The neologism "papaoids" captivated me the first time I heard it after a meeting convened at my university by the high school of Anthropology and Ethics that advises and coordinates the teachers of Humanities.

The author of this term is called Jokin. He is Full Professor at Preventive Medicine and Public Health, married, father of five children, and also an expert in Education sexual. He gives conferences and courses all over Spain and is also a recognized authority in the international arena. We spoke on that occasion of the educational urgency to educate children in affectivity from the first years of life. This goal appears in documents of the Catholic Magisterium, but, unfortunately, it has not had much echo, at least in practice in families. Jokin confided to me that currently the most notable problem is the absence, passivity and inhibition on the part of parents who are unaware of their indispensable role. He pointed out that the positive and so necessary ascent of women to the professional world, many men have not been able to digest it well, that perhaps because of the lamentable war of sexes between feminists and atavistic machismo, it generates in the male a complex of confusion and educational absenteeism: boys do not have, in many cases, a defined father model , and girls (who need that figure like water of May), do not find it either. The Full Professor added that he has proposed to disseminate through his conferences and courses the idea of what it means to be a father and how to recover this figure, which is essential for family and social health.

During my classes at the university, I was able to address these topics, since the syllabus corresponded to the exhibition of love, human sexuality and the family. I must admit that the conversation with Jokin was an incentive to emphasize the important role that fathers, in constant dialogue with mothers, play in the affective Education of daughters and sons.

While I was there, I was surprised and delighted to learn about the topics that Pope Francis had discussed both last week and this week during his catechesis on the family, since he has twice dealt with the figure of the father. As will be recalled, on Wednesday, January 28, his diagnosis warned of the problem and its pathologies, although he did not want to offer a negative or hopeless vision. Among the most notable shortcomings, Francisco pointed out, first of all, a lack of dedication to the children: "The problem of our times seems to be not so much the intrusive presence of the parents, but rather their absence, the fact of not being present. Parents are sometimes so focused on themselves and their work, and sometimes on their own individual achievements, that they forget even the family. And they leave the little ones and the young alone".

Undoubtedly the competitiveness of the professional world influences the lack of dedication of time that daughters and sons require with respect to the father, but the Pope called for generosity with this committee: "wasting time" and playing with them.

The diagnosis of the absence of the father figure always happens invoice in children, and as Francis pointed out, it produces wounds both in the family and in the social sphere: "the absence of the father figure in the lives of children and young people produces gaps and wounds that can even be very serious. And, in fact, the deviations of children and adolescents can occur, in large part, because of this absence, because of the lack of examples and authoritative guides in their daily lives, because of the lack of closeness, the lack of love on the part of parents. The feeling of orphanhood that many young people experience today is deeper than we think" (Pope Francis, General Audience, Wednesday, January 28).

The social transcendence of this orphanhood has important negative repercussions that deteriorate the social fabric where, as the Pontiff lucidly pointed out, young people will not find a reliable principle of authority either: "And we see this problem also in the civil community. The civil community, with its institutions, has a certain - we could say paternal - responsibility towards young people, a responsibility that it sometimes neglects or exercises badly. It too often leaves them orphans and does not offer them a real perspective. Young people are thus orphaned of safe paths to follow, orphaned of teachers to trust, orphaned of ideals to warm their hearts, orphaned of values and hopes to sustain them every day. Instead, they are filled with idols but their hearts are robbed; they are encouraged to dream of amusements and pleasures, but they are not given work; they are deluded by the god of money, denying them true wealth" (Pope Francis, Idem.).

The root of these pathologies that are so clearly expressed in the public sphere is to be found in the disorientation of parents, who have become "papaoids" according to my friend's terminology , and which Francis diagnosed as follows: "Sometimes it seems that parents do not know very well what their place in the family is and how to educate their children. And then, in doubt, they abstain, withdraw and neglect their responsibilities, perhaps taking refuge in a certain "equal" relationship with their children. It is true that you must be your child's "partner", but without forgetting that you are the parent. If you behave only as a companion to your child, it will not be good for him.

Neither father simply friend, nor "colegui" in terminology popular, simply father is what daughters and sons are looking for.

Reviewing the bibliography during these teaching weeks and in the light of the Pope's words dedicated to fathers, I have once again skimmed through Rocco Buttiglione's book, published by Ediciones Palabra years ago, which offers concrete ideas on the role of the father educational (cf.: ROCCO BUTTIGLIONE, "La Persona y la familia", Madrid 1999). I note that it inspires my lessons and, so far, it has not been contested in the classrooms, moreover, the students agree almost unanimously.

