Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E126: A Better Framework For Gender Roles with Dr. Pia De Solenni

Transcript

E126: A Better Framework For Gender Roles with Dr. Pia De Solenni · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  How many child is a ton of vulnerability?
• 0:02
  A population that does not want to to replicate itself, that
• 0:06
  does not want to grow is 1 without hope.
• 0:08
  When we talk about people not having children or having
• 0:11
  smaller families, I really think that we should take some time to
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  listen and ask why we're just so quick to judge before we
• 0:18
  actually learn the story. I think there's a bigger crisis.
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  And before we go running around telling people, look, you got to
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  get married and you got to have a bunch of kids, I think we need
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  to give people the gift of hope. Hello, everybody.
• 0:33
  Welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
• 0:35
  Today we're sitting down with Doctor Pia de Salani, who has a
• 0:38
  doctorate in moral theology. We're going to talk about
• 0:40
  masculinity and femininity. What?
• 0:42
  Christianity in the Bible, have to say about it.
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  And some surprising truths about gender roles.
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  I hope you enjoyed this episode. Doctor Pia de Salani, thanks for
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  joining the podcast. Great to be with you, liar.
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  Thank you. I'm very excited to talk to you
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  today. I first met you probably 10
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  years ago at this point. Might have been a little longer.
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  Maybe longer than that. And you have, you've always
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  fascinated me because your work, I feel is both very
• 1:08
  countercultural, but even surprising among the
• 1:11
  countercultural people is how I see it, because of the way that
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  you talk about women and your work and on moral theology.
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  So you are a doctor of moral theology, moral theology.
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  And I learned, I just learned recently that you own
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  moraltheologian.com. That is my domain and right now
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  there's a placeholder, but hopefully by the time this airs
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  there will be a nice little website in place.
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  I love that. So for those listening, we talk
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  about effectively moral theology a lot on the show.
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  But how do you define moral theology?
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  What does it mean to be a moral theologian?
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  I I call it a applied theology. And just as a little aside, one
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  time when I was, so I studied in Rome and I went to Saint Peter's
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  for one of the vigils. I don't know if it was Easter or
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  Christmas. I was there really early and of
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  course get a seat. And I thought, oh, OK, I'll go
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  to confession because there's the confessional and I'm sitting
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  here for a while. So I went to confession and the
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  priest asked me, what do you do in Rome?
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  And I said, I study. And he says, what do you study?
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  And I just started laughing and I said moral theology.
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  And he said, well, it just goes to show that having the virtue
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  isn't the same as knowing the virtue.
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  I guess it's the reverse. Knowing the virtue isn't the
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  same as having the virtue. And so, oh, I loved it.
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  I loved it. So anyway, moral theology this
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  was after. Your confession.
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  He heard your confession. It was awesome.
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  All right, Well, but no, because anyway, so moral theology
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  doesn't describe me. I hope it does.
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  I work at it, but it's really, I call it apply theology.
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  So it's how we apply theology to our day-to-day life and, and
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  human actions. How does the theology relate to
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  human actions? So it's it and that kind of fits
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  my personality because I kind of like to blend the academic and
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  the day-to-day and I'm, I'm constantly like, there's an
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  activist in me. Maybe not as strong as an
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  activist as in you, but we're Kindredactus.
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  And so I, I, the academic for me always has to make sense on the
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  practical and it, it has to have an impact.
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  I I can't sit around and think about how many angels dance on
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  the pin of a needle. So it's like how to live out the
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  ways and the rules of God in everyday life for human beings.
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  Yeah, yeah. And how, how do we apply?
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  How do so, you know, we start with a Nicene Creed.
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  Everything comes well, so much comes from that.
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  We look at the tradition, we look at Scripture with the
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  Magisterium. But all of these things shape
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  how we as Catholics, how we relate to God, how we relate to
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  others, to the world. And so there's just, there's
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  just a constant unpacking of that because certain questions
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  that we have now weren't questions 100 years ago.
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  I mean, in vitro fertilization was not a question 100 years
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  ago. We're able to answer those
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  questions because of the principles that we have.
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  And so that's it's knowing what those principles are and being
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  able to apply them to to concrete human situations.
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  We have a lot of and we talked to folks, you know, Christian
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  and non Christian on the show, but certainly folks that are
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  biblically oriented, they want to live biblically is the term
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  used often. And you know, evangelicals,
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  Protestants, of course, Catholics.
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  I'm Catholic, as you know. You're Catholic.
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  Would you say that moral theology can be understood and
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  lived by people whether or not they're Catholic or even
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  Christian? Absolutely, absolutely.
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  And it's for everyone. It's for everyone.
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  And I think it's, you know, also important to understand everyone
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  is called to live the truth in so far as they know it.
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  So some people are exposed to the fullness of truth, others
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  are not. The criteria is, when presented
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  with truth, how do you embrace it?
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  And again, another wonderful Rome experience that I have that
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  kind of brings tears to my eyes. I was on a bus and anyone who's
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  been to Rome, you know what the Gypsies are like now.
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  You can't tell them as much as you could before, but the
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  Gypsies are there and they drug their kids and they drug their
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  dogs and they drug whatever. It's horrible.
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  And I was on a bus and there were these gypsy women with
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  babies that were semi drug. And there's a little boy and he
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  was about 5 years old. And he was telling the women
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  that the way they were behaving and the way that they were
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  treating the children was wrong. And I just went wow.
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  Like there's this conscience. I mean, you see, everybody has a
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  conscience. And here's this little 5 year
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  old boy who's been raised with the gypsies in this culture, and
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  yet he's able to see that what's happening is wrong.
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  And so I used that as an example of, I mean, this poor kid
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  probably hadn't even had the the basic education and catechism.
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  So he was a gypsy himself. He was a.
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  Gypsy, Yeah. And so he probably hasn't had
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  the luxury of, you know, the normal preschool education,
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  kindergarten education that most children in the developed world
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  have, much less any type of catechesis.
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  And yet he was able to see that. And I just think it was so
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  courageous of this five year old to stand up to these women and
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  to call them out. On it, what was he saying?
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  He was just calling them out on how they were treating the
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  children and how they were behaving and, and he I, I don't
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  remember the exact thing, but he definitely calling them out.
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  And I thought, and in that culture, you kind of expect him
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  to get smacked or something. And nothing happened.
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  They looked at him. I thought, here's this little
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  guy, five years old. He knows what's right somehow in
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  his conscience, because everybody has a conscience.
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  He knows what's right and he's listening to that and he's
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  taking up his his space by voicing that.
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  What got you so passionate about moral theology, even to the
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  degree of going to Rome to get a PhD, and so much of your work
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  has been dedicated to teaching on it?
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  Yeah, I think it's, I mean, honestly, I think it's a God
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  thing. I'm not sure I understood what I
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  wanted to learn when I went to Rome.
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  Well, back up. Here's a when I was doing all
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  sorts of odd jobs, you know, high school, college.
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  I worked for this wonderfully entertaining woman.
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  She was an artist and she was going to, that was back in the
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  days when you still had portraits for thoroughbreds.
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  And so she was going to do these paint portraits of these
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  thoroughbred horses for a breeder.
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  So she took me with her and she said, I want you to, to video
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  them. And I said, OK, so I'd never
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  used a video recorder and I had been around horses because I
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  grew up on a ranch, but I'd never been around a stallion or
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  anything. So she we go in with the breeder
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  and this wonderfully crazy woman, and I'm in the corral,
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  They're outside, the stallion comes out and he's just bucking
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  and he's just going crazy. And I kept filming because
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  that's what they told me to do. And the end of it, the breeder
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  looked at me and he said, you're either real stupid or you're
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  real good with horses. And that anecdote is kind of
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  like, that's kind of my life. Like sometimes I don't know
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  where I'm going. And so when I I did my undergrad
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  at Thomas Aquinas College, when I finished high school, a small
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  startup school in Milwaukee, I already knew I wanted to do
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  graduate studies. Long story short, I decided to
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  do theology in Rome and when I went, I really didn't understand
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  what a doctor was. I was just going and starting to
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  study because I could, I could make enough money during the
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  summer waiting tables and whatever to pay my expenses
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  during the academic year. And you know, tuition there is
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  very low and you can you can get by on.
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  Gelato and bread, yeah. I've got some great bread
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  stories. But anyway, so and and it was
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  just one foot in front of the other.
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  And I did have a hard time in Rome because, I mean, I'm in
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  classrooms with seminarians and religious and then eventually
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  priests. And you know, that's just,
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  that's a very different vibe from being an American College
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  or university that's Coed and suddenly, you know, having to
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  realize that I can't interact with these men in the same way
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  that I would have interacted with my college classmates and
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  so forth. And, you know, just learning
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  boundaries and such and, and living in Rome can be really
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  challenging and really hard. And then, but I went on, so I
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  finished what's called the Sacral theology baccalaureate.
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  I went on to do the license and I had a fabulous, fabulous
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  mentor there, a professor, and I'd gone to him because for the
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  license you have to do what's called a tessina, A thesis.
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  A little thesis is preparing you for the doctoral thesis or the
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  dissertation. So I went to him and I said,
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  hey, I want to, I need to come up with a thesis topic.
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  And he said, what about the concept of law in Saint Paul?
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  And I went, OK. And I went home.
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  And that just did not, I mean did not turn on any bells in my
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  head, didn't excite me or anything.
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  And then at that point, this is what I think really kicked it
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  all off for me. I read a book by Carl Stern, not
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  to be confused with Howard Stern, and he was a famous
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  psychiatrist, Jewish, who converted to Catholicism.
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  And he wrote this amazing book called The Flight from Woman.
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  And he says everything that's wrong with the world.
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  I mean, this is a blanket statement.
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  Everything that's wrong with the world is because of Descartes,
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  because Descartes separates the, the intellect from the reason.
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  And he says that we determine we reason to literally our own
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  reality. I, I think therefore I am is
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  his, his famous mantra and or saying whatever.
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  And so he said, we've left out the intellectus.
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  And he says that's the feminine part.
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  And if you overlay that with thought of Saint Thomas, who a
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  lot of people think is a big misogynist, but he's not, more
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  on that another time or later. It it's beautiful because the
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  intellect is actually receptive. It's receptive before God.
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  It's receptive to the truth and so Ratzio there is a very
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  masculine tendency to it. It it's determining for itself,
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  right? And it's picking out, it's
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  seeing things, it's measuring, but it's all kind of self
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  determination. The reason the.
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  Reason. And so, but he's saying we've
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  left out this part, the intellectus, where again we have
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  to conform our selves to truth, we receive truth.
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  I mean, we see this in the Annunciation, right?
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  Mary in the Annunciation, when she gives her consent, when she
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  says let it be, let the incarnation be, she is able to
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  take into herself physically and actually God, someone who is
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  greater than herself, the second person of the Trinity.
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  And that's that in epistemology, the philosophy of how we come to
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  know. I think that's an essentially
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  feminine quality if we extrapolate from our bodies,
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  from biologically what the male and female bodies are kind of
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  tended to do. And so I went back to poor this
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  poor Father Bob, my mentor and I said Saint Paul and the law are
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  not going to happen. I said, but, and I just did a
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  verbal dump a little better than what I no worse than what I gave
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  you. So and so he came.
