Why should wives be submissive to husbands?

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LucyT25 said:
I feel I should be equal to my husband. I’m better at some things, I contribute to the household equally. I’ve been the breadwinner at times. I take care of the kids. My husband is a spender , so I take care of the finances. If I gave my husband full authority I would be broke. If he was the head and I submitted to him fully i would not own a home or have a savings.
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Your situation sounds almost exactly like my wife and I. I’ve been unemployed for extended periods of time in the past, and my wife had to work to support our family. I’m a spender, my wife is much better at managing the finances. We swap the kids back and forth because we both recognize that we need “alone time” to get re-energized after dealing with our small flock day-in and day-out.

“Submission” doesn’t mean that your husband is to control and dominate you and your family. And that’s certainly not Catholic teaching. Look at Genesis and you’ll see that this idea of the husband “dominating” or “lording over” his wife is a curse brought on by the fall of Adam and Eve (and carefully read the account of the fall and you’ll see Adam is every bit as much to blame [if not more] than Eve).

The “submission” of the wife - rooted in the mutual submission of spouses to one another - is described by some Catholic theologians as a wife’s putting herself “under the mission” of her husband. And her husband’s mission is nothing less than loving his wife “as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.” How that plays out in day-to-day married life is left open-ended.

If you’re interested in diving more deeply into what the Church teaches about this topic, I strongly recommend you check out a series of talks by Christopher West called “Naked Without Shame.” Do a Google search for it because it’s available for free online. You can also read his Theology of the Body for Beginners, or if you’re feeling really adventurous you can tackle Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body where he talks about these topics in great depth.
 
The problem is not in the idea itself but in the implementation of the idea.

In my personal experience, the idea of leadership in general, has been often implemented in a negative way, in the form of micromanagement or tyranny. This is done in nations, the workplace and in the family.

True leadership in its purest sense is kind of rare.

We have had many many topics on female submission and the repeated command that women must submit, submit, submit. It keeps going round and round and round. Often neglected in the discussion are concrete examples of how men should lead.

There is also the implication that men will naturally know how to lead when in truth leadership is a skill that must be taught. We have to know how this leadership is implemented in day to day life.

Very often we see the headship approach in dysfunctional marriages where the husband is either a tyrant or a micromanager.

Countless bible verses can be thrown or various accusations of feminism can be done against those who question it, but we need to define what is true leadership. Otherwise we have these negative examples to only show for it.
 
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I agree, the only marriages I know personally that follow this system are not healthy marriages. I see a wife with no (name removed by moderator)ut on anything. A shell of a person just doing what her husband says.
 
DeniseNY said:
The Star of David is not a pentagram. Pentagram comes from the Greek “ pente ” meaning five.

The Star of David has six points.

They do not look alike and they do not represent the same things. Calling them the same is a type of calumny, and means you are in error
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He’s responding to my comment about the synagogue in Capernaum having pentagrams on it.
Which it does. They are pentagrams. I took several photos because it was interesting to see a pentagram used in that context. You can also find pictures of that synagogue with its pentagrams online. They are definitely not Stars of David.

Picture and discussion of pentagrams on Capernaum synagogue
 
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LucyT25 said:
I agree, the only marriages I know personally that follow this system are not healthy marriages. I see a wife with no (name removed by moderator)ut on anything. A shell of a person just doing what her husband says.
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This is what I was saying earlier. Both men and women are rational and thinking beings. Why should anyone in a marriage “submit” to a decision that they know to be wrong.

“Honey let’s buy this car which is totally unsuitable for our needs”
“Yes dear”

It’s supposed to be a partnership and that’s how all the good marriages that I know work.
 
LumineDiei said:
And yet, those that insist on it, as though there was some “check off box to determine whether your marriage is biblical or Catholic enough” have no concrete practical examples to give…because it’s almost always single laymen that are shouting “submission from the wife, it’s right there in the Bible (or a particular encyclical)”, but when asked to share what that means on daily basis
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Exactly. What really gets me with guys who have this attitude (and I’ve known both single and married men who make this claim) is that hardly any of them have read beyond that verse to find out what their responsibility is within the marriage. As one of my Scripture professors from college pointed out: When you read what the man is supposed to be like within a marriage, you quickly realize that he has the more difficult task. 😉

Plus, by pointing just to the “wives submit” passage, they miss the verse immediately before that says, “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

I think what most people - men and women - miss today is that marriage is a vocation (a specific calling) that, in part, is meant to strip each one of us of our own selfish desires, our disordered passions, and self-centered orientation so that we can be freed to love freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully the way God created us to love from the beginning. It’s only by allowing ourselves to undergo this process of purification within marriage that we can then live the “happily ever after” both men and women desire so deeply. It requires that both the husband and the wife take up their cross daily and follow Christ the way He Himself called us to follow Him.
 
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Then you find a man with the same beliefs.
Personally I feel I bless my husband by doing for him and our family.
I love feminine arts.
I am not submissive but want him happy and on the road to heaven. I wouldn’t go buy an expensive thing like a refrigerator without his (name removed by moderator)ut.
If he said no it would make me sad but live with it.
 
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Katie777 said:
Then you find a man with the same beliefs.
Personally I feel I bless my husband by doing for him and our family.
I love feminine arts.
I am not submissive but want him happy and on the road to heaven. I wouldn’t go buy an expensive thing like a refrigerator without his (name removed by moderator)ut.
If he said no it would make me sad but live with it.
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I think many women naturally feel like that. And most people wouldn’t buy a large items without consulting their spouse.
 
The misguided destruction of complementarianism in the of equality is one of the greatest threats facing the Church and the Western world in general, in my opinion. It affects every aspect of family life negatively.
 
The Fridge Story

About three years ago our fridge just died.

My husband ordered a new fridge.

“Did you measure?”

“Of course I measured. It will fit.”

The delivery came.

The delivery crew took away the old fridge, then attempted to put in the new one which was a quarter inch too tall and didn’t fit.
 
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We knowingly ordered one a quarter inch too tall. When the new refrigerator was delivered, I knocked out a piece of trim from the cabinet above and it fit perfectly. It looks just fine!
 
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This is me and I’m the female! My husband is the whizz with carpentry, electrical and plumbing in housing but I’m the geek that teaches everyone how to program the VCR/DVR and I used to build all the computers for the family…and do the troubleshooting when they had issues.

I handle the finances because I switched to computerized budgeting long ago. We both cook but I’m the one that tries out new recipes. He’s the one that maintains our home and saves us a fortune in repairs. He’s the one that when I wanted an outlet in our kitchen island, he put in two…one on either side…very handy!

After 47 yrs of marriage, it’s foolish to not play to each other’s strengths and cover for each other’s weaknesses. It’s what married people do!
 
LucyT25 said:
I don’t agree with several verses in the Bible. I don’t feel as a woman that I should be submissive to a man. I also don’t think that a man should be the head of the household. I want to be equal to my husband.
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A wife not wanting to be submissive to her husband and not wanting him to be the head of the family sounds very unnatural to me.

When I as growing up, my father was very clearly “the boss”, not my mother.
 
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Buzzard3 said:
When I as growing up, my father was very clearly “the boss”, not my mother.
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Hahahaha, my dad “your mama-so great! Not only is she the best boss of this house, but she lets me think I am.”
 
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