Archdiocese of Washington

Out of Wedlock Birthrate Continues to Soar. Nothing Less than the Future of Our Country is At Stake

The breakdown of the traditional family is at the heart of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called a “tangle of pathologies.” The image I have often used is that the breakdown of the nuclear family is in fact a kind of nuclear fission. For the family (not the individual) is the basic unit of society. Splitting the family is like splitting the atom, it leads to a destructive chain reaction that, if not somehow controlled and contained, destroys just about everything in sight.

So many of our national ills are show a strong connection to the breakdown of the family: poverty (the highest correlation to poverty is single motherhood), juvenile crime, teenage suicide, promiscuity, teenage pregnancy, lower SAT and other academic scores, higher dropout rates, authority and trust issues, abortion (85% of abortions are performed on single women), a demonstrated lower capacity to make and keep commitments, delayed maturity, and a whole array of other things in a “tangle of pathologies.”

Clearly God, and nature provide that a child should have the influence of both a father and a mother, both a male and a female influence. It makes sense that proper human formation would require both male and female influence, which is both complimentary and diverse. There are important things that a child can learn from his father than he cannot learn from his mother and vice versa.

In a recent article, author Doug Patton does a good job setting forth some of the numbers and the things that ought to cause us serious concerns. While his article is essentially political, I here use the non-political aspects to  frame our discussion. As always, the Original Text is in bold black italic typeface and my comments are in plain red text.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a Labor Department official, released an alarming report about the number of black children born to unwed mothers. The percentage at that time was 25 percent. In the years that followed, Moynihan went on to become a United States Senator from New York, and the percentage of out-of-wedlock births among African-American mothers soared to today’s level of 73 percent.

If alarms were being sounded at 25% surely now with the rate approaching 80% merits a major national outreach. But what do we have? Silence. To speak of single motherhood is politically incorrect, and most leaders in the Black community, while privately lamenting the huge problem, consider public discussions of the issue to be “off message.” The preferred message is one which emphasizes poverty and racism. These are not insignificant issues but more attention must be paid to the “self-inflicted” wounds. And while some would like to trace illegitimacy to racism and poverty, the fact is, that when both were far worse back in the 1950’s and 60’s, the out of wedlock rates were below 20%. There are simply other factors to consider, and understanding these wounds as self-inflicted restores personal responsibility and overrules the “victim” card.

Some years ago I was at a meeting of inner city church leaders, both Catholic and Protestant. Out topic was how to lower the poverty rate. After many of the usual solutions were trotted out (e.g. job training, Government outlays etc.) I suggested that we ought to vigorously teach and encourage chastity. Well, heaven forfend, did the room ever grow quiet and icy stares come my way. It was clear that I was “off message” and that such “moralizing” was an unkind. Someone quickly changed the subject.

In my own African American Parish we do speak a lot about this problem. I have met with the men especially, and called them to account. We are currently planning to view the movie Courageous and prepared the men to make public promises to live and act responsibly toward the women and children in their lives. We are also ramping up to provide more vigorous marriage preparation and marriage enrichment. Among the High School students, yours truly speaks quite clearly that fornication is a mortal sin and a huge barrier to success. Progress is slow but steady.

Indeed the marriage numbers are grave. In the African American community only  37% of women college graduates have ever been married. And at any given time, only 33% of black women are married. [1] Grave numbers. Until such things are addressed, the soil grows ever thinner and the taller growths among our children are less and less likely.

Hard though it is, accepting personal responsibility is essential to human dignity.

As we shall see the Black Community is not alone in demonstrating serious issues with sexual promiscuity. The White community too is mired in promiscuity and irresponsibility.

That [out of wedlock rate in the African American community] is higher than the rate during the years when parts of America still practiced slavery. Ponder that fact for a moment. In 1850, when black men, women and children in several of the states could be ripped from their loved ones and sold as property, a higher percentage of their children were being born and raised in marriage-based, two parent families than there are a century and half later, in 2012. – Exactly. And now author Patton widens the conversation.

