A Remedy Against Liberalism in the Home
Recalling a timely sermon from Fr. Christian Ingham on the poison of liberalism in the home and its effects, after which he proposes a most-fitting antidote: devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
“So this is the order for the family which God has established. And the inversion of this order which we largely see today is something truly satanic… Where God has set the husband over the wife, women seek to manipulate and rule their husbands. And they have no peace. They have no peace because peace is the tranquility of order. And when she acts in this way, she is out of order with her husband and with God.” - Fr. Christian Ingham
Perversion of Order in the Modern Family
The breakdown of order in the modern home, not excepting Catholics, is one of the most visible effects of the anti-Christian conspiracy. A conspiracy largely advanced by Liberalism. Women run most households, usurping the place of its chief, while the husband is relegated to second-in-command. Quoting Aristotle, Saint Thomas affirmed: the dominion of women is the death of a family, as tyrants of a commonwealth.1
Today, some are brave enough to state this truth plainly. More necessary — and more daring, we wager — is to state its true cause: weak and wicked men. Men, possessed of greater intelligence, strength and natural authority, have the greater blame for this condition, among other modern evils. Unlike in times past, it is the husband who fears his wife in practice, while she ensures her “authority over him” is duly reverenced. This is the exact opposite of Christian order, which Saint Chrysostom explains:
However not for the husband’s sake alone it is thus said, but for the wife’s sake also, that he cherish her as his own flesh, as Christ also the Church, and, that the wife fear her husband. He is no longer setting down the duties of love only, but what? That she fear her husband. The wife is a second authority; let not her then demand equality, for she is under the head; nor let him despise her as being in subjection, for she is the body; and if the head despise the body, it will itself also perish. But let him bring in love on his part as a counterpoise to obedience on her part (emphasis added).2
Emphasizing that husbands must love their wives in imitation of Our Lord’s perfect love for His Church, the golden-tongued doctor of the Church continues:
And yet how can there ever be love, one may say, where there is fear? It will exist there, I say, preeminently. For she that fears and reverences, loves also; and she that loves, fears and reverences him as being the head, and loves him as being a member, since the head itself is a member of the body at large. Hence he places the one in subjection, and the other in authority, that there may be peace; for where there is equal authority there can never be peace; neither where a house is a democracy, nor where all are rulers; but the ruling power must of necessity be one (emphasis added).3
A beautiful picture has emerged: the sublimity of Christian order. A wife is not her husband’s equal,4 but rather is a submissive helpmate5 working to support the mission of her head. The husband, while occupying the role of head, naturally bears a greater responsibility and must love his wife for her sake and, most importantly, for the sake of God. The husband must not despise the “bone of his bones” and “flesh of his flesh”.6
The Siren Call of Servant Leadership
Admitting the authority of the husband over his wife and children in theory, it is often denied to him in practice under the guise of “servant leadership”. A notion which admits of an orthodox understanding,7 but all too often devolves into a purely verbal confession of authority emptied of its prerogatives. Prerogatives that include the right to obedience from the wife and children, along with the right to judge, punish and grant mercy.
All authority exists to secure the common good. More specifically, “[M]oral authority… is a relation according to which one person directs, and another (or others) is directed to an end; and it may be formally defined: the relation between one person as ruler and another person as subject.”8 In this context, the end would be the happiness and supernatural good of the family, distinct from the private good of the Father.
But the modern idea of “servant-leaders” or “service-leadership” is distorted, seeking to subordinate the common good of the family — of which the father has the ultimate right to procure — to one of its individual members, often the mother. Again, this is a practical denial of the prerogatives of the father. Further, it amounts to forbidding the Father to select the good means by which to ensure the happiness of his family.
When we hear the term “servant leader”, we should be reminded of the mission of the leader — who is the visible sign of authority — to direct others to a common end. What could be worse than a leader who refuses to act and speak like one? How could a subject respect him?
The Sermon from Father Ingham
We now turn to a timely sermon from Father Christian Ingham on “Liberalism in the Home”, which bears directly on our remarks above. For background, Father Ingham is a Catholic priest belonging to the Roman Catholic Institute founded in 1993 by Bishop Donald Sanborn.
In this skillful sermon, Father Ingham presents truths — importantly without equivocation — drawn from the Arcanum of Pope Leo XIII and the Casti Connubi of Pope Pius XII, both concerned with Christian marriage. First tracing modern disorder to the fall of man, he then explains the prerogatives of the husband as head of the Christian home and the dignity of his wife as a regal queen. Unlike nearly all other modern treatments of the subject, wives are here enjoined to obedience and reminded to remain submissive to their husbands. Particular attention is also drawn to the effect that the conduct of the mother — in her relation to her husband — has upon their children.
With his kind permission, we now present the transcript of the sermon, to which we have added only two things: 1) headers to organize the main ideas, and 2) links and references to further enrich the text.
