WIVES SHOULD BE SUBMISSIVE TO THEIR HUSBANDS?

10/29/12

 

Tomorrow's (i.e., 10/30/12's) first reading for Mass in the Catholic Church is the now infamous Ephesians 5:21-33, which contains the following passage:

 

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is head of his wife
just as Christ is head of the Church,
he himself the savior of the Body.
As the Church is subordinate to Christ,
so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

 

The admonition to wives to be submissive to their husbands is offensive to the modern ear, so offensive, in fact, that the Church provides an alternate reading, Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32, which excludes that reference.

 

The most obvious explanation for Paul's admonition is, of course, historical context.   But there is more to that explanation than meets the eye.

 

Was St. Paul, the author of Ephesians, the raging male chauvinist, perhaps even misogynist, that he is sometimes accused of being?   Yes, by standards of today but by not by standards of his day.  

 

It was a matter of course in Paul's day that women were not considered the equals of men, so much so that Paul's advice to women to be submissive barely raised notice, let alone objection.  (It is indeed one of the gifts of God that we have made so much, but not yet enough, progress in our regard for women in advanced societies; less developed of today's societies, sadly, still regard women with little more than scorn and, tragically, sometimes do so in the name of God.   But I digress.)   The portion of this passage that did raise eyebrows, if not hackles, among Paul's listeners, followed the above quoted lines:

 

Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ loved the Church
and handed himself over for her to sanctify her,
cleansing her by the bath of water with the word,
that he might present to himself the Church in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish.

 

Paul goes so far as to say

 

So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one hates his own flesh
but rather nourishes and cherishes it,
even as Christ does the Church,
because we are members of his Body.

 

Love your wives?  And love your wives as you love your own flesh?  In that era, and in that area where the Roman military and Greco-Roman culture dominated, women were regarded as little more than chattel and wives were more or less traded as parts of business deals, large or small.   Doubtless there were many instances in which men did love their wives, but generally when that condition prevailed that love developed over time; love was not a consideration in the deal that was marriage in Greco-Roman culture.   Lust perhaps, and probably rarely, but love?   Rarely, if ever.

 

So what was truly revolutionary to the ear of Paul's time was his admonition to husbands to love their wives.   Telling wives to submit to their husbands was the same old same old.   But telling husbands to love their wives was so out of the ordinary, and threatening to the normal course of things, that it could have, and doubtless did, get Paul in trouble.

 

In Paul's further defense, he concludes this passage, after relating a larger point about the relationship of Christ to the Church being very much akin to the proper, loving relationship between a man and a woman, with a reiteration of his advice for men to love their wives:

 

In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself

 

and a change in the verb describing the proper relationship of a woman to her husband

and the wife should respect her husband.  (Emphasis mine)

 

Though we wish Paul would have added something like

 

and the husband should respect his wife,     

 

who, even today, would argue with that?

 

So, yes, Paul sounds like a male chauvinist, at best, to today's listeners.   I cringe when I hear the above passage, and I am sure most of you do, too.   But give St. Paul a break; he was operating in the 1st century Roman world and was effectively sticking it in their eye by telling men that they should actually love, rather than own and do with what they would, their wives.   By those standards, Paul was a champion of women's rights, as was his Master, but the latter is grist for another mill

 

YOU MEAN EVERYBODY GETS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE…FOR FREE!?

10/27/12




As part of my post-Communion prayer and meditation today, I was trying to enumerate all the things for which I am grateful. Of course, the list is way too long for any of us to possibly enumerate. We tend, though, to start, and maybe end, our lists, with the obvious things and often, though not necessarily, the material things:



Our families

Our freedom

Having been (most of us) born in America during peace time

Our homes

Our education

Our friends

Our church and our faith

Our health

Our pets

Our cars

The great food we in this country eat daily as a matter of course

The beauty of the season…



Again, the list is too long to enumerate.



It occurred to me, as I tried to scratch the surface of the list, that the thing for which I ought to, and I think and hope I am, be most grateful is the presence of God in my life, that God wants to be and is my friend, my Father, my protector, my Creator, and my Savior and that He will never leave me. Perhaps a time will come when we will not feel all that grateful, and for good reason. That time has doubtless come for many of you; terrible things happen, friends and family leave us, we lose our jobs, our money, our standing in the community. But God is our constant; He never leaves us and, while He doesn’t promise us that life will be good or easy, He does promise that He will be with us for it.



