Authentic Male Leadership

[marymary1975]

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 subimission 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

Hmmm so basically what you are telling me is that when my first husband, who was bipolar decided that instead of buying food for my daughter we had to take every penny we had so he could get a BMW (which we couldn’t afford) I should had obeyed him, buy him a BMW and let my daughter starve. Quite interesting especially since when I talked about this situation and the submissive role with my priest he gave me a VERY different answer to what you are saying in here.

 

[Walking_Home]

Not the position of the Catholic Church. Which truly Christian man goes into marriage intending to dominate his wife when marriage should be about mutual respect, trust and love?

Blessed JPII said marriage is about mutual submission, that the historical dominance of men over women was about sin

.

---

Yes – indeed. One sided submission is the sinful spirit of pride/domination…

 

[ringil]

My belief, and how I live my marriage (as the husband) is that I see myself as the spiritual head of the family. It is my duty to lead by example- the Catholic faith, and to do my best to lead my family to do this as well.

I don’t associate my role with any temporal authority over my wife- we share those aspects equally.

 

[The_Bucket]

WOW, are you married?

A quick check back at his history would note that he’s admitting to emotional abuse in his own marriage. He’s also been hurt… so I just give him a pass and pretty much ignore the content of his posts. And Portrait… well… that’s a long story. Though I very much doubt, marymary, that even that poster would say that husband’s have the right to buy fancy cars while their families go hungry.

 

[The_Bucket]

My belief, and how I live my marriage (as the husband) is that I see myself as the spiritual head of the family. It is my duty to lead by example- the Catholic faith, and to do my best to lead my family to do this as well.

I don’t associate my role with any temporal authority over my wife- we share those aspects equally.

Quite well said. And like I wrote earlier, Christ has given us the model for leadership. Leadership comes in the form of service and total self-giving to another. I’ll provide the fuller context to the verse I quoted earlier.
Matthew 20:25-28:

Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

This applies to every relationship we have, including and especially with our spouses.

 

[marymary1975]

Portrait,

Thank you for articulating this view much more eloquently than I presently have to time to proffer. Mutual submission is impossible as is duarchy. A body can only have one head.

I would wholeheartedly concur that potential spouses should avoid marrying someone where there is apt to be a good deal of “deciding vote casting”, but Casti Connubi is clear as to the proper roles of a husband and wife.

1. With great wisdom Our predecessor Leo XIII, of happy memory, in the Encyclical on Christian marriage which We have already mentioned, speaking of this order to be maintained between man and wife, teaches: “The man is the ruler of the family, and the head of the woman; but because she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, let her be subject and obedient to the man, not as a servant but as a companion, so that nothing be lacking of honor or of dignity in the obedience which she pays. Let divine charity be the constant guide of their mutual relations, both in him who rules and in her who obeys, since each bears the image, the one of Christ, the other of the Church.”[30]

Both you and portrait are taking one paragraph from what Leo XIII wrote, isolating it from the rest of the text and making your own conclusion. Is mutual submission is imposible how do you explain that Blessed John Paul II said that it was mutually submissive?

I think you should read this: thepersonalistproject.org/comments/reading_casti_connubii_and_the_tradition_in_light_of_the_insights_of_jpii
It makes a perfect explanation and pay special attention to what numbers 9 and 7 indicate and what the real definition of “authority” is which was already very well explained by Bucket.

 

[Portrait]

I would suggest people not marry others who are in need of much “fraternal correction.” I have no interest in being submissive to my husband, and he has no interest in me submitting to him. What we did ensure before marriage was that we were extremely compatible and like-minded on all the big and small issues, so that neither of us would ever feel the need to pull rank. When a good match is made, there is no need for one spouse to outrank the other, because the decisions are easily made together and rarely does one want something that the other does not.

If both spouses hold tight to a spirit of service, respect, kindness and good reasoning, then the subject of which one is the “boss” will never even come up.

Dear JackieMom,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

It is, dear sister, certainly prudent during the courtship stage for a couple to ascertain if they are well-suited and whether there is general consensus of divers matters, as this will establish if there is likely to be potential conflict that will result in an unhappy married life. If there is agreement, especially as regards faith and morals if they are Catholics, then that is surely likely to minimise marital disputes and the need for the husband to have to continually assert his rightful authority.

