It might be the most politically incorrect verse in the Bible: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:22). How can this possibly lead to a loving household? Monica Doumit explains the proper understanding of this verse on Catholic Answers Live.
Transcript:
Caller: I hear from priests a model of the family that I really can get behind, which is a model of walking side by side, the husband and wife leading the family. But I really feel like that is in tension with Ephesians 5 which says that wives should be submissive to their husbands. It doesn’t seem like you can have both. It’s either walk side by side or be submissive. So I was just wondering if you could address it.
Monica Doumit: Absolutely, and that’s a really good question. I’m trying to pull out my Bible here, but as I understand it, the beginning of that verse in scripture is, you know, “Be subject to one of one another out of reverence for Christ.” So St. Paul begins that exhortation not with saying “wives be subject to your husbands,” but “husbands and wives be subject to one another.”
So there’s sort of this mutual submission that we talk about. And then particularly if you’re talking about being submissive, or, you know, submission, talking about being “under mission,” so “sub-mission,” and the thing is that the husband and wife really do have the same mission. And so in terms of that particular verse of scripture, I think what we’re talking about is a mutual sub-mission, which is getting each other and your children to heaven, really, primarily is the first goal.
More broadly than that, I guess there is this whole question of of ultimate authority and things like that in a marriage, in a family, and I really do think that the most important thing is for you to be a united front. Sometimes that will mean the wife giving way to the husband in a decision, and sometimes, you know, the husband giving way to the wife in a decision as well. But I think that the best thing—particularly in front of children, and then also as a front to the world—is that there is unity between husband and wife in certain terms.
But hopefully that doesn’t come up too much, because if all of us have our eyes fixed on Christ, if all of us understand that our true mission really is heaven for our family—and, please God, the salvation of souls more broadly than that—then we shouldn’t be in too many of those positions where there is conflict in that decision-making process.
Host: Maria, does that satisfy you?
Caller: Could I just ask a follow-up question? So can you then get behind the idea of the father being the head of the household? Like would you say that and proclaim that, yes, the father is the head of the household?
Monica Doumit: It’s a good question. I think I could get behind that, but again, the head of the household in modeling after Christ. Because again, that passage in Ephesians, and really our understanding of that, is love your wife, love your family as as Christ loved the church and laid himself down.
So I was saying a little bit before that the idea of authority in the Church is authority ordained to service. And that’s not only in terms of priests, but also in terms of fathers, there’s this idea that there is the need for authority to be ordered towards service. Obviously that can be misused, misinterpreted, and I wouldn’t support that. So not the idea that the father is the head of the household, and therefore his decisions are not questioned, you know, and that gives him free reign in a way that can be abused—in the same way that you wouldn’t accept that in terms of the priesthood. You know, yes, the priests have a particular ministry, but that doesn’t mean that they’re infallible.
And so I think if we understand the father being the head of the household in the way that scripture understands it, in the way that Christ modeled, it, of laying down your life, then I don’t have an issue with that. But like anything, it can be twisted, misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misused, and obviously we don’t want that to happen and I think it’s our job to proclaim what it really means to lead in that manner.