Spiritual Headship

A while back a woman with a delicate but common situation wrote me with a question. She said:

I was wondering what our beliefs as Catholics are concerning a question my husband has. He says that the man of the household should be the ‘spiritual leader’ of his family. He is not Catholic and turned Fundamentalist only five years ago. Before that, I was the sole source of my family’s faith building. Our daughter is very active in the church and loves the faith, as I do.

So I was wondering where in the Bible it says that the man should be the spiritual leader of the family. I don’t want to go to my husband’s new church and feel that we are rooted in the Catholic faith. How do I explain to him that this isn’t going to happen and possibly refer to Scripture in explaining this to him?

I answered her along the following lines.

First, some basic principles:

1. Men and women are equal in God’s eyes. They have equal dignity, and Christ died for both sexes equally.
2. Husbands and wives have an equal right to the goods of marriage and equal responsibility toward making the marriage work.
3. There are differences in the sexes. For example, men tend to be larger and stronger than women, while women have longer lifespans and more agility.
4. Some differences between men and women are nonphysical. For example, though men and women are of approximately equal intelligence, women have greater verbal aptitude than men, and men have greater spatial aptitude than women.
5. One of the differences between the sexes is that men are designed for physical competition and combat in a way that women are not. (It goes along with being larger and stronger.) They are correspondingly configured mentally and emotionally. Men are more aggressive, more competitive, and less risk-averse on average than women are. Men tend to have a stronger leadership drive than women.
6. The differences between men and women translate into a corresponding differentiation of roles. For example, men are generally better suited to roles that require greater physical strength.
7. In general, men are configured physically and cognitively to serve as the primary leader/protector of the family, while women are configured physically and cognitively to serve as the primary nurturer/caregiver. (It is to be pointed out that men also need to nurture and care for the children. Both parents have equal responsibility to make sure the children get what they need as they grow. Men are configured by nature to be the secondary nurturer/caregiver for the family, just as women are configured to be the secondary leader/protector.)
8. In a few cases, the difference in roles is absolute. For instance, only women can give birth.
9. In most cases, though, the differences do not lead to an absolute division of roles, and in any given marriage whichever partner is better suited for a task is usually the appropriate one to do it.
10. Apart from the bearing of children, the distinction in roles within marriage is not absolute. Many spouses are in situations where one spouse refuses to, is ill-suited to, or is incapable of fulfilling the typical roles just described.
11. In such atypical cases, the good of the family must be provided for, and this frequently means that one spouse may need to fulfill an atypical role. For example, a woman with an alcoholic husband may need to exercise the primary leadership role; a man with an alcoholic wife may need to provide the primary care for the children.

The above points form the natural law foundation needed to answer your question. With them in mind, two things should be pointed out:

First, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition recognize the difference in gender roles just described:

• “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3).
• “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.’ This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Eph. 5:22–33).
• “Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you. Likewise you husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered” (1 Pet. 3:1–7).

These passages do not say that the husband is or should be the spiritual leader of the family, but this is clearly implied (e.g., by Christ being the spiritual leader of the Church, by men being able to serve as priests, etc.). So your husband has a point: Men should be the spiritual leaders of their families.

But we have noted that there are atypical situations. Not all men are able (or fully able) to exercise leadership functions, the spiritual one included. The passage from 1 Peter is directed toward one such situation: that of a Christian woman with a non-Christian husband (most likely he would be a Jew, since Peter is addressing Christian Jews living outside Palestine; see 1 Pet. 1:1).

Such a husband obviously cannot fully be the spiritual leader of his family, and he wouldn’t be the spiritual leader of it at all if he were a pagan rather than a Jew. In such a situation, the wife is called to recognize his leadership role where he is capable of exercising it but not where he is incapable of exercising it.

This situation is not the same as yours, since your husband is a Christian, but it is analogous in that he does not share the fullness of the Christian faith. To the extent that he shares Christian truth, he is capable of serving as spiritual leader (e.g., by leading the family in prayer, provided the prayers are compatible with the Catholic faith and he’s not trying to covertly “preach at” you and your daughter through them).

But until such time as he becomes a Catholic, he is impeded from fully exercising spiritual leadership. You and your daughter have an obligation to maintain your Catholic faith and practice, and he must respect that. Even if he does not recognize the Church for what it is, he must recognize your conscience in the matter, and it would be a violation of your conscience to abandon Catholic faith and practice. In this regard, there are a few Scripture passages you may wish to show him.

First, in explaining your perspective on the matter, you may wish to point to the reply of the apostles when they were told to stop preaching Jesus: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

You must obey God by maintaining your Catholic faith and practice regardless of what you husband might say, just as the women Peter was writing to must continue Christian faith and practice regardless of what their Jewish husbands might say.

It also might be helpful for your husband to reflect on Romans 14, in which Paul is dealing with controversies among Christians at the time. Paul points out that, apart from the question of which side was right in these controversies, each person must follow his conscience, and for any person to violate his conscience would be mortally sinful.

As you explain this to your husband, try to understand also where he is coming from: In Protestant circles it doesn’t matter nearly as much what church one belongs to. As a result, it is a much more normal thing for wives to begin attending their husband’s churches in Protestant circles.

But you as a Catholic are not in that situation. For you it would be abandoning Christ’s Church to join another church, and he needs to understand and respect the situation you are in, even if he does not share your beliefs about the Church.

It also may be useful for your husband to reflect on the fact that no successful leader—inside of the family or out of it—continually insists on his prerogatives as a leader. Successful leaders follow the servant-leader model provided by Jesus (cf. Mark 10:42–45) and appeal to their authority as infrequently as possible.

Unfortunately, too many Christian husbands try to use the verses above as tools to get their way on trivial matters, and in so doing they undercut their ability to serve their family and provide it with authentic leadership that is pleasing to Christ.