This troubling fact is reflective of what Moynihan once called “a tangle of pathology.” Indeed. And in 2012 that tangle has ramifications for every aspect of society, as the percentage of unwed white mothers has risen sharply to rates higher than the ones that so alarmed Moynihan about blacks in the 1960s. In fact, the combined rates for unwed American mothers of all races have climbed to a staggering 41 percent. In the case of women under age 30, the rate now stands at 53 percent.

Yes, it is too easy for White America to point to the Black and inner city community. I was once confronted by a brother priest who asked me, in effect, “What is wrong with those Black folk you serve…having all those illegitimate births?” I accepted his concerns for the illegitimacy rate but warned him that the White community was not far behind and that in his suburban affluent white community he might be surprised if he actually did the math and saw the actual rates.

In a certain sense the African American Community is like the “Canary in the mine.” In the old days, miners brought down canaries into the mine. If there was gas, the sensitive canaries died first signalling the miners that there was trouble.

The truth is, for all the finger pointing, most white children are now raised in single family homes and the number has jumped dramatically in the last ten years. And as for Latinos, especially immigrants, the numbers are also horrible. Among teenagers, who are at the greatest risk for getting into trouble, — 70 percent of U.S.-born teenagers with immigrant parents live in unmarried households.[2]

This is an increasingly illegitimate, irresponsible and immature nation. As always, it is the children who suffer. While adults take care of themselves and refuse to form responsible marriages and stick to their commitments, children are made to endure endless ignominies and conflicts. With dad one week, mom the next, “By the way, mom has a new boyfriend, but he is not as nice as the last one.”

Of course the expectation that these children will have any capacity to form lasting marriages or even have a modicum of human trust, grows ever remote.

Yes, this is the nuclear fission of our culture. And as the basic unit of the family is split and melts down, enormous and uncontrollable chain reactions set in that cause widespread destruction and loss.

Patton concludes:

A 53 percent out-of-wedlock birth rate among America’s young women is unsustainable…. Nothing less than the future of the country and the next generation is at stake.

It is increasingly clear that we need a miracle to save the West, and to save our country. Either that or we need a crisis that will so rock us back on our heels that we will actually have to start sticking together again to survive.

I will say that in this harsh desert there are some oases, some couples who do manage to form and keep stable and healthy marriages. God has worked with small and faithful remnants before to effect miraculous reforms. I pray that we can find enough faithful couples to work with God in this regard, before God’s judgment on the decadent West is final. As a priest I strive to work hard to prepare couples by emphasizing biblical principles and the teaching of the Church. I also strive to preach on marriage a lot. It’s all I can do. But with the culture so far gone, instructions and sermons alone may not be enough.

Help Lord, send us your mercy and heal our hearts wounded by lust and immaturity, hatred and unforgiveness. Help Lord, we need a miracle.

Indeed, an old song says, “In times like these you need a savior….”

Has the Cost of Raising Children Really Risen 40% in Ten Years, or Does This Say Something About Us? A Reflection on A Recent USDA Report.

I was alerted to an article on the cost of raising children by one of my brothers who, with his wife, has six children. The USDA estimates that the cost of raising children from birth to age 18 for a middle-income, two-parent family now averages $226,920. That’s up by 40% from just ten years ago. Now, right away, you ought to question a reports that inflates the cost of some activity by 40% in just ten years. It strikes me that how they collect the data has changed, not just the costs. My brother, father of six, says, I’m supposed to believe that my six children are likely to dent my pocketbook by over 1.3 million dollars ($262,000/kid), not including college and wedding expenses? Something about “lies, damned lies, and statistics” comes to mind here. Me thinks that the USDA needs to get back to inspecting meat!

Let’s look at the report, and then ask some technical and philosophical questions. I am here quoting from a CNN Money report on the study. These are excerpts, the full report can be read here: HERE.  As usual, the original text is in bold, italic, black, and my comments are plain text red.

