Catholic Dads

One of my sons friends came over the other day- let’s call him Carl. He had met him when they were both new transfers to the Catholic school my son attends three years ago. He is a polite boy, always calls me Mr. and my wife Mrs. Always says please and thank you. He had a mischievous nature and sometimes my son, Carl and their mutual friend would get in trouble, and Carl seemed to be the ring leader – though it was all pretty small potatoes stuff. Still I warned my son to stay focused on what he was supposed to be doing and to choose his friends wisely. As a result of those conversations, my son regularly started praying for Carl in our family rosaries.

We tried to reach out to Carl’s family when they first moved to the area, but it didn’t seem to work out. They lived in a beautiful home rented from some Hollywood types in the hills behind our middle class home. His dad was a high powered attorney, I left the corporate world and run my own small marketing research consultancy. His mom dabbled in new age religions – we are solidly Roman Catholic. We made an effort, but maybe not enough.

My boy asked if he could have Carl over to play, and we said yes. We found out that Carl was moving in two days, which was news to us. We had heard from our son that his Dad was getting a new job and they would be moving closer to it, but the real story came out. While we were enjoying lunch, Carl tells us that his parents are divorced now and they are moving because of it. That he didn’t want to move schools but that it was only 40 minutes away so he could still come and see his friends.

I didn’t know what to say. What could I tell him? It was as if someone had died.

This divorce will change his life. It will change how he sees relationships. It will change how he sees his parents. It will undermine his foundation and ability to trust. It will make love and relationships that much harder. He will survive, but his parents have delivered him a blow as they try to separate what God has joined.

I don’t understand how a family can allow itself to disintegrate. When he told us, there was a mourning for something lost. As a man, a Catholic and a father, I don’t know his father well enough to ask how it came to this – but I wish I did.

I don’t know what went wrong here – but something did and it is tragic. While not always the case, I tend to look to the man for this failure. As a Catholic father my first responsibility is to God, then to my wife and then to my children – career, sports, blogs, etc. all come after that. We men are the head of your households. We must love our wives like Christ loves the Church. Our offspring should be the fruit of that holy love. When we fail at loving our wives like this, because we are selfish or perhaps because we have lost our way with God, then we allow the specter of divorce to enter into what is made a holy sanctuary by God.

Wherever you are in your marriage, you can love this way. That is what you are called to do. So do it! Love your spouse and then your children like Christ loved the Church. That means laying down your life, right here and now – your time, your heart, your career, your pastimes – all of you. If you do this, then you are living and loving as a husband and father is meant to live and love. If you don’t live and love as intended, then it isn’t just you who suffers – it hurts those closest to you as well.

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