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More Analysis of Mulieris Dignitatem:

Let’s analyze more of Mulieris Dignitatem to round out the picture. I will underline the problematic sentences. John Paul II writes:

The author of the Letter to the Ephesians sees no contradiction between an exhortation formulated in this way and the words: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife” (5:22-23). The author knows that this way of speaking, so profoundly rooted in the customs and religious tradition of the time, is to be understood and carried out in a new way: as a “mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ” (cf. Eph 5:21). This is especially true because the husband is called the “head” of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church; he is so in order to give “himself up for her” (Eph 5:25), and giving himself up for her means giving up even his own life. However, whereas in the relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on the part of the Church, in the relationship between husband and wife the “subjection” is not one-sided but mutual.

Here John Paul says that St. Paul’s command is a “new way” of understanding husband and wife relations. Is it? Does St. Paul say that he is giving a new command? We saw earlier that St. Peter, basing his teaching on the principles of the Old Testament, told the Christian wives of his day to “be subject to their husbands...like Sarah who was obedient to Abraham and called him lord” (1 Peter 3:1, 5). If today the wife’s submission is based on a woman who lived 4,000 years ago, there is certainly nothing “new” about requiring the wife to submit to her husband. Similarly, in 1 Cor. 14:34-35 St. Paul tells the women to “keep silent in the churches” and to “ask questions of their husbands at home” and bases his command on “the Law” of the Old Testament and on “the Lord’s commandment” given directly to him. There is certainly nothing “new” about those two sources. Similarly, in 1 Cor 11:3f and 1 Timothy 2:11-15, St. Paul bases the commands for woman to be in subjection to the man on the relationship stemming from the time of Adam and Eve when their respective roles were put in place by God. Obviously, there is nothing “new” about Adam and Eve. Hence, there is nothing “new” in any of St. Paul’s writings regarding a woman’s role, and certainly nothing regarding “mutual submission” as the sense in which the wife’s subjection to her husband is to be understood. In fact, there are more passages in the New Testament that directly command the wife to be in submission to her husband than in the Old Testament!

John Paul II continues:

But the challenge presented by the “ethos” of the Redemption is clear and definitive. All the reasons in favor of the “subjection” of woman to man in marriage must be understood in the sense of a “mutual subjection” of both “out of reverence for Christ.” The measure of true spousal love finds its deepest source in Christ, who is the Bridegroom of the Church, his Bride.

Unless we are misunderstanding him, John Paul II is advocating that the references to the “subjection of woman” in Scripture cannot be understood as a command which singles out the sole responsibility of the wife. In other words, John Paul II claims that when you see “woman be subject” you must read “both be subject.” This is in the face of the fact that Ephesians 5:21 is the only place in Scripture where a general command to submit oneself to another appears in the same vicinity as the command for wives to submit themselves to their husbands.12 “Mutual submission,” as we have noted earlier, means that whatever is true for the wife’s submission to the husband must be true for the husband’s submission to the wife, for that is what the word “mutual” means. Hence, if the wife’s submission is legally mandated, then the husband’s submission is legally mandated. But as we have seen from an analysis of the Fathers, the medievals and two recent popes, no one has ever taught such a legal interchange between spouses. John Paul II, as he appears in various other cases, stands alone in the history of the Catholic Church.

If John Paul II does not intend to teach what I have described above, it surely is not clear in Mulieris Dignitatem. For the sake of the faithful, if he does not intend to teach it, he needs to make it clear. In the meantime, is a good Catholic obliged to give the pope the benefit of the doubt in instances like this? Certainly, in his general approach to the pope, charity and humility ought to lead a good Catholic to do so. However, in light of the specific Patristic, Magisterial and Scriptural evidence laid out thus far, and the additional information we are about to share, it is very difficult to do so. Catholics are not required to put blinders on, even in humble deference to the pope. This would indeed be a very dangerous and extreme kind of deference, and certainly not a genuine service to the Church or the Holy Father. Hence, we are obliged to raise our concerns, respectfully yet confidently, to the degree our abilities and calling require, which we are presently endeavoring to do in this essay. As for now, since there is no other statement in the last 25 years (at least one that I know of) in which John Paul modifies or clarifies his statement regarding “mutual submission,” then according to Canon Law, it is our “right and duty” to take him at his word and offer our conscientious and responsible objections. As Canon 212:2-3 states:

“The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.”