Forget designer strollers and organic baby formula, just providing a child with the basics has become more than most parents can afford. The cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 for a middle-income, two-parent family averaged $226,920 last year (not including college), according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s up nearly 40% — or more than $60,000 — from 10 years ago. Just one year of spending on a child can cost up to $13,830 in 2010, compared to $9,860 a decade ago.

Again, beware of a 40% figure here. The average annual inflation rate for the past 10 years is 2.37% [1]. Hence it would seem other things than just inflation are factored into the number. What are they? Do parents do more voluntary spending on their children? Are they less able to say “no” ? It is not clear. So even if we accept the number, (which I am not certain I do), we need to know what factors went into the assessment. This is because the 40% increase is almost double the inflation rate for the ten year period. And remember this, even the inflation rate of 2.37% can mislead if we do not remember that wages have also inflated in the period. Some will argue, and I agree, that wages have not kept pace recently with inflation, due to higher unemployment. But remember 2.37% inflation over ten years is not an absolute cost number, since wages have increased some, as well. 

“Everything is more expensive and each family makes its own set of trade-offs,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York. “Many parents are working longer hours, or another job, and they are giving up time at home….

OK, but to be fair, wages are up in the past ten years. Let’s admit they have lagged behind inflation a bit. So the deeper question remains, Why is the cost of raising a child up 40% in ten years? If, and I do not cede this point, the number is real, why? It is more than inflation. There are behavioral issues at work here too. Not every parent feels compelled to buy tennis shoes that light up for their children, others do. This is behavior, not just unavoidable costs. Some parents use “hand-me-downs” in their families, others do not. This is behavior. Some use a lot of childcare (costly), others do not. This is behavior. We do not need to be locked into this $226K number. Chosen behaviors can have a lot of influence.

From buying groceries to paying for gas, every major expense associated with raising a child has climbed significantly over the past decade, said Mark Lino, a senior economist at the USDA.

But again, the ten year inflation rate is NOT 40%. So the question is, if these cost have acutally risen, why? Are all the costs unavoidable?

Food prices, in particular, have weighed on parents’ budgets as rising demand for commodities like corn and wheat, along with other factors such as rising oil prices, drought and floods, have made even a box of cereal a pricey proposition.

Almost two years ago,  I blogged on whether the cost of basic essentials is really higher today, than in the 1950s, a period widely perceived to be a prosperous time for US families. In that post, (read it HERE), we explored a significant amount of data that indicated that the cost of almost everything was higher in the 1950s (in inflation adjusted dollars) than today. The essential problem today is that we need and want more of everything. Life was simpler back in the 1950s, but today we “require” many more add-ons. Thus, while we can look at food prices in the past few years, the big picture indicates that, many years ago, things like food and gas and clothing, took a higher chunk of our income than today.

Even more recently, in the economic downturn, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has only slightly elevated to about 3.7%. Food prices edged upward, especially in 2007, as a percentage, but other prices came down. And then things became more stable as the economy slouched in later 2007.[2] Hence, while prices are higher, the overall CPI has not dramatically jumped, as the the CNN Money report seems to want to indicate. Wages of course, in this era of higher unemployment are less upward and will tend to lag behind the CPI. But remember if we look at ten years (as the CNN report and the USDA report claim to do), rather than focus only on the past few years, the overall numbers are still, steady as you go.

Many employers scaled back or even did away with medical coverage in recent years, leaving many families to cover that bill, said Lino. At the same time, costs for doctors visits, medications and other health services also climbed. As a result, health care costs for families with children rose 58% over the decade, he said.

Here too, there are a lot of behavioral issues involved. In recent years we run to the doctor more quickly. All but free medical care has made us prone to presume a doctor needs to see us for the merest reason, and that prescription medicines should be available to us free of cost. When I was a child,  the emergency room was for real emergencies, a place rarely seen, and the doctor was consulted only after the usual drug store products proved ineffectual. There was the usual “yearly check-up” to get a few shots, and do preventative medicine. But today, the expectations are much higher.

