Practical ways that a wife should be submissive to her husband

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BEL said:

“There’s a regular poster on this site that I have a lot of respect for who said on a thread a while back that he’s the head of the house, and as such, he makes sure that he gets to watch football every Sunday and even plans the family’s travel around it.”

That would be totally kosher, as long as he dropped the “head of the house” part, and/or said, “and my wife gets to do blah blah blah.”

As soon as you’re saying, “I’m the head of the house and I get to do XYZ for me,” you’ve taken a wrong turn.

(My husband and I claim the parental right to eat ice cream on the sofa while the kids don’t get to eat anywhere but the dining room table (much to the kids’ disgust), but that’s a parental right, rather than a head of the household right. If my husband were claiming the right to eat ice cream on the sofa while I had to eat it in the kitchen, we would have words.)
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
I don’t think there is any way for a Catholic marriage to have two headships - Christ and the husband. The comes awfully close to making an idol out of the husband, IMO.
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Such would be a misunderstanding.

Yes Christ is head of the Church (which includes married persons and marriages, as well as those in consecrated life: monks, nuns, hermits as well as Priests, Bishops, and the Pope! – within the Church though there are various heads in the order of love)

But yes there is a role of the husband as head.

“the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”

~ Ephesians 5:23 RSVCE
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
I don’t think there is any way for a Catholic marriage to have two headships - Christ and the husband. The comes awfully close to making an idol out of the husband, IMO.
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Only if you claim the two headships are the exact same kind of headship. 🤷

Again, it seems to me the problem is that people are coming at this discussion with preconceived ideas of what “headship” means and assuming that that is the only possible meaning for headship. Again, the fact is that both scriptures and official Catholic teaching use this phrase to describe the husband. So, if you are a Catholic, you kind of have to accept that this phrasing can be used legitimately. The question that remains is hammering out what exactly the Church means when she speaks of the husband being the head. One thing we do know is that whatever the Church means by this phrase she does not mean that the wife is like a child or a slave, or that the wife has less intelligence or prudence than the husband, or even that this headship has a universal appearance that must be met. All of those ideas were explicitly rejected by the Church even as the Church re-affirmed that the man is the head. So if your idea of headship includes any of the above then rest assured that that cannot be what the Church means by it.
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
I don’t think there is any way for a Catholic marriage to have two headships - Christ and the husband. The comes awfully close to making an idol out of the husband, IMO.
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Do a soldier make an idol out of Barack Obama if he obeys his orders? :confused:

(Not that headship = obeying orders, but surely there’s nothing idolatrous about considering another person your head! Otherwise well-behaved children would be idolaters.)
 
Prodigal_Son said:
Do a soldier make an idol out of Barack Obama if he obeys his orders? :confused:

(Not that headship = obeying orders, but surely there’s nothing idolatrous about considering another person your head! Otherwise well-behaved children would be idolaters.)
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Catholic marriage isn’t the military.
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
I don’t think there is any way for a Catholic marriage to have two headships - Christ and the husband. The comes awfully close to making an idol out of the husband, IMO.
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Such would be a misunderstanding.

Yes Christ is head of the Church (which includes married persons and marriages, as well as those in consecrated life: monks, nuns, hermits as well as Priests, Bishops, and the Pope! – within the Church though there are various heads in the order of love)

But yes there is a role of the husband as head.

Quote:

“the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”

~ Ephesians 5:23 RSVCE
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
I don’t think there is any way for a Catholic marriage to have two headships - Christ and the husband. The comes awfully close to making an idol out of the husband, IMO.
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I think the point “submit to your husband as to the Lord” might be that the husband is to be given respect even though he serves instead of dominating or keeping score. When someone who has the physical capacity to dominate and controls himself not to do it, becoming not an equal but a servant who does not demand to be served equally in return, there is a temptation to take that sacrifice for granted or even to look down on it. If we secretly believe that it is impossible to both serve and have authority, is the temptation to want the husband to either not serve or not have authority, but not “pretend” to be able to do both? If we think it impossible to do both, after all, then Christ was lying to us about his own life, was he not? Was he really the servant of all, or was he really King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Are we living our lives in a way that says we believe he was both?

What if the charge to wives is to respect their husbands as a leader who serves, or if he fails to do that, to give honor to the role he is supposed to be filling, anyway, that he might “rise to the respect” he is given?
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
The head of a Catholic marriage is Christ.
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Considering that the arguments tend to not be over who gets to do the most serving but rather squabbles about who gets to do the most dictating, I’m not sure this is to be taken for granted. 😃
 
BlueEyedLady said:
There’s a regular poster on this site that I have a lot of respect for who said on a thread a while back that he’s the head of the house, and as such, he makes sure that he gets to watch football every Sunday and even plans the family’s travel around it.

