With special guests:
- Archbishop Barry Hickey and
- Fighting Father Dave.
The mainstream churches have long ignored the many issues confronting fathers in Australia today, so we decided to take a look at the issues of fathers and the various churches.
Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey has written that the absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem in our society. He said the absence of dads was a bigger problem than drugs.
If Father Christmas was offering me gifts, I would ask for peace in every family and a father at the heart of every family,” he was quoted as saying in the publication Perth Now.
The absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem we face today. It is the biggest cause of lifelong difficulties for fathers, mothers and, most of all, for children.
The absence of fathers is bigger than anger, aggression, alcohol, drugs, crime and under-achievement by children because it is the biggest single contributor to all of them.
This is borne out worldwide by every large-scale, long-term study of family. I know that Father Christmas isn’t going to solve this problem for me, but I keep praying for it.”
Archbishop Hickey said these days we were in danger of forgetting what family was, he said.
Firstly, it is father and mother accepting lifelong responsibility for one another and their children and then it is sharing of family life within and across generations,” he said.
Providing a loving, caring and nurturing environment for children makes successful families, not necessarily the gender of the child’s parents.
The greatest threat to family life is issues like neglectful and poor parenting skills and not providing for the best interests of a child’s welfare.”
Fighting Father Dave is Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of three. His website is: www.fatherdave.org
Father Dave, author of Sex, the Ring and The Eucharist, is the only Australian in the Holy Order of the Anglican Church who has ever had to box professionally in order to raise the funds to keep his ministry going. He is known as “Sydney’s Fighting Father,” who combines his work as a Parish Priest with a ministry to street kids, heroin addicts and other ‘undesirables’ from the underside of Australian Society. He uses boxing and the fighting arts to teach young people self-control.
Father Dave lives with his wife Angela, and three children just outside of Sydney Australia.