He never said it was a sin. It is a sin on your part to misrepresent the doctors.
St. Alphonus wrote: "
The husband commits sin ... if he maltreats her by beating her, slapping her face, or calling her insulting names. The wife is a companion not a slave. "This is the general rule. This is also what St. John Chrysostom was preaching about. Under certain specific conditions there may be permission to use corporal punishment, but that is the exception to the general rule. As I gave the analogy earlier, it is comparable to having permission to miss Mass on a day of obligation if we are sick. Normally missing Sunday Mass is a sin, just as normally striking one's wife is a sin. I am not misrepresenting the Doctors. You misrepresent them by ignoring the conditions necessary for the exception and treating it like a general rule. You misrepresent them by claiming this exceptional permission constitutes a duty.
It is quite easy to see which of us has accurately represented the position of St. Alphonsus. I quoted the entire passage and you quoted one phrase out of context in a way that changes its meaning. Obviously you are the one who misrepresents.
Here is some important context for people to remember in reading everything from St. John C. St. Thom Aq and St. Alph:
It is that there was before the french revolution at least, a very masculine culture, where men indeed went to excess at times. St. John C had to deal with the remnants of paganism remember.
So the context is that they were trying to warn against the excess of corporal punishment.
But today, we have the total opposite of this. We have traditional Catholic men guilty of defect in regard to their duties as husbands, not just when it comes to corporal punishment but a wide range of other things. So it is prudent to emphasis to the other extreme.
We must remember the context of the other writers before imposing our modern mindset on them. It is a classic mistake of those who have zero understanding of history.
I agree that these Doctors were writing in times in which it was far more socially acceptable for a husband to physically abuse his wife than it is now. While there is a tendency for modern people to be shocked that corporal punishment of wives was ever permitted under any circuмstances, in the historical context, the Catholic teaching was putting strict limits on it and discouraging it. The Church was the protector of women, not the enabler of domestic violence portrayed in anti-Catholic rhetoric.
It does not follow from this, however, that we ought to encourage men to use corporal punishment now that it is no longer socially acceptable. For one thing, this conclusion is based on the false premise that it is a duty of husbands to use it. There is no Catholic teaching that it is a duty. There is permission to do so under specific circuмstances. Permission does not equal duty. Returning to my analogy, it is clearly wrong to say that we have a duty to miss Mass on Sundays merely because there is permission to do it when we are sick.
For another thing, we live in a society in which corporal punishment of wives makes no sense because it is not possible for it to be effective. One of the conditions for using it is that other methods of correcting the wife have been attempted several times and failed. But there is no reason to think that corporal punishment would be effective either.
The proponents keep saying "if the wife is good she will accept it and benefit from it." They expect us to believe that there are women so meek and docile that they will submit to a beating, yet these same women cannot be corrected any other way. This is clearly nonsense. If the wife is good, she does not need corporal punishment and one of the necessary conditions for using it is not met. If the wife is bad, nothing stops her from directing the full force of the law against the husband who has struck her. He loses everything, the marriage is destroyed, and the children are given to the bad woman to be raised without their father. In our historical context, more than any other, is is extremely imprudent to attempt corporal punishment.
It has never been, at any point in history, the duty of a husband to strike his wife. In contrast, one duty that has arisen in this discussion is the duty to report a husband who abuses his wife. He is sinning as well as breaking the law. There is no Catholic teaching against "snitching". The idea that it is bad comes from criminals who do not wish to be caught. Catholic teaching, on the other hand, teaches that concealing the sin of another makes one complicit in the sin. With all the current scandals about cover-ups, how can anyone suggest that it is wrong to report sinful crimes?
I encourage all those who wish to follow Catholic teaching to make clear that you do not tolerate abuse of women under the pretence of corporal punishment. Make clear that it is not acceptable and that you will report it. The proponents in this thread need to understand that they can not get away with it.