Fatherhood - What does it mean to be a Catholic dad today?

What does it really mean to be a Catholic dad today? In this episode, Baron and Greg tackle one of the most important — and often overlooked — roles in the modern family, exploring how faith, fatherhood, and purpose intersect in a world that makes it anything but easy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, welcome back to my brother's journey. I'm Greg Joseph, Chuck, one of your co-hosts, and with me is my other co-host, Baron Fink. Baron, great to see you this morning. Great to see you as well. Thank you. Um, certainly looking forward to today's session. I know we're going to uh have a couple interesting topics. Um, but as we normally do, we start off with prayer. Would you mind if I leading us?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Sure. Yep. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and amen. Dear Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to get together. We thank you for how you move throughout our lives to guide us, to to encourage us, um, and to help us to be your hands and feet and eyes and ears and everything else, Lord, that you want us to do to serve our brothers, uh, to and to do your will. We ask that you uh continue to be with us uh as we move move through this day and this week. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? Thank you. So uh, Baron, you know, uh this past Sunday was Father's Day. And so happy belated Father's Day to you. And same to you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh and um so that got me thinking a little bit um about the topic of what does it mean to be uh a Catholic dad, especially in today's world. And uh I thought I'd start by asking you this question. Uh you and I are both in our 60s.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

And so uh so we've seen a lot of interesting times of uh over the decades. Um do you think it's more difficult to be a Catholic father today versus say when you and I were kids growing up?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that I would necessarily have a proper perspective back then as I do today. Um I don't think it's I don't find it difficult to to be a Catholic dad in in today's world. Um but uh you know I guess the what the rubber meets the road, so to speak, is is how you how do you live that out? How do you how do you use that uh if you will, or or demonstrate that to your children um in a fatherly way that's impactful? Um and and how does society kind of move against that? And so, you know, I'm I'm blessed. You and I were talking before this podcast about uh fathers. My my my father is still alive, my my wife's father has since passed. But I'm you know, I felt a great blessing this past weekend uh being able to get on there. It turns out my brother was down there as well, and my mom was there. So we got to, you know, kind of celebrate Father's Day as a family, and I've quite honestly I I don't think I've ever felt closer to my dad than I have in these last few years as I've you know gotten more serious about well, maybe a better, better perspective of life in general and and family in particular that I've grown to appreciate more. And so I think trying to demonstrate that now to my kids and give them the attention, the direction, and letting them see through my actions and my words and everything else how important my faith walk is to me. And you're talking about that as well. How about how about you?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I think it is more challenging today to be a Catholic dad than maybe 30 years ago. But I'll I'll I'll you know, I'll just say right off the bat, my father was not um, although he was baptized Catholic, he he did not go to church. He he was not strong in his faith. My mother, on the other hand, was completely the opposite. She was a very, very strong, devout Catholic, and she was raised by my grandparents who attended Mass every day, prayed the rosary with their children every night before bed, those kinds of things. So um, so it was a little different. Um and my dad was a uh blue-collar worker, union guy. Um and if he could work Saturdays and Sundays, um, and he almost always did, it was time and a half on Saturday and double time on Sunday. And so for him, he would he would work seven days a week, and he worked at a lot uh because the place he worked at was very busy uh with work, and so um so he certainly didn't model what I think a uh Catholic dad would be like 30, 40 years ago, but just I think of the world that we live in today versus a world 40 years ago, and certainly we had challenges back then, and drugs were still prevalent back then when I was a kid growing up and things like that. But I just think today, um I just think with with kind of the internet and smartphones, and I just think that there's so much coming at our kids and grandkids now, and that really wasn't maybe as prevalent when I when I was growing up. I mean, TV was our biggest form of right telecommunication or whatever, right? And or communication, I should say. And you know, by and large, I didn't pay attention to TV really much. I mean, certainly not as a kid, and really not in high school or college either. As I look back at, I wasn't much for watching TV shows or the news or anything like that. So, you know, so maybe it I don't know if that made it a more innocent time or not, but it certainly wasn't as big as a distraction. Today, I mean, you know, I I know when we started raising our our live three sons, and we started raising our boys. Um, and this was about the time that you know phones and texting were becoming kind of pretty pretty prevalent, right? And