Pints With Aquinas - BONUS | Feminism, Postmodernism, & Gender Theory Craziness| Matt Fradd Show Ep 4.

Episode Date: January 19, 2019

Yo! Go subscribe to The Matt Fradd Show podcast:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-matt-fradd-show/id1443398185 I sit down with Abigail Rine Favale for nearly 3 hours to discuss her unlikely conversion, why she no longer identifies as a feminist, and postmodernism. So much postmodernism. Enjoy! To support me on Patreon (Thank you!): https://patreon.com/mattfradd To follow Abigail on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AbigailFavale/ Get Abigail's book (use promo code "deep" for %40 off): https://wipfandstock.com/into-the-dee...  To follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd To follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd/ To follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd/

G'day everybody, this is a bonus episode where I share with you an episode from The Matt Fred Show with Dr. Abigail Renee Favale, where we talk about postmodernism and feminism and the patriarchy and her unexpected conversion. Now look, this thing that I'm putting up here on Pints with Aquinas is just a bonus episode. We're not going to be putting these up on Pints with Aquinas for much longer because you can go right now and subscribe to The Matt Fradd Show where you'll get these podcasts from now on. Make sense?

So don't blame me if you're like, hey, Matt, this is a three-hour video on YouTube. Who has time? And I'll say, not me. That's why it's a podcast. And you'll say, but I can't find it on Pints with Aquinas. And I'll say, yes, I know it's on The Matt Fradd Show. I'm a poet and I didn't even recognize it. Okay. So go subscribe, but here's the show. Enjoy.

G'day and welcome to The Matt Fradd Show. I am so excited about the conversation you're about to hear and which I just had with Abigail Renee Favale. This is her book. We're going to be talking about everything from feminism to her conversion to Catholicism to the apparent patriarchy and all things in between. A fascinating episode where we discuss topics that are really relevant today and I know you're going to learn a lot. Before we get into today's show, I want to say a couple of thanks to our sponsors who are making this show possible. The first is Exodus 90. Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't. This is like a spiritual boot camp for men. So if you're a man out there and you want to take things to the next level, you know, you want to fast for the church, you want to grow in your relationship with Christ, you really can't go past this. Type in exodus90.com

slash Matt Fradd. And when you do that, you can join a waiting list of men who are about to do Exodus 90, like hundreds. In fact, it might even be thousands now of men who are going to spend 90 days giving up things they'd rather not give up and taking on things they'd rather not take on. I've done this. And so certain things you've got to take on like cold showers. And it's the worst, but it's also amazing. So if you talk to my kids, they'll tell you that dad's been screaming a lot in the shower lately. That's because I turn it to freezing cold and I stand outside the shower and I think to myself, okay, who am I going to offer this up for, you know? And it's very often

Pope Francis, you know? So I'll jump in and I'll start screaming the name of the Holy Father because I'm offering it up for him. You know, three meals a day, no snacking, no alcohol. You don't do it like in isolation. You do it with a group of men. If you want to take your spiritual life to the next level, this is what you need to check out. Okay, so again, go to exodus90.com. That's exodus90.com. Do it right now. If you type in exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd,

you're going to get a series of videos that are going to encourage you as you begin your journey in Exodus 90. So be sure to check that out, exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd if you want to join the waiting list. The second group I have to thank is Covenant Eyes. Now, full disclosure, I used to work for Covenant Eyes, but I don't anymore. The reason I'm plugging them is because they're a sponsor of the show, of course, but it's honestly because it's the best filtering and accountability software on the web. Like if I were to ask you right now, how many phones and tablets and computers do you have in

your house right now? Would you know? And if you have kids, I think maybe we should know because as great as technology is, you're watching me right now through the excellence of the internet, but with a few clicks, you know like I do that you can get into some really troubling stuff that can be really detrimental to you and to your children. So I would say this, if you're a young woman or a young man or an older woman or an older man who struggles with pornography, you've got to have covenant eyes. Is it a pain? You know, you're going to go download it, you've got to figure it out. Yeah, it kind of is. But I kind of think to myself, like, what kind of pain in the butt do you want? You know, do you want the pain of continually

falling back into porn, telling yourself you'll never do it again? Or do you want the pain of installing it? And honestly, it's not that difficult. It's actually very easy, very affordable. And when you do, realizing that you're going to be a lot safer online, and honestly, if you have kids, this should just be part of your safety. Like you make your kids perhaps wear helmets when they ride their bikes. You have a lock on the house. This is part of the safety that you ought to be giving your children. Now, the good news is if you're not too sure about Covenant Eyes, you can try it out for free right now. If you go to covenanteyes.com and at checkout, enter the promo code Matt Fradd, that's my name, no spaces, okay, Matt Fradd, you will get an entire month for free to try out this software. If you don't like it, you know, by day 29, tell them,

they'll cancel it. You won't pay a cent, but I promise you that you're going to want to use it. At the Fred Household, we use it on all of our devices. It's an absolute necessity. If you want to give your children an internal filter for an unfiltered world, you need Covered in Noise. Not only does it block the bad stuff, it gives you an accountability software program so that you can see where your children have gone online, and then you can chat with them about how to make better choices. And if you're the one struggling with pornography, you choose an accountability partner, and that way you know if you go to any websites you shouldn't, they'll be getting a notification. Not so they can shame you or call

you out, but so they can call you up to be the person that God's created you to be. Check it out right now. CovenantEyes.com. Do not wait. It's procrastination that leads people to not do anything about this and all of a sudden their kids are addicted to porn. Don't wait. Stop this video if you have to. It would be more important for you to go get CovenantEyes at CovenantEyes.com. And as I say in the promo section, just type my name without spaces, Matt Fradd, and you'll get a month for free. And then finally, this is the book I'm going to be talking about today by Abigail, and it is absolutely fantastic. This is my copy. You can see that I've been reading it. It's actually really well written. I am positive that by the end of today's episode, you will also want

to get a copy. Well, here's the good news. If you go to this URL here, this is the name of the publisher, whipfenstock.com. Gr granted, not the easiest thing to remember, but there it is right there. If you go there, buy the book, and type in the promo code DEEP, D-E-E-P, you will get 40% off the book. It is an excellent book, and as I say, by the end of this episode, I'm pretty sure you're going to want to get it. Thanks for watching. Enjoy the show.

How's it going? Pretty good. Thank you for being on the show. Yeah, of course. So we're not sure if this is going to want to get it. Thanks for watching. Enjoy the show. How's it going? Pretty good. Thank you for being on the show. Yeah, of course. So we're not sure if this is going to fall over or not. For those watching at home, it's definitely not a real table. No, it's not a real table. But it looks good. Have you been on camera a lot before? A lot? No. Yeah. No. I did have a weird experience, though. I'll tell you when I was defending my PhD PhD there was a snowpocalypse happening in the UK and so I flew over to Scotland and what my other um my other sort of examiner couldn't actually make it so she had to appear via camera and so I had to be on camera yeah and in the room there

was this huge screen that just had my face on it in my PhD defense so I had to where were you like I was where your face though like in front I was like here so if I'm sitting here yeah there is a screen right there with my face and is there a bit of lag yeah it was horrible so I just sort of I was like I'm going to ignore the screen now so I had to sort of enter into it but that's kind of my only real on-screen experience when did you get your PhD? 2011, yeah. Wow. Well, 2010 is when I defended, yeah. That's so cool. Is it as scary as everybody says? Yes. I think the scariest part about it is thinking, will I get a job at the end of this? Will all of this be worth it? Yeah. So was it better or worse that she wasn't there and you

only had one person oh it was totally worse it was bizarre but it went well did you suspect at any point that you might not receive your phd i don't know you just can't go there i just sort of like i had to focus and not not think about that but yeah it went it went really well and it was funny i was i was a time in my life when I was pretty distant from God, but it was such an unlikely story that I was even able to get there. Like as I was flying into Scotland, they closed the Edinburgh airport because it was so snowy. My examiner was coming from England and she couldn't even make it. And here I was coming from the West Coast, the United States, and I barely made it in. Wow. And then I defended the PhD and passed without corrections.

It was just, it was like incredible. I remember just going out to the ocean and feeling this surge of gratitude. And it was maybe the first time I prayed in years, just like, thank you. So you went that close to our Lord at that point. Not at all. But you prayed anyway. No, that was probably, that was a phase in my life where I wasn't, I wasn't really practicing the faith at all. I was sort of intellectually engaged,

but not the heart, not anything like that. In fact, when we lived in Scotland, our first flat, the bedroom window overlooked the Catholic parish in town. It was this beautiful little stone church. And I never went in. I never went in. I was that close. And so that's one of the things I look back and I think, oh, if I lived there now, I would run in there all the time. But it's kind of a metaphor for me now that I was sort of close to the faith,

but yet so far, like I wasn't even venturing toward it. If I were you after getting my PhD, I would have just, I don't know, man, that just must be such an incredible relief after working your butt off for so long. I would have made everybody call me doctor. Oh, yeah. Well, there is the, I remember I put, at first I put doctor on my credit card and then at some point I was on the phone with this guy trying, like I think I was getting a new credit card or something.

And he kept calling me every time. He was like, doctor, at the time, Ryan, Dr. Ryan, Dr. Ryan. And I just felt so embarrassed, right? There's this normal guy and he's sort of, Dr. Ryan, Dr. Ryan. And so after that phone call, I was like, oh, I don't want that on my credit card anymore. It just feels, I don't know, That's awesome. Pretentious or something. Well, I want to get into your story, but just as a brief kind of summation for those who are watching, tell us a bit about you, what you're doing.

Alright, so like what I'm doing now? Yeah, whatever you want. Well, right now I'm a director of a great books program at George Fox University, which is a Christian school in the Pacific Northwest in Newburgh, Oregon. So I direct the great books program, and then I also teach in it.

So I moderate seminars on the Great Books, which has been super wonderful. And it's an interesting place to have landed, because I did my doctorate in feminist theory and women's writing very much against the grain of the traditional canon of texts and ideas. And then now I'm fully immersed in that and loving it. So it's been kind of an interesting switch. But I became Catholic almost five years ago. It will be five years this Easter. And I entered the Catholic Church after a decade of kind of nominally Christian postmodern feminism. It's hard to put a label on it, but that's the best one I've got.

And I was raised evangelical and then really began to become interested in feminism in college, and eventually that kind of became my religion. feminism in college and eventually that kind of became my religion. It kind of became my worldview. The lens through which I read everything including Christianity and it really kind of whittled my faith down to the bone really where there was hardly anything left and then at the end of the very end of mys, I had a sort of escalating spiritual crisis. I also became a mother and all these sort of storm fronts came together. And I really suddenly became Catholic. And then after becoming Catholic was sort of, oh, wait, what have I just done?

What do Catholics actually believe? Oh, wow, I need to sort through this stuff. And then I had a very intense kind of intellectual conversion on many issues that I had once been very committed to, you know, like the idea of women's ordination and same-sex marriage, contraception, all those sorts of things. Yeah, is it like one of those, you've bought something, you're not really sure what it is, and then have you become increasingly pleasantly surprised at what you've fallen into? Does that make sense? Because you said, what do Catholics believe? Yeah, I mean, I knew what Catholics believed, but I think I was just so,

I guess I was so just spiritually desperate at that point that as soon as I began the process of becoming Catholic, all the sort of spiritual consolations that were happening, I just kind of lapped them up and I didn't really, I just set aside my doubts about these other things, but then I eventually had to reckon with them, right? And really say, okay, am I going to be a dissenting Catholic? Or am I really going to figure out why the church teaches what she does in these things that I just don't initially agree with? And then in trying just to understand what the church taught or why she taught it, my heart and mind were changed. Wow.

And it's unlike anything I've ever experienced. It was wonderful, but incredibly disorienting. Yeah. And it was just dizzying. I think for about a year, I was just in a state of just complete disorientation. But I was being deconverted in some ways and then really reconverted too. And so you grew up evangelical Protestant, is that the word you used?

Yeah, yeah, I would say, yeah. Strong Catholic, sorry, strong evangelical family or? Yeah, so my parents were adult converts through the Campus Crusade for Christ. And so by the time my brother and I came on the scene, they were very committed Christians. And so I definitely had a Christian upbringing from the time I was able to form long-term memories. And we lived in the western United States in several different areas. But it was very much a Christian.

Yeah, I saw the evangelical, you know, like focus on the family. Cool. James Dobson kind of upbringing. And so were you happy in that through your teenage years? Was there any rebellion or questioning? Oh, yeah. Well, I was happy with it until my teenage years, I think. Yeah.

Yeah, man, you know, adolescence is rough, right? It's sort of like hormonal tsunami. Were you at a public school? I was at a public school in a very small town in eastern Idaho in a very, very Mormon area. Right. So I kind of grew up in this kind of evangelical bubble inside a Mormon bubble. It was kind of like this Russian nesting doll of religious conservatives.

Yeah. So it was, but that context made my faith, I had more of a defensive posture toward my faith, I think, growing when I was entering into adolescence. That probably helped somewhat, at least for you to maintain your faith, did it? Defensive in the sense that... Defensive in the sense that I never really examined it. I never really turned around and really examined it.

It was more about proving, or at least to myself, that what I believed was more reasonable than what Mormons believed. But I mean, did that help you to then reflect upon your faith? Because if you had to give answers to your Mormon friends, presumably you had to look at your faith. Yeah, well, but it didn't work that way. So here's an example, right? So Mormons believe that there was a great apostasy right so like almost immediately after christ ascended i don't know if they believe in the ascension but christ zapped back up there um the the truth the church just fell away immediately and then it was not restored until joseph smith right, and I thought that was absurd,

but now I sort of think, well, that's not, that's not totally far afield from what my, what maybe a more sort of Protestant evangelical perspective would be, because even though, say, the great apostasy doesn't happen immediately, there is a sense that for centuries, the truth was underground or hidden or distorted, right? Until then kind of restored somehow in, I guess, in the Reformation. It depends on how. I had a very kind of, I think, ahistorical faith, which I think is typical of a lot of, at least at the time, evangelical.