Demand for services inflates costs, and we do well to ask questions not only of employers, insurance companies, and doctors, but also of ourselves. Medical costs don’t have to be up 58% in every household.

I realize that some, reading this will say, “How dare you, and a priest at that, suggest that complete medical coverage is not an absolute and inalienable right of every human being?!”  But in the end we do take care of uninsured people in this country. Most emergency rooms, if accredited, are required to provide care even if a medical insurance provider is not identified. We ought to provide urgent medical care for to the poor. But the focus here is families, and it remains a valid question as to whether all recourse to the doctor and hospital is immediately required just because I happen to think so. A little personal triage is helpful in families to keep costs down and medical costs don’t have to be 58% higher for all families in all circumstances.

All of this comes at a time when incomes are shrinking and unemployment is near an all-time high. Over the past decade, median household income has fallen 7%, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau. Granted, this is true in the last four years. But remember the USDA numbers cover ten years. There are cycles, this one has been severe, but children are part of a twenty year cycle and the numbers there are still steady.

For many parents, choosing to work and pay for child care is often a difficult trade off when they might otherwise stay home. “The sad truth is, when you weigh the cost of child care and the cost of my wife driving back and forth to work it comes out to an extra $2 to $3 an hour,” Ben Hammond, 31, said of his wife’s decision to return to the workforce after their second son was born. “But we can’t really live without that.“

I’d like to know why. I will not personally judge a situation where I don’t know all the details, but I wonder if this family really needs everything they choose to pay for. What are some of the voluntary things that could be foregone? Even Air Conditioning in every room, and two cars aren’t always essential. Smaller houses, fewer commodities (extended cable, etc) can make a difference. Prioritized spending can put to the lie many things on the list that we say we cannot live without.

OK, well you get the point. USDA and CNN Money report that child care costs have risen 40%. But it seems, I would suggest,  there is more behind this data than mere inflation and victimized families caught up in an unjust economy. There are many personal lifestyle decisions that all of us Americans engage in. The list of things we cannot live without grows ever longer. And it is worth asking, “Is it really true that I cannot live without all these things?”

I am not immune from such questions. In recent years, due to the terrible economy, the Lord has called me to be more generous to the poor. This means that I too have had to ask what creature comforts and latest gadgets I can do without. The fact is, we Americans want a very comfortable and very pricey life. Fifty years ago most Americans easily lived without most of the things we deem essential today. I admit most of us are expected to have cell phones and some Internet connectivity. I do not suggest that we can simply get in a time machine and live exactly like we did in 1960. But, in the end, there are choices we can make to simplify and lower our expectation that life should always be a peach.

A final philosophical question. Why does our culture always seem to talk about and emphasize the cost of raising children, and not discuss the benefits? Children are a wonderful gift from God, (or a least we used to think so). Today they are more often described as a burden, as a cost center. We did not used to think of children in this way. In the not so distant past (60-70 years ago and prior) large families were desirable, children were valued, pregnancy and birth were called the “blessed event.” Scripture says, May your wife be like a fruitful vine within your house, Your children like olive plants around your table (Ps 128:3). Today, the birthrate has plummeted and children are more often seen as something to contracept, (God forbid) abort, and generally to be tolerated in only small numbers.

Some will say, “But Father, it costs so much today.” That is debatable, but I still think that the real reason is that what we value most has changed; our priorities and preferences have shifted. They have shifted away from life and family, to things and creature comforts. There are many complexities that may also factor in, but in the end, an awful lot comes down to what we really value and want.  It is not so much the economy that has changed, it is we who have changed.

As always, I write, not to have the last word, but to begin a discussion. Please add to this, indicate necessary distinctions, and feel free to differ or say “yes, but.”

This video shows just a few ways to cut costs, of course many other things could be added: hand-me-downs, smaller houses, fewer amenities, smarter shopping using coupons, less shopping, don’t need every upgrade, etc. So much of what we call essential is not absolutely so, or is at least not necessary all the time.

