“WITHOUT any authority, the family would fall into anarchy; if the balance of authority tips too far to the side or in favor of the husband, we will have the enslavement of the woman; if on the contrary it tips to the whims of the woman, the horrors known to paganism will follow.
“It is therefore necessary to seek balance; which, if it can be found in an atmosphere of cold calculation of rights and duties, is instead achieved and practiced when trusting love animates the relationship between both parties. If the one who commands loves, they will never exercise despotic control; if the one who obeys loves, they will never submit with a slave’s spirit.
[…]
“Now, every family is a partnership in life: every well-ordered partnership needs a head; all authority of a head or leader comes from God. Therefore, the family you founded also has a head, invested by God with authority over the one he has given him as a partner to form his first nucleus, and over those who, with the Lord’s blessing, will come to increase and gladden it, like vigorous shoots around the trunk of an olive tree…
“Yes; the authority of the head of the family comes from God, just as the dignity and authority of the first head of the human race came from God to Adam, endowed with all the gifts he was to transmit to his offspring; that is why he was formed first, and Eve afterward; and, as Saint Paul says, Adam was not deceived, but it was the woman who allowed herself to be seduced and transgressed. Eve’s curiosity upon seeing the beautiful fruit of the earthly Paradise, and her conversation with the serpent—how much harm they caused to the first man, to herself, to all her children, and to us! To her, besides multiplying her worries and sorrows, God said that she would be subject to her husband. O Christian wives and mothers! Never give in to the thirst to usurp the center of the family. Your scepter—a scepter of love—must be the one placed in your hands by the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Savior, through the procreation of children, if you continue in faith, in love, and in holiness, with modesty.”
— Pope Pius XII, September 10, 1941
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