This is why Latins lose the culture war, because they can't get the authority of the husband right. Both Matt Fradd and Scott Hahn would probably be safely described as beta.
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The bad and the ugly: blue pill introduction, blue pill descriptions of their wives and their families. Also, I find his use of the "domestic priesthood" and "domestic kingship" to explain the authority of the father with respect to the spiritual life of the family questionable theologically and scripturally. The man should lead because he is the man. No need to try to give it a theological justification beyond this. After all, both husband and wife share in the offices of Christ, priest, prophet, king. (This is the same mistake Dilsaver makes in Three Marks of Manhood, using those three offices to explain the headship of the husband.)
The good: non-anxious leadership @25:00 - this sounds equivalent to holding frame, being stoic or a rock, confident. Maybe Scott Hahn never had the opportunity to develop leadership skills as a young man. That is definitely part of the problem with contemporary education, in addition to pedestalizing women so that one habitually defers to them.
As for Casti Connubi and St. Augustine and the wife having the primacy of "love" -- I have to disagree here as well. Men need training to love those whom he leads, just as he needs training to lead those whom he loves; but I don't think women have the primacy of love, unless it is by love one understands expressive and intuitive affection, and even in that case often she feels this more naturally for her children than for a beta husband. But if we are talking about any form of rational love, it is the husband who should have the primacy of rational love. After all, the husband is commanded to love his wife like Christ loves the Church, and not the wife.
Using authority as the king to exalt the queen, that's just dumb.
@27:45 John Bergsma uses ballroom dancing to explain leadership. RP writers have done that too. But: he talks about leading her in order to showcase her for other people? Stupid. He leads so that they can enjoy the dance together.
@29:00 He talks about learning from his mistakes and a rocky period during his marriage, in which there were a lot of verbal arguments. Where's the frame?
@33:00 Hahn talks about "releasing" his wife, so that she is now on the city council. (Before she was head of a Catholic homeschooling association, the one she helped found.) Definitely beta here, and inflicting his wife on other men.
@34:00 I think his wife's father did more than just "affirm" her. Seems like he didn't give her proper guidance so that she could restrain her headstrongness and bossiness.
Again the pedestalizing that is disguised as "authority serving love, i.e. the wife." Authority does serve love, but the love of God by the husband, and then love of his wife and of his family.
@35:39 The husband needs to learn to say, "I don't deserve you." Unbelievable.
@39:44 "There aren't five women in the world who would have married me." I don't think this is self-deprecation as much as the truth, but I don't think Hahn realizes that it's not about compatibility or willingness to bear with him, but his own lack of attractiveness.
@40:30 The soulmate myth. They are rightly critical of it.
@42:40 He talks about his wife admitting to him that she was enjoying the company of a co-worker too much, and he in turn got some physical and emotional distance from a woman with whom he was clicking. Because he is attracted to other women he not only needs to go to confession but tell his wife that his heart is weak? Beta.
He introduces a questionable notion of "sacrificial love" of his wife.
@50:30 ff A discussion of his new book. I didn't listen to all of it, but what I heard was ok.
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