The Eric Metaxas Show - #116 - Margarita Mooney Clayton

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Margarita Mooney Clayton about her new book When Mary Calls, the role of Mary in Christian faith, why Protestants often avoid the subject, and how a fuller understanding of Mary can deepen our understanding of Christ, motherhood, femininity, and spiritual surrender. They also discuss Mary as the mother of Jesus, her presence in Scripture, the beauty of the Incarnation, and why Christians should be willing to recover what has too often been neglected. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.⭐ PRE-ORDER TODAY:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:⭐ FREE SLAVES with CSI: https://csi-usa.org/metaxas/⭐️ BlockTrust IRA: https://www.metaxascrypto.com/⚖️ Legal Help Center - Get Free Legal Help Today: https://www.legalhelpcenter.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/💧 Sentry H2O: https://sentryh2o.com/

Hey there folks, welcome to the program. I'm the York Metaxus show. This is a show where I interview guests. And I am particularly excited today because my guest is someone, well, how do I even put this? It's Margarita Mooney, who is someone I've interviewed many times at Socrates in the city and on this show. But the news is, I guess the larger news is that. I've started a publishing imprint. So my book, Revolution, is under the publishing imprint called Odysseus Books.

And we are going to be publishing lots of books under Odysseus books. And one of the very first that we're publishing is by Margarita Mooney. We're going to discuss it right now. Margarita, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Eric. And thank you for believing in the importance of my book. book when Mary calls surprising encounters with the mother of God. Well, I believe, I think, you know, I was raised, as a lot of people know, in the Greek Orthodox

Church, where they take Mary very seriously. Catholics obviously take Mary very seriously. And it's an interesting thing. When the Reformation happened, a lot of things happened that really weren't Luther's idea. Luther had a very high view of the Eucharist, a little bit different from the Catholic view, but very little, tiny, tiny, like almost semantic difference. And people kind of think, like, oh, suddenly it goes from being the sacred thing

to like a symbol and grape juice. No, that's just historically inaccurate. And a similar thing happened kind of with Mary and the saints. Like, it's one thing to say, oh, we don't worship Mary. Well, no serious Christian ever worship Mary, but they revered Mary as the sacred mother of Jesus. It's so amazing. And so I think that we have to move back to a more traditional historical view and have that conversation.

Some people get very triggered by this. But I believe in talking about things as much as possible. possible. So we're excited. So your book is titled, When Mary Calls Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God. Now, I, Eric Metaxis, always have trouble with the term the mother of God. I don't really like it. The mother of Jesus is better for me because Mary, of course, you know, didn't give birth to the infinite God. She gave birth to Jesus. And so it gets a little complicated. And I think that that term can be confusing to some people. But I guess my question to start us on the conversation is what started you, Margarita Mooney,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, what started you on the journey with Mary or the interest in Mary? What is your faith journey so that we can get into the larger subject of Mary? Eric, this journey which culminated in me publishing a book on Mary absolutely began because of a hunger amongst the Protestant students whom I teach at the Princeton Theological Seminary to hear for me, as a Catholic woman, what is it that Catholics actually believe about Mary and how do you express that and how is that related to what they know from scripture. Now, I've mentioned just now that I was raised Catholic. Mary was present in my church. I never really gave it much thought. But I have to say, Eric, when I got older and I went to Yale, both you and I went to Yale, I thought, I had a lot of

mistaken notions about Mary. And I thought, well, I don't want the kind of faith that tells me to be under the heel of a man. Okay, I was getting that from feminism, not from Christianity, but it sort of seeped in. And I began to, I think, falsely associate Mary with passivity. Again, this is not what Catholics have ever believed. In fact, I was never told that in Catholic school, but I was hearing this message somehow. And so there's a lot of ways in which women have pinned their problems on teachings about Mary. But so I just kind of left to, aside. I thought, I want to be a Christian friendly with my Protestant friends. I don't want to bring up controversial topics like Mary. But what happened, Eric, was I taught an ethnographic