Vive la différence – Acknowledging, Accepting and Appreciating that Men and Women are Different

Continuing in the theme of marriage that we had earlier this week, there is a very humorous video at the bottom of this page, one I often use for couples I prepare for marriage.

It centers on the fact that a woman is very  different from a man. The physical differences are obvious but these physical differences arise from important differences in the soul. It is the soul that is the form of the body and the qualities of the male and female soul give rise to physical differences. I know that this is politically incorrect today, but it is true. It is a common modern error to be dismissive of the profound differences between the sexes. No one can deny the physical differences, but too often they are dismissed as surface only, of no real significance. But the truth is that our bodies are expressions of the faculties of our soul and male and female differences are far more than skin deep.

It remains true that these differences often give rise to tensions in the marriage and the overall relationships between men and women. That men and women perceive differently, think differently, and have different emotional experiences is just a fact and it is always healthy to recognize and accept reality. Too often in the modern age there has been a tendency to dismiss these deep differences as just archetypes of bygone “sexist” era. But what ends up happening is that an expectation is created that these differences will just go away when we decide to ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. But guess what , they don’t. And thus resentments and anger follow. Too many marriages end in power struggles because neither spouse can accept that it was not good for them to be alone and that God gave them a spouse who, by design, is very different so that they could be challenged and completed.

Original sin has intensified our pain at the experience of these given differences. The Catechism links the tension surrounding these difference to the Fall of Adam and Eve:

[The] union [of husband and wife] has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character. According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator’s own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust; and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work. Nevertheless, the order of creation persists, though seriously disturbed. To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them. Without his help man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them “in the beginning.” (CCC #s 1606-1608)

One important cure for the disorders of marriage is to return to an appreciation of the necessity of our differences. Though our differences can be be intensified by sin, it is a fact that God made us different for a reason. These differences help spouses to complete each other. A husband should say, “My wife has some things important to teach me. I am incomplete without her.” Likewise the wife should be able to say that her husband has important things to teach her and that he somehow completes her. In this way we move beyond power struggles and what is right and wrong in every case and learn to experience that some tension is good. No tension, no change. God intends many of these differences to change and complete spouses. God calls the very difference humans he has made “suitable” partners.

And humor never hurts. Here is a wonderful and funny comedy routine about the differences between a man’s brain and a woman’s brain. Humor is often the best of medicines to defuse some of the tensions that arise from our differences. Vive la difference!

(By the way, as with any humor, stereotypes are used a bit here. But things are usually funny because they ring true. It is also a fact that not every individual man or woman has every trait described here (for example, I don’t have a very big “nothing box”) but enjoy this video for the humorous descriptions of the general situation).

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An Unpopular Teaching On Marriage in the Light of Recent Debates and Interviews

Yesterday on the blog we discussed some of the media back and forth on some statements by candidate Michele Bachmann. On of the issues is of a wife being submitted to her husband. Mrs. Bachmann at first indicated support for this biblical principle but has since, in the face of questioning backed off from it more than a little. You can read more of that in yesterday’s post here: Michele Bachmann Interview A portion of the video interview on marriage is also at the bottom of this post.

In yesterday’s post I indicated I wanted to spend some time today setting for this biblical principle of the headship of the husband. It is a headship rooted in love and service, not in power, but it is a headship.

There are cultural and worldly notions that underlie the rejection by many Catholics and Christians of  the biblical teaching on the Headship of the husband. Indeed, such a concept is unpopular in our culture which usually gets pretty worked up over questions of authority in general. But that is because the worldly notion of authority usually equates authority only with power, dignity, rights and being somehow “better,” rather than equating authority with love, and service. Consider what Jesus says about authority:

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority and make their importance felt. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:41-45)

Jesus describes then sets aside the worldly notion of authority wherein those in authority wield their power by “lording it over” using fear, and the trappings of power. But in the Christian setting there is authority (there has to be) but it exists for service.

