Ask Your Husband

A Wife’s Guide to True Femininity

Mrs. Timothy J. Gordon

Ask Your Husband: A Wife’s Guide to True Femininity © 2022 Stephanie C. Gordon

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

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Acknowledgements

Dedicated to my husband, Timothy Gordon, who inspired the creation of Ask Your Husband when he asked if he could be mine. Concerning the closeness of our marriage, Emily Brontë put it best, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Also, to the memory of John Moorhouse, who knew just what to say to a first-time author to give her confidence to write her first book, and whom to ask to convince her write it.

And, of course, to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary who gave the greatest answer ever to the greatest question ever asked.

Stephanie Gordon,

Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Valentine’s Day, 2021

Contents

Acknowledgements

1: The Basics: Do Whatever He Tells You (Even Writing Books)

2: Why This Book Isn’t a Performed Contradiction

3: An Obedient Wife Is Actually Man’s Best Friend

4: Unplugging from the Culture of Lies

5: Inerrant Catholic Teaching versus Working Wives

6: Wear What He Likes, Do What He Likes

7: The Obligatory Complimentary Chapter on Women

8: The Leader Who Won’t Lead

Epilogue

1:
The Basics: Do Whatever He Tells You (Even Writing Books)

The most profound wisdom spoken by any woman, in any time, was the Virgin Mary’s response at the Cana wedding feast: “Do whatever he tells you.”1 Our Lady, of course, spoke in deference to her Most Holy Son. Such deference constitutes the precise topic of this book, in the arena of the Christian household: the husband is the head of the wife in “all things not inconsistent with Christian piety.”2 This plainly means that the husband can order his wife in all ways, except to sin.

Mary, deferring to her Son, used these words to respond to a wedding attendant’s request. Note: she responded not with silence—which we might mistake for perfect deference—but by opening her mouth and thereby diverting all authority to her Son.

That, is, she said something rather than nothing.

I would expect that if a woman writes a book, she “speaks her mind” by it. Life after the advent of feminism frequently insinuates the false alignment of absolute silence with perfect deference. This proposition—usually true enough—proves false when uttered or received categorically. I caution my reader: the opposite of the opposition’s credo is not always true. That is, feminists falsely claim that more female voices are needed; yet calling such a proposition “false” does not require the anti-feminist never to speak. After all, the Virgin Mary navigates the middle course, whereupon a woman speaks and thereby defers to a man.

This book will aim to do just as Mary did. One might even say this book recommends that women defer to male headship by its very expression (instead of remaining silent).

An editor who is a friend of my husband requested that I write this book because my former Twitter handle, @AskYourHusband, proved to be a salty laywoman’s nod to Our Blessed Mother’s great wisdom offered at Cana. And I humbly accepted this call. (In reference to my Twitter account, I say “former” because I quickly found that Twitter was hardly the place for a lady. The year I spent on “Catholic Twitter” proved one too many.)

When a woman speaks, she ought to direct her listeners to the wisdom of her husband. After all, the husband is the priest of the home, the Domestic Church. He is in turn accountable only to Christ: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”3

On this note, I must contend honestly with the question: how does the writing of an anti-feminism book square with the same book’s narrative that women should never hijack leadership roles? Also, isn’t the authorship of a book by a married woman, by definition, an exercise of one form or another of feminism?

These questions will be thoroughly answered through my first few chapters. But the short answer is, “no.” The Patriarchy instituted by Scripture (or Catholic Tradition) and nature does not require complete silence from women. What it does require of women is knowing when to speak. After all, silence is not an integral part of womanly humility and obedience for no reason. Contrary to those who hold out female silence as inherently good, it is primarily good on account of the opportunities it furnishes wives for listening to their husbands. If one’s house is on fire, wouldn’t it be imprudent not to shout “fire!”?

Feminism has, from its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, set the Christian world ablaze. Accordingly, the need for traditional-minded women to speak out—to speak out on behalf of silence!—is long overdue.

We have permitted feminists—like the one below—to direct the conversation on the Patriarchy for far too long:

Ancient intellectual greats like Plato, Hippocrates, and Aristotle laid the foundations on which centuries of sexism were built. Although these Greek authors did not invent sexism, their writings contained ideas and arguments that were used to rationalize a particularly virulent form of misogyny. Once these ancient trend-setters devised arguments for female subjugation in the name of a divine good, it became self-confirming in the sense that women were taken to be naturally inferior to men, treated differently from birth, and trained to subjugate themselves, which itself further supported views about female imperfection and the disempowerment that entailed.4

So, here follows the proverbial poke in the feminist eye: a housewife writing a book to recommend to her readers the longstanding wisdom of the Patriarchy (i.e. Christianity). More specifically, I direct my female audience to the wisdom of their own husbands. If they are half-decent Christian men, then they have only Christ as Judge of their familial headship.

God bless the Patriarchy, the foundation of Western culture for 2,000 years.

In a society beset by the moral putrefaction of feminism, celebration of the Patriarchy is certain to summon a host of nasty responses (hence my departure from Twitter). I know whereof I speak: I am the vocally supportive wife of a public, conservative, Catholic alpha-male who built his career upon, among a few other items, the restoration of the Christian Patriarchy. The insults are bountiful, and I’ve read them all: “you’re brainwashed”; “you hate fellow women”; “don’t you know this is 2021?!”; and my personal favorite, “your husband probably makes you think this way!”.

The notion of the happy Christian marriage wherein the wife “knows her place”—and is honored for it—shocks the modern feminist’s imagination, even her “conscience.” After all, up is now down, and notions of justice are considered scandalous and even illicit. Unfortunately, my detractors condemn what they should praise and vice versa. They have no idea what it’s like for a real man to treat them in accord with their God-appointed femininity. Indeed, it is a prize to be treasured and protected and, for that matter, heeded (though this part is a little trickier; more on that later). Their “shock” at the simple description of Christian marriage tells the true narrative of what feminism has done to the popular view of men and women.

Christian Marriage Is Shocking

Let’s investigate briefly why a basic, Christian, marital relationship is so shocking to everyone in 2021: because…feminism…is…everywhere.

The husband who kowtows to his wife is much like the push-over father who allows his petulant child to walk all over him. This means that feminist-friendly households harbor hen-pecked, unhappy, bitter husbands and officious, unhappy, bitter wives. The unhappiness and bitterness of husband and wife prove to be reciprocally arranged: each party craves the sexually derived behaviors in his spouse which he commandeered. Wives want leaders and husbands want followers, which spells—when granted—the sexual joy of Christian complementarity. Since they lack it, nowadays, both husband and wife prove to be undersexed, unpleasant denizens of the failing feminist city.

There are only so many hours in a day. Under the new feminist arrangements, this old fact proves to be more of “novelty” for women than men. For obvious reasons of arithmetic, these freelance, half-time wives are spread far too thin, having to squeeze household duties into a short window after work and before bed. As we all know, doing two jobs poorly instead of one job well is a recipe for disaster. No wonder the modern wife has become an unpleasant, nagging, over-taxed, under-sexed roommate—a very poor surrogate for the cheerful heart of the happy home, which is precisely what she was designed to be.