Presupposing the indispensable, primordial, and always necessary unconditional love of the mother (shared by the father) it is pointed out that the paternal educational functions, according to Buttiglione, can be summarized as follows: The father represents the moment of the law. He intervenes by separating the child from the mother. This separation is painful but very important for the child to educate himself and develop his autonomous identity.

-The child thus grasps the autonomous reality of his own being and the autonomous reality of his mother: "He is not the mother and the mother is not him. Thus he comes to the conclusion that his mother is not the world, but a person. He realizes that "my mother is not my world" but someone who has introduced me into the world... That world goal, outside is full of dangers and difficulties: the mother knows it, and the child, on entering it, is bound to experience pain. This meeting with the painful reality has first passed through a reality of unconditional acceptance. It will then overcome the temptation to despair by remembering that not everything ends in pain and difficulty: there it will also be loved and will be able to offer love.

The father, as mentioned above, teaches the child the law so that he can develop in this "new world" outside. The law supposes:

-The exchange between equivalents: "No one has the right to receive something in exchange for nothing". The work is the activity that allows everyone to earn the satisfaction of one's own desires (remember also that desires and satisfactions are always limited).

-The child is not alone in the world, nor is he the only valuable being on this planet: being loved unconditionally as a unique person and always respected in his dignity, he is one among many. He must accept to have a share of his own in the common reserves, and respect an analogous right in his brothers to whom a piece of the pie is due as to him.

The father teaches the child that the desire to be happy, to love and to feel loved and all his desires for fulfillment will be achieved with effort through the law of work. The world is not transformed automatically because the child's desires alone are intended for this or that goal and much less without his partnership and effort.

-Moreover, the child must understand that not everything in the world belongs absolutely to him: there are other individuals who have the same rights as he has. If he manages to incorporate the law of justice harmoniously into his personality and to warm it up from the law of love, his relations with others, with God, and with himself will be very harmonious. If he were to remain only in "the law" he would become a dry and cold formalist.

Therefore, the father and the mother must know how to distribute harmoniously their roles as educators in a mutual dialogue and with simple agreements that facilitate the representation of the law from the father and the gratuitousness from the mother: La persona y la familia, Palabra, Madrid, 1999, pp. 17-131).

Other authors have reflected on the philosophical, sociological and cultural reasons for the flight undertaken since the last century with analyses of special theological depth, but they agree with Buttiglione and others belonging to the personalist currents on the need for the father figure to accompany adolescents as they build their own identity (Cf. PAUL JOSEF CORDES: El eclipse del padre. PALABRA, Madrid, 2003).

Returning to Pope Francis, during his last catechesis, he pointed out "positively" two guidelines for the father to recover his identity and function:

The first is his presence and accompaniment, avoiding, at the same time, to be "controlling". Thus, he advised: (...) "that the father be present in the family. That he be close to the wife, to share everything, joy and sorrows, fatigue and hopes. And that he be close to the children in their growth: when they play and when they commit themselves, when they are worried and when they are anxious, when they express themselves and when they are silent, when they dare and when they are afraid, when they take a wrong step and when they find their way again. Father present, always. But saying present is not the same as saying controlling. Because fathers who are too controlling cancel out their children, they do not allow them to grow". (Pope Francis: Audience Wednesday, February 4).

The second guideline: be patient and not be afraid to correct. Thus, the Pope, after referring to the parable of the prodigal son, considered: "A good father knows how to wait and knows how to forgive, from the depths of his heart. Of course, he also knows how to correct with firmness: he is not a weak, submissive, sentimental father. The father who knows how to correct without degrading himself is the same one who knows how to protect without rest. I once heard a father say to a married couple on meeting , 'I sometimes have to hit my children a little, but never in the face, so as not to degrade them' How nice! He has a sense of dignity. He must punish, he does it justly and goes ahead" (Pope Francis: Idem.).

At final, we also concluded during the classes, it is urgent to encourage, once again, parents to recover their indispensable active role in the home, and to accompany them in this fascinating challenge so that both the family and society are enriched with a new culture in which the symmetrical paternal and maternal protagonism dynamizes with facts the growth in humanity that our time demands.