• 12:29
  He came up with a title for me and that was I did an overview
• 12:32
  of feminist and gender theory. And although when he gave me the
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  title, I did have to ask what one of the words meant, but I
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  did an overview of feminist and gender theory.
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  And John Paul two had been asking for a new feminism.
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  So I, I based it on Aquinas's anthropology and the philosophy,
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  his philosophy of how we come to know his epistemology to create
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  an integral feminism or feminism.
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  Back then I called it a feminism of complementarity, but I think
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  complementarity has been hijacked.
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  So I like to focus on relationality and because I
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  think that's the key part is the relationality and how we relate
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  to others and, and how relationality is just so key for
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  us. I mean, even in Genesis, Adam,
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  you know, doesn't know himself. He names all the animals in the
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  garden, but he can't name himself until he sees E.
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  And so relationality is key for any of us to know ourselves.
• 13:28
  And then you know, the the impact of this and we're seeing
• 13:31
  this post COVID. What does it mean when you don't
• 13:34
  have that relationality? What is it?
• 13:35
  And, and we have decades of data on families, families, family
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  sciences and patterns and so forth.
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  And we're seeing how relationality is just so
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  fundamental for the human experience.
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  And when we take that away, it impacts our ability to know God
• 13:53
  in any of the three persons, it impacts our ability to be happy.
• 13:57
  And and finally, it impacts our ability to be who we are.
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  Doctor de Soleni. OK, so where do I, where can we
• 15:34
  start with this? Because you, you touch on so
• 15:36
  many things for us to deep dive and we talk about some of the
• 15:39
  some of the things you're talking about on the podcast,
• 15:42
  what it means to be women. You you mentioned you know
• 15:44
  Descartes being according what was who is the author?
• 15:47
  Carl Stern. Carl Stern introducing the
• 15:50
  flight from women, introducing Descartes as basically the
• 15:54
  earliest bad feminist. In a way.
• 15:56
  I mean if. I think there were some others
• 15:57
  beforehand. OK, but but as a as kind of a
• 16:00
  father of modern thought. He the impact that he had the.
• 16:04
  Impact that he had it was tremendous because how let's
• 16:07
  walk through that walk us through that one more time.
• 16:08
  So you were talking about Descartes.
• 16:10
  I think therefore I am as us being the kind of end all be all
• 16:15
  of capturing or understanding truth that it's not something
• 16:20
  outside of us necessarily that we assimilate to, but we we are
• 16:25
  we we kind of created ourselves. Some people would say that's the
• 16:28
  wrong reading of Descartes that that's not what he meant.
• 16:30
  He wasn't a he wasn't, he wasn't a, you know, a moral, you know,
• 16:35
  he wasn't a relativist. He was saying something else.
• 16:40
  First of all, how do you respond to that?
• 16:41
  Those that defend Descartes that we misunderstand him and then?
• 16:45
  I, I say just, let's just maybe there's a more generous way to
• 16:48
  understand him and his intentions, but the, the,
• 16:52
  there's the fact of how his work did impact epistemology and the
• 16:56
  philosophy of how we think. And, and, and so excuse me, how
• 17:02
  we come to know. And so it there, regardless of
• 17:05
  his intent, there's a certain impact that I think is there.
• 17:09
  And we, we did become a hyper rationalized society.
• 17:12
  That's what led to the Enlightenment and everything had
• 17:15
  to be the sciences because it's not true unless you can prove
• 17:18
  it's true and materially right. So then faith, Well, where's
• 17:22
  faith come in? You can't, if you have arguments
• 17:25
  of faith, you can't say if they're true or false because
• 17:27
  you'd have no material scientific proof for it.
• 17:31
  And we've also what's what's ironic is that we've also
• 17:33
  learned that science is not hard and fast is not hard and fast
• 17:41
  itself. Again, the more we know and
• 17:44
  ironically, the more we take in, the more our science changes.
• 17:49
  It's informed. We inform our science.
• 17:52
  We'll say, wow, it seems that what can I think of?
• 18:00
  Just think of how surgeries used to be done without people
• 18:02
  washing their hands because nobody had a concept what germs
• 18:06
  were, what germs were right. And so we and so that was the
• 18:10
  best practice. This is how you do surgery and
• 18:13
  you know, you just wipe it off and go off and have your lunch
• 18:15
  or something. I don't know.
• 18:17
  And so we learned and so that that expands the scientific
• 18:21
  world, but the scientific world doesn't, it's not static, it's
• 18:26
  constantly expanding because there's, you're constantly
• 18:29
  bringing more information into it.
• 18:31
  There's, I mean, my, my husband and I were just talking recently
• 18:35
  and we sound like we're 180 years old.
• 18:36
  But can Can you imagine the things that we have now?
• 18:41
  If you've been born in the 1800s and you saw some of our
• 18:44
  technology now, it's insane. It's just mind blowing.
• 18:48
  Right? FaceTime.
• 18:49
  There you go. Airplanes, right?
• 18:52
  Yeah. Space.
• 18:52
  Spaceships. I mean, for that matter, yeah.
• 18:55
  Automobiles just on and on and on.
• 18:58
  And but that's because science it it it's, it's constantly
• 19:03
  proving and disproving and it finds something better.
• 19:06
  So there's a constant input of information.
• 19:10
  But Descartes, his his this focus on the the reason and
• 19:15
  being self determining, thinking, you know, determining
• 19:18
  reality for oneself. That's to my mind.
• 19:24
  Well, not to my mind. I mean, we know that paved the
• 19:26
  way for the Enlightenment. And then what happened was, is
• 19:29
  that everything to do with faith was cast aside because I mean,
• 19:32
  the Trinity really, you can't prove the Trinity and so and all
• 19:36
  the other matters of faith. So maybe his intentions weren't
• 19:41
  that, but his. His thought did pave the way for
• 19:44
  the Enlightenment, and there were other factors contributing
• 19:46
  to it, but his was definitely one of the most influential.
• 19:50
  So how does that connect to the feminine and rejecting the
• 19:55
  feminine? And where does feminism fit into
• 19:58
  that? Because you, you know, there's
• 20:00
  certainly, I would say, and I've talked about on the show like
• 20:02
  there's a good feminism and there's a bad feminine feminism
• 20:06
  and. You know, really the project
• 20:09
  today for women is to live fully our feminine selves, you know,
• 20:14
  in collaboration with men and build society, do our, you know,
• 20:17
  fulfill our vocations. But there's all these competing
• 20:20
  narratives about what it means to be a woman and what that you
• 20:22
  know, how you should live out your womanhood.
• 20:26
  So I would say it's so again, it's at the level of
• 20:30
  epistemology, how we come to know.
• 20:33
  So Saint Thomas Aquinas talks about the, the union that a
• 20:36
  husband and wife form and he calls it a social union.
• 20:39
  And he says that the primary purpose is not children, which
• 20:43
  most of us think that that's the primary purpose, right?
• 20:46
  And he's like, no, the primary purpose is getting getting to
• 20:50
  heaven. And how do you get to heaven?
• 20:52
  You have to know God. And this is the primary vocation
• 20:55
  of every person is to know God, ultimately to love God, But it's
• 21:01
  you can't love someone unless you know them, right?
• 21:03
  And, and sometimes that there's a reciprocity there too.
• 21:07
  We'll get to that in a minute. But I guess what I would put
• 21:11
  forward, extrapolating from the thought of Aquinas and looking
• 21:16
  at what happened with Descartes is saying maybe we need to look
• 21:22
  at the relationality of men and women and the way in which we
• 21:26
  work together. This social union is if this
• 21:30
  anthropological level is actually an intellectual level
• 21:35
  and it coming to know. And so perhaps the way in which
• 21:40
  we work together is how we come to know, and we know things in
• 21:44
  different ways. So I've got to pause there for a
• 21:46
  moment because it's so rich and I want to, I know you have more
• 21:48
  to say on it, but just to kind of emphasize what you're saying
• 21:53
  here, you're saying marriage, not just relationships between
• 21:57
  men and women generally, but marriage.
• 21:58
  The Social union at Saint Thomas Aquinas talks about it.
• 22:02
  The end game is heaven. Kids are secondary, but not
• 22:05
  everyone can have kids in a marriage.
• 22:06
  You know, you hope to have kids, but the end game is heaven.
• 22:09
  Like you want to get together to heaven, right?
• 22:12
  And what you're saying in addition to that is in order to
• 22:16
  get to heaven in a marriage, you learn about yourself and you
• 22:19
  grow your virtues and you get closer to God in how you relate
• 22:22
  to your spouse. Ideally in the better scenarios,
• 22:25
  yeah, Hopefully getting to heaven is that type of teamwork
• 22:28
  rather than putting up with each other.
• 22:30
  And if someone's not married, if they're not married, whether by
• 22:34
  choice or by accident, like they are not able to find a spouse or
• 22:38
  there's some other issue, or maybe they choose a different
• 22:40
  vocation, a religious vocation. It comes down to relationality.
• 22:44
  How do we relate to others? Because every one of us has a
• 22:48
  sexually differentiated body, right?
• 22:51
  And how so it's how do we show up in that body?
• 22:55
  And remember, so if we're using classic Aristotelian or
• 23:00
  optimistic metaphysics, the the soul is the soul in the body
• 23:06
  come into existence at the same time.
• 23:08
  It's not like there's a bunch of bodies sitting here and there's
• 23:10
  a bunch of souls sitting here and God just kind of goes, I'm
• 23:13
  going to throw you guys together, right?
• 23:15
  They come into existence at the same time and what happens is
• 23:19
  they then you have this soul that is called in the language
• 23:25
  in Latin is tabula rasa. It's a blank slate.
• 23:28
  So it comes to know through the sexually differentiated, through
• 23:33
  this sexually differentiated body.
• 23:36
  So it seems to me to make sense that maybe how we experience
• 23:40
  things as men or how we experience things as women might
• 23:43
  be a little bit different and we might pick up on different
• 23:46
  things in, in, in the Gospel of John.
• 23:49
  What is it, Chapter 4? The woman at the well, I mean,
• 23:53
  we know that story, but I've just been struck there by the
• 23:56
  fact that the apostles have just been running around asking who's
• 23:59
  the Messiah, Who's the Messiah. Now, there is one other place in
• 24:03
  which Peter makes the, the, the confession that our Lord is the
• 24:07
  Messiah and our Lord confirms it.
• 24:09
  But this has been a big consternation for them.
• 24:13
  And here are the Samaritan woman who's a public Sinner.
• 24:18
  He says he talks about the Messiah.
• 24:21
  And she says, no, no. She says, I know the Messiah who
• 24:24
  is to come. So she's not even a Jewish
• 24:26
  woman. And he says he, he actually
• 24:29
  reveals part of himself to her. He says, I am he.
• 24:32
  And again, that has been the drama of the Jewish people for
• 24:36
  thousands of years, the Messiah. And it's this woman that says,
• 24:41
  yeah, I know. And there's something I don't
• 24:44
  know. And if you do Lexio Divina, I
• 24:45
  think there's something there in which our Lord, for whatever
• 24:49
  reason, chose to say to this woman, I am he.
• 24:53
  And then of course, we know that she's kind of the proto
• 24:55
  evangelist because she goes out and she's like, Oh my gosh, I
• 24:57
  just met this, met this amazing man and everybody has to know
• 25:01
  about him. And he told me the things that
• 25:03
  I've done wrong. And I mean, it's amazing.
