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THE AUTHORITY OF THE HUSBAND ACCORDING TO THE MAGISTERIUM Rev. Paul N. Check PONTIFICIO ATENEO DELLA SANTA CROCE FACOLTA DI TEOLOGIAPerhaps, I am a little dense, but I am having trouble understanding how childlike obedience benefits women but is harmful to men. I am having trouble seeing how men are somehow better suited for this role of leadership. I am having even more trouble with why gender differences (which I absolutely believe in) necessarily calls women to perpetual submission in the church and marriage without implying inferiority.
And yes, I have read John Paul II’s letter to women and his “on the Dignity of Women.”
Maybe, I am just blinded by sin, but I am still offended.
Kendy
“WIVES, BE SUBJECT TO YOUR HUSBANDS”:
THE AUTHORITY OF THE HUSBAND ACCORDING TO THE MAGISTERIUM
INTRODUCTION
The words, “Wives, be subject to your husbands,” jar many modern ears. Even though this exhortation comes from an inspired text in Sacred Scripture (Ephesians 5:22), many people–including practicing Catholics–are troubled by what appears to be a relic of Marriage customs “rightly” abandoned by contemporary culture. Those who resist any notion of hierarchy or patriarchy in the social order vigorously reject St. Paul’s concept of Marriage as an attack on the dignity of women. Even those Christians not hostile to Paul’s teaching may believe that given the state of modern society, there is little to be gained by investigating–let alone applying–Paul’s prescriptions concerning the relationship of the spouses. However, one Catholic scholar, Stephen Clark, suggests that the controversy or unease over the family order described in Ephesians 5:21-33 is a relatively recent phenomenon. Regarding the question of a “head of the family” he writes, “Few areas in early Christian teaching are as uniform and fewer still were held with the same consistency as long as this one, since the first Christian voices advocating a different approach were raised only in about the nineteenth century.” Clark continues, “There are few instances where it is clearer that a change in the approach of Christians is an abandonment of Christian tradition, and not only of tradition, but of every source of authoritative teaching that can lay claim on a Christian.”
The purpose of this paper is to examine the teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church regarding the authority of the husband in Marriage, which in this area rests largely on the writings of St. Paul. My main concern, as Gerald Vann, O.P. once wrote, “is not with the facts of married life but with the theology that lies behind them, and I do not know that mistakes about the facts need invalidate the attempt to state theological principles.” My study of the husband’s authority accepts the following principle from the outset: men and women are equal in dignity, but within Marriage they differ in role or function, and these roles are not interchangeable. The differences between the spouses, i.e. their “complementarity,” permit them to form “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31). As Pope John Paul II points out, “In the sphere of what is ‘human’–of what is humanly personal–‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are distinct, yet at the same time they complete and explain each other.” Pius XII states that men and women share an equal dignity since they are children of God and redeemed by Christ, and since they receive common earthly (“be fruitful and multiply”) and supernatural destinies. Then he adds, “The Creator with His wonderful ways of bringing harmony out of variety has established a common destiny for all mankind, but He has also given the two sexes different and complementary functions, like two roads leading to the same destination.”
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. I don’t want my husband to die for me; it’s improble that he will ever have to. I will settle for him not treating me like some fargile, needy little thing that he needs to lead and protect.
