Why Did You Become a Priest?/Training of a Boy/Children of Divorced/Love of Couples ~ Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J.

Questions People Ask About Their Children – Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J. 

Why did you become a priest? 

Chiefly because God was good and I was very lucky. In the order of time…I suppose I owe my vocation first of all to my mother. She prayed that I would be a priest. She set me the example of a fine Catholic faith. She sent me to a high school and a college that has seen develop from its student body many another priest.    

Then I met priests and priests in training for whom I had admiration. As baseball stars inspire boys to play baseball, and young men become doctors because of their high regard for physicians they have met, I thought of the priesthood because of the examples of priests and priests in the making.    

It seemed to me too that the life of a priest was naturally one in which I should be able to do many of the things I enjoy doing. What seemed to me then has certainly turned out to be the case.    

I had a desire to save my own soul. The priesthood seemed the profession that most completely guaranteed that desire. 

In a vague sort of way I, like most fairly decent kids, wanted to do some good for others — and for the world. Where, I argued, still rather vaguely, would this be more fully possible than in the priesthood?    

But in the last analysis a vocation to the priesthood is the grace of God… and the fact that two mothers — one on earth and one in heaven — took an effective hand.  

I arrived at the threshold of my training almost without personal impulse. I continued because the life proved far more wonderful than I had dreamed, and the promise of the priesthood grew constantly more desirable. I regard as deeply blessed others who have my luck.    

How can a parent train a boy to be a priest?    

ONE THING IS SURE: You mustn’t tell the boy you want him to be a priest. Priesthood and the vocation to priesthood is a gift of God. Yet we get God’s gifts for ourselves and for others, not by chance, but by cooperation with God and prayer to Him.    

Parents are wise if they pray for a vocation for their boy. They should pray however not merely that he will be a priest but that he will be a good priest.    

From the boy’s infancy the setting should be right: holy, good, normal, natural — and supernatural. Those adjectives are all intended to modify the noun setting.    

The faith of the parents, manifested in practice more than in words, will pass on normally to the child. Their high respect for the priesthood and their reverence for and kindliness toward priests will affect him powerfully.    

The choice of a school for the boy has much to do with this vocation. His education should of course be Catholic. The kind of high school and college that he attends — and by that I mean the type of priests (secular or religious) who direct it — will have a profound directive influence upon his vocation.  

Parents might be wise to inquire whether a particular school has been marked by many vocations or whether few boys go from it to the seminary or the novitiate.    

In most other things his life should be natural and normal. It should include games and sports, parties and pleasant friendships, a wholesome attitude toward girls, a clean and happy social life.    

Boys do not like to be urged into the priesthood. Mothers especially are sometimes insistent and demanding about it. The whole religious attitude of parents can be much more effective than their words. Their prayers will have a hundred times the efficacy of their pleas.    

But in general good parents, who have strong faith and a prayerful regard for their children’s future, are likely to be blessed with children whose vocations take them to the seminary or the novitiate. 

What would you suggest as the best means to bring a seventeen-year-old son and his father closer together?    

If they are not already close, I’m afraid the situation is not too hopeful. If they are already close, the trick of bringing them closer is not too difficult.    

What are the common interests of men? Sports chiefly, sports participated in together or seen together … enthusiasms for games of all sorts, shared and discussed.    

A boy of that age responds to his father’s intelligent and unobtrusive interest in his school — his teams, his studies, his grades, his teachers. Schools nowadays usually have father-son clubs and meetings for fathers. The wise father attends all such meetings and sits with his son — or with the boy’s classmates, if the son is playing — during the school’s athletic events.    

Sometimes fathers and sons have hobbies in common. They collect stamps. They are interested in photography. They enjoy the woods and the open spaces. The father takes the boy hunting and fishing, invites him out with parties of his men friends who are going on field trips.    

A father can teach his boy card games and give him a social interest in the more intellectual forms of card playing.    

A smart father sometimes invites his son downtown to lunch, notably to meet his friends — with or without the sons of those friends. He takes his son through his business or factory and gives the lad insight into what he is doing there.   He listens when the boy wants to talk — and in general listens much more than he talks.  

If his son has a skill or knowledge that the father hasn’t — an interest in aviation or in Diesel engines for instance — he is not too proud to listen when his boy explains these things to him. Indeed he is proud to be pupil to his own son.    

All this is much easier if the relationship between father and son has existed from the infancy of the son. A father cannot hope for too much success if at six o’clock in the evening of February 3, when the boy is already seventeen years old, he decides to get closer to his son. The boy thinks this sudden burst of interest is queer. The father is self-conscious. Both will do a lot of unhappy gulping and feinting-— and in the end probably miss the connection.    

Can a child of divorced parents ever be completely normal – psychologically and emotionally? What happens when the parent in charge is really devoted to the care of the child?

A number of years ago one of our big-circulation weeklies ran an article called, “I Am the Child of Four Parents.” It was the story of a young woman whose parents had divorced, married again, and competed fiercely for her affection. Each parent with his or her new partner struggled in a racking tug of war that pulled the girl emotionally apart.    

Around that time I met a young woman who was in a similar situation as far as the divorce of her parents was concerned. But when I mentioned the article, she laughed bitterly. “I could write another article,” she said, “called, ‘I Am the Child of No Parents”’. Each of my parents is remarried, and the one thing neither wants is to be reminded of that first failure or have me around as the element to create jealousy and disunion in the new marriage.” She was incidentally a real psychic problem.    

Nature meant that children should have the benefit of a joint guardianship, the father and the mother each contributing his and her individual characteristics both as parent and specifically as father or mother

Something is missing when there is only one parent. There are deficiencies. In the case where one parent dies, the child remains the charge of the other parent; he does not however recall the often blighting experience of the pre-divorce episodes. He does not feel the pull toward a parent who no longer has part in his life.    

One wonderful parent has been able to do remarkable things with a child. Yet there is the pressing danger that, in an effort to make up for the lack of the second parent, the one parent may spoil the child. He or she may be too kind and generous and lenient. He or she may strive to find in the love of the child an equivalent for the lost love of the other parent. That is not good.    

That person is wise who makes the best of any existing situation, however unsatisfactory or bad. Just so, the innocent parent now responsible for the care of the child, is wise to do as good a job as possible. And the job may be very good indeed.    

But nature meant children to have two parents sharing in the care, training, and character formation and development of the children. It is sad when the broken marriage of two adults means a handicap to the guiltless child.    

Do you think that true love between two people is greater at the time of their marriage or after many years of normal married life?    

Today most young couples marry on a tidal wave of romantic love… and tidal waves have a way of receding.    

But if a couple have obeyed God’s laws, worked together in unity, known joys together and borne burdens together, been brought close by the partnership of a lifetime, their love ripens and matures. Their love is like their wisdom: It grows greater in quantity and deeper in kind.    

The mistake is to think that romantic love is the only kind of love.    

Love is a thing of the whole man and the whole woman, body and soul. As bodies develop and souls mature, love should move along in the rising growth of personality and character.    

After all love is a virtue. Virtues improve with practice. Practice makes for habits. Strong habits are characteristic only of well-developed and matured personalities.

In happy families, father and mother occupy a position of equality, but there is no misunderstanding that he is the head. The importance of the mother is an accepted fact. She is the heart of the family–the custodian of love and warmth, the first comforter and educator of the children. In according her a just status, however, we must not weaken the father’s traditional position. -Fr. George Kelly, 1950’s

Honesty and sincerity bring about confidence and a spirit of loyalty. Few things contribute more to the success of a marriage. The enemies of honesty and sincerity are nagging, miserliness, jealousy and in-law trouble…

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