Has anybody else known a priest who objected to being called "Father"?

  • Thread starter Thread starter EmilyAlexandra
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
  1. Jesus never said to call no one “father” That would exclude God Himself!
  2. He taught, “Call no man your father” “Your father.” Note: Who was He teaching? The context of our Lord’s teaching is against the Pharisees, who perpetually justified their heartless actions by claiming “We have Abraham as our father.”
“We have Abraham as Our father”, “Call no man your father.” Do you see the message here? We have the Lord’s prayer, known as the “Our Father”

Notice that Saint Paul states “I have become your father…” It is spiritual fatherhood. Even in the secular world there are “second dad” and “adopted dad.”

This is the danger of parsing sentences in scripture which were never meant to be linguistically dissected.
 
Wannano said:
In my career I have worked closely with many priests so I identify with what you have presented. I have often wondered though how the usage of the term “Father” originated to identify a Catholic priest. Is it established upon anything other than custom? If other titles like Officer, Judge etc identify an honorific job title why aren’t Catholic priests called “Priest Larry” etc?
Click to expand...
Well, in fact when I am operating in French, I would sign my Christian name and Family name followed by a comma and “priest” in abbreviated translation as that is a convention that is used by diocesan priests.

I also operate in languages and cultures where the default reference to me would be the corresponding word for “pastor” instead of “priest”. Indeed my younger self was sometimes called the word for priest – and which was not meant or understood to be a kindly usage of the term. That is still not a happy memory and I leave it there.
 
Last edited:
I used to work with a lady who told me when I first arrived that she did not like to be greeted with, “good morning.” She preferred to be greeted with, “good morning, Sally”. I always said, “good morning, Sally.” and we got along well. The other guy on our team refused, and they never got along.
 
We are in agreement. I don’t know how I tagged you. 😊 I was answering @K9Buck
 
Last edited:
Suddenly remembered a joke my sister-in-law (who is a Carmelite nun… prioress of the monastery, in fact.) told us, about having one of the nuns call the local Benedictine monastery because she needed to speak to the prior:

“Brother? This is Sister. Mother would like to speak to Father.”

That being said, I have brother-in-law who is a priest, a sister-in-law who is prioress of the Carmelite monastery, and a niece who just took her final vows as a Carmelite nun. My husband is fond of saying, “My brother is Father, my sister is Mother, and my niece is Sister!”
 
Thank you. 😃
Don_Ruggero said:
I have the sense it involved people who had been sent to boarding school and it became ingrained. Perhaps that was this monks experience, like mine.
Click to expand...
Yes, this particular monk had gone to boarding school himself and then became a teacher at a boarding school. It may be that that is where he learned an abhorrence of people being excessively deferential! I only went to an ordinary British school, and I found it a little odd the way that the teachers were required to address the headmaster as “Headmaster”. One would hear the headmaster greet a colleague, saying, “Good morning, Mrs Thomas”, and Mrs Thomas would reply, “Good morning, Headmaster”.
Don_Ruggero said:
The use of Dom for Benedictine Monks and Dame for Benedictine Choir Nuns is more a custom of the English Congregation than it is with other Congregations of the Benedictine Confederation.
Click to expand...
That is interesting to know. I always thought it was all Benedictines. The Anglican ones also use Dom and Dame.
Don_Ruggero said:
I have known – I dare so most clerics have known – prelates (honorary or actual) who become a bit too attached to their honorifics and being called Excellency or Your Grace.
Click to expand...
Yes, a friend of mine who is Catholic told me that when she addressed a new parish priest as “Father”, he told her that he expected parishioners to address him as “Monsignor”. He didn’t last very long in that parish. Or the next one. He had been out of parish ministry for a long time, working in the Vatican and before that teaching at a seminary in Rome, so perhaps that is how he picked up such habits!

I have had more to do with Anglican clergy, and my impression has been that the worst are the ones who hold honorary titles of possibly dubious origin. I once met an Anglican priest who was just an ordinary parish priest, but he had been given an honorary archdeaconry in some distant province of the Anglican Communion, and he was most insistent about being styled as “the Venerable” and being addressed as “Mr Archdeacon”.

I tend to think that the more important somebody is, the less they seem to care about being important. I recall watching a TV debate shortly before the last general election in which members of the public were putting questions to Nicola Sturgeon among others. One gentleman addressed her quite properly as “First Minister”, but the next person to ask her a question just said “Nicola”, and she didn’t seem remotely bothered.
 
Don_Ruggero said:
I have known – I dare so most clerics have known – prelates (honorary or actual) who become a bit too attached to their honorifics and being called Excellency or Your Grace.
Click to expand...
On the other end of the spectrum, was +Archbishop Daniel Sheehan of Omaha, NE. Years ago while he was Archbishop, he was present at the wedding of a family friend. The reader at the Mass asked him in the sacristy how he preferred to be addressed, and he said, “Father Sheehan”.
 
Glennon_P said:
On the other end of the spectrum, was +Archbishop Daniel Sheehan of Omaha, NE. Years ago while he was Archbishop, he was present at the wedding of a family friend. The reader at the Mass asked him in the sacristy how he preferred to be addressed, and he said, “Father Sheehan”.
Click to expand...
Splendid! A man after my own heart.
 
I believe he had studied at Oxford many years ago. A lot of the English Benedictines seem to have studied at Oxford, as Ampleforth Abbey owns one of the colleges.
 
My bishop, who is also a cardinal, specifically stated he does not want to be addressed as ‘Your Eminence’, and encourages priests in the Archdiocese to tell parishioners to address them by their Christian names, not as ‘father.’ He says it promotes ‘clericalism.’ Very unfortunate.
 
EmilyAlexandra said:
, in summary, he had no objection to the title “Father” in principle, but considers that it should always be prefixed to a priest’s first name rather than being used as a term of deference equivalent to Sir/Ma’am etc
Click to expand...
Yes I met father Bob
And father dick
And sister Mary
And sister lucy
 
I suppose more than one Fr Last Name has been ‘relieved of the obligations of holy orders’ against his will?

Defining a group by their preferred salutation seems a bit of a stretch.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top