Why Do Catholics ...?

What wisdom does the Church offer on fatherhood?

St. Joseph is the patron saint of fathers, and many Church documents and papal speeches include teachings on fatherhood.

"It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father," Pope St. John XXIII once said.

Pope St. John Paul II expounded upon this in Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World):

"Love for his wife as mother of their children and love for the children themselves are for the man the natural way of understanding and fulfilling his own fatherhood. …

"In revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God, a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family: He will perform this task by exercising generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother, by a more solicitous commitment to education, a task he shares with his wife, by work which is never a cause of division in the family but promotes its unity and stability, and by means of the witness he gives of an adult Christian life which effectively introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church."

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