Holy Insurrection Batman!

Joseph of Jackson, a former manosphere commentator who left the ‘sphere a few months back, has returned over at Sunshinemary’s site. In her latest post, Sunshinemary published an e-mail that he sent to her explaining some of what he has been up to. A sample:

Women talk, a LOT. It is their tool of choice for most things. And here we are, as men, using the primary tool of women to try and enact change and we wonder why we can’t get any real traction going.

[Some men] are genuinely surprised that red pill women behave this way. They believed they had found some trustworthy women and the pedestalization phase began all over again. You can see that although they understand alpha traits, and in some cases use them, they are just as prone as any man to falling back into beta thinking. The only true defense we men have against this is a culture that will not tolerate it. If it is considered the respectable thing to do to keep women quiet and in submission then that is what men will do. We don’t have that culture online.

Apparently JoJ built up a group of men that recently joined a church and began reforming the church. I am publishing in full a comment he left at SSM’s site explaining what he did, because it is an amazing story. My own series on reforming the church is put on hold for the time being, because Joseph has already exceeded it with his actions.

Okay, here goes. This actually all started at a different church. I was thrown out of my first one for teaching what I taught. I started in a small group that I had been a part of for a little over a year. I established myself as a leader in the group and slowly (dear god, so slowly) started introducing red pill concepts during our weekly bible study. I made a point to hang out with the guys during the week. We spent time together. I actively flirted with girls in front of them to let them see what was possible. Everything changed one day when I was flirting with our waitress. I asked her for her number. She said she didn’t want to. As she walked away, one of the guys (the actual leader of the small group) was picking at me by saying I had lost my edge. I told him that she actually meant “no, not right now, it’s too public”. He didn’t believe me, so we did what most guys do. We made a bet. If I got her number by the end of dinner, I got to teach about the Bible and girls at our next meeting. If I lost, I had to humiliate myself publicly by standing up in front of everyone and anouncing that all women hate me and run out like I was crying (don’t ask, one of our guys is on bi-polar medication and he thought this would be the best thing to watch ever). I had her number within 2 more passes.

That’s where it all started.

I spent several months introducing them to the concept of game and told them about the class I went to. My small group leader got onto me for placing women before God. I informed him that this helped me actually put God first as women were no longer that important. He was hooked. We were already hanging out every week so while hanging out, I started to get them to approach women. Not to have sex, but just to get past the fear. This continued for several more months. I taught them how to work your way around a room starting with the least attractive girl and working your way up. I taught them how to read social situations and how to take control of a set. I showed them how to get women to actually start chasing them and how to play the part of the bad boy without actually being a bad boy. I taught them how to wing for one another. Soon, we were doing this several nights a week. I made one condition. I would teach them, but we had to have bible study afterwards. So we did. We went from one bible study a week to 4 or 5. No one wanted to miss meeting women, so they all came for bible study. About our 4th month, something interesting happened that I had been waiting on. It happened to me and I knew it was only a matter of time before it worked for them too. They started to come out of the haze. Women weren’t some mystery anymore. We actually felt sorry for the women as we knew they couldn’t control themselves.

That’s when the events occurred when I first started posting at Mary’s blog. I wasn’t prepared for the backlash that would come. These guys were getting much more spiritually mature and the church didn’t care. I was asked to leave. They left with me. My girlfriend left with me. We started doing church at my place on Sunday’s and we started working for a local shelter during the week. Cooking food, doing laundry, cleaning floors. We also spent more time getting to know people. These guys had moved past wanting to pick up women. They had been there and done that. No kino, No sex, No dirty talk, and they were still past it. They now understood not just women, but social dynamics in a group and with individuals. We saw many people get saved because the Holy Spirit used our newfound gifts.

Then one day, another guy in the group had an idea. Let’s go and see if we can turn a church around. I was opposed to the idea at first. Finally, they sold me on it. Individually, we are good with women. As a group, we dominate any social scene we go to. It’s like 10 male lions walk into a female pack of lions. We don’t fight each other, we don’t compete with each other. We are in charge. Place Roosh in my church, one of the best PUA’s around and watch him get tooled by our group. He’s not dealing with one or two guys. He’s dealing with an entire tribe. So we decided as a group to use our skills to reclaim a church that was no longer acting on God’s Word.