The question I often have for Mormons is I first get them to tell me when the great apostasy happened. And if they tell me after the death of the last apostle, excluding John, whatever John's doing, I then do the, like, who put the Bible together? And like, how do you know it's, and at that point, they often want to say that the apostasy happened immediately then. Well, how do you know the 27 books of the New Testament since you have an apostate church collecting it? And they said, well, it was revealed to Joseph Smith that this is it, which all seems very, and is very ad hoc, I think.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that's interesting. Yeah, what's those words from our Lord who says, you know, if your brother sins against you, like bring it to the church or bring it for each other. And if you won't listen to the church, but yeah, for centuries, that was not applicable then, I guess,

if the church was, yeah. Right. And it gets really sticky too. So one of the things that's interesting doing the Great Books program, our program's chronological. So the freshman year, we start in the ancient world

and then we do kind of the dawn of Christianity in the spring. And so when they're, like for example example when we're reading Eusebius and his history of the early church one of the interesting passages in Eusebius that I like to read with them is when he's he's talking about how the canon of the new testament is becoming assembled okay and what's interesting is that he points out that how, so how are they figuring out which books are canonical and which are not?

They test it against the tradition, the apostolic tradition of the church. It's not the other way around. Yeah. Right? So it's not that the Bible tells us what tradition is true. It's that tradition actually helped test which, you know, figure out which Bible should even,

which book should even be in the Bible to begin with. I like how Scott Hahn put it. He said, the Bible is not an instruction manual for a church still in shrink wrap, but rather the Bible presupposes a church already in existence. Yeah. Right.

Well, that's funny. Did you kind of, kind of come up to head with some of those thoughts and did they make you feel uncomfortable as you were trying to defend your faith against Mormons or did that not really come to the fore at that point? No, that didn't, that didn't. Yeah. So that's what I, that's what I guess, you know, I had a very sincere faith that I think especially as a child. And then I think when I was a teenager, I was kind of, I was just like a little insane. Sometimes I look back and I think, oh my gosh,

I feel like I'm going to have my comeuppance when my kids get. Oh yeah, I totally will. I totally will. Because you and I found out this morning we're the same age, which is really cool. Because I became a Catholic when I was 17. And prior to that, I was agnostic

and very much into like kind of being shocking, you know, like so like death metal kind of apparel in a very heavy rock band. Right. Just trying to be very irreverent

to raise sort of a reaction. At the time, it seems all very kind of rebellious, but you look back and you're like, I just wanted people to think I was special. Do you know? Right, right. So then why did you become Catholic when you were 17? How did that happen? Do you not know? No. Okay, so my mom came home from mass and invited me to World Youth Day. Oh. Okay, now I have heard this story. Yeah, yeah. And I remember sitting in the back of my class and saying to my great friend Jake,

I said, I'm not going for Jesus or any of that bleep. I'm just going to have a good time. And I'm like, there's a lot of women going. Like, that's cool. I've had no luck with Australian women. There's a possibility that someone. World women. Right, yeah.

Maybe they'll like my accent and something good will happen finally. So I boarded a plane surrounded by young Catholics. And the thing that struck me the most was how normal they were. Because I remember thinking of Christians like weird people. And they kind of were weird. They were dressed sort of funny. They were kind of sheltered. They just seemed uncool. and I wanted to be cool and so when I met these young Catholics who were cool

I couldn't figure out why they would be Catholic or where they came from right and they believed all the things that the church taught that I thought were ridiculous like they would save sexual marriage I would like I get why I probably have to but why would you do it like you have a shot you know like you're attractive you know and it just it blew me away and uh it really shocked me into praying the skeptics prayer like god if you exist that'd be great I remember just finally admitting it would be really cool yeah wouldn't it be great like if this is actually true like I know we're just doing this thing and we're trying to bring people over to our side and it's not all true. But if it was, that's kind of how I started to think of it.

What if it was? And I'm like, well, that would be amazing because there would be meaning in the universe. And then I became very happy Christian after I came back from Rome. That's awesome. So that's almost in a way the opposite of my own trajectory. What were you doing when you were 17? Let's awesome. So that's almost, in a way, the opposite of my own trajectory. Really? What were you doing when you were 17? Let's see.

Well, I started in the fall. That's when I started college. Of 17? Yeah. So fall. Okay, that's America fall. What's fall? Yeah, okay.

So yeah. Yeah, so I would have been just coming back in the fall, right? In July. So August, September. And that was when I was going to parties with my Bible. Gather around, guys. Let's read from Matthew's Gospel. Unreal.

So I was coming off a year of, I don't know. I mean, it's sort of cliche to be like, teenage rebellion. But, you know, I'm sure there was some of that. I'm sure there was some of it that was just, you know, the kind of classic rebellion. But, you know, I also think I was just like, I was really hormonal. Let's be real. Let's be real. You know, I just had some unrestrained urges, you know, that I was like just following at whim.

And it had been a very sort of difficult year. And my parents, understandably, were distressed by a lot of my behavior. And so we were butting heads all the time. And then so I went to, then I went off to college, to a Christian college. And when I got there, I was like, okay, this is a clean slate. I like threw away all the pictures of my illicit boyfriend who I wasn't supposed to be seeing. He's a nice Mormon boy. illicit boyfriend who I wasn't supposed to be seeing.

It's a nice Mormon boy. I took out my belly button ring that I had told my parents, or I had gotten without my parents' knowledge. And I was like, okay, this is it. I'm doing it. And then I tried to kind of recommit my life or whatever. Yeah, so there really was a real sense of you wanting to live this life. It wasn't like doing stuff because my parents want me to because I could see the story happening

differently where now I'm finally free and I can be who I want to be and I'm not going to let my parents' idea of who I should be influence that. I think there was also a desire to restore my relationship with them too. That was sincere. That was sort of my pattern.

I would go off the rails and then I would sincerely be like, okay, I'm coming back. I'm coming back to the faith. I'm coming back to the fold. What was that like? Because you were an evangelical who had made a prayer to be once saved, always saved. What's the experience like for a Protestant who has to believe intellectually that they're saved, but then falling like you said you did, and then having to, just like you say, get back on track? Because obviously, as a Catholic, you just go to confession. What do you do as an evangelical, or what did you do? see that I was sort of flailing around wanting something exactly like confession, wanting some

kind of tangible sacrament or ritual of reconciliation, but I didn't have that. So, you know, sometimes there would be kind of these ad hoc sort of things. So sometimes it would be getting rebaptized. Sometimes it would be, you know, just going to a Christian summer camp and having this kind of intense spiritual experience and crying with people in like a glomming prayer hug circle thing. And then

or there would be these sometimes people would make up their own kind of rituals where like so you write down your sins on a piece of paper and then you burn them or you come like lay it at the cross or, you know, they're sort of. So warmer, warmer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, that's what's fascinating now looking back. I think there's this, there's this desire to kind of create something like. Like a little sacrament. Yeah, that approaches the very kind of sacrament that the church has given us from the beginning for that kind of reconciliation. So, but for me it was, it didn't really stick. Right. sacrament that the church has given us from the beginning for that kind of reconciliation.

But for me, it didn't really stick. It was very hard for me to stay on the wagon, I guess. And then in college, I began to be increasingly interested in questions about what it means to be a woman, especially in the context of Christianity. And what sparked that? Not that anything necessarily would have to spark that. It's a pretty reasonable thing. I think I've, in some ways, I've always sort of had, I guess, an attention toward questions of gender. I think growing up I was, I know I don't look it now, but I was really sporty and I was sort of a jock in high school.

My wife was a total jock. Yeah, yeah, soccer team or whatever. So I was often the only girl in a context of all boys or something like that. So feeling like I had to kind of prove myself or having this sense of, you know, unfairness or imbalance, right? you know, unfairness or imbalance, right? And then when I went to college, I remember being in this class on the New Testament and we were studying 1 Corinthians and in reading it, I came across that passage. I think it's in 1 Corinthians 11 where it says that woman is the glory of man and man is the glory of God or something like that. I can't remember. It was the NIV translation.

I think that's basically what it says. And so, and I read that and I thought, what? You know, this sounds like there's hierarchy here and men are closer to God than women. Like that can't be right. That was sort of my assumption. I didn't entertain the possibility that that, it was like, no, this has to be wrong. So how do we read this in the right way? And I remember I asked the professor about it,

and he didn't really have a good answer. He was sort of like, let's talk about something else. And because of that, I went and did my own research. And that's when I discovered this thing called Christian feminism. How did you do research? What year was this? Was the internet in full swing? So I went into this thing called Christian feminism. How did you do research? What year was this? Was the internet in full swing? So I went into this thing called a library.

Have you heard of a library? Yeah, brick buildings. They have books. So I went into the library on campus. And it's weird. I can even remember which aisle it was. Wow, yeah. And I kind of went there.

I don't remember what I would have Googled. I don't know that I would have known the word feminism yet. You know, I think I grew up thinking, you know, just having sort of a Rush Limbaugh kind of association with feminism. Were your parents into that sort of stuff? Yeah, my dad listened to Rush Limbaugh. You know, it was during the Clinton years. And so there was like Hillary the Feminazi and that kind of thing.

So I didn't have a favorable, and feminism wasn't really part of the kind of common parlance the way it is now. Yeah. So it wasn't really a term that I was familiar with. But somehow, I guess, in just looking, maybe it was, I was looking at like biblical interpretation sources or just trying to figure out. But anyway, that's when I discovered, you know, I mean, there probably was only a handful of books in the library at the time. They didn't have, like, a huge holdings. But that's when I encountered this whole discipline

of feminist biblical criticism. And then that was sort of the entry point. And I was, like, an immediate convert. So I remember for that same class, I wrote... But you asked your professor? Yes, so the same New Testament class for our final, we could either memorize the Sermon on the Mount or write an essay. And I chose to write an essay,

and I think I was the only student who chose to write an essay. But the title of the essay was God is a Feminist. So I was like immediately on board, right? I remember I sent that to my mom. I don't know why I would send these papers to my mom. What did she send? Oh, I don't know. I don't know what she said, but I'm sure she was kind of freaked out.

She was like, oh, geez, here we go. You send your kid to a Christian school. She could have memorized the Beatitudes. Yeah, right. I could have memorized Scripture, but instead. Did you get a good grade? Yeah, I think so. But that was sort of the beginning of...

And from that point on, you know, I really embraced the feminist label. And at that time, it was not... It was uncommon, especially in, I think, Christian circles. There were very few people who were also considered themselves feminists. I don't know how similar this is, but when I was about 14, atheist wasn't part of the common parlance. So if it had have been,

like today atheist means more intelligent than you. Yeah. You know? And today maybe feminist means what? I don't know. I don't know, that's a good question. We can get to that. But so if atheist had have been a thing when I was 14, I don't know. That's a good question. We can get to that. But so if atheist

had been a thing when I was 14, I think I would have adopted the title. Yeah. I'm this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But because it didn't

have that connotation, I'm agnostic, which felt more spiritual. Yeah, yeah, sure. So I don't believe in God, but I still am open to spiritual things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, for a while, around the time I was in grad school, I thought of myself as a reverent agnostic. Okay, yeah, that's cool. So, yeah. Yeah, so, but yeah, so when I was in college, I... So, in the beginning, though, you're reading these books that are coming from a Christian perspective, is that right? And they're trying to reconcile, maybe? Right, okay, so, yeah. So when I first got into especially feminist biblical interpretation, it was still very much from an evangelical framework. So very much taking

scripture seriously as God's word, this belief that it is infallible if correctly interpreted. So the goal was then to correctly interpret it. And then it's authoritative. So it still took, I think, the Bible fairly seriously and the Christian faith very seriously. And so at first, my sort of task as a feminist was to take these troublesome passages, like the one I mentioned, or like the one in 1 Timothy, about women not having authority over a man, not being able to teach.

The sort of household codes. Ephesians 5, submit. Yes, exactly. Ephesians 5, it's so funny. I love Ephesians 5 now. Yeah, that was read at our wedding. So good. Yeah, so I would, and then I would sort of do research I'm like what's the

original Greek term and what connotations I would have and so it was that was sort of the the path initially and then you know kind of trying to evangelize this this kind of um evangelical feminism to other people right to trying to get them on board. I think especially my main interest at that point was to make the case for women's leadership and women's ordination. Okay. Although I guess I don't know that I would have said ordination at that time

because I wasn't in a tradition that necessarily ordained. Were women pastors in your tradition? Well, I didn't grow up in a single tradition, but I definitely grew up, I mean, we would go to different churches. At one point I went to a Lutheran church. At one point, a more charismatic, sometimes a Bible church. We never had a church, we never went to a church where there was a woman pastor or where that would have been possible. So I think when I started college, I had the, I just kind of thought,

yeah, like maybe a woman could be like a side pastor, you know, or like a subordinate pastor, but not head pastor. I could only be a man, so. Well, you know, or like a subordinate pastor, but not head pastor. That could only be a man. Well, I mean, up to this point, though, it all sounds very reasonable. Like if you're reading passages that seem to imply like a sort of like what Aristotle thought of women, that they're somehow like subpar. Right. And they have to sort of totally submit to the whims of a man. It's like, that doesn't sound cool.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, so yeah, I think some of those. So far it's like, that doesn't sound cool. Right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I think... So far it sounds like you're on track, in a way. Yeah, no, I don't think I was... I think the interpretations that, at that point, I was learning about and kind of embracing, I think were as reasonable, certainly,

as any other kind of standard interpretation on the table, maybe even a little bit more so. Yeah. But I was learning a kind of hermeneutics, a kind of way of reading the Bible that, and I wouldn't, at that age, I wouldn't have been able to articulate this, but it still, it begins with certain unquestioned assumptions. So it begins with the unquestioned assumption that the Bible, when read correctly, will affirm the full equality of men and women.

So you weigh the verses that seem to support that. You privilege those in a reading. And you use those to kind of read. We do this all the time, don't we? Right. So if we would think that loving one's neighbor is better than killing him, then we kind of read those verses over the other ones. Or try to interpret the bad ones through that. Exactly.

Right. And so when, you know, without any sense of an interpretive tradition, and all you have, the Bible is the only tradition really that you have in sort of an evangelical framework. And so everything has to come from that. Everything has to be based on that. To make any sort of case for a certain doctrine or certain theological approach, it has to be justified through scripture. So that was sort of what I was immersed in initially, was trying to make the Bible read the way that I thought it should be read. And so where are you in college at this point? Towards the end or the beginning?