• 25:06
  But you're saying the fact that he chose a woman is very
• 25:09
  meaningful in that moment? I think everything in scripture
• 25:12
  is meaningful. So what is the meaning there?
• 25:14
  That he chose a woman. I think there was a capacity to
• 25:17
  receive and so. To receive the word that this is
• 25:20
  the Messiah, the long waited Messiah.
• 25:22
  Yes, to receive like this profound truth and I read the
• 25:26
  first chapter of Luke and I mean, sometimes I want to read
• 25:30
  it with a cocktail, but I haven't done that yet because
• 25:32
  it's there's parts of it. This is just hilarious.
• 25:35
  I mean, you've got Zachariah, he and his wife Elizabeth, they've
• 25:38
  been praying for a child. That's been their consistent
• 25:41
  prayer, right? It's like poor Angel shows up
• 25:45
  and says your prayer has been granted.
• 25:47
  And what does he do? He says, well, how can this be?
• 25:52
  You know, come on, my wife's old not possible.
• 25:55
  And the, the the Angel explains it to him.
• 25:58
  And Zachariah's response is that's not possible.
• 26:01
  He refuses to believe. So then.
• 26:04
  He's a rationalist. I would say.
• 26:06
  He's an empiricist. I I think he is.
• 26:09
  So so. Do you know how old my wife?
• 26:11
  He's back to day. I mean, it sounds like you're
• 26:14
  saying women are better at receiving revelation and men are
• 26:18
  better at rational. Rational.
• 26:20
  I don't want to go that far. I think we might get into some
• 26:22
  trouble. I'm not afraid of trouble on the
• 26:24
  show, but. This is what I would say is
• 26:26
  this. We might have a natural tendency
• 26:29
  towards one or the other and this is how we help each other
• 26:31
  to learn. So we know the next same Angel
• 26:37
  goes to Mary and whatever, she's a young teenage girl, 13 Angel
• 26:42
  appears to her in her room. And as one person I heard
• 26:45
  recently and said, you know, an Angel appearing to a 13 year old
• 26:49
  girl, you expect her to yell like what's this?
• 26:52
  What's this person doing in my bedroom?
• 26:55
  But she doesn't. She's calm and that's really
• 26:57
  interesting. All of the depictions of Mary in
• 27:00
  the Annunciation show her as calm, frequently with a book or
• 27:05
  you'll see like a lectern which has the shape of a triangle.
• 27:08
  It's a mathematical symbol indicating that she's not some
• 27:14
  irrational 13 year old. She's actually an intellectual
• 27:18
  being who is present body, soul, intellect, right?
• 27:22
  And will. And she's fully present.
• 27:25
  And so the Angel gives her a bigger message than he gave
• 27:29
  Zechariah. She does the same thing.
• 27:32
  How can this be right? And then the Angel explains it,
• 27:36
  and she says, yes, she's able to take in something that that's
• 27:40
  bigger than herself, something that Zechariah could not.
• 27:44
  And then there's, But it it's not just a receptivity.
• 27:47
  I like to call it an active receptivity because what's then
• 27:50
  the Angel says, Oh yeah, by the way, your, your cousin, she's
• 27:54
  expecting. And So what does Mary do?
• 27:57
  She gets up and goes like she goes to take care.
• 27:59
  And it's a journey. We know they don't live next
• 28:01
  door. I mean, this is a journey.
• 28:03
  And so I call it an act of receptivity.
• 28:05
  She and, and again, I look to all these depictions and art
• 28:09
  where we see that it's a, it's a knowingness that she has.
• 28:13
  She's not dumb, dumb, dumbly or or ignorantly saying yes to
• 28:19
  become the mother of God. She's, she's knows what she's
• 28:22
  saying yes to and she has that capacity.
• 28:25
  And, and I think this is something again, where we can
• 28:29
  learn from men and women can learn from each other.
• 28:32
  And all I'm saying is perhaps one of us are more disposed to
• 28:35
  the virtues of intellect. This what I would call active
• 28:38
  receptivity. And maybe men are more disposed
• 28:41
  to the virtues of reason. And if you know that the
• 28:44
  empirical sciences and connecting the dots and so
• 28:46
  forth. But we need both of those to
• 28:49
  know and and maybe this is the way in which we are supposed to
• 28:54
  be working together and relational.
• 28:57
  Such a beautiful vision. Of course, there's so many,
• 29:00
  there's so much nuance there. And there's also so many caveats
• 29:03
  or exceptions to the rule, right?
• 29:05
  That woman who is far more rational than many men, That man
• 29:08
  who's far more maybe intuitive, you know, intellectually
• 29:11
  receptive than many, many women. What do we do?
• 29:15
  How should we think about those exceptions?
• 29:18
  Because I think in culture today, often in a way,
• 29:21
  exceptions are being used to prove the rule.
• 29:24
  As an example, obviously with transgender ideology, gender
• 29:27
  ideology, you know that one person who has a deviation of
• 29:31
  sexual development in their chromosomes, all of a sudden,
• 29:34
  you know an intersex person. Now this is a new rule.
• 29:38
  And therefore, you know, if you are a man or a woman according
• 29:41
  to your chromosomes, you can be the opposite if that's what you
• 29:44
  think in your head because there are intersex people exist,
• 29:46
  right? That's kind of part of the
• 29:47
  argument of gender ideology. So I would say that men and
• 29:51
  women should both have the virtues of the intellect and the
• 29:54
  reason and be able to use them. I guess my question would be I'd
• 29:58
  want to know a little bit more about the woman who is really
• 30:01
  strong in the rational sides, because is it the gifts that
• 30:05
  she's been given? Is it the family that she was
• 30:08
  raised in? Is it the teachers?
• 30:09
  I don't know. But I mean that that is a gift
• 30:12
  to be able to, to have those very high reasoning abilities,
• 30:16
  right. And, and again, that had to be
• 30:18
  learned somewhere and it had to be it, it not only learned, but
• 30:22
  it had to be cultivated and shaped and informed.
• 30:27
  And so I'd want to know more about her life experiences.
• 30:29
  And then on the, when men are a little more intuitive again,
• 30:34
  maybe this is again an example that we're seeing of this, this
• 30:38
  relationality. I mean, look at the the parable.
• 30:41
  So many of the parables are about household matters.
• 30:44
  That means that Jesus was like hanging around Mary when he's a
• 30:48
  little guy and he's watching her make bread and he's watching
• 30:52
  her, I don't know, fill wineskins and so forth.
• 30:56
  So he's taking all of this in and then, I mean, taking it to a
• 31:00
  higher level. I, I'm always struck there.
• 31:03
  There's several parallels. But you have Mary's Fiat, right?
• 31:07
  Let it be done. And then in the agony of our
• 31:10
  Lord in the garden, he asks if this cup can be taken away, Take
• 31:17
  it. And then he says, but if not,
• 31:19
  your will be done. Those to me are beautiful
• 31:22
  parallels, and I can't help but think that they're significant.
• 31:27
  I also think that again, in the Gospel of John, we see Mary
• 31:32
  Washington, well, a Mary, Mary Magdalene or one of the, Mary's,
• 31:38
  not Mary, the mother of God washing the feet of Jesus,
• 31:42
  right. Well, if if you read that
• 31:44
  carefully, that's just a few days before Jesus goes and does
• 31:48
  the same for his apostles. And, and it's beautiful to me.
• 31:53
  I mean, maybe he was inspired by her gesture of love.
• 31:57
  Maybe. And you know, because he's got
• 31:58
  divine and human nature. So on the divine nature, he
• 32:00
  knows everything on the human nature, he could have been
• 32:02
  inspired by that. He could have been learning in
• 32:05
  that moment. I think there's this almost a
• 32:08
  criticism of women today and, and you know, a backlash against
• 32:12
  feminism. And I'm talking more about the
• 32:15
  third wave, the second wave and 3rd wave feminism.
• 32:18
  But the backlash that says women, you're always making it
• 32:21
  about you. You know, the women just kind of
• 32:24
  very self obsessed trying to compete with men.
• 32:28
  They kind of want to always, you know, how do we read the woman
• 32:32
  narrative into this scripture? You know, how do we understand
• 32:35
  what it means to be women in this, you know, conversation?
• 32:38
  And then what about the men? Men aren't allowed to have
• 32:41
  similar conversations about themselves.
• 32:44
  I think there's got to be space for both conversations.
• 32:46
  I really do. And and also for individuals to
• 32:50
  have a space for their voice. This to me is so key because we
• 32:56
  as our society becomes more and more polarized, both culturally.
• 33:00
  And I think that I mean, this would be a topic for a whole
• 33:03
  another show with an expert better than myself.
• 33:06
  But how trauma is impacting families and so forth.
• 33:10
  People don't even know how to take up space by having their
• 33:13
  own voice. And so I, yeah, I guess that
• 33:20
  it's to my mind, we have to find a space for all of these
• 33:24
  conversations. There are a lot of different
• 33:26
  conversations to be had. And again, the beauty to my mind
• 33:30
  of the church is there's, I say, I would say there's more of a
• 33:36
  fluidity in how we express masculinity or feminine
• 33:39
  femininity rather than gender fluidity.
• 33:42
  And again, we see this in the examples of the Saints.
• 33:44
  I mean, there are some Saints that some women Saints that are,
• 33:48
  you know, little more shrinking Violet type, a little more
• 33:52
  demure. Others are just like, Oh my
• 33:54
  gosh, I mean, these women are Trail Blazers.
• 33:57
  I mean, really, do you think you really would have wanted to get
• 33:59
  into an argument with Teresa of Avila?
• 34:01
  I mean, none of us would have. I wouldn't I mean, I would have
• 34:03
  lost that argument. And then we in the in the male
• 34:07
  Saints, we see such different personalities as well.
• 34:10
  And that's what I think is so wonderful is that there are very
• 34:13
  different ways to live out authentic masculinity and
• 34:17
  femininity. And I would extend that to
• 34:19
  paternity and maternity. And I see an amazing variety of
• 34:25
  fathers who are all really good dads, but they go about it in
• 34:29
  different ways based on their gifts, based to, on the, the,
• 34:33
  the, their wives, the, you know, the mother of their child.
• 34:36
  And I see women who are just, they, they're all amazing
• 34:40
  mothers, but they're very different.
• 34:41
  And one time I was at a conference at Columbia College,
• 34:45
  they decided to get a group of women representing different
• 34:47
  types of feminism to agree on something, which of course we
• 34:51
  weren't because it's a group of women.
• 34:53
  No, but there was one woman who got up and she was a Catholic.
• 34:58
  And most of the room was not Catholic.
• 35:00
  Most of the room was very secular.
• 35:02
  And she said, I bet that everyone of you can make a
• 35:06
  better peanut butter and Jelly sandwich than I can.
• 35:10
  And she said, but none of you has the relationship that I have
• 35:14
  with. And then she rattled off the
• 35:16
  names of all of her children. And it was just so impactful to
• 35:20
  me because again, it underscores the relationality.
• 35:23
  It's it's how we exist in relation with other people.
