Letter from the Pastor
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June 16, 2024Happy Father’s Day!
In 1908, Grace Clayton proposed the day to honor those men who had died in a mining accident in the United States. Though it was not accepted then, in 1909, another lady, Sonora Dodd who along with her five brothers was raised by her father alone, after attending Mother’s Day in a church, convinced the Spokane Washington Ministerial Association to celebrate a Father's Day, the following year 1910, it spread nationwide.
Like most of our holidays, Father’s Day started out as a religious feast. March 19th is the Feast of St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus and since the Middle Ages, fathers were blessed and celebrated on that day.
You cannot buck the biology of Creation. A father’s influence is vital to the physical and psychological health of children. Many if not all of our social ills are because of the lack of the male influence in the family.
Psychologists, socio-biologists, and neuroscientists have produced some powerful evidence that while mothers and fathers are both well-equipped to raise children, their methods of operating, their natural skills, and even their ways of seeing the world tend to be quite different, yet complementary. One needs both male and female.
We know that infancy is a special time for mothers; they nearly always take charge during the initial year to 18 months. The critical period for the father generally begins when the child starts to interact with the outside world.
There is a large measure of working complementarily in male and female parenting. And the demands on fathers and mothers shift back and forth as a child grows. Men and women tend to provide children with different things, in different ways, at different times.
One of the main things a father does is to help his children understand the outside world. Psychologists and pediatricians have shown that as early as the third week of life, children experience and react to their father differently than their mother. Moms and dads generally approach their children with different intentions; dads come to play, while mothers tend to soothe, comfort and to take care.
Studies show that fathers also have a special role in building a child’s self-respect, and are more effective at discipline. In both intact and divorced families, children are more likely to obey the father than the mother. Researchers have found that while moms are more active than fathers in helping youngsters with personal problems, the fathers’ involvement is more important with regard to youthful alcohol and drug use.
As children get older, fathers frequently concentrate on helping their children navigate through life crises, for instance those surrounding puberty. It’s well established that the masculinity of sons and the femininity of daughters are each greatest when fathers are active in family life.
In 1994, a team of Swiss researchers conducted a study on how faith is transmitted in the family, and their results were surprising. If a father does not go to church — even if the mother is deeply religious — the study showed only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. Whether a child will remain a Catholic, whether he will attend Sunday Mass and participate in the life of the Church, is significantly affected by the religious practice of the father.
So today, we encourage and pray for our dads. Gladly, I hear from visitors to our parish, how nice it is to see so many families at Mass here and to see so many fathers. Just last week, Sr. Charles from the Little Sisters mentioned it to me. How blessed is our parish to have young dads with their families at Mass. Sister, who travels to different parishes each week, said that you don’t see that as often in parishes anymore. Indeed. Have a blessed and Happy Father’s Day and thank you for being good fathers. Don’t give up and know how much you are loved and needed.
Little Sisters of the Poor
The Little Sisters sent a thank you note to us expressing their gratitude for your generosity. The Little Sisters collected $3,886.00. Their prayer for us is that “the Love of the Heart of Jesus continues to sustain you and overflow to your flock.”