cultural book called The Madonna of 115th Street, which is about Italian-American race, class, and how Mary was holding the immigrant community of Italians in Italian Harlem, holding them together, listening to their pleas. And I thought, oh my gosh, my students are going to hate this book. And you know what happened? A woman came in in tears and said, I am a liberal feminist theologian. I am not supposed to like this. But I've never heard that Mary is the holiest person who ever lived and that her spiritual power exceeds that of a Catholic priest. And I'm thinking to myself, like every Catholic knows Mary is holier than the priest. Like, that's not, like, you know, she's never heard this. And she said, you know, all of the, all of the models I've ever had in Christianity are male. And so I just began to think, okay,

well, let me teach a whole class on Mary where I can walk with students. One kind of, where's Mary in the scripture? You know, you and I can talk about that. I mean, she's the one person that scriptures tell us was there at the incarnation, the crucifixion and resurrection in Pentecost. You forgot the nativity, but people just assume she was there. I'm pretty sure she was there. Well, I'm sort of grouping together the infancy, right? So from the incarnation to the nativity, she's there at the nativity, which we know, but she's there at all through his infancy. She's there at the crucifixion, which I'm looping together with the resurrection, because the crucifixion was always going to be fulfilled in the resurrection. But it's often forgotten

that she was also there, Acts 114 tells us, and they united in the upper room with the mother of Jesus. Now, so we know she was there, but scriptures call her the mother of Jesus in Acts 114, which is what you said you feel more comfortable. Now, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, says in Luke, how is it that the mother of our Lord would come to me? That's a pretty strong word. But you are correct, Eric, that the scriptures don't use the term mother of God, nor do they use the term theotokos, which is the Greek term for it. So when people start- Theotokos is God-bearer, the one who bore, you know. And again, I think those terms can lead to problems. So it's not that I would say, oh, you can't use it. But I'm sensitive.

to people misunderstanding that. I mean, I actually spoke about this at my father's funeral about the Theotokos, the one who bears God. Now, let's think about this for a second. Every Christian, when I invite God into my heart and the Holy Spirit comes to live in me,

I am meant to be a God-bearer. I am meant to be a Theotokos. You know, so this stuff is kind of complicated, and you can get it in the right way and get it the wrong way. But it's important that we understand, Mary, on every level, everything you're talking about. So I don't want to interrupt you more than I already have. Forgive me. No, that was a great point. What I think is important here,

Eric, is that I wrote the book to not only explain these doctrines, which I mostly do in the appendix, but to explain why they matter to the life of faith. And there's a young woman whom I talk about in the book who had never heard anything about Mary other than she was at the birth of She was a young seeker, not raised in a Christian household, became Methodist, lost three babies in her womb from miscarriages, and came to me because she had this incredible sense that Mary was with her, that Mary had a peer to her, that Mary had a message for her, and she wanted to understand how to relate to Mary. And what I wanted to do was to connect her personal experience of Mary's protection to her vocation as a Christian to follow Christ. better. And Mary's title, Godbearer, was important to her to learn about because it helped her to see one of the central things of Christianity that our cooperation with God's plan really matters. And she had thought that Mary was kind of passive at the incarnation. She was just a vessel. So this, you know,

error of Mother of God misleading people, sometimes the error goes in the other way that Mary's body was just a vessel. I've, I've heard people say this, and this is not what I think Luther or Calvin would have said. Well, isn't it interesting, though, how we're always having to push back against unchristian versions of Christianity. I mean, you hear this over and over again that you believe this. And it's like, no, not really. You're messing it up. You're misrepresenting it. You know, when people say, well, Christians are, you're supposed to be just a doormat. You're supposed to, it's kind of along those lines. It's like, no, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, That's a real misunderstanding.