• 35:28
  And again, they're going to be some amazing moms that bake
• 35:31
  bread from scratch, you know, they've got the chicken coop and
• 35:36
  whatever. And then they're going to be
• 35:38
  other moms that kind of, you know, cobble it together with, I
• 35:42
  don't know, maybe they're, I've seen now they're they're frozen
• 35:44
  peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches.
• 35:45
  Maybe that's it. I don't know.
• 35:47
  But the point is, is that they're all showing up for their
• 35:50
  kids and they're all showing up for their relationships, their
• 35:53
  relationships. And I mean, really, if we're
• 35:55
  going to sit here and measure some woman in her, her maternity
• 36:00
  and how she expresses it in terms of what her house looks
• 36:03
  like or, you know, what type, whether she uses organic chicken
• 36:08
  eggs or whether she buys the cheap eggs at Costco, that's
• 36:11
  absurd. We need to be valuing that her,
• 36:14
  her role as a mother based on the relationality that she has
• 36:17
  with that child. And that's what's going to cause
• 36:20
  the child help the child to. I mean, that's and this isn't I
• 36:24
  mean, John Paul 2 talks about this emiliaris dignitatum.
• 36:27
  This has been blowing up all over the place in in mental
• 36:31
  health. But the mother is kind of the
• 36:34
  child's first experience of reality.
• 36:37
  And John Paul two had a line which a lot of conservatives did
• 36:40
  not like. I think it was unfamiliar.
• 36:43
  I was consortio. I'd have to double check.
• 36:45
  But he said that the father learns fraternity through the
• 36:48
  mother. A lot of conservatives still
• 36:50
  don't like that. And I thought it was really
• 36:53
  interesting because when I look around, the mother does
• 36:58
  determine in many cases how the father interacts with the child,
• 37:02
  if he does. And that's not a blanket
• 37:04
  statement, but I'm saying in a lot of cases, right?
• 37:07
  Well it's biologically the reality.
• 37:10
  He learns about the child through the woman's body as
• 37:12
  she's pregnant and when she first gives birth he's watching
• 37:15
  that happen from the wifes body, the woman's body.
• 37:19
  So, physically speaking, that's true.
• 37:21
  And I remember a friend of mine when his wife was pregnant with
• 37:23
  their first, you know, obviously she knows everything that she's
• 37:26
  experiencing everything first hand that's going on here,
• 37:29
  right? And in the morning when he would
• 37:30
  leave for work, he'd put his hand on her stomach.
• 37:33
  And they already knew that it was a boy.
• 37:34
  And I can't remember what the kids name was.
• 37:36
  I mean, call him Scotty or something.
• 37:38
  Hey, Scotty, Daddy's going to work.
• 37:39
  And it got to the point that that when he would do that, the
• 37:42
  hand, the child would push back, right?
• 37:45
  Just as again, to your point, the mother's already
• 37:49
  experiencing this first hand in her body and the father has to
• 37:52
  experience that through her. And but it was a beautiful
• 37:55
  experience of how he engaged, right.
• 37:58
  And I just think our we really need to Plumb our ideas of what
• 38:04
  we think healthy maternity or paternity is.
• 38:07
  Well, and that's, I mean, it goes all the way to the faith.
• 38:10
  The Catholic faith's very, you know, it's insistence on Mary as
• 38:14
  mother of God. And you know, there's this
• 38:16
  misunderstanding while you're saying Mary is this mediatrix,
• 38:19
  this mediator, What about only through God, to God the Father,
• 38:22
  through the Son, Jesus Christ? You know, this is the kind of
• 38:24
  Protestant versus Catholic wrestling that happens.
• 38:27
  Or it's like, well, you put Mary, you make Mary too
• 38:29
  important. But what you're saying goes to
• 38:33
  Mary being important because we do get Jesus through Mary and
• 38:37
  that's how he chose God, chose to enter the world was through
• 38:39
  Mary and and he picked her a woman.
• 38:42
  What if she had said no? Yeah, she had free will.
• 38:45
  She could have said no. But he, he, he allowed the
• 38:49
  feminine to be his entry point into the world.
• 38:52
  He didn't need to choose. He could have just, you know,
• 38:55
  created himself out of dust like Adam.
• 38:57
  He could have appeared. That's how he made Adam.
• 38:58
  Adam didn't come into the world through the womb of a woman.
• 39:01
  Adam came first. And but Jesus came into the
• 39:04
  world through the womb of a woman.
• 39:05
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• 40:20
  I love what you're saying about the relationality because I
• 40:22
  think that's such a key. It's like the secret to handle
• 40:27
  so much of the confusion today when it comes to gender roles.
• 40:32
  Gender roles are really controversial and I think
• 40:35
  there's extremes all over the place, but there are principles
• 40:39
  that I think are worth resting on, even like using that as a
• 40:44
  resting place. And, you know, I always say it
• 40:46
  comes back to being a mother versus being a father.
• 40:48
  Like all of the, you know, the, the, the, the fact that our
• 40:51
  bodies are sexual. I'm a woman, that there's a man.
• 40:55
  It has to do with our ability to be mothers or fathers, right?
• 40:59
  Talk, tell me more what you think about.
• 41:02
  How should we think about gender roles, especially as Christians?
• 41:07
  Well, I mean, first of all, it's again, you know me, I don't like
• 41:11
  to put things in a box. Are there any boxes?
• 41:17
  I think there are very few and I think the only box when we're
• 41:20
  talking here is you have these two sexually differentiated
• 41:23
  bodies. Those are the boxes.
• 41:25
  How they express are very different.
• 41:28
  So for example, I have a friend who grew up in a very large
• 41:31
  family and I said, Oh my gosh, how did your mom do it?
• 41:36
  And she said if we wanted comfort, she said we went and,
• 41:40
  and we couldn't. My dad, my dad was the
• 41:42
  comforting and the nurturer, right?
• 41:44
  She's there's no way my mom couldn't do it because she was
• 41:47
  always having a baby and nursing baby.
• 41:49
  And I wouldn't say that. I would never say that her
• 41:54
  father was emasculated. I would never say that he was
• 41:58
  the mother. He showed up as this particular
• 42:02
  father for this particular family.
• 42:05
  And her mother was probably not as emotionally close to the
• 42:09
  kids, but she was. I've never seen her anything in
• 42:13
  her that I would say is she's not a mother.
• 42:15
  Now, some people would say about that, well, that's the argument
• 42:19
  for not having too many kids. I'm playing kind of the devil's
• 42:22
  advocate here. And, and I think that's a really
• 42:26
  so, so jump all to talks about, well, what Tia talks about
• 42:30
  responsible parenthood. And I do think that we have to
• 42:33
  be very, I think this is a huge challenge in Humanae Vitae that
• 42:38
  that Pope Paul the 6th did not address as well as I think he
• 42:42
  should have, which is that we have to make sure that people
• 42:46
  are, are healthy and ready to have families and to have large
• 42:50
  families. Now he does, and he does have a
• 42:53
  line in there if there's a big translation thing.
• 42:55
  But the Latin and the good English translation say that the
• 43:00
  the decision to have a large family should be undertaken
• 43:04
  prudently and generously. So the prudently part means the
• 43:09
  husband and wife talking together, saying can we show up?
• 43:12
  Is this a good time? And that's where I'm a big
• 43:15
  advocate of fertility awareness because it gives a couple, a
• 43:19
  married couple, an opportunity to say, oh, my gosh, my head is
• 43:23
  exploding. This is going on, this is going
• 43:26
  on, this is going on. I don't think this is the right
• 43:29
  time. And you know what, 4 weeks later
• 43:32
  you can have your life together a little bit better and say, Oh
• 43:35
  yeah, I, I think, I mean, I could be open to a child.
• 43:38
  And so, but there's so many extremes in culture today where
• 43:42
  I think most people are not having big families.
• 43:44
  No, they're not. Most people look down on big
• 43:46
  families as crazy. Afraid, I think they're afraid.
• 43:49
  And again, I think big families too.
• 43:53
  I mean healthy big families. That means a lot of people say,
• 43:57
  well, if you have a big family, you can't love everybody.
• 43:59
  It's like, well, how if you create more people, there's more
• 44:02
  love. And again, so I'm talking about
• 44:04
  a healthy big family that that is a beautiful experience,
• 44:08
  right? I think what people are, I think
• 44:11
  there's a lot of internal fear and woundedness, trauma that
• 44:16
  people translate into ideology. And so a lot of times when
• 44:21
  people say, I don't want a big family, there's a lot, there can
• 44:25
  be a lot more going on. And in fact, there was a
• 44:28
  brilliant memoir that was just written by a Catholic journalist
• 44:33
  about her family, a Catholic family, eight children, you
• 44:37
  know, back in the 50s. Meg is her first name.
• 44:41
  I can't remember the, the title right now, but it was just the,
• 44:48
  the parents weren't healthy. There were so many problems.
• 44:52
  And there's, there's still a lot of healing and redemption
• 44:55
  through that. But two or three or two of the
• 44:57
  siblings, two of the eight siblings committed suicide.
• 45:00
  One attempted it and continued to have mental health, serious
• 45:04
  mental health issues. So that can be a lot of if you
• 45:08
  if you grow up with that or if you're close to that, that that
• 45:12
  shapes that inevitably shapes your idea of family.
• 45:16
  So it might be that that crazy as your normal, which I would
• 45:21
  hope that you step back and look for some healing.
• 45:25
  It could also be create an incredible sense of fear, which
• 45:28
  is I don't want the same thing to happen.
• 45:31
  And at least with two kids or three kids, we can just focus on
• 45:34
  that. And what I find that we do,
• 45:37
  particularly in conservative circles, is we're so quick to
• 45:39
  judge and, and I've, I've seen this first hand, people will go
• 45:43
  after those women aren't having enough.
• 45:47
  This is it. There was an article couple
• 45:49
  years ago and it said that young women were more inclined to buy
• 45:55
  a house than to have a baby. And so I was on a listserv and
• 45:59
  these people, a couple people just really piled on like
• 46:02
  selfish young women. And I said, well, back up.
• 46:06
  So I, I thought from our, from with our values, we would like
• 46:10
  her to get married and be in a stable, permanent relationship
• 46:14
  before she's having a child. So OK, and may we all know women
• 46:19
  that haven't been able to meet a suitable spouse, right?
• 46:23
  So how many child is a ton of vulnerability buying a house,
• 46:28
  there's some vulnerability, but it's also a really good
• 46:30
  investment decision for most people, right?
• 46:33
  And so, but the judgement, we're just so quick to judge before we
• 46:37
  actually learn the story. And that's my point is that when
• 46:41
  we talk about people not having, wanting to have children or
• 46:45
  having smaller families, I, I really think that we should take
• 46:48
  some time to listen and ask why and get beyond the, the, the
• 46:53
  talking points, because I think that there's a deeper story
• 46:56
  there. And many commentators in the
• 46:59
  past have said that maybe Chesterton was one of them.
• 47:02
  I've seen several say that a, a population that does not want
• 47:06
  to, to, to replicate itself, that does not want to grow is 1
• 47:09
  without hope. And so I think there's a bigger
• 47:12
  crisis. And before we go running around
• 47:14
  telling people, look, you got to get married and you got to have
• 47:16
  a bunch of kids, I think we need to give people the gift of hope.
• 47:20
  And that is, that is a theological virtue.
