Catholic Candle note: This is a companion article to Catholic Candle’s article on the role and glory of womanhood.  This article is available here: https://catholiccandle.org/2019/12/02/the-role-and-work-that-god-gave-to-woman/

The article below can also be viewed as a companion article to the ones concerning the leftist attack on motherhood.  You can read these articles here: https://catholiccandle.org/2022/08/26/the-feminist-program-is-the-same-as-that-of-satan-and-marx-part-vii/

Leftist Destruction of Fatherhood in Families Causes Sons to Be “Dad-Deprived” Failures

The leftist revolution is focused on destroying fatherhood.  One of the key reasons Marxists and feminists want to destroy the family is in order to destroy paternity and paternal authority.  No matter what else the leftists do, their revolution would fail if society were full of strong fathers fulfilling their duties of state.

The Marxists and feminists follow their founder and leader, Satan, attacking paternity because they hate God, Who is the Creator and Model of all fatherhood and “from Whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth receives its name”.  Ephesians, 3:14-15. 

Also, paternity is part of the Natural Law.  The feminists and Marxists hate paternity because they hate the Natural Law.[1]

Further, in order to enhance the power of the government (which is increasingly controlled by them), the enemies of Our Lord Jesus Christ want to destroy the basic “building block” of society (viz., the family) and substitute the individual in its place.  If society were founded on the individual instead of the family, then there would be no familial society to nurture the children and to be a haven of security and assistance for the members of the family.  This arrangement is like the one in communist countries, where they have “free” state-sponsored “child care” to minimize the influence of parents and families and to increase the role and influence of the state.

Under this arrangement, everyone who needs help of any type (especially the children) would have to depend on the government.  Along with destroying the family, the leftists also subvert, weaken, or destroy other non-governmental institutions such as the Human Element of the Church and non-government schools).  So, this on-going, leftists’ attack is made against the family and, secondarily, against other non-government institutions, in order to break down society’s mutual bonds and to make everyone depend more on the government, giving the government the power to increasingly control everything.

This attack on patriarchy and the family has been Satan’s plan for centuries but is succeeding much more fully now.  We see this plan sometimes stated openly.  For example, Cambacérès, the French revolutionary[2] and legislator, declared that:

Paternal power no longer exists.  A man should not have direct power over another, even if it be his own child.[3] 

This plan of Satan and his servants then, is that without fatherhood, only the government would have power over people.

Similarly, the French socialist, Benoît Malon, attacked fatherhood in these words: 

What must happen is to completely abolish the authority of the father and his almost royal power in the family.  In effect, equality only will be perfect if this is achieved.  Aren’t the children of as great a value as the parents?  By what right do the latter command the former?  Enough of obedience! Enough of inequality![4]

It is obvious under whose banner Benoît Malon (and the other enemies of Our Lord) are marching when they declare: “Enough of obedience!”  This declaration is another way of voicing their leader’s battle cry: “Non serviam!”

Benoît Malon and the other leftists have learned from Satan to also echo his words: “Enough of inequality!”  This malicious temptation comes from the original one who sewed discontent, who told Eve that God was trying to keep her from becoming equal with Him:

For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as gods.

Genesis, 3:5.

In fact, inequality is crucial to the proper order in everything.  Here is St. Thomas Aquinas’ explanation of this fundamental truth:

It must be said that as the wisdom of God is the cause of the distinction of things, so the same wisdom is the cause of their inequality.[5]

So, to the extent that the leftists destroy fatherhood in society, they destroy the family and the children, especially the sons.  One way the boys are destroyed is by not learning discipline and manly virtue from their father.

Dad-Deprived Boys Are More Likely to be Criminals.

Not only do the leftists successfully destabilize society by destroying the family, but they are also destabilizing society through the young criminals who are turned loose on society after growing up in dysfunctional families. 

Marxist revolutionaries know that marauding criminals destroy society’s peace and stability.  That is why one of the first things such revolutionaries do (when they are beginning to gain control) is to open the prisons and free the criminals.[6]   

One of the crucial harms resulting from the destruction of the family as an institution, is that boys are Dad-deprived.  The number of boys growing up without their fathers has almost doubled since 1960 (from 17% to 32%).[7] 

Those boys who don’t live with their fathers are about 50% more likely to be arrested by age 19 and more than twice as likely to be arrested by age 34.[8]

This connection (viz., between the father being present in the family home and the decreased likelihood of the sons going to prison) remains strong and statistically significant even after accounting for family income, race, maternal education, and age.[9]

It is striking that the most common aspect of a mass-shooter’s profile (besides that he is male) is that he was dad-deprived – i.e., he lacked a father figure in his life.[10]

To take just three infamous examples:

❖  Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 in a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, had a father who was imprisoned and had little contact with his son. 

❖  Adam Lanza, (Newtown, Connecticut in 2012), who murdered 26 people, did not often see his father, who was divorced from his mother.[11]

 

❖  Patrick Wood Crusius (El Paso Walmart on August 3, 2019) who murdered 23 people, had a father who was divorced from his mother when he was three years old.[12]

Of course, there are many higher, more hidden ways in which fathers are crucial to a family.  But this increased criminality of boys who are raised without their fathers, shows one dramatic type of loss to those families and society.

Without Their Fathers at Home, Boys are More Likely to Be Failures in Other Ways, Too.

There are many ways in which the father of a family has an irreplaceable role, as shown by the Natural Law and the Catholic Faith.  (Of course, the mother’s role is crucial too, but in an irreplaceably different way.)  Above, we saw that when the father lives with his family, his sons are more likely to stay out of trouble and avoid becoming criminals.

When, however, the father lives with his family, the family will also (statistically) have a larger income and more assets.[13]  This adds stability to a family.

Of course, there are more important things than more money, which are involved in growing up.  It is important for those sons to “make something of themselves”.  Sons who “drift” through life are on the path of failure rather than accomplishment.

But young men who are raised in a home with their father are more than two times as likely to graduate college by their late-20s, compared to those who grow up in families without their father (35% vs. 14%).[14]  See the graph of this data below.[15] 

This disparity and that benefit of the father’s presence is true regardless of race and family income (i.e., “controlling” for those factors).[16]  Further, this is statistically true even though many fathers do a poor job of fulfilling their paternal responsibilities.

A college degree is not the only way to see that a young man has some employment success and does not become a derelict.  As an alternative to the college route, a young man can live a productive life by getting a high school diploma and then holding a full-time job.

If the young man grew up in a home without his father present, that young man is almost twice as likely to live an idle life (i.e., having neither a job nor being in school) in his mid-twenties as compared to the boy who grew up in a home which includes his father.[17]  This disparity and that benefit of the father’s presence is true regardless of race and family income (i.e., “controlling” for those factors).[18]  See the graph below.[19]

We see that the family is a natural institution and has an essential need for its father.  This is a reflection of the perfect wisdom of God and the Natural Law!  He made the family to have a father as its head and a mother as its heart.  That is how the family ever was, how it is, and how it will be until the end of the world. 

It is crucial that boys are raised by their fathers and are taught by their fathers how to be men and how to live lives of sacrifice and virtue.  They must learn how to spend their lives fulfilling their manly role and responsibilities, how to fight in the Church Militant for Christ the King and against His enemies!

Those who reject God’s Plan are rejecting reality.  They are part of the wreckage which litters the history of mankind, and, if they continue on this path of failure, they will become desolate souls buried in the tomb of hell.