Most feminists assume that submissive wives, who hold no tangible final authority, fail to enjoy a conspicuous place of honor as the single source of sacramental counsel to the head of the household. They’re scandalized and shocked by a wife who is not boss. According to nature and history, this is the sheerest nonsense. Although the Catholic wife doesn’t make the final decisions for the family, she does submit her wisdom for review by an often-heeding husband who does.

Certainly, even the most open-minded Catholic husband will fail occasionally to employ his wife’s advice or counsel when it is offered. But among parties of good will, a wise wife’s word will be heeded when needed. Further, it is fallacious to assume that a second opinion fails to shape what it does not replace. Most Christian men take great care to ask for their wives’ opinions on important family matters. Presumably, a prudent man asks his wife for counsel neither to heed categorically nor to reject unthinkingly what she proffers. A faithful wife trusts this, no matter how often she’s not indulged.

But the point remains that wives are not designed to be family bosses any more than they are suited to be society’s bosses. And this shocks the modern conscience more than anything.

Full disclosure: this was precisely the case when that same friend (viz. the late acquisitions editor)5 approached me through my husband, to request this book. Tim respectfully laid out the conditions under which it could be accomplished. Again, how might a married Catholic woman author a book in accord with the Church’s insistence on her domesticity—which carries the presumption that her homely duties are not compromised by outside endeavors, except in cases of extreme need? (This books’ later chapters will reveal that the Church clearly supports this belief.)

Chapter Two will also thoroughly respond to this charge of hypocrisy which could be leveled at its author. Let us again return to the paradigm instance. At Cana, the Virgin Mother spoke to empower her son, and she did so with His permission. The feminists, in all their anger and vileness, forget or disregard that in Our Lady’s deference, she became the perfect model for all women and for all times. Of all her many virtues, her deference proves the highest. Thus, not surprisingly the Church expects all women to honor her example: deference by communication. Imagine the terrible power of a God-fearing mother who directs her children to listen to their father. The next chapter will unpack this notion thoroughly.

The Church’s Marginalized Teaching on Wifely Duty

In 2020, citizens across the world were asked to comply with government mandates because of Covid-19; many people followed blindly. Now, in 2021, it is time for wives to comply with their husbands’ governance, not based on blindness but reason and truth, which will be spelled out throughout this book. I cannot overstate my next point: I never received this basic advice to comply with my husband from any of my female elders. Never. Ever. I didn’t receive it from the Catholic female “leaders” teaching RCIA when I entered the Church, during early adulthood. Nor did I get it from the priests’ homilies even though many households were utterly broken and needed most especially to hear it. Prior to becoming Catholic, I didn’t receive it from my secular relatives or friends. Neither before nor since being married have I received it from my Protestant friends. Why not?! Because few know about it, and few are courageous enough to live it.

The reason few know about this teaching, and embrace it, is that the Church and the world refuse to preach it boldly. In fact, the Church teaches it, but she seems embarrassed by her own teaching and refuses to promulgate it in anything more than a whisper. I’ll tend to that defect below, and more specifically in Chapter Five.

In other words, in order for you to read this, someone must have written it. I thought, why not me? It veritably seems that no one else will.

After all, the basis of this Christian teaching is the basis for this book. Consider the Catechism of Trent—the only definitive catechetical statement by the Church on the matter—on the duties of the wife:

On the other hand, the duties of a wife are thus summed up by the Prince of the Apostles: Let wives be subject to their husbands, that if any believe not the word, they may be won without the word by the conversation of the wives, considering your chaste conversation with fear. Let not their adorning be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel: but the hidden man of the heart in the incorruptibility of a quiet and meek spirit, which is rich in the sight of God. For after this manner heretofore the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. To train their children in the practice of virtue and to pay particular attention to their domestic concerns should also be especial objects of their attention. The wife should love to remain at home, unless compelled by necessity to go out; and she should never presume to leave home without her husband’s consent. Again, and in this the conjugal union chiefly consists, let wives never forget that next to God they are to love their husbands, to esteem them above all others, yielding to them in all things not inconsistent with Christian piety, a willing and ready obedience.6

The most controversial portion of the above segment says, more or less, this much: ladies, your husband is your boss, plain and simple. If you don’t care for the concept “boss,” take it up with God. The Roman Catechism uses much less flattering imagery. Ladies, reread the above passage, and ask yourselves: who is the boss, husband or wife, that is, who sounds like the head and who sounds like the subordinate? Facts, as they say, have no use for your feelings…or terminological preferences, for that matter.

Ask yourself: why should the husband not be treated with the highest deference? Is he not the head of the household, sacramentally appointed by God Himself? For God is not some out-of-touch, out-of-date watchmaker who assigns mandates according to the changing cultural fashions of the day. His Word is eternal. What higher authority would today’s liberated and open-minded women require on this subject? Cosmo Magazine? Sadly, many Christian women defer more readily to filthy, pagan tabloids than to basic Christian teaching.

On a simple, emotional level: is the husband not the one who is duty-bound to lay down his life for the protection and sacralization of his family? Like a medieval king, a husband is indebted with the protection of his subjects, and his credit is their honor. Heavy is the head who wears the crown, and the wearer of that marital crown is owed obedience. Being called “boss” is the cheapest honorarium we can pay him.

Across the board, the feminist movement chiefly centers upon women having the “right to choose.” Instead of the evil misdeeds that motto usually insinuates, the Church too says women have the right to choose…their husbands. According to historian James Hitchcock:

The first Christian wedding liturgies made their appearance during the fourth and fifth centuries, their relative lateness perhaps reflecting the belief that a true marriage was brought about not by the action of the priest but by the mutual vows of the couple.7

If you are a woman in the married vocation, you chose not only the man, but also the duties that came with him. In our day, it is even shocking to hear something as banal as that our major decisions and choices—like whom to marry—have real consequences.

Needless to say, the Church is not pro-choice in the standard feminist ways, such as the “choice” to murder one’s offspring or to use artificial birth control. But as part of the Church’s embarrassment of its (correct) perennial teaching about the sexes, it has camouflaged a subtler, third feminist “choice” issue. This particular one has embedded itself more furtively into the fabric of the popular culture: the “choice” by husband and wife to swap vocational duties.

The Church Is Not Pro-Choice About Vocational Duties

Many readers are, at this point, thinking: “but we prefer to run our households according to our feminist preferences—and even our husbands agree.” Neither wives nor husbands may tell God they know better than He how a marriage ought to be structured, which is a precursor for transgenderism. Above, we saw that the Church is “pro-choice” about the woman’s right to select her own husband; this was a historical novelty unique to Christianity. Yet the Church is not pro-choice as to the functional hierarchy of the Christian household, which means that your husband cannot give away the duties he holds in trust. Neither can the wife.

Simply put, they are not really allowed to “swap.”