If John Paul’s view were the correct one, St. Paul and St. Peter had many opportunities to say so. All they needed to do was add the necessary qualification regarding spousal submission, and a simple one it would have been. But, inspired by the Holy Spirit, they never did. They told husbands to love their wives, not to be subject to them. There is not one command, or even a suggestion in the whole Bible, or in the patristics, or in any papal, doctoral or conciliar statement, that men are to submit to their wives. Granted, all Christians, whether they be popes, bishops, employers, husbands, government officials, etc, should all have an attitude of spiritual “submission” to one another, for we are all “foot washers” in the general sense of the term. Unfortunately, unless one distinguishes between the general submission Christians offer to one another over against the specific legal submission required of those under authority, this will create undue confusion and distort St. Paul’s teaching, and this has occurred in many Catholic circles today. Many think wives are no longer required to be obedient to their husbands because of the “new” interpretations of Scripture. Many contemporary wedding vows are minus a reference to the wife promising obedience to her husband. This is a recipe for disaster. The statistics for divorce since the time the women’s liberation went into full force, which now hovers around 60% of all U.S. marriages, bear this out. Unfortunately, some of this thinking is due to the ambiguous and misleading statements in Mulieris Dignitatem. As we have seen from the traditional teaching, however, the submission of the wife to the husband is not voluntary. The wife is as much obliged to submit to her husband as a priest is to a bishop or a citizen is to the government, and the submission on that level is not mutual. The husband is to honor and love his wife, not submit to her.

End for CFN 1-05

To be completed next issue

How Could Such an Interpretation Seep Into Catholic Thinking?

The basic question now facing us is this: If the Fathers, the medievals, two popes, not to mention Scripture itself, give no indication that Ephesians 5:21-22 is to be interpreted as teaching a “mutual submission” between husband and wife, where might such an interpretation have originated? We don’t have to go far to find the answer. It has been in the modernist/liberal hermeneutic for quite a while. The “mutual submission” interpretation burst forth in the 1930s from liberal Protestant seminaries and pulpits. Rest assured, it was not an interpretation of the variety which made a distinction between submission from love and submission from authority. Rather, the exegetes asserted that the husband’s submission to the wife was to be understood in the same way as the wife’s submission to her husband. Protestant biblical commentaries written during these years make it plainly evident that their liberal theologians were anxiously reinterpreting Ephesians 5:21 to introduce a “mutual subjection” interpretation to Ephesians 5:22. After the days of Margaret Sanger and the suffrage movement in the 1920s, liberal Protestants had gained a substantial foothold in their universities and seminaries, and soon their liberal theology became worldwide, spawning the women’s liberation movement of the 60s and 70s.

Additionally, when Pius XII gave Catholic scholars the go-ahead to experiment with the methodology of historical criticism for use in Catholic biblical studies (which originated with Protestant liberals as far back as the early 1800s), the floodgates were opened. Fueled by the ecumenical ties fostered by John XXIII and Paul VI, the main elements of Protestant liberalism seeped far and wide into Catholic scholarship. Using the same historical-critical tools they borrowed from liberal Protestants, Catholic scholars were coming to the same conclusion about the role of women - that Paul’s injunctions against women (i.e., acquiring authoritative roles in government, church and family) were culturally conditioned, if not culturally biased. Rather than exegete the Pauline passages at face value, it was now time, so we were told, to reinterpret them in light of the advances in modern society regarding the status of women. Not surprisingly, we find Catholic liberal scholarship’s premier biblical exegete, Fr. Raymond Brown, stating that Scripture not only contains errors in matters of history and science,13 but also in “religious matters,” that is, commands such as those which tell women to be subject to their husbands.14

John Paul II himself suggests that the injunctions against women were the result of a cultural conditioning in the time of St. Paul. He states in Mulieris Dignitatem:

‘Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife’ (5:22-23). The author knows that this way of speaking, so profoundly rooted in the customs and religious tradition of the time, is to be understood and carried out in a new way: as a ‘mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ’ (cf. Eph 5:21).

