What do Catholic's call priest "Father" whent he Bible forbids it?

Question

Matthew 23:9
"And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven." (NIV)
"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." (KJV)

I am not attacking this act by Catholics. I respect your beliefs; I am just curious as to your thoughts on the matter.

Answer 1

Matthew 23:6-9 reads, "They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation 'Rabbi.' As for you, do not be called 'Rabbi.' You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven."

Are we also not to call anyone "teacher" or "doctor" which is how "rabbi' would translate? I think not.

This is call for humility for those in leadership roles. Not to be taken literally.

We are not to deny our male parent and cut the Commandment to honor our father and mother in half.

Some leaders in any church may fall into the same folly of a lack of humility as the pharisees of Jesus' day.

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

This statement is the most common on how the Catholics "try" to justify it.

"Catholic priests share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ (not a human priesthood), and their sacred ministry partakes of the Fatherhood of God."

The problem with that is the fact that all men are equal. The priest is no closer to God than anyone else. Neither is the Pope, or a preacher, or a rabbi, etc.

There is no biblical scripture that gives a priest a higher standing in God's eyes. Christ is the head of the church and each congregation is "overseen" by Elders and Deacons. You will find Elders and Deacons in the New Testament, you will NOT find mention of a Pope or Cardinal or "spiritual, earthly Father" anywhere in the New Testament.

So, the answer to the question is... the Catholics have long ignored the teaching of the scriptures on the subject of calling their "priests" and other earthly leaders, Father.

The Catholic religion also states that Peter was the first Pope, but Peter was married and lived 500 years before the Roman Catholic church was established.

This is only the tip of the iceburg on the number of unscriptural traditions that the Catholic church tries to say are Biblical.

See source for more info.

Answer 3

Before I attempt to answer the question, I would ask that we consider verses like Matthew 1:22-23, Hebrews 1:8-9, and others. Those verses are telling us that the Old Testament texts being cited are references to Jesus. Imagine if you lived in a time before Matthew or Hebrews was written, and all you had were the relevant Old Testament texts (e.g. Isaiah, Psalms); how obvious would it be to you that those texts were referring to Jesus? It seems to me to be a plain fact that without Matthew or Paul, we'd have no clue those texts were referring to Jesus. Such an interpretation or understanding would be far from clear.

Why did I bring that up? Because it is relevant in this sense: the early Church figures (i.e. apostles and their successors) are far more capable of discerning the true meaning of the Biblical texts than we are. Even if their interpretation is not obvious to us, their interpretation nonetheless trumps our own.

Now, several people have noted that Paul and Stephen referred to other men with authority as "father" (Acts 7:2, Acts 22:1). Who is better suited for knowing what Jesus meant? Some 21st century Protestant armed only with an English translation of the Bible? Or Paul and Stephen? To ask the question is to answer it!

Paul himself fathered us through the gospel. What do you think that means? Obviously he was not saying he engaged in the marriage act with our biological mothers. He means he is our father in a spiritual or religious sense (just as Catholics see the presbyters in their Church).

Regardless, while my post overlaps with the posts of others before me on this subject, there is one verse that nobody brought up. Before I become the first to cite this verse, note that the Catholic Church did not form doctrines by reading some English translation performed by Protestants (e.g. the KJV or NIV); rather, they were employing the oral tradition as well as reading the original Greek texts (and, later, Latin translations of those texts).

With that in mind, consider 1 Timothy 5:1-2. That passage gives the exact structure one finds today in the Catholic Church, with father priests/bishops, mother superiors, brother monks and sister nuns. But wait, it gets better. Note that in the Catholic Church, priests and bishops are known as presbyters. The exact word employed in the Greek text of 1 Timothy 5:1 is "presbytero". The most literal reading of the Greek text (which is the text the Catholic Church started with) results in an exhortation from Paul that we recognize presbyters (i.e. the elders of the community of faith, i.e. priests and bishops) as fathers.

For fundamentalist anti-Catholics, especially those who hold strongly to the King James Version, I would invite you to read the translators preface of the KJV. The translators themselves (men who had a far better understanding of the KJV text than some guy or girl reading a lone verse) refer to the Church Fathers as "Fathers," and it even calls Saint Jerome "a most learned father". Even the men who gave us the KJV knew that the Biblical text as a whole outweighs an interpretation derived from a lone verse with regard to whether we can call those men with authority in the church "fathers".

Answer 4

The Bible passage refers to calling some one father as in supreme father/god. This means that you shouldn't call others your God, or supreme father. Only in the English language do people call priests father. Priests are in a sense our fathers not biologically or spiritually, but because they take care of us in the particular parish, and they teach us and reside over the mass and communicate Christ to the people.

Answer 5

In Matthew 23:1-12, when Jesus tells us to call no man "father" or "teacher" He is using figurative language to emphasize that all legitimate authority and truth ultimately come from God. We are not to take these passages literally.

