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By Christine J. Murray
©Catholic Online 2004
One day Fred came home with his buddy Sam. He introduced Sam to his father. But everyone thought Fred was odd. Sometimes he would call Sam's dad, "Mr. Smith," sometimes "Mrs. Smith" and sometimes "Sam's parent."
In an ill-fated attempt to be politically correct and inclusive, we can at times end up speaking similar nonsense. This particularly shows up when we try to incorporate these concepts into our prayer and liturgical life.
When the apostles asked Jesus how to pray, He told them to say, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name ..." This is the most crucial of places where Jesus teaches us about God the Father (Abba, means "father," or "dad," but not gender-generic "parent").
Having children especially sing songs like: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Our mother who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" in an effort to have them "receive" the "Our Father" does them no favors. Jesus never taught His disciples to pray "Our Mother."
And those who say that Jesus did not do that because of the culture He lived in, speaking of God as "Father" was radical in itself. It also implies that Jesus is willing to lie. Since, as He told the apostles, He is "the way, the truth and the light," how can He lie? And, as St. Thomas Aquinas states, "The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect of prayers." If that is so, how could it be perfect if Jesus never instructed His followers to say, "Our mother"?
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "We can invoke God as 'Father' because he is revealed to us by His Son [...] The personal revelation of the Son to the Father is something that man cannot conceive of nor the angelic powers even dimly see" (2780).
No Church Father ever taught that God was Mother. As Church Father Tertullian states, "The Father's name has been revealed to us in the Son, for the name 'Son' implies the new name 'Father.' "
Through baptism, we are adopted children of God the Father. As St. Cyril of Jerusalem states, we "are appropriately called 'christs.'"
God cannot be our mother because God is not Jesus' mother. Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God. Since we become other 'christs' through our baptism, Mary, and rightfully so, becomes our Mother.
It seems as though those who use vertical inclusive language in a misguided attempt to level the field for women so they are not excluded actually minimizes the role of either parent, mother or father. It gives the impression that father or mother is interchangeable. If one can call father mother and mother father, then pretty soon the child has no parents at all. However inadequate a human father can be as a parent in modeling God, by virtue of his maleness he models God the Father more perfectly in a sense than a saintly woman.
There is a difference between male and female - God made sure of them when He created them both. There is a difference between Jesus' Father and mother. Mary is not God. God is not mother.
___________________________
Christine J. Murray writes from Sterling Heights, Michigan.
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Holy Trinity, God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Mary
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