First published in 1883 by Benziger Brothers under the title The Christian Father, this book was written by the Right Rev. W. Cramer, D.D., Coadjutor Bishop of Münster, and translated from the German by the Rev. L.A. Lambert. We have retitled it The Catholic Father for this edition to match its companion volume, The Catholic Mother, and readers looking for the original will know they have found it. The text itself is unchanged. Bishop S.V. Ryan of Buffalo wrote the introduction, and he does not soften the point: the father holds the place of God in his household, and as a general rule, children are what their father makes them. The first half of the book is instruction. Bishop Cramer takes up the name of father and the stewardship attached to it, argues plainly that a Christian mother alone is not sufficient, and then sketches the model Christian father and fills in the portrait. He is blunt about the dangers, including dangers against the Faith and the hours a man loses in the public house. He is just as concrete about the work itself: law, rule, and order in the home, seeing that they are kept, the right to punish, the watch a father must keep over his children, what to do when a son or daughter is away from home, and how to help a child choose a state of life. Two model fathers are held up from Scripture, Abraham and Tobias, and the chapter on Abraham takes on the question of mixed marriages directly.
The second half is a complete prayer book for a father's use. Here are prayers for piety and the fear of God, for the grace of faith, for temperance, and against an inordinate love of the world, along with prayers for the anniversary of his marriage, for morning and evening, and for his devotions through Holy Mass. There are prayers for wisdom and mildness, prayers to St. Joseph, to the Guardian Angels, and to the patron saints of his children, a prayer for a blessing on his work, prayers for the protection of his children in temptation and for purity in them, a father's prayer for his wife, and the Litany of the Christian Father. Glorious Heritage Books has reset this edition in clean, readable type, with the 1883 translation kept as it was written. There was a time when a Catholic father could walk into a shop and buy a book written for him and his duties. Those books are largely gone from memory now. This one is worth having back.