COMMENTARY: Happy Fathers Day to the men in black

(RNS) Wouldn’t you love to have Pope Benedict XVI over for a barbeque on Father’s Day, if for no other reason than to give him an afternoon off? I mean, the man barely gets up in the morning and there’s another scandal on his doorstep. He takes vacations, but there’s not one on his calendar […]

(RNS) Wouldn’t you love to have Pope Benedict XVI over for a barbeque on Father’s Day, if for no other reason than to give him an afternoon off? I mean, the man barely gets up in the morning and there’s another scandal on his doorstep. He takes vacations, but there’s not one on his calendar for another few weeks. Meanwhile, he’s got the real or metaphorical glare of klieg lights all day, every day, all week long.

Can’t we give the man a break?

Father’s Day started 100 years ago this month in Spokane, Wash., at the behest of Sonora Smart Dodd, who thought it up while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in her Methodist Episcopal Church. When Dodd was 16, her mother died, leaving her father to care for six children. Years later, it hit her that fathers need to be honored, too.


Now 52 countries honor fathers on the third Sunday in June, while several others (including Italy) take the feast of St. Joseph (March 19) for the celebrations. Benedict’s native Germany annually honors all fathers on Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter.

Not all cultures fire up back-yard barbecues, but the special place of fathers in the hearts of children fires the respect and honor due to all fathers. I don’t think such honor is a zero-sum event. I think we should spread it around a little, including to the world’s 400,000 or so Catholic priests, most of whom are black and blue from the general trashing given (and in some cases still due) the creeps within their ranks.

The priesthood is a touchy subject these days among Catholics. In the church, the folks on the far right are harking back to a Victorian-era priesthood filled with lace and incense, while those on the far left have opened it to a rainbow-hued crowd of men and of women.

Most of the working-stiff priests in the world are in the middle — just ordinary men who get up day after grey day, say their prayers, celebrate Mass, and get on with the business of burying, marrying, and baptizing. It is a life filled with joys and sorrows stretching out before them. Yes, a lot of them own golf clubs, and spend considerable time using them. But they also have cell phones, parish councils, bishops, and the confirmation class to deal with.

There are also the priests not wholly involved in parish work. They teach or work in the chancery. They are professors and canon lawyers; physicians and physicists. Many belong to religious orders large and small: Jesuits, Franciscans, Claretians and Norbertines. They are equally on-call for priestly duties. They have cell phones, too.

It wouldn’t be a half-bad idea to invite one of those men over for the afternoon this Father’s Day. The majority of the priests in the United States are unmarried — only a handful are married former Episcopalians, or belong to an Eastern Catholic Church that has continued the older tradition of married clergy. The rest are stuck with their cell phones and golf clubs on a day that perhaps is meant for them as well.

And, since so many folks and families are bereft of fathers to honor this Father’s Day, I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to throw a barbeque in honor of the local priest, who gave up natural fatherhood to serve as religious “father” in times of trouble and triumph.


I mean, that’s in case Benedict can’t make it over that afternoon.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)

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