In my marriage, we each bring up things that we want to make sure to carve out time for-and the other does their best to accommodate.

I guess at the end of the day, one of these outlooks seems a lot more loving to me.
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Acting as if a woman has ANY place disagreeing with the man to whom she is subject? You villainous heathens, shut up and do as your husband tells you! Back to the kitchen, woman!
 
thewanderer said:
This should be happening in every marriage, whether or not the couple considers the husband to be the head. Unfortunately it happens too often that men will take up this idea of them being head and twist it and use it to attain selfish goals harming the family and their wives in the process. 😦
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Again, as I stated before, in another thread, I would hate to be the husband who has to explain to Jesus that he used his God given authority not to serve God and to bring his family closer to God, but used it for his own selfish goals. Recall the fate of the abusive servant in the Bible who used his own authority to abuse the other servants when the master was away.

Of course there will always be abuse but that does not negate scripture. I think where Christians dropped the ball, is that often when the wife is abused by a tyrant of a husband, people tell her to submit even more. The husband is always right and is not corrected. I have seen instances of this in some Protestant churches. This is why opposition to the concept of the husband gains legs. It’s when the man who is supposed to protect and love you mistreats you and you are told by others it’s all your fault. Or you are told to offer it up since suffering is good.
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
Acting as if a woman has ANY place disagreeing with the man to whom she is subject? You villainous heathens, shut up and do as your husband tells you! Back to the kitchen, woman!
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Honestly, Veritas, what is the point of you saying this here in this thread? I mean, I know Portrait tends to hold a harsher (and in my opinion un-catholic) idea of headship that this might apply to, but come on, Portrait has already left the thread, its not as though most people on this thread who are insisting we accept the language of headship hold an opinion even close to what you are portraying here. So whats the point of bringing it up this way as though that is what we believe in?
 
Y’all are reduced to semantics now…who’s the “Head”
Why dont you get your heads together and answer the question of what submission to said head is.

Honestly, neither partner in a marriage should be submissive, but both should be.
 
MacQ said:
Y’all are reduced to semantics now…who’s the “Head”
Why dont you get your heads together and answer the question of what submission to said head is.

Honestly, neither partner in a marriage should be submissive, but both should be.
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It has been answered…this is a long thread now.

Yes all Christians are submissive to each other even! Within this though there is also particular roles …including head and heart…and further “submissions”. All in the right Christian understanding.
 
Bookcat said:
It has been answered…this is a long thread now.

Yes all Christians are submissive to each other even! Within this though there is also particular roles …including head and heart…and further “submissions”. All in the right Christian understanding.
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:clapping:
 
MacQ said:
Y’all are reduced to semantics now…who’s the “Head”
Why dont you get your heads together and answer the question of what submission to said head is.

Honestly, neither partner in a marriage should be submissive, but both should be.
Click to expand...
The thing is its kind of hard to have a conversation about what submission to the head looks like if you have many people posting to insist that the idea of headship is wrong in the first place. Thats why I have posted so many times about the importance of accepting that the man is the head in the marriage, once you accept the language the Church uses then you can get down to the more important and relevant part of actually figuring out what in the world it means to have a “head” in a marriage.
 
thewanderer said:
The thing is its kind of hard to have a conversation about what submission to the head looks like if you have many people posting to insist that the idea of headship is wrong in the first place. Thats why I have posted so many times about the importance of accepting that the man is the head in the marriage, once you accept the language the Church uses then you can get down to the more important and relevant part of actually figuring out what in the world it means to have a “head” in a marriage.
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If you’re suggesting that man is head and therefore the woman should “submit”, I must disagree.
I will not further belabor the point, which has apparently already been made.
Over and out,
Mac
 
MacQ said:
If you’re suggesting that man is head and therefore the woman should “submit”, I must disagree.
I will not further belabor the point, which has apparently already been made.
Over and out,
Mac
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“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord.”

~ Ephesians 5:22 RSVCE

“the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”

~ Ephesians 5:23 RSVCE

Q: Does the truth that husband is the head of the wife or that she is to be subject to her husband mean that she is like a child to him or a slave or employee etc etc?

A: No!**

** “head”- kefalé - in terms of the husband as head of the wife -does not mean there a role of master to slaves, or boss to employees, or even parent to child! One must remove any such understanding.

No. It is the Christian sense that is meant. Not that of the world. As Jesus said those in the world do things one way -those it the Church are to live authority in a different way.

Rather - Servant leadership (serving the others!- at the service of the good of the wife and family). As Christ washed the feet of his disciples.

If one reads the* full context* -it rather involves the laying down of ones life for the beloved…the giving of ones blood.…

And as I noted above Christians are also to submit to each other. We live the life of love and in the order of love.

See also 1 Peter 3:1

And my post from Msgr Pope Above. And the work by Dr. Pitre “Wives do what?”
 
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