The church we chose was the worst of the worst in our area. They actively let women preachers speak. They had a ceremony one week that celebrated the uniting of the nations in which they presented a staff of holly wood (witchcraft) to an indian shaman on stage. They have a women’s counsel that is the equal counterpart to the deacon’s counsel (which is their version of elders). We targeted it tactically.

Our goal was simple, dominate the social scene. Most Churchians are there for the social aspect of church and if you control that, then you control public opinion. We established ourselves in 4 small groups. We would actively team up against male members of the church who were leaders that taught false doctrines. Two man teams were assigned to this, one would be good with scripture and the other would be good at AMOGing. In a few weeks, the deacons were quelled and the women were very happy to see us taking on leadership roles. The entire atmosphere changed. The script that Satan had used to claim this church for himself had been used against him. That’s a high level overview, but it’s a good idea of what’s going on.

What Joseph of Jackson has done is to play the part of an insurgent, and start the process of taking a church over from within. I can’t wait to hear what will happen in the future, because if he is successful it provides an opportunity for many Protestants to begin reforming local churches. Being a Catholic, I can’t adopt his plan for myself, as the organization of that church and the Catholic hierarchy are quite different. But there are still plenty of lessons to be learned here. I have managed to draw a few of them out already (in no particular order):

1) Dominate the social scene- As JoJ noted, most churches today serve as social centers first, and communities of believers second. If you can control the networking behind the social structure of the church, you can influence a lot of what goes on at the church. This can be done behind the scenes, away from any scriptural or doctrinal battles that might be happening Therefore efforts to gain influence here might not elicit the same kind of resistance.

2) Group tactics work- JoJ’s comparison to a pride of male lions attacking in concert has a certain appeal to it. It is so unexpected, so outside the natural order, opponents won’t be able to easily respond.

3) Know your strengths and organize accordingly- Some men have natural charisma, others are great at memorizing and reciting scripture. By utilizing each person’s strengths in the right context, you can overcome any foe.

4) Alpha men control the Church women- Women are drawn to attractive men just as strongly as men are drawn to attractive women, and you can use that, even in church. If you have a group of powerful, confident, charismatic men, those men will be attractive to a lot of women, and be able to exert considerable influence over the same women. Women will do a lot to maintain the good graces of an Alpha male. If Alpha males start demanding that the women of the church act like they should, the women will follow.

It is possible that this will all blow up in JoJ’s face, just like before. But I rather doubt it. Given his success thus far, I suspect that Joseph has succeeded in his insurgency. Even if he and his cohort were to be kicked out, I have no doubt they would be able to take a large chunk of that church with them. Which means that the next takeover should be even easier. It sounds like even if he is successful, he will be working on reforming all of the churches in his locality. The insurgency has only just begun.

In the spirit of the title of this post, I leave all of you with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nltVuSH-lQM

Making the Music Stop

Background

In the comments following my “Woe is Me” post titled All Alone in the Dark, Sunshinemary (honestly, I’m not picking on you, its just that your comments make for great blog fodder) left this comment:

I really, really think men should refuse to marry non-virgins. Women are not total idiots. If they realize that no one will marry unchaste women, they’ll close their legs pretty quick.

While I think that this will help, to some degree, I don’t believe that it will be a complete solution. In my reply I said that:

I’m not really convinced this is the case. As I’ve argued before, I think that if you give women a choice between sex with hot men and no marriage on the one hand, and sex with only one man (who may or may not be hot) in marriage on the other hand, that many, many women will choose the first option. Whether it is their true nature, or the inexperience of youth, or whatever cause, many will take that path. Enough that you will end up with a large number of women outside the marriage pool. And far more men inside the pool who now have no marriage partner available.

Let me explain what I meant. If you give women the choice of marriage where they must be a virgin, or no marriage and they can pursue sex to their heart’s desire, a large percentage of women will choose to pursue “free” sex. How many? It is tough to say. But I believe that the percentage of women who choose that path will be greater than the percentage of men who choose that path. In part this is because the percent of men who can eschew marriage and still get regular sex is much smaller than the percent of women who are attractive to those men.

