What exactly does this whole submission to the husband thing mean?

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

Seems like a wife who’s enthusiastic about the idea of moving isn’t submitting, since it would be her will as well.

What do you think about a wife who says no, because she wouldn’t want to leave her job, family and friends? Or if he already has a perfectly comfortable life here? Is she sinning by refusing to drop her whole life?

Submitting is extraordinarily easy most of the time because before marriage you and your spouse shared & talked about everything before choosing to marry them so you’re on the same page with everything you could think about pre-wedding.

Submitting can be difficult in those rare situations not covered in your pre-wedding discussions that you hasn’t discussed or where you or he had a change of heart: like this scenario you’re suggesting where the husband accepted a job out of country which he needed to do to continue to support the family. The wife doesn’t want to go because keeping her job, living near extend family & living near existing friends is more important to her than her husband and his need to financially support his own immediate family (he’s completely within “harmony of right reason”). Submitting in that situation would be difficult for her because based on your scenario her priorities are off, at least for the moment, but even if her husband and marriage were most important in her life next to God & his Church, it would still be hard to say goodbye to those other people in her life boss, extended family & existing friends. She could decide to In this situation submitting would be difficult. She could throw a fit and demand to stay in the country & out of love, he may give into her and staying in the country he’s not able to continue to provide for their family and they eventually lose their savings, their home, her job as their only source of income becomes a burden for her now as they struggle to survive, he feeling inadequate because he can’t finance provide for his family might start trying to fill that feeling of inadequacy by drinking to numb the pain. She’s beyond frustrated with him. Their family is essentially destroyed even if the couple manages to stay together. But, the other possibility, If she throws a fit demanding her own way, It could be a final straw for him he might not allow her to prevent him from supporting their family and may say fine, you can stay here, but I’m accepting this position so I can support our family, now we’ve got court dates and hearings for cold custody, the family is split, everyone is angry even if in the end they get what they wanted from court, their family is destroyed. Now, if she submits, they move, he’s able to better provide for the family, wife can start working again if she feels like it, new friends are made, extended family & previous friends are excited to come visit and not only see the family but also get to experience this other country they’d have otherwise never gotten a chance to see, depending on the country the entire family might become bilingual and in the end, she’s happy she trusted the man she married.

 

[Xantippe]

Something that hasn’t come up yet is that it is possible to a) express disagreement in a pleasant manner or b) acquiesce in an unpleasant manner. Agreeing pleasantly and disagreeing nastily/contentiously are not the only options. The options are:

–agree pleasantly
–agree unpleasantly
–disagree pleasantly
–disagree unpleasantly

What a lot of us need to learn (or have needed to learn) is that it’s possible to say “no” in a nice way. Consider, for example, how you’d say “no” to a beloved friend or a coworker that you are friendly with. I would make the case that saying “no” in a kind way is also submission–as St. Paul would understand it. That’s why the New Testament authors are able to tell us to be submissive in all of our relationships with authority figures–because submission is not the same as obedience.

Saying “no” nicely is a really important adult skill, and not all of us learned it when we should have. Unfortunately, the effect of a lot of wifely submission talk is to reinforce the idea that the only options are instant acquiescence and raging shrewishness–which, paradoxically, may increase the amount of shrewishness! Whereas, a wife who knows that it’s acceptable to say “no” nicely or that it’s OK to talk things out and wait on a final decision is going to be less tempted to be shrewish or ragey.

On the other hand, there are nasty, unsubmissive ways to say yes, as anybody with tween or teen children knows!

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

From my memory, I don’t think so. The document was essentially saying that women don’t have to submit to everything because she’s not a slave nor a child.

The document, at least the paragraphs you quoted, didn’t say that at all. It said the only time she doesn’t submit is if her husband’s wish isn’t “in harmony with right reason”. He’s asking her to go against the Faith or he’s literally unable to reason due to a mental health situation.

You’re falsely equating an obedient wife with slavery and a child. A wife isn’t a slave or a child. A wife is a wife, Queen of her family. I think perhaps Roman Catholics have dropped the Coronation from their Wedding services, but as we were married in the Eastern Church we had the Coronation and our Wedding Crowns are mounted on the wall. But even if it’s not part of the wedding service, surely you still know that your husband is truly King and you are truly Queen of your family from the moment you were married in the Church. An obedient wife has nothing to do with slavery, but everything to do with her royalty, second only to her chosen husband, her King, who loves her like Christ loves the Church aka he’s ready to die for her.

