Happy Father’s Day to you, Father Jonathan.

Michele

Just to add a thought or you to yours:

1) My dad always made sure to hold his temper and anger and address things that frustrated him when he was a bit cooler and calmer. I knew that took a lot of effort.

2) My dad never failed to let us know how much he loved us, even if it was in an unspoken embrace.

Proverbs 23:24 — ‘The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, And he who sires a wise son will be glad in him.’

As a former teacher I really liked the idea your father had about offering a choice between physical punishment and loss of privileges, and how you said the spanking was usually the option taken. It’s a great antidote about the nature of what is called in psychology, negative reinforcement. Freedom is more valuable than comfort. It was a great lesson that your father taught you through that practice. You were able to make the choice for yourself and you chose freedom most of the time.

My own father’s willingness to spank me from time to time taught me pretty much the same lesson. I would rather be responsible for myself than to depend on someone else, and thus also be subject to their judgment of what I should and should not do.

While positive reinforcement is definitely great, there seems to be some important and valuable lessons taught through the use of punishment that positive reinforcement does not achieve. Most of those are in the area of being independent and taking personal responsibility. Your father was both intelligent and wise.

An excellent word Father.

Amen to that thoughtful piece. Your father was very much like mine, although with eight of us, we didn’t regularly receive the ‘one on one’ you spoke of. That is fantastic. I try as best I can to be half the father to my two sons as my father was for me. I fall short many, many times, but I continue to become better at it. My youngest son now has his own daughter of nine months, and he too, is going to be a good one. We strive to stay close to the Father, but when we stray and ask to come back, we always get that big hug from Him. He is an awesome God and Father!

Happy Father’s Day to you also Father Morris. God Bless you.

My dad has been gone now for 6 years, but he was special.
He taught me to put God first in my life as soon as I was able to understand. He did not send me to church he took me and sat with Mom and me every time there was a service.
We were far from rich. We lived in a little cotton mill town in a mill house. but he loved us and he saw to it, with great sacrifice that I was afforded a college education in the 50’s when that was not the norm in my little Al. hometown.
Truly as the bible says my lines feel in a goodly place.

In 1944 I lived in the Hague, Holland. WW II was going on full force and there was nothing to eat but some tulip bulbs. If my father got hold of some food he always gave it to my brother and me and both my father and mother went without. I didn’t know this untill much later. It still brings tears to my eyes. He was strict but fair and if he was wrong he admitted it. He loved my mother and us kids very much and I still miss both of them.

Thank you Father Jonathan. This was my Dad’s first Father’s Day without his first little girl. My only Sister just passed in February from cancer. My Mom & he were her primary caretakers for the last few months of her life. This was a Father’s job he never knew he would be undertaking, for this I am eternally grateful.

I tried very hard to be happy and not sad on the phone yesterday, (my parents live in another state). This article made me remember more of the wonderful things my Dad did for us. We didn’t have much either, but we had the Dad that all the other kids in the neighborhood came to for getting their bikes fixed, etc. I used to follow him around everywhere and was his shadow along with my little brother. God bless you Dad, each and every day.

I was lucky. When I was young - seven, eight, nine — my Dad would grab me and take me along on weekends. He was a hard-charging, super energetic guy always up for an adventure. I couldn’t tell you exactly why he let me tag along. We lived in a foreign country at the time, and it’s true I was fluent while he still stumbled with the language. Or maybe he was giving my Mom a break from the strain of trying to run an American household outside of the US. Or maybe he simply enjoyed the company. In any case, we forged a strong father-daughter bond. Years later, when things were not going so smoothly in our family, that bond proved invaluable. Stretched and tattered as it might have been, it never fully broke. Dads can’t do much better than to spend time with their kids.

Fr. Jonathan: Unlike your Dad, I have disciplined while angry and always felt bad after doing so. Somehow though (through luck) I now have 3 daughters who love me w/o question and unconditionally in the same way I love them and my wife. Suffice to say my weakness was impatience or anger but my strength was always being there for them no matter the problem or concern and I was there w/love and caring and thanks to God I still can do it. At 44, 43 & 38 they’ve had their ups and downs but faith in God and eachother has helped us and we continue to need him in our personal and individual way. I’m not unlike my own Father gone 50 years ago past May. Maybe a little softer but I’ll always be glad he was around to give me the principles in life we live by today. A good Father/Mother have their roles and know them and as a team can work wonders. Sometimes the wonders happen w/o even knowing how they really did happen…a few of ours had Divine Intervention, I’m sure. Peace, K

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Thanks so much for posting that. My daddy is a wonderful daddy & he always taught me such good lessons & never treated me like a child that didn’t have a brain. He treated me like I had some sense & if I didn’t use it reminded me that I had it. I love my daddy so much & I’m so glad that God blessed me with him.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

The only jobs I know of that are more difficult than being a good mom or a good father is being the same when single. Each also come with rich rewards.
God Bless you Father John….
Ben

Amen, Father!