• 47:22
  And I'd like to know what we're doing to help people to have
• 47:25
  hope and, and to say it, Wow, I could do this.
• 47:28
  And, and again, let's not forget the trauma that so many people
• 47:32
  have been raised in, including, quote UN quote, good Catholic
• 47:35
  families. It's there.
• 47:37
  And, and, and, and we don't talk about it much, but it is there.
• 47:42
  And so I, I don't know, I understand there's, there's lots
• 47:45
  of things going on and I understand at a policy level,
• 47:48
  those are different discussions. But I think that we have to be
• 47:51
  very, very sensitive and do more listening before we start
• 47:56
  prescribing things for people because or prescribing, I guess
• 48:00
  it's the word anyway. We, I, I just think a lot more
• 48:03
  listening has to take place. For those that are doing the
• 48:06
  listening and they're uncovering things like, you know, trauma,
• 48:12
  people who have developed a worldview probably from trauma
• 48:17
  or from lack of formation growing up, like needs that
• 48:20
  weren't met growing up. You know, we could create the
• 48:22
  laundry list of all the different things that go wrong.
• 48:25
  You're raised in a broken household.
• 48:26
  You're raised with abuse or addiction or neglect or all of
• 48:28
  these things, right? And so you wind up as a young
• 48:31
  adult and you don't want to do that.
• 48:34
  No, you don't want to get married even.
• 48:35
  Or if you do get married, it's going to look very different
• 48:37
  from your parents marriage or lack thereof and kids.
• 48:40
  Maybe, maybe not not. It might be safer, better to not
• 48:43
  do it. Why overburden the environment
• 48:46
  anyways with children as we're encouraged not to typically.
• 48:50
  So that's why a lot of people are opting out of having kids.
• 48:54
  And you have this trend online now called the dual income, no
• 48:57
  kids DINK phenomenon, where people are proud of the status
• 49:03
  of being wealthy enough to enjoy the comforts of life and not
• 49:06
  being burdened with a child. I completely agree with you that
• 49:10
  we need to discover what's going on at the deeper level here.
• 49:15
  But do you think there should be more conversation or what is the
• 49:20
  solution? Let's let's go to that.
• 49:23
  I mean, first of all, those of us that are called to marriage,
• 49:26
  that are called to family, my husband and I haven't been
• 49:28
  blessed with children, but those that are have been blessed with
• 49:31
  children. It's just living the witness and
• 49:33
  living it joyfully. That says so much more.
• 49:36
  And you know what I mean, if you can keep a sense of humor, your
• 49:40
  kids doing something insane. I mean, one time I had one of my
• 49:42
  nephews when he was 5 and we were at Starbucks and he was
• 49:47
  having the meltdown. And I was that Lady at the
• 49:49
  Starbucks with the five year old meltdown.
• 49:51
  Like, Oh my gosh. So I just this.
• 49:53
  Isn't even my child. So I just took him in my arms.
• 49:56
  I knelt down, I crouched down, I just took him in my arms and I
• 49:59
  just held him until he stopped. And so whatever that's I don't
• 50:05
  know if that's he stopped, I have.
• 50:06
  Heard that? That's the best advice for.
• 50:07
  Tantrums, I don't know, but my point is, is that if people see
• 50:11
  parents showing up and even in the messy parts, it says a lot.
• 50:18
  And I do a fair amount of traveling and I have to say, I
• 50:20
  am so impressed by the parents that I see traveling with
• 50:24
  children, particularly in airports.
• 50:26
  And I, I posted this on social media.
• 50:29
  I think that they raised the bar for all of us, frankly, because
• 50:33
  you guys are all doing an amazing job.
• 50:36
  You don't get enough credit for it and you're behaving better
• 50:38
  than the rest of us that are crabbing because this hasn't
• 50:41
  gone right and that hasn't gone wrong.
• 50:43
  And you're meeting the needs of these beautiful children that
• 50:46
  the lived witness to me is, is one of the most important things
• 50:50
  because it's a witness for other people.
• 50:52
  It's a witness for your children, it's a witness for
• 50:54
  your spouse, it's a witness for yourself.
• 50:57
  And, and we don't have enough of that.
• 50:59
  I mean, honestly, we don't, a lot of us that are conservative
• 51:04
  Christians, we don't always look very happy, myself included.
• 51:08
  And we don't always act very happy.
• 51:10
  And I just don't understand how we're going to convince anybody
• 51:13
  to jump onto this plan of life that we're proposing when we
• 51:17
  ourselves don't even look happy. We don't even look like we're
• 51:21
  enjoying this. And so that's where I would
• 51:24
  start. I think that's so easy to get
• 51:26
  more in an activist stream. It is completely easier, but
• 51:31
  it's we're called first and foremost to our immediate
• 51:34
  vocation and whatever that is, we got to show up there.
• 51:37
  So that's the first thing is showing up joyfully.
• 51:41
  And then I would say that, you know, as we begin to work
• 51:44
  through these things that at a policy level and so forth, ask
• 51:49
  deeper questions and and do more listening.
• 51:51
  I just think more listening and, and this is where I like Pope
• 51:56
  Francis's concepts of encounter and accompaniment.
• 51:59
  I think they're so crucial and they model exactly what our Lord
• 52:03
  did throughout the Gospels. And he listened to people and he
• 52:06
  asked people questions, and we don't listen.
• 52:12
  You said earlier, we, we, I took you down a tangent, I think
• 52:16
  because it was also interesting what you were saying about this
• 52:18
  couple and the roles, gender roles about men and women.
• 52:21
  And, you know, in this particular family, the woman was
• 52:25
  having all these children and the father was kind of being
• 52:28
  more of a nurturer immediately to the slightly older children.
• 52:31
  And then I was saying, well, you know, I was kind of playing
• 52:33
  devil's advocate. Well, some people say that's why
• 52:35
  you shouldn't have a big family because you can't give each
• 52:37
  child individually as a mother what that each child needs.
• 52:39
  And so we were going down this other path about trauma.
• 52:42
  But I want to bring back to that because I think it's so
• 52:44
  important. I would, you know, erring on the
• 52:48
  side of generosity as families in being open to life even when
• 52:54
  it's messy and chaotic, because it always is, right?
• 52:56
  Absolutely. But back to like the gender
• 52:59
  roles. If you as a woman are feeling
• 53:03
  you're not able to fully be mother, you know, this is a
• 53:07
  sticky situation, of course. But what do you think?
• 53:10
  Are there bright lines for what it looks like for a mother to
• 53:13
  nurture a very young child? I'm not understanding.
• 53:16
  What? What?
• 53:16
  What do you think? Are there principles that we
• 53:20
  should be upholding in our own lives and in society at large
• 53:24
  about what it what it looks to father, how it, how it is
• 53:27
  different to father versus to mother?
• 53:30
  Yeah, I mean, again, so John Paul two, he got, he was soundly
• 53:33
  criticized for this by conservatives and he said that
• 53:38
  government should be doing whatever is necessary to help a
• 53:40
  woman stay at home, a mother stay at home with small young
• 53:43
  children and even if it means subsidies, right.
• 53:46
  And of course, conservatives in the US tend to be political and
• 53:50
  social or economic conservatives, so those two
• 53:52
  things didn't really match really well.
• 53:55
  Like paid leave basically. Or some type of subsidy, you
• 53:58
  know, if you can't afford it, if you can't afford to do.
• 54:01
  I think we have to find ways to support women in their choices.
• 54:05
  I also think that one of the great things over the past 20
• 54:09
  years is with technology. And honestly, COVID showed us
• 54:13
  this more than anything. You can do a lot from home and
• 54:17
  you can also do a lot of things part time.
• 54:19
  A woman can work part time, she can have help.
• 54:23
  And there's just lots of different ways to work this out.
• 54:25
  I've seen husband and wife teams that they both work at home.
• 54:29
  They have help, but they're both present for their children.
• 54:33
  They're not locked away all day long, you know, 8 hours and
• 54:37
  nanny's caring for the child, their, their children.
• 54:40
  They're still both present. And again, it's how you present.
• 54:47
  Let me put it this way, how you present as a mother or father is
• 54:51
  just invaluable. And we tend to say, well, again,
• 54:57
  20 other people can make a better peanut butter and Jelly
• 54:59
  sandwich than I can. So they can be mom and or they
• 55:02
  can soothe that they're going to be more creative and come up
• 55:05
  with better games. And I think that we kind of have
• 55:08
  to encourage people to embrace who they are and to be just I, I
• 55:16
  think God reveals when we embrace who we are, God reveals
• 55:20
  more to us of who we are and our abilities.
• 55:23
  And again, I think so much of this is driven by fear that we
• 55:27
  don't know how to show up and we're constantly questioning
• 55:29
  ourselves. And I mean, my gosh, like if I
• 55:31
  had children and I was following the parenting stuff on social
• 55:34
  media, I think my head would blow up because I mean, people
• 55:38
  have always had theories on how to raise children, but it is
• 55:40
  insane now. And people have to learn to
• 55:44
  trust themselves and to know that the way that there's they
• 55:49
  actually know how best to show up for their child.
• 55:53
  And you obviously need some formation and so forth.
• 55:57
  And it's good to learn from others, but to trust yourself to
• 56:00
  know. And, and this is kind of one of
• 56:02
  my soapboxes. I don't understand why even
• 56:04
  Catholic schools are teaching sex Ed in the schools because
• 56:08
  all kids are different, right? And the parents are the ones
• 56:11
  that understand those differences better than anyone.
• 56:13
  So I'm sitting here hanging, why don't we bring the parents into
• 56:17
  the schools to teach them how to teach their children about the
• 56:21
  birds and the bees? Because the parents are, I mean,
• 56:25
  again, the engaged parents that I see, they understand these
• 56:28
  differences between their children.
• 56:29
  You can have five boys and not have the same conversation with
• 56:34
  each of them because they're very different.
• 56:36
  And you may have it at different stages in life, at different
• 56:39
  ages. I mean, they're all sorts of
• 56:40
  subtleties. I think we should be arming
• 56:42
  parents, equipping parents to be able to show up a little bit
• 56:46
  better. And that's where I think, again,
• 56:48
  the church could be doing so much.
• 56:50
  We could be doing this in our parishes.
• 56:51
  I mean, we spent so much time fighting against the
• 56:55
  redefinition of marriage, OK. And I was, I'm against the
• 56:58
  redefinition of marriage. I did my part mostly unpaid, but
• 57:04
  we never, we did very little to show up and say, well, wait,
• 57:09
  what is marriage? Why is it important?
• 57:11
  How do we strengthen it? I mean, and you could have done
• 57:14
  things if if every diocese said to every parish, you have got to
• 57:18
  do at least one thing to strengthen marriages.
• 57:20
  Here's an idea of what that looks like.
• 57:23
  You can bring in some marriage therapist to give a seminar.
• 57:26
  You can have a conference. You can have your youth group
• 57:30
  offer free babysitting because families of small children, they
• 57:34
  tend to be younger families and money seems to be a little more
• 57:37
  strapped. So it'd be nice for those
• 57:38
  parents to be able to go out to dinner and not drop a chunk of
• 57:41
  cash or whatever you call it on Venmo just to, to, for
• 57:46
  childcare, right? Plus you would get those, the,
• 57:49
  the youth group would start to develop maybe some reasonable
• 57:52
  more realistic ideas about babies and what families like
• 57:56
  and so forth. But they're just so many things
• 57:58
  We could be doing parenting classes in our parishes.
