Carlson Allan C. - Man of the House: a Handbook for Building a Shelter That Will Last in a World That Is Falling Apart

A Handbook for Building a Shelter That Will Last in a World That Is Falling Apart

C. R. Wiley

Foreword by Leon J. Podles

Afterword by Allan C. Carlson

Leon J. Podles

W isdom ascends to the heavens, but it begins on the earth. Proverbs is full of sound advice from a father to a son, who warns, Folly is a joy to him who has no sense (Proverbs :), and folly is what we are taught by the gods of the marketplace. The sexual revolution promised carefree, pregnancy-free sex for everyone all the time. And now anyone can be a man or woman or anything in between; the body God created is irrelevant. Kipling warned, we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife), Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: The Wages of Sin is Death.

Chris Wiley provides practical advice for a man to live up to his role as father. Even the Romans knew how important fatherhood was; the paterfamilias was the foundation of the Roman state. But with Abraham the revelation of the ultimate importance of fatherhood began, and at last Paul proclaimed the Father, from whom every family (patria) in heaven and earth is named (Ephesians : 1415 ). Without a father, there is no family.

The family is a revelation of Gods plan for mankind, and the only one who has a higher claim on our loyalty is God himself. Jesus was not devaluing the family, but implying his claim to divine honors: He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew :). Our ultimate loyalty is to him, the incarnate God, but under him to the union of male and female that he established at the beginning and which he restored in its purity and integrity (Matthew :).

Paul repeatedly emphasizes the right order of the family, insisting that a well-ordered family is a model for the church: a bishop must manage his own household (oikos) well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way, for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for Gods church ( Timothy :).

Wiley helps us see what is necessary to manage a household and its economy well, to provide and protect for a family and to ensure its stability generation after generation. Such households provide a space of freedom, the milieu in which a human and Christian life can be lived, a place of sanity and health in a world that seeks to detach individuals from all other connections and make them dependent on the state for everything, to make them denizens of the brave new world... When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins. But God is not mocked, and As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

Leon J. Podles, father of six, is married to the former Mary Elizabeth Smith, who survived a year at Wellesley with Hillary Clinton. Podles survived Providence College and received his PhD from the University of Virginia in, of all things, Old English and Old Icelandic. He helped found Birthright Charlottesville, was a senior editor at Touchstone, is on the board of BishopAccountability.org and author of Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. He wrote the pioneering The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity and the forthcoming Losing the Better Part: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity. He is a member of Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore.