Conclusion of the Conference

Crisis of fatherhood?

Are we living in a society, in a modern (or post-modern) culture that is prey to a crisis of authority, and in particular of paternal authority? How does this crisis affect the practice of spiritual paternity? What can spiritual paternity learn from natural paternity? Can natural paternity renew itself by considering the model or models of spiritual paternity and, beyond that, of its source, the paternity of God the Father?
The father: he who dispossesses himself, who empties himself for his children; he is the kenotic father, humble love. We can consider the example of the father in the parable of the prodigal son. He loses his younger son, but he respects the latter’s freedom. He is patient, he loves, he has already pardoned. Is he also going to lose his elder son? this last, will he accept to enter the house? Jesus in the parable leaves the question open.
It is up to us to respond today… We conclude with this portrait of a contemporary spiritual father, heard in one of the talks in these days: a man “of high spirituality and of a very warm humanity”.

Fr Michel Van Parys