And so I'm glad you're bringing this up. Go ahead. Well, I think this is why, so Mary's cooperation at the incarnation is not often understood, but this was essential to the early church. And this is the origin of her title, the mother of God or Theotokos Godbearer, because the meaning of the incarnation is the eternal divine taking on human flesh. but the substance of the flesh comes from Mary because Christ did not exist as flesh prior to the incarnation. But again, why does this matter? Why does this matter? We're going to be right back,

folks. We're going to be right back to continue the conversation. Don't go away. Folks, this is important. If Medicare has you confused, if you've got questions, we understand, and this is why we recommend our friends at Chapter, they're there to help you, to kind of talk you through what might work best for you. This is very important. that you get it right. You can call them at 571, 421, 12, 5,53. These are our friends at chapter 571, 421, 12, 5,53. Welcome back, folks.

I'm talking to Margarita Mooney, who has written a book called When Mary Call, surprising encounters with the mother of God. So continue along what you were just saying, Margarita. What I want to share through this book, is how a title like Mother of God, which we've been talking about, certainly can be misunderstood and misapplied. But we live in a time when for too many Christians,

the extreme errors of a misunderstanding of titles of Mary have been met with an opposite error, which is not to talk about Mary. And this has been the experience of too many of the Protestant students who I've encountered, who have learned nothing about Mary. in scripture, but why does this matter to how they follow Christ? And I myself as a Catholic had to ask that. Well, if I have Christ and I have the church, you know, I don't need Mary. But what you and I have

been discussing is that Mary actually, or what I'm trying to say, at least I would say, is that understanding Mary helps us understand Christ. And I learned that through my teaching. And I learned that although I had disregarded Mary because I thought she was too passive for me as a career woman and all of that. I was neglecting that Mary is a model of grace and a model of what a life redeemed in grace is. But she's also truly our comforter, our advocate. And I know that makes people uncomfortable. And I was uncomfortable talking about Mary that way, Eric, because I wanted, well, let me just get people to like acknowledge Mary as a woman of virtue and hard work. Let's look at her as, you know,

the dutiful wife. That's all great. But when we deny that Mary has a unique role in cooperating with God and as she's an instrument of grace, never the origin of grace, only God, but she's an instrument of grace, well, what does that mean? I recount in this in the stories that I tell that people turn to Mary for comfort and affliction. Not that they don't turn directly to Christ or that it's a sign of weakness to turn to Mary. But again, going back to Scripture, when Jesus was on the cross,

Mary was there at the foot of the cross and she truly consoled him by being there. And he says from the cross to John, woman, behold your son, son, behold your mother. and from that day the disciple took her into his home. And what I saw, for example, in the story of Cuba, which I shared in my book, that Mary is a real presence in people's lives, even in a country where they tore down the churches,

destroyed the images, and outlawed the practice of Christianity. But people see Jesus and Mary together. Because as I mentioned just a moment ago, they were together at the nativity, but they were also together at the cross. Mary is united to her son. Mary is not a divine goddess, but she is the woman chosen by God with a special grace to unite us to her son, with whom she was perfectly united as a human being united to the divine. It's almost inconceivable. Again, you know, I am, I'm an evangelical who is very sensitive, you know, to the pushback where people say, oh, the Mary me, you know, okay, but I just think because I attended, I mean, not only, but recently when I attended

the Good Friday service in the Greek Orthodox Church, to appreciate suddenly, suddenly to focus on, on this person, Mary, and to think, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, it's the mother of Jesus. Just that, folks. It's an inconceivably beautiful, close relationship that not to acknowledge it somehow, not to think about it, not to know that this is somehow central is insane and is unchristian. It's wrong. It's clearly wrong. So what I notice, Margaret, a lot of times is people focus so much on how things can go wrong

that they avoid it entirely. and you think no. I mean, you know, this is people with charismatic gifts or with this, they're just like, it makes them uncomfortable so they leap in the other direction.

And I think, well, I appreciate your concerns, but there is a healthy way toward this, and I think you've touched on it. I think the sanctity of motherhood, there is nothing more beautiful than the idea of the Madonna and the child.