While no one can agree on a single number, a rough estimate that is widely accepted is that about 20% of men are found to be attractive to women. So let us take a sample of 200 youths, 100 men and 100 women. About 20 of the men are considered attractive to the women by virtue of their LAMPS factors. Some are better looking, some are more athletic, some might have inherited money or come from a respectable family, and a few just have a boatload of charisma. Now, depending on who you ask, between 40 to 60% of the women will be considered attractive (or at least, not unattractive). That means that 40 to 60 women will be attractive (or at least, not ugly). For the sake of this hypothetical, lets assume that half of each attractive cohort decides to forgo marriage, and that we split the attractive female cohort to the right side of the curve, or 50 women. That leaves us with 10 men and 25 women who eschew marriage. They have all the sex they want, and everyone else waits for marriage. Unfortunately, that leaves us with 90 men who want to marry, and only 75 women (of course, the 10 men enjoying the 25 women on the carousel could always decide to marry later, making things even worse). Fifteen men cannot marry because there aren’t enough eligible women. Given that skilled “players” can spin several plates at once (that is, to maintain a harem of sorts), a small number of men can claim a much larger number of women. Thus, there will still be men who cannot marry because there aren’t sufficient marriageable women for them.

More troublesome though, is whether women even want to marry. Dalrock has been exposing for years now how the ideal female sexual strategy is not life-time monogamy (marriage), but instead serial monogamy. If we give women the choice between marriage as virgins or a single life with the possibility of unlimited sexual access to alpha males, we run the risk of women choosing en masse to follow their natural sexual strategy. In the past women were very much supportive of marriage because it was highly beneficial to women and the costs of avoiding marriage were great. Remember, women have three primary impulses which drive their behavior:

1) Have sex with the most attractive man possible (in order to have his children)  [What Deti refers to as the Female Prime Directive]

2) Secure Provision

3) Secure Protection

Those three impulses are still with us, but our civilization is very different from what it was, say, two centuries ago. Back then, in order to secure both protection and provision, women had to get married. A woman’s husband would be the source of those things. She did her best to satisfy the first impulse by marrying the best man she could. Contrast this with today. Nowadays, the State provides Protection to women, and the cost is paid by the taxpayers, not by an immediate figure in her life. In fact, in many places because of gun controls laws, men are much less able to protect their wives and children then they were even a hundred years ago. Furthermore, Provision is much easier to acquire in the present age then in the past, when a woman might have been able to support herself, but would have trouble supporting children. Thanks to changes in labor laws and the labor market, in many cases women don’t need the help of a man to support themselves and children. And even if they can’t do it all by themselves, the State is always willing to lend a hand.

With both the third and second impulses satisfied without the need of a man (husband), that leaves women with just their first impulse. Unless a woman is attractive enough to snag one of the top-tier, high-value, attractive men for herself in marriage, then marriage means that she will be stuck with an unattractive man for her whole life. But why would she want that? She doesn’t need him to protect her, or to provide for her, after all. Marriage is mostly a status marker these days, a valuable one, but still just a status marker. All of which means that for many women, they may not feel compelled to seek marriage. Instead, they will ride the carousel with whatever attractive men decide to take part in it. More is needed than just making marriage for the chaste.

What will it take?

Sunshinemary’s idea is a good start, but I think more is needed to really end the carousel, or at least, to cut down on the number of women riding it. So what are some potential ways to stop the music, and restore balance to the SMP/MMP? Here are a few:

1) Convince men to only marry chaste women. Sunshinemary’s original idea is still helpful, as it will motivate those women for whom marriage is a status marker.

2) Reduce or eliminate the massive amount of state support to unmarried women with children. Single mothers receive a lot of government support, and since the taxpayers ultimately support this, it means that single mothers are able to draw provision from multiple men at once, not just a single man. If this support were to be curtailed, there would be some initial hardships, but women would be forced to adjust their behavior accordingly.

3) Encourage early marriage. The truth is that Christians who don’t promote young marriage don’t actually care about chastity. The longer that women are single adults, the greater the chances of them becoming sexually active and joining the carousel.

4) Slut Shame. That is right, we need to start ostracizing women who take part in that culture once again. While it may seem cruel, in the long run it will be beneficial to women by discouraging them from taking part in a lifestyle that trashes their ability to bond with a future husband.  While the idea of “the ends justify the means” is oftentimes used for ill purpose, the consequences of the carousel are grave enough that such tactics are important.

5) Restore Masculinity to its proper place. Women despise weakness in men. Unfortunately, our society has done its best to emasculate men. This is especially prevalent among Christians. If we want women to consider marrying, especially marrying young, we need to stop making men unattractive to women.