However, dear sister, even in the most pious family where, as you put it, “a good match is made”, there can on occasions, hopefully very seldom, be strong disagreements between spouses. Perhaps, for example, it may concern the children and whether they should read be allowed to read a particular work of fiction or listen to certain music, which a husband deems to be unwholesome and therefore a harmful influence upon their spiritual formation. In this sort of situation the wife may profoundly disagree and think her husband is being unduly prissy or reactionary, but she must, if she is to be submissive, allow her husband to have the final say and defer to his wishes. If she defiantly refuses to let her husband have the final say on the matter, then she vitiates the ruler-subject relationship that is plainly taught in Sacred Scripture (Eph. 5: 22-23) and by the constant teaching of Holy Mother Church (e.g. Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum Encyclical). This is because her disobedience gives rise to a situation where there are two heads in the marriage, which is manifestly absurd as well as being necessarily confusing to the poor children who are having to witness discordance between mother and father. This will only serve to encourage the children to exploit this situation in the future so they can get their own way. Needless to say, this will lead to problems and so it is vitally important that the fathers authority is never undermined within the household and that his decisions are accepted as final. In a good marriage many issues can usually be resolved by husband and wife talking matters through calmly, the husband always striving to show love, gentleness, reasonableness, patience and fairness to his beloved wife. However, it is a false egalitarianism which insists that families are little democracies. That is just arrant un-Christian nonsense and should be given no credence by those who profess the holy religion of Christ.
An authentic Catholic family is, and always has been, a patriarchy where the husband is the head and ruler and where the wife submits to this headship and leadership, even when she cannot always agree with his decisions.

Quite frankly, dear sister, I fail to see how any authority could exist any more in the family than in the Church if there were ‘mutual subjection’ and no ruler-subject relation between the spouses. This whole mutual subjection notion, now so fashionable among modern Catholics (including some who identify as ‘conservative’), is actually a conundrum, since you cannot have a subject without a ruler, nor a ruler without a subject, and neither Holy Mother Church or the family can have two heads. That to me seems as clear as the sun at noonday - “the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the Church” (Eph. 5: 23, added emphasis mine).

The Western world, dear sister, has been subjected to a constant barrage of radical feminist and liberal ideology since the moral revolution of the 1960’s and this has sadly impacted the thinking of many contemporary Catholics, either wittingly or unwittingly. It is hardly any wonder that contemporary women are defiantly refusing to submit to their husbands authority or are cohabiting in ‘relationships’ where both sexes are on an equal footing and headship is denied. However, this is a recipe for anarchy and the erosion of the family. Moreover, when the headship of the father is no longer accepted as a fact of nature, children lose the sense of a firm locus of authority in the home, and become unruly. What a sad legacy radical feminism has bequeathed to us and who can begin to calculate the many problems of which it has been the occasion!

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[Portrait]

Hmmm so basically what you are telling me is that when my first husband, who was bipolar decided that instead of buying food for my daughter we had to take every penny we had so he could get a BMW (which we couldn’t afford) I should had obeyed him, buy him a BMW and let my daughter starve. Quite interesting especially since when I talked about this situation and the submissive role with my priest he gave me a VERY different answer to what you are saying in here.

Dear marymary,

Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your response.

May I first say, dear sister, that I am very sorry to hear of your unhappy situation with your first husband. However, he was acting in way that was at complete variance with Church and biblical teaching and was manifestly not being a good Catholic husband and therefore was unworthy of your obedience. In that extreme case obedient submission would have been inappropriate and I can understand why your priest advised you accordingly.

However, your own personal case does not vitiate Church or biblical teaching respecting the headship of the husband and the due submission of the wife.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[Portrait]

Portrait,

Thank you for articulating this view much more eloquently than I presently have to time to proffer. Mutual submission is impossible as is duarchy. A body can only have one head.

I would wholeheartedly concur that potential spouses should avoid marrying someone where there is apt to be a good deal of “deciding vote casting”, but Casti Connubi is clear as to the proper roles of a husband and wife.