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

Why doesn’t “don’t let the sun go down on your anger” apply equally to husbands?

And again, I don’t know if you realize you’re doing this, but you keep putting the wife in the role of Jesus, whereas the scriptural analogy in Ephesians 5 is that the husband is supposed to lay his life down for his wife. This analogy of the wife as Jesus and the husband as God the Father is not one that you’re going to find in scripture.

It does apply to everyone, married or not. The wife has been given a unique power to do this within a marriage because the Holy Spirit through St. Paul gives wives the unique ability to obey. It’s pretty hard to get, let alone remain, angry at someone who’s always obedient.

The wife and the husband, in fact ALL Christians, are to be imitators of Christ Jesus. Jesus is the perfect example for wives who surrender and obey and Jesus is the perfect example to husbands to love. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice fulfilling the old testament and gives everyone the example of how to behave.

Scott Hahn does give the analogy of the Trinity as the original Family that all other families imitate. He does, in his talks, refer to the Father, Son & Holy Spirit as Father, Mother & Children. He says he based this off of Pope John Paul II’s writings which he read while he was still a protestant pastor.

 

[Lea101]

Submitting is extraordinarily easy most of the time because before marriage you and your spouse shared & talked about everything before choosing to marry them so you’re on the same page with everything you could think about pre-wedding.

Submitting can be difficult in those rare situations not covered in your pre-wedding discussions that you hasn’t discussed or where you or he had a change of heart:

Is it really though? It’s pretty unlikely for a couple to cover most of their potential arguments/decisions. Of course stuff like the number of kids, jobs etc will be covered before though. But most decisions (eg day to day things) are hard to anticipate. Two loving individuals may still find themselves at odds here and there.

like this scenario you’re suggesting where the husband accepted a job out of country which he needed to do to continue to support the family.

My scenario doesn’t imply that he has to move or else the family will suffer.

they eventually lose their savings, their home, her job as their only source of income becomes a burden for her now as they struggle to survive

So all of this is really just an exaggeration, haha. Why do you assume the worst case scenario when the wife says no, but the best when she says yes?

The other way can happen. She submits. Kids and her life changes drastically. She can’t find a well paying job. No friends. Nobody to help her out with the new baby. Old friends drifted away/can’t afford to visit. Kids start to act out because of the change and possible language barrier. Wife gets depression. Kills herself. Husband feels like a failure for making this decision. Starts drinking. Yeesh.

point is, sometimes the wife is 100% right in refusing to go along with something. Even if that something is not sinful. She’s a grown adult with intellect! There’s no reason why both adults can’t come to a decision together. Sometimes one may back down out of love. But why should that be based on gender?

 

[Xantippe]

Submitting is extraordinarily easy most of the time because before marriage you and your spouse shared & talked about everything before choosing to marry them so you’re on the same page with everything you could think about pre-wedding.

That was not my experience. I got married very idealistic and gungho about wifely submission, and I believed I’d done all of that–but the truth was that we were both pretty young and not experienced enough to know what “everything” might mean. And frankly, I don’t think it’s even possible to figure out “everything” before marriage.

The truth is that when we got married over 20 years ago, I was deeply in love and didn’t even realize that we could disagree about anything for longer than 15 minutes, how big (and important) our differences of opinion about housekeeping were, or that the “husband gets tie vote” idea that I had read in C.S. Lewis (and believed) was kind of stupid. Plus (as I now realize), my parents relationship was pretty weird.

Fortunately, all’s well that ends well, but it would have saved or shortened a lot of fights if I had had started out with a more realistic view of what a good marriage looks like–namely that, it will involve a lot of compromise, turn-taking, and that being kind, fair and flexible is a more realistic goal than thinking that I am going to stop wanting the things that I want and stop caring about the things that I care about. But I grew up in a home where I never saw a middle ground between instant acquiescence and screaming fights, so it took me a long time to realize that there are other options and that it is possible to disagree pleasantly. I realize that this is stuff that I should have learned when I was in kindergarten–but you learn stuff when you learn it.

I have more to say, but I’ll just finish this by saying that being kind, fair and flexible is a very handy skillset for parenting teens.

 

[Sarcelle]

It’s pretty hard to get, let alone remain, angry at someone who’s always obedient.

I agree.

However it is also too easy to harbor contempt for someone who is always obedient.

I’ve seen a lot of dominant husbands talk contemptuously to their submissive wives.