God Bless You!

An excellent read Father! You’re a blessed man to have such a wonderful family. It brought fond memories of my own father. Both of my parents are gone now and they’re missed very much though I am so thankful for them.

Now, I am a father. Even the word — the title — itself is heavy with meaning. I didn’t realize what fatherhood meant or what my own father went through until I became one. It has taught me about sacrifice, giving up and going without are inseparable from being a dad. Sometimes they’re what make it so difficult to be a father. Other times they’re what makes it such a rich blessing.

It seems safe to say that there is no task, no obligation, that can make me feel so ill-prepared, so inadequate, so dependent on God’s help to have any hope of . . . if not meeting with booming success, at least surviving without causing too much damage to those I love. All the while, my kids were watching me as they grew up. It’s a seemingly endless list: To show love; to admit mistakes; to ask forgiveness; to value honesty; to work hard; to laugh easily. . . . I took what ever God gave me and what my dad and mom taught me and used it to the best of my abilty. What more can a man do in “answering the call within the call” as Mother Teresa would say.

God Bless and happy Father’s Day….

My Father passed on confidence to us by very often speaking confident words to us. We knew that we had value in his eyes. When he grew old, our Dad spoke to us strongly about “loving in the little ways”. He spoke it over and over……they were his dying “gift of words” to us and they have made a difference.

The best advice I recieved from my father was to never discipline your kids when your mad. Our daughter and six sons didn’t always recieve one on one time with dad but my wife was a great listener when anyone wanted to take. There were no secrets between any of us. The best for any family to do is pray daily together as a family. Example is always imitated long after advice is forgotten.

Happy Father’s Day dads! While my Dad did his best with the seven of us and dittto to your Dad Father Jonathan, my husband is an amazing father to our four. Aside from disciplining with love and “being there” for all major events in the kids’ lives, he is the most positive and encouraging man I’ve ever known. His “yes you can” attitude is exemplified by an “of course you can” mentality. It wasn’t all due to his words, but his actions/example also spoke volumes by way of walking the walk. He has been involved with the scouts for all three of our sons, including camping once a month for the past 20 years, even though he works a 50-60 hour week. All four have done well in school, are not afraid of the dark, are not embarrassed to ask questions or to speak their mind, are very capable in the kitchen, the laundry room, and all are adept at all outdoor living skills. Nothing was ever expected of them other than to try their best and to keep safe. Our daughter is that girl with the hands on her hips, demanding that things are so for righteousness sake, for heaven’s sake! The payday came when these kids continue(d) to make significant achievements in life, which include helping other people and making friends with strangers/elderly/the suffering all along their paths. I knew I had chosen extremely well when my wonderfully crazy husband was thrilled when our first born made his first dirty diaper,so much so that he swooped in to change the diaper before I, still shaky from the birthing event, could make my feet find the floor! Imagine how blessed we all are in our home! Thank you God for my husband, and the father of our children!

Now that he is gone I fondly remember and appreciate the times we had alone where we did not have to talk to be together and you knew he would always be there for me if I needed to talk.

I hope that the lessons we learned for a caring father are passed to our children. And those that did not have the best experiences learn that the best example is from a loving, involved parent.

Thanks Father Jonathan for the reminder of what it means to be that Father.

James from Utah

Nice piece, Father, although I can’t say I’ve read any of yours that aren’t.