Many women today say, “I will not serve,” which is the exact opposite of the most humble and obedient woman to ever live, Our Lady, who said, “Amen.” As a corollary, the twenty-first century husband’s motto—knowing as he does that his wife would probably resist his authority anyway—seems to be, “I will not require her to serve.” In this way, her noncompliance inaugurates his (and eventually, their children’s). The bitter result is a familial rebellion against God, initiated by the mom. By capitulating to his noncompliant wife, via agreeing to “swap” duties, the husband more or less guarantees that no one in his domestic church will serve God, since he is the household’s irreplaceable priest.

By refusing to submit naturally and supernaturally to their appointed familial roles, such “Christian” couples will never know the beauty and goodness of a life of serving each other and their family, the Church in miniature. Accordingly, they will never recognize their marriage as their vocation, their path to Heaven.

The Church is not pro-choice concerning a wife’s duties outside her home, her daily whereabouts, though there is some prudential latitude in this arena. As the Catechism of Trent clearly states above, a Christian wife must “never presume to leave home without her husband’s consent.” Yes, gals, this teaching is still true today. If the woman is under her husband’s headship and if she is to “love to remain at home,” why should her husband contradict this fundamental teaching by compelling her to “go out?” Further, the Church rarely tells us what we must love, aside from Christ and one another and virtue. Hence, she must be teaching something of great importance, and we ought to heed this instruction—that is, to love being at home (which further insinuates that we must make it a highly pleasant place to be!).

Even non-feminists grapple with this teaching. Many Christian women today assume it’s almost an abusive practice for the husband to be managerially aware of his wife’s goings on throughout the day.

But at some level, intimate couples—even if they don’t consider themselves hardcore anti-feminists—already function to some degree in this manner. Common sense, rather than a control-freak husband, dictates that the gentler sex must be cloistered, at some level. My husband and I have always been in communication during the day, which is not atypical. This much makes sense even to my non-anti-feminist friends. And when I’ve had to leave home, I’ve nearly never been “disallowed” from doing so. (I say “nearly” because occasionally, my judgement was lacking, by suggesting running an errand to a bad part of town. In such rare cases, I praise Jesus for the protective and loving husband He gave me.) Contrary to popular assumption, the Roman Catechism’s passage on wifely duty is not an anachronism.

To contextualize the above information: Our Lady’s life was defined by her humble and obedient service to the Patriarchy. Her service began at the Annunciation with the words “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”8 And it continued with her wisdom at Cana, at the beginning of her Son’s service: “Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye.” Note her calm, quiescence, submission, and self-possession…which she willed and propagated in her goodness. In other words, she began her role in the greatest tale ever told by affirmatively submitting to the Lord’s will. At Cana she tells every Christian woman to do the same.

This is the only time in the Gospel in which Our Lady approaches evangelizing, as if to say, “I submitted to the Lord’s will, so should you.”

If married women were to begin seriously tracking the Blessed Virgin as our Morningstar and Eveningstar—the Lord clearly asks that we do—then her simple wisdom at the Annunciation and at Cana ought to be enough for us to “know our place”: viz. the home, at the service of our husbands and children. Simple prudence dictates as much. So does nature.

Ladies: never presume that you deserve more than—or even as much as—Our Lady did. Never presume that you know better than God which spouse ought to run the household. The Lord chose one perfect woman to bear and raise the one perfect man, the Son of Man. None of us is she.

A brief cautionary word on exceptions: as they say in court, exceptions make bad law. Since you may be wondering, daily spousal tasks and chores can be fungible. In this way, small tasks of each spouse can be lovingly traded or volunteered for, unlike the general mantle of male leadership, which must be the husband’s. For example, my husband helps me not infrequently with some of my wifely chores. Admittedly, the ones he helps with are always those which he tends to enjoy, and never include doing the dishes, which he hates. Similarly, I help him with many of his husbandly chores which prove enjoyable to me. What’s the difference, you ask, between this and the household, role-swapping feminism decried above? Only this: between my husband and me, chore-swapping is never expected or demanded. We always appreciate each other’s help. So doing keeps it pleasant and pleasantly surprising when the help shows up.

G.K. Chesterton once prophetically proclaimed on feminism, which “is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”9 These words are more important than ever.

God’s Expectations Are Timeless

Our Lady was a simple, uneducated housewife. Yet she was destined to become the greatest woman in the history of the world, not to mention the Queen of Heaven. This contrast between expectations and facts should not be understated. Of all possible ages, of all possible women, God chose her.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of her “underwhelming” resume for her female Christian emulators. Feminists—both the secular brand and the confused “Christian” ones—will certainly ponder why the Lord chose an unworldly teenager above all other imaginable candidates. Why Mary of Nazareth rather than an “accomplished” boss-lady pulling in the big bucks, or at least a boss-like thirty-five-year-old Nazarene “with her life together” prior to pregnancy?

Unfortunately, we are told, the boss-lady is the perfect embodiment of what every woman ought to be. The female exemplar of our age is one that can “have it all,” and only later add (or not) the cherry on top—i.e. a child. Wrong. God’s choice of Mary seems to indicate exactly the opposite. For He exalted Our Blessed Lady out of all women (in all eras) to give us the perfect representation of what a woman should strive to be: a perfectly loving mother and a ceaselessly docile wife. This much is true in season and out of season.

Mary didn’t “go out and see the world,” “get real-work experience,” or “date around” before she was entrusted to be the mother of Jesus Christ and the wife of St. Joseph…in her teens. Women of today recur to Mary’s feminine inactivity and inexpressiveness—two of her leading virtues—as excuses not to emulate her. Today’s women aim to be active and expressive. Clearly, if Mary is the mother of God, then young women should imitate her holy example. Conversely, if young Christian women cannot look to Mary’s life and “resume” as the most perfect example of true femininity, then we should question whether we believe her to be the mother of God.

No academic degrees or professional careers were necessary for the fulfillment of her holy calling. In fact, such things would have been barriers to her duties as wife and mother. Although Christ came into the world in circumstances unbefitting of a king when he was born in a manger, the Virgin Mother’s simplicity and purity more than made up for what was lacking. She dutifully served Him like no queen has ever served a king, like no mother has ever loved a son. At His birth and at His death, her tender arms became the throne of God.

In our sad, anti-Mary times, many women scoff at the relevance of this most blessed of women. As a result, they favor an old charge of anachronism: “that was back then.” Feminists would say: “It’s twenty-first century: I don’t take a donkey to work.” This is an important rejoinder. It’s true, if Mary were to live today, she’d use a car and not a donkey. Yet one’s means of transport is an accidental property of life in one’s era. On the other hand, if Mary were alive today, she would take neither a car nor a donkey to work, because full-time homemaking is an essential property of her ageless vocation. Prudence lies in distinguishing essential properties of wifeliness—like not working outside the home—from accidental properties thereof—like what one rides to the market (unicycle, roller blades, donkey, automobile).

The moral order is immutable,10 a fact that always disappoints radicals and feminists. As if God expects us to follow His natural and supernatural moral order any more or less depending on such arbitrary things as advancements in technology. Whether we travel from point A to point B on a donkey or on the much-anticipated hovercraft, God requires from us the same things He always has. The Lord is aware of all things in all eras, and He chose Mary (and her era) for the birth of Christ. God’s words are perennial: then, now, and always.