Then something else occurred to me: the thing for which I should be most grateful, the presence of God, is something EVERYONE has. Some people reject His presence, but, even in those cases, He is never far from them and they can once again be in His presence for the mere asking. So EVERYONE, rich and poor, good and bad, hard working and lazy, good looking and not so good looking…EVERYONE…has the most important thing in life.



I don’t know about you, but this is not entirely a happy thought. People, including yours truly, work hard (or, perhaps in my case, perhaps we ought to just leave it at work) to achieve things. Material things, of course, but also friends and family, education, etc., if we think about it, require work and effort, hence forth the old adage, for instance, that to have a friend you have to be a friend. The work we do, especially in the case of our families and friends, is often, in most cases almost always, not unpleasant, indeed it is usually rewarding and fun. But for many of us the work we do to obtain the material things, and often the work we do to be a better friend, spouse, or parent, can be difficult, strenuous, exhausting, tedious, dispiriting, and/or something we would just rather not do. Yet we do whatever is necessary to achieve the things we, and the people we love, need and want…and harbor a very understandable resentment of those who don’t.



But the thing we most need, the most important thing in our lives, the presence, the Fatherhood, the friendship, the comfort of God, requires NO efforts; it is always there for us…and anyone, even those we consider not all that worthy, have it, or at least have ready access to it. If this isn’t somehow troubling to us, there are at least two possible reasons.



First, we haven’t grasped, or haven’t bought into the idea that God’s presence is indeed the most important thing in your lives and everything else, by comparison, is either ephemeral or, like our families, derive their value because they are manifestations of God’s love for us and our love for Him. This probably describes most of us, including yours truly. We may intellectually understand the preeminence of God and His presence, but haven’t fully accepted it.



Second, we have truly achieved that level of selflessness that should be the aim of our lives, the thing that God most wants us to achieve, and, therefore, that other people can have what we most treasure for the mere asking does not bother us. This condition does not describe most of us, including yours truly, and St. Paul, who says (Romans, 3:23):



“For all have sinned and fall short of he glory of God.”



In a sense, this having fallen short is a human condition that we can strive to, but probably never will, overcome in this life. This is perhaps a good thing, yet another gift from God for which to be grateful. It’s pretty frightening to imagine a world in which we all realized, and internalized, the paramount importance of the free gift of God’s grace, were perfectly fine with EVERYONE having access to that gift, and acted accordingly in our material affairs. One does not have to a fervent believer in free markets to imagine the impact such an attitude would have on the world’s living standards! But that is perhaps grist for a discussion of the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew, 20:1-16).

RICHARD MOURDOCK ON RAPE: GOD INTENDED IT?

10/24/12




Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, in an attempt to explain why he opposes abortion even in the case of rape, opined yesterday during a debate:

“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”



Leaving aside for a moment the question of when life begins and/or when abortion is permissible, Mr. Mourdock displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how God works.



Put simply, God does not intend that horrible, or even just bad, things happen. God does not want a woman to go through the horrors of rape, nor does He want the children conceived under such horrid circumstances to endure whatever horrific circumstances may await them.



So if God is omnipotent and God does not want things like rape to happen, why do they happen? These things happen because God is not omnipotent. God is not omnipotent because He created us with free will and thus with the power to refuse God, to say “No!” to God and choose the path of evil rather than the path of His will. God is largely powerless to stop people who insist on refusing His love and His mercy and therefore to not follow His will. That is why things like rape happen…not because God intended a woman to be raped. What loving father could intend that his beloved daughter be raped? And God is the ultimate loving Father.



Since God clearly did not intend the terrible crime of rape to be perpetrated on one of His daughters, how could He intend the pregnancy that resulted? Clearly He did not. But God also works, as best He can, given that He must work through people, to make the best out of terrible, or even merely bad, situations. How that plays out under these clearly terrible circumstances is another issue, though it is very difficult to see how He would demand that a woman to carry the term the product of such an abominable violation of His will. But to say that God intends a rape and the immediate consequences thereof shows a fundamental misunderstanding of God as a loving Father…and an overestimation of His ability to control people and circumstances.

“YOU GET WISE! YOU GO TO CHURCH!”

10/23/12




In reading the letter to the Hebrews today, I again ran across this admonition from the unknown (That the author is not St. Paul, as was once believed, has been accepted for hundreds of years.) writer: (Chapter 10, v. 25):



We should not stay away from the assembly, as is the custom of some, but encourage one another, and this all the more as you see the day drawing near.

