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Ephesians 5 is one of those Scripture stumbling blocks for the modern man... err, woman. Just what did Saint Paul mean by "Wives be subordinate to your husbands"? And what does the Church mean by authority? How do you feel about the roles of men and women within the marriage relationship? Click on over to The Feminine Gift to read our latest post.

Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church. ~I Corinthians 14: 34 This elusive verse, when not totally ignored, is a matter of controversy, as scholars and theologians try to explain it away. St. Paul, not caring a fig for political correctness, past or present, wanted it to be clear that women were not to usurp the functions of priests at the altar. On another level, the spiritual director at our Secular Carmelite meeting said that the verse is not to be seen as a negation of women but as a call, a call to silence, both interior and exterior. It is in the deep silence of the soul that spiritual warfare on behalf of the Church, her ministers and her people, is best waged. Many women have sought a life of prayer and have become prayer warriors, from the earliest days of the...

The saint of the day is St. Etheldreda (also known as: Audrey, Ethelreda, Æthelthryth, Edilthride, Ediltrudis, Edeltrude), a widow and a Benedictine nun. She was born in Exning, Suffolk, England and died at Ely, 679. To her friends and family, this once most famous female Anglo-Saxon saint was Etheldreda. To poor people she was Audrey, and the word "tawdry" originally came from the cheap necklaces that were sold on the feast of Saint Audrey and which were believed to cure illness of the throat and neck. This was because Etheldreda had suffered from neck cancer, which she attributed to divine punishment because she was once vain enough to wear a costly necklace. She had a huge tumor on her neck when she died, but, according the Saint Bede, when her tomb was opened by her sister Saint Sexburga, her successor as abbess at Ely Abbey, ten (or 16) years after her death, her body was found incorrupt and the tumor had healed. Etheldreda was a woman of noble birth, the daughter o...