I remember when we gave our kids their first phone for themselves to use, they were teenage boys, they were maybe uh maybe 13, 14, something like that. And I remember telling them that if you text more than you talk on the phone, we're taking the phone away from you. That would be good. Yeah, because nobody would have a phone in it. Because exactly, right? I mean, listen, the phone was there to, you know, and really we had told them it's really there more for emergency use, and at least initially. Even as they were getting older, we were challenging them that listen, you know, you look at your friends. They can't even look a person in the eye. All they know how to do is text. I know I'm I'm kind of getting off on a tangent here, but I just think that um there's so many distractions out there. And I think the use of of phones and the internet and and gaming, gaming with today's youth is uh it's an addiction. I mean, they the these guys design, and you're an IT guy, they design these games so that they become addictive, right? And I mean, there are there are kids that I mean they're adults now, they're they're in their 20s and 30s, and they're hardcore gamers because they got addicted to gaming at so at such a young age, and they're on, you know, I don't know, the fifth generation or sixth generation of of whatever that I'm not a gamer, so I I don't even know the the different names of the games. But my but my sons do. They they still game, they're in their 30s, and they're they're still they'll still go out there. Now they're not addicted to it, but they'll they'll their college friends will get online and say, hey, let's you know, let's let's play, I don't even I can't remember the name of the games, but you know, so yeah, yeah. And so I think um I see all of that as a greater challenge to parenting. Um I I see that as uh a more difficult challenge for moms and dads today than maybe what it was 30 or 40 years ago. And you know, I'm gonna we're gonna talk in just a little bit, I think, about, you know, maybe now that we're older, the advice we would give to uh maybe a uh a newly married couple, right? That uh or dad that or or someone that's expecting their first child, let's say. And if we had a young man here right now and was sitting with us and and he said, you know, I'm gonna be a dad for the first time, you guys are are fathers and grandfathers, what advice would you have for me? So I'm gonna ask you that question first, and I'm gonna give you, and then I'm gonna give you my answer. But if you had a young man here right now today, and like I said, he's he's gonna be a a first-time dad, and he and he asked you, Baron, what advice would you give me? I want to be a good Catholic dad. What advice would you give him?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Yes, that's a good question, Greg. I think um, well, my advice, I guess, would be that that your really our relationship, my relationship with with God permeates everything I do. Okay. So it's not just how I raise a a child, it's also how I treat my wife. Exactly. It's also how I uh you know, how I spend my time, uh, what's important to me. Um and so I think that you know, if you if you are grounded in faith, it gives you a sense of peace and calmness that is gonna be necessary throughout your life, whether you're dealing with an unruly child or hey, we need you know, we need to divide and conquer because so-and-so has a uh sports, you know, they gotta go to a soccer match and this versus in swim lessons, and that happens, as you as you know. And so if you're not if you're not grounded in something, okay, in my case, you know, you know, definitely it was our faith, those things can be stressful. And that stress can tend can break and and and hurt in all kinds of ways. Not just in raising a child, it can have an impact on their family. So I think you know, my uh this is why I think it's so important when we do you know pre-cana and everything else for for you know young people that are going to get married and talk about having kids, is understanding how you have to be unified. And and if you're not unified in both your faith, and that's what Christ really does, is help you to be unified, help you to be sacrificial in your love so that you you can do that. Because if you're if there's selfish love, it will not will not work. It'll cause problems all throughout. So you know, if you can impart that advice on a young man, that would be what I would tell.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah, no, I think that's that's solid. I think that's very solid advice. And you know, I was thinking about this last night, because obviously you and I were thinking about topics uh for the podcast, and when I you know suggested this one, um I I really started thinking about it. And so I I this is if so, if the young man was here and asked me this question, I'm gonna preface my answer because I had time to think about this, um, but also to say that um I will candidly admit I am I did not model what I'm about to get provide as answers when I was child rearing. So and and you could say, well, then you're being a hypocrite, and and yeah, maybe I am, but I uh what I would say is I wish, I wish I had been more involved in my faith at the time I was rearing children. Um you brought up uh sports as one thing. My three sons played very competitive hockey, and unfortunately, all of our hockey games and and tournaments were on the weekend. And so we didn't go to church. Um we were too busy chasing, you know, and and almost by default, if you if I look back now at those, because we had three of them and their ages differed, you know, we we probably