"If you don't mind, dear...."

It fell to me to do the second reading at Mass today beginning with St Paul's memorable words, "Wives be obedient to your husbands". Having enjoined obedience upon wives he subsequently spends a greater time admonishing husbands upon their duty of self-sacrifice towards their wives so I suppose it balances out. Nevertheless I was struck afterwards by the thought that here was proof, were it needed, that St Paul was not married for no married man would have dared ordering wives to be obedient.

I mention this thought because I recall not so long ago a priest, doubtless full of some modern scripture scholarship, asserting in a sermon (or homily- I've never figured out the difference) that, before his conversion, St Paul was very likely married. Well, I think that a very shaky hypothesis.