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TheLittleLady
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Preach it, Deacon!!
How Practical is it for Women to be Submissive to Their Husbands in Modern Society
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Xantippe
Guest
“Chief and final authority” is not consistent with “nor does it bid her obey her husband’s every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife.”
What does “final authority” mean to you? To me, it would mean that the wife does need to “obey her husband’s every request” even when “not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity” due to a wife.
If you were just saying “chief authority,” I would not be arguing with you, but “final authority” sounds like some sort of domestic dictatorship, I don’t think it accommodates such facts of life as brain injury, addiction, mental illness, or senility.
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Xantippe
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I would love to hear from omgriley, but this might help.
In my experience (I’ve been married to the same guy for nearly 20 years), the biggest struggle is not submitting to my husband but both of us submitting to reality. For example, my husband needed to accept the fact that two of our kids have special needs and that his kids’ interests and gifts aren’t identical to his (husband initially really hated a kid’s musical interest despite the fact that she was very interested and talented), or I needed to accept that we couldn’t actually afford the amazing preschool I toured, or both of us needed to deal with the fact that our school bills were getting to the point where we need some combination of radical budget cutbacks/more income. There has been a long list of issues where it’s not about submitting to each other, but about living in the real world and playing the hand we have been dealt, not the one we wanted.
So I think that an unrelenting focus on “what he wants” versus “what she wants” can be missing the boat.
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omgriley
Guest
You’re splitting hairs. “chief authority” “primacy of the husband” and “final authority” are interchangeable. I’m sorry you seem to be taking issue with the husband’s authoritative role in marriage.
Then you misunderstand.
Hi, LumineDiei. I’d love to share some examples.
Part of my role and responsibility as a husband is to provide for the spiritual well-being of my family and to ensure it’s proper spiritual development. Traditionally, this involves deciding things like what parish we will be members of, what type of education our children are going to receive, what type of material is allowed inside the home. For instance, if I feel as though there is dangerous reading or viewing material coming into the house it’s my role to prevent it from coming near my family. These are just a few examples of the top of my head, there obviously isn’t a list of what I can and cannot do with my patriarchal authority. But what I can say is that the principle is to be to my wife what Christ is to His Church, what the Pope is to the Bishops, etc. to love and to provide for the needs of my family, without lording over them or nitpicking.
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Xantippe
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I know a couple where the husband insists on watching super scary stuff with his kids just before bedtime against his wife’s wishes. He’s a serious Protestant, but doesn’t really seem to get the idea of things being age-inappropriate or bedtime being a bad time to watch Chuckie with little kids. It causes a lot of issues with the kids imitating what they see on screen and the kids going around talking about zombies, ghosts, vampires, etc.
At my house, my husband and I would probably both exercise a veto on things we think are inappropriate. We have expectations in more or less the same ballpark and it’s worked pretty well. For example, our big kids (15 and 12) watch a lot of Star Trek, movies with some bad languages and the 5-year-old gets to watch LOTR with us, but I take her out for battle scenes or when there’s a giant spider stalking the hobbits, and I don’t want her around for anything with bad language as she parrots a lot of what she hears.
I’ve mentioned before my great distaste at the thought of a husband imposing homeschooling on an unwilling wife, especially year after year. It’s very unwise to have the person in charge of homeschooling be a person who doesn’t believe in it. If mom is going to be the point person for school, be it homeschool, private school, or public school, she has to believe in it heart and soul or she won’t do a good job, or at least not as good a job as she could do if she believed 100% that it was the best thing for the children and was excited about it. We have been at the same private school for 10+ years. With our third kid starting there, it’s getting to be an enormous sacrifice. I don’t think we could cope with that level of sacrifice if we didn’t both believe that it was the best place for our children, and that all of the doing without was worth it.
And, with regard to parish–how many choices do you really have within reasonable driving distance? If your wife doesn’t want to drive 45-minutes away with a car full of children to a church with no cry room, no nursery, poor children’s programs, and mean old people–why would you do that every Sunday? Why not at least split the difference?
These are areas where my husband and I have agreement and unity. As Sheila Wray Gregoire (a Protestant writer) points out, unity is actually our goal in marriage, rather than doing things a particular way. What happens if you drop dead and your wife didn’t agree with how you were raising the kids? Do you think she’s going to do everything exactly the same way if deep down she always thought that you were mistaken and making things too hard for her? The same applies to the wife, too–what happens if she was super strict against her husband’s wishes, but she drops dead? Is her husband (who always disagreed) actually going to follow through with her perfect system if he never really bought into it?
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Walking_Home
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“Without lording over them” – from what you describe in your household – yea – looks like “lording over them”
And here is Pope Francis on “patriarchal authority”:
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Xantippe
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No, “final authority” is definitely in conflict with Casti Connubii.
It’s also not very appropriate for a Catholic husband to think of himself as his family’s pope.