No, this would be probably the first two years. You have to, as a bit of a side story, you have to tell us that story of that bloke you dated who was throwing rocks. Oh, yeah. This is brilliant. When I read it in your book, it made me so happy. Especially the poem. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, tell us. Okay, so what name did I give him in the book? Because I didn't give his real name. Dave. I think I called him Dave. Yeah, I think so. I'll stick with that. Dave.

And so this was my freshman. This was my first semester freshman. I was really, really boy crazy. As soon as I got to college, I was like, where's my husband? You know, like, who's it going to be? Which one's the one, you know? And so the first sort of viable boyfriend option was this guy named Dave. We'll call him Dave, not his real name.

And so we started hanging out a lot. was this guy named Dave. We'll call him Dave, not his real name. And so we started hanging out a lot. We would often hang out in the lobby of his dorm, and he would sort of, he would show me the poems that he'd written, and he would play songs he'd written on his acoustic guitar, which everyone was doing at that point. I did that.

I'm so embarrassed. Of course you did. I'm listening, just cringing at how I did the same thing. You probably had a puka shell necklace. I did, yes. Bleach tips. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I was all deep. Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Totally. And so you'd be like at a party and someone's like, hey, you want to play a song? No. I mean, I guess. I didn't go to parties.

There wasn't really a party scene. But it was like that was the party. It was like, hey, let's go down in the lobby and play worship songs. And then it would be, you know, the guy as described. And then this kind of adoring, you know. Yeah, that's the word. All in the spirit. All feeling the feelings.

Yeah, and he, so one of the poems that, yeah, I write about this in the book because I still remember it. It was just, you know, it was on these, on these clunky HP laptops that we had back then. Yeah. With all these giant disk drives and such. And it was just this blank Microsoft Word page. And he was like, I call this one Void. Void. And that was the poem.

It was just Void. Was it even a title? No. He meant it. I don't remember if the word Void was on the screen. It was just void. Was it even a title? No. He meant it. I don't remember if the word void was on the screen. I don't think so. I think the file was saved as void. I call this one void.

And how did you respond to that? Oh, I was so like, this is amazing. This is so great. Oh, totally. It's sad. I remember being kind of bored. Yeah. But I, it's sad. I remember being, like, kind of bored, you know? Yeah.

But, you know, I was like, yeah, you know? And it just would kind of, like, go on and on. But, yeah. And so then, okay, so then we were, at this point, we weren't, like, officially dating or whatever. So we went on, we had our DTR, which is called the Define the Relationship Talk. And it was this really long, meandering walk through campus at night. And, you know, I was just sort of like, okay, okay, let's, like, seal the deal already. You know, but he was, like, you know, discerning God's will. So I was just kind of, like, following him around.

And my memory was really long. I don't really know how long we were out there. Did he initiate the DTR or was that you? I don't even remember. But you want him to kind of like man up a little here. Yeah. Well, I just sort of was like, you know, like let's date or not. You know, like what's going on.

It's either like a flattering or an offensive thing he's about to do to you. Right. So then we like, we reach a point on our walk where there's a stop sign a few yards down, and he picks up this rock, and he's like, all right, if I throw the rock and I hit the stop sign, that means that it's God's will for us to date, right? So it's sort of like, yeah, and so he picks it up. Have you done this too, Pritchett, back in the past?

And he didn't hit the stop sign at first. No,? So, and he didn't hit the stop sign at first. No, sorry. Yeah, he didn't hit the stop sign at first. So then he tried like two times and then he hit it finally. With his girly little arms. Sorry. No, no. He wasn't particularly girly.

He like, he would wear, oh shoot, what are they called? Shants. Okay. They're like, they're not shorts, but they're not pants. They're shants. They're shants. They're like, they're not shorts, but they're not pants. They're chants. And he would ride on one of those little scooters around campus. And do tricks on it. Oh, wonderful.

So he eventually hit it. Yeah, yeah. So then we dated for a while. And we were like terribly matched. We were terribly matched. He had very much like a youth pastor vibe. Yeah. And really super extroverted and wanted to have as many friends as possible. You know, and anyway. But. And really was just super extroverted and wanted to have as many friends as possible, you know, and anyway, but I just really, I just really like, you know, it's, it's, it's ironic

because just, I was getting on this, you know, feminism train, but at the same time, I did not feel comfortable unless I had a boyfriend. Like I needed a man, I needed to be validated that way. But then I was also, yeah, so. That's so funny. I remember when I finally proposed to my wife. So I was living in Australia and we had just done net ministries together. And I went back to Australia. She went back to America.

We were emailing back and forth and on MSN Messenger. Oh, yeah. Do-do-do. Yes. Or whatever. Like I remember. Dopamine hit. Uh-huh. back to America we were emailing back and forth and on MSN messenger oh yeah do do do yes or whatever like I remember dopamine hit uh-huh and um she came visited me and it was amazing I went and visited her and then I was like all right let's do this so I sold everything I owned quit my job bought a ring without telling her moved to America but was still like unsure and nervous. And I remember one day praying, you know, there's more of my personality speaking to myself perhaps than God. I'm like, God, like give me a sign, you know.

It's embarrassing to say this because it's like your friend with the stones. I was like, I want to see like a full moon. I want to see like some random nature, like a deer. I want to see like a full moon. I want to see like some random nature, like a deer. I want to see like a deer. And then I want like a very unambiguous scripture passage like this. And I was just like kind of conversing with the Lord in that kind of charismatic way. And I sensed our Lord say to me, like, do you want to marry her? And I said, yes.

And God, who apparently speaks like an Australian, said to me, well, you're old enough and ugly enough to make this decision on your own. Like, do it. I'm like, done. It's probably me giving myself justification to marry her. So yeah, so the next day I proposed. I have to say, like after that moment throughout the whole engagement, I had no more doubts. That's great. And that's like a real proposal, too. You know, now it often seems to be this sort of, like, oh, let's pick out rings together. Let's book a venue. And now, oh, you proposed.

I'm so surprised. And I tell you, I'm glad that social media didn't exist. Nor did it for you. Because could you imagine having to get this on Instagram? And yuck. I have students now who had a Facebook account when they were in, you know, 6th, 8th grade, whatever. And I'm thinking, if I had a Facebook from when I was like 14 and 15, 16, like, I'm so glad I was born when I was born before that. You know, or even just having to navigate.

Because by the time Facebook came on the scene, I was already married. I was in grad school. So I never had to navigate the awkward like Facebook relationship status and then the breakup yeah I see that yeah yeah so that that was my like super dramatic prayerful too bad you didn't know the stop sign method I know that would have been so much easier. Anyway. All right, so you want to be a feminist at this point? Is that what you would say? No, I am a feminist. You are a feminist?

Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. And are you winning converts? To what seems like a very reasonable Christianity. Right. It sounds like all you're saying is women are less indignity to men. Right. Seems like a pretty easy thing to buy into.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I remember one sort of moment too where that is significant in kind of tracing this trajectory was later. So this would have been, I believe when I was a junior,

when I was taking this class, either the end of my sophomore year or the beginning of my junior year. And I had a professor who, she was sort of known as like the feminist professor. And she often came under a lot of fire because of that. And we were, the class was a women in the Bible class. And we were studying the Pauline household codes.

And so I was expecting her to do the kind of interpretation thing that I'd been doing, right? To say, well, if you look at the full context here, and if you look at this Greek word, then what it really is indicating is a kind of mutual submission, blah, blah, blah. But instead, she took this approach where she was basically, in a nutshell, like, yeah, no, Paul's saying what it seems like he's saying. He's asserting a kind of male-dominated hierarchy, and we should reject it. Wow.

So that was like a shift into a different kind of feminism where it was more of a hermeneutics of suspicion and critique. So it's, you know, beginning with the—so I think previously I had the assumption that, you know, I brought in the assumption of, say, you know, equal dignity between men and women. And the Bible, when read correctly, will affirm this. Whereas this was more like, okay, equality between men and women, but the Bible is sexist in certain places. And those places need to just be rejected. So that began more of a kind of dismantling, I think, of the authority of Scripture. And no longer was it the goal to make the Bible affirm the equality, but it was rather just, it doesn't really matter if it affirms it or not, but you can just not listen to

the parts that seem not to. Now, had you already dealt with this perhaps by looking into the Old Testament and seeing things like slavery and the ban and things like this? Yeah, well, for the Old Testament, I mean, I think there's almost like this neo-Marcionism a little bit where it's kind of like, oh, the Old Testament. That's right. You know, like, you've really got to focus on the New Testament in terms of doctrine now. Yeah.

And in fact, in the Old Testament, arguably there is evidence that you have several women prophets, you have women prophesying, you have women leading, you have these exemplars like Deborah and Judges,

Miriam, and so there are some positive things. So it was the idea that Paul was culturally conditioned. Yes. Yeah. So it's not like he's a... Yeah, yeah. Paul was sort of shaped by his time.

And so we don't really need to listen to those parts. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's a slippery slope, isn't it? It is a slippery slope. And I don't think I realized it at the time. Because was Jesus a sexist in choosing 12 men? Okay, so Jesus, in this view, is almost sort of set up in opposition to Paul.

Because, you know, Jesus was countercultural in the way that he dealt with women. He spoke to them. He invited them into his inner circle. And because in evangelicalism you aren't working within a framework of apostolic authority, the fact that the 12 apostles specifically were men isn't as huge a deal because you can point to, well, here, you know, it's women who are first witnessing the resurrection and told to proclaim the gospel. Here, it's the Samaritan woman who is, you know it's women who are first witnessing the resurrection and told to proclaim the gospel here it's the samaritan woman who is you know converted and told to proclaim the gospel

and so you just it doesn't really matter that the disciples you know maybe that was just sort of a pragmatic decision on our lord's part or something like that right so um but in in I think, that kind of Christian feminism, Jesus is often represented as sort of the feminist, right? Okay. And then Paul is not. Paul's the sort of aggressive one. So if we read Paul through this kind of feminist Christ, then we can just pay attention to the parts that correspond with that. So I was never really that bothered by the apostles specifically being men because there isn't this sense of that's where church authority comes from.

That's where leadership positions come from in the church are traced to the apostles. It was more like a church leader is someone who proclaims the gospel to, you know, and you have women doing that. So where did you go from there? So when I first took that class, I remember when this professor was giving that, I felt frustrated because I was like, I knew that she was going to lose people immediately. That was just going too far.

And I was like, why didn't she do the more winsome kind of evangelical feminism? And then when I was a junior, I studied in Oxford. And I was studying. Like a trip abroad sort of thing? It was a study abroad for a semester. And I was studying medieval women writers. And so I was writing on St. Hildegard of Bingen.

I was reading Julian of Norwich. Yeah. Christine de Pizan. And that semester, I feel like, was kind of the last sort of moment where I think bi-feminism actually strengthened my faith and kind of vice versa. I was, I don't think I'd fully kind of been ushered into a more sort of secular mode of feminism at that point. But then it's after that, like in my senior year especially, that's when I began looking more, I think, reading more contemporary feminist theory and philosophy. And then that's what I chose to sort of study in graduate school, women's writing and feminist theory. And so once I really entered into that stream, that's when I, not necessarily consciously, I didn't like decide, I'm now going to operate from different presuppositions that are at odds with the Christian faith. It was more like, you know, feminism is good. It's sort of a, it's true. And so I just kind of followed, you know,

began studying the discipline. And then kind of what happened by the time I sort of was studying it in graduate school, that was sort of more of a secular postmodern feminism that really became my worldview. And then I analyzed Christianity through that. I wonder if we could take a step back and just explain what we may perhaps should have done at the beginning. Like, what is feminism?

What is postmodernism? I know. Maybe this is a really difficult question, but like for our listeners who, you know, they've heard this term. They're afraid to ask it of their friends in case someone will yell at them. Like, what is first, second, third wave feminism? Right, right, right. Okay, so it's actually pretty difficult to define feminism because there are so many different varieties. Little denominations you might say.

But if you could sort of distill it down to a very sort of basic common definition, here's what I would say. down to a very sort of basic common definition, here's what I would say. Here's what I say is not a good definition, but you hear this a lot, which is, oh, do you believe that women are people? Then you're a feminist. Or do you believe that men and women should be equal? Then you're a feminist. Because that's only sort of half, I would say, of a good definition, a basic definition of feminism. The first, I would say, is an affirmation of the common humanity or dignity of men and women or equality, whatever word you want to use there. But then the second piece of it has to be a belief

that there are significant forces in society that undermine that equality or that dignity. You have to have that second piece. Okay. Right? Because if you are like, yeah, I believe men and women should be basically equal and, you know, in our culture

they kind of are. Then you're not really a feminist, right? Because there has to be that other piece where there's work to be done, right? That there is widespread endemic, systemic, male-centered or patriarchal oppression.

Okay. So there's also this kind of belief in like the patriarchy. Yeah. That in, that I would say in most situations, like from a feminist perspective, men are in a powerful position and women are not. And that that, in kind of all levels and spheres of society. So that's what I would say is a basic definition of feminism would be

common dignity, humanity of men and women and that there are significant forces undermining that. And then once you get beyond that, then it gets really complicated because it's the kinds of solutions that are proposed all over the place, right? You have Marxist feminism, which I think I think a lot of maybe mainstream feminism now... This is what I see a lot online.

...tends to be Marxist in its assumptions, even if it's not... And what does that mean? What is Marxist? I think it would... You see this in Simone de Beauvoir, for example. Her book, The Second Sex, I think is perhaps... I would say it's maybe the seminal text. It's sort of funny to use that word in this context, but in terms of Western feminism. And basically, her solution to women's oppression is this kind of socialist utopia, women's oppression is this kind of socialist utopia where um the this it's kind of also sounds like plato's republic about you know where you know someone else raises the children

the sort of petty petty problems of child rearing so that's the state takes care of that um and so yeah right so yeah so access to abortion and contraception and then sort of the state kind of taking over childcare. So the dissolution of sort of a family structure maybe where children are tied so closely to their mother and things like that. Right, because this is what kind of burdens women and prevents them from being as powerful and as free as men, children, marriage. Yes, yes, right. So from the way I read Simone de Beauvoir

then, I think that she ironically, in trying to sort of liberate women, her approach is to basically distance them from womanhood, right? Become more like men? Yes. Yeah. So that's what it means to be free. Like to be free is to become as much like a man as possible. And, you know, because she writes about how the female biology basically makes women,

we are more enslaved to the species and we're more animalistic in that sense because we have these really intense biological ties through pregnancy and lactation to the young. And so for her to kind of achieve this transcendence, right, so she's an existentialist, so she's working from that idea in order to sort of transcend, you have to fight against that kind of biological facticity that for women is more intense, right? So for, so yeah, so access to contraception and abortion and then, yeah, that kind of more sort of state-run socialist utopia. That's sort of her solution in the second sex. But where I would also see a little bit of implicit Marxism

in contemporary feminism is the notion of equality as sameness or perhaps the belief that any time there is difference, there is a differentiation in power as well, and therefore a kind of implicit oppression at work, right? So you can't really have equality and difference or intention in a certain way. So minimizing the differences between men and women, or denying that there are any essential differences between men and women. So denying essentialism is very much a core feminist dogma, for sure.

