Tom McDonald once heard a female lector confess: Whenever the Scripture passage stating that “wives should be submissive to their husbands” comes up at Mass, she gets a substitute because she has such a problem with the text.

She was referring, of course, to a line from the fifth chapter of Ephesians, which will once again come up in the Lectionary on Aug. 24.

“People read that reading and the instant interpretation is that this means men are in charge of women,” says McDonald, who serves with his wife, Caroline, as co-director of the Office of Family Life for the Archdiocese of Mobile, Ala. “That is such a limited, narrow understanding.”

McDonald and his wife, whose “Family Matters” column appears to the left, chose the reading for their own wedding 11 years ago precisely because it is so often misunderstood and they wanted to express its true and deeper meaning.

When the reading comes up in the lectionary cycle this weekend, it is bound to meet with the usual misapprehension. Some priests will fear offending women if they elaborate on it and instead will preach on one of the other readings of the day. Others will choose to focus on the opening sentence, “Defer to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

In some parishes, the verses may not even be read. Oregon Catholic Press's Today's Missal offers as an option a shortened reading that eliminates the sentences about wives being submissive and the husband being the head of the wife.

Father Paul Check, associate pastor of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Stamford, Conn., agrees that modern ears, particularly American ones, find it hard to hear St. Paul's words. He believes this is because the idea expressed seems to run counter to the egalitarian spirit and instinct of the age.

But rather than avoid the controversial passage, he decided to explore it in a paper for his licentiate in moral theology. Now, in his work with engaged and married couples, he often challenges Catholics to consider the text's true meaning rather than dismiss it out of hand.

“This is one of those areas, not unlike the [Church's] teaching on contraception, where the opportunities to do a lot of good are very much there, as long as we're not afraid to believe that the divine wisdom contained in the teaching is accessible to us.”

Authority and Dignity

In his paper, which is available on the Internet at www.familylifecenter.net, Father Check shows how Church teaching on the hierarchy of roles in marriage has been fairly consistent for more than four centuries. What may appear to be differences among various documents, he writes, are really changes in emphasis reflecting the challenges of each age.

For example, Father Check found that, more recently, Pope John Paul II's emphasis on the dignity of women and the mutual submission of the spouses in Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women) has not come at the expense of traditional teaching on the husband's authority. The Pope says in fact that the husband's authority is closely united to the protection of woman's dignity.

In Catholic teaching, the man is still considered the head of his family and serves his wife and children with authority that is ordered toward the common good, says Father Check.

The husband and father is charged with protecting the unity and safety — moral as well as spiritual — of his family. “There's no question but that both in nature and in grace,” he adds, “the role of leading the family has been given to the man for the good, smooth running of the family.”

Although modern women often bristle at the idea of submitting to their husbands as stated in Ephesians, Father Check says that, in the passage, St. Paul actually is trying to correct selfish notions on the part of men about how they should treat their wives — which, he says, “is exactly the opposite of what pops into mind first when someone listens to this Scripture passage.”

He considers the text to be a “handbook on marriage” from the Church and adds that, in the not-so-distant past, it would have been the epistle at every Catholic nuptial Mass.

Father Check acknowledges that, without proper explanation, St. Paul's words can be used by men as a weapon against their wives. But he said careful reading shows that almost all of the passage is directed to the man, who is instructed to love his wife as Christ loved the Church.

“St. John Chrysostom points out that the man has harder work,” he says. “It is more difficult to love than obey. Men should really tremble that they should have been given that role … for the enormous responsibility and obligation that has been entrusted into their hands.”

Katrina Zeno of Women of the Third Millennium, a group begun in response to a challenge to spread Pope John Paul II's message on women, agrees, adding that she thinks the most important line in the passage is, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.”

“It's the man laying down his life for his bride and the woman responding,” she says. “The woman is the one who is loved. Now, if you're loved, your response is that you want to give yourself back in return.”

Zeno said she thinks the submission of wife to husband must be understood in the context of the relationships in the Trinity, in which God is a union and communion of self-giving love. “The Father and the Son and the Spirit are one and yet are also distinct,” she says. “And within that oneness there's a distinction of relationships. The son is submissive to the Father.”

Mutual Submission

Of course, applying such ideals in the typical household with its multitude of bills, household chores, colicky babies, toddlers in their terrible twos and teens clamoring to borrow the family car can be a challenge.

The McDonalds, who are the parents of three children, say that, although they both regard Tom as the head of their home, they submit to one another in certain areas.

For example, Caroline generally yields to Tom's decisions about finances — but, when the couple bought a new home, Tom bowed to Caroline's desire for an older house downtown. Even though he would have preferred a new house on the outskirts of town, he knew she would be spending more time in the house caring for the children.

Early in their marriage, however, when Caroline was teaching full time to put Tom through graduate school, they differed over when he would take the compre hensive exams for his doctoral degree.

“We had planned for him to take it at a certain time, but he felt like he needed to push it back another year,” Caroline recalls. “It was devastating to me because it meant I had to work another year. What I realized was that this was a long-term vision for the family and I needed to offer it up. That's where I had to yield and submit.”

Nonetheless, Tom says that, for him, the passage in Ephesians is less about taking the lead on such decisions and more about emptying himself of his own desires in order to focus on what is best for his wife and children.

Likewise, Douglas Dewey of Westchester, N.Y., says his wife, Leni, and their seven children also see him as the head of the family — but that he views his role as one of a servant leader. “It's leadership with love,” he says, “And love in a family context means sacrifice: sacrificing my time, sacrificing my thoughts and my pleasures and subordinating them to the greater good. That is the essence of a man's leadership at home.”

Judy Roberts writes from Millbury, Ohio.