Laughing At You

Prejudices are what fools use for reason. – Voltaire

All the Catholic girls, sit down. Remove any liquids from the vicinity of your computer.


What if someone told you that Catholic husbands rule the house with an iron rod?


Yeah, I read something like that and I thought: “Wow. Does this person have a brain stem?”

Maybe.

It’s more than likely they can’t read anything at all.

Case in point.

Ask a housewife and she might tell you her husband is the head of the family but she is the brains. It makes sense. Who spends the money the husband earns? Who anticipates every need? Managing a budget for an entire household isn’t a job for a total doofus. Aside from managing the budget, the woman of the house has other things (job, kids, ect.). That’s the real world. Whoever doesn’t get it is either single or has been living under a rock.

What the good monsignor in the linked article has been trying to impart is the theological aspect of family hierarchy. No one likes the word “hierarchy” because it conjures up images of iron-fisted rule. Everyday hierarchy is more the guy who pays the bills, takes the hits and makes the hard decisions. People who have trouble with hierarchies secretly wish they could kiss this guy because it saves them the agony of thinking a problem through and solving it. Anyway, the marital hierarchy- if it could be called that- is more like a partnership or, as Saint Paul put it , the merging of two into one:

Marriage Like Christ and the Church

22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.

24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;

29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,

30 because we are members of His body.

31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.

32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

See that? Nowhere does it say: “the husband is the boss or else”. There is the plea for co-operation in order to live harmoniously (check Confucius though his attitudes are far more draconian). If anything, there is more pressure on the husband than on the wife. Husbands have to love their wives as Christ loved the Church AND GAVE UP HIS LIFE FOR IT. Read it if you don’t believe me. A wife has to respect her husband; the husband has to take a bullet for the wife. In reality, that’s not a fair exchange but it’s one that someone is willing to live with. Things one does for love, I guess.

So why do people blather on with unsubstantiated nonsense? They do it because, quite simply, they are at a good place with their base ignorance and bigotry. It takes a lot of work to hate. It fills up a hole that Wicca, dog pictures and dreary office cubicles can’t. It’s absolutely nonsensical to even believe that Christians- especially Catholics- live under some sort of theocratic Iron Curtain. But just as the real Iron Curtain was a verboten topic for champagne socialists and Islamofascism is not even uttered by leftists, looking at reality takes work and understanding. For a pet hate, that won’t do.

So, if one is bent on disproving this post in its entirety, fine. I don’t think you can but if you’ve got the free time, go for it. Just keep in mind, you’re wasting the precious gift of life for no other reason than spite. And that’s pretty sad.