Cowardice has no place in the Church Militant

This past Sunday saw St. Paul's words about marriage from the Letter to the Ephesians make their appearance again.  (For non-Catholics, our Lectionary, which contains all the Bible readings for Mass, runs on a three year cycle.  If you attend Mass every Sunday for the whole three years, you hear about 90% of the Bible.  If you add in daily Mass, you get up past 95% of the Bible.  The only part left out is all the "begats."  Remember that next time someone tells you that the Catholic Church isn't a "Bible believing" church.  Grr.)

Anyway, the part that gets people all riled up, of course, is the part about wives being submissive to their husbands.  I will quote, from Ephesians 5:21-30.

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.  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.  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.  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.

This was immediately followed by the Gospel reading, which was from John 6, the Bread of Life discourse.  After Jesus tells His listeners that He will give them His flesh to eat, people start to leave Him and call Him a blasphemer.  (Tangent:  if Jesus meant this to be only a symbol, don't you think He would have called back His followers and explained, corrected their misperception?  But He didn't do that, He let it stand.....hmmmm......)  Another quote:

Many of Jesus' disciples who were listening said,  "This saying is hard; who can accept it?"

I chuckled inwardly, because that could just as easily apply to modern attitudes toward the second reading as to Jesus' declaration of His Real Presence in the Eucharist.  While I am happy to report that another deacon at a different Mass than the one I attended apparently gave a great homily that did address this reading, I waited in vain to hear it addressed at my Mass.  (Usually priests give the homilies, but deacons can do it too, and at our parish there is usually one Sunday a month when the deacons preach.)  In different years, I have also heard a deacon tell the congregation that he has never and will never preach on that Scripture, because his wife told him he'd better not.  I remember thinking, "Wow, you are an ordained minister of Christ, supposedly one of His soldiers, and you can't even take on your wife's ridiculous order that you neglect teaching your flock about a certain part of Scripture?!"  This past Sunday was a different one, but his avoidance of the second reading was obvious, and to my mind, pathetic.

If this reading makes you uncomfortable....SO WHAT?!  This is YOUR JOB.  (This goes for priests too.)  When you avoid talking about this reading, you give the message that the secular society who declares us backward woman haters is right!  You communicate that there is something shameful about that Scripture, and that it needs to be hidden and ignored as much as possible.  If you think this Scripture will anger your female audience, then you need to learn more about how it needs to be taught to a modern audience.  But also, you need to adopt more of a "so what" attidude about that possibility.  People get angry when you say abortion and euthanasia are wrong too.  They get angry when you preach against premarital sex and divorce.  Are you gonna stop?  (And if you would, then please, just hang up your stole right now.)

Here's the thing.  This teaching looks different in every single family that attemtps to live it.  The one thing it is not, which so many seem to think it is, is license for a man to lord it over a woman, putting up his feet and ordering her to get him a beer while she slaves away on housework.  Your job as an ordained deacon or priest is to dispel misconceptions like that.  How can you do that if you refuse to ever talk about it?

Really, truly READ that passage.  First, it tells spouses to be subordinate to each other.  Then it goes on to tell wives to be subject to their husbands.  Is it possible that cultural bias of the time influenced the wording?  Sure, after all, the Bible was written by inspired HUMAN authors, and each added their own influence to what they wrote.  But let's think about this:  the man is described as the head of his family.  Don't families work best when a man truly embraces that role?  When he takes on himself the responsibility of the welfare of everyone in his domestic sphere?  How healthy are families when he doesn't do that?  Fatherlessness is a national crisis, and yet we persist in trying to have it both ways, wanting to deny men their leadership role.  Keep reading, and you will see that men are ordered to love their wives as Christ loves the Church.  You know, that Church that he allowed Himself to be CRUCIFIED for?  How is that not subjection and subordination?  Wives are basically told to listen to and respect their husbands.  Husbands are told to be ready to suffer torture and death for their wives.  Wow.  That would seem to put things on a pretty unfair level....for MEN.  That's an awfully high standard to expect of them.  And yet, a man who has truly embraced his leadership role will be ready to do that for his wife and children, because that is what his call is as a Christian husband and father.

I can't give you a formula for how this looks in every day family life.  I could tell you how it looks in my family, but that won't be relevant for anyone else.  Each couple has to work it out for themselves, and that is where the guidance role of our leadership comes in.  If you have been ordained as a priest or deacon, and you refuse to lead Christ's people in the difficult matters, if you refuse to help them understand what might be confusing, you are not doing your job.  If it's uncomfortable or scary, well, so what?  Jesus didn't call you to give you an easy life.  He called to you preach His Word and lead His flock.  That's always been hard.  It's like being a good parent, where the easy path is basically never the right one.

Now the caveat here is that a woman has to choose a man wisely before she puts this much trust in him.  Likewise, men must choose wisely before committing themselves to lay down their lives for a woman.  I have told my daughters, any guy who quotes the first part of this Scripture in an attempt to boss you around is someone you should run from, with all the speed you can muster.  Because men like that seem never to get around to reading the second part.  They are troglodytes in Christian robes.  For men, if a woman wants to try and use this Scripture as an excuse not to develop herself and reach her potential, educationally, professionally, morally, whatever, then you should also run from her.  She is just looking for someone to blame for her failures.  While you should be willing to face crucifixion for your wife, it shouldn't be your wife doing the crucifying.

Honestly, if I can work out this little bit of cogent thought on the topic, shouldn't someone who has been educated and ordained by the Church be able to do as much?  Gird up your loins, guys, and get to it!