Sermon on Our Lady as a Remedy for Liberalism
Being that we are still within the octave of the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, and that this octave concludes with the Feast of the Immaculate Heart, I would like to speak today again about Our Lady and in particular how she is a remedy for one of the greatest evils that we face today, which is liberalism — and in particular, liberalism in the home.
The Fundamental Principle of Liberalism
The most fundamental principle of liberalism is unrestrained freedom: unrestrained freedom of thought, religion, conscience, speech, press, and politics. The liberal would say, “It is contrary to my natural and inalienable right and liberty and dignity to subject myself to any authority which is not myself.”
And this is contrary to the very nature of the creature. The creature is dependent on God and therefore must be obedient to God and to those to whom God has given authority.
The Fall of Our First Parents
On Friday, I mentioned the fall of our first parents. In the garden, God provided a paradise of pleasure for man. We read, “And the Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure to dress it and to keep it. And he commanded him, saying, ‘Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat.’”
So man was free. He was free to enjoy the good things which God had given him. But this freedom was not unrestrained. “Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what days soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.”
So God imposed this restriction on man’s freedom, and he did this as a test. It’s as if God had said to Adam:
“All of the fruits in the garden, all of these animals, everything I have given to you, Adam. Use them as you will, govern them as you will. But I am the Lord your God, and you were created to love me, and you show this love by obedience. Your obedience to me does not take away your freedom. It perfects your freedom because your will was created to choose the good. And all of these fruits and creatures which I have given to you are only particular and limited goods, whereas I am the highest and the infinite good. So obey me in this, Adam. And if you do, you will have proven that you love me above all things. And you will be confirmed in grace, and you will merit the place in heaven which I have prepared for you.”
Lucifer’s Rebellion and the Temptation of Eve
A test like this was also given to Lucifer, and his response to this test was non serviam— “I will not serve. I will not be subject to an authority outside of myself.”
And he tempted Eve with this same non serviam: “If you eat this fruit, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil. You will be as gods. You will not have to obey a moral law outside of yourself. You will create your own moral law. You will decide what’s right and wrong. You will be unrestrained.”
And Eve followed these allurements. And that’s when the will of the creature was broken off from the will of the Creator in disobedience. It has a terrible effect.
The Consequences of Rebellion
We see this in Genesis: when one rebels against a legitimate power and authority above him, then one suffers from something beneath him. Adam and Eve, they turn their souls from obedience to the Creator — and what happens? Their own bodies turned against their souls. They begin to suffer rebellion from their passions.
Before they fell, Adam and Eve were both naked and were not ashamed. We read this in Genesis. They were not ashamed because they had perfect control over their concupiscence by a special gift of God. After they turned from God, they lost this gift and their passions turned on them, and they began to suffer from temptations to lust.
We read that after they disobeyed, they perceived themselves to be naked and they sewed together fig leaves to cover themselves up. For the first time, they began to experience a disorder in themselves, a lack of control over their bodies and a rebellion of the flesh. And they tried to fix these temptations by covering themselves up.
Whereas before they were in a state of peace — peace of soul, peace of body — now turmoil erupts inside of them because of their disobedience, and they have to do violence to themselves. “I feel a law in my members fighting against the law in my mind,” St. Paul says, speaking of this rebellion of the flesh.
The Pattern of Rebellion in All Orders
And we see this verified in all orders:
When governments rebel against the authority of the Church, the citizens are corrupted.
When Martin Luther rebelled against the authority of the Pope, his own followers very quickly rebelled against him.
When the mother rebels against the authority of the father, then the children rebel against both parents.
And when the children are rebellious, they become impure because they’re rebellious. The rebellious little souls become enslaved to rebellious passions.
The Mother’s Particular Influence
And I mentioned the example of the mother in particular. The father, he must also practice obedience. Fatherhood does not dispense from this. He must obey the natural law and the divine law, the laws of the Church, civil laws, and the will of God manifested by his duties of state.
But his submission or non-submission to these things is a little more abstract and is difficult for children to see because he’s in the position of authority in the home. He’s in the position of being obeyed. So it’s difficult to see how the father himself obeys.
But kids see a concrete, up-close example every day of submission or non-submission in the relation of the mother to the father. And so it’s the mother’s influence that has a particular power to corrupt or correct the wills of her children.
The True, Catholic Order of the Family
Pope Pius XI gives the true order of the family in the encyclical Casti Connubii (no. 26) when he says:
“This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children and the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: ‘Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.’”
And he goes on to explain that this subjection does not mean that the wife has to obey her husband’s every request if they are not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to the wife.
So obviously if the husband commands the wife to do something sinful, she cannot obey him in this. The Apostle said, “We must obey God rather than men.” Or if the husband commands her to do something degrading, like eat her meals off the floor, she doesn’t have to obey him in this because this is insane.
But the tendency, especially in this day and age, is for women to rebel and not submit to their husbands when in fact they should.
Pope Pius XI goes on (no 27): “If the man is the head, the woman is the heart. And as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.”
