Family Man Family Leader

The word 'family' does not appear in either Hebrew or Greek, instead the word 'family' appears in the bible as 'household '. The biblical household comprised family members including grandparents , indeed the grandparents comprised the head of the pyramid ,aunts , uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters alongside parents. The immediate family lived in the family house and made it a home, the extended family lived in close proximity thereby constituting a familial homeland .
Adoption was a means of absorbing non blood kin into the sanctuary of the tribe. It was the eldest male member who decided, as he was the 'Father', and his headship extended to inheriting and disinheriting . Opening and closing the door to nationhood .
The Man as head is a really difficult concept for us today . Even within traditional Catholic circles there is a tension on this issue. Could God really have meant that to be the case today?
First, if you are a non christian , forget it , you are never going to understand this one.
If you are a christian than you are going to have to listen to the evidence.
1Corinthians 11;3
'I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ , and the head of every woman is man , and the head of Christ is God'.
1 Corinthians 7;11
'for a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and the glory of God; but woman is the glory of man . for man is not from woman , but woman from man'.
1 Tim 11-13
Let a woman learn in silence with all submission . and I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over man, but to be in silence.
Tough words for those who only love selectively quoting easy on the ears passages of scripture . Did St Paul mean it , or were those quotes only relevant because the tradition of the day demanded it.? No contest he meant it all right .
He was not adverse to rocking the foundations of traditional institutions and challanging cultural norms of the day, circumcision for one, the traditions of the pharasees for another. Now you can say i dont agree with St Paul and walk away but you cannot say that is not what he meant, and still accept the word of God.
Recent generations of men have retreated from their calling to be leaders of their families . Men have abandoned the truly formative institutions of civilisation . The home stands empty and abandoned for most of the day while the physical, moral and spiritual education of their children is given into the hands of those who actually despise Christ and all he stands for. The exodus of Fathers from the centre of the home to the margins of the workplace has had a severe impact on his influence within the family. So often a work weary father rather than beginning his second shift of 'family man' when he returns through his front door, seeks time out in rest, reward and reccuperation . His only period of interaction or influence with the other family members seems to be reduced to the short time between the tv going off, food being served and the tv going on again . Basically Dad has become stranger, his focus on material prosperity has been bought at the cost of family disintegration.
The only real time he is challanged to act is when pushed to the limit this, action is usually an hysterical expletive filled rant after which he is prone to go into a deep sulk . Family man has become re-actionary rather than pro-actionary. His bottom line is keeping everyone happy even if that is at the cost of right and wrong. 'As long as they are happy then I'm happy', is his catchword . In fact those words become the families constitution . Man has lost not only conviction in himself but the courage needed to ennact those connvictions . popularity becomes his prime concern and to keep that popularity he buys his audience with unlimited freedoms. His leadership will follow in any direction it is lead .
St Paul has this advice for women , hard words for soft ears but again making no dilution, the same yesterday , today and tommorrow.
Titus2;3-5
The aged women , in like manner , in holy attire , not false accusers, not given to much wine, teaching well;
That they may teach the young women to be wise , to love their husbands , to love their children,
To be discreet , chaste, sober, having a care of the house , gentle obedient to their husbands; that the word of god be not blasphemed.
Mothers today so often neglect their home centered role for the empty fullfillment of the workplace while warehousing their children in daycare. Parents send their children to schools where God is outlawed and they allow them the near total freedom to absorb the twisted messages of trashy movies and mindless music. The computer and the tv have become the incubator for so many mums and Dads whose only wish is the passivity of their sons and daughters. anything will suffice to do that job as long as it enables them to spend their lives with the minimum of interruption or agrivation . After years of training in the ways of rebellion through Godless schooling , negative peer association and debauched entertainment , christian parents are somehow suprised when their children rebel and forsake the God of their fathers.
