Boy Need A Father

The slang expression "Who's your daddy?" holds a lot of of significance these days owing to the "man crisis." A boy passing into young manhood is at a severe disadvantage without a father rooted in the Faith. That is so blindingly clear it seems almost insulting to a person's intelligence to even say it. But it must be said.

No good faithful man in a boy's life is almost guaranteed to spell a world of hurt for the boy — and not just in the usually considered way. Of course the absence of a faith-filled father will create a huge deficit in the boy's life. There are the rare exceptions, of course, that a substitute dad in the form of a grandfather or uncle or even a very involved coach can serve as a good safety net, but those cases are not the rule.

And the great disadvantage is this: Not only does a young fellow not have a strong man to harness all that energy and vinegar of youth and properly direct it, but he has a whole world of horrible men out there willing to lead him down the path of destruction. It isn't really a question of not having a dad as much as it is the question "Who is your daddy?"

There are simply too many men waiting to devour young impressionable boys. From Hollywood celebrities and entertainment industry icons, there are dozens of males who substitute for a missing father. Instead of teaching boys how to be men, they teach boys how to stay boys, self-absorbed juveniles who gratify themselves with sex and video games. But this eventually has the negative impact of building up a rage in boys as they mature into biological males. Somewhere down in their spirit they feel the pain of rejection. This isn't the sad case of a father dying. It's the even sadder case of a father rejecting — actively rejecting his son, and his son knows that on some level and incorporates it into his self-perception. This can inspire a self-loathing and anger and result in all kinds of bad choices which the boy is predisposed to make.

And we aren't talking about just physically absent fathers, but rather spiritually negligent fathers — those who do not pass on or instill the Faith in their children. They rob their child of spiritual security and youthful happiness. Right at the moment that a boy turns to look for his dad, in need of his Heavenly Dad, he quite often finds neither.

What a blow to his psyche and even more shattering blow to his soul. The boy is now left to fend for himself and go in emotional search of his father — any father, if need be. Fueled by anger, a boy can accept any male as his father, figuratively more than literally. So he goes all in on the images of manhood that show him violence, sex, drugs, alcohol — whatever seems to anesthetize the hurt. These things feed his anger more than subdue it. And the ability to go off the rails oftentimes becomes a reality.

The culture is more than happy to lay waste young men, to abuse them by feeding the dark side of their innate masculinity, the destructive side. The culture cares nothing for young men except to profit from them or even exploit them. Boys need a father, a faith-filled man of God to love them deeply who is there for them every day teaching them how to be self-sacrificing. Consider this: Even though strictly speaking He didn't need an earthly father, His Heavenly Father gave charge of Jesus to St. Joseph.

When the final curtain finishes dropping on Western civilization, one of the saddest lines of our history will be the anguished tale of boys who had no fathers to teach them about their Heavenly Father.

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