Consider a teacher in a classroom. She has authority. She has to in order to unify and keep order. But she has that authority in order to serve the children, not to berate them and revel in power over over them. The same is true for a police officer who has his authority not for his own sake, but for ours so he can protect us and preserve order.

Further, having authority in a Christian setting does not make one better, for authority is always exercised among equals. Our greatest dignity is to be a child of God, and none of us are more or less so because we hold any position of authority.

But, truth be told, worldly notions of authority affect Christians and many harbor resentments to authority because they think of it in worldly ways. Further, many who have authority (and most of us have some) can also fall prey to worldly notions of authority and abuse their leadership role.

The key to understanding the authority of a husband and father in the home is set aside worldly notions of authority and see the teaching in the light of the Christian understanding of authority as existing for love and service, to unite and preserve.

With that in mind let us turn to the “unpopular” and politically incorrect notion of wives being submissive to their husbands.The teaching is found in a number of places in the New Testament: Ephesians 5:22; Col 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1. In all places the wording is quite similar that wives are to be submissive, that is under the authority, of their husbands. In each case however, the teaching is balanced by an exhortation that the husband is to love and be considerate of his wife.

The most well known of the texts is from Ephesians 5, wherein the infamous line is: Wives should be subordinate to their Husbands as to the Lord. For the Husband is the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is the Head of the Church…so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything; (Eph 5:20-21, 23)  Apparently the Holy Spirit didn’t get the memo that we don’t think and talk like that today!

Alright, so maybe it grates on modern ears today but don’t just dismiss what God teaches here. One of the great dangers of this passage is that it is so startling to modern ears that many people tune out after the first line into their own thoughts and reactions and thus miss the rest of what God has to say. It will be noticed that there is text that follows, and before a man gloats at the first line, or a women reacts with anger or sadness, we do well to pay attention to the rest of the text, which spells out the duties of a husband. You see if you’re going to be the head of a household there are certain requirements that have to be met. God’s not playing around here or choosing sides. He has a comprehensive plan for husbands that is demanding and requires him to curb any notions that authority is about power and to remember that, for a Christian, authority is always given so that the one who has it may serve. And before we look at submission we might do well to look at the duties of the husband.

So what are the requirements for a husband?

1. Husbands, love your wives- Pay attention men, don’t just tolerate your wife, don’t just bring home money, don’t just love in some intellectual sort of way. LOVE your wife with all your heart. Beg God for the grace to love your wife tenderly, powerfully and unconditionally. Did you hear what God says? LOVE your wife! Now he goes on to tell you to love her in three ways: passionately, purifyingly and providingly.

2. Passionate love – The text says a man is to love his wife: even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her. The Greek word, παραδίδωμι (paradidomi), translated here as, “handed over,” always refers in the New Testament to Jesus’ crucifixion. Husbands, are you willing to give your life for your wife and children? Are you willing to die to yourself and give your life as a daily sacrifice for them? God instructs you to love your wife (and children) with the same kind of love he has for his Bride the Church. That kind of love is summed up in the cross. Love your wife passionately, be willing to suffer for her, be willing to make sacrifices for her and the children.

3. Purifying love - The text says of Christ, and the husband who is to imitate him, that Christ wills  to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Now a husband cannot sanctify his wife in the same way God can. But what a husband is called to do is to help his wife and children grow in their relationship to Jesus Christ. He is first to be under God’s authority himself, and thus make it easier for his wife and children to live out their baptismal commitments. He ought to a spiritual leader in his home, praying with his wife and children, reading scripture and seeing to it that his home is a place where God is loved and obeyed, first of all by him. His wife should not have to drag him to Church, he should willingly help her to grow in holiness, and pray with her every day. And he should become more holy as well and thus make it easier for his wife to live the Christian life. He should be the first teacher of his children, along with his wife in the ways of faith.

