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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Call No Man Father?

St. Josemaria Escriva celebrating Mass.
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus admonishes his followers not to call any man on Earth father (Matt 23:9). How can this be?

Catholic Answers poses the question this way:
Many Protestants claim that when Catholics address priests as "father," they are engaging in an unbiblical practice that Jesus forbade: "Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" (Matt. 23:9).

In his tract 10 Reasons Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic, Fundamentalist anti-Catholic writer Donald Maconaghie quotes this passage as support for his charge that "the papacy is a hoax."

Bill Jackson, another Fundamentalist who runs a full-time anti-Catholic organization, says in his book Christian’s Guide To Roman Catholicism that a "study of Matthew 23:9 reveals that Jesus was talking about being called father as a title of religious superiority . . . [which is] the basis for the [Catholic] hierarchy" (53).
How should Catholics respond to such objections?
 Catholic Answers addresses this common question in this answer.

Here's Tim Staples answer:

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