Edmond Grace SJ responds to a question about calling priests ‘Father’, when and how did it come about.
There’s a question to which I have never been able to get a satisfactory answer: Why do we call our priests ‘Father’ and the Pope ‘Holy Father’ when in the Gospels Our Lord specifically instructed his disciples to call no man on earth your father, as we have only one Father in heaven? When priests are giving sermons they freely quote from what Our Lord said in the Gospels as to what we should or should not do. So surely this is a ‘Do not’ bidding from Our Lord and should be followed? After all, in the early church the leaders appeared to be called ‘elders’. So when was the title ‘Father’ given to Catholic priests?
There are disadvantages – as well as advantages – in being around for a long time, and the Catholic Church has been around for two thousand years. One of the disadvantages is that the Church has seen many changes and developments in her life and it is not always easy to explain how they come about.
This is complicated by another disadvantage – there have been shameful and sinful episodes in the history of the Church and often it takes time for believers to recognise this and put it right. As to when people began to call priests ‘Father’, it was not until the nineteenth century that this title came into universal use.
Before that it was common practice to address a priest as ‘Mister’, but it would not be true to say that addressing a priest as ‘Father’ was a nineteenth-century invention.
Religious orders
For a long time before that, the title ‘Father’ was used to refer to priests in religious orders. It was certainly well established before the foundation of the Jesuits, the order to which I belong, in 1540. St Ignatius was referred to as ‘Father’ as a matter of course by the first generation of Jesuits, who borrowed this practice from other religious orders, like the Franciscans or Dominicans. And these orders had been in existence for almost three centuries.
As for addressing the Pope as Holy Father, I am not sure when that practice began, but I can tell you that the very word ‘Pope’ comes from the Greek word for father ‘Papas’. The Italian word for ‘Pope’ makes this link with fatherhood unmistakable to the ordinary English speaker – ‘Papa!’
Even to this day in the eastern Churches all priests and bishops are referred to as ‘Pope’. So, in one way or another, addressing priests as ‘Father’ has been a long established practice, and not just in the Catholic Church.
Saint Paul
You could even argue that the use of ‘Father’ as a title in the Church goes right back to the very first generation. In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul effectively invited those to whom he was writing, if not to address him as ‘Father’, at least to think of him as one. ‘Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father (literally ‘I begot you’) in Christ Jesus through the Gospel’ (I Cor. 4:15).
So, if the practice of referring to significant men in the church as ‘father’ is against the teaching of Christ, it is clear that the rot set in at a very early stage.
Let’s look more closely at what Jesus said and what it would be like if we took his words literally on this matter. Firstly, he did not say, ‘Call no one in the Church your father,’ but, ‘Call no man your father.’
In other words, if we took him literally, it would mean that we’d never even use the word ‘Father’ in relation to our male parent, but only in relation to God. It’s hard to see how this can make sense if there is no problem in referring to our female parent as ‘mother’. Then if we referred to God, and no one else, as ‘Father’ we would have to find some other way of addressing our male parents and people would eventually forget where the term ‘Father’ came from – a bit like the way we’ve forgotten where the term ‘Pope’ comes from!
Parent to child
So why did Jesus refer to God as ‘Father’ if it wasn’t with a view to presenting God to us as one who wants to relate to us as parent to child? Perhaps it is because at birth it is the father who is the outsider and who has to wait to be brought into the relationship of mother and child. If the mother does not want him, there is very little he can do about that.
God is like a human father in that sense, one who gives life but who must wait on the margins of our story until we decide to make him part of it. Maybe that explains why Jesus says at one point in the Gospel: ‘Anyone who does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother.’
A mother is in a position to welcome a father into the story of a new life; we become the mother of Jesus by acknowledging him as the Son of the Father and thereby acknowledging the Father.
Use of language.
This still does not answer the question why did Jesus then tell us to call no man on earth our Father? The answer lies in the way people use turns of phrase in everyday language which are not meant to be taken literally. For instance, if I were to tell you that I was ‘dying’ with a cold I would be very taken aback if you were to send for the emergency services. Similarly, when I tell you that I am ‘sick to death’ of this or that I do not expect you to get alarmed.
In the Gospels, therefore, when Jesus talks about plucking out our eye or cutting off our hand if it causes us to sin, nobody gives a literal interpretation to his words. To do so would be barbaric and destructive and would go against all the healing brought by Jesus into the world.
Giver of life
Likewise when Jesus says, ‘Call no man on earth your Father,’ it simply does not make sense to take him literally; doing so does not make the world a more loving place. He is, however, calling us to a realisation that the fullness of fatherhood is to be found in God alone, the giver of life who waits lovingly on the margins of our lives to be acknowledged as ‘Our Father’.
This article first appeared in
The Messenger , a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