Too many American homes do not feature a man being the spiritual leader of his house. If any one is raising up the kids in the Lord it is usually the wife. But Scripture has in mind that the husband and father should be a spiritual leader to his wife and children. Scripture says, Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4). Fathers and husbands need to step up here and not leave all the burden to his wife.

4. Providing love – So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it - Husbands, take care of your wife in her needs. She needs more than food money and shelter, these days she can get a lot of that for herself. What she needs even more is your love, understanding, and appreciation. She needs for you to be a good listener and wants an attentive husband who is present to her. Like any human being she needs reassurance and affirmation. Tell her of your love and appreciation, don’t just presume she knows. Show care for your wife, attend to her needs just like you instinctively do for your own self. Encourage her with the kids. Confirm her authority over the kids and teach them to respect their mother. Show her providing love also by taking up your role and duties as a father who is involved with his kids. That’s what God is teaching here.

OK, so scripture DOES teach that a wife should be submitted to her husband. But what kind of husband does scripture have in mind? A husband who really loves his wife, who is a servant leader, who is makes sacrifices for his wife, who is prayerful and spiritual, submitted to God’s authority and who cares deeply for his wife and her needs. The same God who teaches submission (and he does) also teaches these things clearly for the husband. The teaching must be taken as a whole. But all that said, there IS a teaching on wives being submitted to their husbands (properly understood).

And there is just no way around it, no matter how much the modern age wants to insist there doesn’t need to be headship, there does. Every organization needs a head. Consider your own body first. With two heads you’re a freak, with no head you are dead. The members of your body need a head to unify the parts, otherwise there is disunity, death and decay. Every organization needs headship, a final decider, to whom all look when consensus on significant issues cannot otherwise be reached. The Protestants have tried to have a “church” without a head, without a Pope, and behold the division. Even this Country, which we like to call a democracy, is not actually a pure democracy. There are legislators, judges, law enforcers and many other people and mechanisms who exercise local, federal and final headship and authority.

Thus in a family, where consensus and compromise may often win the day, nevertheless needs a head, a final decider,  to whom all look and all submit, to resolve conflicts that cannot be resolved otherwise. Scripture assigns this task to the husband and father. Headship just has to be. But please remember to shed your worldly notions of headship when considering the teaching of Scripture and remember, headship, authority, is for love and service, it is for unity and preservation, not for power, prestige, trappings and superiority.

For more on this consider listening to my sermon Teaching on Marriage in mp3 format. But beware, It is 35 minutes! Consider downloading it if you can’t listen just now. You can download this and other sermons of mine by going here: http://frpope.com/audio/recordings.php and then right clicking on the title of any talk and selecting the “Save Target As” option. You can also get my sermons at iTunes. Just search on my name.

Here is the video clip where Michele Bachmann is attacked for saying a woman should be submitted and then backs down. Please note however, I am not sure a husband’s servant leadership means that he should force his wife to take a law course she does not want to take. Such an exercise of authority hardly seems necessary or proper.

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This video clip is from the movie Fireproof and depicts a heartfelt apology from a husband who realizes he has not loved his wife as he should. A beautiful movie available at Amazon if you have never seen it.

Two Questions: Do We Need to Use a Different Word for Marriage in the Church? and, Should Catholic Clergy Cease Signing Civil “Marriage” Licenses?

I have proposed before on this blog that we may be coming to a point where we should consider dropping our use of the word marriage. It  is a simple fact that word “marriage” as we have traditionally known it is being redefined in our times. To many in the secular world the word no longer means what it once did and when the Church uses the word marriage we clearly do not mean what the New York Legislature or an increasing number of states mean.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines Marriage in the following way:

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament (CCC # 1601)

The latest actions by New York, along with Washington DC, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Iowa have legally redefined the term marriage. Other states will likely join the list. The secular world’s definition of marriage no longer even remotely resembles what the Catechism describes.

