Some people say we should let kids develop their own sense of morality. That being an intentional role model takes away their agency. There’s an adage of unknown age that goes something like this:
Your children will be indoctrinated. You get to choose the contents and goals of that indoctrination, though.
Understanding this and following it to its logical end reveals many things, chief among them for our purposes here being that you will be the role model your children seek; the choice lies in how to be a good and fruitful role model for your kids. But what does a good and fruitful role model work toward?
Know what your role modeling needs to do.
It is needlessly inefficient to attempt to improve something until we know what that something needs to do. A tractor company and a sports car company are going to ask their mechanical engineers to do two very different jobs. As a father, you and your wife “have the first responsibility for the education of (your) children” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This shouldn’t be new to a Heroic Father. As with all rights and responsibilities, we may sometimes assign a portion of them to others – which is why it is right and fitting for parents to expect their children to treat teachers with respect and love, and to expect teachers to treat the children with warmth and care. But the buck stops with you and your wife.
Of course the Church wants your children to be instructed in the Three Rs, STEM, underwater basketweaving, and how to read a range card and operate a spotting scope while posted on the roof to overwatch lanes of ingress to the property. All the profits of the world – from noblest charity to meanest bank account padding – are nothing if we ignore the prophets sent into the world. And the prophets have combined to tell us that God primarily wants you to concentrate on educating your children in faith, prayer, and virtues.
What benefit does your daughter gain by being a CEO who ignores the hungry and naked? How will your son grow in virtue if he is the food pantry coordinator that never talks to God? On what will your children stand when their prayers aren’t (immediately or “satisfactorily”) answered without a heartfelt and logical faith? Nothing, because without all three, Earth is the closest they will ever get to Heaven.
Model your faith for their faith.
Faith in the wrong thing is a dangerous endeavor. Role model the faith. To do so, though, you need to have faith. And live it. For we are “saved by faith”, but “faith without works is dead.” So it is not enough to think and feel. We must do. Faith is an action. In this world, it is starting the sauce before your wife gets home with the pasta. You have faith that she will do what she says she will do, but have direct proof that it will happen. Spiritually, we have faith that the things the Church says are true about God – all of Biblical and Traditional revelation – are true and we may safely dedicate our lives to those truths.
My children see my love of classic rock and metal, and largely share it. Similarly, your children are trying to find what kind of man they want to be or be with by watching you. Do you put everything in God’s hands, acknowledging that your role is to overflow love and wisdom into your children while letting God take care of all things large and small?
The first reaction to faith is spoken.
Pray for your children, but also for demonstration.
We must pray. Prayer isn’t formulae and ritual (although it can also be those things). Our English word “prayer” comes from the Latin word precari which means “to entreat”. But, in Latin, they used the word “oro” – to beg, ask for, pray, to beseech, plead, entreat, to worship, adore, to burn. Interesting tidbit with the last definition. To burn. Ancient people often burned fragrant things while praying, believing that the pleasingly-scented smoke would carry their prayers to the gods, or God. The Church still does this with incense and candles, but more as a sacramental (a sacred sign to point us to God). It is cool that that mode of prayer survived into the Latin language.
Anyhow, prayer isn’t simply asking God for things, it is a primary mode of worship. And it is a conversation. Imagine if the only time anyone ever contacted you, it was to ask for something. Sure, you might be willing to provide the thing being asked for. It might be necessary, even. But it sure would be nice if they sent you a Rick Roll video on your birthday.
No, I’m not suggesting you start to pray and then sing “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead. God does love to hear you sing, though. So maybe…. No, I’m saying that if you want to be a friend of God, talk to him before you need things. Thank him for your day, your house, your family, your job, your trials that bring you to his throne to ask for help. Ask him for wisdom and insight into your situations. Ask him to hold Rick Astley in his arms. Or any Rick. Anyone at all, really.
That also means bring your kids to Mass.
The ultimate form of prayer that we’ve been given is the Mass, or Divine Liturgy for my Eastern Rite friends. In it, we worship (oro) God in the way he has asked us to. We know this because it is what Christ began with the Last Supper, reaffirmed after his Resurrection, and the Holy Spirit confirmed in the Apostolic Age. And guess what? Prayer and Mass attendance reverberate through your life and improve your faith and works. And the faith and works of your children. Both together (prayer/Mass and faith/works) serve as bulwarks and guideposts for the last.
Virtue is a permanent role. Values can change.
Virtue as a concept was introduced to me when my grandfather first commented on my inability to wait for something. “Patience is a virtue. Seldom in a woman, never in a man.” Pretty funny to me now. But, I hadn’t heard the word “virtue” before and told him so. He explained that virtue is a good habit. That’s an ok explanation for a 10-year old. But we can do better. A virtue is an outward, habitual manifestation of conformity to moral standards. There are times when that outward manifestation is worked inside of us – for example, keeping our cruel thoughts to ourselves – but our neighbor benefits, even if through a negated potential evil.
Note the difference between virtue and value. One is a standard. The other is malleable by nature. Values change for legitimate reasons and illegitimate reasons. Before I was married and I was trying to make a career in music, I valued my friends at First Baptist, my bandmates, our fans and trying to find a wife. Those values morphed or in some cases fell away when I was married and in the Army: I now valued my fellow paratroopers, keeping Beth a happy wife, getting promoted and learning my role well enough to make it home alive. So don’t get me wrong. Values aren’t bad. But they’re not virtues.
Virtues are pillars of fire in the night.
Some might cry, “No! God is the pillar in the night.” Of course. But God is good. Not in the way that a child can be good, or hating the Yankees is good. But is goodness itself. Not full of goodness. But is the unplumbable font of good. And since virtue is conformity to morality, God is also virtue.
Your children will adopt virtue most easily and readily by watching you model it. And you can’t help modeling it if you are virtuous. You will become like a pillar of fire for them. Every time my children feel sad that someone they don’t know seems to be having a hard time, I know this to be true. And every time my children yell at each other and use words I’ve said to them, I know this to be true.
They will seek role models from other places if you don’t provide a strong model for them.
But what about other modes of fatherhood that the world presents?
Look, everything that is good is from God. That is part of his nature. Just as every hydrogen atom is of the Big Bang, every good, beautiful and true thing necessarily comes from God. But I’d be doing you and your children a disservice if I didn’t point out that the faith, prayer and virtues as presented by the Church that God Incarnate founded are the clearest and densest form.
Do you have any follow-on questions?
There’s a lot of assumption in the paragraphs above. And an honest person likely has many questions, or even objections. Drop them in the comments. Let’s have a conversation.
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