“Call no priest father”; this is what I hear day in and day out. And if it isn’t that, then it is “why do you call them father? Don’t you know what the Bible says?” Sure. I understand that the Bible says the priesthood is spiritual fatherhood. Abraham was called the father of all nations in the Old Testament and is recognized as such according to Romans 4:16-17, “For this reason, it depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not to those who only adhere to the law but to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us, as it is written, ‘I have made you father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist.” St. Paul names Abraham “our father in the sight of God”. Why? As St. Paul recognizes, “he [Abraham] is the father of many nations.” Didn’t anyone tell St. Paul about the verse “Call no man father” (Matthew 23:9) or did he understand it to mean that we have but one God who is the origin of all? Also, Jesus calls Abraham “father” in John 8:56!
