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Scriptures that Lead to Domestic Violence
Two Irish bishops made a controversial proposal to drop seven New Testament texts from the lectionary because they may lead to domestic violence. But leaders of other religious traditions oppose the trend as an attempt to strip the words of God of their divine origin.
By Kieron Wood
The Vatican’s recent Declaration, Dominus Iesus, criticized Catholics who fail to accept the sacred nature of the “whole and entire” Bible. The declaration—issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the approval of the Pope—said that some people believed that the “inspired nature of the books of Sacred Scripture” had been superseded.
The congregation reminded bishops, theologians, and lay Catholics that the Church “accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.” Coincidentally, the declaration came just a week after the Catholic Bishops of Ireland decided to remove seven New Testament scriptural readings from the Mass because they were “liable to give contemporary society an undesirably negative impression regarding women.”
Scripture leads to domestic violence?
The bishops’ proposals came in a letter on domestic violence published by Bishop Larry Ryan of Kildare and Leighlin, on behalf of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, and Bishop Willie Walsh, of Killaloe, for the Bishops’ Pastoral Commission. In a joint foreword, the two bishops said: “The Church, like other sectors, has had its learning curve, and there is still a long way to go.” They added that “Within marriage the mutual submission of spouses was often overlooked.”
Among the bishops’ proposals to combat domestic violence, they called for the omission from the Mass readings of seven texts from the letters of St. Paul and St. Peter. The bishops said that, if the extracts were quoted in any context, there should be a “suitable comment” on them in light of contemporary Catholic Church teaching.
It is not the first time that Ireland’s Catholic bishops have criticized the New Testament. In 1995, the bishops’ conference approved proposals from the Women in the Church working group of the bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission following the “Kilkenny incest case,” in which a father was jailed for physically and sexually abusing his daughter over a 10-year period. The group recommended “confrontation” of Biblical texts which, “when taken out of context, may be used by abusers to justify their behavior and by victims to explain their submissive response.”
But the battle over sex and Scripture is not confined to Ireland. Efforts have been made in many English-speaking countries to neuter the language of Scripture and to remove passages which some would regard as sexist or offensive. For several years, the leaders of the US Catholic Church have pushed for the adoption of language which would explicitly include women at every mention of “man,” “mankind,” “sons of God,” or similar phrases. America’s seven cardinals went so far as to fly to Rome to urge the Vatican to approve the revised Lectionary of the Mass which included the changes.
But such moves have not always gone smoothly. The International Bible Society, for example, proposed changes to the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible, mainly used by Evangelical churches, to make it more “gender-inclusive.” The society, which owns the copyright to the hugely successful NIV, had planned to publish a version next year changing the word “men” to “human beings” or “people.” But Southern Baptists accused the society of “capitulation to radical feminism and political correctness,” and the proposals were eventually dropped.
An “inclusive” English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was also delayed for months while the Vatican corrected the doctrinal problems raised by the new version. The attack on Scripture is not confined to English-speaking countries. In Germany in August, two lawyers asked Family Minister Christine Bergmann to classify the Bible officially as a dangerous book for children because of its “perverse” content.
Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel said the Bible preached “genocide, racism, enmity toward Jews, gruesome executions for adulterers and homosexuals, the murder of one’s own children, and many other perversities.” They said the Bible should remain on the danger list until the “human rights-violating passages” were removed.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Munich said the demand was absurd; every history book and newspaper would be banned if the same demands were applied. The Irish bishops’ censorship of the Scriptures may be fashionable, but it puts them out of step with many other Christians.
The founder of the Christian Renewal Center in County Down, Northern Ireland, set up 26 years ago to provide an ecumenical forum for Catholics and Protestants, disagreed with the bishops’ proposals. Church of Ireland (Episcopalian) minister the Rev. Cecil Kerr said, “Thousands of people have stayed at the center over the years, some of them from a background of domestic abuse. We have had many battered wives—and husbands—here. But the reasons for domestic violence tend to be problems like excessive use of alcohol, rather than the teachings of St. Paul.”
Kerr said the bishops’ actions seemed to be based on political correctness:
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Personally, I think you can’t really omit these texts. There is obviously a lot of controversy about them, but this is the way the Scriptures were written. The passages are there, and we have to handle that. It is important for us not to let go of Scripture, and I would not compromise on that.
