Catholic Dads

Welcome back to As For Me And My House, the place where the rubber meets the road.

I am a Nodling generator.

Astute readers of my blog will have noticed a new seal that appeared several weeks ago without explanation. It shows a small set of footprints encircled by the words “Official Nodlings Generator”. The Nodlings are, of course, my children.

I am happy to say the immediate cause of the seal is that Mrs. Nod and I are expecting our sixth child. “Fearful and Wonderful” stuff (ref. Psalm 139:14). If it is a boy, we’ll have an even split. We’ll be like a Catholic Brady Bunch.

As a father I am my children’s progenitor, my wife their co-creator. This is the one power that we have that most directly images God the Father, the Creator. He allows us to share in His creative power. God made from nothing, ex nihilo, we continue what He has caused into being. To put it a bit more crudely, being able to make a baby is a little like being God.

This past Sunday the reading was about Abraham who,

“By faith he received power to generate … So it was that there came forth from one man, … descendants“. (Heb 11:8-19)

So it is with me and my house. God has granted us this power to generate in a complementary way. St. Thomas writes in his Summa Theologica (1273):

I answer that, It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a “helper” to man … in the work of generation.

Wherefore we observe that … the active power of generation belongs to the male sex, and the passive power to the female.

It is an especially manly thing to be able to generate. I have been blessed with many children, but I am not a Providentialist / Quiver Full adherent; I’m not trying to have “as many children as possible”. This is not a discussion about the merits of NFP or the lack thereof. My wife and I are getting older, reaching the end of our shared fertility.

I will mourn its passing.

Now, I said that it was both fearful and wonderful and I meant it. Children are always a Good Thing ™ and they inspire joy and delight; on the other hand, to borrow a line from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility”, and that is rather sobering. We have been blessed with a goodly number of children. Other couples have differing numbers, and some know the heartache of not being able to have children at all. Still others, even more heart-breakingly, have had to bury their own children.

You don’t know fear until something happens to your own child. That is why, when this baby is born, despite all previous experience, I will be checking late at night at odd intervals to see if he is breathing, worrying about rolling over on him, wondering if he is sick or too hot or too cold, counting fingers and toes, and even — gasp — reminding my own mother to “support the neck”. (Ok, that only happened with the first one, for which I was roundly chastised.)

But all that worry and concern is ordered to the good of the children, towards protecting them, because we love them. As a man, even the most timid one, you are ready to fight any foe, defy any odds, brave any danger to protect your child. These are my flesh! my blood! my children! It is at times like these that I remember a description I heard once, that God the Father loves us with a fierce Love.

I can totally relate.

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Relate your thoughts and experiences in the comments below…

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