gave a good 16 to 18 years of our lives around hockey rings, enjoyed it, but also now recognized that that became kind of our God in over over our Lord at that time, and so that's a huge mistake. So here's what I would as I think about it, if I if I if I was given advice to this young man, and I've given advice to to one of my children who are married, I only have one of one of the three that are married, but the first thing would be to model, and I think that's really what you're talking about, to model the importance of Christ in your life, in your faith. I think it's real important that as the as the dad, as the head of the house, that you set the example and realize that as that child is growing up, as it starts off as a as a baby, an infant, it is watching you constantly. Yes, it is. And it it's absorbing everything that you do, whether it's conscious or unconsciously, but it is absorbing it all. Uh, you know, when I think back now, I can see my mannerisms in some of my children. Okay, and it's kind of that old saying that you know, the what is it, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And that there's there's a certain amount of truth in that because they're they're watching you. And so what comes out of your lips, the way you treat your wife, the way you treat your neighbors, the way you treat strangers, the children are all seeing that. Yep. And you know, I'm I'm embarrassed to say some of the the really terrible things that came out of my mouth when I was angry in front of the kids. If if if a car cut me off, or at a hockey game, you get pretty charged up, and some parent on the other side was you know yelling at your kid for you know a check he didn't like or whatever. I mean, it's unbelievable some of it. And now I recognize that, like, hey, the kids will have would have seen that, would have seen how I handled that. And uh, so that would have been number one. The the other, the the next one I would say, and this is one that I tried to do though, even though I was a very flawed father, um, but to pray with your children every opportunity, and certainly at night before they go to bed, especially when they're young and growing up. And uh and I my wife and I tried to do that. Um, and I think we we we mostly did that. I can't remember when we stopped doing it exactly, it was probably preteens or something like that. But um, but I think for the children to understand the importance of prayer and what prayer really is about, um, it's not you know that God is a magic genie, but that God is our creator, that God is our true father. Um I think the other one, and this one you might find interesting, I'd like to get your perspective, um, is to teach them that it's okay to fail and to allow them to fail. You know what I mean? I sometimes think that some parents don't ever want their children to fail, that they want to make it so that so that there's no obstacles ever to a child's life. And I think that's that's not reality, right? And it's uh I think it's important to to teach our children that there's great learning in failure. And go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

And not just I'm not just a failure, and and I'll I'll repeat this because my wife I've encouraged her to not listen to these broadcasts, and so she doesn't. So uh anyway, but uh but to your point about teaching children, we were getting ready to half camp and all and we're having some grandkids come stay with us for a week. And we had life jackets for everybody, but the life jackets for the girls didn't, they weren't the same color. They would work perfectly fine, but they weren't the same color. And so, based on the past experience or whatever else, my wife ordered another duplicate of one of the life jackets so they would be matching so that the two kids, the two girls would not get into an argument about who gets to wear the different color. And I thought, well, okay, so so now I have an extra life jacket, and that's fine. But and my reality is that that life is all gonna be full of that type of stuff all the time. And so you're missing an opportunity, in my view, okay, to teach them a valuable lesson of life that you know you've got to learn to share. You've got to learn to to do trade-offs, you've got to learn to appreciate you know someone else having something you don't, whatever the case may be, because life isn't gonna be equal for everybody all the time. Sacrifice. Right?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

So maybe sacrifice. That's my favorite color, but I love you as my sister. Um right, yeah, exactly. And you know, I'm gonna add this. This actually wasn't in there, but as I thought about it, not only allow them to fail, but also to understand that adversity is also a very good lesson to learn in life. Yes, it is, and you know, we all of the best, right? And and so uh I know that that we've had some major adversity uh challenges raising our children at different times in their life, and we helped them through that and and tried to show them that, and that's you know, uh depending on what that adversity is, oftentimes people will be like, Well, why would God allow that? Well, God's allowing that so that you can learn and grow from it because I truly believe that you grow more by overcoming adversity than if you just had this nice, easy right, sure. Yeah. So um you said it, I I think, and I'll just agree, uh amplify it, to demonstrate your love for your wife, to exhibit, of course, that loving relationship, but also that it's the tenderness, that it's okay to to show that tender side of you as a as a loving father and as a loving husband. Um and then I think you know, one of the