God Gave Marital Headship to Men, part 5 of 5

Pope John Paul II put different roles in marriage as part of manifestation of Old Testament prophecy. This puts forward ideas of harmonious marriage with male as head being a healthy reversal of the issues in the Garden of Eden, with Adam blaming Eve for his eating the apple (the opposite of taking responsibility like a leader), and Pope John Paul II put forward the husband as “suffering Servant” and the wife as “Zion,” helpfully illustrating that the headship of husbands in marriage is a job and not a selfishly kingly tyrannical office. Pope John Paul II wrote:

"Likewise, the same concrete conditions of redemption are at play in the way in which prophetic statements, such as those of Isaiah, associate masculine and feminine roles in proclaiming and prefiguring the work of salvation which God is about to undertake. This salvation orients the reader both toward the male figure of the suffering Servant as well as to the female figure of Zion." (Pope John Paul II, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, 9.)

In paragraph 10 of his Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, Pope John Paul II continued the ubiquitous reference of earthly marriage as an eschatolgoical sign, writing:

"...Mary, the chosen daughter of Zion, in her femininity, sums up and transfigures the condition of Israel/Bride waiting for the day of her salvation. On the other hand, the masculinity of the Son shows how Jesus assumes in his person all that the Old Testament symbolism had applied to the love of God for his people, described as the love of a bridegroom for his bride." (Pope John Paul II, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, 10.)

Again, if Christ the King is the bridegroom, then the bridegroom has headship. In the writing of Cardinal Marc Ouellet, one can find one of the many examples of Catholic writers writing of marriage as an eschatological sign, and again if Christ, King of the Universe, is bridegroom, then any analogous party has headship. The Cardinal wrote:

“It raises human love to the dignity of a sacramental sign, that is, a visible reality that bears in itself the invisible reality of divine Love, committed in a covenant relationship with the humanity in Jesus Christ.” (Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Marriage and the Family within the Sacramentality of the Church: Challenges and Perspectives, https://www.communio-icr.com/files/ouellet41-2.pdf, p. 232.)

Extrapolating this doctrine of marriage-as-an-eschatological-sign onto earthly marriages, one finds that Christ’s headship of the Church translates to male marital headship. Saint Augustine stated that husbands are to have headship in marriage:

"For they are joined one to another side by side, who walk together, and look together whither they walk. Then follows the connection of fellowship in children, which is the one alone worthy fruit, not of the union of male and female, but of the sexual intercourse. For it were possible that there should exist in either sex, even without such intercourse, a certain friendly and true union of the one ruling, and the other obeying." (Saint Augustine, Of the Good of Marriage, Translated by C.L. Cornish, From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3, Edited by Philip Schaff, (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm.)

Secular questioning and misunderstanding of male marital headship is a microcosm of the secular sense of freedom saying that God infringes on one’s freedom and that one should want to be free from God’s rules.

God’s love and commandments are a blessing, just as a husband’s sacrificial Christlike leadership and authority (through God’s grace and the husband subjecting himself to God and to Gospel teachings) is meant to be a blessing upon wives. Male marital headship (with an assumption of benevolence and subjection to God on the part of husbands) is taught and promoted in Scripture and Catholic teaching.