This was a good thread, I've only read half of it so far but I've found it quite valuable. Especially the part distinguishing different 'things.

Let me see if I understand this so far.

E.g the Blessed Virgin Mary is superior to all creatures, however in terms of human nature, her female nature is inferior to male nature.
 
Am I understanding this correctly?

Another e.g I as a man have a nature that is superior to the female nature because my nature is more "complete ' yet this does not make me or other males superior to females. I could be physically superior to a female yet also be intellectually inferior to the same female.That is quite sad. Still thanks for your other posts explaining authority and subjection in regards to pre/post fall.

Thank you for finding this thread.

To answer your question about why woman don't want to marry. This statement says it in a nut shell

Quote from Ladislaus

What we're saying is that a SIGNIFICANT NUMBER of men use "subjection theology" as an excuse to abuse their wives ... emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically,

I have personally seen this happen to at least 5 families and it is such a powerful "evil" that priests can't even seem to fix.

In most cases the women blame God. It is hard to reach them and either all the love and joy is drained from them or they leave the marriage. It is awful to watch.

I just though that if more men recognized it and stood against it then maybe something would change.

The daughters from these fall outs don't want to go through what there mom went through, so they either blame God and leave the Faith or they think all men will be like that.

The other side is that the woman had some sin that the husband wasn't patient with. This is why I constantly say that you have to work on making yourself a good Catholic before you try to help anyone else. The most humble thing to do in marriage is to look at a situation and say where did I go wrong and then admit it to your spouse and try to do better.

I don't know if this helps or harms you, Ladislaus, but I think the distinctions you've made in this thread are things Catholics need to hear on a regular basis. They need to be preached from the pulpit and in adult catechism classes. Anytime a priest has the chance, he should take it. I was very hesitant to even click on this post (must be feeling brave today) but am happy I did. It restored a little bit of my faith in such threads.

I have many times observed the treatment you describe with the mentalities described. Thankfully my own husband is very considerate of me and it has done nothing but wonders for us as a couple, but he has a couple of brothers who tried to "educate" him when we were first married. In their eyes he was not to take my needs, opinions or concerns into consideration at all. They are by far not the only ones who become selfish, inconsiderate jerks and try to pass that off as part of their vocation as husbands. There are many good men out there to be sure, but there are also many whose concept of authority and how to wield it is quite warped. It's unfortunate because people in the world would use these as examples of how our Faith is misogynistic and harmful to women, when in fact women came to be well loved and better treated because of our Faith. But as always, the devil is in the details and it all greatly depends on the proper distinctions being made and understood.

It goes without saying but the Holy Family is a fascinating and beautiful example in so many ways.

This ^^^

Such an old thread, but I recall having disagreements with JayneK on the subject, and the side of the disagreement are probably the complete opposite of what people expected when clicking on a Ladislaus vs. JayneK thread.

In any case, yes, there is a real sense in which male nature is superior to female, as St. Thomas teaches, because it's more complete and more primarily rational in its orientation, but the order of grace and the order of nature are different.  Clearly human nature in general is inferior to angelic nature, but we have Our Lady as the Queen of Angels and by all accounts superior to every last one of them in the order of grace.  There are many women with greater glory in Heaven than many men in Heaven, so surpassing them on the order of grace and merit, despite the relative order of nature by itself.  Since Our Lord's elevation of human nature to a potentially supernatural level, there's very little point of discussing human nature in isolation from the supernatural state to which we're called ... except that the supernatural order does not cancel out, but, rather, completes the natural, with grace fulfilling nature, not destroying it, as per the scholastic/Thomistic maxim.

Our Lord used this cryptic reference (that IMO very few properly understand) about St. John the Baptist being the greatest man born of woman (on the order of nature) but the least in the Kingdom of God, wherein Our Lord meant that THE VERY LOWEST supernatural dignity and supernatural virtue surpasses the greatest natural/created dignity and natural virtue.  That is to take nothing away from St. John the Baptist, since he too had a great SUPERNATURAL dignity as well, but this saying of Our Lord was similar to when He said about His Mother that blesesd rather are those who keep the will of God (vs. just having physical nursed Our Lord).  Unlike the Prots would have it, this does absolutely nothing to detract from the unique dignity of Our Lady, as she was the most blessed of all women on BOTH counts, both her natural relationship to Our Lord AND on the order of grace.  So, St. John the Baptist, in so far as being born of woman, i.e. in terms of his nature alone, was inferior to the least individual who had been born again into the supernatural life and the Kingdom, without making the two mutually exclusive, since St. John ALSO had a great supernatural virtue.  Our Lord did this to make the very distinction between natural and supernatural that the scholastics later invented technical terms for.  St. John could have spent his entire life practicing virtue, fasting, all manner of mortification, but had he lost his soul (though God would not and did not allow that), all that natural virtue would have meant nothing as he would have been infinitely inferior to the lowest chump who made it into Heaven by the skin of his teeth and never fasted a day in his life.

Now, clearly the Holy Ghost teaches through Sacred Scripture (and it's not just St. Paul being a misogynistic product of his times as the Modernists hold) that wives should be subject to their husbands.  This state of subjection is due to Original Sin, whereas prior to the Fall, there was simply a natural harmony, with man taking the lead, rationally, and woman simply following along in complementary fashion.  Due to the disorder caused by Original Sin, where this order and hierarchy were broken, just like also our internal order was broken, where our lower nature no longer remains in complete harmony with the higher nature, what may have been termed "subordination" now takes on a slightly more forced//compulsory nature, part of the punishment for Original Sin, in the term subjection.

Pre-Fall:  Natural Harmonious Subordination
Post-Fall:  Subjection (more of a forced subordination)

In any case, however, while I did not intend to reject the Divine Teaching that wives should be subject to their husbands, what I meant was that some men tend to abuse this "subjection theology" (which I did not mean to disparage per se by putting it in quotes) as an excuse for being tyrants and bullies, and to talk down to their wives in degrading manner as if they were ona  part with children, and then attempting to justify the behavior via the requirement of wives to be subject to their husbands.

So, I do not take these positions based on emotion, but on reason and theology.  Where the subjection of wives differs from that of children to their parents is that nowhere does Sacred Scripture (again the Holy Ghost speaking) require that parents HONOR their children, whereas men are commanded to honor their wives.  IMO, honor precludes things like corporal punishment of wives (my argument against JayneK) ... except in extraordinary situations, where it's critical to prevent grave harm and there's no other alternative.  So, one example might be that I see my wife about to kill someone, and the only way I can stop her is by knocking her out ... that kind of scenario where it would be permitted to strike even your parents.  

So, to understand the implications of the requirement to "honor" our wives, something distinguishing them from children ... what is missed by the men who justify their ill treatment of wives due to "subjection" -- we find that the other conspicuous place we're required to "honor" is with respect to our parents.  Since honor very clearly prevents us from laying violent hands upon our parents, regardless of the reason, the pretext, or the justification, I hold that it would also preclude applying corporal punishment to wives.  Of course, there's also the massive imprudence of doing so, since the legal system would just jail the husband, break up the family, etc. ... if the wife decided to object to the treatment, nor do I believe it would be effective, since a wife who's determined to engage in bad behavior is MORE likely to just be smarter about not getting caught than to amend the behavior.

Basically, anything we would be prevented from doing to our parents by the requirement to "honor" them would also applies to wives.  So, with this in mind, there's no simple analogy between "wives" and children.  While both are enjoined to be subject to their husband/parents respectively, there's no obligation for parents to honor their children.