Denying, say that again? Denying essentialism, so denying that there are essential, in kind of a philosophical sense, differences between men and women. So how do you explain the biology? I mean, because we're different in that sense, aren't we? Are we? Are we? Yes, I think we are, of course.

Well, that's one of the tensions, I think. So feminism has always had this problem, or I would say maybe, I don't know, if it would be helpful to go over the waves, but I'll finish this thread first. Sure, yeah. I think feminism has this problem in more sort of contemporary or 20th century feminist theory.

So they're denying this sense of an essence in order to argue that what we see as womanhood and manhood is primarily socially constructed and therefore malleable. malleable. And so while there might be sort of biological differences, those differences don't really extend beyond say reproduction and instead they're sort of like socially exaggerated. So things like my daughter who wants to play with dolls and not a bow and arrow, for example. Yeah, that's because, I mean the argument would be that's because she is being socially constructed. She's being socially pressured or formed to want those things. But then there's a problem because if you deny that there is this kind of essential difference between men and women, that it becomes very hard to maintain a movement that's based upon women's identity.

Because if woman doesn't mean anything. Exactly. So what is the take of feminists, of the transgender movement? I imagine there's biological males who identify as females marching in women's pride parades or whatever, you know, women's marches. What's the take on that? Right. So there are different takes on that. Although I've been surprised at how readily I would say mainstream feminism has embraced the idea that you basically only need to, that you can kind of become a woman

simply by a speech act. Wow. By kind of making a declaration. So right now, I presumably have male privilege. Yes. So, but if I just decide to be a woman, and if I mean that, I now no longer have that. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, that's sort of the idea, right?

So I think in kind of pop feminism, you know, like sometimes I'll listen to, like, okay, here's an example, Confession Time. So I like to watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Okay. No judgment, yeah. And I, so there's this podcast I listen to about it, and it's run by these two HuffPo feminists. And they're just totally on board, right? So there was one contestant that they said was transphobic because he said his worst nightmare on a date would be finding out his date's really a man. Yeah, that'd be terrifying. Yeah, right. I mean, that seems reasonable.

And so they were like, oh, he's so transphobic. They're sort of hand-wringing. And so it's been surprising to me, I think, how quickly sort of mainstream feminism has embraced that. Interesting. But there are some feminists who have not, but I would say they're of the minority. And in kind of the common parlance of the day now,

they're called trans-exclusionary radical feminists. So these would be feminists who say, yes, a human being with a penis is not a woman. Like you can't, there's actually, you can't just simply say that you're a woman, right? And they've been critical of this trend because it actually undermines women's rights, you know? And it undermines the ability for women to have,

for us to have sex-segregated spaces. You mentioned women's sports. I mean, certainly if this trend continues, it will frankly destroy women's athletics. Yes. You know, there's sex-segregated spaces and, you know, whether women want to have a retreat or bathrooms, of course.

That's been one of the big front lines of this debate. And all of this chaos and confusion comes from the false premise that there's no difference between men and women and all of this is just socially constructed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's, it's hard to dissect in some ways, but honestly, I think this really boils down to, um, this collective forgetting of what sex is and, you know know therefore what actually it means to be male and what it means to be female and that the body matters that the body carries and tells a kind

of truth that is not just simply malleable or constructed by us um so i think there's a lot of things at work i think there's this weird kind of Gnosticism, you know, where the body is just this, it's this instrument that one can sort of use at will. And, you know, obviously we have these, now these, we have these technologies that we didn't have in the past where you can, you know, mimic the appearance of the other sex in ways that simply weren't possible previously. So there's this kind of, you know, this plasticity that's violently enforced on the body that we just didn't, that didn't exist in the previous. Right, and this is probably partly why drag queens are less of,

maybe that's one of the reasons drag queens are less of a thing maybe and more transgenderism is because back in the 80s maybe we didn't have the same sort of technology. Yeah, for sure. I mean, well, yeah, I don't know exactly when it developed, but yeah. Being in Essence by Thomas Aquinas. I think he quotes Aristotle. The first line is something like a minute error in the beginning leads to like a major error in the outcome. Yeah.

And it really does feel like that. Yes, yes. It's like, and this is from the second, I think, or first Vatican Council, when God has forgotten the creature becomes unintelligible. And so if we kind of begin from the premise that man and woman aren't anything, they're just sexless widgets who are culturally constructed. Right. And you know what else is crazy?

It's like we've been talking about LGBTQ whatever, but that was back when we thought B meant something. Yeah. Like that's an admission that we live in a binary world, but we don't apparently. Right. But now we're stuck with this bloody B. Have you thought about that?

I have thought about that. Because there are some fundamental contradictions or tensions or philosophical inconsistency in some of these assertions of identity, right? Because I remember asking my students a couple years ago, you know, something like, okay, is sexual orientation innate?

Are you born that way? Yes, immediate answer. And then, but what about, you know, sex? And then, no, you're assigned to sex at birth. Because they were using this terminology how you're assigned to sex at birth. Sex isn't something that is simply recognized when you're born.

It's actually assigned or imposed on the body. And to me, I said, well, aren't those two ideas incoherent? Because presumably sexual orientation is an attraction to a particular sex. Right. So if that's innate, but sex isn't innate, like that doesn't make any sense. Those seem to be contradictory. Yes. Right.

And it's becoming, I mean, some of the weird things I've seen lately that are being written about, you know, criticisms of folks who say that they would be uncomfortable dating someone who's transgender. So when you have this sort of shifting ideas of sex and gender, then what does sexual orientation even mean in that? So what does it mean for me to say I'm attracted to men? Does that mean I'm attracted to humans with male bodies? Does that mean I'm attracted to men? Does that mean I'm attracted to humans with male bodies? Does that mean I'm attracted to men? And isn't that rather discriminating of those poor women who might want you to be attracted to them? Well, that's the ultimate discrimination, right? Like who you want to have sex with. Yeah. Right. You would think that would be a good thing to be able to discriminate unless we're supposed to be having sex with anybody. Yes. I would agree that that is

a very good kind of discrimination to make, right? So, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm... It's mad, it's mad. It's like we've gotten on this insane train from nonsense and we refuse to get off of it and things seem like they're spiraling. It feels like we're kind of in the midst of like this kind of slow motion like car crash,

this kind of reductio ad absurdum argument like in real time, you know, and it's changed so quickly, right? So when I was in graduate school in a secular program, we're studying feminist theory, the transgender question was very much on the margins. I remember watching sort of a special, like a BBC special on trans kids, and at the time, you know, here I was probably in the most sort of secular phase of my life studying feminism. And I immediately recognized, like, well, this actually seems to affirm these sort of stereotypes that feminists have tried to undermine, right? The idea that, oh, I have a son who loves to wear pink. He loves to play with dolls. Therefore, he must not really be a boy. Well,

the idea there is that what it means to be a boy is to like boy things, to like cars. So what's interesting is that hidden between this is this implicit, very polarized and stereotypical sense of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. It's almost as if we're... It ironically makes those boxes very small because now it's not as though... Say I was a tomboy growing up. I played a lot of sports. Now I kind of wonder. It wasn't even an option for me to think, oh, maybe I'm really a boy.

But now I sort of wonder, maybe I would have wondered, you know, if that had been an open question. Because I was not into sports. I hated sports. Right. But I would love to, like, read poetry and, like, write music and think about my deep thoughts. Right. Because one of the frustrations I have about this phenomenon is that it seems to give an even narrower and more polarized definition of what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman. So no longer is it possible to be, say, a more stereotypically masculine woman. You must really be a man.

My wife was captain of the wrestling team. See, there you go. And, you know, she was big into sports. She would wear her, you know, pants under the dress, the frilly dress her mom would make her wear. But as soon as the priest was down the aisle, it was off and she was out playing with her boys. And she would have had to deal with that.

Yeah, it's insane to say men and women are socially constructed, but this man is a woman now. Right. You know? Right. And you may not question that. So, like, what are we claiming? Are we claiming a social construct? Right.

Why do that with any enthusiasm? Right. Or seriousness? Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to sort of track in a way. I mean, I remember in graduate discursive place that is a woman and wrote from that. And I remember in our seminar, we were all like, you can't do this, right? A man just can't sort of declare, like, I'm a woman.

I'm now writing as a woman, right? Because, you know, at that point, it was still absolutely fair game to appeal to some kind of, to the importance of the body. And so, and even then I was studying a kind of French feminist theory that took the body seriously. And so even then I was probably something of a closet essentialist, even though I wouldn't have been able to admit that in feminist circles. So briefly, since we began the conversation,

first, second, third way of feminism. Right. Give us a definition of those. First way of feminism usually refers to, in the early 20th century, the movement for women's suffrage or the right to vote. And first wave feminism grew out of the temperance movement in America, where it was primarily women who sort of rallied together and passed the prohibition laws because it was women and children who were really affected by the widespread alcoholism at that time. And so when that was at least temporarily successful,

it sort of demonstrated that, wow, women can actually, you know, when working together, they can make real changes in the law. And so the women's suffrage movement grew out of that, and women were awarded the right to vote in America in 1920, I believe. And then after that, the feminist movement kind of disbanded in a way, and things were fairly quiet because the sort of mandated inequalities at the level of law, such as, you know, women being able to vote, women being able to serve on juries, that sort of thing. Those had been corrected. And then in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the second wave hit when all these sorts of kind of social

upheavals were happening at that time, these various movements. And that movement was different. It was kind of initially called the Women's Liberation Movement, and it's often referred to as Second Wave. So Simone de Beauvoir, who I mentioned earlier, she wrote The Second Sex in the 1940s, I think, kind of between these two waves. But her work was, in my opinion,

very formative through the second wave feminism. So Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, and she took a lot from Simone de Beauvoir. So there was now more of an attention toward more sort of, I guess, perhaps more subtle or social kinds of inequality. And there was perhaps more of a sense of a desire for a flight from domesticity, whereas that had not at all been part of the first wave. And so the second wave, it was really... And that's when kind of the sort of pro-abortion movement, like with NARAL and that sort of stuff,

became allied with now the National Organization for Women. If women are to have equality, then abortion on demand must be a thing. Right. But what's interesting, however, is that there were, even in the second wave, when it first broke, there were a lot of women who protested

or who, even within the National Organization for Women, who did not want to kind of jump on that platform. But it was, interestingly enough, it was, so NARAL was primarily run by men, right, who really kind of thought, okay, well, we need to get women on board in order to make this successful. And so they successfully wooed the leaders of the National Organization for Women, and then that became just a central to the feminist platform from there on out.

So this is why, because I imagine there's people watching who wonder how when they criticize abortion or when they try and demonize it, as it ought to be demonized, they get such hostility. And this is part of it, right? Because for some people, if I speak against abortion, I'm speaking against your equality, to be autonomous. Yes, exactly.

So, yeah, most of the first wave feminists were not in favor of abortion. So that really is something that became part of feminism in the second wave and has only, I think, become increasingly more central to feminism. And then third wave feminism is maybe perhaps the next generation that grew out of that where it's more about plurality and freedom of choice in every sort of area of life. and freedom of choice in every sort of area of life where it's not so much like, oh, you shouldn't stay at home, but more like you should be able to choose whether you want to stay at home or whether you want to work.

And then I think that's also when... That sounds a little more balanced. Well, it's... I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, I think that in some ways it's more balanced, but I think it also, because of the emphasis on sort of the plurality and that began to become allied with gender theory, which is coming on the scene, I think, like with, say, Judith Butler's work and that sort of thing. So in the second wave, you know, you would see, for example, a much stronger sense of womanhood as a definite category and common sisterhood, right?

And in third wave, that idea begins to be critiqued. So how can we really say that there's kind of a commonality between all women? So there's more of a focus on, like, multiculturalism or intersectionality, like other forms of... If there's a commonality among all women, then there's something that's essentially different about you and me. Right. Is that okay?

Oh, I mean, I think it's okay. Right. In feminism, no. It's not. Yeah, I think for most part, yeah, I would say most feminist theory would not be... One thing I hear from feminists... Feel free to drink your water. Okay, yeah, I would say most feminist theory would not be. One thing I hear from feminists, feel free to drink your water. Okay, yeah. Look at me as a man telling you when you can drink your water.

I would just like to apologize. I feel so oppressed right now. Yeah, I would just, even my apology is probably oppressive somehow. You're very present. Yes, yeah, I should just end it. So I've heard some, you know marxist feminist type say things like um we don't think you're defined by what's between your legs and i want to be like yeah me me neither i thought it's kind of i kind of wanted to say maybe i'm wrong i thought that's what you were saying because you were saying essentially all

that's different is our packages it's not actually any anything essential or different you know and when i pointed out that there's differences in the brain and the and the makeup of the body um it was just yes well we have no idea uh what impact that has on on people and the choices they make and yeah yeah i think um that one of the one of the sort of ideas at work is the the reduction of the idea of biological sex to say just genitals yeah okay yeah um whereas biological sex is something that concerns a whole organism right it's something that's a whole organism, right? It's something that's part of the whole person,

even on a scientific level, not even talking theologically here, right? So this is actually where a Catholic worldview and sort of the science of sex are very, you know, compatible and I think to be very helpful. Okay, so here's where I'm going to sound like a crazy Catholic, but I see a lot of the confusion and sort of chaos related to sex and gender as being traced to the widespread use of contraception

in Western society because once you sever the connection between sexes and sexual intercourse and procreation, then that really reduces, I think, in our cultural imagination, the importance of our reproductive identities, right? Because what it means to be male, and here's where Aquinas can help.

