Editorials The authority of the husband in Christian marriage
| The authority of the husband in Christian marriage |
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| Written by Padre Alfonso Gálvez |
| Monday, 04 January 2010 02:37 |
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Feminist Movements arose as a powerful weapon in the battle against Christianity. The steps to be taken, according to the planned operation, are the following: a) The destruction of women by eliminating their dignity. The procedure, with very efficient results, to achieve this goal has been to instill in women the need to realize themselves via emancipation from the authority of their husbands and, by the same token, from the state of servitude to which, according to Feminism, the male has for centuries subjected her. b) To do away with the Family in general, and the Christian Family in particular, once the dignity of women was destroyed, and their feelings and their own idea of who they were had been disrupted. c) Once the Family was destroyed, which, after all, is the locus for the birth and education of new children of God, eradicating any vestige of Christianity from human society was an easy task. This issue is particularly relevant when applied to conjugal life in the modern world. Modern doctrines, subscribed to by many Catholic theologians, resist admitting the authority of the husband over his wife. The alleged reason is that such a prerogative implies a diminishing of the woman’s dignity. Hence, their almost unanimous tendency to reject the well-known passage of Saint Paul: Let wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord: because a husband is head of the wife, just as Christ is head of the Church, his body, being himself its Saviour. But just as the Church is subject to Christ, so also wives should be to their husbands in all things (Eph 5: 22—24).
Those who reject this passage tend to overlook the fact that the Apostle immediately adds husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife, loves himself (Eph 5: 22—28). Likewise, they also omit this other statement of The twisted intention of the feminist doctrines clearly appears in their customary attitude, actually a habit, of willfully omitting too many things. One of these things, for example, is the absolute necessity of authority in any kind of society, whether it be big or small –like the conjugal life; otherwise that particular society would fall into total anarchy and end up by disappearing. In fact, the persistent attitude of not recognizing such an evident truth is but one of the causes which have contributed to the destruction of the Family in modern societies. And since the need for authority is demanded by the very nature of things, nobody can claim a valid reason to feel himself humiliated or offended because he has not been established in authority. Such a claim would be nonsense; equivalent to the absurdity of a man feeling himself humiliated because he is a mere creature and not God. There is humiliation only whenever the dignity owed to a person is not somehow recognized. How could anyone feel his dignity as a person offended when his place in society is attributed great honor, and his job within that society is admittedly irreplaceable and of the highest dignity? The feminist doctrines are bent on mixing two separate things: the diversity of functions and the difference in dignity –something that sound doctrine has never confused or taught. How could anyone, in all honesty, accuse somebody of ignoring the woman’s dignity when this person clearly states, as we have seen before, that he who loves his own wife, he loves himself? And a few verses later, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God (1 Cor 11: 11—12). For anyone who wants to see things honestly and without prejudices, it is clear that the Apostle firmly proclaims the essentially equal dignity of both sexes. In addition to this, we must remember that when a woman refuses to accept certain attitudes of submission and of belonging, then she refuses to recognize as real and authentic certain qualities which, truly speaking, belong to the essence of and are proper to love; which is tantamount to the absolute rejection of love itself. Since the faculty of loving –and consequently its reciprocal of being loved—are fundamental characteristics of human nature, the consequences of that woman’s rejection are self-evident: that human being (that woman) would be placed at the lowest level within the taxonomy of living beings; namely, the irrational animal. (This editorial is based on ideas gathered in the book by the same author, Siete Cartas a Siete Obispos, Shoreless Lake Press, NJ 2009, pp. 110 ff.)
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| Last Updated on Monday, 04 January 2010 02:48 |