Conclusion

The five steps mentioned above are just a few of the steps we can take to fight against the carousel and our depraved culture. They will not be easy steps to take; feminists and their White Knight supporters are sure to actively resist. However, I am not one to just sit by and watch the world collapse all around us. On the Day of Judgment, I want to be able to stand before the LORD and tell Him that I did my best, that I tried my hardest, and that I put all of my talents to good use.

If anyone else has any additional ideas on how we can turn around the culture and stop the music for good, feel free to leave them below in the comments. I will add them to this post as time permits.

Another Random Update

A quick update here on this blog and future projects.

Blogroll Updates

I have updated my blogroll, adding two new blogs:

Wintery Knight, who runs a very intellectual Christian blog which addressed Red Pill issues,  has been added to the Red Pill Blog section.

I have also added the lovely Naomi of Embrace Your Femininity to the Christian blogs section of my blogroll. As the title of her blog suggests, she writes to encourage women to embrace their feminine nature in order to live happy and fulfilling lives.

Looking for the One

I solicited some help from a few other bloggers to help with my Looking for The One series. I asked them for their thoughts on what someone should do to prepare for marriage, I hope to have them posted in the next few weeks. Also, I added the Looking for The One main-page to my Top Posts section. In the meantime, I intend to my own thoughts on that particular aspect of Looking for The One, as well as anything else that comes to mind.

Future Posts

I have a few ideas for future posts that should be showing up over the next week.

I intend to respond to Rollo’s post on how Men Need Sex, which he wrote in response to my All Alone in the Dark post.

I’ve been thinking on what exactly is necessary in order to shut down the Carousel lifestyle here in the west, and will make a post suggesting some ideas, and soliciting for more. Given how devastating it has proven for women and men, I think this should be a priority of the manosphere.

Also, I am thinking of writing a long post or a series of shorter ones concerning the problems within the Church (irrespective of denomination) right now and how the New Testament stories on the formation of the early Church could prove invaluable for fixing those problems.

Teaming Up

I wanted to expand a bit on a point that I made with my last post. After explaining that women have a ONE OF US mentality which is commonly known as “Team Woman”, I stated that:

Look at how quickly these Christian women were willing to set aside their ethics and their faith to help another woman. It should be obvious to everyone by now why Paul explained that women had no place in Church leadership. That command is necessary because women will set aside wisdom, reason and faith to help ONE OF US.

One thing I should clear up is that women are not excluded in participating in the Church and church ministries. Phoebe was a deacon(ess) in the early church, and was commended for her works by Paul. But a deacon in the early church was not a leader, but rather a servant or minister for the leaders or elders of the church. The first seven deacons, among them Stephen, the first Christian martyr, were called to minister food to the hungry in order that the leaders of the church could focus on prayer and worship. But that role of leading prayer and worship was not to be filled by women:

⁸ I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; ⁹ also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, ¹⁰ but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. ¹¹ Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. ¹² I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man;she is to keep silent. ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve; ¹⁴ and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. ¹⁵ Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

Here we see the Curse of Eve emerge once again. Paul explains that the reason women are not hold authority over men in the Church relates to deception, and that may well be true. But I think it goes deeper. It is my belief that women have a default setting to “Team Woman.” For an excellent example of this, see here. Something that has been emerging in this sphere of of the internet has been the idea of “Team Her Man.” This involves a woman  altering her mindset so that instead of subconsciously favoring all woman, she instead subconsciously favors her man (ideally her husband). My suspicion is that “Team Her Man” is also a possible setting for a woman who is attracted to a man and respects him. But I think that those are the only settings for women. Which means that they are either “Team Woman” or “Team Her Man.”

It isn’t necessarily a bad thing that they have these “settings.” A woman who favors Team Her Man is an advocate for her man, and fulfilling her role as helpmate to her husband. Even women favoring Team Woman can be advocates for the cause of women, and make sure that male leadership doesn’t forget the women of the Church.

What is a problem in the setting of the Church is if a woman were to be given power and authority over men. If that were to happen she would either sub-consciously favor women (Team Woman) or she would favor her man (Team Her Man) when she exercised her authority. This will only serve to divide the Church, by either promoting women at the expense of men (which is happening now in Churchianity), or by favoring the husbands of women with power. Now, I think that this inclination by women is not borne of evil intent. As I indicated before, its sub-conscious. Women do it without thinking.  They cannot maintain an attitude of favoring the whole community of believers for long before they start favoring one of those teams.  My previous post highlighted an excellent example of Christian women sub-consciously favoring another woman, at the expense of unknown, nameless men. Once they were confronted with their wrongdoing, they apologized and repented. But only after they were confronted with their actions.

