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LightBound
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Sad, but true.
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aemcpa
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Last I checked, it is a dogma of the Church that God is the author of “the Ephesians thing”, as you call it.
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Debora123
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Well here’s another one:
My husband just recently fulfilled his life long dream and got accepted into the Air Force with a pilot position.
This is something we talked about a lot before he joined, and I was very adamant about him joining the military because of all the hardship and strain it’ll put on me and our future children. Honestly, FOR ME, it would probably be better if he had just went after a normal career and we could have a stable home and he wouldn’t be gone all the time. But I decided to put my faith in our marriage, make the sacrifice for him to live his dream, and went ahead and agreed and was very supportive of him joining.
We are in Texas right now while he is going through pilot training, but once training is over, that could mean anything. We could be sent to live anywhere in the world, and he can be gone for several months at a time on deployments. Being in Korea/Japan/Germany by myself while he leaves for Afghanistan for a year is a very likely scenario.
Other than wanting to be an Air Force pilot, my husband has also always wanted a large family. I told him that I would leave my family and my home behind to follow him around the world for his career so he can live his dream, but there is no way that I can go through all that, and move to a different base every 2-3 years, and be alone for several months at a time, all while trying to raise 5 kids mostly by myself.
He recognizes that I’m sacrificing a lot for him and his career, and he in turn chose to sacrifice his desire for a big family for my well being.
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Debora123
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How can you agree that a wife and husband both have equal rights in a marriage, yet you say a husband always has the final say in every and all decisions?
And actually, a worker absolutely DOES NOT have equal rights in a work place as the worker does.
Sorry, but I’m not buying it. And neither does the Church teach that a wife/husband relationship is the same as that of a boss/worker.
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LightBound
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Sigh. Yes, of course it is. But come on, how many times does someone start in with the wives submit to your husbands verse and not fully address just what the prior verse and the following verse say? Please look back over my other posts on this thread just this morning and see what I said about all those verses in Ephesians. Or were you taking exception to my use of “Ephesians thing”? With that I simply meant those verses that people pull and quote from the Book of Ephesians, meaning the wifely submission thing. My apologies if you were offended.
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EasterJoy
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Not quite. First off, in Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI specifically wrote that the husband-wife relationship is not analogous to the parent child relationship when he said of her submission: "…nor…does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors…"
And yes, if a husband is sinful, his wife may be, according to Pope Pius XI, forced to take his role: "…this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time.* In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family***"
“This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.” John 10:17-18
Do you see how the “power structure” of the Trinity works? This is the power structure of a Christian marriage: that is, that the wife is subject to the husband because by their love for each other the two are of one mind and one Spirit, just as in the Trinity there are Three Persons, but one mind. Yes, Jesus laid down his life in submission to the Father, but by an act of his own will. He was not slaughtered by the Father and chose not to resist the assault; he laid himself down as a victim.
Why does Christian marriage exist, after all? To efficiently make correct decisions? No. It exists so that in learning the ways of love, by the two becoming one, two saints are made and two saints are used by God to make other saints. To become a saint, as St. Benedict put it, those in the marriage must “not presume to defend their own views obstinately”. So if in a marriage, one or both spouses is doing just that, it hardly matters who wrestles the matter to the ground and gets his or her own way. If that happens, someone has failed, maybe both have failed, and for that those of us who are married will stand before the Throne. The one who has their senses should settle the matter in favor of peace.
“I make all the decisions and I get respect, or else I check out”…that is a man to be respected? That is the way a husband ought to become leader in his own home? You can’t mean that.
There are worse things than making no decision. Really…making the wrong decision or failing to get an opportunity to make the right decision because one spouse was being patient while the other was being obstinate is not always the worst thing in the world. If a spouse gives over to putting urgency to get a decision made in his or her own way over the patience that is part and parcel to love, that’s not a good thing. The decisions are made for the marriage, not the marriage for the decisions. The relationship between husband and wife always has to come first.
Do not get me wrong. I am all for submission by the wife. It is just that I also understand that it is a huge mistake to confuse Christian leadership and submission with what the world takes for leadership and submission. Our Lord took flesh by the free consent of the woman who had been selected for that purpose from before her Immaculate Conception. His redemptive act relied entirely on free consent–both his and his mother’s. Had it been compelled, the redemptive life of Our Lord would not have been the act it needed to be; it would not have had the same effect. Just so the consent of a wife that is compelled by any kind of force. If that is how a husband asserts his leadership, then his leadership is not what God intended. He is already outside the divine plan, and the model of a Christian marriage is already abandoned.
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thewanderer
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Debora123
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Wow. Honestly I don’t even know how to respond do this.
