Ephesians 5 (Last Sunday's 2nd Reading)

Each year around this time the Church gives us for the 2nd reading one of St. Paul's statements about the roles of husbands and wives. These are the verses that talk about "wives be subject." Although some try to make a big fuss about this, I think Mark Shea, who is a Catholic apologist and writes for www.catholicexchange.com, does a great job addressing this issue.


"Wives be subject"

There's one of those hot button verses. Everybody thinks they know what it means. And one of the markers of whether you are a pre- or post-conciliar Catholic is what you think it means.

Pre-conciliar types tend to believe that (obviously) Paul meant that the husband was to run the family and the wife's job was to submit. Pausing from their labors to convince the world of geocentrism, they write exceedingly long tomes aiming to show that all post-conciliar teaching on man and woman is not just wrong and heretical, but it's heretical and wrong too! Anything less than women in head coverings is a betrayal of the Faith, etc. John Paul is in error, etc. You know the drill.

Post-conciliar types tend to say things like reader Morning's Minion:

St. Paul was a victim of his time and of his heritage. So, when he directed wives to be subject to their husbands he failed to explicitly direct husbands to be equally subject to their wives. He came very close, but still not quite. Pope John Paul II filled in the blanks in Mulieris Dignitatem.

Then, there are those of us who refuse to submit to the paradigm of Two Churches, pre- and post-conciliar. We tend to take it seriously when we confess faith in ****one**** holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. We also take it seriously when we are taught that the Church is indefectible and the ordinary Magisterium infallible. So our first thought, when the Church teaches something that does not immediate sit will with us, is not to explain (as pre-conciliar types tend to do) that John Paul is a heretic, nor to explain (as post-conciliar types tend to do) that our fathers were fools.What the pre-conciliar type tends to do is claim that the task of the modern exegete is to corrupt, not interpret, the apostolic tradition. What the post-conciliar type tends to do is claim that the task of the modern exegete is to correct, not interpret, the apostolic tradition.In fact, JPII neither corrupts nor corrects St. Paul. Because he does not introduce the notion of mutual submission: St. Paul does. "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ" is the keystone of the entire discussion of marriage. That is why it is so stupid to extirpate the verses addressed to women and address only men. It is to treat men alone as moral agents.

When Paul writes these words, he is writing to a world in which it was assumed women were *not* moral agents. He calls upon them to be disciples and not drones. He also calls men to die for their wives. He calls, in short, for mutual submission in love.He is not a blinded slave of his culture, but a radical thinker who is way ahead, both of his time and ours.At the same time, as JPII makes clear in his Letter to Families, the whole conception of marriage is governed by the Church's understanding of God as a Trinity of Love.

That is why, after his discussion of marriage Paul makes it clear that "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church". That's why it's a sacrament: it brings us into the life of mutual surrender in love that is the Trinity through the Lord who surrendered his life to us (he was, after all, "handed over to sinful men") and who teaches us to surrender our lives to him.

Bottom line: both pre- and post-conciliar takes are wrong. The task of the Magisterium remains what it always was: to interpret, not correct or corrupt, the apostolic tradition.

c/o markshea.blogspot.com