Section — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology
Section III. On the Mutual Duties Both of Other Blood-Relatives and of Spouses
I. Duties of other blood-relatives. According to the things set forth in the treatise on virtues (n. 394), the obligation of piety, which is primarily between parents and children, also exists: 1. between blood-relatives ascending and descending, for example between grandfather and grandson; 2. between nearer collateral blood-relatives, for example between brothers; 3. between guardians and wards, between sponsors and spiritual children. For since guardians and sponsors are equated with parents, competent authority is judged to have imposed on them duties from the motive of piety. The aforesaid persons, moreover, owe to one another love, and, according to the circumstances of persons, reverence and obedience. For the rest, note can. 1372, § 2: not only parents, according to the norm of can. 1113, but also all who hold their place, have the right and the most grave duty of caring for the Christian education of children.
Toward more remote collateral blood-relatives, duties of common charity rather than of piety ought to be exercised.
II. Duties of spouses. 1. Spouses owe one another love, affective and effective,1 conjugal fidelity,2 and living together.3
The husband is bound: 1. diligently to administer family affairs; 2. rightly to govern the wife and the whole family. Yet let the husband be mindful of the condition of the wife, who is a companion, not a handmaid. Hence let him treat her honorably; if there is need, let him correct her, but it scarcely happens that it is lawful to strike her (St. Alphonsus, III, 351).
The wife is bound: 1. to reverence her husband;4 2. to obey her husband;5 3. together with the husband to govern the family; 4. to perform domestic duties. As to obedience, however, note that of herself she is not held to those things which the husband would irrationally impose, for example if he required from a woman of more honorable condition that she sweep the house, unless poverty excused it (St. Alphonsus, III, 351, 352, question 2). Besides, disobedience as such is not easily gravely evil, because she ought to obey as a companion, not as a handmaid.
Spouses sin gravely by provoking one another with hatreds, grave curses, or quarrels.
The husband sins gravely: 1. "if he hinders [his wife] concerning the precepts of God or of the Church... but if he hinders her, even without cause, concerning those good things which are only of counsel, as confession, communion, etc., he commonly sins only venially; 2. if he beats her gravely; yet sometimes he can moderately chastise by words, or even from a grave cause by moderate blows, with account taken of condition and state;... 3. if he neglects the governance of the house and the family property; 4. if he does not cohabit with his wife or is absent for a long time without just cause; 5. if, when he can, he does not procure food, unless however the wife has departed from the company of the husband by her own fault, or unless she has committed adultery" (St. Alphonsus, III, 356).
The wife sins gravely: 1. "if she provokes her husband by quarrels or otherwise by words to grave anger or blasphemy;... 2. if, despising her husband, she claims authority for herself; 3.... if she inserts herself into the administration of the house without just cause; such as if, for example, the husband, being prodigal, squanders the goods of the family" (St. Alphonsus, III, 351).
1 Cf. Eph. 5:25, 28, 29; Titus 2:4.
2 Cf. our little work De virtute castitatis, n. 34.
3 Cf. cited work, n. 103.
4 Eph. 5:33.