Fatherhood. What does a 23-year-old, fifth-year graduate student know about fatherhood?
Not much at first glance, but I know enough to understand the importance of the role of fathers in society.
In 1960, only 1/10 children were raised in a single-parent household, whereas today it is approximately 1/4 children. This stark increase is directly attributed to the degenerate Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and attacks on the nuclear family, but this article won’t elaborate any more on the negative consequences of the 1960s.
Instead, I want to discuss the importance of fatherhood and why the importance of good father figures are crucial to the betterment of young men.
Young men are at a crossroads. They are searching out for something. Society constantly attacks men as the ills of all problems and oftentimes deems them as sexist, racist, or any other ism.
College campuses, which already lean left and are usually majority female, further cause men to become isolated. Just take note of the suicide rates among young men, which the tyrannical Covid lockdowns only accelerated. They have increased nearly 1.5 times in the last twenty years, and men are alone and searching for something greater in life.
Some young men come to religion, which is why you see a rise in young men turning to traditional religions such as Catholicism in the Tridentine Latin Mass or to Orthodoxy with their extremely traditional services.
Unfortunately, however, some young men are also turning to “alpha males” online who highlight certain attractive qualities such as wealth, physical fitness, and confidence. These men, however, fall under the line of “Barstool Conservatism” and are epitomized in figures such as Dave Portnoy, Andrew Tate, and the Nelk Boys. They promote sexualizing women and “getting girls” instead of what makes a true man.
Physical fitness is crucial for young men, so that aspect of Andrew Tate’s message is beneficial, but his reasoning to “be fit to get laid” is completely incorrect. One should seek to be in peak physical shape because all of us are made in the image and likeness of God.
A true man is one of devout Christian faith, emulates Jesus Christ at every turn, and has a love of family and friends. None of these listed figures above do that at all, but instead are leading men down a negative path that can only cause future harm to them.
The young men who are turning to these figures need better role models, which can most commonly come in two forms: their familial fathers and their spiritual fathers.
I grew up in a two-parent conservative household where we practiced our faith by going to Divine Liturgy every Sunday and we were active members of our Parish community. I certainly owe a debt of gratitude to my mother for all of this, and she herself taught Sunday
School, but my immediate role model was my father.
Emanuel Markis is the type of man that one should strive to be. Although he lacks athletic ability, especially when it comes to basketball, there is nobody I can think of that better encapsulates the man and father that I one day want to become.
His unconditional love for my two siblings and I, from getting up at 4 am to drive me to baseball tournaments, to hitting me ground balls for hours on the baseball diamond, to
(attempting) to teach me how to fix cars.
He didn’t have to do these things, but he did them because he truly loves me. It’s taken me all these years to truly understand how much love my father has for me, and I can only hope that he knows the love is reciprocal. He taught me to treat women with the respect they deserve, to not engage in the degeneracy of society, and ultimately, to love Christ.
If I didn’t have my father as a role model, I very likely would’ve fallen into the world of Andrew Tate and “Barstool Conservatism” and completely abandoned the faith. As I have articulated in previous articles in The Torch, I constantly pray about the desire to raise a family that loves Christ and is deep in the faith. That prayer consistently returns to desiring to be
a father half the level of what my father has been for me.
It’s taken me 23 years to even begin to comprehend the beauty of fatherhood, and the role model that I have in my father is something I can strive for every day.
The second form of fatherhood is spiritual fatherhood, taken in the form of a priest who is your mentor and another person who serves as a role model. I wasn’t aware about spiritual fatherhood until I began to recommit myself to the faith in the last six months or so.
My home parish priest, Father Nicholas Krommydas, is the epitome of a spiritual father. Even outside of the Sacrament of Confession, he is a guiding light for me in my faith and my desire to love Christ. He always is offering me guidance on how to pray, how to emulate Christ, and how to display my faith in a world that actively seeks to persecute Christians.
I first began to learn about Father Nick when I interviewed him for a school project my sophomore year of high school. His love of Christ and desire for others to be active in the faith is an inspiration and immediately upon talking with Father Nick or hearing one of his homilies, one has an innate desire to pray and form a relationship with Christ.
I always knew Father Nick was an extremely devout and spiritual man, but it wasn’t until I began to talk with him individually that I realized how much he cared about my well-being and how much confidence he had in me to seek out Christ.
Knowing that my home parish priest thinks I can emulate Christ is a constant push to not fail him in my pursuit of Christ. For that, I am eternally grateful and blessed.
The fire burning inside of me to emulate Christ and have a relationship with Him is something that will not be extinguished easily, despite the constant attempts of our largely Satanic society to kill my devotion. The role models of both my father and my priest offer me the perfect examples on how I can truly be the man I strive to be when society isn’t conducive to that lifestyle, and for both of them I am eternally grateful.
As Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:1-4)”.
Children need good fathers, and fathers need to raise their children to love Christ with all their heart, soul, and mind; luckily for me I had the privilege of the best father and priest that one could have to be my guides.
James “Δημήτριος” Markis is a senior at Boston College studying History, Political Science, and Ancient Civilization. He is a Greek Orthodox Christian, offering a unique perspective from the East on faith, scripture, and liturgical practices. His interests include right-wing politics, Church Fathers, and refuting Protestant heresy. His hobbies include basketball, baseball, and trivia, with the occasional adventure into the arena of chess.
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