October 11, 2022
St. Paul’s admonition that wives should submit to their husbands, as the Church submits to Christ (Ephesians 5), is one of the most offensive teachings to modern Catholics. But submission in marriage is not the only thing modern people find offensive. And it is not just liberals who cannot stand it. In all areas of politics and religion, even among self-described traditionalists, people find every excuse to avoid submission. Deeply ingrained in post-Enlightenment consciousness is the identification of authority with tyranny, of obedience with slavery.
If you think about it, the Bible teaches that the issue of authority and submission is at the root of humanity’s disconnection from God throughout history, beginning with Adam and Eve’s rebellion. Satan deceived Eve into thinking that God’s commands were a ploy to subjugate her, not a gift of love. Adam complied, choosing to please his wife rather than God, a distortion of his God-given inclination toward union through gifts. Ever since, rather than being submissive and receptive to God’s authority, men and women have been suspicious and wary, ironically dominating and manipulating others in the very ways they feared God was doing to them.
This primordial reality, that authority is a gift and submission is receptivity, which Christ came to restore in his nuptial union with the church, is at the heart of theologian Mary Stanford’s new book. The Paradox of Submission: The Search for True Freedom in MarriageDrawing on Scripture, theology of the body, and the entire tradition of the Church’s magisterium on obedience in marriage, Stanford not only defends traditional teaching but also deeply illuminates how both wife and husband can find true freedom by following God’s design for what Pope Pius XI called “the order of love” in mutual and asymmetrical marriage.
Stanford’s talk will be especially liberating for open-minded Catholics who wish to be faithful to Church teaching but fear that repeating this particular point of Scripture and Church doctrine on marriage only creates opportunities for control and abuse. But all Catholics, not just wives, not just married couples, can learn from living submission in marriage and understand that submissive receptivity is at the heart of what it means to be human.
link
Mary Stanford The Paradox of Submission: The Search for True Freedom in Marriage
https://www.osvcatholicbookstore.com/product/the-obedience-paradox-finding-true-freedom-in-marriage
Pope Pius XI’s views on marriage: Casti Konnubii
https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html
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