1. With great wisdom Our predecessor Leo XIII, of happy memory, in the Encyclical on Christian marriage which We have already mentioned, speaking of this order to be maintained between man and wife, teaches: “The man is the ruler of the family, and the head of the woman; but because she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, let her be subject and obedient to the man, not as a servant but as a companion, so that nothing be lacking of honor or of dignity in the obedience which she pays. Let divine charity be the constant guide of their mutual relations, both in him who rules and in her who obeys, since each bears the image, the one of Christ, the other of the Church.”[30]

Dear hurting,

Hello again and a hearty Amen to all of the above.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[marymary1975]

Dear JackieMom

but she must, if she is to be submissive, allow her husband to have the final say and defer to his wishes. If she defiantly refuses to let her husband have the final say on the matter, then she vitiates the ruler-subject relationship that is plainly taught in Sacred Scripture (Eph. 5: 22-23) and by the constant teaching of Holy Mother Church (e.g. Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum Encyclical). This is because her disobedience gives rise to a situation where there are two heads in the marriage, which is manifestly absurd as well as being necessarily confusing to the poor children who are having to witness discordance between mother and father. This will only serve to encourage the children to exploit this situation in the future so they can get their own way. Needless to say, this will lead to problems and so it is vitally important that the fathers authority is never undermined within the household and that his decisions are accepted as final. In a good marriage many issues can usually be resolved by husband and wife talking matters through calmly, the husband always striving to show love, gentleness, reasonableness, patience and fairness to his beloved wife. However, it is a false egalitarianism which insists that families are little democracies. That is just arrant un-Christian nonsense and should be given no credence by those who profess the holy religion of Christ.
An authentic Catholic family is, and always has been, a patriarchy where the husband is the head and ruler and where the wife submits to this headship and leadership, even when she cannot always agree with his decisions.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

I am sorry but I have to say that what you are saying cannot be correct because it contradicts what Blessed Pope John Paul II says (and if I have to choose who may be right sure I am going to go with JPII) and it even contradicts the enciclyca you are citing (again read the link), as your idea is based on an isolation of one sentence. you have a wrong idea of being the “head.” Again, do you think my first husband should have had his final say into buying himself a fancy car while his family starves? Just like I said before any man who enters marriage thinking that the husband is the “ruler” per your own words and that marriage is a ruler-subject relationship is heading straight to sinful behavior which is confirmed by JPII when he stated that your patriarchal family was nothing but dominance and it was sinful.

 

[Walking_Home]

Again – the one sided submission of wife/subject under the husband/ruler— has sin as its core.

 

[The_Bucket]

Again – the one sided submission of wife/subject under the husband/ruler— has sin as its core.

Indeed. I think we all fail to appreciate how radical St. Paul was when he demanded that self-sacrifice even go into the marital relationship. I think we fail to realize how radical Christ was when he turned leadership into service. Today it’s sort of taken for granted but that was an age when women and children were true subjects to their husbands and fathers with absolute authority over them.

If you want to see what that’s like, go look at Afghanistan under the Taliban or Saudi Arabia today. That was commonplace back then. Telling people that such an arrangement was immoral was very, very radical.

It’s true today that feminism has run rampant, but it’s had plenty of men to help it along the way and it’s been injurious to men and women alike. Not because it gets women “out of their place” but because radical feminism ascribes superiority of women over men and gives women absolute control of the lives and deaths of their in-utero children. As for the portion of feminism that cast aside stigma for a woman who chose to work or speaks up in the political debate, that’s been quite good.

Men and women are both made in the image and likeness of God. We are equals. When we are married, we are partners and no one rules over the other. Instead we each respond to the other, we serve the other and we serve any children God decides to give us. Just as the vocational life is a life of service to the Church, so is the marital life is a life of service to the spouse and to the family overall.

I think it serves families well for husbands and fathers to be seen as a spiritual leader and temporal protector, but that in no way gives them temporal or even spiritual authority over their wives by right. The only authority given to husbands and wives over each other is the authority freely handed over and those arrangements are made by each individual couple.

 

[ringil]

A quick check back at his history would note that he’s admitting to emotional abuse in his own marriage. He’s also been hurt… so I just give him a pass and pretty much ignore the content of his posts. And Portrait… well… that’s a long story. Though I very much doubt, marymary, that even that poster would say that husband’s have the right to buy fancy cars while their families go hungry.

Best and most appreciable greetings to you Bucket,

Taking into account, my benevolent brother/sister in Christ, the fortuitous insight you bring into this auspicious matter of marital relations, I must give you thanks and great attentiveness in this most informative exchange.