Every woman in every generation must wrestle with the decision to follow God, just like the humble Virgin did two thousand years ago. We can choose the blessing or the curse (See Dt 11:26–28). So which way, western woman, will it be? Mary’s heavenly way or the culture’s worldly way? We are ceaselessly told that unless we support ourselves through careerism, as a man does, we are but a leech upon society (and even upon our husbands who may provide for our needs, but begrudgingly). This is a lie from the devil. The way of the world is neither Christian nor even practical. As will be seen in later chapters, household labor specialization and single-income households are both Christian and practical.

I’d be willing to wager that the Lord doesn’t view childrearing by daycare and public school as an alternative to that of a loving mother attending the hearth of the home. Can you even imagine the Blessed Mother dropping off the Christ-child at daycare, in order that she could pursue a trifling career in nursing or marketing or retail management or education (of other people’s children)?11 In this horrific scenario, the great Madonna artworks would, instead, depict her in a pantsuit at the office without the infant Jesus beside her. He would instead be somewhere else, mistaking another woman for his mother. How absolutely absurd is this scenario. Consider ruefully, dear reader, that this passes as acceptable and even advisable by the “experts” who have imagined into reality such a pitiful situation for millions of children today.

Make no mistake, the greatest achievement a Catholic—or any—laywoman can attain is being a faithful wife and mother. Simple housewives beneficently alter the course of history by raising the next generation. Abraham Lincoln once declared, “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” This is always the case. From his youth, Jesus’ mission was molded by His mother’s gentle attention.

With God’s grace, simple, yet faithful housewives do accomplish sublime things —even and especially those who have no formal education, marry young, and submit themselves to the Christian Patriarchy every day of their lives. This is what the Lord asks of us. The path to faithfulness involves following Our Lord and our husband’s lead, not our own foolish pride.

Conclusion

It cannot be overstated that Mary, the Mother of God, loved the Patriarchy. She joyfully submitted herself to it every day of her blessed life. And remember, the Patriarchy simply means the Christian priesthood, which was established under two fonts, that of the clergy and of the lay household. By serving and preparing the way for her blessed Son, she submitted to the clerical Patriarchy, whose priesthood emanates from Christ’s. By obeying and honoring her husband, St. Joseph, she submitted to the lay Patriarchy, a priesthood of the home.

This is not complicated, and yet we seldom hear this fundamental truth. Few priests proclaim this simple truth because cowardice often silences them when they ought to speak. Fortunately, some faithful priests are willing to risk their popularity to preach the unpopular (yet obvious) truth. Father Isaac Mary Relyea is one of those priests:

That’s why I tell the feminists, you’re all a bunch of miserable, miserable beings because you won’t accept your role. The greatest person on Earth that was created is… a woman! It wasn’t a man. The Blessed Virgin Mary. What are you complaining about? And then, what did she do in the eyes of the world? She cooked, she cleaned, and she prayed. I tell you; you think you’re better than the mother of God. And that’s why you’re miserable! I tell women—normally speaking—women shouldn’t be working, if you’re married. Now, people say “what do you say, you know, I’m a single parent…” Of course, you have to work then. But, the Devil twisted everything and [you no longer recognize] your role as a mother is to imitate the mother of God. And you belong home with your children, in the kitchen cooking and cleaning. Yes, it’s beautiful. Sweeping the floor. According to the world, what did Our Lady [actually] do? They say, “nothing, she was a simple handmaid of the Lord.” What’d she do? She cooked, she cleaned…and in that life she’s holier than all the saints and angels.12

In other words, the modern woman has turned her back on that for which God designed her. Yes, she continues to eat of the forbidden fruit rather than accept her irreplaceable role in salvation history as another handmaid of the Lord. Accordingly, she is now more inexplicably miserable than any other demographic in any other time in history. To wit, according to the 2009 article, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness:”

We will show, in this paper, that women’s happiness has fallen both absolutely and relative to men’s in a pervasive way among groups, such that women no longer report being happier than men, and, in many instances, now report happiness that is below that of men. Moreover, we show that this shift has occurred through much of the industrialized world.13

The same paper continues and the plot thickens:

Alternatively, women’s lives have become more complex and their well-being now likely reflects their satisfaction with more facets of life compared with previous generations of women. For example, the reported happiness of women who are primarily homemakers might reflect their satisfaction with their home life to a greater extent compared with women who are in both the labor force and have a family at home. For these latter women, reported happiness may reflect aggregating over their multiple domains. While this aggregation may lead to lower reported happiness, it is difficult to know whether this reflects a truly lower hedonic state.14

Note the undeniable implications of Wolfers’s conclusions:

This is all a way of saying that whatever’s making women sadder may merely be aggravating what’s already in their heads. And that’s where the gender wars come in. Some critics believe that by convincing females they could succeed in the workplace without sacrificing family life, the women’s movement set up the vast majority for disappointment; whether you’re talking hormones or spare time or fatigue, they’re just not equipped to handle what the feminists envisioned. It’s a theory so freighted with controversy that Wolfers jokingly calls it the “Rush Limbaugh interpretation,” implying as it does that women were better off when they were barefoot in the kitchen. “Did the women’s movement make things worse? Unattainable? Plausibly, yes,” muses Wolfers.15

The women’s movement has indeed set women up to fail. If Christian women were to meet their full potential by accepting their domestic duties by returning to their place—the heart of the home—then society would radically change for the better.16 Peace and happiness would reign in our marriages, in our children, permeating to our fallen world. It is hoped that the unintentionally obstinate woman will embrace the Creator’s call for obedient wives and dutiful mothers. That her converted heart will enthusiastically shun the devil’s lies to abandon her wifely and family duties in the name of worldly successes and goods.

If, in my off time from my own duties, as my children rest or play, I can help to convert even one of my fallen-away sisters, it will have been time well-spent. I will thereby have emulated—imperfectly yet sufficiently—Our Lady when she instructed her audience to “do whatever He tells you.”

If the heart dies, so does the body…and so it is with the heart of the home.

2:
Why This Book Isn’t a Performed Contradiction

Mother, First; Hobbies, Second

Given the above information, it’s fair for a reader to ask more specifically: how can a wife and mother find the requisite time and focus to write a book? As Marge Simpson hilariously puts it: “I spend twenty-three hours of the day here [home].” Like Marge, I am a “full-time” wife and mother and, admittedly, writing a book is a monumental task. As I will repeat time and again, not all monumental tasks (e.g. authorship) are off-limits to married Christian women, just as not all incremental or “part-time” tasks are allowable (e.g. ostensibly “minimal” outside work for twenty weekly hours). To wit, for a married, Christian woman of usual circumstances, twenty-one hours of post-bedtime book-drafting is perfectly harmless while twenty weekly hours of toil at even a non-stressful retail job outside the home is not. By no means is this my standard, but rather it is the Catholic standard. Amid such high stakes, a married woman must know therefore what standard she is to be judged by.

