to abuse drugs and alcohol
• Much more likely to be incarcerated
• Is several times more likely to smoke cigarettes
• More likely to have lower grades, lower school attendance, and lower college aspirations
• Twice as likely to drop out of school
• Five times more likely to be poor and ten times more likely to be extremely poor

And the list could go on. The point is that fathers can and do make a difference in the lives of their children. When divorce strikes (roughly one in two marriages), it is so very important for the father to find ways to remain actively involved in the lives of his children and for the mother and father to find ways to not undermine one another but rather to work together. In our highly individualistic age, this is often not the case.

These statistics, however, do not get to the heart of the difference a father makes in the lives of his children. A father is more than a mother’s helper. At the least we can say that his role complements the mother’s. When we consider the impact of Captain Karol Wojtyla on the young Karol and of the research of Paul Vitz, we begin to get a sense of how fathers may very well be in a unique position to lead their children toward or away from our heavenly Father.

When we continue this series, we will look more closely at some of the unique roles that fathers play in the lives of their children.

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last updated 23 May, 2005
Copyright © 2005, Dr. Thomas P. Shubeck