You are coming on more and more as a troll…
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Debora123
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Aempca, what exactly are you trying to get at?
You’ve been making random, vague little remarks here and there and it’s difficult to interpret what exactly your point is.
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Walking_Home
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Ditto – a power/control/domineering hungry one.
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Debora123
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aemcpa
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My point with that comment was don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Even if it’s unpopular or misinterpreted, the principle of a hierarchical household is Biblical and Catholic. I was late to the game on this thread; upon further review, I see that that point already been addressed, so I haven’t elaborated.
My main point in response to the original post is that couples simply can’t remain in the situation the OP described. Not shouldn’t, can’t - it’s impossible. A marriage can’t function if the spouses reach an impasse regarding major life decisions. Ultimately something has to give. I imagine in many cases what gives is the marriage itself.
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7armyrugrats
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This exactly. I have been married for a very long time. My husband is the head of our family and I am the heart. The head cannot function if the heart is not beating. The heart has influence in the decision making. If the heart isn’t happy, the head cannot think clearly. Submission is a two way street, but when all is said and done, the head MUST make the final call.
My husband is not a male chauvinist. He respects me more than most husbands I have met, he charishes me. He has laid his vary life down for me! Nothing he does is for his sake, it is for the sake if our family. He is the authority in our family, even when he isn’t home. It is not unusual for me to ask him, even when he is deployed or at training, what do I need to do about this or that. Sometimes he tells me what should be done, sometimes he says whatever I think is best, sometimes he says he doesn’t know and asks what I think. He trusts my judgment and respects my authority if I make a unilateral decision as well. Sometimes there isn’t time to run things past him, especially if he isn’t home. Whatever I decide, he stands by it. He doesn’t “dominate” me or “pull rank” either. We are 100% equal, but just as a company must have a boss, so must a family.
Now, when it comes to the everyday stuff at home with the kids, usually it’s me that makes the decisions. What I say goes. If the run to Papi they hear, “Listen to your mommy.” If tge ask me for something they know I will run it past dad and if they ask him he will run it past me. We have never had kids try to play one against the other because it will never be possibly. We are a united front and equal partners who submit to each other when the time calls for it. I would never deny my husband something that he wants if I could possibly give it to him, and he would never deny me what I want. He would go to he’ll and back to keep me happy! We trust, honor, respect and cherish each other. That is how marriage works. But whatever you want to call him, the husband must be the head and with that he must have the final say for the family.
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thewanderer
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And this sounds perfectly fine and not at all like what Paul Fekete has been suggesting.
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Paul_Fekete
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I am in my mid-thirties and the trend I see is for the husband to cherish his wife and for the wife not to respecting the husband. In fact, around 90% of the divorces I have been exposed to were caused by the wife leaving the husband for another man. The women felt empowered to make their own decisions after they fell “out of love” with their first husband. All the husbands were willing to work on things, but it was the wife who wanted out. These were loving husbands (not perfect), but they at least made efforts to cherish the wife. The cultural trend is moving in the opposite direction which is why so few men are getting married and staying married. Many men see marriage as a losing scenario. “If I live with my girlfriend she respects me much more, then if we were married” is the thinking of many young men. Extreme feminism has damaged marriage in many ways that you may not realize. On the flip side there are many young women who are trying to find men who will love and lead them like Jesus, but they cannot find any such men.
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7armyrugrats
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And as a military wife with 8 kids I can tell you many many MANY of us do this. The average family size at our current base is 4 children, but I know many of us with 6+ kids. That is not a good example of compromise at all, and what’s more it is sad that it would even be thought of to do that to your spouse
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thewanderer
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Yes, there is a problem in society, but it is not because men aren’t allowed to have last say on everything. It is because society has lost sight of the Catholic understanding of marriage, which, as has been pointed out to you, is not that men always get last say.
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Paul_Fekete
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This is exactly what I have been trying to communicate. Thanks for sharing.
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Debora123
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Funny you should say that when statistics show that infidelity is a lot more common on the husband’s end than on the wife’s.
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thewanderer
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Please do try to keep in point my point from earlier in this thread about Casti Conubii explicitly stating that the form of marital decision making will differ not only from couple to couple, but also depending on the time and the place. So while a form of submission and authority as described by 7armyrugrats is not the only acceptable form, according to the Catholic Church. And, in all honesty, such a form is only compatible with Church teaching if the wife is continuously and honestly choosing of her own free will to give up her authority and submit to her husbands authority and decisions. Otherwise the model is skewed and it broods discontentment and creates a division between the couple, which is precisely what Casti Conubii tells us is to be avoided at all costs.
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