There’s no point in circumventing the issue. Answering the question thoroughly requires that we specify the obvious: working a job does not qualify as a pastime. As noted, earlier, I never desired to join my female counterparts in their futile search for outside “fulfillment” via careerism. Thus, I cannot claim that I commiserate the “loss” of permission to work an outside job. Irrespective of personal biases, it is safe to say that mothers seeking refuge and fulfillment in outside work renders them “freelance moms.” In their case, the pastime immediately swallows the true vocation. Such women are reduced to tacking on mothering before and after their paid shifts.

Tragically, most children (and husbands) today only have access to their mothers (or in the case of husbands, wives) in the evening. And during that brief window of time, such women must fit in all their mothering, housework, cooking, recreation, and husbandly attention. Although some readers embrace this hybrid lifestyle, over time it proves to be taxing on the entire family. Thus, I must begin by distinguishing how and why, “going to work at a job,” is never a valid wifely answer to the question, “what do you do in your spare time to refresh your enthusiasm for your marital vocation?”

Conversely, seeking fulfillment in appropriate pastimes not only fails to harm but even enhances our mothering. It is necessary. Accordingly, this chapter will help the reader to understand and distinguish good from bad wifely pastimes.

How I Almost Slipped into the Fallacy

Full disclosure: in my initial married years, I held a few part-time jobs. Guilty as charged. But to be fair, the brief time I did work in my pre-child marriage comprised just two short stints. The first was a stint when I was first married and in college; I “went back to school” at the community college at which my husband taught, mostly during the hours of his courses. I never earned a degree. When he stopped teaching there, I stopped attending, but instead got a neighborhood part-time job. My second marital working stint occurred when we lived in Rome: after my husband began teaching English to Italians in order to fund his studies of graduate philosophy, his agency offered me work at mostly the same locations and times. Both of my marital jobs were very part-time, and very proximate to home and husband, it should be noted.

Even prior to my conversion to the faith, I intuited that even part-time work proved detrimental to the harmony of my home—even childless as it was then. Moreover, before I recognized it, I sensed it: there was simply too little time for being a proper wife. Despite working only part-time in non-career roles, the trivial stress grew insidiously. Imagine the comparative toll it takes on married women who nurture and covet their full-time careers after having children. The physical and spiritual harm increases exponentially. Looking back, my husband wasn’t treating me unkindly by permitting me to work in our early marital years. Unfortunately, we learned through trial and error by haplessly believing the crypto-feminist fallacy that part-time labor qualifies as healthy recreation. And the results were far from what we expected. The chores built up; we had less time for each other (and, childless, we had no excuse for having any less than much time together); my prayer life suffered; most meals were eaten out.

Although this represents a brief time before our children, I was nevertheless spread too thin. In what should have been an easy introduction to marital time management during those first couple of years, we borrowed trouble. Only after we began practicing the last, “inconvenient” tenets of the faith, a few years after marriage, did we both finally understand why the Church teaches the woman is to be the practically ever-present “heart of the home”: the house (or apartment) is simply not a home when the woman is absent from it. It’s simply a structure, a home without a heart. Like St. Thomas Aquinas says (in a different context), four walls and a roof do not make a home, without more.17 Since then, we have been thriving as a single-income household, and we’ve never looked back. Indeed, we never wanted to. Turns out, the Church knows best.

The recurring premise of this book—in all its disparate chapters—is that the humble and obedient wife belongs in the home. From within its four walls, she directs her own corner of the world—much like Mary did at Cana—to the longstanding wisdom of the Christian Patriarchy. Like Mary, a godly wife does so without regrets. As Hyman Roth says in Godfather Two: “this is the [vocation] we have chosen: I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!” I wanted to serve my God, who gave the order. Since I wasn’t called to the convent, my vocation as wife and mother presented itself plainly. Many of you can relate to this calling—a calling no less worthy of God. And yet, at the same time, we experience great tension as to how best to use our precious free time. Unlike a convent’s daily schedule providing predictability and structure, a married women’s day often varies moment by moment.

To do anything well, “downtime,” rests, and breaks are utterly necessary. Hence wisely selecting the most appropriate hobbies and pastimes from among competing ones is key. Even though certain activities enhance and strengthen our vows, our fulfilment ultimately comes by means of our vocation as wives and mothers. Still, to avoid vocational fatigue, we require rest for our weary souls. And in the world of refreshing recreation, not all pastimes were created equal.

Egalitarianism of every sort is a sham. Gardening, crafting, writing, painting, sewing, knitting are vastly superior eventide refreshments to married women than part or full-time labor. They are on a different level: one renews the body and soul, the other tears it down. One builds up the family, the other destroys it. For those who believe my reasoning to be “subjective,” we can ask ourselves the following questions to determine whether a prospective hobby is beneficial.

First, does each of the pastimes, through its creative productivity, enhance not only the woman’s mood, but also her overall family’s while being enjoyed with children and/or the husband? Second, does each of the pastimes occur within immediate proximity to the home? Third, does each of the pastimes actually relax the participant?

None of these justifications apply to part or full-time work. The stresses of one job do not ease the stresses of another—only hobbies and rest do. As men regularly say about their favorite pastimes, such as hunting and fishing: “the worst day of hunting and fishing beat the best day of work.” It’s a human axiom.

Apparently, everyone except feminists understood the punchline being expressed by the truthful jest. Instead, feminists claim that labor gets them away from the home and thereby relaxes them. This insanity represents a confused blend of equal-parts sex revolution, on one hand, and Puritan work ethic, on the other, as my husband argues in his book Catholic Republic.18

As articulated by the commonsense standards above, a good wifely hobby proves to be productive and creatively enhances the household mood; proximate to the homeplace; relaxing to the female hobbyist. Every part or full-time work outside the home fails to answer two or all three of the questions above. Any hobbies that are truly praiseworthy will refresh the household woman for the following day’s responsibilities. For me, writing accomplishes these things, although other women will select different pastimes from my list and others not mentioned.

How the Hobby of Writing Aids My Vocation

The written word affords wives—who require shelter from notoriety—a unique opportunity to privately express the public word. More specifically, authoring books is arguably the most appropriate means for a traditional Catholic woman to exercise her voice while tending to the home. During my children’s naps, play time, or bedtime, I wrote this book. The homeschooling of our seven children continued unabated. Dinners were cooked. Cookies were baked. None of my duties as a wife or a mother suffered since my priorities are straight. The care and attention to the household comes first—both chronologically and on my list of importance. As a result, my vocational duties were never outsourced to another woman as an expense of completing this book.

As noted above, authorship qualifies as a great hobby. From the comfort of my own dining room table—during spontaneous “openings” in the daily household schedule—I get to exercise any productive intellectual impulses I entertain throughout the day. Honestly, such impulses are frequent; most of my book ideas occur and get processed and shaped throughout the doing of my daily chores. Like my other good hobbies, writing thereby affords me “the best of both worlds”: my “wifing” and mothering sharpens my desire to write for an opportune hour or two, and vice versa.

