A Catholic Take-Home Message for Biological Fathers
When viewing the Gettler study from the perspective of Christian anthropology, I proffer the following take-home message for biological fathers who, as faithful Catholics, are trying to live out their vocation to marriage and parenthood:
- The source for your evolved biological propensity to take care of your offspring is the Center of all created things—the active creative force of God who works in and through the secondary causes of evolution and the natural process of human conception, implanting the seed of divine “self-donation” within every newly conceived human being.
- Due to its divine origin, your paternal “investment” in childcare, facilitated even by your hormones, is more than the sum of its parts—more than just giving the child your time, energy, and material resources—as it calls for nothing less than the total gift of your very being.
- Your natural adaptation to childcare “primes the pump” of your paternal self-giving love, making it that much easier for you to freely and intelligently choose and meet your children’s basic human needs:
- To live, to be healthy, and to be safe so they can do something with their healthy life;
- To be raised in a family so they can develop socially, psychologically, and morally in and through family life, especially as they witness their parents’ responsible procreative decisions;
- To live in a society where its various citizens, with their different gifts, skills, and professions, can help them mature and develop in mind and heart;
- To know the truth of reality, that is, to acquire the knowledge that will enable them to realize lesser goods such as making a living, healing diseases, and educating others, identifying which professions, in turn, help them attain the higher good of integral human fulfillment—and even transcend it—by knowing world cultures, history, the wonders of the universe, and, above all, its wise and all-good creator-God.
- Every time you freely choose to cooperate with your evolved hormonal propensities—that is, you forget self and put your children and spouse first—you reenact the gospel paradox of dying-to-rise and losing-to-find.
- On the one side, you die to self: as, for the umpteenth time, you feed your baby or change his diaper; you read Goodnight Moon to your toddler or rock her when she wakes up at 1 AM with an earache; you help your 10 year-old to solve word problems or perfect his soccer kick.
- On the other, you find yourself: God rushes in with his grace to fill your void, to subsidize your naturally lower levels of T with divine strength so you can continue to meet the relentless day-to-day demands of parenting, and to fortify and enrich you and your relationship not just with God, but with your children and your wife.
- As a father, you’re not just biologically adapted to the provision of childcare but to its ground (goodness itself) , specifically to the good of self-donation perfectly summed up by Divine Love so that the trajectory of your hormonal mechanisms are aimed not just at the material, temporal flourishing of your children and your wife, but also at their spiritual, eternal wellbeing.
Augustine and John Paul II were right, of course: faith and science shed light on one another, protecting scientists and believers alike from a reductionist view of reality.
Sister Renee Mirkes, O.S.F., Ph.D. is Director of the Center for NaProEthics, the ethics division of the Pope Paul VI Institute. She may be reached at: ethics@popepaulvi.com
Articles by Sister Renee:
Print 
PDF 
Pages: 1 2