Throughout the Bible men are called fathers and teachers. Both Catholics and Protestants call earthly men fathers and teachers. St. Stephen and St. Paul call the Jewish religious leaders "fathers" (Acts 7:2 and 22:1). St. Paul calls the Corinthians "my beloved children...for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel" (1 Cor 4:14-15; also see 1 Thess 2:11, 1 Tim 1:2, and Tit 1:4). St Paul became their spiritual father because he cooperated with God in giving them spiritual life, just as a biological father cooperates with God in giving physical life. Catholics call their priests "father" because, like St. Paul, priests cooperate with God in giving spiritual life to their flock by preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments.

God bless,
Stanbo

Answer 6

If you read the whole chapter, you will see that Jesus is talking about exhalting men. Men who do religious things to be revered by others. Jesus also says do not call anyone Rabbi, or Leader...

We call the Priest "Father" becasue he is our spiritual father, he guides and teaches us about Jesus and God.

Paul’s statement, "I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 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. 4:14–15).

Here Paul refers to himself as "your father"...why would Paul disobey Christ...Paul wouldn't. Obviously, Paul knew that Jesus didn't literally mean to call no man father. You cannot pull phrases out of chapters and books of the Bible and assign meanings to them, you need to read it as a whole and use the understanding of Christ and his teachings as well. What Jesus is talking about in this chapter is so much more important then this small, mistranslation...yet it's one that Protestant's have been unsuccessfully slinging at the Church for centuries.

Also, many people refer to their earthly male parent as Father.

http://www.protomartyr.org/father.html
http://www.catholic.com/library/Call_No_Man_Father.asp
http://www.trosch.org/for/no-fathr.htm
http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/father.html
http://www.scborromeo.org/papers/father.PDF
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ct_nomanfather.html

There are many more websites...but I think you get the idea.

Answer 7

I am not sure,however,we need to be in defense of the Gospel,rather than picking on our Catholic brothers,over peripheral doctrine. I don't mean to sound mean,but some of our Catholic brothers and sisters are being hurt by those of us of the protestant faith. I understand that this is a valid question,but some of us are evidently bashing Catholics and I can not be a part of that..

Answer 8

And there's NOTHING that you do that is forbidden in the Bible? I wouldn't bet a PENNY on that.

Maybe you need to stop pointing your fingers and criticizing other religions and people's perceived imperfections when you yourself are most certainly loaded with them. If you are truly a Christian, and know a whit about what it is you're supposed to believe, then you would know that your arrogance and self-righteousness would be considered shameful to Jesus. Worry about yourself.

Answer 9

First, the imperative "call no man father" does not apply to one’s biological father. It also doesn’t exclude calling one’s ancestors "father."

Second, there are numerous examples in the New Testament of the term "father" being used as a form of address and reference, even for men who are not biologically related to the speaker. There are, in fact, so many uses of "father" in the New Testament, that the Fundamentalist interpretation of Matthew 23 (and the objection to Catholics calling priests "father") must be wrong,



"So it was not you who sent me here, but God; and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt" (Gen. 45:8).

"I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know" (Job 29:16).

"In that day I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah . . . and I will clothe him with [a] robe, and will bind [a] girdle on him, and will commit . . . authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah" (Is. 22:20–21).

Elisha cries, "My father, my father!" to Elijah as the latter is carried up to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kgs. 2:12). Later, Elisha himself is called a father by the king of Israel (2 Kgs. 6:21).

Acts 7:2, where Stephen refers to "our father Abraham," or in Romans 9:10, where Paul speaks of "our father Isaac."


"But Timothy’s worth you know, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel" (Phil. 2:22).

"I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment" (Philem. 10).

"I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 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. 4:14–15).



Since the Bible frequently speaks of this spiritual fatherhood, we Catholics acknowledge it and follow the custom of the apostles by calling priests "father." Priests, in turn, follow the apostles’ biblical example by referring to members of their flock as "my son" or "my child"

Answer 10

so, according to the bible passage that you picked (without taking into consideration the context of which it is said), I cannot call my Dad 'Father'?

The answer to your question:

Catholics call their priests ``Father'' because in all matters pertaining to Christ's holy faith they perform the duties of a father, representing God. The priest is the agent of the Christian's supernatural birth and sustenance in the world. ``Father'' is a title which does not conflict in the slightest with Matthew 23:9. Christ forbids the Christian to acknowledge any fatherhood which conflicts with the Fatherhood of God--just as He commands the Christian to ``hate'' his father, mother, wife, and his own life, insofar as these conflict with the following of Christ. (Luke 14:26). But Christ does not forbid Christians to call His own representatives by the name of ``Father.'' Catholic priests share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ (not a human priesthood), and their sacred ministry partakes of the Fatherhood of God. Like St. Paul (himself a Catholic priest), every Catholic priest can refer to the souls he has spiritually begotten as his children in Christ. (1 Cor. 4:14). St. Paul considered himself to be the spiritual father, in Christ, of the Corinthians: ``For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you.'' (I Cor. 4:15). The title of ``Father'' is entirely proper for an ordained priest of Jesus Christ.

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