What's with all the anti women threads recently??

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After reading this tread and others. I find that I am deeply disturbed by the feelings about women and “non” radical feminism from a lot of the male posters here. Truth be told if a lot of catholic men feel the way these posters do I really feel that marrying a protestant is a far better alternative to marrying another catholic.
Don’t worry. The only Catholic men I’ve ever known to think this way are the very few on this site.
 
Can I just also say that the “dear sister” stuff is probably not the best choice of words when approaching a thread that can get as touchy as this?

I find it seriously bizarre when a traditional red-blooded Catholic man like me who thinks the vast majority of women in this country who cry “sexism” at everything they see need to take a freaking chill pill finds himself on the side of telling fellow men to dial it back big time.
 
Oh no…Portrait’s here!!! 😃

I’m running for the hills now…and I’m taking my feminist views with me 😛

This thread is just becoming a “he said, she said” thread.

Husband does not have the final say over everything. Pope JP II even stated that. Read his LETTER TO WOMEN. It’s in there.
 
As to Dan’s overnight comments, look I think he’s charitably trying get a point across about how men and women are different but he’s still wrong about something. There is no doctrinal basis for saying that a husband has the “final say” about anything, no matter how inconsequential. Period.

Now in my house is this the case? I’d say probably yes, but that is because I am encouraged by my wife to take on that leadership role. She’s quite the independent woman when it comes to her own affairs but when it comes to leading the family she wants me to embrace that role. So I do. Trust me it’s not something I terribly enjoy as it is an awesome responsibility. It’s not a privilege and it’s certainly not something I’d abuse.

But that’s my personal marriage. It is what my wife and I have worked out and what she prefers. And I only take on that role because I am submitting to her wishes that I have this leadership capacity. Your mileage may vary. My point about women generally being more naturally submissive and men generally being more proactive is indeed SCIENCE, at least when it comes to the science of attraction. There is no two ways about it. Study after study shows that women (especially during ovulation) are attracted to alpha-male type men and would prefer that they be the father of their children then more beta-male types. There is nothing wrong with this. It’s the complementary nature of the sexes. It’s also not a proof of one sex being better than the other, nor is it a hard and fast rule that is applicable to everyone.

God wants us to love one another perfectly and to lay down our lives for each other. Power in relationships is indeed a dirty word as ed alluded to. Marriage and even friendship should not be a power struggle. The relationship between men and women should not and is not a power struggle. That is where the radical feminists of the 1970s are so totally dead wrong and the Susan B. Anthony-type feminists are right. Women are indeed equal in all ways to men, but they are also different from men. Civic society should reflect that equality and difference, and the Church’s teachings do reflect that.
👍 Perfect!
 
Oh no…Portrait’s here!!! 😃

I’m running for the hills now…and I’m taking my feminist views with me 😛

This thread is just becoming a “he said, she said” thread.

Husband does not have the final say over everything. Pope JP II even stated that. Read his LETTER TO WOMEN. It’s in there.
Haha, I’m with you…
 
My position on a husband having the final responsiblity for family decisions does not rest soley on Casti Connubii. It’s far from the only time, the topic of the order of marriage has been discussed by the Church. As Pope Pius XI said, the degree and manner of a wife’s subjection may vary with different persons, places, and times. Every married couple is different, and how they work through decision is different. Yet, on a fundamental level, the order of marriage is unchangeable, and the ultimatle responsibility and duty for directing the family lies with the husband.

I never said that women are not supposed to love their husband as much as their husbands love them. I said they are supposed to love each other differently. Love is by definition total. If you don’t love someone completely, you don’t love them. Our Holy Father has spoken very beautifully on this topic. To give but one example, a wife can love her husband by carrying his child inside of her. A husband can’t do that. Likewise, both spouses are called to make sacrifices for each other and their family, but they do not sacrifice in exactly the same manner. That does not mean one sacrifices “more” or “less” the simply sacrifice differently.

Pax
Wifely submission (to husbands) appears to be the cultural norm throughout human history.
And it has usually been justified on the grounds that women are inferior and used as an excuse to abuse women and treat them as lesser beings.

Thus all rationals for such female submission should be regarded and examined very critically at least.
 
Dear severus68,

Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well.

The Church, dear sister, has always and consistently taught that the wife was subject to the authority of her husband and must obey him as the Church obeys Christ, assuming, of course, that the husbands demands are just and moral (see Arcanum by Leo XIII and Casti Connubii by Pius XI). Moreover, this teaching has not been officially abrogated or declared invalid on account of its age and is therefore still authoritative for Catholics today.