In addition, writing enhances my mood and the mood of those around me. Accordingly, the authorship of this book answers the first of three questions above. I refuse to write a single word from anywhere outside my home—or at least, anywhere outside the presence of my family. It also resolves the second question. You’ll have to take my word on the third question. Writing after a day of rote housekeeping simultaneously relaxes and enlivens my mind in the simultaneous action known as “refreshment.”

As insinuated above, the same principle also operates in reverse: after my brain becomes addled from several hours of writing, I enthusiastically return to my chores, which provide a much-welcome thoughtless physical activity. Such is the ebb and tide of the intellectual and physical virtues, which work best in tandem.

I’ve gone through my checklist here not so much to justify myself—I already did this privately before consenting to write this book and thereby jeopardize some portion of my privacy—but rather as a sort of illustrative exercise as an important part of this chapter’s content. In brief, a wifely pastime can be objectively scrutinized as good or bad for the home.

When I considered the prospect of writing this book, I also harbored concerns of being “too public.” Typically, authors grant interviews, speaking tours, and promotional events, which would contradict the precept that a woman should be chiefly in the privacy of the home. Although Scripture paints Mary with Jesus and His Apostles on a few instances, she likely did not travel with them to the hostile parts of Palestine. After her Son died, she did not accompany the Apostles to the ends of the earth spreading the Gospel. Such publicity would have exposed her to incredible danger, which is possibly why Christ didn’t choose female disciples. On the rare occasion that Mary had something to say, she did so from a place of feminine safety.

A counterexample to the healthfulness of book-authorship presents itself. On my former Twitter account, I learned the hard way how uncivilized the world proves to be to women who foray into the public, notwithstanding the geographic privacy that it affords. My husband had to enforce new rules which led me to delete most of my social media accounts. Twitter was the most obvious social platform on the chopping block. The “take away” principle here is that certain pastimes—not only getting a job, but also interacting on Twitter and the like—contradict or threaten to contradict the private vocation of the Christian woman. Notwithstanding the fun I had poking the feminist “bear” on Twitter, the fights it provoked and the time it wasted was not worth the privacy I lost.

When we identify one of these bad habits in our daily routines, no handwringing or garment-tearing is needed; simply, we must root it out. Such is the life of a Christian. Note that I share my own failings in these areas to reinforce the Aristotelian proposition that life is a series of trials and errors.

The virtuous are not virtuous because they were born perfect; rather, they are virtuous because over time they’ve habituated the reverse of their vices.

Writing a book such as this within the protection of the home is the best medium for safeguarding the private principles of my household while expressing them to the public. I get to publish my anti-feminist point of view without the social media catfights. It is truly the best of both worlds. Arguably—and I’m still less than perfectly convinced on this score—I bear a duty to speak because I am a simple housewife: I enjoy the luxury of having the type of “job” from which I can never be fired for saying true, thus controversial things. No one can call my boss to try to get me terminated. My boss explicitly approves of the project. Not only did he give me permission to take it on, but he has been an aid in its completion. Most men today cannot say these things, even if it is most veritably their duty to say them (since it is the birthright of men, not women, being hijacked).

Now that we’ve established that a traditional Catholic woman may engage the hobby of authorship without contradicting her vocation, what renders one (specifically me) qualified to do so?

The credentials for writing a homemaking book and for being a homemaker per se prove to be identical. And to be qualified to write such a book, a woman need not to have passed a home-economics course or reached a certain mature age. Rather, God has implanted a desire within her heart to share the wisdom of her vocation and nothing more. Sometimes God even chooses women like me who are far from being “credentialed,” in the world’s eyes. Like many of you, my childhood experiences fell utterly short of informing my vocation—theologically or even practically. I was raised in a divorced, secular home but with God’s grace, I became a Catholic, traditional wife.

The latter sentence proves to be the most understated portion of this book, upon which I shall not elaborate much. Suffice to say, I was born to teenaged parents who divorced a few years after my birth. The next seventeen years of my world-weary, military step-childhood proved to be trying and faithless (but not entirely without its joys and charms). One final caveat to my gentle reader: however distant you may assume your early childhood placed you from your eventual vocation, it can scarcely be farther than mine placed me from the loving Christian model of matrimony and sacrifice. But placed me it did.

Thus, my transformation was a stark one. As you will see, everything I have learned about being a submissive wife first came from answered prayers to God and then from…asking my husband. It turns out that much of what he taught me (and in some cases, that which we learned together), I may hereby pass onto women who may be craving—and lacking—what I was formerly missing. The point is this: given my earliest beginnings, if I can turn up where I did, then anyone can.

Ask Your Husband…To Teach You the Faith

I knew almost nothing of Christianity until I met my husband, Tim, at eighteen. I was born to an unwed, atheist, teenaged mother. As Providence would have it, she was also devoutly pro-life and never considered an abortion when she became pregnant in high school. God bless her for that: although she gave me no instruction in the faith, she gave me precious life.

It would be my husband, years later, who would instruct me in the faith. I have no college degree to speak of, although I was earning decent grades through two years of college. The closest thing I bear to formal theological education would comprise my time in Rome when I would sit in and take notes (when Tim was sick or working) on his graduate philosophy and theology courses at two renowned pontifical Roman universities: the Gregoriana and the Angelicum. This happened somewhat frequently since we lived so hand-to-mouth in the ancient city, and since Tim could not afford to miss any course material. In fact, we sold most of our possessions to afford the move to Rome, where Tim worked almost full-time while being a full-time student.

Since the wife is the husband’s helpmate—and since those two medieval universities were so fascinating and alluring—I was happy to assist him in any way I could. And as a result, I found that by assisting my husband, God was forming me both spiritually and intellectually. As a recent convert to Catholicism—one who had “crossed the Tiber” less than a year before literally relocating near it (and then delivering my first child in the middle of it.)19—I had a long educational road to hoe. And yet I was honored to learn technical aspects of the faith in such a city, inspired by my proximity to Christ’s relics, tombs of the greatest saints, churches older than the first ecumenical council, and magnificent artworks at literally every corner.

As enjoyable as it was grabbing coffee at Roman cafes and sipping it as I walked into the center of Rome to attend class at a university twice as old as the American republic, it didn’t constitute the extent—or even the majority—of my “home-spun” education.

As a young Catholic wife, I was eager to invite Tim’s classmates, many of whom were priests, to our small Roman apartment to try the new Italian recipes I was learning. (I introduced many of them to American classics like pumpkin pie—which, incidentally, cost about twenty bucks per pie to make since the ingredients were so hard to find in Rome. They also first tasted Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing at our place.) Most of these priests were South Americans and Africans foreign to Europe, home-sick, and accordingly quite eager to enjoy a home-cooked meal and friendly conversation. Our dinner table was frequented almost every week by a diverse group of young men who were studying philosophy and theology alongside Tim.