At the time the letter was written, probably before AD 70, the Christian assemblies to which the author refers were simply meetings of people who accepted Jesus, or early church services.  So the message of the writer of Hebrews can be translated in modern times as, in the immortal words of Curtis Salgado, “You get wise!  You go to church!”

Even then, perhaps especially then, in the earliest days of the Church, it was deemed important to get one’s self to church regularly…and there were plenty of Christians who didn’t go to church. Back then, everyone had a good excuse not to go to church; the authorities, whether local or Roman, in the Holy Land were not too keen on this new sect or branch of Judaism and had little compunction about persecuting those who adhered to it. But, despite the dangers, people recognized the value of gathering together to profess their faith in common and to, as the author put it, “encourage one another.”



Today, going to church has fallen out of favor, even among those who have deep faith in God in the person of Jesus. While the reasons for not going to church are not as valid as they were when there was something of a price on Christian’s heads, aversion to church attendance is understandable, given what many organized religions, or at least some people representing many organized religions, have done to betray the trust of the faithful…or worse. But adhering to the ancient admonition to attend “the assembly” makes sense not only from the standpoint of mutual encouragement in these trying times, but also because of human limitations.



You and I are limited in what we can do because we have different talents and abilities. Paul wrote about different roles for people of different talents in the 12th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. And even if we were virtually unlimited in our abilities, we would be constrained by time and normal human limitations. We simply cannot do what needs to be done (See yesterday’s post, ST. PAUL, ST. JAMES, AND SALVATION BY FAITH.) on our own; it takes the collective effort of believers from many backgrounds and of many abilities to accomplish the works that God wants accomplished, both to spread the good news of the salvation He offers us and to give witness to the faith by which we are saved.



Going to church was tough back in the 1st century and, though less so, it’s still tough today. And, no, it isn’t necessary to go to church to be saved; Jesus already took care of that (Again, see ST. PAUL, ST. JAMES, AND SALVATION BY FAITH.) But church attendance helps strengthen our own faith and the faith of others and to bring the good news to others. So find a church that you like to attend, not a church that you feel you must attend, regardless of denomination, and go when the Spirit moves you, hopefully, but not necessarily, frequently. You’ll be doing God’s work…and yourself, and many others, a favor.

ST. PAUL, ST. JAMES, AND SALVATION BY FAITH

10/22/12




The first of today’s (Monday, 10/22/12’s) readings in the Catholic Church comes from the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, concluding with verses 8-11:



For by grace you have been saved through faith,

and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;

it is not from works, so no one may boast.

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works

that God has prepared in advance,

that we should live in them.

This is far, far from the only place in which Paul has made the point that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ and not from our works, our devotion, dedication, or anything else we can do, have done, or will do; faith, not works, saves us and we incapable of achieving our own salvation. All the novenas, all the Masses or services we attend, all the confessions we make, all the work among the poor and the sick, all of the personal sacrifices we make for others will not win us salvation. Salvation cannot be won or earned; it is a free gift from God, won by the sacrifice of His Son on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Paul could not be more explicit in making this point than he is in this passage.



Does this mean that works are worthless, that we are free to do whatever we please as long as we believe in God? Of course not, for at least two reasons.

First, our good works are a manifestation of our faith, a sign of our faith. He who says he has faith in God and then acts in a manner contrary to God’s wishes, or to sound morals, may believe in God but he has no faith in God. As James said, (Chapter 2, vs. 18-22, New American Bible):



Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works. Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our Father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and that faith was completed by the works. (Emphasis mine)



The minor point here is that I love St. James; he tells it like it is (“you ignoramus..) and provides me solace, or at least justification, when I, as is my wont in my blogs and elsewhere, put the proper label on someone.



The major point here is that believing is not faith; even the demons believe that Jesus is the Christ, as demonstrated in several of his exorcisms. Faith is deeper than belief. That faith is demonstrated, or, as James puts it, completed by works. Anyone can say “Oh, yeah, I believe that Jesus is Lord.” But true faith is demonstrated by the way we live our lives—with an awareness of Christ. And it is living in this awareness, rather than living by the rules, that saves us.



The second reason that good works are necessary lies in the old expression that God has no hands or, with a slight variation, that we are the only hands God has. If God is to accomplish His work of salvation, we must do our very large part in spreading the word of God so that others may have faith in Him and thus be saved. We can do so with words, but, as St. Francis of Assisi said,



Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.



and



It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.



Again, we demonstrate our faith through our works and we preach the faith through our works. Further, God needs us to accomplish His work of salvation; without us, nothing, or very little, gets accomplished in saving the human race through faith in Him and in His Son.