Father
hunger:
The world response to the death of Pope John Paul II
by Richard Rohr, OFM printer friendly (PDF 2 pages)
I have been convinced for many years that many male systems are held together by a deep and common form of father hunger. Men who have not had a strong or any father relationship are driven to seek the approval of older men, the reassurance of smart men, the company of stronger men, the blessings of holy men. For many, it is the very name of the whole human game. It creates tribes and teams, it holds together churches, it creates businesses and corporations, it maintains kingdoms. If they have not yet found their own manhood or their own inner power, men find it vicariously through identification with other “important” and symbolic men. They love to serve them. They almost worship them. It is a good way to begin. It is the energy of initial sonship.
But
this pattern is so deep and all pervasive that it eventually becomes “the
norm” in adult male society too. Why wouldn’t you need to please the
boss, the old man, the sergeant, the CEO, the Pope? “Isn’t this the
whole point?” the un-initated man assumes. It becomes the very shape and
understanding of love, loyalty, success, dedication, patriotism, heroism, war,
and even holiness. Often, ironically, much more than their love for their wives
or their children! (which is only holy or significant if the father figures say
so).
For many
Christian men, particularly church men, the very nature of sanctity is obedience
to male authority figures—pure and simple. Not love, not service, not
surrender, not trust, not simplicity, not humility, not prayer, but mere dogged
obedience. They feel a deep security having obeyed “daddy”. It
frees them from all inner anxiety, responsibility, and struggle, which is so
consoling and reassuring that it feels like safety and salvation. If daddy
says it is right, then I am somehow in the very arms of God and the bosom of
Abraham. After 35 years as a priest, and 13 years in the seminary, I am
convinced that the clergy is filled with such souls, as is the entire Army,
Navy, Air Force, Marines, most businesses and corporations, sports teams, and
neighborhood bars.
This, in a
word, is why God and country so often go together, why men who are religious are
invariably nationalistic too (Then we have two sets of approving daddies! And
usually a strong “male” God too!) Just observe the patterns of most
military men, most church men, or any hierarchical system. They all hold
together by building on that primal father hunger, and sometimes on a father
wound too, and it is so deep that they cannot usually recognize it within
themselves. It just feels “natural”, as most unconscious behavior does
to unconscious people.
What is lost,
of course, is depth, inner freedom, and true personhood. They live vicariously
through identification with their male leader, and his greatness, and never
bother to find their own. That is the tragedy. Yet it held together most
tribes in all of history, most religions, all kingdoms, the Nazis, the
Communists, and has always worked for a certain type of Roman Catholic and
Evangelical Christian too. The Protestants just substituted a preacher for a
pope. Both have to wake up, and let that need and wound draw them toward
“the father from whom every family takes its name” (Ephesians 3:15). Inner
experience instead of substitute experience.
Much of the
First Book of Samuel is concerned with the “tragedy” of having a king! (see
Chapters 8, 10, 12) Surprising, isn’t it? The prophets knew the
danger of substituting a human father figure for the True Father. Finally
Yahweh relents and says to the prophet Samuel “Go ahead and give the people
what they want, but know that it is not you they are rejecting, but they have
rejected me from ruling over them” (8:9). Kingship is always a begrudged
concession in Israel, merely tolerated, and an avoidance of their own true and
needed sonship. This is later taught more strongly by Jeremiah (31:34) and
Isaiah (49:14-16), and finally lived and exemplified by Jesus himself, the
ultimate beloved son.
I say all
this, as one way to understand the immense worldwide outpouring of grief for
Pope John Paul II. People who were not Catholic, people who care nothing
about his teaching, Catholics who are barely Catholic, people who disagree with
his teaching, found themselves weeping, abandoned, loving him, needing him,
missing him, and praying to him! For the Catholic pundits, all their
beliefs were validated and he was instantaneously canonized. (This was
also done a few months previously with Ronald Reagan, by true believing
Republicans). We are clearly dealing with something archetypal here and
nothing logical at all. That is the depth and breadth of father hunger in
our world today. Identification with a spectacle and idol becomes a
substitute for any real transformation of the self.
If the cult
and idolization of John Paul will eventually lead men to search for their own
manhood and the True King, it is indeed good. But if it is merely an
avoidance of the inner journey, their own inner authority, or the projection of
their own power and dignity onto a man safely buried in Rome, this will merely
be another example of what the Prophet Samuel warned us against—creating
worldly kings instead of becoming sons of the King ourselves.
Heroes are
good to get young men started, and John Paul was that on many levels, but
eventually we need brothers and companions. “Too big” a father can be
a way of remaining ever a son. In the second half of life adult men do not
need idols and heroes as much as they need companions, imitable brothers,
and men who love with them in ordinary and courageous ways. Few of
us will be popes or kings. All of us are men, naked underneath our
clothes.
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