To be fair, as we noted yesterday, this is not the first redefinition of marriage that has occurred in America. The redefinition has actually come in three stages:

1. In 1969 the first no-fault divorce law was signed in California. Within 15 years every state in this land had similar laws that made divorce easy. No longer did state laws uphold the principle which the Catechism describes as a partnership of the whole of life. Now marriage was redefined as a contract easily broken by the will of the spouses.
2. The dramatic rise in contraceptive use and the steep drop in birthrates, though not a legal redefinition, amount to a kind of cultural redefinition of marriage as described in the Catechism which sees the procreation and education of offspringas integral to its very nature. Now the American culture saw this aspect as optional  at the will of the spouses. Having sown in the wind (where we redefined not only marriage, but sex itself) we are now reaping the whirlwind of deep sexual confusion and a defining of marriage right out of existence.
3. This final blow of legally recognizing so called gay “marriage” completes the redefinition of marriage which the Catechism describes as being a covenant, …which a man and a woman establish between themselves. Now secular American culture is removing even this, calling same-sex relationships “marriage”.

Proposal: So the bottom line is that what the secular world means by the word “marriage” is not even close to what the Church means. The secular world excluded every aspect of what the Church means by marriage. Is it time for us to accept this and start using a different word? Perhaps it is and I would like to propose what I did back in March of 2010, that we return to an older term and hear what you think. I propose that we should exclusively refer to marriage in the Church as “Holy Matrimony.”

According to this proposal the word marriage would be set aside and replaced by Holy Matrimony. It should be noticed that the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this Sacrament formally as “The Sacrament of Matrimony.”

The word matrimony also emphasizes two aspects of marriage: procreation and heterosexual complimentarity. The word comes from Latin and old French roots. Matri = “mother” and mony, a suffix indicating “action, state, or condition.” Hence Holy Matrimony refers to that that holy Sacrament wherein a woman enters the state that inaugurates an openness to motherhood. Hence the Biblical and Ecclesial definition of Holy Matrimonyas heterosexual and procreative is reaffirmed by the term itself. Calling it HOLY Matrimony distinguishes it from SECULAR marriage.

Problems to resolve – To return to this phrase “Holy Matrimony” is to return to an older tradition and may sound archaic to some  (but at least it isn’t as awkward sounding as “wedlock”).  But clearly a new usage will be difficult to undertake. It is one thing to start officially referring to it as Holy Matrimony. But it is harder when, for example, a newly engaged couple approaches the priest and says, “We want to be married next summer.” It seems unlikely we could train couples to say, “We want to enter Holy Matrimony next summer.” or even just to say, “We want to have a wedding next summer.” Such dramatic changes seem unlikely to come easily.  Perhaps you, who read this blog can offer some resolutions to this problem.

Perhaps, even if  we cannot wholly drop the terms “marry” and “married” a more modest form of the proposal is that we at least officially discontinue the use of the word marriage and refer to it as the “Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.”

What do you think? Do we need to start using a new word for marriage? Has the word been so stripped of meaning that we have to use different terminology to convey what we really mean?

When I proposed this over a year and a half ago, many of you we rather unconvinced and some were even perturbed that we were handing on over our vocabulary to the libertines. That may be, but we already know that gay will never mean what it used to, and maybe marriage will never again mean what it did.

A secondary but related proposal is that we begin to consider getting out of the business of having our clergy act as civil magistrates in weddings. Right now we clergy in most of America sign the civil license and act, as such, as partners with the State. But with increasing States interpreting marriage so differently, can we really say we are partners? Should we even give the impression of credibility to the State’s increasingly meaningless piece of paper?  It may remain the case that the Catholic faithful, for legal and tax reasons may need to get a civil license, but why should clergy have anything to do with it?

We would surely need a strong catechesis directed to our faithful that reiterates that civil “marriage” (what ever that means anymore) is not Holy Matrimony and that they should, in no way consider themselves as wed, due to a (meaningless) piece of paper from a secular state that reflects only confusion and darkness rather than clarity and Christian light.

Here too, what do you think? Should the Catholic Bishops disassociate Catholic clergy from civil “marriage” licenses?