Here's where Aquinas can help. So let me back up just a second to explain this, to set this up well. But when I, so when I was a feminist and you would have the problem of how do you define a woman? So you would say, it was almost like you would be kind almost like you would hit these dead ends,

like you're trying to get through a maze. Like, okay, well, a woman is someone who has, say, breasts and a uterus. Oh, what about a woman with a hysterectomy? Oh, shoot. Or what about a woman with a mastectomy? Oh, well, okay, well, maybe we can't define it just based on biology, right? But then what I found very helpful in thinking through this is the distinction between potentiality and actuality that you get from Aquinas, right?

So then you can define a woman as the kind of human being that has the potential to gestate life within her. And a man is the kind of human being that has the potential to inseminate a woman or to reproduce outside of himself, right? And then, of course, one of the immediate responses is, well, what about infertile people, right? Or what about a woman who's menopausal or has hysterectomy? Well, she no longer has that potential.

But that misunderstands what Aquinas means by potential, right? Because you can have a condition that prevents a potential from being actualized, but that potential is still there, right? And a potential is not something you can endow. So if a man decides to become a woman, he can, you know, surgically and, you know, hormonally change his body to a certain extent to mimic the appearance of a female, but he can never actually create the potential that a female has in terms of reproduction. Because what biological sex really is, it really is about reproduction, about our role or our niche in reproduction. And our whole organism is organized around that particular role.

Whether or not you ever have kids, whether or not you also have another condition that prevents you from having kids, that is still a reality, right? And so I think because that element of manhood and womanhood and male-female relationships has been really downplayed because of contraception. Now I think sex is too often thought as just this, I don't know, just this kind of appearance. You just have these little, well, you've got a ding-a-ling.

That's all sex is. But that's just one visible sign of sex, but sex concerns the whole, the whole organism. And yeah, and so I think once, once we moved away from that idea, then that just kind of, it took away the sort of foundation, the kind of factual foundation, a bodily foundation to manhood and womanhood. actual foundation, a bodily foundation to manhood and womanhood. What did this mean for your faith then as you became, and I also want to know how far along you kind of bought into the feminist label and what feminist meant for you when you said you were a feminist, yeah? Yeah, so I think in my early 20s when I was in graduate school, you know, I was studying feminist theory. I was studying to

be a professional feminist, a feminist academic, right? So it was very much a part of my identity. But I was also married to a man at a very young age. And so my professors... Did you ever question that? Did you ever question if you were part of this social arrangement that was... a part of this social arrangement that was... You know, I didn't question it, like the idea of being married. I think sometimes I felt a little sheepish about it. But I also have enough of a contrarian streak

that I was kind of fine with it. And I sort of had this idea that like, yeah, we're married, but our marriage is different, right? You know, I kept my own last name. You know, we're still sort of, it's just, you know, I had this view that, you know, even though we're married, it didn't really change our relationship. The marriage is more, you know, for pragmatic reasons. So we could, you know, he could come with me to Scotland and, you know, for our families. So they're not freaked out. And as a Protestant, you presumably were okay with birth control. So there was also that element that made you kind of...

Oh, yeah. No, it never occurred to me to ever question that birth control was a great thing. Like, I saw that as when I, you know, I saw that as... I remember, to quote my former self, saying things like, you know, birth control is the linchpin to a woman's freedom or woman's health. So I was very much on that. And I got there not from doing research, really. I mean, it was also never questioned.

But I think when you kind of join an ideology, in some ways it comes as a prepackaged whole. Yeah. And you kind of join an ideology. In some ways, it comes as a prepackaged whole. Yeah. And you kind of accept it. With contraception, I was always sort of, I was never really taught to be critical of it. But abortion, you know, I grew up in a very anti-abortion, pro-life household. And I felt, you know, I sort of was sympathetic with that view

very long into my feminist years. And then it switched. And it didn't switch because I did research. It didn't switch because I followed the intellectual arguments. It just switched. And all of a sudden I had a very emotionally intense reaction against pro-lifers. Why was that? Because as you say, you didn't follow the thread.

No, I think it's because once you sort of join a group, kind of an ideological movement, you know, it often, it comes as sort of a prepackaged whole. I think we see this a lot in American politics, right? Like, oh, well, you're a liberal. Here, these are the things you believe. These are the things you should feel outraged about. And if you concede any points to the opposition, then you're a traitor. And so you must adopt everything within that right party right exactly yeah yeah so um yeah so i was totally fine with contraception um yeah this is important i think for us to understand as catholics who wish to evangelize to understand

where people are coming from because i am all of a sudden getting a lot more of a sympathy for those who tell me how necessary contraception is for the autonomy of women and to attack it. But then you said you didn't really think this through either. Right. So did you think, well, when people attack contraception and abortion, even if they say abortion is murder, this is an attack on my autonomy? Did you think of it that way?

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think for one thing, I think feminism takes the supreme value of autonomy for granted. Like that's really a primary value for feminists is autonomy. And so let me give an example. And this is, there was this Facebook post that I saw, and this was after I became Catholic when I was beginning to start to listen, you know, entertain questions I'd never allowed myself to entertain before. And there, and it's funny, this popped on my feed this was a friend of a friend not someone I know personally but she was she posted that she was having about having an abortion and she's the post said something like this is the second time I've gotten pregnant on long on like long-term

hormone or birth control. And, you know, I'm not ready to be a mother now because I'm having an abortion. And, you know, this is why abortion is so necessary. You know, bodily autonomy. I think she used the phrase bodily autonomy exists for a reason. And what struck me when I read that is that ironically, her very situation demonstrates that bodily autonomy

does not exist for women in the same way that it exists for men. So she was using contraception, but she still got pregnant anyway. So who forced that pregnancy on her? It's her own body. So if a woman engages in sex, even if she tries to prevent a pregnancy from occurring, it can still happen. Because for a woman being sexually active,

bodily autonomy doesn't exist in this absolute sense the way it does for men because of our distinctive reproductive roles and those realities, right? So I think I was beginning to see that both contraception or abortion and abortion are part of this train of thinking that what freedom looks like is for women to become as much like men as possible. So rather than say trying to change certain aspects of society like having generous maternity leave for example like most of the developed world, the solution to the problem of pregnancy has been for abortion, right, to get rid of it, basically. But this, I think I also overlooked just, especially with hormonal birth control, even just the physiological and emotional effects that women are taking on themselves.

And I didn't really realize, because, you know, birth control is talked about so positively, like it's nothing. Like it's just eating a piece of candy. Vitamin, yeah. And then you get to sort of do what you want without consequences and that vitamin. But it's really significant what's happening because you're taking synthetic hormones

in order to make one of your physiological symptoms intentionally malfunction. Wow. Can you say that again? That was very well put. Oh, I don't know. It doesn't matter. We can just backspace on YouTube.

Yeah, but you're intentionally causing your body to malfunction. And this is when people say, well, what's the difference between birth control? You're for aspirin and Tylenol. But of course, the difference is with Tylenol, I'm taking it so that my body works correctly. I'm healing an ailment, not shutting down a function of my body. correctly. I'm like, yeah, I'm healing an ailment, not shutting down a function of my body. Exactly, and that's the difference, right? So it's not, and sometimes people misunderstand

the Catholic position that, you know, you're against birth control because it's artificial. Yeah. You know, like, oh, what about glasses? Yeah. You know, but again, like, well, when I have really terrible eyesight, so I'm wearing contacts right now,

and that's enabling my eyeballs to function correctly. Right? So it's very different. And, yeah. So I, yeah. My views have changed a lot on contraception. And, you know, surprisingly in ways, like my views on contraception and abortion now, in many ways are, you know, they have theological and philosophical basis,

but I also genuinely think that it's bad for women. Why is contraception bad for women? Because it creates a culture where women are expected to be sexually available to men and to act as if they have complete bodily autonomy even while engaging in sex. But when the reality of female biology they have complete bodily autonomy even while engaging in sex. But when the reality of female biology rears its head,

it's women who carry the burden of that. I see. So once a woman becomes pregnant, sure, she can get an abortion, but that's not like going and getting a teeth cleaned or something. She imposes that bodily autonomy violently on herself. So that's what we're asking women to do. We're saying- Do you think that's why women want to make it seem, some women who are pro-abortion want to make it seem

like it's not a big deal? Because you just said it's not good for women because they're expected to be sexually available. And then the woman says, well I want to be sexually available and this affords me that. And you say, yes, but your femininity, the reality of your biology will rear its head. And then you have to do this thing. And that's a big deal. And then they have to say,

well, it's not a big deal. It is just like getting my teeth cleaned. It's almost like we have to, women have to lie to themselves. And so do men who maybe encourage their partner to have this abortion performed. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we have sort of embraced this myth that sex doesn't have anything to do with procreation. Right. Right. So, yeah, so I really see this as kind of a masculine or male model of reproduction as being presented as the norm. And then women

are now expected to do violence to their bodies in order to be able to exist in the world and to be as sexually free as men. But then, you know, then it doesn't, it's not a utopia, right? So because contraception is not, even in perfect use, it's not 100% effective. And in typical use, you know, anywhere from 10 to 20% failure rates, right, depending on the method. So even just from a, I'm not even talking theologically yet. I'm just talking pragmatically. I'm just talking pragmatically. And here's the thing that's super interesting that really shocked me because there was a time when I was sort of like, okay, I was on board with the pro-life when it comes to abortion. But I was like, but doesn't access to contraception reduce abortions?

Like, of course. So how can, as a Catholic, how can I be against contraception when that's the sort of the thing that will reduce abortions? contraception when that's the sort of the thing that will reduce abortions. But what's fascinating is that if you look at the research, and you can even look at this, the Guttmacher Institute, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, so it's a very pro-choice organization, even their research indicates that once a society becomes contraceptive, abortion rates actually go up. They don't go down. And the reason is because sexual behavior changes. It becomes riskier. It becomes more casual. This is why pumping condoms into Africa isn't going to help. So unplanned pregnancies go up and abortion rates go up. So that was really shocking for me to realize that and to see that there's actually

a correlation here because abortion essentially becomes backup contraception. Now, once a society is contraceptive, then there, there's an argument that contraception does reduce abortion rates, right? So once sort of the cat's out of the bag, then it becomes a more complicated question, the relationship between those two things. But yeah, once I really began to see contraception and abortion as basically two sort of practical extensions of the same idea, rather than contraception being the solution to abortion, that's when that was part of my sort of change. Fruit of the same tree. Yes. And we haven't even begun talking about the detrimental health effects, like the fact that the oral contraceptive pill is a class one carcinogen. Right. Yeah. And in a day and age

where we're all so intense about being natural, this is the one thing we refuse to look at. Yes. I mean, no one has stopped. I mean, there's all these great Netflix videos about all the hormones that go into your food and eating healthy and being green, but we can't talk about that. There was an interesting study recently that came out about a correlation between birth control and depression as well. So yeah, it's a significant thing that we're sort of asking women to do. And it's true. Some women, like I did for years, you know, will say, look, I'm not being forced to want this. I'm not being forced to do this.

You know, this is, like, I want to, you know, function in the world as a man when it comes to sexuality. And, you know, but the problem is it's, what we want isn't always, it doesn't always align with what's real. Yeah.

And there's a givenness to our bodies that we have to reckon with. Hmm. Somebody recently said that they were trying to give an example of male privilege

because I actually, what I want you to do is to be able to kind of show us the points of feminism that you still agree with and think all people should agree with uh you know I'm not sure how much of this comes all together uh but a man was opening his they're in a hotel room husband and wife someone started banging on the door at two in the morning and he came up when you're at the wrong room and he wouldn't go away and so he opened up the door to show him like you've got the wrong room and he wouldn't go away and so he opened up the door to show him

like you've got the wrong room and when he went back into his bed you know his wife said like she would have never done that and that you know that this is an example of of male privilege because there are certain things that you don't have to worry about that women do have to worry about is that a legitimate argument for male privilege and so, is it necessarily a bad thing? Okay. So you're asking kind of like, does male privilege exist? And if so, is it necessarily a bad thing? Yeah, I guess. I guess I have more the view that it's a much more complex picture. I think there are privileges and burdens for each sex.

If we're different, then there's necessarily going to be privileges and burdens. So there are some situations where it's to my advantage to be a female. And there are some situations where it's advantageous to be male. It's been interesting to look more at the research about, even things like suicide rates for, you know, middle-aged men. Or the idea that men are sort of disposable in terms of being soldiers and going to war, right? Like men can have dangerous jobs and, you know, a male death isn't as significant as a sort of a female death, right? So, go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off,

but I'm thinking of the whole Harvey Weinstein thing. Yeah. Right? Here's an example, I'm being a little provocative, of female privilege, because if all those people he abused, like a monster, were men, how many of us would be that up in arms? You know what I mean?

Like, if it wasn't, like, forced rape, but it was a matter of, well, if you want to get ahead, here's what you need to do. Right. I'm not sure we would all be this outraged. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, some of the Me Too scandals,

like Kevin Spacey, for example, like, you know, that was all with men. Well, that's true. And he got totally canned. And he was a younger boy, wasn't he? Well, there was a younger boy, but then there was also, I believe, someone on the House of Cards crew who said that he'd been harassing him and stuff. So there's some of that, right. But see, even when I think about like Harvey Weinstein or somebody like that, I mean, his power isn't just because he's a man.

His power is also because the money and the influence that he holds in that particular sector, right? So it's more complex. But the argument is it's because he's a man that he was able to get to that position, wouldn't it be? Well, I don't think it's, it can't be that simple. I mean, there are women in positions of power as well, right? And there are women in positions of power who can misuse that power sexually. I think men are more prone to misuse their power sexually because I think there are differences, generally speaking, between male sexuality and female sexuality in terms of behavior and proclivities.

So, yeah, I think, I don't really like the word privilege, to be honest. I think it's sort of bandied about and used as kind of a weapon against people. Like, oh, you're privileged. You're privileged, you know. So you can have a grievance against me, but I'm not allowed to have a grievance against you. Well, like, I can be racist against an Asian or a black man, for example, but they cannot be racist against me because of the privilege and the hierarchy. Right, exactly.

