If you call God ‘Father,’ does that mean God is male and women matter less?

🔥The question: “Why is God a father and not a mother?”

🛡️The Church's answer: God is not male or female the way a human being with a body is; God is beyond human sexual difference. Man and woman alike were created in the image of God. Scripture expresses the love of God as a father's care and also as a mother's womb and a mother's labor pains. So it is wrong to use the name ‘Father’ as grounds for saying that men are closer to God than women.

At the same time, ‘Father’ is not simply an image meaning that God is masculine. It points to the relationship within the Trinity that Jesus made known. The Father is the one who eternally begets the Son, and the Son is the one begotten of the Father. That is also why the Church baptizes “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” — to keep this revealed relationship intact. God's fatherhood and motherhood are the source of every good human parent, and they are always greater than the figure of a human parent, who can wound and can fail.

🧐If they press further: “What if I was hurt by my father and the words ‘God the Father’ are hard for me?” — you don't have to hide that wound or force yourself to act as though it were fine. Nor should you think of God as an enlarged version of a violent human father. You can pray over the many images Scripture gives — the shepherd, the rock, a mother's embrace — and, with help from safe and trustworthy people, slowly relearn the merciful Father that Jesus showed us.

✨In one sentence: “God is neither male nor female but beyond sex. ‘Father’ doesn't point to the superiority of men but to the relationship of love and life that Jesus made known.”