And yes, I do disagree strongly with the idea of the husband having unlimited power in the family. I was the poster who told the story of a father in my extended family who was able to molest two generations of girls in his family because he had unlimited power. I’m also the poster whose dad didn’t think it a priority to provide medical care for me and my siblings when we were sick or injured. I’m also the poster whose friend’s husband has insisted that she keep homeschooling, even though she has wanted to stop for years.
I think all of this behavior is terrible and makes Christians look bad if we enable it.
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UbiCaritas
Guest
This!
Also, frankly, Dad/Hubby as final authority can easily lead to spiritual and moral laxity on the part of Mom/Wife. I grew up in a family where unquestioning obedience was held as the sole paramount virtue for the wife and kids. As a result, there was a lot of pretty horrifying abuse from or permitted by both parents, but one of mom’s fallback excuses was “well, your father says that X is what should happen even though I disagree, so it will happen because he’s the head of the house.”
So, Dad thinking that inviting neo-Nazis (and I do mean literally–as in, I wasn’t allowed to have my Jewish best friend over while this guy was there because he was offended by her continued existence…), pedophiles (yes, convicted ones), and drug addicts to the family home was acceptable behavior meant that we kids were exposed to all that that entailed while also giving Mom an excusable “out”: “You shouldn’t ever be alone with Mr. Smith, and he’s a very dangerous person, but Daddy says he can come over, so he can.” Lovely dynamic, I do not think.
As Sole, Final Authority, Dad believed that no one got to tell him what to do. Do you know, I didn’t realize 'til I was a teen that it wasn’t normal to get food poisoning on a very regular basis? It seems that “those feminazis down at the health department” just miiiiiight have been onto something about the whole washing your hands between using the bathroom and handling food thing, and ditto washing your hands after handling raw meat, but hey–Dad was the final authority, so we didn’t do those things. (Until, that is, I read a cookbook one day that included a chapter on food safety, and then took over the cooking.) He also routinely kept me from getting any reasonable amount of sleep because my saying “I’m done with work at 10 PM” meant that he had to prove I wasn’t really in charge, so he wouldn’t pick me up until 2 AM on a school night because, again, he was In Charge, and I wasn’t.
Also as Final Authority, Dad threw my sister out of the house at 15 for being a mouthy teenager. Should she have been a mouthy teenager? Nope. But sassy is kinda part of the package with the average teenage girl, and the appropriate response to impertinence from a 15-year-old isn’t to ban her from the house so you don’t have to deal with it. Again, mom disagreed…but “if your father says you have to go, God said he’s the head of the household, so…” Nice.
Women have moral authority too, and are, providing they’re of normal psychological/moral development, expected to use it, and a dynamic in which one person has unquestioned and seemingly unlimited authority is not only dangerous, but doesn’t jive with God’s apparent expectations of behavior. “The snake gave me the apple to eat, so I did” didn’t get Eve any further than “the woman tempted me, so I ate” got Adam.
Also, frankly, Dad/Hubby as final authority can easily lead to spiritual and moral laxity on the part of Mom/Wife. I grew up in a family where unquestioning obedience was held as the sole paramount virtue for the wife and kids. As a result, there was a lot of pretty horrifying abuse from or permitted by both parents, but one of mom’s fallback excuses was “well, your father says that X is what should happen even though I disagree, so it will happen because he’s the head of the house.”
So, Dad thinking that inviting neo-Nazis (and I do mean literally–as in, I wasn’t allowed to have my Jewish best friend over while this guy was there because he was offended by her continued existence…), pedophiles (yes, convicted ones), and drug addicts to the family home was acceptable behavior meant that we kids were exposed to all that that entailed while also giving Mom an excusable “out”: “You shouldn’t ever be alone with Mr. Smith, and he’s a very dangerous person, but Daddy says he can come over, so he can.” Lovely dynamic, I do not think.
As Sole, Final Authority, Dad believed that no one got to tell him what to do. Do you know, I didn’t realize 'til I was a teen that it wasn’t normal to get food poisoning on a very regular basis? It seems that “those feminazis down at the health department” just miiiiiight have been onto something about the whole washing your hands between using the bathroom and handling food thing, and ditto washing your hands after handling raw meat, but hey–Dad was the final authority, so we didn’t do those things. (Until, that is, I read a cookbook one day that included a chapter on food safety, and then took over the cooking.) He also routinely kept me from getting any reasonable amount of sleep because my saying “I’m done with work at 10 PM” meant that he had to prove I wasn’t really in charge, so he wouldn’t pick me up until 2 AM on a school night because, again, he was In Charge, and I wasn’t.
Also as Final Authority, Dad threw my sister out of the house at 15 for being a mouthy teenager. Should she have been a mouthy teenager? Nope. But sassy is kinda part of the package with the average teenage girl, and the appropriate response to impertinence from a 15-year-old isn’t to ban her from the house so you don’t have to deal with it. Again, mom disagreed…but “if your father says you have to go, God said he’s the head of the household, so…” Nice.
