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letters from our readers
In marriage
subjection is mutual
Editor: My expression “Husbands Obey Your Wives” rubbed George Gil the wrong way (October 2000). My response is that Pope John Paul II teaches that submission is not one-sided but mutual. Popes are not wont to contradict each other, but tend to fill in what is still lacking. How to resolve the issue?
Pope Leo XIII, in “Christian Marriage,” February 10, 1880, wrote how polygamy abused the rights and dignity of wives: “Hence, too, sprang up the greatest confusion as to the mutual rights and duties of husbands and wives, inasmuch as a man assumed right of dominion over his wife, ordering her to go about her business, often without any just cause; while he was himself at liberty. . . . Nothing could be more piteous than the wife, sunk so low. . . . Without any feeling of shame marriageable girls were bought and sold, just like so much merchandise; and power was sometimes given to the father and to the husband to inflict capital punishment on the wife.”
Siding with the ladies, Leo XIII tells husbands to shape up: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered himself up for it, that he might sanctify it.” He skipped Paul’s admonition to the ladies: “Wives, obey your husbands.”
Pope Pius XI in “Casti Connubii,” December 31, 1930, wrote: “This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her to obey her husband’s every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment. But it forbids the exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family. . . . For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love. . . . In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family.”
Pope John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Letter “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” August 15, 1988, that conjugal submission is mutual. His words:
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“The author of the Letter to the Ephesians . . . knows that this way of speaking . . . is to be understood and carried out in a new way: as a ‘mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ’ (cf. Eph. 5:21). This is especially true because the husband is called the ‘head’ of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church; he is so in order to give ‘himself up for her’ (Eph. 5:25), and giving himself up for her means giving up even his own life. However, whereas in the relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on the part of the Church, in the relationship between husband and wife the “subjection” is not one-sided but mutual.” (See more in my “library” of published works by clicking on zimmerman.catholic.ac.)
Fr. Anthony Zimmerman
Nagoya, Japan
Keep the faith
Editor: I am writing to express my disappointment in your decision to publish the article on the Novus Ordo Mass written by Dr. James Lothian in the October 2000 issue of HPR. The author obviously has an opinion and then uses pseudoscientific analysis to support it. The cause-effect logic employed by the author was lame and pathetic. To correlate the significant drop in Mass attendance to the introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass is ridiculous. There have been many factors and forces at work over the last 30 years that have led to this decline (e.g., rejection of Humanae Vitae, religious relativism). I expect superficial articles like this in the secular media, not in your magazine. What an insult to your readership.
Look, I love the liturgy (I’m a charter member of Adoremus, the Society for the Renewal of the sacred Liturgy). In fact, my faith as a Catholic has grown over the last 5 years as I have stood up to defend the liturgy and the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church against forces within my own parish, like progressive liturgists and clergy. I know the battle is tough and the stakes are high. But, an article that nostalgically pines for “the old Mass to be made much more widely available” is not just wrong, it is counter productive.
We’re not going to fix this by crying for “the good old days.” The return of the Latin Mass will not cause throngs to descend on their local parish next Sunday. We have to be prayerful and forthright. We have to work hard to build the domestic church in our families and spread the gospel to our neighbors. We have to provide sound, authentic Catholic catechesis to the next generation of Catholics. We have to groom the future leaders of the Catholic Church, clergy and laity, to know what the Second Vatican Council taught and to implement it in the way that the Fathers of the Council envisioned. It’s called “keeping the faith” and “fighting the good fight.” Come on HPR, I’ve seen it in the past. You can do much better than this.
Eugene Kania
Wheaton, Ill.
Watering down Catholicism
Editor: The decline in Mass attendance by Catholics since Vatican II was convincingly documented by Dr. James R. Lothian in his article “Novus ordo Missae: The record after thirty years.” However, the Church’s failure to teach Catholic doctrine and discipline, and not the liturgy, may be the cause. When Catholics were taught the existence of personal sin and hell, and that deliberately missing Mass was a mortal sin, fear of hell prompted many Catholics to regularly attend Mass. Now that everyone is going to heaven, in the updated Catholic milieu, many Catholics simply don’t bother with attending Mass without compunction.
Is it surprising then that Catholics and Protestants now attend religious services at approximately the same 45 percent rate? The American bishops did their best to make Catholicism compatible with Protestantism since Vatican II by watering down Catholic teachings . . . and they have apparently succeeded.
Robert J. Kendra
Putnam, Conn.
More than Patriarch
Editor: Bro. John M. Samaha, S.M., has written a fine article (November 2000) on the Eastern Catholic Churches and the ecumenical necessity to safeguard and respect the spiritual and cultural heritage of the ancient Eastern patriarchal churches. However, his and other recent theologians’ sharp distinction between the role of the Pope as Supreme Pontiff with a universal jurisdiction over the entire episcopate of the Church (East and West) and his role as “Patriarch of the Western Church” is questionable.
In perhaps the best historical and doctrinal study of the thesis of the Pope as a Patriarch in the Church, “Il Papa Patriarca d’Occidente?: Studio storico dottrinale” (Collectio Antoniana, 1990), Fr. Adriano Garuti notes that the title of “Patriarch” was of Eastern origin (influenced by the perspective of Byzantine Emperors), largely honorific, and in the first millennium never presumed any juridical or canonical exercise of a patriarchal jurisdiction over the entire Western Church. In fact, when the Pope intervened outside his own bishopric in other Western dioceses, he did so, not as a Patriarch but as the Pastor and Primate of the Universal Church. The Latin Church was never a patriarchate. To this day, the Canon Law of the Latin Church does not acknowledge the exercise of a patriarchal jurisdiction by the Pope over the Church in the West.