In exchange for the many meals I prepared, my educated guests (along with my husband) taught me the fundamentals of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Many hours were spent by faithful Catholic men, gathered around my tiny kitchen table recalling the day’s lectures discursively. These men would debate, ask questions, and read texts aloud…until the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, I recognized the unique opportunity before me, and soaked it all in. Catholic graduate education is remarkably affordable in Rome, but I received mine for even cheaper than the low cost of Rome’s pontifical university tuition: the cost of a few home-cooked meals.

We often wonder if, during those golden days, we hosted any future bishops in that cramped little apartment in the bustling San Lorenzo neighborhood of Rome.

As a child of divorced parents, one who was raised entirely outside of the faith, I had much to learn from my cradle-Catholic husband on the workings of a properly run Christian household (and the tenets of the faith itself). I am thankful that the Lord provided me with an eager disposition which allowed me to learn the foundations of Catholicism in this way.

Unlike my lost opportunity to attain a degree at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome, I did not miss the in-house educational opportunity afforded to me by my husband and his dinner guests. During and immediately after our sojourn to Rome, as my husband “came into his own” with his own Catholic writings, cultural commentary, and inchoate apostolate, I found myself engaging with increasingly profound teachings of Catholicism. In very much the same way parents teach their child a native tongue, I learned the language of the Church from my husband, who speaks it fluently.

While my education was unusual, it should not be surprising. After all, it is proper for a wife to learn from her husband and from his adventures. Within the domestic hierarchy, the husband is “priest of the home,” meaning he is duty-bound to prepare his family for heaven by instructing them in the faith. As a consecrated priest is to the larger Church, the husband is to the miniature Church, the family.

As we spelled out the duties of the wife, let us now consider the Catechism of Trent on the duties of the husband:

It is the duty of the husband to treat his wife generously and honourably. It should not be forgotten that Eve was called by Adam his companion. The woman, he says, whom thou gavest me as a companion. Hence it was, according to the opinion of some of the holy Fathers, that she was formed not from the feet but from the side of man; as, on the other hand, she was not formed from his head, in order to give her to understand that it was not hers to command but to obey her husband. The husband should also be constantly occupied in some honest pursuit with a view to provide necessaries for the support of his family and to avoid idleness, the root of almost every vice. He is also to keep all his family in order, to correct their morals, and see that they faithfully discharge their duties.20

Few women are blessed with a similar situation—a learned husband who takes time to instruct her. For those who aren’t, however, the good news is that you can start to “learn from Him” by reading the Bridegroom’s words in the Holy Bible, and Holy Church’s interpretation of their meaning. Also, a multitude of texts written throughout Church history by philosophical and theological geniuses are widely available with commentary breaking them down for beginners. For example, within the Catena Aurea by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Gospel commentaries of the Church Fathers are masterfully assembled into four volumes.

For women who simply don’t have the time to read expansive texts due to the constraints of homemaking, I’ve found the resources online conveniently edifying. (There exists a multitude of YouTube and online radio channels, for instance, where a housewife can tune in as she does her household chores.) But even primary and secondary sources from the Catholic tradition are insufficient for replacing instruction by the loving head of a household. Realistically, most of my readers find themselves in precisely this situation. The title of this book, Ask Your Husband, applies even in the lives of such wives: they must ask their husbands to teach them. Of course, for this to happen, such husbands nascent in their knowledge of the faith may have to learn with their wives at first. Later, they may become husbandly instructors. But before one can walk, one must crawl.

As my sex dictates, most everything I’ve learned about the faith has come from the tutelage of men: my husband, his fellow students, Church Fathers, and of course from the male writers of Scripture.

When Women Should Speak (and When They Shouldn’t)

The Church teaches perennially—up until a recent silence on the matter—that married women are to submit themselves to the authority of their husbands. As part of a larger twentieth-century apostasy, unfaithful churchmen abandoned the longstanding teaching of Holy Mother Church regarding proper sex roles. Last century, at the hands of Marxists, secularists, and feminists, the very notion of Christian “Patriarchy”—which bears two components, clerical and lay21—grew unpopular. Instead of proclaiming the truth about the sexes “in season and out of season” as the Church requires of itself, weak churchmen of the twentieth century opted not to jeopardize their own personal popularities secured by telling married women what they wanted to hear. The charge of the faithful shepherd consists instead in telling his flock what they need to hear. For married women, their vocation itself dictates that what they need to hear is virtually always in conformity with obedience and fealty.

If you are shocked by this teaching on the proper hierarchy of the home, it is not your fault—not initially anyway. You were deliberately not told any of this. It was withheld from you to spare your “feelings.” Modern churchmen deem married women so fragile that simply hearing Our Lord’s path for them—obedience—might break them. As a matter of fact, the Missal has even been edited with brackets around the inerrant or free from error words of St. Paul which proclaim, “Wives submit to your own husbands, as you do the Lord.”22 Revoltingly, those words may now be omitted by the attending priest during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass if he wishes (and most of them do). Regarding the Holy Word being censored, altered, and memory-holed at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Benjamin Wiker of National Catholic Register perhaps too honestly writes:

You’ve been there, sitting uncomfortably in the pew, waiting for the lector to read the dreaded Ephesians passage, the one that speaks the culturally anathema, “Wives be subject to your husbands…” Sometimes you notice that the offending passages have been delicately bracketed, so that only St. Paul’s admonitions to the husband are going to be read, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church…” The lector gladly takes the hint, and you sigh in relief. Yet, sometimes the entire passage is read while everyone looks uncomfortably downward, counting the seconds until it’s over. Once it’s over, you know you’re home free. Happily, no priest will ever preach on the whole passage, but will slip into the culturally comfortable preface, “St. Paul says to all of us, ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,’ and so we see…” Then follows a warm meal of platitudes served on a boilerplate, perhaps with a side of nervous humor.23

The effeminate cowardice of the modern Church knows no limits: putting the words of the Holy Bible in brackets—what an accursedly cautious time in which we live. Priests complicit with radical left “newspeak” like Scriptural redaction and replacement understand only too well that oppressive feminism visits furious anger upon even the most meager dissenters. And these cowardly priests behave accordingly. Moreover, informing women of their proper place does nothing to gain parishioners, donations at collection time, or episcopal appointments. So again, these spineless leaders remain mum, knowing full well that the married women in their flock are failing in their vocations.

Yet silence does not abrogate the truth; it simply disregards the truth.

The ambiguity and silence from the pulpit have resulted in an unprecedented time of complete marital discord, vocational confusion, and vice. In lieu of proper, top-down Church teaching and culture, books like this and my husband’s The Case for Patriarchy try to fill the void left open from our shepherds’ derelict instruction. The duty to teach the faith and morals falls, in the first place, to the bishop and the priest, not to the layman (and especially not to the laywoman, as we will recall with the words of St. Paul below). The layman, as the priest of his house, is ordinarily responsible for teaching in a secondary way, reiterating and putting into practice what his wife and children heard at Church. Because of the abandonment by our shepherds, more and more households today are being led by fathers who fill both roles: the role of the priest and the household priest, which is an onerous charge. Still, men who spiritually lead their wives and children are the minority.