In other words, the statement “wives be subject to your husband” is said to be so culturally conditioned by the age in which he finds himself that St. Paul must bring forth a new interpretation to an otherwise common maxim. That is, St. Paul is said to be employing the clause “wives be subject to your husbands” not so much as a biblical command to wives, but as if he were quoting an outdated maxim of the past in order to reinterpret it or neutralize it in the present! As we have seen, John Paul II claims that St. Paul’s new interpretation is one of “mutual submission” between spouses, without any apparent distinction or qualification. Unfortunately, it appears from all the evidence we have gathered that John Paul II is oblivious to the possibility that it is his own interpretation of St. Paul that may be culturally conditioned (i.e., conditioned by the modern women’s liberation movement), since no Father, no medieval, no saint, no doctor or pope previous to him ever stated or even suggested that “wives be subject to your husbands” is to be interpreted as a “mutual subjection” between spouses.

Are we surprised to see these kinds of statements from John Paul II? No, not if one has been following his pontificate for the last 25 years. The record shows that Cardinal Wojtyla quoted admiringly from all the top liberal Catholic and Protestant scholars of the day in, for example, his 1978 book Sign of Contradiction (e.g., he quoted from Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, Henri de Lubac, Walter Kasper, Teilhard de Chardin, L. Feuerbach, Rudolph Otto, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, et al.), the landmark book that laid much of the groundwork for the Assisi Interreligious Prayer Gatherings occurring in 1986 and 2002, another innovation unprecedented in the annals of Catholic thought and practice.

The Impact of Genesis 3:16

Another possible reason for the pope’s radical interpretation of the “wives be subject to your husband” passages is his understanding of Genesis 3:16's clause “he shall rule over you.” It appears to be John Paul II’s view, as it is with virtually all liberal exegetes, that the husband’s rule over the wife was not originally intended by God, but was a result of Eve’s sin. Thus, since the Gospel is specifically put in place to deal with sin, this pope reasons that a husband’s rule over the wife should be set aside for the supposedly more gospel-oriented role of “mutual submission.” He writes in Mulieris Dignitatem:

This statement in (Gen 3:16) is of great significance. It implies a reference to the mutual relationship of man and women in marriage.... But the words of the biblical text directly concern original sin and its lasting consequences in man and woman....The words of the Book of Genesis quoted previously (3:16) show how this threefold concupiscence, the “inclination to sin,” will burden the mutual relationship of man and woman.

Here I think it is implicit that the pope’s use of “mutual relationship” means, or at least leads to, “mutual submission,” and the only reason he did not use the term “mutual submission” is that the section of Mulieris Dignitatem which includes this phrase had not been written until later in the apostolic letter where it was addressed more thoroughly.

John Paul II then makes a connection with Genesis 3:16 in the following paragraph:

If Mary is described also as the “new Eve,” what [is] the meaning of this analogy? Certainly there are many. Particularly noteworthy is the meaning which sees Mary as the full revelation of all that is included in the biblical word “woman”: a revelation commensurate with the mystery of the Redemption. Mary means, in a sense, a going beyond the limit spoken of in the Book of Genesis (3:16) and a return to that “beginning” in which one finds the “woman” as she was intended to be in creation...

To what is John Paul II referring when he says “the limit spoken of in the Book of Genesis (3:16) and a return to that ‘beginning’”? I think it is adequately clear he believes that the command “he shall rule over you” is the “limitation,” and this limitation was not intended from the “beginning.” It was merely a consequence of Eve’s sin. Accordingly, Mary is viewed as the New Eve, the liberator of women, since she will reverse the “he shall rule over you” punishment imposed on Eve and the rest of womankind. That being the case, it is John Paul II’s plan that we implement this new state of affairs at the present time (even though it was never implemented by any pope previous to him). It appears to be his view that the traditional Church, for the past two thousand years, failed to see feminine liberation as a vital part of the Gospel, that is, until the “mutual submission” interpretation came to set the record straight.

To show that the above analysis of John Paul II’s view is endorsed by other neo-conservative Catholics, I will quote again the words of Fr. Brian Wilson who, as you remember, was cited earlier in this essay as supporting the “mutual submission” view. Fr. Wilson writes:

On the one hand, there are certainly elements of domination in the relation between the sexes which, rather than a sacred part of God’s plan, are evil and a result of sin. Commenting on Genesis 3:16 Pope John Paul sees this event as establishing a “form of inequality” in the relationship that contradicts God’s plan.15

Then Fr. Wilson quotes from John Paul II’s General Audience address of June 18, 1980:

Does not the rule “over” the other - of man over woman - change essentially the structure of communion in the interpersonal relationship? Does it not transpose into the dimension of this structure something that makes the human being an object, which can, in a way, be desired by the lust of the eyes?

