I went to Mass at an out-of-town Church last Sunday and experienced some of what Mark Shea is talking about here. Shea links to Dale Price, and to a piece that Shea wrote earlier. Both are worth reading.
It was amazing to witness at Mass all the hemming and hawing about Eph 5, combined with self-congratulatory acceptance of the "hard saying" part of Jn 6. And all with no consciousness for the complete irony of the situation.
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Ephesians 5 is an (and possibly, the) essential foundation for the pratical application of the whole of the Gospel to marriage, family life (the Domestic Church as Pope John Paul II referred to it) and for the integration of the whole family into the larger Church and society. The bishops, clergy and theologically innovative chanceries are profoundly in error in ignoring, even perverting, this teaching of Paul. Their doing so undermines effective communication of the Gospel and Church doctrine. The maintenance of, as Mr. Shea aptly calls it, balkanization, actually hobbles effective instruction to males on how to love their wives because present practices of handling this teaching in most parishes fallaciously reduces the matter of submission to one of crude power politics. Once this is maneuver accomplished, confusion reigns, men and women suspect and mistreat each other through ignorance, and the resulting ill consequences can be further blamed on patriarchy. Now the social engineers can begin a new and evermore invigorated cycle of combatting perceived sexism in the Church. These are typical of the tactics employed by the Left in other spheres, such as politics and economics. As with the Blessed Virgin initiating the whole of the Incarnational mystery and triumph by her fiat, Christian women have the opportunity to initiate a shock wave throughout salvation history should they come to apprehend the beauty, peace and--yes--power that results from faithfully embracing Paul's teaching in Ephesians 5. The changes they would see in their husbands and the world would be nothing less than astonishing. People fear that much good stuff.
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