Do Women Belong to Their Fathers Until They Get Married?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tina.Kamira
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
redcatholic said:
This thread is s very interesting. I recently started a thread asking how much authority do forum members give a parish priest. Since “go ask your priest” is a common answer on here. Mostly, with a few exceptions, posters willingly give incredible amounts of authority to a priest.
Click to expand...
With all due respect, that’s not the conclusion I drew from the last thread you started.
You seem to have some unusual ideas regarding priestly authority. I would suggest you please try to approach the subject a bit more open-mindedly and not keep asserting that vast numbers of Catholics give all sorts of authority to their priests, which is not borne out by either the responses on here or the way most Catholics outside of this forum (which is hardly a representative group) act.

As for family members having spiritual authority, parents have authority, spiritual and otherwise, over their children until they become adults. Once the child is an adult, neither parent has authority over the child, spiritual or otherwise, any more.

In Catholic marriages, the Church does not teach that one spouse has “authority” over the other, spiritual or otherwise. Marriage is an equal partnership. This is Church teaching.

I would have been rather in a pickle if my husband had spiritual “authority” over me; he wasn’t Catholic.

Likewise, the idea of a 50-year-old single adult daughter still being under her father’s authority in the modern world, where women have rights and ability to look after themselves, is laughable. My father has been dead for decades anyway, and I have no other close adult male relatives living. I’d have to be under the spiritual authority of a younger male in-law, who is likewise not Catholic and given his personality and place in life, would probably be daunted at exercising “authority” over me. Silliness.
 
Last edited:
Ok. So at what age does a child, specifically a daughter have her own spiritual all authority?
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I would have been rather in a pickle if my husband had spiritual “authority” over me; he wasn’t Catholic.
Click to expand...
This is interesting thing, because if we presume that husband has spiritual authority over wife in marriage, what is with those in non Catholic marriages? Does that apply to them?
What happens with spiritual authority if both of them are Orthodox or wife is Protestant and husband is an atheist?

That is silly to me too and I cannot accept it.
I am trying to understand whole that idea.
I also heard for it from some of my friends and I cannot understand where does it come from originally?
On which sources people refer when they say it (I suppose it comes from non Catholic source)?
 
redcatholic said:
Ok. So at what age does a child, specifically a daughter have her own spiritual all authority?
Click to expand...
http://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib1-cann96-123_en.html
"Can. 97 §1. A person who has completed the eighteenth year of age has reached majority; below this age, a person is a minor.
Click to expand...
§2. A minor before the completion of the seventh year is called an infant and is considered not responsible for oneself (non sui compos). With the completion of the seventh year, however, a minor is presumed to have the use of reason.
Click to expand...
Can. 98 §1. A person who has reached majority has the full exercise of his or her rights."
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Inbonum said:
I cannot understand where does it come from originally?
On which sources people refer when they say it (I suppose it comes from non Catholic source)?
Click to expand...
I don’t know where the original source of it came from, except the old cultural expectation that women were totally dependent on the males they were related to in societies where women weren’t allowed to work outside the home or own property and where they were also as a practical matter unable to protect themselves from physical harm or kidnapping without the aid of strong males.

If we go back to the days of the early Church, there were some female saints who refused to marry non-Christian spouses and were martyred for that, and other female saints who married the non-Christian spouse and suffered at his hands (sometimes managing to convert him later, sometimes not); and still other female saints who somehow managed to convert their non-Christian spouse either before marriage or early on in marriage, which usually seems to have ended with them both getting martyred together. In any event, being married to a husband who doesn’t share your religion is not a new concept.
 
Please read the Catechism. It contains the Church’s proper interpretation of Scripture and other materials.

I would also be interested in knowing if you’re married. Most of the stuff you’ve been posting on here is giving the impression that you are not married and that you may be quite young. If that’s not the case, it would be good if you clarified it. This forum often gets posters who have read a few encyclicals and go on like they’re marriage experts and then they turn out to be teenage singles.
 
Last edited:
I’ve read the Catechism, thanks. I was also married in the Church for 23 years.

I don’t think it’s necessary to discuss this further.

I also think marital topics are best discussed with/ by people who are/ have been actually married, with the exception of priests.
 
Last edited:
Tis_Bearself said:
I don’t know where the original source of it came from, except the old cultural expectation that women were totally dependent on the males they were related to in societies where women weren’t allowed to work outside the home or own property and where they were also as a practical matter unable to protect themselves from physical harm or kidnapping without the aid of strong males.
Click to expand...
I can say that, connected to what I heard from some people, they usually say it “because of sacrament of marriage and because of unification of the body wife and husband have spiritual authority over each other, wife and husband are masters of each other”, “wife can either bless husband or curse him, and vice versa, because of power of sacramental connection between them” .