In the setting of the Church, it doesn’t make sense, nor is it efficient or wise, for women to be given authority over men when it would be necessary for men to constantly scrutinize their decision to ensure they don’t favor women at the expense of men, or favor her man. Women can serve the Church. But they can’t be trusted with power over men, as they will invariably begin to wield it for their team. It is this natural tendency of women which makes them unsuited to hold authority in the Church.

When Push Comes to Shove

It is my belief that “Feminism” is nothing more than a massive, society-wide fitness test that has spiraled out of control and now threatens to bring civilization down around us.

What is a Fitness Test? It is when a woman pushes against a man to try and see if he will respond in a dominant or commanding manner. It involves a woman making unreasonable or unrealistic demands of a man and expecting that he will cave to her whims. She is testing his masculinity, trying to determine just how much Masculine Power he really has. What makes a Fitness Test truly maddening is that the woman unconsciously wants to fail. She wants the man to push back, or to swat aside her demand. She wants him to succeed, even though she doesn’t realize it. While it may bother her at first, when a man passes the test by refusing to cave into her demands, she will ultimately be happier as a result.

Unfortunately, this behavior has jumped from being something individual women do to something which is practiced on a massive scale. Women push and push and push. They push for more power over men everywhere.

They push for more power over men in universities. Sadly, all too many men are more than willingly to cave in and fail the tests.

They push for more power over men in science fiction and fantasy.

They push for more power by preventing men from enjoying all-male spaces or activities.

They push for more power inside the Church.

 

Well, now people (men and women alike) are starting to push back. This threatens the imperative, naturally. And so the push becomes a shove. Expect to see more visceral responses in the future against anyone who tries to expose what is going on. Women will be loathe to give up their precious feminism, and White Knights will be eager as always to step in and fight on their behalf. Things are going to get ugly.

Today is Father’s Day… and you know what that means…

… it means “Man Up” sermons from “Churchian” pastors, who rather than use the day to thank fathers for their tireless, work instead use it to further bludgeon men with responsibilities that come without rights. Fortunately, not all churches practice this abhorrent behavior. This post is a place for commentators to tell us their horror stories from today. Or for them to talk about how their pastor or priest gave a positive message and didn’t actively undermine men and fathers on a day that is supposedly set aside for them.

Have at thee!

 

Update 1: While the fact that it was Father’s Day did merit some mention, it was not the focal point of today’s homily. In fact, besides mentioning it at the end and beginning of the service, Father’s Day was brought up only once, in the context of the love of a father being irreplaceable. Since the actual homily was a good one, I have to approve. The Church shouldn’t address the matter of being a mother or a father because the rest of society decided that “today is the day.” Instead, it should be scripture which drives when and how the message is delivered.

Sins of Omission- Part 1

As I indicated in my last post, I believe that Christian disunity is a huge enabler of the “Churchian” cancer which is infecting most Christian sects. As I explained:

“Churchianity” is not merely some modern contrivance that resulted from the emergence of feminism. Instead, Churchianity is a natural and logical outgrowth of Christianity when there is no longer a single scriptural authority for the Church.

However, my admonition against Christian disunity was not meant to be a denominational attack. Far from it. As I said earlier, nearly all, if not all, Christian sects in the West have fallen under the spell of Feminism, whether they realize it or not. I happen to be a Catholic, but the Catholic Church, whether Latin or Eastern Rite, has not escaped the pull of feminism. Since I don’t believe that those who live in glass houses should throw stones, I decided to read up on official Catholic teaching with regards to marriage, especially sex inside marriage and the role of the husband and wife. That official teaching is found within the Catechism of the Catholic Church, found here. The section for marriage is somewhat lengthy, and the introduction can be found here.

So what did I find? To the best of my abilities I couldn’t find any direct reference to the role of sex in the marriage. Only a few oblique references to consummation effecting the marriage, and the importance of fertility to marriage. A lot of time was spent covering consent, and the indissolubility of marriage, and the role of God in the sacrament of marriage. But nothing concerning sex. Certainly no mention of 1 Corinthians 7.

Ok, so nothing about sex… but what about the roles of men and women in marriage? Well, Genesis and the concept of a helpmate does warrant a mention.  That’s something. What about Ephesians 5, does that show up anywhere? Why yes it does. But what actually makes it into the document? This:

This is what the Apostle Paul makes clear when he says: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her,” adding at once: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.

