Dear hurting,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Jolly well said and bang on target.
A spurious egalitarianism, itself fuelled by a defiant radical feminism, has ensured that the words of St. Paul regarding the rightful submission of women to their husbands (Ephesians 5: 21-25) are offensive to modern ears, including, I regret to say, the ears of many contemporary Catholics. This is a monumental tragedy and deeply saddening, evincing clearly the extent to which the Devil has invaded man’s social structures.
The proper submission, dear friend, of the wife to her husband can even be seen in natural law, for men and women each have a profoundly different function in the building block of society which is the family. This will be manifestly evident to any woman who has not been tainted by the rebellious liberal and warped egalitarianism of our godless age. However, it has been explicitly confirmed in the New Testament by St. Paul in the passage I referenced in the preceding paragraph. A husband has, by virtue of the Sacrament of Marriage, always to imitate Christ in His love for the Church, likewise a wife has always, by virtue of the same Sacrament, to imitate the Church in her love for Christ. The man is the head of his wife in all things lawful and not contrary to Church teaching and has the duty to take leadership, whilst the wife must be humbly submissive and learn to be dependent upon her husband. In an arrogantly rebellious age, when many are attempting to increasingly blur the distinction between the sexes and when fanatical stress is placed on the emancipation of women, this no doubt sounds unpopular and offensive doctrine. Nevertheless in the family, for its order and its unity, there must be leadership, and the responsibility of that leadership rests with the husband and father, and his authority must be accepted.
Pope Leo XIII explicitly treats of this topic, dear friend, in his Encyclical Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae, 1880, which continues to be authoritative Church teaching that has not gone mouldy with the passage of time:
"The husband is the chief of the family, and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him: not, indeed as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither honour or dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the woman represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her who obeys, a heaven born love guiding both in their respective duties. For “the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church…Therefore as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives bee to their husbands in all things (Eph. 5: 23-24)”.
As the nature of man is immutable, dear friend, so also is the natural law and thus this divine order of the husband being head of the wife is not subject to change with so called more enlightened or ‘maturer’ thinking. If they are to resist the corruption of nature and God’s supernatural gifts, then husbands and wives must needs remember that they do not belong to this present godless world, otherwise modern day feminism and liberalism will utterly succeed in destroying the family. Pious Catholic husbands will consequently take responsibility and leadership, even when they feel inadequate, and pious Catholic wives will take delight, denying their own subversive will, gladly obeying their husbands and submitting to them “as unto the Lord” (Eph. 5: 22).
To contend that what the Pauline passage treats of is a ‘mutual subjection’ is surely to divest the text of any sense and undercut biblical and Church teaching, for example* Arcanum Divinae Sapentiae* cited above, so as to make it chime with a false modern day egalitiarian and radical feminist ideology. Nobody would honestly deny, save for polemical purposes and secular principles of equality, that St. Paul is speaking of a one-sided submission. The fact that this is how his words have been universally understood until the emergence of the warped opinions of a liberal egalitarianism is, I think, jolly telling. Truly feminine and devout wives will abhor this false ideology, treating it with the contempt that it rightly warrants, and will practice the submission and obedience which both nature and grace incline them.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax