Catholics call priests "father" because this practice has come down to us from the Apostles. To many Protestants, this statement may seem to fly in the face of Jesus' command in the Gospels: "Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" (Matt. 23:9). In this instance, however, as He often did, the Lord was teaching through hyperbole in order to underscore the fact that life and wisdom come to us, not from human beings, but from God (cf. Eph. 3:14-15). This point is lost, though, on those who interpret Jesus' saying in isolation from the rest of Scripture. The fact is, the Apostles routinely regarded themselves as the spiritual fathers of the faithful, and the biblical support for this practice is extensive. Saint Paul, for instance, tells the Christians in Corinth, "For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4:15; see also Judg. 18:19; 1 Thess. 2:11; 1 Pet. 5:13; 1 John 2:1, et al.). This pious custom continued after the death of the Apostles. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, for example, writes in about 107, “Respect the bishop as a type of the Father” (Letter to the Trallians 3:1). And the leaders of the Church of Lyons, writing to Pope Eleutherus in 177, say, “We pray, Father Eleutherus, that you may rejoice in God in all things and always” (Eusebius, Church History 5:4:2). Coincidentally, the title "Pope," initially applied to all bishops, but eventually exclusively to the Bishop of Rome, is derived from the Greek Papa or Father.
Discovering the What & Why of the Catholic Faith
Discovering the What & Why of the Catholic Faith