• 58:01
  There's no reason why And, and there's just so much that we
• 58:05
  could be doing. We could be teaching
• 58:06
  communication classes. I don't understand why they wait
• 58:09
  until we're engaged. And you know, half of us have a
• 58:12
  ton of baggage, some have some Samsonite, you know, express
• 58:16
  baggage. And nobody's taught you how to
• 58:19
  express, how to communicate and say, hey, when you do this, I
• 58:23
  feel this and, and lots of things.
• 58:25
  I mean, you can teach that stuff to a 5 year old and, and I've
• 58:29
  seen people that have been raised like this and they are
• 58:31
  far more healthy and far more they're, they're far more
• 58:36
  confident then to accept their adult roles, particularly as
• 58:41
  mothers and fathers, as religious, as priests.
• 58:45
  The reverse is we've all seen the messes and, and, and, and
• 58:49
  the people that just don't have the wherewithal.
• 58:51
  We know what that looks like. So I just think at the church
• 58:54
  level, we could be doing so much more to offer that formation and
• 59:00
  and and and, and to really equip parents to be even more present.
• 59:04
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• 59:08
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  for 10% off your order. Sounds like from what you're
• 59:51
  saying, and I agree, I think it's so it's so true everything
• 59:54
  you're saying. I completely agree with it in
• 59:56
  terms of we should be doing more of this sort of relational
• 1:00:01
  relationship education, you know, even the fact that it's
• 1:00:03
  called sex education. It's like, what is sex?
• 1:00:06
  Sex is ultimately supposed to be, yes, it's an act, but it's
• 1:00:10
  built through a relationship that's ultimately sacred and
• 1:00:13
  intimate and vulnerable and beautiful.
• 1:00:15
  It's meant to be that anyways. But how do you do that, right?
• 1:00:18
  Well, you have to build a relationship.
• 1:00:20
  Sex doesn't shouldn't be. It's not like this happens in a
• 1:00:22
  vacuum over here, right? So even like the birds and the
• 1:00:25
  bees concept, like the birds and the bees, I mean, they have, I
• 1:00:28
  guess their meeting rituals in their way that they, they do
• 1:00:30
  that. But human beings like that's our
• 1:00:32
  whole life is relationship and how do we live relationships in
• 1:00:35
  a healthy way that's so rarely taught in any kind of but we're
• 1:00:41
  not intentional way. I would say in kind of these
• 1:00:44
  community structures like churches and.
• 1:00:46
  No, and we're not even taught. So I mentioned earlier the
• 1:00:49
  question, the concept of doing versus being right.
• 1:00:52
  We're not taught to think about the question of who am I or
• 1:00:57
  asked what do you want to be when you grow up?
• 1:01:00
  Do you want to get married? Do you want to be a doctor?
• 1:01:04
  Do you want to be a soccer player?
• 1:01:05
  So it's all this Doo Doo Doo. Whenever asked who, who are you?
• 1:01:10
  Tell me about yourself. We don't encourage people to
• 1:01:12
  spend time thinking about who am I?
• 1:01:16
  And and that changes the perspective completely.
• 1:01:19
  And if we start to focus on that question of who am I, it's very
• 1:01:25
  profound. And some people are going to be
• 1:01:28
  off to a rough start. If they haven't had some good
• 1:01:31
  experiences during their lives, they might not have a whole lot
• 1:01:34
  of raw material to work with. But the people that do and, and
• 1:01:39
  even those that haven't, I mean, there are tons of resources out
• 1:01:42
  there, both secular, Christian, Catholic out there that that can
• 1:01:46
  be used. They, I think we really have to
• 1:01:51
  be approaching this, the whole human project as who am I, you
• 1:01:57
  know, and it's like, well, I feel call, if you start thinking
• 1:02:00
  that through, I feel called to marriage.
• 1:02:02
  So what does that look like? In fact, this is great.
• 1:02:04
  I remember going on retreat and there were these 280 year old
• 1:02:08
  men and they were talking about how different education was.
• 1:02:12
  And they said by the time we were in 8th grade, we knew that
• 1:02:16
  if we wanted to be married and have a family, we had to earn
• 1:02:19
  enough money to support that family.
• 1:02:21
  What 8th grader, male or female, is even being taught by 8th
• 1:02:27
  grade to think about who am I? And that question was a little
• 1:02:31
  bit what do I want to do? It's what I want to be too.
• 1:02:33
  Who do I want to be? In terms of relationships, I.
• 1:02:36
  Want to be a mom, I want to get married.
• 1:02:38
  I want to be a wife. I don't want to be a wife, you
• 1:02:41
  know, and, and then begin planning for that.
• 1:02:43
  And then, but we don't do that type of and it's not just
• 1:02:46
  formation, it's thinking. We're not even helping people to
• 1:02:49
  envision themselves that in in these roles.
• 1:02:52
  And so then we're shocked because people are in their 20s
• 1:02:56
  or, or early 30s and don't want to get married or don't want to
• 1:03:02
  have children. Well, because this hasn't been
• 1:03:04
  the vision. We've been setting all sorts of
• 1:03:06
  other goals out there for a long time.
• 1:03:09
  And now we're saying, hey, by the way, you should be thinking
• 1:03:12
  about something completely. And I mean, it is radically
• 1:03:14
  different. You know what we're proposing,
• 1:03:16
  what the church proposes is radically different.
• 1:03:18
  Well, and if they didn't have a relational experience of what
• 1:03:22
  motherhood, fatherhood and marriage were or are, then I can
• 1:03:27
  see why they might not be interested or they might reject
• 1:03:29
  it. And that's because you're,
• 1:03:30
  you've mentioned trauma a few times.
• 1:03:31
  I mean, that's one, one word for what people experience.
• 1:03:34
  But other times it's just, it wasn't as personalized.
• 1:03:38
  I mean, they felt like they weren't fully connected in a
• 1:03:41
  healthy way, maybe to the marriage of their parents or to
• 1:03:44
  their mother or to their father or to both.
• 1:03:45
  And so those concepts of being a mother, being a father, being
• 1:03:49
  married are very fraught for them.
• 1:03:51
  It's like not attractive for them.
• 1:03:53
  Right and and culturally what what images are we providing?
• 1:03:57
  I'm sorry, I mean it, it, you know, it's been most of my
• 1:04:03
  lifetime that men that fathers have been portrayed as idiots
• 1:04:07
  and on media. What are the alternatives that
• 1:04:11
  we're showing? And now we've got ROM coms where
• 1:04:14
  the characters are like in their 40s and in their 50s.
• 1:04:17
  Oh, please. I mean ROM com.
• 1:04:20
  It's funny if you're talking about people who are widowed or
• 1:04:24
  something. And I think there is an old
• 1:04:26
  Jimmy Stewart movie based on that, which, you know, it's.
• 1:04:30
  The Golden Bachelor now, right? They have the golden.
• 1:04:32
  Bachelor. Yeah.
• 1:04:34
  And so it's, they're very different concepts and we have
• 1:04:39
  to challenge that. But again, if you get back to
• 1:04:41
  what are our roles in the world, well, it's really easy to sit
• 1:04:46
  back and take potshots at the the culture that's created.
• 1:04:50
  But we as Christians, we're the body of Christ.
• 1:04:54
  We're supposed to be in there shaping that culture.
• 1:04:57
  And we can't just leave all of culture and everything to, to
• 1:05:01
  other people. That's where we have to show up
• 1:05:02
  too. And so there may be some people
• 1:05:05
  that are not called to get married or they're called to get
• 1:05:10
  married, but they're not blessed with children or not blessed
• 1:05:13
  with as many children And they have that ability or I don't
• 1:05:16
  know. There's some pretty brilliant
• 1:05:18
  moms that have had 12 kids and kids are raised and these women
• 1:05:21
  are just brilliant. And maybe they should be jumping
• 1:05:23
  in there and, and, and shaping some of this content.
• 1:05:26
  Maybe they should be taking the screen writing course or getting
• 1:05:29
  involved in production. I That's another thing is that
• 1:05:32
  we try to cram everything in, particularly for women.
• 1:05:35
  Like we're supposed to have all of our education and our career
• 1:05:38
  experience and we're supposed to be married and have babies by
• 1:05:42
  the time we're 30. Oh my gosh, that makes no sense.
• 1:05:45
  We live a heck of a lot longer than we used to live.
• 1:05:49
  And most people, you know, including men, changed careers
• 1:05:53
  several times over her life. So why does, why are we
• 1:05:57
  expecting all of this from women on the front end when it could
• 1:06:00
  be spread out throughout her life?
• 1:06:02
  And again, it has to work for each married couple and each
• 1:06:05
  family. And those dynamics are going to
• 1:06:07
  be just so different. And I think we we, we really
• 1:06:11
  should honor that. And, you know, we talked about
• 1:06:13
  the principle of subsidiarity in the church, but that also
• 1:06:16
  applies to how families organize themselves and govern
• 1:06:20
  themselves. And maybe what works for one
• 1:06:23
  married couple doesn't work for another married couple.
• 1:06:25
  But all that matters is that it works for this married couple
• 1:06:28
  and their family, and they're able to meet each other's needs
• 1:06:32
  and the needs of their children. That's what matters.
• 1:06:34
  And the great thing about the principle of subsidiarity is
• 1:06:36
  that you can have a different model over here that works for
• 1:06:38
  this family with their needs, their gifts, personalities and
• 1:06:42
  all the variables, you know, And that's what's so beautiful like,
• 1:06:46
  But we kind of need to stop being.
• 1:06:48
  So again, we, we, we, we want to tell everybody what they should
• 1:06:52
  do and how they should do it without giving them the liberty
• 1:06:55
  of working this out. Like, hey, what's going to work
• 1:06:58
  in our marriage? What's going to work in our
• 1:06:59
  family size? What's going to work?
• 1:07:01
  You know, it's so different. But that was a big rabbit hole.
• 1:07:05
  I'm so good at rabbit holes. Just.
• 1:07:08
  To say, just to say that, you know, I, I think we need to be
• 1:07:12
  seeing more people of goodwill getting involved in the
• 1:07:17
  production of culture like content in terms of of the media
• 1:07:21
  and the movies and we're seeing some trends here, a lot of
• 1:07:23
  changes which are great and we just need to see more of it but.
• 1:07:27
  Do you think it's fair to say then, because I I think we get
• 1:07:30
  fixed up or there's a fixation with gender, gender roles, what
• 1:07:35
  it means to be male or female in the culture today, confusion
• 1:07:39
  around it. Gender roles are really as
• 1:07:41
  simple as if you can mother or you can father.
• 1:07:45
  But besides that, there's really a lot of Gray area for, you
• 1:07:49
  know, yes, a lot of women tend to be more in these roles or
• 1:07:52
  these occupations, but that doesn't mean a woman shouldn't
• 1:07:55
  be allowed or a man shouldn't be allowed in other certain roles
• 1:07:58
  or occupations. Would that be your position?