My father was a hard worker and of the old school…come home and sit and read or watch TV. He didn’t spend much one-on-one time w/ us, but I do recall him teaching his daughters how to ride bikes w/o training wheels, throw a baseball and light camp fires. My father did not know how to parent well; he was verbally abusive when angry (which was often) and we were treated to many names that I cannot print in this forum. I left God and the church because of my father, blaming Him for all my problems and believing there could be no God that would allow such a man (a pillar in the Episcopal church) to treat his girls so cruely. After being an Atheist for 2 decades, I married a devout Catholic whom I knew would make a great husband AND father. He never pushed his religion on me; rather, he served God by example. In 2003, I started attending mass w/ him on special occasions (sadly, as too many Catholics do…Easter and Christmas Catholics), but became a Catholic in 2005 after 2 close girlfriends used emotional force to get me to attend a M.O.M.S. group in the church. I was challenged to ask for God’s grace to forgive my father, a man I had helped care for in a nursing home for years, but whom I couldn’t touch or tell I loved him. With God’s help, I made myself hug and kiss my father one evening. It became easier each time. I then saw him thru two near death experiences in Hospice, having to wipe his nose, feed him, wash him and eventually FORGIVE him. That was 2 years before he died (I was with him as he died). I am so thankful God gave me my father, regardless of his human faults. I learned to be strong (he never whined during his 21.5 years of illness), he taught me that giving back is a duty (before his illness he drove people to mass, gave blood regularly and always helped those in need) and he told me I could be or do anything (back in a time when little girls were not told that). Making peace with my human father (a man with faults like the rest of us) brought me the peace in my life I had never had. Had he not been a difficult and misguided man as I was growing up, had he not become ill and had I not allowed God back into my life, I would not have learned the valuable lessons on compassion and forgiveness. And had I not forgiven my father, I would suffered thru life with a brick on my shoulders….never fully happy and continuing to carry that baggage into all my adult relationships. I now thank God daily for my father. I have made the choice to see all the good in my father while recognizing that each one of us has our own demons and each makes mistakes throughout our lives. I realize my fahter’s intent was not to hurt me. To him (and many in his generation) giving us food, shelter and clothing was what father’s do. The positive emotional stuff was beyond my father’s reach; he had been raised by parents who didn’t know how to parent and he simply continued that legacy. I made a promise to myself that that legacy would end with me. And it has, not only by choice in my own behavior and attitudes, but by the choice I made when choosing my spouse; the father of my children. I MISS my father (he died Feb 2007) and I thank God daily for the long “trip” I had to take from injured child to mature and introspective adult. My father’s unintentional lessons were difficult, but so important. And I thank my other Father, my spiritual one, for my journey that has molded me into the daughter, wife, mother, volunteer and Christian I am today.

Our father walked out when I was very young. It’s truely good, to read stories of great fathers. Nice to know that most dad’s hang-in-there. May God Bless all Fathers, and even the one’s that fall short.

God Bless you for this enlighted message

Ah, B.Alexander, most fathers fall short at one time or the other. We’re human and so are they. FLNonny, your story made me cry. I can imagine the pain and I admire your determination to fight your way through it. Your story has some similarities to my own, although you have travelled farther spiritually than I. In any case, I do so strongly believe that there is no gift so valuable as being able to forgive a loved one who has wronged us through their own weakness or faults. It can take a lot of time to get there, but that is a destinatin worth working towards.

This has been a terrific blog — a chance to glance into the lives and experiences of other families.

Thanks so much for sharing this. Your dad sounds like a special person too, along with your mom!!!

Reminds me of how I miss My Dad! If I know now what I didn’t know then I would have spent more time with Him.
BB

Thanks for this column. It’s what most of us Dad’s try to do.

Since I spent most of my adult life in the USMC, I missed more time than most with my kids because of 6 180 day plus deployments. My wife kept things going when I was gone–and allowed me to step right back into my job when I returned. Of all the things I will ever do–being DAD is always the second most important thing–being a good husband is the first.

I spent Father’s day with my wife and kids. The two oldest ones have their own families–but choose to spend this day with me. I guess I did do something right with them.
Semper Fi,
Mike

Thank you, Father, for sharing part of your life.
My father was angry when he disciplined, and I carried this into my own method of child discipline. I “provoked” two of my three sons, and I wish that I could take it back. But “All things work for good to them that love God”, and with the blessing of a good wife, we have hope of a better future for our family.
Thank you for your time,
Jeff

I’m trying to appreciate the kind of Dad my husband is, but I’m having dfficulties with that right now. He is in the Army, but eligible to retire, yet chooses not to do so, despite my begging him to do so. You see, instead of retiring and being with his family, he chose to go to Korea for a year with his unit. That may sound noble and patriotic, but my husband has more that served his time with multiple deployments over his twenty years. His son’s are 5 and 2 years of age, and they need their Daddy very much. I am bitter that he chose to leave them, and leave me to take care of them. So this Father’s Day, I had to bite my tounge and make a special effort to have the kids recognize their Father. As far as I am concerned, while he is gone to Korea, I am both their mother and FATHER.