Archimandrite Brian O’Ceileachair, who ministers to Dublin’s Eastern-rite Catholic community, said:
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There has been no suggestion among the Byzantine Catholic community that these texts should be dropped. The Bible is the Bible, and it says what it says. It’s entirely possible that people might be uncomfortable with some passages, but it is often those very passages of which we are in the greatest need, as they challenge our own personal weaknesses.
But the impugned New Testament texts seem positively egalitarian when compared with the teachings of some non-Christian religions. Islam, for instance, differentiates between the roles of men and women in Scripture, worship, and daily life. The relationship between Muslim men and women is prescribed by the holy book of Islam, the Qu’ran.
Imam Yahya Hussein from the Dublin Islamic Center said,
- We preach the whole of the Qu’ran. We don’t believe it is anti-woman because it comes from the creator of men and women. The Qu’ran is not a human thing, it is divine—sacred and infallible—so there is no reason for any believer to doubt the words of God. If it were the work of a human being, it could become outdated or irrelevant after the passage of time.
Hussein explains, “It is better to have more than one wife than to have a mistress or illegitimate children. And in time of war or disaster, when there are more women than men in society, polygamy provides a solution to the excess number of women.”
The authority of men over women is also spelled out in the Qu’ran:
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Men are made responsible for women, and God has endowed them with certain qualities, and made them the bread earners. Righteous women will cheerfully accept this arrangement, since it is God’s commandment, and honor their husbands during their absence. If you experience rebellion from women, you shall first talk to them, then desert them in bed, then you may beat them. (Nisaa 4:34)
In Orthodox Judaism, men pray daily, “Blessed be the Lord who did not make me a heathen . . . blessed be he who did not make me a woman . . . blessed be he who did not make me an uneducated person.”
The issue of this prayer even entered the US presidential campaign, with some feminist groups in October questioning Orthodox Jew and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman’s commitment to women’s issues since he prays the prayer daily, despite his avowed support of abortion, even partial-birth abortion.
The prayer may not be politically correct, but it reflects the Orthodox Jewish perception of the different roles played by men and women. The basis of Jewish Scripture is the first five books of the Old Testament, which Jews call the Torah. The Old Testament and supplementary sacred writings of the Jews emphasize the authority of husbands over their wives and the distinction between men and women.
In the book of Genesis (3:16), God tells Eve: “In pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” The distinction between male and female is further underlined in the book of Leviticus (12:2-5): “If a woman conceives, and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days. . . . But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks.” Ireland’s 500 Jewish families, who attend the community’s one Progressive and three Orthodox synagogues, hear such readings from the Old Testament at every Sabbath service—but not together.
The president of Terenure synagogue in Dublin, Michael Gilbert, explained, “Women and men are separated in Orthodox synagogues. And women cannot lead a service—that is the role of the rabbi, minister, or cantor.” An Irish Orthodox rabbi, who asked not to be named, defended the integrity of the Old Testament and its teachings on the roles of men and women. “For the Orthodox Jew, the Torah is cast in stone,” he said. “These things don’t change. The relationship of husband and wife is set out in Scripture. Legally, in the home, the husband is the owner of all the possessions. If there is a dispute in the home, the final say goes to the husband. But Judaism is against any kind of domestic violence. It would be abhorrent to Jews for a husband to beat his wife.”
The rabbi explained that the purpose of the mechitza—the separating divide between men and women in the synagogue—was to keep men’s thoughts on prayer. Similarly, the Orthodox practice for women covering their hair is a result of the Jewish view that a woman’s hair is sensual. “The touching of a woman by a man is also a Torah prohibition,” said the rabbi. “Some Orthodox Jews will never shake hands with a woman.”
The rabbi insists that Jewish women enjoy a superior role to men. “In Judaism, a woman is regarded as being at a much higher level than a man. The man is the breadwinner, but it is the woman who has the task of staying at home and raising the children and giving them Jewish values. That is why she is known as the akeret habayit, the foundation of the home.
“Most women feel enriched by these teachings. If you talk to Orthodox women who keep to the traditions of their faith, you will find that they are extremely happy and fulfilled.”
So even as some Irish Roman Catholic bishops capitulate to feminist activists with statements such as, “In the past, Scripture has often been used to justify male domination and female subjugation,” and “The Church, like other sectors, has had its learning curve and there is still a long way to go,” Eastern-rite Catholics, Muslims, and Jews reject any attempt to tinker with divinely revealed truths for the sake of political correctness.
Kieron Wood is a barrister and assistant editor of The Sunday Business Post newspaper in Dublin.
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