I don’t understand your answer. My arguments mean no such thing. Women hold authority in the Church–abbesses, and even the chancellor of our archdiocese–and that is not a man-made organization. No, my point is that being in a position of subordination does not make someone a dominated second-class citizen. That is the secular talk of willful people who hate the idea that someone else has authority that they didn’t personally have the power to give or take away, IMHO, and I hate the way it is creeping into the Church. (Present company excluded–I do not mean to accuse you or those debating here of any such thing, but talk about my frustration with the “to be under authority is to be dominated” talk that is so prevalent in the US these days!)
Re-read my posts; I most clearly did not put the husband in the position of a king, but as a head among servants, and a head bound to treat everyone in the household not as he would, but as God would have the house run. He is bound to lead as Christ dictated, which is in clear contrast to the way the leaders of the secular world “make their importance felt.” He is also bound to treat his wife as his equal helpmate, and to take her opinions fully into account as to how the decisions are to be made. He is in no sense whatsoever the king of the house. If that is the model, where the husband is a king beholden to no one, then that is a perversion of marriage.
Under the headship of Christ, mutual submission and the authority of the husband in the home are not at cross-purposes. They are a full description which are only paradoxical if decision-making is seen in a secular way. For heaven’s sake, St. Paul put those two concepts side-by-side in Ephesians for a reason!! The two go together, and one does not stand without the other. He laid it all out very carefully.
Honestly, this conversation has been like listening to two sides argue about whether light is a wave or a particle. There is no contradiction, and experimental evidence shows that this is true.