So in the family, the man is the head and the woman is the heart. This is the order established by God. And what God hath joined, let no man tear asunder.
And then he quotes Pope Leo XIII, who said (Arcanum, no. 11): “Because she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, let her be subject and obedient to the man, not as a servant, but as a companion, so that nothing be lacking of honor or of dignity in the obedience which she pays.”
Obedience does not degrade a person.
The Inversion of God’s Order
So this is the order for the family which God has established. And the inversion of this order which we largely see today is something truly satanic.
Fatherly virtues are considered by the world to be vices — “toxic masculinity”. And men have become weak, feminine, and submissive. And very often they submit to the will of their wives at the price of the obedience which they owe to the will of God, which is exactly what Adam did.
And feminism has destroyed the most beautiful virtues of a woman, those which we see exemplified most in Our Lady: humility, modesty, obedience. And instead it has made women domineering.
Where God has set the husband over the wife, women seek to manipulate and rule their husbands. And they have no peace. They have no peace because peace is the tranquility of order. And when she acts in this way, she is out of order with her husband and with God.
So just as Adam and Eve brought ruin upon themselves and upon their children by their disobedience, so also husbands and wives bring ruin upon themselves and their children when the order of the family is inverted.
And we particularly have to watch out for this nowadays because it’s almost the norm in the world. It is the norm in the world. And so we become desensitized to it.
Our Antidote: The Immaculate Heart of Mary
Our antidote to this satanic poison is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and this for two reasons.
1. She Is the Example of Perfect Obedience
Our Lord gives us the most perfect example of obedience. But Our Lady is a pure creature, and so in that sense, she’s closer to us. In that sense, Our Lord is a divine person — He’s both God and man — whereas Our Lady, she is a pure creature. So she gives us a particular example of the obedience of a pure creature to the Creator.
We saw that Satan’s motto is non serviam. Our Lady expressed the interior of her soul, her fundamental attitude towards God when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
And in the Psalms, we see Our Lord’s fundamental attitude of soul — the relation of His human soul towards God — in the Psalms when it says, “Behold, I come to do thy will, O God.”
Look at the similarity between those two expressions.
2. She Forms the Virtue of Obedience in Our Souls
Because as I said on Friday, she is our spiritual mother and the Mediatrix of all graces.
St. Augustine says that all of the predestinate, while they are in this world, are in a certain sense hidden in the womb of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, where they are guarded, nourished, brought up and made to grow by that good mother in order to be conformed to the image of her Son.
And the reason for this is very simple. The Holy Ghost uses Mary to bring forth both the head and the members. So Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ and His Mystical Body — the totus Christus in the words of St. Augustine.
So she is the model of obedience and she’s the channel through which we receive graces of obedience.
Praying the Rosary
And we can avail ourselves of both of these aspects of Our Lady especially by praying her Rosary.
Saints and spiritual writers tell us that it’s not so much by reading about virtues in the abstract that we learn how to practice them, although this can be helpful. Rather, it is by seeing them practiced in a person.
And in the fifteen decades, we find the example of every virtue in the lives of Our Lord, Our Lady, and St. Joseph. We find the order of the home perfectly observed in the hidden life of the Holy Family.
So everything Pope Pius XI said about the order of the family is shown in the Joyful Mysteries, where Our Lord and Our Lady are submitted to St. Joseph.
And everything he said about husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the Church is shown in the Sorrowful Mysteries, where Christ sacrificed Himself for His Church.
And in the Glorious Mysteries, fathers and mothers will be reminded that they are raising children to populate the Kingdom of Heaven, and that they are not alone in this struggle since they are assisted by our Mother and Mediatrix of all graces, and that your own children are especially her children.
God bless you — in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
END.
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St. Thomas, Commentary on 1 Tim., ch. 2, lec. 3.
St. Chrysostom, Commentary on Eph. V, ver. 33.
Ibid.
St. Thomas, Ibid.
In regard to the first he mentions three things that are suitable to women, namely, silence, discipline and subjection. These three things proceed from one source, namely, their lack of reason. So he imposes silence on them, when he says: let the woman learn in silence: if any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man (Jas 3:2); let women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the Lord says (1 Cor 14:34). For the words of a woman are inflammatory: her conversation burns as fire (Sir 9:11).
Second, that they learn, because that is the proper function of one who is weak in intellect: if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home (1 Cor 14:35). However, it is given to men that they teach.
Third, he recommends subjection, because it is natural for the soul to rule the body, and reason the lower powers. Therefore, as the Philosopher says, whenever any two things are related as the soul is to the body, and reason to sensuality, it is natural for the one with the greater amount of reason to rule and give orders, and for the other to be subject, since it is lacking in reason: he shall have dominion over you (Gen 3:16).
Gen. III, 18.
Gen. III, 23.
Matt. XX, 26-28.
But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Rev. Henri Grenier, Moral Philosophy, (1949), p. 287.