In his encyclical Arcanum, on Christian marriage, Leo XIII forcefully and clearly restated the traditional teaching:

"The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither honour nor dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the wife represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and her who obeys, a heaven born love guiding both in their resepective duties. For “the husband is head of the wife; as Christ is head of the Church…Therefore, *as the Church is subject to *Christ, so also let wives be to their own husbands in all things”.

Please observe first, dear sister, that in Mulieris Dignitatem, frequently appealed to nowadays in equality debates, H.H.JPII presents his teaching as a personal “meditation” (“And it seems that the best thing is to give this the style and character of a meditation”, his own emphasis). Now the level and binding nature of this “meditation” is far from apparent and can hardly be said to portray definitive teaching which no man can question.

Pope Leo XIII emphasized precisely the point that Ephesians 5: 22-23 - which is to say, God Himself - teaches, that subjection is required not “only on the part of the Church” to Christ, as H.H.JPII asserts, but also on the part of the wife to her husband, because in the order of familial authority the husband represents Christ and the wife represents the Church, as Pope Leo taught explicity in the above cited passage. You will note, dear sister, that H.H.JPII quotes only from the beginning of the key sentence from Ephesians - "For the husband is the head of the wife, omitting the conclusion: “as Christ is head of the Church”.

Indeed, I fail to see how any authority could exist any more in the family than in Holy Mother Church if there were a “mutual subjection” and no ruler-subject relationship between the spouses. This whole “mutual subjection” notion, so much spoken of nowadays, is surely a conundrum, since you cannot have a subject without a ruler, nor a ruler without a subject, and neither the Church nor the family can have two heads.

H.H.JPII suggests that St. Paul’s teaching is but “a way of speaking” arising from “the customs and religious tradition of the time”. By way of reply, it must be said that the “religious tradition” of the time was Christianity. Moreover, dear sister, does not St. Paul mean exactly what his words signify, and what both Pope Leo XIII and Pope XI both affirmed they signify, that is to say that the wife is subject to the husband as the Church is subject to Christ? Sorry, but that seems as clear as the sun at noonday, even though it may not sit comfortably with the secular world view of today, informed by a radical and profane feminist ideology. Are the Catholic faithful to conclude, then, that God dictated His revelation of the divinely ordained constitution of the family in language that was culturally determined and required ‘unpacking’ by historical-critical exegesis, and that Pope Leo and Pope Pius and all of their predecessors at the Vatican misinterpreted the Epistle to the Ephesians by reading it too literally? One sincerely hopes not, for that is the sort of thing that one associates with liberal Protestantism - I know this from sad experience as a former member of the Church of England. Once you adopt this approach, you run into all kinds of problems. For example, what of St. Paul’s teaching on homosexual deviant acts and, for that matter, all the other ‘hard sayings’ of the N.T.? Were these similarly ways of speaking that should be now understood in some different sense? That, I am quite certain, is not what H.H.JPII intended and neither should we intend such, but it is imperative, dear sister, that we take the entire sweep of Catholic Tradition (the old and the new) to arrive at an authentically balanced perspective of Catholic doctrine.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax
Dear Portrait,

Simply, what one Pope said a thousand years before or 70 years before does not bind a future Pope. With respect to the Popes you quote, what they may have said about a woman being subject to her husband is not doctrine. If it was it would be in the CCC. I have great respect and love for JPII and for what he said. The insistence of women’s subjection is a result of sin with the demand for domination.
 
It is unsettling. Very unsettling. This, in my view, goes too far.

The anti-homosexual stuff (such that they are treated as “sub-humanl”), too far. The race/racial stuff, in my view, too far. The anti-science stuff, in my view, too far. The vagueness surrounding the marital embrace, as I’ve said on many occasions, way too far for me.

It is with great regret that I admit this forum has both 1) taught me much about the Church, but also 2) led me so far away from the Church. Last week was the first Sunday I have missed Mass in quite some time. In the past few months, I find myself having no more power to fight this. I will probably take a separation from the forum for some time, as I’ve always intended on doing. Perhaps that will reconcile me with the Church but I honestly don’t think so anymore.
When I read some of the posts on these threads, I sometimes have the urge to leave the Church. I have to remind myself that all the rubbish spoken is not about Christ and His teachings but about human beings with their warped views.
 
Wifely submission (to husbands) appears to be the cultural norm throughout human history.
And it has usually been justified on the grounds that women are inferior and used as an excuse to abuse women and treat them as lesser beings.