Analysis of John Paul II’s Interpretation of Genesis 3:16

Even if the pope’s contention that Eve’s submission is caused by sin, does that mean we, at this present time, are now supposed to be reforming or alleviating the divine mandate that a wife is to be in subjection to her husband? No, there is no such command in Scripture or in any Church teaching. As we have noted, the New Testament passages which speak of the wife having to be in subjection to her husband make no attempt to extricate women from the injunction of Genesis 3:16. In fact, they base their bedrock teaching directly upon Genesis 3:16, a divine truth which the inspired authors see as perpetual.

We see this perpetual basis, for example, in 1 Timothy 2:11-14, which states that the woman is to be in silence and in subjection to the man precisely due to the fact that Eve was the first person who sinned. St. Paul gives no indication, either in the context of 1 Timothy 2 or elsewhere, that the silence and subjection is a temporary state of affairs, or one that is waiting for the enlightenment of future theologians (e.g., 20th century historical-critics) to show us that a literal interpretation of Genesis 3:16 is “culturally biased.” No, St. Paul is clear that as long as this present earth exists the original roles of man and woman stemming from Genesis 3:16 will abide.

We see the same thing in 1 Cor 14:34-35. St. Paul told the women “in all the churches” to be in silence (Note the plural, that is, the injunction applies to ALL the churches), so much so that if the wives have any questions they should ask their husbands at home, not at church. St. Paul contends that the commands to women are not merely his personal opinion, rather, they are from “the law” and the “commandments of the Lord.” Similar to 1 Timothy 2:11-14, he gives no indication that these injunctions are someday going to be relaxed as the Gospel progresses into society before the return of Christ.

What Does Genesis 3:16 Really Teach?

The above analysis is based on John Paul II’s contention that Genesis 3:16's clause “he shall rule over you” is a deviation from what was supposed to be practiced by husband and wife from the “beginning.” But we need not view Genesis 3:16 in that light at all. The clause “he shall rule over you” is not to be viewed as a consequence of Eve’s sin for the simple reason that Adam was already given headship and authority over Eve before sin ever entered the human race! St. Paul assures us of this fact as he states that Adam’s authority over Eve was granted to him because “Adam was created first” (1 Timothy 2:13). Thus, Adam’s rule over Eve is based on the order of creation. Unfortunately, John Paul fails to mention this fact, and because of this failure he has distorted the relationship between husband and wife in the area of authority and submission.

That being the case, where are we to look for the consequences of Eve’s sin? Very simply, following the grammatical/historical approach to exegesis, the aftermath of Eve’s sin is to be deduced from the clause “And your desire shall be toward your husband.” We are to understand that, because of her sin, as well as the subsequent proclivity to sin which became a punishment for the human race (i.e., concupiscence), Eve will desire something from Adam but will be frustrated in her attempts to attain it. What is it that she will “desire”? Fortunately, we have a lot of help from the context.

The Hebrew word for “desire” (teshuqah) does not refer to some sort of overwhelming affection Eve would have for Adam. It denotes something far more sinister. We see a more precise understanding of its lexical meaning in the next and final time this particular phrasing appears in the Old Testament, Genesis 4:7, regarding Cain’s plight immediately after he murdered Abel. God said to Cain:

“If you do well, is there not acceptance? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is toward you, but you shall rule over it.”

Here we see that sin’s “desire” [Hebrew: teshuqah] is to rule over Cain, but God tells Cain to rule over sin.16 Thus, Genesis 4:7 helps explain the relationship in the Hebrew grammar between the “desire” and the “ruling,” the very two elements that appear in Genesis 3:16. In this light, the consequence of Eve’s sin is not that Adam would suddenly be put in authority over her. It was just the opposite. Adam, because he was created before Eve, was already in authority over her, but sin would tempt Eve to desire to rule over Adam. God, in turn, would frustrate her desire and see to it that Adam maintained his God-given rule over her. Prior to sin, Eve’s motives would be untainted by a sinister desire to usurp Adam’s authority, and thus she would naturally assume her designated place as wife, helper and subordinate. Sin, however, would tempt her to see otherwise.

Projecting this dynamic into the future, we can safely say that whenever we see women assuming authority over men and seeking to supplant them as God’s rulers, it is due to sin. Consequently, if the rule of submission deteriorates, it is not because God wishes women to be liberated from their husband’s rule, but because sin is multiplying for the purposes of judgment (e.g., 2 Thess 2:7-11). As we noted earlier, this was exactly the state of affairs in ancient Israel when that nation began to apostasize. As Isaiah laments:

O my people, their oppressors are children, and women rule over them. O my people. Those who guide you lead you astray, and confuse the direction of your paths (Isaiah 3:12).