The ecclesiastical institution and organization of patriarchates was peculiar to the Eastern tradition and though certainly acknowledged by the Roman See in the first millennium as a modality of collegiality, the Roman Pontiffs would never accept the reduction of their Universal Primacy to a mere “patriarchate” as did later medieval Byzantine dissidents who were to regard the Pope as the “first of equals” in a Pentarchy governing the Church.
James Likoudis
Montour Falls, N.Y.
Read the Gospels
Editor:What we are lacking in the Church in our country today is practical theology. We have many theorists, but these ideas as good as they may be, do not help the people in the pews. They are hardworking family people, with problems at home and problems at work, and they need help and hope. In too many parishes all they hear from the pulpit is amateur psychology and amateur sociology and precious little else.
What they need is Christ. He is our faith. How can they know him better, so they can love him more and more and follow him more faithfully? One good way is Gospel reading. Cardinal Newman said, “It is impossible to read the Gospel without coming closer to Christ.” In Gospel reading, prayerfully and slowly, we encounter Christ. He is speaking to us, we must listen. No other words are like his.
Some people now are reading a few paragraphs of the Gospel each evening for night prayers. An excellent idea. We are Christ-followers. The better we know Christ the better we follow him.
Fr. Rawley Myers
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Our Lady and the Eastern Christian Churches
Editor: Reading Brother John Samaha’s article “Understanding the Eastern Christian Churches” (November 2000) brought back memories of my licentiate studies of Eastern Christianity and my thesis on contemporary Russian ecclesiology.
Although there are a few statements that I would like him to clarify, I am pleased by his presentation and glad that he brought up this pertinent subject. The correction of this defect in Christianity may very well be an important means that Providence will use for the re-evangelization of our Western world.
What surprised me was that the article did not mention collegiality, so vital in Eastern ecclesiology — and a recent theological advancement promulgated by Vatican II.
A practical advancement of this has come from a very unusual source: Fatima. Given the contemporary theological non-interest if not disdain, for the mystical, no theological attention has been given to the relationship of Fatima to Orthodox reunion, even though the living seer, Sister Lucia, insists on this aspect of the Fatima message.
What is the connection of Fatima with such a reunion? In 1917 Our Lady told the children that she would return to ask for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. She did that in 1929, stating that that was the time for the Pope to make that consecration in union with all the bishops of the world, promising Russia’s conversion. Lucia notified her ecclesiastical superiors and was advised to write to Pope Pius XII herself. He responded by making two acts of consecration, but Lucia pointed out their insufficiency since it was solely a pontifical act, not in union with all the bishops of the world as Our Lady specified.
The importance of that deficiency seems to have escaped the attention of the authorities at the time. Then, when Cardinal Wyszynski of Poland, on the occasion of the beatification of Maximilian Kolbe in 1971, requested Pope Paul VI to consecrate the world to Mary in union with all the bishops of the world, it was discovered that this was meant to be a collegial act of consecration. Shortly thereafter a worldwide signature campaign for such a collegial consecration was inaugurated, collecting an estimated six million signatures, including that of Sister Lucia.
Just as the signature campaign transferred this effort from the private domain, between Sister Lucia and church authorities, to the public domain of all the faithful, so identifying the collegial nature of the request transferred the act from a devotional level to the theological.
It must be understood that collegiality is central to the ecclesiology of the Russian Orthodox. If there is one thing they fear, it is a papal dictatorship! As Brother stated: “Governance is the uppermost concern.” And as he also points out, “In some respects, the Patriarchate of Moscow is the most important of the Orthodox sees.”
So, at Fatima, we see Mary indicating the way for unity with our Orthodox brethren. The Collegial Act of Consecration which she requested is the key to resolving the problem of unity on the practical level. Thus what the Orthodox value most, collegiality, will be preserved with its perfection assured by the presence of the infallible successor of St. Peter, the Pope. What brilliant pedagogy on the part of our Lady, truly Mater et Magistra, at Fatima!
The Collegial Act was finally made in 1984, more than fifty years after the request was made — even though it was meant to prevent the terrible scourge of world-wide Communism, if not in politics, at least in philosophical influence. Religious freedom has been restored to the Russians, which Sister Lucia predicted to be the sign that the collegial act had been divinely accepted and which she has since authenticated. The recent publication of the third part of the Fatima Secret explains its contemporary prophetic prominence.
The time has come for a theological analysis of those facts. It has been suggested that an updating of spiritual theology is necessary to include the new orientation many private revelations have recently taken. These revelations may be private but they are not personal. At LaSalette our Lady specified “Tell my children.” So that message was not merely personal to the two teenage seers. The miracle of October 13 at Fatima in 1917 was experienced by an estimated seventy thousand people to authenticate the message. Again, that miracle transferred the occurrence from the personal to the public domain.
Presently, classical spiritual theology does not treat of this public aspect with social consequences: LaSalette predicted a famine and Fatima severe political and ecclesial hardships. As theology states, we are not obliged to believe what are termed “private revelations”; but, we are warned by St. Thomas Aquinas that it would be imprudent to ignore them.
Unless this is taken seriously, how can we harvest the beneficial fruits of such extraordinary graces? Otherwise we will continue to taste the bitter fruit of our imprudence.
Rev. Stanley Smolenski
Enfield, Conn.
Back to Homiletic & Pastoral Review Table of Contents March 2001