So it shifts things away from the individual to like a communal, it's about communal sin. It's no longer about sort of individual sin and culpability. So I'd love to hear about how you became Catholic. And also, so while you were kind of, I think you mentioned like feminism was almost like your religion. Is that right? Did you say that? So at that point, were you, did you cease going to worship services? Did you cease identifying as a Christian? Did you believe the Christian story? So it depends. Yes and no. I think early in my 20s when I was in graduate school,

I entered a phase where I didn't practice as a Christian at all. I didn't go to worship services. I wasn't praying. And I think it would depend on the day whether or not I would call myself a Christian. I think most of the time I would, but I had sort of entered this more postmodern sense of what Christianity means. And by that I mean that I had kind of entered into this worldview where all meaning is constructed and created by human beings. That's what I wanted us to define earlier, post-modernism. Right, yeah.

And that's kind of what I mean when I'm using the term, when I say kind of a post-modern sort of Christianity, where I basically had the view that there probably is absolute truth out there, but it's unknowable by human beings. All we have is our sort of human efforts to reach out to the divine. And so Christianity is one of those human efforts, and it's one that I find to be the most beautiful, the most compelling. I went through the same thing. Really?

Yeah. When I was dating and living in America, this is a real culture shock for me. I went from Australia where, you know, we had the parish priest and the lady who vacuumed and that was the parish staff. Wow. You know, and then I came to what for me was a mega church. I don't think they would have described it like that. And it was this huge staff and I just was submersed in sort of southern Christianity with all the big Christian shops and t-shirts at Walmart and it was just all very weird to me and I felt a little grossed out by it and so I started going down the do you know

who Father Richard Rohr is I do yeah yeah so I started going down that and the anne lamott yes yes and yeah those are my people at the time i read all of their stuff i went on the males initiation rite of passage oh wow okay yeah and um and i started to get really angry at orthodox catholics interesting um and i would refer to god as mother and things like this. And, yeah, found it really arrogant when people would talk about Christianity being, you know. And I was really, it really felt great. Yeah. So it's interesting that we've had a similar experience. Yeah, that's exactly where I was.

Absolutely. That describes sort of that phase of my life. Yeah. And I think for me it was in rebellion to the people I was surrounding myself with who I found to be narrow-minded and overly judgmental and critical. Right, right. Yeah. Yes, yeah.

And I think I found it, that form of Christianity, not only it was, it aligned with the sort of feminist trajectory I was on. I'm just remembering. I'm so sorry. I'm just remembering the mass at the male. Do you want to hear about it? Yeah. The male initiation rite of...

I absolutely want to hear about it. Do you really? Yes, of course. Are you kidding? No, you can't. So, I mean, there was about 100 of us, maybe more. I'd say maybe half were Catholic and half were evangelical and half were who knows what and we may not have even identified as those things. And so the liturgy of the word was all

of these dramas that we came up with with our little men's group that we were displaying for people. And then we all carried flags to the top of this mountain where we were to celebrate the liturgy of the Eucharist. And at which point, Father Richard Roy invited all the evangelicals, pastors to come up and to help him co-celebrate and consecrate the elements. And even to, you know, when we were handing around the chalices of, well, wine, let's be honest, it was talked about to take a big intoxicating drink, you know, and we were, God have mercy on me, a sinner. And God have mercy on Father Richard Rohr. I think he has a lot of interesting and good things to say.

That's what's so disappointing. Like, I met him, I had lunch with him. I'm like, I really like you. You seem like a really cool guy who in many areas is far more advanced than me, and I want to learn from you. But again, it was this dividing. It was like, we can't be judgmental, but then he would talk a lot about the first half and the second half of life, and how in the second half of life, there's this openness and liberality. And I'm like, okay, so we're kind of defining people again. Like we're in different groups

again. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's good to be able to, I think there's always a temptation to maybe overly, to sort of demonize or really dismiss perhaps anything good in these kinds of movements that you were a part of previously. So I noticed that, and I try to still be fair with feminism, because sometimes you hear conversion stories of people who maybe used to be feminists, and now they're like super anti-feminist. And I'm trying not to go that way, and I'm trying to sort of be more measured and reasonable and think, okay, well, what is good about feminism? What can be retained?

What should be retained? And you kind of asked about this earlier. And, I mean, one of the things that I still find, so now my primary feminist concerns, I think, would be the hypersexualization of women and the sexualization of women, especially in our culture. I think that's the main sort of, I guess, frontier, I mean, the kind of pornification of our culture. That's where I see, you know, real kind of problems still at work. What's been so sad is it feels like the secular response to this has been to sexualize men.

Right, right, exactly. Because I just saw Aquaman yesterday, which isn't worth your time, I don't think, or anyone's time. So I was originally going to say, well, that's right. There was the cleavage and the tight suits. I'm like, oh, yeah, and also Aquaman walked around ripped the entire time without a shirt on. But then you've got Fifty Shades of Stupid, et cetera, et cetera. Well, okay, that's different though. I mean, yeah, well, maybe it's not different.

Yeah, that's its own sort of fascinating phenomenon too, that that's kind of the fantasy that's gripping female imaginations at this time. What I find interesting about Fifty Shades of Stupid is at first it appears that Anastasia, what's her name again, Anastasia? Oh, I'm so glad that we don't know. Who had the personality of a toothbrush.

Wait, did you see this movie? No, no, but I wrote a lot about it. Okay, yeah. I mean, it makes sense that you wouldn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't see it. But, you know, at first it appears that she's the victim. And in some sense, she definitely is.

But I think upon further reflection, we should agree that she's the object of adoration it's almost like like female pornography is is is like male pornography in that it's eroticized self-idolatry so if you think of like porn that men watch like he's the most adored you know the women are before him and he is king and they, you know, they, whatever. But it was like the same thing. He was obsessed with her and that she tamed him. Yep, yeah.

But no, that's interesting. That's good to know. So like a genuine feminist concern ought to be the over-sexualization or the sexualization of women. Yes, yeah. And especially I think, going beyond sort of Western developed countries, there are very real kinds of oppression that women face around the world and society. Name one place.

I agree with you. So let's talk about a place. Well, I guess I'm just sort of thinking about places where women are sort of bought and sold, like chattel. Yeah. You know, maybe, I don't know, I keep imagining like, you know, in Afghanistan, like the full face veil. Right. You know, where women are like totally sort of hidden from the world.

What's the weird relationship between radical feminism and Islam? Oh my gosh. What is that? I have no idea. Is that a thing? Okay, so I don't know. I don't know a lot about this, so I'm just sort of like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that actually has been kind of an interesting question

because in Europe there's been a fair amount of feminist discomfort with the hijab, right, and wanting to sort of crack down and make that illegal because it's clearly a sign amount of feminist discomfort with the hijab, right, and wanting to sort of crack down and make that illegal because it's clearly a sign of women's oppression. Whereas I think then you have maybe more millennial kind of feminists who don't want to be Islamophobic and so sort of see it more positively. And I think there is a meaningful difference between, you know, a Muslim woman

who freely chooses to wear a head covering out of a sense of devotion to God. You know, I relate to that. And then something that's actually being imposed, being forced upon her, you know, where women, yeah. So I think that the sort of like sexual abuse of women and sex trafficking trafficking especially, you know, those, or forced abortions in China. I mean, those to me are like, or the surrogacy trade that's happening in India where you have sort of surrogacy outsourcing. You want to talk about the commodification of women's bodies, right?

But those are things that feminists by and large aren't really speaking out against because it undermines. No, it's not bizarre because it undermines. I mean, it is bizarre, but it makes logical sense because it undermines the feminist commitment to abortion. Right. Right. So we don't want to talk about sort of women who are forced to abort in China. When I hear quote unquote radical feminists talk, set their aims on something or some group, it's usually like Christian, male patriarchy.

I don't often hear them talking out against Islamic countries where women are subordinated. Right, because now that transgresses another sort of faux pas against cultural relativism, right? So, you know, say like female circumcision or, you know, we can't. Those are just different cultural practices, right? And so, but, you know. Has any like serious radical feminist ever said that is okay with female circumcision?

I have no idea. I don't know. I mean, even the term radical feminist is sort of like. What is that? Is that just a slur or do people adopt that? I think I know somebody who says as much, that she's a radical feminist. Well, it depends on what era you're talking, right? So now the ones who are being labeled radical feminists

would be people like myself, who don't think that a male can be a woman. Oh, you're the radical feminist now. You know what I mean? So that's kind of what radical feminism looks like now. Wow. It's this sort of rejection of some of this, the transgender ideology. You know, but if you're talking second wave, then radical feminists would be more the separatist feminists.

Like, say, Mary Daly in Boston College, how she banned men from her classroom. You know, that sort of thing, right? I mean, that's a very interesting juxtaposition in a way. So the sort of the radical feminist Mary Daly, you know, it was like woman's identity is so sort of strong and real that it was okay for her to have a women-only classroom.

And now it's like, oh, well, you can't exclude, say, a man who says he's a woman from that, right? So there's been a big kind of shift on that front. I think oftentimes radical feminism is sort of used as, it's either used as a slur or as a way to kind of form perhaps a feminist to distance herself or himself

from the parts of feminism that they want to sort of downplay. Like, oh, well, you know, I'm a feminist. I'm not a radical feminist, right? But then what exactly that looks like, I think it just depends on the perspective. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us how you started.

How did you become Catholic? Right, I know. It's so bizarre. So you were kind of maybe in that more liberal Christianity where you viewed these stories as powerful stories but not necessarily true events right yes I would say that I'm I was in that I was in that place um well another thread of my story that I haven't really talked about um that was sort of unfolding initially alongside

the feminist stuff in college was that I started going to an Anglican church. It was like an Anglican house church, one of the small, tiny kind of conservative even Anglican denominations. And that was my first encounter with liturgical Eucharistic worship with the community of the saints and with an historic kind of sense of Christianity. And so I fell in love with that. I loved it and kind of embraced it wholeheartedly. And for a while, those kind of meshed together okay. But then eventually, the more I kind of went down, I would, you know, a road of feminism

that was much more suspicious of Christianity than the harder it became to be actively Christian but even in this time you know I kept trying to sort of like reconnect like I wanted faith like I wanted us to find again that sort of sense of spiritual consolation I wanted wanted to, you know, I would have used the language maybe, I wanted to connect with the divine or I wanted to have a kind of a spiritual life. And, but it just, it really, it wasn't, it wasn't there. I just couldn't maintain it.

And so this, this kind of Christianity that I defined for myself, it was just, it was this kind of house of cards, I guess. It wasn't anything real or substantive. And it didn't ask anything of me. It didn't require conversion. It was fundamentally self-affirming and kind of therapeutic.

And so it didn't, there was no real kind of spiritual transformation happening. And so this kind of escalated into a crisis that really hit a peak at the end of my 20s at the same time that I became a mother. And this was really huge for me because the experience of becoming a mother really began to destabilize some of my feminist assumptions enough that I just began to ask questions that I hadn't asked before. And it also began to become much less compelling. It no longer explained my experience the way that it used to. You know, I was now a mother to a son.

I no longer had this sense of the most important thing being my autonomy and my independence. I experienced this kind of physiological connection to another human being in a way I never had. And also this very sort of intense spiritual and emotional kind of love for another person as well. very sort of intense spiritual and emotional and kind of love for another person as well. And even just being a mother to a son, that made me more interested in the experience of boys and what sort of challenges boys face growing up in our culture. And that began to open my eyes to a picture of our society that's not this simplistic, like men are in power, women aren't, but a much more complex picture of what it means to be a boy and a girl. And there are unique challenges faced by each gender, I think. So those things were happening at the same time.

Where are you in your education? Are you teaching at this point? I'm teaching at this point, yeah. So I'm done with a PhD, and I'm teaching at a Christian school. And so that's part of it as well, because at first I sort of blissfully inhabited this place of kind of cognitive dissonance where I was, you know, it's a Christian school that has a faith commitment.

So you sign basically the Apostles' Creed. And I signed it. I was like, of course I believe this. You know, but I wasn't actively trying to be dishonest. But at the same time, it's like, well, I believed it. I was interpreting it in a way that it really wasn't meant to be interpreted. Yeah, yeah.

Like, of course I, you know, born of the Virgin Mary. Yes, what a beautiful story, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I was teaching there and it became, and actually this was very good for me because it kept the question alive. It forced me to be wrestling with faith maybe longer than I would have had I been in a kind of a secular setting. But I reached this point where I did begin to feel like I'm living a lie.

Like how am I supposed to spiritually form my students when my own spiritual life is such a wreck? So I began to have then a professional crisis. So I'm like having this feminist crisis from becoming a mother. I'm having this spiritual crisis. And then I'm having this, which leads to a professional crisis

where I'm like, I can't continue working here. So then I began to think, okay, well, where could I? Just to stop you, that's pretty admirable of you that you didn't just want to keep going on and faking it for the sake of receiving an income. Well, I don't know. I mean, maybe. But I did that for a long time. So I don't really see it as admirable. Were you teaching great books?

No, not at the time. I was teaching in the English department, and I was teaching literature courses, and I taught a gender theory course as well. Oh, wow. Which I began to get very, oh, yeah, that's an interesting story. Like when I became Catholic and I was teaching gender theory, and all of a sudden I was like, oh, my gosh. That was a crisis. So did people look at you as the feminist professor on campus? Yes. Yes. So that's been strange in a way because yeah, and I, you know, I was

seen as a feminist professor. I was very visibly an advocate for LGBT students and you know, visibly an advocate for LGBT students and, you know, and had, had, solely on board with same-sex marriage. And that was a very, like, that was very important to me. Like, I felt very good about being on that side. So, but anyway, so this crisis is happening. And so I'm thinking about working somewhere else. And so I applied to a couple of Catholic schools because my reasoning is, well, I can go to a Catholic school, and I don't necessarily have to be a Christian, but I can still, you know, there's still a faith identity because I, you know, I still want to wrestle with it. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, but then I ultimately pulled my applications because I was like, I can't uproot my family just because I'm having this existential crisis. And so I have this, so I'm sitting there at my desk with my laptop there. And I just, I think, sent an email to withdraw my application from one of the searches for a Catholic school. And then this thought comes in, just sort of, and it very much seemed to have come from outside, just kind of like zoop, this little arrow. And it was, I don't have to work for a Catholic institution to be part of the Catholic church. And then right then I Googled a local parish. I'd never been to Mass there. I lived two blocks away from it. And I called it up and reached the woman who ran RCIA. And I was like, well, you know, I'm kind of interested in learning more. She said, come to the church. And I did.

