Taken as a wooden rule, that verse forbids far more than its users intend. In the very same passage Jesus also forbids being called “Rabbi” and “master” (Matthew 23:8, 10) — so a strictly literal reading would ban the words “teacher,” “professor,” and “mister,” and stop a child from calling his own dad “father.” Almost no one applies it that way, which is the first clue that Jesus is not legislating vocabulary.

Scripture itself settles it, because the inspired writers keep using exactly these titles. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that they have “not many fathers,” because “in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you” (1 Corinthians 4:15). St. John writes, “I write unto you, fathers” (1 John 2:13). Stephen and Paul both address their hearers as fathers (Acts 7:2; 22:1), and Paul repeatedly calls Timothy his son in the faith. If Matthew 23 banned the word, the Apostles broke the rule on nearly every page.

So what is Jesus condemning? Pride. The whole chapter is a thunderclap against Pharisees who loved the places of honor and the public title “Rabbi” — men who used religious labels to exalt themselves and eclipse the one Father and one Teacher1 behind all genuine fatherhood and teaching. Calling a priest “Father,” rightly understood, does the opposite: it confesses that his fatherhood is not his own but a share in God’s — exactly as Paul’s was. The title points past the man, not at him.

And there is a reality under the title. A priest is a spiritual father because, through the sacraments,2 he begets and feeds supernatural life — the very fatherhood Paul claimed. To call him “Father” is to recognize that ministry, handed down in unbroken line from the Apostles — not to rob God of His. One Father in heaven; many fathers on earth who serve Him. The Bible says both, in the same breath.