A most cordial and blessed day I wish you, my amiable and meet friend,

Yours, truly and truly yours,

Ringil

 

[The_Bucket]

Best and most appreciable greetings to you Bucket,

Taking into account, my benevolent brother/sister in Christ, the fortuitous insight you bring into this auspicious matter of marital relations, I must give you thanks and great attentiveness in this most informative exchange.

A most cordial and blessed day I wish you, my amiable and meet frind,

Yours, truly and truly yours,

Ringil

http://www.osborneink.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/super-clap.gif

 

[maryjk]

Best and most appreciable greetings to you Bucket,

Taking into account, my benevolent brother/sister in Christ, the fortuitous insight you bring into this auspicious matter of marital relations, I must give you thanks and great attentiveness in this most informative exchange.

A most cordial and blessed day I wish you, my amiable and meet friend,

Yours, truly and truly yours,

Ringil

 

[Portrait]

Both you and portrait are taking one paragraph from what Leo XIII wrote, isolating it from the rest of the text and making your own conclusion. Is mutual submission is imposible how do you explain that Blessed John Paul II said that it was mutually submissive?

I think you should read this: thepersonalistproject.org/comments/reading_casti_connubii_and_the_tradition_in_light_of_the_insights_of_jpii
It makes a perfect explanation and pay special attention to what numbers 9 and 7 indicate and what the real definition of “authority” is which was already very well explained by Bucket.

Dear marymary1975,

Hello again.

The citation from Leo XIII, dear sister, stands on its own and is surely quite clear and unambiguous, thus can you explain how “the rest of the text” completely alters or nullifies the meaning which hurting and I have ascribed to the passage?

With regards to what H.H.JPII said in Mulieris Dignitatem, first, dear sister, it should be observed that he presents his teaching as a “personal meditation” (“And it seems that the best thing is to* give this the style and character of a meditation*”, his own emphasis). Now the level and binding nature of this “meditation” is far from apparent and can hardly be said to portray definitive teaching which no man is at liberty to question. Second, Pope Leo XIII emphasized precisely the point that Ephesians 5: 22-23 - which is to say the very word of God itself - teaches, namely that subjection is required not “only on the part of the Church” to Christ, as H.H.JPII asserts, but also on the part of the wife to her husband, because in the order of familial authority the husband represents Christ and the wife represents the Church, as Pope Leo taught in the *Arcanum *Encyclical. Third, H.H.JPII quotes from the beginning of the key sentence from the Ephesian Epistle - “For the husband is head of the wife”, omitting the conclusion, “as Christ is head of the Church”. Fourth, H.H.JPII suggests that St. Paul’s teaching (in Ephesians 5) is but “a way of speaking” arising from “the customs and religious tradition of the time”. In the first place, the “religious tradition of the time” was Christianity. Moreover, does not St. Paul mean exactly what his words signify and what Pope Leo affirmed they signified, that is, that the wife is subject to the husband as Holy Mother Church is subject to Christ? Is not God Himself the author of those words, which were written “wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost”, to recall the teaching of Pope Leo in Providentissimus Deus? Are the Catholic faithful to conclude then that God dictated His revelation of the divinely ordained constitution of the family in language that was culturally determined and required ‘unpacking’ by historico-critical exegesis, and that Pope Leo and all his predecessors misinterpreted the Ephesians Epistle by reading it too literally? What then of St. Paul’s teaching on homosexual vice, plus all the other ‘hard sayings’ of the New Testament? Were these similarly “ways of speaking” that must now be understood in some different sense? To anticipate any misunderstanding, I am quite certain that that is not what H.H.JPII intended and neither should we intend such. However, one cannot stress enough the importance of taking the whole sweep of Catholic Tradition to get an authentically balanced perspective of Catholic doctrine.

The sad truth is, dear sister, that many contemporary Catholics, especially the youth, are deeply unhappy and even ashamed of older Church teaching and would prefer to largely ignore it or reinterpret it so as to make it chime with their pre-conceived liberal and trendy fancies. This is an exemplification of the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” with the past, so deplored by our former Pope, and is indicative of failure to think with an authentic Catholic mind. It is also, in my opinion, clear evidence that many modern Catholics have assimilated the godless ideology of Western culture and are trying hard to adapt this to their Catholic faith.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[catholicmamajoy]

Best and most appreciable greetings to you Bucket,

Taking into account, my benevolent brother/sister in Christ, the fortuitous insight you bring into this auspicious matter of marital relations, I must give you thanks and great attentiveness in this most informative exchange.

