Mansplaining Ephesians

Over the course of my relatively short career as an extraordinary proclaimer of the Word, my audience has responded with blank stares and occasional approving smiles. At least until this past Sunday, when I chose to read the longer version of the 2nd reading. St. Paul, who can sometimes be impenetrably obscure, is extremely and almost uncharacteristically blunt: “As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.”

As I paused to let this sink in, I caught an undisguised glare from a woman in a front row. Further back in the church, a child began questioning his parents. I can only assume he was asking what I could possibly mean by such a statement. Paul’s follow-up about how men should love their wives clearly did not quiet the congregation. As I stepped down from the lectern, I met an accusing stare from the pastor. Not only had I wasted time by not choosing the shortest available option, I had made his job as a pastor harder. The parish’s delusion was on trial.

I recognized the homily immediately, as it was the same homily he had given the previous week at a different Mass time. But when the good man had run through his script, he looked up and began explaining—or should I say mansplaining—away the reading. 

He started off by informing the parish that “most of our lectors choose to read the shorter version of this passage” which does not include such a “hard teaching”—obliquely informing me that I had made the wrong choice. He went on to say that we have to take the “time and culture” into account, as women were “considered property.” Then he informed us that the passage was really directed at men, and Paul’s statement to “love your wives” was a “radical challenge” to men who had never conceived of such a unique idea. 

There is so much wrong with these statements. First of all, the priest is strongly suggesting that some biblical teachings are “aged out” to the point of not just being irrelevant but wrong. Moreover, he equates a wife’s subordination in marriage with being a husband’s property. I wonder if my pastor sees himself as the property of his bishop, or if he thinks his vow of obedience is just as outdated as the Bible. [My pastor] equates a wife’s subordination in marriage with being a husband’s property. I wonder if my pastor sees himself as the property of his bishop, or if he thinks his vow of obedience is just as outdated as the Bible.Tweet This

Who do you think knows how to construct a godly marriage: the middle-aged women who showed up for 11:30 Mass, or God Himself, speaking through His Word? Has God changed His mind and admitted that He only inspired Paul to write “wives be subordinate to your husbands” because He used to think women were property but now the feminists have reeducated Him? 

Furthermore, it’s interesting to see how unafraid he is to proclaim that men are the problem, and Paul didn’t care half so much about women being obedient as he did about men being loving. While my reading, which suggested that wives ought to be obedient, was met with outrage, no one seemed to be bothered when he suggested that men are the real problem and that women should have “freedom.” 

Yes, men are the problem. There is an uncontroversial statement if I’ve ever heard one. From the most conservative of websites down, all you hear is about how men are the problem. While I understand the impulse to want to “get the beam out of your own (sexes) eye before you point out the splinter in your sisters’,” that doesn’t mean when such a splinter clearly exists you should go all out to try to deny the truth of its existence. 

Coincidentally, my pastor brought up the high divorce rate of modern times. This was odd to me, as it seemed to defeat his suggestion that the modern world knows far better how marriages ought to be constructed than God does. Clearly, there is a problem in modern marriages, and I don’t think the problem is all men not being loving enough. Perhaps, for us Catholics, it’s worth considering whether maybe marriage isn’t supposed to be a tug-of-war between two parties that are supposed to be treated exactly the same. Perhaps we could open ourselves up to the idea that subordination doesn’t mean slavery. 

More importantly though, for the crisis in marriages to be solved, we need leaders who aren’t afraid of their responsibility to tell their people the truth. We need men who can get over their inherent guilt and fear of their identity and construct households on the rock-solid foundation God has made and not on the ever-shifting sands of the zeitgeist. If our pastors are nothing but crowd-pleasing sycophants, we have no hope. Thankfully, we know that the same God who made St. Paul a fearless witness to the truth will embolden us to preach and practice the proper attitude toward marriage.