 

[Xantippe]

The wife doesn’t want to go because keeping her job, living near extend family & living near existing friends is more important to her than her husband and his need to financially support his own immediate family (he’s completely within “harmony of right reason”).

That’s actually an addition to the scenario–we don’t actually know that it is a good financial move in terms of income (for example, the wife’s career may be sacrificed) and cost of living. Also, moving abroad will create additional new expenses with regard to travel back to the home country, hosting friends and family in the new country, and perhaps extra schooling expenses for children. English language schools overseas may be quite expensive…Also, if the family has an existing support system, replicating that overseas may be impossible or very expensive. I would be concerned about health care and personal safety in some areas. Also, if the wife doesn’t speak the local language, any minor emergency could be much more dangerous than in a country where she speaks the language and can communicate with medical personnel.

So, moving overseas requires a lot of thought, and it’s not the sort of thing that you just drop on your spouse unexpectedly unless flexibility in that area was previously discussed and agreed upon. Also, as a rule, quick decisions are bad decisions. Barring life-and-death emergencies, time and thought produce better decisions.

She could throw a fit and demand to stay in the country & out of love

Why is she throwing a fit rather than just saying, “No, honey, this is too sudden. We need to think more about this rather than just jumping into it”?

but I’m accepting this position so I can support our family, now we’ve got court dates and hearings for cold custody,

That would be dumb. A US court is usually not going to allow him to move the kids out of the country without the ex-wife’s permission.

in the end, she’s happy she trusted the man she married.

Does it never happen that a couple relocates to a new country and it doesn’t work out?

Having lived overseas and known a lot of people who have lived overseas, I think it’s not the sort of thing you do without 100% buy-in from both spouses. It needs to be something that both want.

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

I’ve seen a lot of dominant husbands talk contemptuously to their submissive wives.

A Catholic Christian husband isn’t “dominant”, he’s “Loving”.

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

That would be dumb. A US court is usually not going to allow him to move the kids out of the country without the ex-wife’s permission

Ex-Wife? I’m sorry, I was presuming you’d know Divorce is out of the question. Lol. I’ve been discussing Catholic Christian Marriage here. But now I understand that you & I have been discussing 2 completely different types of marriage which is why we’re not able to understand each other. We’re discussing 2 completely different realities.

 

[Sarcelle]

Ideally

Reality is often far from the ideal, people being people.

I do agree with you that the husband is the spiritual leader of the family which is why it pays to be especially discerning of the character of a potential spouse.

 

[Xantippe]

It’s pretty unlikely for a couple to cover most of their potential arguments/decisions. Of course stuff like the number of kids, jobs etc will be covered before though. But most decisions (eg day to day things) are hard to anticipate. Two loving individuals may still find themselves at odds here and there.

Or one or both may realize that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

For example, both might have agreed on a large family and no NFP, but then one of them realizes that they are struggling with their two children. Or they might have had some sort of agreement about sex (which one or both had no experience with), but then one of them realizes that the plan isn’t practical or kind.

Why do you assume the worst case scenario when the wife says no, but the best when she says yes?

That is an excellent point.

A Catholic Christian husband isn’t “dominant”, he’s “Loving”.

No true Scotsman - Wikipedia

Ex-Wife? I’m sorry, I was presuming you’d know Divorce is out of the question.

In your example, the wife’s refusal to move overseas led to the couple’s divorce. Here’s what you wrote:

But, the other possibility, If she throws a fit demanding her own way, It could be a final straw for him he might not allow her to prevent him from supporting their family and may say fine, you can stay here, but I’m accepting this position so I can support our family, now we’ve got court dates and hearings for cold custody, the family is split, everyone is angry even if in the end they get what they wanted from court, their family is destroyed.

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

In your example, the wife’s refusal to move overseas led to the couple’s divorce. Here’s what you wrote:

Yes please read what I wrote. Zero about divorce. If the wife decides to leave her husband & her marriage rather than obey (which is what the Holy Spirit says she is called to be: obedient), that causes a Separation. A split of the family. I never assumed she’d be so far outside a Catholic Christian Marriage values that she’d actually file for Divorce. If you want to presume that, understand that’s your presumptions and not at all what I said.

I think this is the primary difference of understanding we have is I’ve been referring this entire time to a Catholic Christian Marriage, not a civil Non-Catholic Marriage.

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

Exactly.

