The Role of a Christian Father

 The Role of a Christian Father by Keith Chappell CTSFamily Matters Series 
I wish I could like this booklet more.  It has a lot of good material in it, but it left me feeling as though I had not got much from it.  That could of course be due to me, rather than the text, but it is a topic I am particularly interested in, having four children myself, and seeing fatherhood as a major part of my vocation. 
I think part of the problem, for me at least, is that the book lacks a coherent structure.  There is an Introduction, and then a series of chapters as follows:
1. The Loving Father and the Prodigal Son
2. Shaping the Father
3. The Perfect Father
4. Fatherhood as Sacrament
5. Being a Hero
6. The Unchanging Father 

The links between the chapters, and therefore the development of thought through the book is not clear; and the same is true within the chapters themselves. 

Perhaps I should have approached this as a series of reflections rather than as an essay – or even collection of essays.   On that basis I might have found it less frustrating; but nowhere does it suggest that approach.

Perhaps, too, I should have dipped in and found the bits that spoke to me rather than read it straight through.  For on reflection, it was the earlier chapters that I found less helpful, and the later ones that had some real insights.

The early comments on issues such as Work Life Balance and Paternity Leave and the truism that each child is unique, really did not speak to me at all; and later on,  there were comments which I didn’t find helpful either.  There is something a little too politically correct, for my taste, in comments such as ‘this does not mean that unmarried fathers cannot be just as good or loving as those that are married.’  I am not sure this is either true or helpful.  It seems to me that a father who is graced by the sacrament of marriage has a greater likelihood of being a better or more loving father - or perhaps, 'is offered greater graces' would be more accurate.

Likewise when I read ‘Only by being the hero in their own lives can they be all they are called to be,’ I am uncomfortable.  I see what the author means, in terms of fathers not trying to be the heroes in their kids’ lives, but part of me rebels.  I don’t want my kids to think of me as a hero – but I don’t want them to think of themselves as heroes either; that role, surely, belongs to Christ; and I am wary of the self-regarding approach implicit in people being the heroes of their own stories.  Somehow I don't think St Therese, the Little Flower, saw herself as the heroine of her own story...

So overall, I found this a disappointing read – hard to get through, and hard to remember what I’d taken from it when I got to the end.  I feel that good editing could have done much for the structure and that would have helped, but perhaps the problem is simply that the author and I live in very different intellectual worlds – or to put it another way, this is not the book on Christian Fatherhood I would have written…