On the other hand, I love my Daddy so much, and I will forever be “Daddy’s Little Girl”

Sounds like the idyllic life. Also seems there are many people out there blessed with wonderful dads and families. My father was never around during most of my life and now my husband and I are separated because he is an alcoholic. So for me I guess Monday is when Mother’s Day begins. God Bless all the lucky people.

It is the first Father’s Day without my Dad.
Did my Mom call on us children to possibly reminisce with each of us about some special time with our Dad? NO.
I am saddened NOT to have my Dad here with me now. But, I am even more saddened to think that my Mom could not even think that this Father’s Day was a very difficult one.
Tragic and Sad commentary on a Mom who only thinks about herself!
But, then again this is just so typical……….Oh, she used the “comfort care” kit that the hospice people had left……..an appalling thought, but she admitted to it!
Anyone who has hospice care, please beware!! Abuse of the comfort care kit is rampant!!

For LINDA,
A wise old indian was talking to his grandson. He told him that inside every person a war was raging, a battle between two wolves. The white wolf represented all that is good and happy in life, love, laughter, humor and the black wolf represented all that is bad, saddness, depression, anger. The boy asked his grandfather which one would win. The wise old man said “the one you feed.” (source of this story is unknown to me)
Anger needs a way out and must be dealt with, but if you linger on it and feed it; it will take over your life. Living in the past is not really living - I know, I’ve tried it! It sounds like you have many reasons to be angry. Bad things happen in life. Are you going to be a slave to those things? I pray that God will help you to turn them into good …into life.
It can be scary to change. I was very comfortable with where I was and didn’t really know how to do anything different. I still have a lot to learn and it’s hard, very hard, but life is about learning and it is SO worth it to change. Find people who can help support your efforts. Support groups are a good start and many are free.

There are those of us who consider themselves blessed when they can’t remember their childhood - distressed when an errant memory pops thru. If we’re lucky, we muddle thru when/if we have kids, hoping very, very much that we don’t screw up too terribly. Father’s Day can bring mixed emotions - might be nice to know you’re doing (or did) OK, but not quite sure how to handle it if anyone said so… pretty sure the job could’ve should’ve been done better, but not sure how.

Not an excuse - just fact. Nothing to forgive or broach with either parents or siblings - that’s life… do what you’re supposed to do. And, there are boatloads of us around the world. Millions? Billions? I have no idea what-so-ever, ’cause to my knowledge and experience it’s not something ever talked about - at least with all the men I’ve ever known.

Trying to spoil anyone’s memories or Father’s Day? Not At All! Just a side of it that may or may not help anyone understand their dad or husband a tiny bit better.

Thank you, Father Morris. It’s not surprising that you turned out so well with such good parents. Many of the problems we have in America today would be much improved if men would step up and be the kind of husbands and fathers their families need. It wouldn’t solve everything, of course, but it would make a huge difference. I had a great Dad, and I’ve tried to be the best Dad I can for my two sons. What we do to invest in people is more important than anything else we accomplish in life, and it all starts with our families.

Nice piece, Fr. J.

It made me think of the good and the right things my father did. I was the fourth of five children and the second of three sons. We were poor but I did not know it. On his meager salary he sent us all to college, a goal he himself did not attain.

I must have been in my terrible threes when he and I had a fight. I only know about this from his account because I have very little memory of it. I was being punished but for every spanking I got, I picked up something of his and tossed it out the window.
He inflicted controlled pain and I continued the rebellion until I peed on the floor. There were no pull ups then.

He was an observant man and ours was a relationship where the child modified parental behavior. He concluded from that incident that I was the strong-willed one and he was going to deal with me differently.

He must have loved me even more after that incident for I gravitated around him and was zealous for his attention. I remember asking him when I was six, “Would I be your ‘junior’ if my younger brother died?” He must have spoken that word with so much affection that I wanted it for myself.

Because of our detente, I grew up an initiator of cost-saving measures at home. Without his prompting but with an eye to his approval, I competed with another boy in our village at gathering mushrooms in the early morning when I was nine. Since then I helped bring food to the table until I left home nine years later.

He was always proud of the little achievements I had at school and I looked forward to presenting him my report card. I was twelve when he fell ill from an old malady. The illness did not lead to death but brought us to a new level of spiritual life. Pa was a believer in the power of prayer and we learned to pray the family rosary.

He had some faults and it is sad to note that these faults tended to overshadow the good man he was, until now.