• 1:08:01
  Absolutely. And I, and I will say, please
• 1:08:03
  don't underestimate the impact of what it is, how we show up
• 1:08:08
  either as a man or a woman, because that is determining the
• 1:08:11
  way that we express paternity or maternity and that
• 1:08:14
  relationality. But this particular father could
• 1:08:17
  be an amazing cook. And guess what?
• 1:08:20
  He does all the cooking and his wife is fine with that because
• 1:08:24
  that's the last thing she wants to do.
• 1:08:26
  And that's awesome. It works for them.
• 1:08:28
  And it's the way in which he expresses love to his family.
• 1:08:31
  And that's part of the glue that holds their family together.
• 1:08:35
  But there has to be that freedom.
• 1:08:37
  And this is, you know, in the church again, that the, the
• 1:08:40
  chatter online sometimes just drives me Batty.
• 1:08:43
  And so there isn't this appreciation for freedom, for
• 1:08:46
  individual freedom then, and not the, you know, again, not the
• 1:08:50
  freedom from, but the freedom for the individual, freedom to
• 1:08:54
  sit down and examine one's own life and understand like, hey,
• 1:08:57
  these are my strengths. This is where the Lord, I think
• 1:09:00
  the Lord is calling me. And you know, and sometimes we
• 1:09:02
  think the Lord's calling us somewhere and then he's like,
• 1:09:04
  no, not exactly, but it's a constant discernment.
• 1:09:07
  And there has to be that freedom.
• 1:09:08
  We have to allow people to have that process.
• 1:09:11
  And instead we get into these crazy conversations, mostly
• 1:09:16
  online about, you know, everybody's got to do this and
• 1:09:19
  everybody's got to do that, or everybody should be going to
• 1:09:21
  this Mass or I don't know. And it's just.
• 1:09:24
  I think you're right that there's a lot of crazy
• 1:09:26
  conversations, but I think the one and that we return to on the
• 1:09:29
  show and the one that is in some ways, to some people, the
• 1:09:33
  craziest of them all, but I think is the only one that
• 1:09:36
  actually really makes sense when it comes to gender roles, has to
• 1:09:39
  do with mothering and fathering. That only a mother can be a
• 1:09:42
  mother, only a father can be a father.
• 1:09:45
  The sex brings life into the world this way naturally, and
• 1:09:47
  that's a good way within the context of a marriage.
• 1:09:50
  So there's certain there is there is a framework that is
• 1:09:53
  based on our gendered bodies and we should not try to destroy or
• 1:09:59
  subvert that framework. But beyond that framework, there
• 1:10:03
  is so much area for, you know, the personal like for how people
• 1:10:08
  live it out personally. And I just think it's like we've
• 1:10:10
  got it all backwards. I mean, I think about that whole
• 1:10:12
  LGBTQ plus IA, you know, that plus movement, it's like they're
• 1:10:16
  picking personalities. People are finding, trying to
• 1:10:20
  discover their own personality, their own identity through all
• 1:10:23
  of these different ways of living out sexuality as opposed
• 1:10:27
  to, you know, you're a male or you're a woman and sex is
• 1:10:29
  designed in this context naturally.
• 1:10:32
  And that's good, you know, a marriage man, one man, one
• 1:10:34
  woman. But then beyond that, yes,
• 1:10:36
  there's so many different personalities and ways you can
• 1:10:39
  live out your marriage. You can live out your femininity
• 1:10:42
  or your masculinity and it doesn't have to fit some trope
• 1:10:46
  or some stereotype. It's like we're it's like we're
• 1:10:48
  so starving for diversity over here.
• 1:10:51
  And I think that is maybe what is maybe underpinning some of
• 1:10:54
  the LGBTQ plus IA movement is like this desire for, you know,
• 1:10:58
  living, being true to myself. And I don't fit into your box.
• 1:11:01
  And so I'm going to go create this identity or be part of this
• 1:11:04
  identity over here. When maybe there was a
• 1:11:06
  misunderstanding about what these boxes even were to begin
• 1:11:08
  with. Because like you said earlier,
• 1:11:09
  there's two boxes, male, female. Well, I would say there aren't
• 1:11:12
  even two boxes. There are two roles.
• 1:11:15
  Two bodies. Yeah, two bodies. 2 bodies is
• 1:11:17
  maybe the wrong word. And they can express masculinity
• 1:11:20
  and femininity, or male and female, in a myriad of ways.
• 1:11:25
  Is there a wrong way to express masculinity or femininity?
• 1:11:30
  I would say anything that goes contrary to the the dignity of
• 1:11:34
  the human person. But I mean, Elizabeth Anscombe,
• 1:11:37
  you know, the famous professor at Oxford who took down CS
• 1:11:41
  Lewis. I mean, she was a devout
• 1:11:43
  Catholic. She wore trousers, smoked cigars
• 1:11:46
  and had eight kits. She didn't fit a box.
• 1:11:50
  And yet she was brilliant and she was a brilliant academician.
• 1:11:57
  Again, she took down to CS Lewis.
• 1:11:59
  I would have liked to have been there for that one.
• 1:12:02
  What? How did she?
• 1:12:02
  Take down, I don't remember the details exactly, but it was a
• 1:12:05
  big it was a public debate. They had a debate and she just
• 1:12:08
  sliced and diced them. OK.
• 1:12:10
  And I mean he. Was on matters of more.
• 1:12:12
  I think it's on a matter of philosophy or theology, you
• 1:12:14
  know, but and and he was no dummy, right?
• 1:12:18
  So, but you know, she had eight kids and more trousers and
• 1:12:22
  smoked How? Were her kids when she was doing
• 1:12:24
  that debate? I don't know if that's an
• 1:12:26
  excellent question. I don't know, but I'm just
• 1:12:28
  saying all of that is just, it looks like a pretty unusual
• 1:12:31
  picture. Well, Saint Joan of Arc, she's
• 1:12:33
  leading men in battle. Exactly.
• 1:12:35
  As a young teen. Yep.
• 1:12:37
  I mean, the whole thing. Dressed as a man.
• 1:12:39
  Dressed as a man. Yeah, but she was very much a
• 1:12:41
  woman. Dressed as a man.
• 1:12:42
  I mean, it was very much. I'm still a woman.
• 1:12:44
  Obviously she's not pretending to be a man.
• 1:12:46
  No, No. Yeah.
• 1:12:48
  It's it's it's it's. And I mean, Anscombe was wearing
• 1:12:50
  trousers and smoking cigars at a time that that I mean, that, you
• 1:12:54
  know, I think that cued like a lesbian vibe.
• 1:12:57
  Right. Conservative.
• 1:12:58
  I think in the conservative world and certainly among many
• 1:13:01
  Christians and Catholics, we see the craziness in the culture and
• 1:13:05
  like things like gender ideology, a man who thinks they
• 1:13:08
  are a woman, you know, 2 dads using surrogacy and IVF, two men
• 1:13:14
  to bring a child into the world to raise that child as two men.
• 1:13:16
  And that child will never have a mother, no, a mother, right?
• 1:13:20
  And it's, it's, it's not good, right?
• 1:13:21
  We know it's not good. And so I think the reaction
• 1:13:25
  often is, well, we now we need to really plot out the ground of
• 1:13:29
  what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman and
• 1:13:32
  create these clear boundaries so that we don't tolerate the
• 1:13:35
  craziness over here. I think we need to do, I think
• 1:13:39
  we need to show more what is beautiful in God's original
• 1:13:43
  plan. So there's a desire to protect
• 1:13:46
  that. And isn't it?
• 1:13:49
  So the designers, Dolce Gabbana, I mean, they're gay and they're
• 1:13:55
  against gay marriage. They're against adoption by same
• 1:13:59
  sex couples and they're gay and they they actually speak to the
• 1:14:04
  the role of the mother and that she's absolutely essential.
• 1:14:08
  So two men in a same sex relationship.
• 1:14:11
  I don't think they are anymore, but they're, I mean, they're
• 1:14:13
  publicly gay. The, the high end Italian line,
• 1:14:16
  Dolce Gabbana and super interesting.
• 1:14:20
  And they've been very public about this.
• 1:14:22
  And so I think it's important to talk about things and not in
• 1:14:25
  terms of obligations so much, but in terms of what's beautiful
• 1:14:29
  and because that's going to draw the heart.
• 1:14:30
  The heart is not drawn by obligation.
• 1:14:33
  The chart is drawn by beauty and by love.
• 1:14:35
  And you know, one of the things when we started the conversation
• 1:14:39
  and we were talking about the, the relationality between men
• 1:14:43
  and women. So and and I was talking about
• 1:14:46
  the way in which we come to know.
• 1:14:48
  So Saint Thomas has this beautiful question on whether or
• 1:14:51
  not the resurrection should have been made manifest to all men.
• 1:14:55
  And he uses the Latin word, their hominy booths, which means
• 1:14:58
  it's the generic from homo like all men and women, right
• 1:15:01
  mankind. And so one of the objectors
• 1:15:04
  says, well, you know, if our Lord is going to appear to this
• 1:15:09
  ridiculous woman, he sort of certainly appeared to all
• 1:15:13
  mankind. And Thomas comes back and he
• 1:15:16
  says no, basically insofar as someone could merit this, Mary
• 1:15:20
  Magdalene merited this because she loved so greatly.
• 1:15:26
  And again, you have to understand his whole philosophy
• 1:15:28
  of how we come to know that loving and the knowing.
• 1:15:31
  There's a reciprocity there. One feeds the other.
• 1:15:34
  It's not a hallmark love. It's not an unknowing love.
• 1:15:38
  Again, the example of Mary, the Mother of God at the
• 1:15:41
  Annunciation, that is not an unknowing yes.
• 1:15:44
  That is very much she knows what she's saying yes to, right?
• 1:15:47
  She may not understand it completely, but she knows what
• 1:15:50
  she's saying yes to. And so I I bring this up because
• 1:15:57
  this is Thomas says This is why Mary Magdalene, insofar as you
• 1:16:03
  can merit this was the wit the first recorded witness of the
• 1:16:08
  resurrection of our Lord and why our Lord appeared to her.
• 1:16:12
  And I bring this up because she was motivated by love and all of
• 1:16:16
  the Saints are motivated by love.
• 1:16:18
  Some of them get caught up along the way by obligation.
• 1:16:20
  We all that's so easy for all of us.
• 1:16:23
  But at the end of the day, it's, it's love and beauty that
• 1:16:25
  attract us. And I think we spend so much
• 1:16:28
  time talking about obligations or about things that people
• 1:16:31
  shouldn't do that. And we're not presenting the
• 1:16:34
  vision. We're not presenting what?
• 1:16:36
  Well, what? Wait, what is God's plan?
• 1:16:38
  And we're not presenting that in a beautiful way.
• 1:16:40
  And I think we have to do that. Again, I talked about modeling
• 1:16:43
  it in our own lives. But also when we're talking
• 1:16:46
  about this, we have to find beautiful ways to talk about
• 1:16:49
  this so that it's something that people aspire to and want.
• 1:16:53
  If we can't do that, and if we just come down and you know, I
• 1:16:56
  mean, we're Moses with the 10 commandments on LGBTQ and we say
• 1:17:00
  you can't do this. You have to do this.
• 1:17:02
  And only mothers and only fathers to do it, no one's going
• 1:17:05
  to listen. I mean, it didn't work real well
• 1:17:07
  in the Old Testament with offense.