Since the advent of women in the workplace during the first and the second world wars society has become increasingly feminised . This feminising process has reached a point where masculine traits are either hidden away in an attempt to win female popularity, exagerrated in a violent and abusive parody of true masculinity or treated as a psychological condition. The true male role model of an accessable and loving self-sacrificing real family man has given way to a grotesque imitation . The arrogant self obsessed muscleman with the gelled hair and tan who a is also in touch with his gentler femine side and aware of gay/bisexual gender choices is the role model for todays generation of lost boys. It is so sad to see that the best husband material ignored as 'boring', while the dangermen who offer both mystery and excitement are always found to be the most sought after. No wonder boys are desperate to adopt this false image of manliness, because it brings with it the seeming rewards of female adulation.
[As an aside I had to smile at Cathals recent admission to being a night time night club crawler, albeit with no doubt honourable intentions. My experience of near fifteen years of plummeting the very real depths of this nightmare form of social madness serves only to convince me that a young lady of any worth should not be there in the first place and second, if she were she would never make herself known to anyone there, especially strangers with a roving eye propping up the bar. Unbelievably the night club has become the only way that most contemporary young human beings feel able to conduct the form of social intercourse that might eventually go on to lead to a potential marriage or as it is groaningly known today civil partnership . It goes something like this. Take two young self obsessed people , feed them constant moral subjectivity and impurity, get them both drunk, high on drugs, or both , dress her in the most sexually revealing apparell that would once have shamed any self respecting prostitute, lower them both into a scene straight out of Dante's Inferno complete with mind blowing volume levels of hypno- rythmic sensual music filled with foul lyrics and sexual overtones, squeeze them together , dim the lights , stand back and see what happens. Now thats fine and dandy in todays twisted world view , indeed it is increasingly becoming the norm, but if one were to suggest that perhaps the re-examination of the traditional matchmaking cultural practices such as chaperoning , courtship, family involvement and suitor introduction might be in order you can imagine the immoral outrage that would elicit . Enough on that one I think, back to the real subject of this article.]
Primary education is in near complete feminine control with men making up only 12% of the teaching staff. Incredibly very many boys go through their primary formative years both at home and within the school system without encountering or experiencing the vital inluence any male role models . Today we live in a period of the most profound gender identity crisis . It is a crisis that has never been experienced before. All we can do is gawk helplessly at the carnage of violence, despair, unhappiness, uncertainty and unfullfillment that are the true rewards of revolutionary emancipation .
The church like the family is certainly not immune to these symptoms, after all since Vatican II it has readilly embraced so many of the errors and modernist feminist philosophies that so bedevil the mission of the traditional and eternal family instituted by God. The crisis of Fatherhood extends to priest, bishop and as high as the chair of Peter, new man, new religion, new God . The new priesthood is that of the facilitator not the teacher, of those led rather than those who lead . Suggestions take the place of commandments and the main objective of most homiles these days is to say as much as possible while offending as few as possible. Try be mr nice [whatever that means to you ] and try not to be too hard on yourself . This is not exhortation to the war against the world the flesh and the devil but mere feelgood therapy, it is limpwristed self help designed to limit the effects of freudian angst .
The reason that the family is being attacked with such vitriolic hatred from all sides is simple, the family has not been completely liberated from the authority of man as head. It is the last of the Kingdoms. His headship like that of John the baptist is being asked for on a platter but infuriatingly although nearly empty of contents that head remains on his shoulders.
When a woman marries she is given by one man, her Father into the[ we hope loving] custody of her husband. She passes from his authority to anothers willingly.
She veils herself and reveals herself feely to her spouse, she promises to love, honour and believe it or not usually obey the one who promises to cherish.
This sacramental union and sacred oath taking is not a purely emotional response but is one that is also a choice of the will, they say 'I WILL', not 'While I feel like it'.