And so, you know, it's a really bizarre, it's really hard for me to make sense of this part of the story because, you know, this was in October 2013. Okay. At the beginning of the month, I was not even thinking about becoming Catholic. And by the end of the month, I was starting RCIA. Like, that's how quickly it happened. Yeah, this is why you wrote this book, which I'm so glad you wrote. Because it is just so unique, you know? It's a weird story. It is a weird story, I have to say.

That's the, yeah, that's the book. So, and the messier parts of the story happen after that. So I kind of, I think I was, you know, and once I went to the church and I spoke with this nun who, who ran our CIA. And as soon as she, so I show up and she goes, why do you want to become Catholic? And I had expected to be much more like, well, I don't know if I want to become Catholic. I just want to learn more. But instead I just, I started, I started saying, the first thing I said was the Eucharist, the sacraments. And there was this kind of like pent up longing that I don't think I'd really known. And I think what, what, what happened was I, you know, I think when I first became Anglican, you know, I was headed in a way toward Catholicism.

I had friends at the time who became Catholic, who are now very close friends of mine. And so I saw it, and I was like, I'm interested, I'm pulled, but I can't because they don't ordain women, so I'm going to follow this line instead. And I think once that commitment to feminism became, you know, just kind of weakened, then that's when this other sort of, this longing for this interest in the Catholic Church just came flooding in. And I just followed it. Wow. You know, kind of impulsively. What was your husband doing throughout all this time? Oh, poor guy. So my husband and I grew up in a very similar religious context. So he, and we met at college. We met at this evangelical school. We got married

about a year after we graduated. And he, when we got married, I think we were in a similar place in the sense that we were both in crises of faith. We weren't sure what we believed. And then from that point, I kind of went the way I've described into this kind of postmodern Christianity. solidly lost his faith and became a skeptic, you know, atheist, agnostic for about the same period, right? And so even when we were married, you know, I would have these, you know, had this weird sort of Christian faith I was kind of like working out. But it was very separate. You know, we just had our own things, you know.

And it was harmonious because my faith commitments were so weak that it didn't really affect my life at all. So we kind of lived by default a very similar life. We might have just read slightly different books or listened to different podcasts or something. When you told him you were, what was it like explaining to him why you were just at the church, talking about RCIA? Well, he had watched this sort of spiritual crisis for a long time.

So at first, he was just like genuinely happy for me. He was like, that's great. I don't think he really, because I've been sort of like church hopping endlessly. I would go to like an Episcopal church here, a Quaker church here. And so I think he was excited for me to kind of find a place. And then it got a lot more complicated because the further along I got in the process, then no longer could this just be like my thing that I sort of practice in isolation, right? Because the Catholic life is, it connects with everything, especially marriage, right?

And sexuality and so how I was going to live that out. And so we, you know, he has been so amazing through this. He has been as gracious and as patient as any as as you could imagine a non-catholic to be right is he still a non-catholic yes he's still a non-catholic right um and yeah his story has been very interesting um and he's he's sort of on his own um his own kind of he's going through his own sort of spiritual awakening that's been very different from my own. And is unfolding much more slowly, right? Because he's a much more, he's a very sort of careful thinker and kind of a suspicious person.

When you were in RCIA, was it important that you bought the whole Catholic package before you were confirmed? No. No. No. It was not important. It wasn't presented as important. In fact, I don't think we ever even talked about things like contraception in RCIA at all. So that was just because, you know, I was reading a ton on the side.

That was just because I was reading a ton on the side. And at the time, I knew several Catholics who were actively practicing Catholics, had a love for the faith, but also held on to some secular feminist commitments. And so I sort of thought, well, I'll just be one of those Catholics. I'll be Catholic that goes to Mass. But, you know, in fact, the woman who led our CAA, when you say the Nicene Creed, there was one part where she replaces like his with, I don't know, but she sort of swapped out a neutral term, you know, for. So I was seeing these examples of folks. And at first I started doing that and then it quickly became uncomfortable for me. But so what became important, I think, it's funny, the contraception thing I embraced almost immediately because

I think I'd been increasingly uncomfortable just for health reasons to take contraception. And I just had my first baby. And, you know, immediately, you know, you go to the postpartum visit and they're like, what are you doing for birth control? Like, let me give you some pills, you know? And so I'd been taking these pills. And as soon as I had an excuse not to take them anymore

and to try some other method, I just, I went for it, right? It ended up being very difficult, like learning NFP. Yeah, tell me about it. Postpartum is like oh golly and that was really hard that that did put tension on um i really our marriage like that was yeah it was rough but i bet um did you find a good couple to help you with nfp or no no i mean at the time so it's it's bizarre like i didn't i you know i had I had one colleague who was a Catholic and a friend. And other than that, I didn't know any Catholics.

I didn't have any Catholic friends at the time who were of childbearing age. Were you reading Catholic books? No. You weren't Googling Catholic sites? No. Wow. It's weird. It is weird.

It's really weird. It's weird. Glory, though. I'm so glad. I know. I mean, when I read about the concept of actual grace, this kind of grace that makes you act, that makes you move, that was the only way. I was like, that was it.

Wow. When I was sitting in my desk. You know, I think the only Catholic thing on the radar was applying for a job at a Catholic school. And so it was just that kind of, and it just, it flipped. And it was like, okay, don't go to a Catholic school, but go Catholic. Yeah. What was your confirmation ceremony like? It was in the Easter, it was an Easter vigil.

And yeah, it was very, it was very beautiful. It was really cool. Was your family husband there? Yes. My husband was there. My parents were there. I think my father-in-law was there. My family's been really very supportive. My mom's actually become Catholic since then. I was just at the conference earlier this month and I met so many young adults come up to me and tell me how my podcast, Pints with Aquinas, had been somewhat instrumental in bringing them to the faith and it just moved me so much. But I looked at them, you know, I'd just become Catholic and I wanted to say, welcome, everything is on fire.

I know. It's great to have you. I know. I feel like if they're ever put up for canonization, that should go towards one of their three miracles because it's amazing. I know. I know.

It is amazing. But, I mean, that's how the Holy Spirit works, right? The Holy Spirit can work in the worst of sort of circumstances. Yeah. It's been comforting, actually, this past semester, the seminar I was moderating was on the Middle Ages. And so we were reading, you know, we read Hildegard, we read Dante. And so becoming familiar with some of the worst times in church history and these sort of really intense crises.

And St. Hildegard's my confirmation saint. I didn't even realize that she lived in a time of one of the worst crises of the Catholic Church. And so, you know, in her letters, she's writing to bishops, she's writing to popes, just begging them to be holy. And so that was comforting to me to think like, okay, this has been happening, right? There's this battle going on for the soul of the church.

I had this thought that, and it'll be interesting your perspective on this since you're a new Catholic, but I have this thought that we Catholics have become rather arrogant over the last two papacies. And we also had the rise of Catholic apologetics in the United States, like our Carl Keatings and our Scott Hans and our Pat Madrids, who all gave us the scriptural ammunition to refute those Protestant objectors. And I think we felt really good about ourselves. And part of that may have been justified,

but we would say, look at you Protestants, we are 33,000 denominations. And it was maybe a little arrogant, or maybe definitely was arrogant. And then we look at ourselves and we realize just how fractured and broken we are. Yeah, it's a real cause for humility, I think. Well, I mean mean that has definitely

been true even just in a micro cosmic level in my own life because I think once so after I became catholic and then had um more of the internal conversion where I really began to study the faith and um then I I did become arrogant about it you know I I'm working in this Christian school where most people are evangelical. And I kind of, yeah, I had this sort of like, oh, we have it all figured out. You know, and then. You gave me five minutes. And I felt like so proud of being a Catholic. You know, I was like, I wanted to be sort of ostentatious, you know, like a giant crucifix.

You know, be noticed I'm Catholic. So it's been interesting now that this happens. It's like, okay, you know, it has made me, you know, more humble as well. Now, you talked about earlier how you kind of buy the whole thing hook, line, and sinker, say, in the feminist movement, where if you're this, you... Has that made you hesitant to accept all the church teachers that you don't just want to sort of mindlessly adopt all that is appropriate for you to adopt now that you are a Catholic? Well, I mean, the difference is how long and arduous a process it was

for me to change my mind on these things. So it wasn't, I didn't think, you know, thoughtlessly embrace it. I wasn't like, no, I'm Catholic. My views have changed on all these things. I had to read and wrestle my way through that, especially the hardest thing for me to change my mind about was same-sex marriage. Tell us how that happened. Well, so that was the hardest thing for me, I think, because it was not, like, for one thing, it had been, I had been very sort of committed to

LGBT causes personally, and I had had a lot of, had several students who had come out and confided in me, and, you know, felt very protective of them and their experiences, and, and also, so I think that that's good. I think there was also another level where I enjoyed being on the right side of history on this issue. Like I enjoyed being like on the side of the underdog. And so this was happening

right when the Supreme Court decision was coming out. So like this thing that I had been hoping for all these years. To quote Goma, oh no, I can no longer be cool. Yes, yes. I love how he said that. Yes, that's so, it was really, that was hard for me. That was like, it was hard and it made me realize like how much of my own sort of ego had been invested in this perhaps. But I think also what made it difficult was that, you know, contraception, women's ordination, those things are, like as a woman, I'm kind of taking the hit, right? So I'm not just saying like women can't be priests.

I'm also saying I can't be a priest. I'm not just saying, you know, I'm against contraception. I'm saying I have had to change my lifestyle and not against contraception. I'm saying I have had to change my lifestyle and not use contraception. But when it comes to same-sex marriage, that was, I felt like I was committing like the worst of progressive sins in saying, I don't think you can be married,

you know, in a same-sex union. Who were you talking to about these developing thoughts? I was talking to my husband. So we sort of joked because I was just like going through so much angst and there would be these like long sessions where I would be like laying on the couch almost like I'm in a shrink's office.

And I joked with Michael. I would tell him like- Is this your husband? Michael, yeah. That I would, he was like my sort of liberal priest and I would come confess all my progressive sins that I was having in my thoughts. I was like, well, what about this, and what about this? And so I was talking with Michael a lot about it, and then also a former student of mine who was then a seminarian.

His name is Stephen, and he's going to be ordained as a priest this June. And he's the godfather of my kids and just incredibly brilliant, wonderful human being. And he was sort of my go-to person because he would always shoot me straight, but very kindly, but he wouldn't tell me what I wanted to hear, you know. And I think the other Catholics I tried, I didn't know many Catholics, but a couple of the other Catholics I sort of knew and I tried to talk to about it, they were actually kind of weirded out that I was starting to change my views. They were like, oh, you're going pro-life? Or, oh, you're changing your views on same-sex marriage?

Like, ah. Yeah, so that was also very confusing to me, too. So I really only had Stephen as a Catholic sort of confidant, and then I was like processing a lot with my husband um and then you know just reading a lot so because at this time I had discovered theology of the body and I was like this is amazing it was so it was so wonderful and it actually really harmonized with the particular kind of feminist theory I specialized in which was um the work of Luce Rigueur, who's a French feminist theorist. And I just wrote an essay, actually, that kind of brings her, some of her writing and dialogue with Jean-Paul II's Theology of the Body because there's these really interesting parallels between them.

But so this was very amenable to me, and it seemed to it was just it was it was beautiful it was compelling it gave the body a dignity and a theological meaning that I'd never encountered before and so I loved it but the underside of that is that if you take that perspective seriously, then it does preclude a same-sex union being sort of interchangeable with a heterosexual union. So for a while, I tried to inhabit this middle space where I was like, can I embrace theology of the body and this? And I tried, but you can't do it and be intellectually honest. And so for that, it was not an unthinking embrace. It was really hard. And for a long time, my intellect and my heart were at odds on this issue.

I could recognize the truth. I could see the theological consistency. And I embraced it, but I still felt conflicted about it. consistency and I embraced it, but I still felt conflicted about it. So that's what I think makes, that's why it's really wildly different from some of my feminist conversions, which happened just by default without really making a conscious decision. How did you start making this announcement to people or were you reluctant to say anything? I was reluctant to say anything for sure. I, I, yeah. You mean the announcement about just being Catholic or about changing my views? I guess both. The fact that you were actually a Catholic

who was trying to practice what the church taught. Did you have students questioning you on why you converted? Yes. I think I've had mostly positive reactions to me becoming Catholic. I think a lot of, there were a fair amount of students and colleagues I had that were just, once they began to see how Catholic I was becoming, then they started to be, I think, just really confused. And I understand why. I mean, it took a little while to sort of catch on. You know, I didn't, I think what I began to write changed. What I would post on social media changed. I changed the way I taught courses.

changed the way I taught courses. And, you know, at one point I did sort of directly, because we were talking about this very issue, because I work at an institution where part of the sort of belief statement you sign on to affirms a traditional understanding of marriage is between a man and a woman. And I had, I was talking about this with several colleagues who were, who disagreed with that statement, you know, and they were talking as if like, well, clearly we're all on the same page here. And so I did sort of volunteer. I said, well, actually, I don't disagree with the university statement. Yeah. And there was like, you know, I think one person actually like, I don't know if this was unconscious, but he sort of just turned away from me.

Like, oh, yeah. So that was kind of a weird moment. I'd love you to tell us about that experience I read in the book of you blessing your home. How did that happen? Right, okay. So I'm trying to remember here how this, how this worked. Okay. Um, it's kind of a, it's a weird story with a lot of different steps and I have to remember exactly which order they went in. I can tell you what order it went in the book. So you'll

be impressed that I read your book. Well, you've read the book probably more recently than I have. Well, you were talking about going to a friend's house you really admired and they had holy salt and holy water. Yeah, yeah. So they gave me this high-octane glass salt, right? So they had had a powerful exorcism prayer, prayed over it. So I was like, oh, very cool. So I took it home.

And this was just me. I didn't have a priest come over and do this and I was just sort of throwing a little bit in each corner in the corner of each room um and praying the the prayer that's on the benedict medal right um which is how does it go how does it um what you offer me is evil yeah yeah it's like what you offer is me is evil drink the poison yourself that one yeah I've never heard the chant so when you said you chanted it in the book I'm like I want to know the chant yeah it when you said you chanted it in the book, I'm like, I want to know the chant. Yeah, it's really cool.

