Have you ever wondered why catholic priests are called “Father,” nuns are “sister” or “mother” and the Pope is allegedly the “Holy Father” of us all?

It’s called “kin psychology,” says psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson Jr. of the University of Virginia, and it’s one way the church implicitly (or explicitly) generates the emotional attachment of its flock.

Since time immemorial, humankind has favored kin over strangers. In fact, kin psychology may represent one of our deepest, most primordial survival mechanisms. It begins with the attachment of the newborn to its mother and harks back to primitive folk living in caves where the kinship attachment was the difference between survival and being killed by a warring tribe.

So is it an accident that the church represents itself as kinfolk? Dr. Thomson thinks not. It is one of the many ways that religion has appealed to deep human emotional needs to lure people into the church.

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