Thus all rationals for such female submission should be regarded and examined very critically at least.
Christendom is all about submission though perhaps in a different way than you’d see in say, Islam. Christianity is about submission to one another and to God out of love. We are all called to be servants of God and of each other. Married couples have an even more special and intimate relationship reflected in the submission of their entire selves to one another through their sexuality.

Women, children and even men of other races and creeds have been treated like chattel and sub-humans at various times throughout history. This is and always has been contrary to God’s design no matter what society said at the time.
 

What you “cite” as ex cathera – is not supported by Rev. John Trigilio Jr., PhD, ThD and Rev. Kenneth Brighenti, PhD. So based on that – I agree – on no further discussion.
I have looked over your post but cannot find where you provide evidence that the good fathers do not support it other than your statement that they don’t? Please tell me which post links to their statement?
 
I have looked over your post but cannot find where you provide evidence that the good fathers do not support it other than your statement that they don’t? Please tell me which post links to their statement?

It was in post #384-- reproduced below.
Catholicism for Dummies; Rev. John Trigilio Jr., PhD, ThD, Rev. Kenneth Brighenti, PhD; Wiley Publishing Inc.; Indianapolis, Indiana; 2003
The only two ex cathedra pronouncements in 2,000 years have been the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950).”
 
Seriously?

People is thinking of leaving the Church because retrograde or unchraitable things wrtitten here?

I have read/heard worse stuff by progressive theologians, priests, and Bishops and I’m not thinking in leaving because of that.

Please, reconsider what you are doing.

We are here not by people, we are here by God.

Blessings!

🙂
 
Seriously?

People is thinking of leaving the Church because retrograde or unchraitable things wrtitten here?

I have read/heard worse stuff by progressive theologians, priests, and Bishops and I’m not thinking in leaving because of that.

Please, reconsider what you are doing.

We are here not by people, we are here by God.

Blessings!

🙂
👍
 
So you’re going to essentially blast a modern-day saint? I cannot and will not disparage His Holiness Leo XIII as he was a great man for promoting the great spiritual weapon of the rosary as he did, but come on man.

How can this be a “conundrum” to you? I see you’re a fan of writing in a circumlocutory fashion to sound more formal, but I think it is only to disguise your lack of understanding of a basic element of the faith. Christ is the head of the Church, but he is also its greatest servant. As the vicar of Christ, one of the Holy Father’s titles is “servant of the servants of God.” So if the husband is to relate to his wife as Christ and His vicars is to the Church, then the husband should be her servant in all things and be willing to lay down his life, his ego and his pride before her. A wife should likewise be willing to lay herself down to her husband. Perfect mutual submission does not lead to chaos. It is perfect love.
Dear The Bucket,

Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your response.

Having re-read my post again, I do not see that I damned extremely, which is what “blasted” means, what was written by H.H.JPII. That is a jolly strong word to employ, dear friend, to describe a very temperate critique. Moreover, I do not see anything amiss in discussing critically the contents of a personal meditation, the level and binding nature of which is anything but apparent. In any case, you will see that at the conclusion of my post I did actually defend H.H.JPII against a possible misunderstanding of his words.

Authority, dear friend, cannot co-exist with the notion of “mutual subjection” and an abscence of the ruler-subject relation between the spouses. That is surely a simple matter of logic. Clearly, there cannot be s subject without a ruler. Neither the Church nor the family can have two heads.

There is certainly, I would concede, a sense in which husband and wife, unlike Christ and the Church, are subject to each other, that is in the order of charity. However, the precise teaching of St. Paul in the Ephesians epistle relates to the order of authority, as Popes Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI made abundantly clear. In the order of authority there cannot be “mutual subjection”, at least not without authority itself being vitiated.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax
 
Anti-woman? I never got that impression. More like traditionalism. However, I’m confused about something. Women can’t stay at home and be feminists? Women are “out of society” even though they don’t spend most their week in a work bubble, instead socializing with other women and mothers, coaches, neighborhood associations, shopping, dealing with repairmen, and running the house? If you’re a feminist, you should believe a woman deserves equal rights no matter what kind of life she chooses.
Amen sister. I am a proud stay at home mother!! I love every minute of it. I am sick of being thought of as a bobble head!! 😃
 
Authority, dear friend, cannot co-exist with the notion of “mutual subjection” and an abscence of the ruler-subject relation between the spouses. That is surely a simple matter of logic. Clearly, there cannot be s subject without a ruler. Neither the Church nor the family can have two heads.

There is certainly, I would concede, a sense in which husband and wife, unlike Christ and the Church, are subject to each other, that is in the order of charity. However, the precise teaching of St. Paul in the Ephesians epistle relates to the order of authority, as Popes Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI made abundantly clear. In the order of authority there cannot be “mutual subjection”, at least not without authority itself being vitiated.
Portrait. Dear friend. Buddy. Bro.

