CHAPTER III: ON THE OBLIGATIONS OF SPOUSES

441. • I. Spouses are bound:

1° To mutual love. For since they are one flesh, they ought also to be one heart. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church. - Let them (wives) love their husbands.²

2° To conjugal society and cohabitation. This is plain from the nature and ends of matrimony, and from the words of Christ: A man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.³

3° To furnishing mutually to one another food, and whatever pertains to the honorable sustenance of their condition: For (now) they are not two, but one flesh.⁴ But no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it.⁵

4° To rendering the conjugal debt mutually to one another, concerning which matter in the Treatise on Matrimony.

442. • II. The husband is bound in particular:

1° To conduct the family property studiously.

2° To take care that the wife fulfill the duties of a Christian profession, and execute the precepts of the law both divine and ecclesiastical. For the man is the head of the woman and the rector of the whole family; and therefore to him belongs the right governance both of the wife and of the other members of the family.

3° To correct a delinquent wife where this is necessary for her amendment and for preventing scandal. But correction ought to proceed from charity, or love of justice, or zeal for procuring the right governance of the family, and in manner to be such that it is plain the wife is the partner of the man, not a servant. Care must also be taken lest peace and love perish between them.

443. • III. The wife for her part is bound:

1° To reverence her husband, because he is her Superior, as is established from what was said, and from the words: Thou shalt be under the power of the husband, and he shall rule over thee.¹

2° To furnish obedience to him; because obedience is owed to a Superior in those things which pertain to governance; and the Apostle says to the Colossians:² Women, be subject to your husbands, as it behooveth in the Lord.

3° To carry care of the house in the family property, and therefore to undertake the offices of the family, as to prepare food, sweep the house, wash linens, repair torn garments, and furnish other things of this kind. Yet in families sufficiently wealthy the wife can fulfill the lower offices through male servants or maidservants, provided she watches over them and takes care that the domestic matter be well conducted.

444. You will resolve. - 1° A husband can sin gravely if he pursues his wife with insults, for example by calling her an adulteress, etc.; - if without a just cause he impedes her from fulfilling divine or ecclesiastical precepts, or from devotions very useful, for example from discreet frequency of the Sacraments; - if he treats her in a tyrannical manner like a vile slave; - if he does not cohabit with her; - if he neglects the governance of the family, etc.³

2° A wife likewise can sin gravely if she is accustomed to ridicule and mock her husband; - if by harsh words, contumacious disobedience, or excessive peevishness she provokes him to anger and blasphemies, etc.

3° Ordinarily the man ought to begin the correction of the wife by gentler words, and, if these do not profit, to proceed to graver correction. Sometimes he ought to conceal the faults of the wife when he can do this without sin, and not be excessive in correcting; but sometimes to defer correction for a time, lest the correction seem to proceed from the heat of anger and lack fruit, while the wife is less disposed to receive it.

4° Let the confessor not immediately believe a spouse complaining against a spouse, especially if a wife rails against the husband; because women are generally prone to lying or certainly exaggerating. Wherefore it is better, the matter being passed over, to commend to them prayer, patience, meekness, and greater solicitude for furnishing services to the man.

5° Let the wife be silent while the husband is angry or drunk; if admonition seems likely to profit, let her admonish while the husband is well disposed; if a reply must be made to an angry man, let her reply gently: for a soft answer breaketh anger, and a hard word stirreth up fury. If these things obtain nothing, let her take care that the husband be admonished by the Pastor or another prudent man.

445. • Quaer. What are the principal dispositions of our civil laws concerning the obligations of spouses?

Resp. 1° "The husband may ... be bound to keep the peace as against his wife, and for any unreasonable and improper confinement by him, she may be entitled to relief upon habeas corpus. But as the husband is the guardian of the wife, and bound to protect and maintain her, the law has given him a reasonable superiority and control over her person, and he may even put gentle restraints upon her liberty, if her conduct be such as to require it, unless he renounces that control by articles of separation, or it be taken from him by a qualified divorce."¹

2° "If he" (the husband) "shifts his domicile, the wife is bound to follow him wherever he chooses to go."²

3° The husband is bound to provide his wife with necessaries suitable to her situation and his condition in life; and if she contracts debts due for them during cohabitation, he is obliged to pay those debts; but for anything beyond necessaries, namely "elegancies or luxuries,"³ he is not chargeable....

"If the husband abandons his wife, or they separate by consent, without any provision for her maintenance, or if he sends her away, he is liable for her necessaries, and he sends credit with her to that extent." The same says "if she receives such treatment as affords a reasonable cause for her to depart from his house, and refuse to cohabit with him."

"But if the wife elopes, though it be not with an adulterer, he is not chargeable even for necessaries."¹