Finally, what are the consequences of Eve’s desire to rule over Adam? We see many of them in our society today. Women leave the home and put their children (if they have any) in the care of paid-providers, while they compete with the man in all the areas of leadership, including government, church and employment. The high incidence of females in the work force consequently limits the employment available to men. The children of such marriages grow up lacking the care and sensitivity known traditionally with stay-at-home motherhood. Because they become insecure, the children turn to drugs, sex, pornography, rock music, peers or anything that will relieve the gaping hole they feel inside. Females in the white collar workforce especially tend to become enticed by the opportunities of advancement and thus pregnancy is curtailed by contraception, and failing that, abortion is the next alternative. No wonder St. Paul (immediately after he tells woman to obey their husbands), says: “Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety” (1 Tim 2:15), and in other places says the wife is to “...be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus 2:5), and that even widows should “marry, have children, and manage a home” (1 Tim 5:14). Unfortunately, many of today’s women find out too late that they are happiest when they respond to their maternal instincts and are compliant with their husbands. But the typical family today has 1.7 children per household across America, Europe, Russia and China. Most of the First World countries cannot even replace their dying populations.

When women are at home after a long day’s work, the society has conditioned them to compete with the husband for authority. When decision time comes, wills clash. If not repaired, divorce ensues. In the wake of “women’s liberation,” the sad fact is that over half of all marriages end in divorce, and over sixty percent of second marriages have the same fate. Moreover, since married women are now more accessible in the work force, the military and government, the incidence of adultery among them is staggering. Husbands, because they have been brainwashed by a media which stereotypes them as weak and cowardly misfits, fail to assert their God-given role of leadership, and the family becomes highly dysfunctional. This malaise begins to perpetuate itself through successive generations until the family and society are so weak they cannot function any longer. They are replaced by single-family homes, orphanages, or even same-sex parenting. When all is said and done, an inordinate amount of problems we are experiencing today in modern society can be traced to one overriding problem: a confusion in the roles of the sexes. Men want to act like women, and women want to act like men, and unfortunately, their children suffer the worst consequences. These are just a few of the things that happen when “Eve” is allowed to fulfill her desire to rule over Adam.

Although after a reading of Mulieris Dignitatem it is apparent that John Paul II’s heartfelt desire is to elevate women past the incidents of barbarism and domination they sometimes sustained in past cultures, we can also say, based on the above exegesis and historical research, that the way for the pope to accomplish this is not by reinterpreting the Scriptural teachings concerning wives being subject to their husbands. Reinterpreting them to fit the mores of contemporary society will only create bigger problems. The biblical passages on authority are fixed in stone and their truths can never change. As we have seen, neither Scripture, Tradition nor the Magisterium teach that the husband is to be in submission to his wife. Rescuing women from unfair domination can only be accomplished by accentuating the command contained in the second leg of St. Paul’s teaching: “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.” It is love, not submission, that men so desperately need to be taught. Men know all about domination and submission. Their whole world is governed by the pecking order, and the competition out there is rather fierce. Likewise, men know when someone is trying to usurp their authority under the pretext of establishing equality or mutuality, and the so-called “women liberators” fill that bill precisely. The quickest way to unrest and eventual divorce is for the wife to usurp her husband’s authority over his own household. He will naturally resent it and rightly fight against it. If not rectified, he will crawl into a mental shell or leave the home altogether for greener pasture. To prevent this, the Church needs to teach husbands the art of loving, the very thing St. Paul tells them so often, for husbands, because of their own selfishness, often find it hard to do. When husband’s do, indeed, love their wives as Christ loved the Church, submission to his gentleness is a pleasure for the wife, not a competition she must win by seeking his equal submission to her.

As St. John Chrysostom stated so wisely many years ago, and still remains true today:

Observe again that Paul has exhorted husbands and wives to reciprocity...To love therefore, is the husband’s part, to yield pertains to the other side. If, then, each one contributes his own part, all stand firm. From being loved, the wife too becomes loving; and from her being submissive, the husband learns to yield.” (Homilies on Colossians, NPNF1 13:304)

Robert A. Sungenis, M.A.

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