• 1:17:11
  The golden calf was just so beautiful, right?
• 1:17:13
  Right. So I think that we really need
• 1:17:17
  to push ourselves again. How do how do we stir the heart?
• 1:17:21
  How do we stir the human heart? How do we and and that tends to
• 1:17:25
  be with concepts of beauty and not just physical beauty, but we
• 1:17:29
  see beauty in relationships. And when I look at these, these
• 1:17:34
  two men, Dolce Gabbana, you know, these are gay men, They
• 1:17:38
  were coupled together. They are active in the lifestyle
• 1:17:41
  and they can see, they see the beauty of the family, the, the
• 1:17:46
  traditional family they see and particularly the beauty of the
• 1:17:50
  role of the mother. And that's why they're against
• 1:17:54
  these, the policies that would allow same sex marriage and
• 1:17:58
  adoption of or or surrogacy for same sex couples.
• 1:18:04
  And there's a beauty there. And so that's, again, that's how
• 1:18:08
  we win hearts and minds. I, I think I'm excited for you.
• 1:18:12
  I know you said moraltheology.com is not
• 1:18:13
  populated yet, but we've got to get that populated with so much
• 1:18:17
  of what you're sharing. It's, it's, it's great.
• 1:18:19
  I think it's such a needed message what you're saying.
• 1:18:22
  Yes, thank you. And I love what you say about
• 1:18:24
  freedom because we, we have to fight the culture battles.
• 1:18:29
  But it's how do we, how do we engage these battles?
• 1:18:32
  Yeah. And I think.
• 1:18:33
  So much of everything. Stepping back and looking at the
• 1:18:36
  wounds, and I mean, I've, I studied the original gender
• 1:18:39
  theorist. I spent a lot of time on that.
• 1:18:42
  I have read many of the the D transition stories.
• 1:18:48
  When I was with the Diocese of Orange, we had Ryan Anderson
• 1:18:51
  come in and present his book When Harry Became Sally, right?
• 1:18:53
  I always get that title messed up.
• 1:18:55
  And we actually presented it. We had a workshop for high
• 1:18:59
  school principals and one of them said, yeah, but how do we,
• 1:19:02
  you know, how, how do we really get into this?
• 1:19:05
  And I said, read the chapter on D transitioning and tell me that
• 1:19:09
  you can read that with, without getting teary, without your
• 1:19:13
  heart hurting. And so now I've, I've watched
• 1:19:17
  videos online like I'm sure like you have, I've read these
• 1:19:20
  articles and particularly the women.
• 1:19:24
  Oh my gosh, what they're, what they're pushed to in order to
• 1:19:29
  embrace that is atrocious. And they are coming from a place
• 1:19:33
  of pain. And the reason that they embrace
• 1:19:35
  this is because no one's meeting them in that pain.
• 1:19:39
  And yet there's this very active online community, that activist
• 1:19:42
  online community that is looking for vulnerable people.
• 1:19:46
  And I think it's like how awkward I felt in junior high
• 1:19:49
  and high school. Dear God, I thank God there
• 1:19:52
  wasn't social media because who knows what I would have ended up
• 1:19:54
  doing. I mean, I, you know, I was the
• 1:19:57
  only girl in the debate team half the time.
• 1:20:00
  I could have been. And I had the bad haircut.
• 1:20:02
  I had the glasses, I had braces, all of it.
• 1:20:05
  It was so awful. And.
• 1:20:07
  I could have easily been taken up into into that type of a
• 1:20:10
  community and been told, well here, what's wrong with you,
• 1:20:13
  Pia? You know you're in the wrong
• 1:20:14
  body and you're you're desperate because again, there's this hole
• 1:20:18
  in your heart and you're sad and you're desperate.
• 1:20:21
  And no one, no one over in the communities that should support
• 1:20:26
  us, our families, our churches, they don't, maybe they don't
• 1:20:30
  know how that, you know, to be fair, maybe they don't know how
• 1:20:33
  to support, but here's this other community that's
• 1:20:35
  supporting and they're very aggressive.
• 1:20:37
  And so even in this, I just think we have to look at where
• 1:20:41
  people are coming from, what is their starting point.
• 1:20:44
  And I have yet to come across a story of a transgender man or
• 1:20:48
  woman that does not start with pain.
• 1:20:52
  And so I, I just, it, we, and we have to be very realistic about
• 1:20:56
  that. And, and pain is a real thing.
• 1:20:58
  It's a very real experience. So how do we begin to to help
• 1:21:02
  people and, and I'm really to love them to this, the point
• 1:21:06
  that they can begin to love themselves And and again, what
• 1:21:10
  do you do when you're that awkward high school kid, a girl
• 1:21:14
  or a boy and you know, whatever, you're not feeling connected at
• 1:21:17
  home for whatever reason. It doesn't mean that your
• 1:21:19
  parents are awful. You're just not for whatever
• 1:21:22
  reason. They could be awful, I don't
• 1:21:23
  know, but you're not feeling connected.
• 1:21:26
  You're not feeling connected in your community.
• 1:21:28
  And here's this online community that's very different and
• 1:21:33
  they're connecting with you. And to see come back, there's
• 1:21:36
  the relationality. It's not in the communities
• 1:21:38
  where it should be. It's happening over here.
• 1:21:41
  And that's what prompts people and that's why they do this
• 1:21:43
  journey. And I again, I've seen it, it's
• 1:21:45
  particularly in the D transitioning stories one after
• 1:21:49
  the other. Where did it start?
• 1:21:50
  It started in a point of feeling lots of pain and disconnected.
• 1:21:55
  And then here's this group that offers me some type of
• 1:21:59
  connection, some type of relationality.
• 1:22:01
  They offer the solution, and then I find out that I'm still
• 1:22:05
  not myself and now I've got to go.
• 1:22:08
  Now I realize that I sort of have to go back to figure out
• 1:22:11
  who I am. And yet I've probably done
• 1:22:13
  irreparable damage to my physical self.
• 1:22:17
  And I, I mean, it's tremendous. But the key, like you're saying
• 1:22:22
  is, is originally The Who am I? I am a son, I am a daughter.
• 1:22:27
  I am loved as I am in relationship with God and family
• 1:22:32
  and others. Is is the key to solve so much
• 1:22:35
  of this chaos that we're referencing here?
• 1:22:39
  And, and also I think just to find people, to find people
• 1:22:43
  where they're at. And we're very quick to say
• 1:22:46
  things like, oh, gay man, he must have had a bad mother or
• 1:22:49
  his father did this. Oh, just stop with that.
• 1:22:51
  I mean, yes, there's data that indicates that.
• 1:22:54
  There's also some some of that has been questioned.
• 1:22:58
  But at the end of the day, we have to get to know this person,
• 1:23:02
  to ask them and to listen to find out what their story is
• 1:23:05
  rather than, oh, gosh, if their dad had done this or if their
• 1:23:08
  mom had done this, they wouldn't be gay.
• 1:23:10
  And that is such a standard conservative trope.
• 1:23:13
  And it just makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
• 1:23:17
  And because I don't see that anywhere in the Gospels.
• 1:23:21
  I don't see. Blaming the parents you mean
• 1:23:23
  for? Even even when the parent, the
• 1:23:25
  parent, the the blind man, his parents are blamed, right?
• 1:23:28
  And Jesus doesn't do that. And so, you know, at the risk of
• 1:23:33
  taking the, you know, what would Jesus do?
• 1:23:36
  I just think that we we could spend more time in prayer with
• 1:23:41
  the Gospels, reading how Jesus encounters people and using that
• 1:23:46
  as our model rather than issuing blame.
• 1:23:49
  There are very few people that he blames, very few.
• 1:23:53
  And he doesn't blame those that are.
• 1:23:56
  He doesn't blame the most wounded.
• 1:23:59
  What would you say are maybe the top two or three must reads for
• 1:24:05
  folks listening on identity gender?
• 1:24:11
  Wow. What homework would you assign
• 1:24:12
  us, doctor? First, I would say just look for
• 1:24:17
  D transition stories. Really, really important.
• 1:24:22
  I would say find a good theology of the body curriculum.
• 1:24:26
  I'm not saying don't necessarily go by John Paul 2's theology of
• 1:24:29
  the body. It's awesome and Doctor Michael
• 1:24:32
  Waldstein has an amazing introduction that could be a
• 1:24:34
  graduate level course. It's not necessarily digestible.
• 1:24:37
  So fine. I think rural woods has some
• 1:24:40
  different has some resources. I have a list of resources, but
• 1:24:45
  I I can send them to you if you want to add them in the notes or
• 1:24:49
  something. Find some resources so that you
• 1:24:51
  begin to understand the significance of the human body
• 1:24:55
  and then honestly I reading. Top encyclical.
• 1:25:02
  Would you? Would you pick a or you were
• 1:25:04
  going to say something else in? Script I was going to say
• 1:25:06
  Gospels just spending time with the Gospels and just powerfully
• 1:25:11
  consider and and it really focus on how does Jesus encounter
• 1:25:15
  people and ask yourself why are people attracted to Jesus?
• 1:25:21
  And there there there are so many great tools out there.
• 1:25:26
  I mean there's obviously there's all sorts of media content
• 1:25:29
  that's been developed. It's very good at helping us go
• 1:25:31
  there. But I would say first, just do
• 1:25:33
  it ourselves very quietly and, you know, set, maybe set a goal
• 1:25:37
  like, but I know sometimes I've done this.
• 1:25:39
  I haven't done it very well all the time.
• 1:25:41
  But you know, for land or Advent, I decided to go through
• 1:25:44
  a gospel. And maybe I don't make it all
• 1:25:46
  the way through, but just take it in small digestible pieces or
• 1:25:51
  the readings for Mass, you know, you can have them sent to you on
• 1:25:54
  your phone. You can look them up on an app
• 1:25:56
  during the night before Mass. Then even if you're not going to
• 1:25:59
  make it to Mass the next day, you know, read them.
• 1:26:03
  And so that you just have a little time, even if you're just
• 1:26:05
  reading the Gospels, you can leave out the other readings
• 1:26:08
  first reading in the Psalms, just read the Gospel and then
• 1:26:11
  just sit with that quietly. And maybe it's only three
• 1:26:15
  minutes, maybe it's 5 minutes. Make a commitment to it.
• 1:26:17
  Because if we don't commit to it and don't commit that, oh, I'm
• 1:26:20
  going to spend an hour in meditation on these three lines
• 1:26:25
  of the gospel. I mean, I'll be the first one
• 1:26:27
  that's going to fail that, right?
• 1:26:28
  But if I tell myself I'm going to spend 3 minutes, 5 minutes,
• 1:26:32
  that's doable. And the other thing that I do
• 1:26:34
  when I set do that we all have our phones.
• 1:26:37
  So you put your phone on do not disturb, you set the timer.
• 1:26:40
  And since the timer set, it means we don't have to check the
• 1:26:42
  phone to see what time it is because little phone's going to
• 1:26:44
  tell us what time it is. So those are the things that I
• 1:26:47
  would really recommend. I love that.
• 1:26:49
  Thank you so much, Doctor Daisalani.
• 1:26:51
  You're welcome. Good to be awesome.
• 1:26:53
  Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
• 1:26:55
  Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:26:56
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