The Christian Father

In many Catholic homes the mother does the praying. Bishop Franz Wilhelm Cramer wrote this short book for the father in such a home, and he does not let him off. A mother can teach the children all she likes, he says, but they copy their father, and if he treats the faith as her department they will learn to do the same. He meets the objection that church is a woman’s business: a father does from duty what a mother does by inclination, and his way is harder, but nothing asked of him here is beneath a man.

The advice is plain enough to act on this week. Say your prayers morning and evening, and get to confession and communion every few weeks. Keep Sunday for church and the family, and if you like a glass with friends, fix the hour you leave and the amount you drink. Set hours for the house and a time by which everyone is home. When a child must be punished, choose the correction the way a workman chooses a tool, and never in anger. He adds that the years spent feeding, clothing, teaching, and correcting children are counted in heaven as works of mercy.

Near the end a priest remembers his own father, a Westphalian farmer who made his children toys, walked them through his fields on Sundays, taught them to pray there, and once left a stubborn boy locked in the barn until evening. The second part is two dozen prayers written for a father: morning and evening, at Mass, on his wedding anniversary, for his wife, for his children’s patron saints, and a Litany of the Christian Father.