How To Be a Good Father

Throughout history the male has been the spiritual head of the family. As the faith leader, the fundamental action for a Catholic husband/dad to accomplish is to get his wife and children – and himself – to Mass every week.

The Mass is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (Catechism of the Catholic Church1324). Regrettably, a minority of Catholic families these days attend weekly Mass. Every national survey – from the Survey Center on American Life to the CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) – reveals that a majority of Catholic-identifying families in the United States either never go to church or attend only a few times a year.

It appears that the average Catholic family places attending Mass as never higher than the third or fourth priority on their weekend calendar. Going to church falls somewhere below participating in sports tournaments, Saturday night slumber parties, Sunday morning NFL game-watching, and sleeping-in.

Not Just on Christmas and Easter

Regrettably, many of today’s Catholic are ignorant of the precept of the Church which states that a genuine Catholic attends Mass weekly and on other Holy Days. A precept is a minimum requirement for a baptized Catholic to fulfill to be able to truly consider oneself a Catholic. (Other precepts include the minimum requirements to go to Confession at least once a year and observe certain days of fasting and abstinence.) Besides Sundays, there are six other Holy Days when American Catholics are obligated to attend Mass:

1. January 1: The Feast of Mary, the Mother of God
2. Forty days after Easter Sunday: Ascension Thursday (which some dioceses in the United States transfer to the following Sunday of that week instead)
3. August 15: Assumption of Mary into Heaven
4. November 1: All Saints’ Day
5. December 8: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception
6. December 25: Christmas, the Nativity of Our Lord

Add these Holy Days to the 52 Sundays, and a faithful Catholic should be attending Mass at least 58 times a year. Upon hearing this number, many of today’s Catholic parents will most likely respond in exasperation, “You want me to get my kids to Mass on six Holy Days in addition to every single Sunday?! I’m lucky to get them to a grand total of six ordinary Masses all year!”

Setting Priorities and Keeping Commitments

As a busy parent, it comes down to setting priorities for you and your family and to keep commitments to the things you value most. Going to church on the weekend as a family is just that – a priority and a commitment. When you baptized your children, you committed to raise them in the faith. You can’t say you’re raising your kids Catholic if you fail the most fundamental requirement of being Catholic – attending weekly Mass.

Going to Mass should be the most important thing that a Catholic family does together all week. Many children make a commitment to get to their sports practices nightly or to practice their musical instrument throughout the week. Many parents make a commitment to drive their children to and from those nightly sports practices or to get themselves to the gym each day for their workouts.

In comparison, attending Mass once a week for one hour should not be a difficult commitment for family members to make. Going to church as a family is not just good for everyone’s soul, it also models to the kids what a life of commitment is about. If a Catholic – adult or child – cannot keep a simple commitment to attend Mass one hour a week, how can you trust that person will keep other more complex commitments?

The Father Is the Key Factor

This expectation to get oneself and one’s kids to Mass is most vital for dads. The results of a Switzerland study of all religious denominations revealed how instrumental a father’s actions are in raising his youngsters to grow up and continue practicing their faith as adults. Some of the remarkable findings in the study included:

• If the father is totally non-practicing in faith with only the mother regularly attending church services, only 2% of their children will become consistent worshipers in the future;
• If the father is irregular and mother regular in church attendance, only 3% of the children in these families will subsequently become regular attendees themselves as adults;
• If both father and mother attend church services regularly, 33% of children raised in these households will end up as consistent churchgoers as they age;
• If the father is the consistent churchgoer, and the mother is either irregular in attendance or totally non-practicing, 44% of children raised in these types of households will regularly attend church as they mature. 

The results of this study may seem counter-intuitive, because one would think that if the kids grow up in a home where both parents regularly attend church that would be the best chance of those kids becoming churchgoers later in life. But these numbers are showing that the strongest inspiration to the kids develops when they see dad take the lead and show passion about being a Christian, without mom’s influence or involvement. This study certainly reinforces the essential role of a family’s father as the spiritual leader.

Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, said, “A family, no less than a State, is, as we have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father.”

Dads Are the Spiritual Leaders

While we know children tend to take many cues about life from their moms, it appears when it comes to faith-life, dad’s serious faith in God best conveys the message of the importance of getting to church. There is a clear lesson to be learned from the statistics above. A dad should not desire to be seen by his kids as the cool, casual parent of the household who lets everyone off the hook to sleep in and miss Mass. The goal of a Catholic father should be to be seen as the faithful, committed dad who is the first out the door each Sunday morning, honking the car horn to tell the family to hurry up.

Moms are wonderful. As my own life story of growing up without a dad showed, my widowed mom’s modeling of weekly Mass attendance had a big impact on why I kept attending throughout my lifetime. But I was an anomaly.

If fathers like to play the percentages, and want their kids to have the best chance of being faithful Catholics when they are raising their own families, these men would be smart to make sure they are modeling faithfulness by going to church regularly. And as the Catholic precepts state, regularly equates to every single weekend (with a dispensation due to illness or extreme circumstances).

Pick a Mass, Any Mass

What’s nice about the Catholic Church is parishes schedule a variety of weekend Mass times. Plus, there are usually a number of Catholic churches within a reasonable driving distance. So, no matter a family’s busy schedule, there is always a way to fit attending Mass on one’s weekend calendar.

Whereas many of the non-denominational mega-churches and other Protestant churches have only one service each Sunday, most Catholic churches have a Saturday evening vigil Mass and at least two Sunday morning Masses from which to choose. Some even hold Masses on Sunday afternoons or evenings. Thus, even when the family calendar notes an all-day Sunday sports tournament or a classmate’s Saturday night slumber party, chances are a family can still find a Mass to attend that doesn’t conflict with events like these. 

Clearing out an hour in his family’s weekend calendar and both literally and figuratively being in the driver’s seat on the way to Mass should be priority number one on a dad’s weekly task list. His kids will grow up realizing that going to church every Saturday or Sunday is the most important commitment to keep and the most treasured thing all week that a family can do together.

Fathers are to care for their children as our Father in Heaven cares for us.