I mean, all the chants I learn are on YouTube. That's how I tell it. I'm like this self-taught Catholic. Yeah, so I, and then. So you were walking about the house, spreading the salt and chanting the St. Benedict metal prayer. Right. And then later that evening, I was,

as I was just saying, I was teaching myself chant. And I wanted to learn the Salve later that evening, I was, as I was just saying, I was teaching myself chant. I wanted to learn the Salve Regina. And so I was sitting at the table with my laptop, playing the Salve Regina and trying to sort of learn it and memorize it. And I don't think, I think I was home alone at the time, but my kids were, my kids were home. So at this time I had two children and I had a three-year-old and then,

or two or three-year-old and then an infant. And so my daughter was still sleeping in our room. So her crib was in our room. And I noticed when I went to bed that there were kind of two doors to our bedroom and they were both open, which was really bizarre and unusual. And I kind of noticed it, but I just thought weird. And then I went to bed bed and then when I woke up our front door I walked out in the kitchen area and like our front door was wide open just wide open to the street outside and then that's what alarmed me and then I went and our back door was also wide open, which was incredibly unusual. And there were actually child safety guards on them. And our back door especially was really hard to open at the time.

We had to get it fixed. And I know that it wasn't me. And I couldn't have been my two-year-old at the time. He just couldn't physically open the back door um like that and so this this really freaked me out and so I went back to my my catholic friends you know because they always seemed wiser um and when I went over there to kind of tell them about this oh and then but before that I and then um Michael then Michael woke up and he sort of said in an offhand manner, he was like, oh man, I was having these really demonic dreams last night. And I was like, what?

And so he'd been having these dreams about this like demonic presence in the house. And so I was freaked. And I was like, what? And normally I'm pretty skeptical about this stuff, I have to say. Like even though I don't necessarily want to be, I just have this default like okay, demons. There's a certain sort of strand of evangelicalism that I encountered

sometimes growing up that was very like demons everywhere. There's like a demon. I used to be afraid that when I would listen to secular music that demons were coming through the radio. Into my ears. So I've kind of been skeptical generally and but then I went to did you tell your husband that the doors were open and oh yeah no he knew and he and he was

sort of like oh that's weird you know but he's I mean he's way more skeptical than I am and at this point he was just very you know he was sort of like he didn't have a good explanation but um he wasn't as freaked out as I was. Because he also didn't know that I'd done the house blessing because I was trying to do that. I was trying to keep it on the down low a little bit, you know. And so, like, I would go to a room when, like, Michael wasn't there. I'd be like, you know, because I didn't want to totally freak him out.

So then I went over to my friend's house, and they said, I mean, they didn't elaborate, and I didn't really want to pry, but they were like, but when I told them what was going on, they were kind of like, they reacted because they said, well, you know, we were, we've been actually experiencing some demonic oppression last night. And so I was like, blah. And then we, so then we went to mass and I, it was, it was near the feast day of St. Maria Goretti. And so we went to a special Mass for that, and I went with them. And so I talked to the priest who had blessed the salt. But, you know, this was actually after what happened. So first I talked to my friend.

I'm sorry, I'm telling this out of order because it's hard to remember exactly what order everything went in. The nice thing is I actually wrote emails about this. So when I was writing the book, I went back and did research in order to, like, get everything in order. So it's not, even though my, it's kind of a well-documented sort of event. But so then they suggested, my friend suggested, they're like, well, is there anything in the house, you know, that could be, I don't know, bad or like have some. And I was like, well, I did used to work in an occult shop when I was in graduate school, maybe. And so, which is true, I did. I worked in this kind of like crystal, occult, tarot.

Incense. Yes. Tibetan. I used to go to those all the time. Tibetan bowls, you know, kind of places. And so I'd acquired a lot of things from there. And at the time, because I was often very bored at the counter, I would play with the tarot deck and read this book and sort of learned what the cards meant.

I just thought it was kind of a fun form of storytelling, really. Everything's a metaphor and a story, right? And I was like, oh, but, you know. So I thought about that, but I thought, oh, I remember getting rid of the tarot book and the tarot cards. So I know that's not that. But, you know, I still had like some crystals and maybe some jewelry or something. So I just did, like, I went through the house. And I got, I didn't even know what I was looking for.

But I just sort of, anything I found that might have, I don't know, some sort of, I guess, bad spiritual mojo. Yeah. And I was looking in the attic just, and I was praying to St. Anthony, actually. I was like, help me find whatever it is I need to find, which I didn't even know. And then, and so far, I hadn't really found anything that significant, you know, maybe some like, some rocks, you know, and like a crystal bracelet or something like that. But, and then in like, in a box, inside a box, in the corner of the attic, I like opened it opened it up and there was the deck of tarot cards. And it was shocking to me because I had actively remembered getting rid of them.

I was sure that I'd gotten rid of them. I know I'd gotten rid of the book, the guide. And so I think I just in memory thought, oh, I must have gotten rid of the whole thing. So I had no idea it was there. And I was just, you know, I think I just in memory thought, oh, I must have gotten rid of the whole thing. So I had no idea it was there. And I was just like freaked out. You know, I just thought as soon as I saw it was like, boom, that was what I was supposed to find. Right. And so I went out and I burned them all in the backyard and it was dark at this point.

And like while I was out there, you know, we had one of these lights that's like a motion sensor light. And while I was out there in the backyard burning these things in a wheelbarrow, the light just kept like flickering off and on with no, and it would like turn off completely. And I would have to go physically in and turn it back on. It's never behaved like that before or since. And I'm like, what is this B-level horror crap that's going on? Like, you know, I'm just, I'm kind of, like, as this is happening, I'm like, I can't believe this is happening right now. I can't believe this is happening.

Like, I'm not that suggestible, but this is so strange. Anyway, and then, so then I went to Mass the following day and talked to this priest, the one who had blessed us all, and I explained to him what had happened, you know, with the doors being flown open and finding the tarot cards. And his response was, and how that had happened after I had blessed the home with that exorcised salt and said the exorcism prayer. And he was like, well, you know, some things just can't be blessed. That's what he said. And so that's my best explanation for what that was that it was that it repelled that

from my house you know like I blessed the house and then um this this happened so I I think that the the doors being open maybe that was you know something being driven out right yeah I appreciate how kind of uncomfortable this is I'm like, crazy person. That's why I feel like I have a light above my head like, this person is crazy. It's almost like sometimes you say to somebody, what would it take for you to believe that this sort of stuff is true? And the only thing you could come up with would be something crazy like that. But then when it's so crazy, then it's so easy to dismiss it.

That's right. This is just too cliche. Yeah. Right. Oh, tarot cards, flickering lights, demonic dreams, like Shirley, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to take some questions from our patrons.

So here's the first question. Can one be a Catholic feminist? That's a really great question because it's one that I am still asking myself. So I am a Catholic, as you know. I love being a Catholic. I hope to think I'm, I hope I'm a devout Catholic. But I'm not sure, I have ambivalence about the label feminist because so much of it depends on how you're defining it, right? Yeah. But I do think an authentic kind of Catholic feminism is possible. But the requirement would be that the underlying premises, the underlying presuppositions,

the kind of frame of the worldview has to be Catholic. It can't be feminist. Because that's sort of where I think I went awry because at some point it shifted where I was, you know, looking at Christianity from kind of basically secular presuppositions, feminist presuppositions, and then taking what I thought was good from Christianity and incorporating it into my feminism. So I think an authentic Catholic feminism, it has to be deeply Catholic in its worldview, and then that will shape what the feminism looks like. So there has to be a commitment to the dignity of the human person at any stage of life, right? So I think an authentic Catholic feminism will be

at any stage of life, right? So I think an authentic Catholic feminism will be wanting to cultivate a culture of life. So a Catholic feminist, I think, should be very concerned about things like abortion that contribute to a culture of death. I think that a Catholic feminism would be very concerned about the sort of sexual exploitation

of women. Certainly things like sex trafficking and human trafficking. I mentioned earlier surrogacy outsourcing, right? So these, the wonderful thing about Catholicism is that it's so deeply incarnational. The body matters. The body matters. And so a Catholic feminist is going to be working from the premise that human embodiment is sacred and dignified and that the body reveals the person. And so that is going to put, I think, a Catholic feminism at odds at key points with secular feminism. And there's also this richness in the Catholic tradition that a secular feminism wouldn't have access to, like the wonderful writings of the saints, the female saints that we have throughout the tradition. And so a good resource that's really heavy duty,

but I would recommend to any Catholic who's really interested in feminism and women is The Concept of Woman. It's a three-volume series by the philosopher Prudence Allen, who's a religious sister, but she basically traces the concept of woman from the birth of philosophy with Plato and Aristotle, the pre-Socratics, down through the present time. And so she shows how, in fact,

the Catholic tradition has these amazing resources for thinking about the dignity of particularly being a woman and what that means. And I think that the Catholic worldview is an antidote to many of the ills of our culture related especially to sexuality and the body. All right. Thanks. Katie Kutcher asks, as a Catholic woman, I enjoy many activities which society has dubbed as masculine activities, such as tobacco pipe smoking. I always love it when women smoke a pipe. It's super cool. Intellectual discussions, et cetera.

I want to live out my femininity in an authentic way. Is it okay that I enjoy these things? Obviously not, Katie. Continue. Yeah, you've got to give up on the intellectual discussions, right? No, I really relate to that. We talked about this earlier, didn't we? You grew up, you were into sports.

Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons that attracted me to feminism because it kind of gave me permission to be a little bit of an atypical woman. But one of the things I love about the Catholic tradition, especially the 20th century saints, like you read Edith Stein, you read John Paul II, and how they talk about what it means to be a woman, and it really looks very different among individual women. So John Paul II, he uses the terms, it's interesting, he uses the terms masculinity and femininity just as

the activity of a male human being or the activity of a male human being or the activity of a female human being. So when I'm playing basketball, I'm feminine while I'm playing basketball, right? It's not as though I'm suddenly like masculine. So in Catholic thought, those terms tend to be applied to people, to persons rather than actions.

So it's the person who makes something masculine or feminine. It's not the action, right? So it's not as if pipe smoking is somehow owned by men or intellectual discussions are somehow owned by men. So I think there's a lot of wonderful intellectual resources actually in especially 20th century Catholic thought that's very solidly Catholic but on these questions. Gregory Warner asks, and I like this question, what is there in the spirit of modern feminism for we as Catholics to admire? How can these aspects act as a bridge for like you were? That's a good question. I think in some ways it's something I've I've already talked about. I mean one of the things that is good about feminism is but can also become bad is an attention to real oppression that women face

around the world. I think the problem when feminism becomes a totalizing ideology, that it almost creates these sort of, a sense of oppression when perhaps there actually isn't oppression happening. But there is real oppression in the world, I think, that women face. And so feminism calls an attention to the importance of valuing women and valuing women's experiences and making sure we try to have just relationships. And those are all good things. It's sort of what that looks like

where sometimes i think secular feminism um goes in a direction away from where a catholic feminism would like i talked about with human dignity and what that looks like um how did you write your book how did i write Yeah, how did that end up coming about? Mostly like this. Exhausted. So I wrote it last fall. I was on sabbatical. I just had my third kid in July. So it was this weird sort of time where I was on kind of maternity leave.

But I wasn't working, which was nice. so I wrote this in kind of three-hour sessions between breastfeeding sessions. So I would feed the baby and then go, okay, I've got about a three-hour clock here, so I'd go to the coffee shop and write for three hours and then come back. It's so good. Yeah, I want to say, and not just because you're my guest,

but people should get this book. It is so refreshing. I even like that you swear in it from time to time. I do swear from time to time. Yeah. Well, there's a real authenticity in it. You don't get the sense that you're trying to fall in line with the way Catholic authors write about the conversion.

This is just you speaking. This has got to be the greatest accolade ever. This comes from Tim O'Malley from Notre Dame. Who's he? Tim O'Malley is awesome. He works for the McGrath Institute at Notre Dame. He is kind of an expert in liturgy

and theology. He's written some good stuff. He wrote a book on hookup culture and sex recently. He says that your book is augustine's confessions written for our own age boom i know that's a little much but i'll take it i'll take it i'll take it i hope people get that well tell us how people can learn more about you if they're listening they want to follow your great work other than getting this book right so um yeah and i actually I have a discount code just for your listeners

that maybe you can put in the show notes or whatever. So yeah, 40% off if you want to order it through the publisher for your listeners. Did the publisher approach you or did you, the publisher approached me. So the editor of this book, he approached me back when I was, I blogged about deciding to become Catholic at the time I was keeping kind of a feminist motherhood blog and he approached me like wow would you like to write a book about Catholicism, feminism and motherhood and I was like that sounds amazing

but I can't do it right now because I was just I was all over the place right? There's no way I could have told the story then so I wrote it I think at the perfect time because the dust had settled but I was not yet forgetting how I used to think, which I am. I am starting to kind of slowly forget. I'm like, wait, how did I used to think about this?

So I tried to capture that moment. Is it a Catholic publisher? It's not. It's an imprint of Wipf and Stock, and they're one of the leading publishers in religious studies these days, but it's not a specifically Catholic publisher. So how do people, I'll put it in the show notes, but how do people get the 40% discount?

If you order online through the publisher at whipandstock.com, there's a discount code. It's the word DEEP. I'll spell it for you. So if you go... I'm just kidding. So if you go to, you select it, you go to checkout, it has promo code. It should, yeah.

I haven't actually done it myself, but so they tell me. It's an activated discount code. Yeah, and, you know, I work at George Fox University. I'm probably most accessible by email just through the Fox website. Do you really want to give that out? I don't know. Maybe not, but I just did. I mean, I'm findable, though, you know.

I have a, so though, you know. So there you have it. And you've written some things? Yeah, so I write regularly for the Church Life Journal, which is published by Notre Dame. It's an amazing journal, not just because I write for it. That sounds horrible, but it really is. They publish some of just really wonderful, rich thought pieces on theology and culture from a Catholic perspective.

So I write on human life and dignity and usually kind of women's issues for them. I try to do it once a month, but I write regularly for them. I write for First Things sometimes. So I'm around. Well, thanks for being on the show. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Awesome.