As per usual, you're skirting the actual issue. Everyone knows the difference between abuse and punishment. Question is who has the right to discipline whom. I do not have the right to impose and carry out the death penalty against my neighbor; only the state can do that. I do not have the right to discipline my parents. This is not a question of being "better than God". Rather, when you arrogate unto yourself the authority to discipline people you have no right to discipline, you're actually playing God, pretending that you're His equal. My argument has been and is that the honor husbands are required to show their wives precludes using corporal punishment against them ... as the latter is degrading to them and incompatible with honor. You guys think that by establishing the licitness of corporal punishment in the abstract you're proving that it's permissible for a husband to discipline his wife.
Ladislaus, this is a really weak argument that can't convince anyone because there are hundreds of years of the Church teaching that a husband does have a right to use corporal punishment on his wife. There is no precedent for saying for saying it is incompatible with the honour due to a wife. Your position just comes a cross as a novelty based on your personal interpretation of Scripture. The question of who has the right to discipline whom has been answered many times over in this regard.
I think you could make a stronger case by acknowledging that the right exists but should be waived. I found your argument in another thread about how this can cause scandal thought-provoking and persuasive. There is no question that the idea of corporal punishment of a wife is shocking and disturbing to modern people, to a point where it can interfere with them accepting the Faith.
This reminds me of the situation that St. Paul wrote about in I Corinthians 8. As you know, the people were arguing over whether it was permissible to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols. St. Paul acknowledged the position of those who believed it was permissible by saying that they were right that the false gods did not not exist and the sacrifices had no real power. But he told them that even if, strictly speaking, they had a right to do it, it was spiritually harmful to others. He told them to consider their weaker brothers.
The idea that we must consider the effect our actions have on others when determining the morality of the action is well established in traditional Catholic moral teaching. This makes a much better basis for an argument against corporal punishment.
Topic: Proper Punishment for a Disobedient Wife (Read 182610 times)