Thanks for evoking this eulogy I just now gave. I wish I had whispered these by his bedside when I was last with him three months before he died. May he and all the other dads now in the afterlife bask in the Boundless Love of the Father of us all.

VL

You always have something positive and lovely to say and I cannot tell you how much I enjoy your discourses. I had a wonderful stepfather who died at a very young age and I still miss him terribly after about 55 years. Stepfathers can be as wonderful as biological ones and priests are very special fathers, indeed. They have saved my emotional “bacon” more than once.

Thank you for being you.

Father,

I always appreciate your comments and, like you, I was brought up in a traditional family until my mother died at the age of 42. So my father raised me through the most difficult time of my life, pre-teen thru teen years. Dad was a military man, but he also was a dreamer, and I can say that I felt loved by him. Fathers can do a wonderful job in raising children. But in today’s world, with the divorce rate, good fathers are not given an even/fair chance to be with their children. I personally know three fathers who fought to be able to spend every other weekend with their children. One woman received placement and gave the father nearly every day they were not in school, every other weekend and he had to pay 1/2 of daycare. He paid her support all summer when the kids were with him. He was forced to live in a trailer while his 10K a year child support went to her to spend with no accountability. For the summers she sent a small plastic sack of clothes for the kids for the entire summer, she told the teachers he was an absentee father, and later in teen years when the son committed a felony she hid it from the father for a year and a half. In court the Judge blasted the father for spending no time with his child - when in fact the child had been with him for over 150 overnights. His other child at age 16 said to him that Mom says if we don’t come anymore we’ll get more money and she put her fist in his face and said “I want money!”.

I know another young man who thought he could “save” this woman and all she wanted was a baby so she could go on welfare and not have to work. He has supported this child and paid his medical bills since birth and he is almost 15 now. His mother never did go to work, refused this man’s offer of marriage, and has put other church people into the boy’s life since birth telling him those were his relatives.

Another young man married a woman who turned out to be bipolar and physically abused him, controlling, and when he told her to get some help she divorced him but not until after she had his baby. She locked him out of the house and stole 90% of what he owned and gave it to family and friends. She gets placement so now he pays and she controls with no intention to put her child first. The father takes the child 3 days each week and 3 1/2 every other week. She calls him a deadbeat Dad in front of his child and her family calls his workplace. Her family caused so much ruckus at his workplace they fired him. Now she tells his child that daddy is a expletive loser.

There is more ugliness, but the bottom line is I have seen at least 4 women in my life who use their children to control the father, to take money and not be accountable for it, to bully and belittle the man and cause him so much strife and money going to court for useless reasons (I don’t like the way he’s dressing the baby) and making him follow the rules or she will take him back to court for more money, while she refuses to drop off or pick up the kids as scheduled, or only goes half way…or schedules things to do with the kids on his days, or worse yet, tells the kids on the days they are with her that daddy didn’t want them this weekend. And dressing them in the torn, stained clothing when the child is to be with him.

I could go on and on…I have prayed so much for these situations but man has made the laws to be gender-biased and women, in some cases, have the fathers walk away because they can’t take it anymore. Father, the responsibility should be shared but the laws mandate that Fathers are not equal as regarding parenting. This is untrue, and one young man I know is doing his best and hardest to make the situation work, but if the mother decides to move 75 miles away and alienate the father there’s nothing he can do about it - he will lose in court, and though we look to God, these laws are man-made and so we keep praying…Thank you for letting me have some say for the fathers out there who are trying and may not be allowed by the mother to spend even 1 Father’s Day with his child until the child is 18 and can make a decision for themselves.

Wow, that really touched me…thanks and God Bless You, Father Jonathan!

Maura, please hang in there. Much of what Fr. Jonathan writes about can help you. God bless you.

Father, I mean no disrespect in this question, but as I am not Catholic I do not understand. You seem to speak so warmly and a lovingly of fatherhood, does it not make you sad that you are not going to be one? Again I apologize if it sounded rude, I am merely curious/fascinated.
-Katheryn

Comment from Mike.

Hi Mike. Thanks for writing about the difficult situations. Learning from others can help the past turn into a valuable lesson to do it better. Easier said than accomplished, I know. Those old “learned” lessons form us in big ways. But there is hope that we always need to nourish…..hope that we can be better……hope that there is wisdom for us (God has wisdom for us that can by-pass faulty lessons…..He is all of our Father)… And there is Joy in the adventure of life…that we can keep on being better…….and learn to love better……and learn to pass on new lessons ourselves.

Jeanette