You see these icons, these images through history, through art, it's really beautiful. We've denigrated motherhood in America. And when you denigrate motherhood, you're really denigrating women. You're trying to get women to be more like men. There is something sacred about motherhood,

just as there is obviously about fatherhood. And it's so beautiful. It's so sacred. And so to look away from it completely, I think is insane. I think it leads to all kinds of problems. When we come back, I continue. We're barely halfway through talking to Margarita Mooney. Don't go away.

Hey there, folks. Welcome back. We interrupt our usual programming to talk to you about an opportunity that I find, frankly, almost unbelievable. There is slavery in the world right now, real slavery, not metaphorical, not sort of. It is radical Muslims who seem to think this is fine and Christian. who seem to think it's not fine, who want to do something about it. And so every year, once or twice, we on this show partner with Christian Solidarity International to do something about it. And every year we do something about it. You step up.

God bless you. And so I wanted to bring on CSI's spokesman, one of the spokesman, Todd Chapman, to talk more about what it is that's actually happening. Todd, welcome back. Hey, thanks, Eric. Great to be here with you. always thrilled to be able to come on your program and tell your listeners about something that most people don't even know is a thing. And that is the fact that we have a beautiful opportunity

to free slaves, slaves that have been held captive for decades in North Sudan and bring them back to their home villages, reunite them with their family after decades of slavery and abuse. And it's just a beautiful opportunity. And I just got to give you and your audience just amazing, I want to say props, but that kind of cheapens it. I just want to sincerely thank you because over the many years we've partnered with you and your various programs, your listeners have literally freed tens of thousands of these precious human beings. They had no other hope of getting free, but you've allowed us to come on your programs.

You've used your platform to do so much good through the generosity of your listeners, and we're so grateful. Well, there are people listening right now who, can do $250, that sets one of these captive slaves free, sets them up in a life of freedom. It does just free them, but it sets them up in a life of freedom. There are details on that. If you go to Erictaxas.com and click on the banner, you'll see more about that. But I want to say that there are people that can do many multiples of this.

And folks, again, I can't imagine anything more simple and user-friendly. every $250 you gives sets a human being who is enslaved free from slavery. That's, again, almost unbelievable, but you know, you can look into it. You can look into CSI. And there are people that can do multiples of that. And I just want to encourage you, folks. By the way, did I mention it's tax deductible? And it is real.

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and me or me and my wife and we can do it in your city or in my city. But I feel like this is a great, great, great opportunity. And I want to exhort everybody listening to understand how wonderful it is that we get to do this, that we don't just complain and say, well, please pray. No, we can actually do something right now. And that's why we partner with CSI. And Todd, you have been there. You've met some of these people. again, it seems inconceivable to me, all of it. Yeah, it's mind-boggling when you meet these, primarily women. There are some men that have been helped captive. Many of them were taken captive, again, when these villages were raided back last century.

But, you know, imagine that, being taken captive as a child, removed from your parents, maybe watching your father killed right before your eyes, and then enslaved and not just, you know, doing physical labor, but we're talking about physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, sexual abuse, medilation of Christians being forced to convert to Islam, just a horrific life. I've had so many of these women tell me when they come into freedom back in their home country, I never thought I would be free. And you can't hear words like that and come away untouched. And it's just incredible that that can happen for $250.

And so we would just invite you if you're able and can liberate a slave all on your own, $250. If you can't give that much, look, give as much as you can. And then, you know, your gift along with others, it all turns into slaves being freed. And this month, during the month of May, we're just bringing this back front and center here on your program. And we want to invite your listeners to help us free another few hundred slaves. We've got another liberation march coming up here in the next couple of months. And it would be great to have as many people rescued by your listeners as we can. Look, again, I know there are people.