Women have moral authority too, and are, providing they’re of normal psychological/moral development, expected to use it, and a dynamic in which one person has unquestioned and seemingly unlimited authority is not only dangerous, but doesn’t jive with God’s apparent expectations of behavior. “The snake gave me the apple to eat, so I did” didn’t get Eve any further than “the woman tempted me, so I ate” got Adam.
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Melchior_1
Guest
Rather than the conventional definition of submission, perhaps we should look at it within the following framework; "submission"meaning to be “under the mission”.
A wife falls under the husband’s mission, and his mission is to die for her as Christ died for the Church.
A wife falls under the husband’s mission, and his mission is to die for her as Christ died for the Church.
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omgriley
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Have you read anything I’ve written?
Who said anything about “unlimited power”? Please stop twisting the argument to make it seem like some boogyman.
I never said I think of myself as my family’s pope. I set up an analogy in order to show you the similarities between the roles of Christ, the pope, and the husband. It’s exactly what St. Paul did in Ephesians 5.
This will be the last time I respond to your posts because you obviously are not interested in having an actual discussion about this issue. You’re only interested in tearing down men who actually carry out God’s call to be the chief authority of the household. All you have done so far is equate my position, which is the Church’s position, to maniacal child abuse. I’m sorry that you Father mistreated you as a child and I sincerely hope that one day you can put it behind you and stop letting it affect your view of husbands and fathers.
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omgriley
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What about my examples looks like lording over my wife to you? Are you saying it’s not a father’s responsibility to prevent harmful material from entering his house and affecting his family? Is it not a father’s responsibility to ensure his children are properly educated? Give me a break
It isn’t my fault that “Patriarch” has taken on a negative connotation in this day and age. In the proper sense it merely means that I am the father of the family. It’s the same as saying Abraham is the patriarch of the three major world religions.
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Walking_Home
Guest
It’s the parents responsibility – which means – the wife an equal say about what happens within a household.
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omgriley
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LumineDiei, Thank you for your response and I really appreciate your candidness. I guess my answer to your question would be that when I make a family decision, I’m not doing it in some air conditioned office and notifying my wife about it by some inter-office memo. I know that’s not what you’re implying, but sometimes people get that idea. When I make a decision that involves my family’s lives, I do include my wife! She’s apart of everything. However, the decision to do something like selecting a parish, if we were to disagree, would ultimately be made by me. This is of course if my reason for selecting the parish was, well… reasonable. If I selected the parish because I like that the priest speeds through the mass so that I can get Home, well then I’m not acting in good reason and my wife would not be obliged to go along.
Let’s say If i wanted to homeschool my children, and my wife wanted to send them to private school, and we both felt our opinions with equal intensity, then obviously something has to give! Someone has to make a decision. That ultimately falls to the husband and the wife would need to submit to that authority.
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Walking_Home
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Yup – “Lord and Master”
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omgriley
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This is not the teaching of the church. The wife would not have “equal say” —especially when the two are in conflict of opinion. The Church has held that the head of the family is the husband.
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omgriley
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Sorry that’s how you feel. Take it up with the Church and God.
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Bruised_Reed
Guest
I was going to share something similar minus the submission as it was not something the couple practiced.
In this family, if the dad/husband wielded his authority, his authoritarian to the extreme approach to parenting would not have been tempered by his wife’s more thoughtful and measured approach. She wasn’t permissive but he saw it as very permissive when it was actually more balanced. If he was the final authority thise kids would experienced non-stop emotional abuse and neglect. He doesn’t get it and it’s a constant battle for her and the kids walk on eggshells around him. I think mom is doing the best she can but it can’t mitigate the harm being done.
@omgriley how does summision work here?
In this family, if the dad/husband wielded his authority, his authoritarian to the extreme approach to parenting would not have been tempered by his wife’s more thoughtful and measured approach. She wasn’t permissive but he saw it as very permissive when it was actually more balanced. If he was the final authority thise kids would experienced non-stop emotional abuse and neglect. He doesn’t get it and it’s a constant battle for her and the kids walk on eggshells around him. I think mom is doing the best she can but it can’t mitigate the harm being done.
@omgriley how does summision work here?
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Walking_Home
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Walking_Home:
Sorry that’s how you feel. Take it up with the Church and God.
omgriley:
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This is just wrong.
The Church doesn’t teach that at all.
It’s somewhat concerning that so many Catholic men are buying into this false (and protestant) idea of submission. Ultimaely this attitude will do a lot of damage to marriages.
I mean, you really think that you can veto your wife’s opinion about where the kids should be educated just because you’re the man? As a teacher, I have some pretty strong views about what the best education might be, but even with that I would never think that I alone have final say of where our kids might go to school.
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TheAmazingGrace
Guest
Well, what would you call it if the genders were reversed?
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