If the man has not Christ as his head they are doomed. He will be influenced by his pridefull inclinations , his dominion over her will be destructive, not just for her but for him also. The modern idea that is near all pervasive is that somebody somewhere that you are destined for will be able to supply all your physical, emotional and spiritual needs all of the time, and if they fail to do that then they cannot be the right one for you . This disapointment so often leads to divorce and seperation and to the tragic constant series of doomed searching for 'the right one'. Relationship follows broken relationship until old age wakes you up to the falseness of that proposition, by then it is normally too late and so begins a life of regret and lonliness where even the children that were trampled and ignored by this vain pursuit no longer care to call.
For this reason the care that both future husband and future wife should take in descerning their future spouses cannot be underestimated . This voyage that they are embarking on is for Life, only love of God more than of themselves or each other will sustain them on this incredible journey. God as direction, man as captain, woman as first mate and heaven as destination.
Temptation is always to be avoided and unfortunatly the mixed working environent today has become the cause of so many affairs as well as a hotbed of indiscretion and flirtation . No big surprise here as this time spent in shared activity away from the spouse is usually vastly greater than the time they have with each other .This can lead to an improper informality and closeness that fuelled by a constant diet of junk books, soaps and tv can so often lead to infidelity . The joke used to be about the milkman or the barmaid , today most women work with him and most men work with her!!
Important question; Should a woman obey a husband who is both abusuive, ignorant, dictatorial, tyranical or just plain stupid ?
She should from a fundamentalist position, because she has promised to and scripture and tradition require her to. The fact that the husband is an oaf does not disqualify him from being a husband.
Personally I think that perhaps the requirement to obey is operative only when the man is albeit very often imperfectly, trying to allow God to be his head . If he is sincerely and genuinely listening to her , if he is attempting to understand her point of view and include it in his decision making process then even if in his wifes eyes that decision is wrong than he should have the final say. Any other course and the dual voting rights of each leads to a permanent hung parliament and much mutual resentment . However each has their legitimate social spheres and competencies. The wife as homemaker should be allowed the chance to manage that sphere without constant or needless interference, also if she is a better economist or teacher than she should not only be allowed but encouraged to take this lead. [ I must add that abuses on a physical or moral level are never part of a husbands juristiction and these should always be resisted ]
The crisis of manhood that is having such a profound disorientating effect on our culture must be addressed . The formation of future men has to begin today and must begin in your own household . Like it or not the buck stops with you . What you allow or dont allow, what you say and what you do speaks of who you are . And that witness is going to have a profound affect for both good and ill on your children . The things that speak volumes are sometimes the things that go almost undetected because they have become habitual , the lack of charity , the back-biting tongue, the acceptence of soft porn or free internet accesss or casual swearing .the lack of leadership and initiative or the abject surrender of authority to your wife. All of these are filtering into the minds of your young ones. Computations are constantly taking place. Is dad a hypocrite?, does he say one thing and do another? is he a joke? Do I love him or even like him?
We have all seen how some Fathers disordered over emphasis on authority and dicipline without the the corresponding balances of charity and mercy within the home can so easily lead to a counter syllabus of wholesale rebelliion and rejection, and how equally charity and mercy without the balance of authority and dicipline inevitably leads to the same conclusions only this time they are called Liberty and freedom.
It seems as if both the church and the family are indissolubly connected in this way, both are suffering from the same malady . However the illness is caused by the medicine and the solution for both can be found only in a return to objective order. And that order is a return to Patriarchy ..'Rule of father'.
This war is for the hearts of our children, they live for only a short time under our immediate authority and at some time they will have to live by the spirit and that spirit must move their hearts in conformence with the will of God. The world seeks for their hearts and the fight for the parents is to capture those hearts for Jesus. If we have genuinely won the hearts of our children then both theirs and ours become one, and what child would wish to break our hearts if in doing so they risk breaking their own as well .
Last word to the last words of the old Testament
Malachai 4;5-6
Behold i will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the lord. and he will turn the hearts of the Fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their Fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.