Something seems a little off, doesn’t it? Oh wait, that’s because there are huge chunks of scripture missing here. Here is the full language of Ephesians 5, beginning with Eph 5:22 and ending with 5:33:

²² Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷ so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. ³³ Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

I have bolded everything that was not included in the abridged version. Notice what got left out of the Catechism? That’s right, everything which referenced how wives were supposed to act in marriage. Interestingly enough, the command for men to love their wives as Christ loved the church still found it’s way in though. Well, maybe they included that rather important information in the conclusion or brief summary at the bottom…:

1659    St. Paul said: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church…. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:25, 32).
1660    The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. By its very nature it is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament (cf. CIC, can. 1055 § 1; cf. GS 48 § 1).
1661    The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1799).
1662    Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love.
1663    Since marriage establishes the couple in a public state of life in the Church, it is fitting that its celebration be public, in the framework of a liturgical celebration, before the priest (or a witness authorized by the Church), the witnesses, and the assembly of the faithful.
1664    Unity, indissolubility, and openness to fertility are essential to marriage. Polygamy is incompatible with the unity of marriage; divorce separates what God has joined together; the refusal of fertility turns married life away from its “supreme gift,” the child (GS 50 §1).
1665    The remarriage of persons divorced from a living, lawful spouse contravenes the plan and law of God as taught by Christ. They are not separated from the Church, but they cannot receive Eucharistic communion. They will lead Christian lives especially by educating their children in the faith.
1666    The Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason the family home is rightly called “the domestic church,” a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity.

Nope, not there either. But the command for husbands to love their wives showed up again.

So how is it that the command for men to love their wives appears twice, but the command for women to be subject to their husbands, or to respect their husbands, can’t even make a single appearance? The catechism is a lengthy summary of critical beliefs of the Church. There was plenty of room for a few more lines concerning the duties of wives within marriage. What I think is happening here is that the Catholic Church is acting just like the pastor from Church B in my previous post:

[The pastor of Church B] comes to understand that if the subject of Ephesians 5 and wifely submission, or something like it, comes up in church he will be forced to either support the biblical command and risk losing membership, or toss out parts of scripture in order to keep his pews and coffers full. Not wanting to lose members, but also not wanting to jettison scripture, he decides to play the role of King Solomon and split the baby by simply ignoring the parts of scripture which his members oppose.

The Catholic Church appears to have decided to follow this path, by pretending that certain parts of scripture don’t exist. There is no other logical explanation for the  disparity in the Catechism concerning the duties of the spouses in marriage. This is very disheartening. In many respects it had appeared to me that the Catholic Church had done a better job than other denominations of resisting feminist pressure. That belief was clearly mistaken. Now I will have to devote some more effort in the future to investigating how far the feminist rot has infected the Church.

Of course, the Catholic Church has more teachings than what shows up in the Catechism. The US Conference of Bishops has created an initiative called For Your Marriage, which might contain a more detailed explanation of Church doctrine when it comes to marriage. In part 2 of this series, likely out Thursday, I will review this website and see if it provides a clearer picture of how the Church addresses some of the big issues inside marriage.

 

Update: It occurred to me that I might be expecting more of the Catechism than I should, so I decided to compare this latest version with older versions. I started with the 1884 US Catechism, known as the Baltimore Catechism (The link goes to the expanded version). Interestingly enough, it also didn’t cover sex or the roles of husband and wife in marriage. Given the time it was written, before First Wave (Modern) Feminism, that was somewhat reassuring.  Perhaps I was simply expecting too much. Then I found the 1941 Revised Edition of the Baltimore Catechism. The section on marriage can be found here. It is set up in a question and answer format, and one of the questions was this: What are the chief duties of husband and wife in the married state? The answer:

The chief duties of husband and wife in the married state are to be faithful to each other, and to provide in every way for the welfare of the children God may give them.

Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is becoming in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter towards them. (Colossians 3:18-19)

So the official answer is simplistic,  but then it cites Colossians for support. And here at last we get both sides of the story… the commands for both husbands and wives are mentioned. The new Catechism dates from 1992, which means that in the space of fifty years the leaders of the Catholic Church decided that mentioning the duties of wives in the state of matrimony in the official teaching of the Church didn’t warrant mentioning.