A most cordial and blessed day I wish you, my amiable and meet friend,

Yours, truly and truly yours,

Ringil

 

[Baelor]

"Portrait:

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.

This is not Church teaching.

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.

No, because mutual submission in the Pauline passage is not incompatible with the subjection mentioned in other documents.

Nobody would honestly deny, save for polemical purposes and secular principles of equality, that St. Paul is speaking of a one-sided submission.

The subjection takes different forms for man and wife.

Thank you for articulating this view much more eloquently than I presently have to time to proffer. Mutual submission is impossible as is duarchy.

The Church disagrees. Why are you on a Catholic forum if you reject Catholic teaching?

Also, do you deny the right of the head to exact its authority? You deprive the husband of the authority you claim he possesses when you deny him the natural right to involve his wife in decision-making however he sees fit. You contradict yourself.

Needless to say, this will lead to problems and so it is vitally important that the fathers authority is never undermined within the household and that his decisions are accepted as final.

As you say, such instances almost never occur in a stable marriage.

The husband’s authority is also only valid insofar as it is directed toward spiritual good; a husband who asserts his authority toward any other end forfeits it.

Quite frankly, dear sister, I fail to see how any authority could exist any more in the family than in the Church if there were ‘mutual subjection’ and no ruler-subject relation between the spouses.

Perhaps you should read JPII more carefully then.

This whole mutual subjection notion, now so fashionable among modern Catholics (including some who identify as ‘conservative’), is actually a conundrum, since you cannot have a subject without a ruler, nor a ruler without a subject.

This is simply not true.

 

[Walking_Home]

Indeed. I think we all fail to appreciate how radical St. Paul was when he demanded that self-sacrifice even go into the marital relationship. I think we fail to realize how radical Christ was when he turned leadership into service. Today it’s sort of taken for granted but that was an age when women and children were true subjects to their husbands and fathers with absolute authority over them.

If you want to see what that’s like, go look at Afghanistan under the Taliban or Saudi Arabia today. That was commonplace back then. Telling people that such an arrangement was immoral was very, very radical.

It’s true today that feminism has run rampant, but it’s had plenty of men to help it along the way and it’s been injurious to men and women alike. Not because it gets women “out of their place” but because radical feminism ascribes superiority of women over men and gives women absolute control of the lives and deaths of their in-utero children. As for the portion of feminism that cast aside stigma for a woman who chose to work or speaks up in the political debate, that’s been quite good.

Men and women are both made in the image and likeness of God. We are equals. When we are married, we are partners and no one rules over the other. Instead we each respond to the other, we serve the other and we serve any children God decides to give us. Just as the vocational life is a life of service to the Church, so is the marital life is a life of service to the spouse and to the family overall.

I think it serves families well for husbands and fathers to be seen as a spiritual leader and temporal protector, but that in no way gives them temporal or even spiritual authority over their wives by right. The only authority given to husbands and wives over each other is the authority freely handed over and those arrangements are made by each individual couple.

---

We don’t need to go that far—to see it. It is found within – some fundamentalist protestant sects — and from I’ve seen reading various “Trad” sites — within “Traditionalism”.

 

[The_Bucket]

Hey Portrait, if Paul was not in his ecclesiastical directives speaking simply to the church at the time… do you agree then 1 Corinthians 14:34-35? That it is disgraceful for a woman to speak up in the church and that she should direct all her questions to husband so he can ask for her?

There’s a huge difference in what the Truth is as St. Paul wrote and what he directed people to do in the context of the time. Rocking the boat radically and allowing women to have full equality in the church in everything would have resulted in chaos among the Jews. There’s no way that would have been tolerated. It would have been a death knell for the growing church. Working instead within the culture to change it went in the right direction.

And remember that despite these directives Paul was still clear on multiple occasions that everyone was equal and that we are all parts of one body. Just two chapters before the directive I brought up he said:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

When you see that you can clearly separate the directives aimed at dealing with the church as it was in that culture and what absolute Truth is. The Lord’s revelation takes time to unfold because we are hard of heart and hard of hearing. Mosaic law allowed for divorce because the Hebrews’ hearts were hard, but Christ changed that law. And so it was that women’s role in the Church has evolved over time to the point where they are equal, though not the same.