But I still don’t understand where it comes from and most Catholics I know didn’t even hear for that concept.
 
Elizabeth3 said:
I’m not sure but it seems if they are still single, they go from their father’s care to their brothers.
Click to expand...
If the brothers have wives and children, it would be an additional burden on them. Not to mention the risk of the wives resenting the sisters.

Either way, it’s potential trouble and drama.
 
Sarcelle said:
If the brothers have wives and children, it would be an additional burden on them. Not to mention the risk of the wives resenting the sisters.

Either way, it’s potential trouble and drama.
Click to expand...
Agree. It seems as aunties they are considered built-in babysitters for their nieces and nephews so there’s that.
 
Ok so at 17 and 11 months one is under the spiritual direction of a parent but at 18, one month later that spiritual authority is gone because of a calandar?
 
redcatholic said:
Ok so at 17 and 11 months one is under the spiritual direction of a parent but at 18, one month later that spiritual authority is gone because of a calandar?
Click to expand...
It has to come to a definitive end at some point. It makes perfect sense to me that spiritual authority would end at the same time as civil legal authority/ responsibility ends.

Legal adulthood means that the parent is no longer legally responsible for you (including your debts, etc) and can no longer tell you what to do. Which would include telling you to go to Mass, etc.
 
Last edited:
This is where you lost. Right here. As soon as you answered a personal question you were had. This happened to me the other day. I am married, I have a lot of kids. But when I took a spiritual and logical opinion on a thread people assumed I was not married. As if that has ANY bearing on the argument at hand.
 
So if the parent of an 18 year old who is fully supporting the offspring and who is taking care of them has no spiritual authority that maybe two weeks ago they had? That’s odd.
 
Barring some sort of special circumstance where the 18-year-old is unable to function on his own due to severe mental disease, debilitating injury etc, parents have no legal duty to fully support their children past age 18. If they choose to do so, then the parent and kid work out their own terms. E.g. Dad will let you continue to live in his house if you follow his rules, pay some small rent, do certain chores etc. But in most cases, the parent’s job from a legal standpoint is done when the kid turns 18. And so is his authority over the kid.

Why is this such a big issue for you?
 
Last edited:
The whole idea to me is so foreign. I converted. I raise my children Catholic. I know more about many subjects than a parish priest. But here we tell people to go to their priest with some pretty odd things. “I struggle with impurity, porn, masturbation, infidelity, birth control, etc.” go to your priest. Even over your parents or spouse. In about 50 parish priests I’ve known maybe 20 of them would I consider spiritually superior to me. Only 10 would I tell my child to “ask our priest” and none would I ever tell my wife “what father says goes”. Upon hearing of my wife’s 7th child I had our parish priest, who occasionally teaches at seminary, pull me aside and tell me to use birth control. I said “NFP?” He said, “no that doesn’t work, you have reason to use birth control.” I’ve had a young priest tell me that porn was normal, that everyone does it and to try not to but don’t worry too much about it. This was unsolicited. When I was a youth minister our priest would teach the youth that the devil and Jesus need each other???

. . . . So when someone says “ go ask a priest, or who has authority a parent a priest or a husband it seems uncomfortable to me. Does a priest have more authority over my kids than me spiritually? How about my wife? If a priest guides my wife to use birth control or my child that masturbation is not grave. That seems wrong. Upthread, someone said a priest has spiritual authority over you by nature of his ordination. Nope. Just can’t wrap my head around this idea that people will freely give authority to a priest who they met or may not know, who may be moved every six years or so, who may be at a different level of theology than someone. But then we balk at the idea that a father would exercise authority in knowledge and live over a daughter or a husband would abuse his authority over a wife. Given the track record of my family and our tight, faith and our parish priests or even the Church at large I just don’t understand this at all.
 
Last edited:
It should be a big issue for everyone. We are talking about immense stakes here. Souls and bodies, life and death. This thread just highlights this seeming illogical way we Catholics view our priests, parents, and spouses.
 
redcatholic said:
So if the parent of an 18 year old who is fully supporting the offspring and who is taking care of them has no spiritual authority that maybe two weeks ago they had? That’s odd.
Click to expand...
It’s the parent’s job to work themselves out of a job. Especially when the kids reach the teen years there should be a transition that happens in which you slowly loosen the reins without cutting them off too young. You transition from giving rules to follow to giving guidance in making good decisions for themselves. At 18 you still offer quite a bit of guidance but you allow them to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences. As young adults, you may require they follow house rules as a mater of consideration for not only whatever support you are still providing but also for the other members of the house. But it’s more of a respectful agreement between adults rather than an exercise of parental authority. Roots and wings.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top