things I would advise this young man is one of the highest priorities has to be getting to heaven, to getting yourself to heaven, getting your wife to heaven, and getting your your family, your child, your children to heaven, and to explain to the the faith to your children, to explain you know why why we do what we do, why we believe what we believe, and why heaven is the ultimate goal of our of our of our journey, right? And I think that's really important for for children to understand that because if I would be I would I would be scared to think about if if we're not setting an objective of heaven for our children as parents, then who's filling that void and what kind of objective are they setting for their for our kids, right? And we know that the world the world will define success much differently, hopefully, than than than we do, right? And that was one of the things I did tell one of my my sons, or actually I told all three of my sons this that, you know, I said, your generation is probably the most studied generation by marketing people of any generation. From the moment you are born, literally, there are marketing people that are watching every step of your growth along the way, and they're beginning to understand what kind of what kind of videos you watch, what kind of music you listen to, what kind of clothing you buy, what kind of as you get older, kind of nightclubs you go to, what kind of alcohol you, I mean, all of that, right? They're they're watching it the whole time. And they are going to try to define success for you. You know, success is you got to have a house, you gotta have a car. Well, you can't just have any car, you gotta have a really luxury car. They can't, you know, that's a nice starter home, but you're making more income now, so you got to have a nice, a bigger home. When you get into that bigger home because your income's going up, you've got to have even a bigger home than that, and you're not in the right neighborhood. And you know what? You're not, you're not, you're not hanging out at the right social clubs, and you're so you know, the world's gonna define it much differently than than the way the Lord does, right? And I think again, we go back to, I think it's important, and I think this is something that you mentioned uh that I totally absolutely agree. We got to show them what healthy relationships look like. And and I think, as you said, it's got to permeate from you the way that you treat one another. You know, what I love about Father Bernard so much is that he is a man of love. And you can feel that love, you can see that love every single day. It does exactly what you use. I love that term. It permeates from him, and it does from you too, my brother. Um, and you know, so I think it's really important for them to understand what a healthy relationship is. Now I know you're probably saying, holy cow, Gregor, are you still going on with this list of videos? You can see I really thought about this for a while, right? Um, I mean but uh hey, here's the good news to the, and I'm running, wow, I can't even believe how long I've been running here, but okay, just two more quick ones. I and I absolutely believe this with all my heart. I think it is so important to teach your children that you love them unconditionally, that there's absolutely nothing that they can do that would ever separate them from your love. And of course, that's the same as God. God loves them unconditionally. He created them, right? And there is absolutely nothing that they could do that would separate God's love for them. God will never turn his back on his creation, nor will a dad or a mom turn their back on their children. Never. Yep. And so, and then that last one is just simply, again, and I might have said it earlier, so it's really educating them on the Catholic faith and explaining to them why we believe what we believe and let them know that, hey, we're not going to mass just to check a box. And um, and you know, when I was growing up, I I that's what it felt like to me. I mean, I I didn't understand my faith that well. And so when I went to church with my mom, I always felt it was like I'm just going through the motions to check a box to make mom feel good.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

And I think Well, and then don't beat yourself up about that, Greg, because I mean that's that's everybody's experience, more or less. I mean, you have you may have some children out there who really are are truly aligned with faith and have that relationship with God, but that's very few and far between, more than likely. Yeah. I mean, they're they're learning. They don't understand you you send them to school and they're like, why am I doing this? I don't want to do this, I want to go play. They have no, they have nothing to to tell them why that's important. And and even though the teachers will say this is important, and you and I will say it's important, the kids are still the kids. And so that's I mean, that's just life. That's it. And they will, but but by repetition and by demonstration, they will see, as you said, they will they will mirror what they see. And and if they don't see it at home, they're not gonna mirror it. They'll have nothing to mirror.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Right. And they're gonna look for it somewhere else. Yeah. Well, I listen, this is unbelievable. I think we just set a new record for our own line. And I apologize to everyone for that, but uh a great session. So, hey, thank you for tuning in and being part of my brother's journey. Seek Jesus in all you do and be fishers of men. God bless you. Please join us again. Viva Jesus.