And our humanism and different perspectives over a lifetime is what could cause obedience to become difficult on very rare occasion.

I suppose if a wife choose to marry someone who’s domineering instead of loving that would cause alot more difficulty, but that’s exactly why we have an engagement period so we can really learn the nature of our future spouse before we agree to marry him. There are no second chances, Catholic Christian Marriage is for life.

Selecting a husband/wife is the most important decision a person called to marriage will ever make.

 

[buffalo]

Here is one of the best I have ever seen on this:

“WIVES, BE SUBJECT TO YOUR HUSBANDS”:
THE AUTHORITY OF THE HUSBAND ACCORDING TO THE MAGISTERIUM
INTRODUCTION
The words, “Wives, be subject to your husbands,” jar many modern ears. Even though this exhortation comes from an inspired text in Sacred Scripture (Ephesians 5:22), many people—including practicing Catholics—are troubled by what appears to be a relic of Marriage customs “rightly” abandoned by contemporary culture. Those who resist any notion of hierarchy or patriarchy in the social order vigorously reject St. Paul’s concept of Marriage as an attack on the dignity of women. Even those Christians not hostile to Paul’s teaching may believe that given the state of modern society, there is little to be gained by investigating—let alone applying—Paul’s prescriptions concerning the relationship of the spouses. However, one Catholic scholar, Stephen Clark, suggests that the controversy or unease over the family order described in Ephesians 5:21-33 is a relatively recent phenomenon. Regarding the question of a “head of the family” he writes, “Few areas in early Christian teaching are as uniform and fewer still were held with the same consistency as long as this one, since the first Christian voices advocating a different approach were raised only in about the nineteenth century.” Clark continues, “There are few instances where it is clearer that a change in the approach of Christians is an abandonment of Christian tradition, and not only of tradition, but of every source of authoritative teaching that can lay claim on a Christian.”
The purpose of this paper is to examine the teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church regarding the authority of the husband in Marriage, which in this area rests largely on the writings of St. Paul. My main concern, as Gerald Vann, O.P. once wrote, “is not with the facts of married life but with the theology that lies behind them, and I do not know that mistakes about the facts need invalidate the attempt to state theological principles.” My study of the husband’s authority accepts the following principle from the outset: men and women are equal in dignity, but within Marriage they differ in role or function, and these roles are not interchangeable. The differences between the spouses, i.e. their “complementarity,” permit them to form “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31). As Pope John Paul II points out, “In the sphere of what is ‘human’—of what is humanly personal—‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are distinct, yet at the same time they complete and explain each other.” Pius XII states that men and women share an equal dignity since they are children of God and redeemed by Christ, and since they receive common earthly (“be fruitful and multiply”) and supernatural destinies. Then he adds, “The Creator with His wonderful ways of bringing harmony out of variety has established a common destiny for all mankind, but He has also given the two sexes different and complementary functions, like two roads leading to the same destination.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LurWb77DSf6Rt6gRmMuSQ_ess5XKGnre/view?usp=sharing

 

[JanetF]

Fr. John Riccardo gives an excellent talk on Ephesians 5. He did his dissertation on it. I believe you can find it on You Tube, or Ave Maria Radio’s archives.

In a nut shell, it’s not mean to be one-sided, each should respect and love the other as Christ loves us.

 

[Xantippe]

I suppose if a wife choose to marry someone who’s domineering instead of loving

I think a husband who would expect to move his family overseas on a month’s notice without clearing it with his wife is, pretty much by definition, domineering.

 

[Xantippe]

the controversy or unease over the family order described in Ephesians 5:21-33 is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Part of the reason for that is that people get really WEIRD about their “traditional” readings of Ephesians 5.

 

[buffalo]

Part of the reason for that is that people get really WEIRD about their “traditional” readings of Ephesians 5.

Did you read it in its entirety?

 

[Wife.of.Gabriel]

Clearing it with his wife first? Unreal. The wife is his Boss now? Lol.

Not sure why the assumption is this hypothetical husband and wife situation is that they don’t have multiple conversations on a daily basis. Why wouldn’t they both find out the date of departure on the same? That’d only happen if you’re assuming he & his wife don’t speak to each other. Lol, what are they already separated before he gets the job offer, so she didn’t have a clue he was job hunting overseas. Goodness.

This is gotten so completely unrealistic.

Why automatically assume the husband of an obedient Catholic Christian Wife is a domineering husband rather than what he most likely is: a loving Catholic Christian Husband?