Roman Catholic priests honor a lifelong vow of celibacy for several reasons. Of these, the most relevant to feminism is the reason that, unmarried priests can more efficaciously defend the faith, even to the death. Since by design, they lack a wife and children to provide for, the priestly sacrifice of their entire life—and if necessary, death—remains most readily available to men without dependents. And yet, the easier choice is to preserve their lives and popularity by refusing to teach the Church’s hard saying, which many continue to do. As a result, Catholic laymen have had to fill this moral void, courageously exposing themselves (and their families) to possible retribution by teaching “hard truths” to a society gone mad.

Uncoincidentally, the most important of these abandoned teachings today happen to be the most controversial. Thankfully, even if churchmen no longer speak on the wifely obedience issue, inerrantly inspired churchmen once wrote on it in a saner age in such a way as to be perennially binding. It is a saving grace, indeed, that the laity can still access the Church’s many documents and sources regarding the proper hierarchy of the home. For, even if truth is rarely spoken these days, it is always relevant because truth never changes! But as I insinuated above, the written word is a dead letter unless it is read and heeded. Leadership must point household wives to these wise words.

A woman should happily accept her role as “second in command,” assisting her husband as he faithfully discharges his duties as the head of the domestic church—just as Mary did for her Son at Cana. However, being second in command carries more ambiguities than being first in command does. The present ambiguity to be worked through centers on this question: “how much and how authoritatively should the household’s second in command speak?”

The answer is simple, but not easy. Since the woman is under the authority of her husband, everything she says and does is an extension of his headship. Accordingly, I must reply to the above question with the somewhat unsatisfying answer: a wife should speak as much as is necessary for her household. But who renders this qualification? The husband does. It is a prudential call and as such it is his to make. Prudence is called by Aristotle the “special ruler’s virtue,”24 since it involves the kind of authority exercised in snap decision making and subsequent decision-enforcing. If lieutenants held the prudential authority, then they would rule over their generals. Regarding the specific question about how much and how authoritatively they ought to speak, wives should…ask their husbands: “how much do you need me to help articulate our way of life to the children? Am I presently doing it too much, too little, too loudly, too quietly, etc.?”

A quiet husband might prefer a slightly more assertive wife—but then again, a quieter man might see increased female assertiveness as a threat to his household’s order. Many factors will influence each householder’s decision in this arena. What’s important is that each household wife applies no pressure, guilt, or manipulation such as to engineer a desired response from her husband. And the salient point is that prudential judgment calls, such as this, admit of disparities among households only in small degrees. Notwithstanding the many temperaments of all the household leaders, their commonalities should vastly outweigh their differences. All Christian households must have male headship in common: i.e. quiet, effusive, or moderately assertive husbands who lead their wives and children in manners which leave no doubt as to who the head is.

All Christian wives must actively embrace their own passivity and encourage their husband’s preferences in regard to their own wifely voice. Each faithful Christian husband’s answer is good enough to suffice. And while St. Paul refrains from answering the precise question at issue, he provides an appropriate set of answers related to female authority.

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.25

To the “Christian feminists”26 out there, why else would this be taught by inerrant Scripture, if my characterization of women as “second in command” wasn’t true? Once more, we are not permitted to teach—except perhaps as a kind of “teacher’s aide” to our husbands—because teaching implies headship.

As a related matter, the notion of a woman speaking in Church and writing a book may be connected. As such, St. Paul’s instruction to women on consulting their husbands with questions of theology was particularly meaningful to me. As a female author on the topic of a wife’s proper role in her vocation, I am especially called to “ask my husband” for guidance. Female authors ought not to usurp the male right of leadership. Authoring an anti-feminist book, from a woman’s perspective, would be consistent with Scripture only with her husband’s active guidance and approval.27

On this note, St. Paul also writes,

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.28

Pope Leo XIII adds the following gloss to St. Paul’s words above: “teachers of Sacred Scripture are not to be appointed at hap-hazard out of the crowd; but they must be men whose character and fitness are proved by their love of, and their long familiarity with, the Bible, and by suitable learning and study.”29

Where this book differs significantly from my husband’s feminism book is that I do not presume to teach men how to run their households. My objective is to help guide my sisters in Christ to humble themselves to their husbands’ authority.

Teaching Women to Read and Write a Good Thing?

In the previous chapters, I have defended the importance of female non-leaders’ (such as myself) published written words, especially in this book’s domain of anti-feminist encouragement. From time to time, it is important for wives to receive instruction from other wives. Accordingly, there must be some female authors. This raises yet another important inquiry.

Many feminists contemplate the following question: if a woman is to be primarily in the home after she is married, what use is there for her to understand academic disciplines like philosophy and theology? Why pursue a “worthless” education she will not use? Perhaps with good reason, this is a favorite feminist rhetorical question. It is worth addressing in full.

Like most leftists, feminists claim to think that education is “priceless.” Yet apparently, education is worthless to them unless economically profitable. And this is key to understanding the feminist lie about the connection between education and career.

Remember, it was Catholicism that gave the world the library, the grade school, and the university system. These endowments by the Church carried the tacit notion that education is primarily for enhancing the moral and intellectual virtue of the human being, which literally makes humans better at being human. In sum, educating people is good for their souls, not their pocketbooks.

The Church has historically, but not exclusively, focused on the education of young men. After the medieval period, during which higher education was reserved almost exclusively for priests, laymen increasingly received university education. More recently, young women began to enroll at universities.

But only in the twentieth century did a university education—traditionally reserved for the highest studies like theology, philosophy, and mathematics—become increasingly mistaken or misused as a sort of glorified trade school. Simultaneously, only recently have university degrees been popularly received as “accreditation” for the job market. This represents a complete paradigm shift in the popular understanding about what an education is. Prior to this change, true education, constituted by study in disciplines like theology and philosophy, was its own end and its own reward. An inverse correlation exists between the highest, “speculative” academic disciplines and the lower, practical disciplines which have only recently been added to university catalogues: the most important are the least “useful.”

This carries interesting implications for the feminism question. In this domain—unlike many others this book will touch upon—I can offer the female university student encouragement rather than discouragement. (But my encouragement comes with a caveat: a virtuous wife does not need a university education.) In fact, a faithful young Christian woman in the twenty-first century society enjoys, on the average, greater latitude for studying the speculative disciplines than her future husband does.

Before a woman becomes the helpmate to her husband and a nurturer to his children, she has a unique opportunity to grow in virtue through the study of subjects which middle-class males typically cannot (since most men must now take practical degrees as to provide for a family).

As will be outlined more thoroughly in Chapters Four and Five, a Catholic woman properly prepares for her married vocation differently than the world, which does so by means of a careerism. Consider the words of Pius XI:

In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family. That the rest of the family should also contribute to the common support, according to the capacity of each, is certainly right, as can be observed especially in the families of farmers, but also in the families of many craftsmen and small shopkeepers. But to abuse the years of childhood and the limited strength of women is grossly wrong. Mothers, concentrating on household duties, should work primarily in the home or in its immediate vicinity. It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father’s low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children. Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately.30

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