The notion of love between to equals precludes one having power over another. Certainly a good relationship between God and man involves love going two ways but one is a perfect love and the other is imperfect by its very nature. So of course the Lord will have authority over us, though He does not exercise it by denying us our free will.

The love between a husband and wife is a love between two imperfect creatures and is therefore an equal (or should be equal) relationship. No one has the power to subjugate the other. Instead both are called to subjugate themselves and dedicate their lives to the happiness and holiness of the other. As I said in my marriage my wife is desirous that I take the leadership role when it comes to the family as a whole but is a fiercely independent woman when it comes to her own life, provided that her affairs do not interfere with the family’s goals.

Christ is the head of the Church but His submission to the Church and its people goes so far as to have his authority lightly rest on our shoulders. We are never denied our free will, we are never forced to “submit” to him. Is it good and proper that we do? Sure. But what you infer is that wives by virtue of being wives must do whatever their husbands say provided that the nature of their requests are not sinful. This is categorically false.

There is no “ruler and subject” in a marital relationship. Over the children certainly but husband and wife share authority much as they share their flesh. They are ONE FLESH. Therefore no one rules the other. Instead, each spouse gives up authority over himself and hands it over to the other.
 
Dear Portrait,

Simply, what one Pope said a thousand years before or 70 years before does not bind a future Pope. With respect to the Popes you quote, what they may have said about a woman being subject to her husband is not doctrine. If it was it would be in the CCC. I have great respect and love for JPII and for what he said. The insistence of women’s subjection is a result of sin with the demand for domination.
Dear severus68,

Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your response.

On the contrary, dear sister, the encylicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI are valid Church doctrine and form part of the consistent teaching of the Magisterium, which require religious submission of the mind and will of pious Catholics throughout the world. So called dissent from papal teaching in encyclicals is not a part of the creed of a Catholic. The Catholic faithful willfully conform to papal teaching and do not dispute or write it off on account of its antiquity. Liberals may do this, but not pious Catholics. In any event the teaching of these Popes is based upon St. Paul’s timeless and authoritative teaching (otherwise they were mistaken in making their appeal to it) and thus their teaching cannot go bad and cease to be Church doctrine.

You have, dear sister, fallen into a very common error these days of supposing that all standing Church teaching is to be found only within the pages of the current Church Catechism. This is a very novel and narrow opinion, devoid of any proof whatsoever, for there is no official Church teaching that remotely makes such a strange aberrant claim. To hold to the view that the entire deposit of faith is to be found only in the contents of the CCC, just cannot be sustained because such a view severs the vital link with the whole sweep of Catholic Tradition throughout the ages. Moreover, it is also to adopt a sort of ‘sola - CCC’ which is as grave an error as its Protestant counterpart, sola scriptura.

Therefore we must needs, dear sister, listen attentively to ALL the Popes throughout the ages, since the unbroken succession from St. Peter to Benedict XVI is one of the central components of the apostolic nature of Holy Mother Church. Truth cannot contradict truth and truth does not cease to be truth with the passage of time.

The Church has never stated officially that the passage in St. Paul respecting women being subject to men has ceased to have perpetual validity.

Finally, if “the insistence of women’s subjection is the result of sin with the demand for domination”, is true, then that surely shows Pope Leo XIII and Pius XI in a very bad light indeed, since they upheld the biblical teaching of a woman’s subjection to her husband in their encyclicals.

God bless.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax
 
We surely must listen attentively to the popes of prior generations but also note that our understanding of God’s design for man has evolved over the centuries. The vicars of Christ over the generations spoke of both timeless truths and suggestions for living out those truths in the culture and time period they lived. The Church wrestled with the question of slavery both in Roman and colonial times. It fought with the idea of forcibly converting Jews during the Middle Ages. It pushed the boundaries of acceptable ways of converting “savages” during the colonial period. All was done with an eye on salvation for the world but the execution was, as we all are, imperfect and in some cases dead wrong.

Remember that while the doctrine of the Church has not changed, the Holy Mass has evolved, access to the Scripture has changed dramatically, the faith has reoriented towards personal relationships with Christ, much greater emphasis has been placed on receiving the Eucharist as often as possible and of course, we’ve rid ourselves of insanity like Inquisitions and Crusades and temporal papal authority.

Aside from all that, dude you’re virtual friends with Ron Conte who is seriously, seriously crazy. I hate to pull any kind of guilt by association card on you but I’d be curious to know why you’d want to be in contact with that kind of guy.
 
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