I know that everybody listening can do something, folks. So you're without excuse. Just go to Ericmetaxis.com, click on the banner. Do what you think you can. But there are people that can do huge amounts of money that we could tomorrow free practically all of those who are still enslaved. So the fact that we can do that, here's the phone number,

888-253-3522, or go to Ericmetaxis.com. God bless you. as you give. Welcome back talking to Margarita Mooney, Clayton, about her new book published by Odysseus Books, which is called When Mary Calls. So Margarita, I was just saying, you know, a moment ago, the centrality of Mary, I mean, when you just think about nothing else that,

imagine if we knew who Jesus' mother was, wow. And you think, that is just so important. possibly sacred that that the early church had the mother of our Lord and and and and had her during his lifetime after his resurrection and ascension there is just no doubt that if God wanted her to be forgotten you know she could have died when Joseph died and we would just know nothing and you know she was just there when he she gave birth but But that's not the case. And I think, I guess I want to make this theological point and forgive me, but I just think that the problem that a lot of Protestants or evangelicals have is when they talk about Soliscriptura, it's one thing to say that something should be biblical.

That is correct. But just because the Bible doesn't talk a ton about Mary, it doesn't mean that the early church didn't talk. a ton about Mary. And so I think that we don't want to go beyond scripture in the sense to contradict scripture, but there's nothing in the reverence for 15 centuries before the Reformation, the reverence for Mary that contradicts scripture. Anything that contradicts scripture, I reject immediately. But I just feel like this has been so forgotten that it's just kind of crazy. And so anyway, that's one of the reasons that I'm excited about. you're talking about it.

You know, Eric, my background is in sociology. I have a PhD in sociology, and I've given talks on the global demographic decline and how we are actually living in a world of a shrinking population. One third of Americans may never marry, one third of Americans right now under the age of 30, and a lot of people are childless. But why is it in this time when there has been a voluntary or involuntary retreat from motherhood that suddenly Mary, the mother of Jesus, is suddenly appearing as something people just want to hear more about? And I think it's precisely because of what you said. When we stop and marvel at what scriptures do tell us that the word became flesh in the womb of Mary and that,

God himself incarnate was in Mary's womb for nine months. How can we not marvel at this gift of life? But we live in a culture, you just interviewed Carl Truman. I agree with him. We live in a culture of desecration. A young woman told me she worked for a politician that I won't name whose staff made fun of fetuses in the womb, a very pro-abortion politician. she walked away from that job because they mocked the fetus. They mocked the fetus. What does Christianity do? We marvel at God's gift of creation and that God himself humbled himself to be dependent on the body of a woman. That is unbelievable. And it's supposed to elevate. It's a theological statement. God is making a statement by doing this. He could have done it a different way. And I also think of the idea.

that he picked one person. Talk about a staggering responsibility. I think any of us would be like, no, Lord, please no, pick somebody else. This is too much. This is way, way, way too much. I'm not worthy. The idea that Mary was a person who was not God

and that God picked her to bear Jesus, again, when I focus on it, it's almost inconceivable. It's so, no pun intended, it is so gigantic, gigantic to think that he picked this young woman, that she opens her heart, her life, her body to say yes to God. That's to me the other message of Mary. She says yes to God. Wow. But anyway, yes.

Well, I think that for those listening, we who have this, faith, then have the scriptures, have an opportunity to share this truth with people. This is why it's important to remember, because we do live in a time where less people are going to church, as I mentioned, less people are having children. And so we need to return to the fullness of the understanding of the scriptures, not just Sola Scriptora, but all of Scripture in order to present this to a culture that's lonely, that doesn't revere children in the womb, that doesn't believe that God has a call for them. You also said earlier that in some ways we're all called to be God-bearers. So Christianity also has been wrongly pinned as enslaving people. God is not arbitrary. He calls us and each of us

has a calling, but we have to respond with freedom. We are not kind of, we are, of course, under God's authority and sovereignty, but he does give us all a unique call, which is why the book is called when Mary calls, because I'm trying to help people to see that Mary responded to God's call, as you said, and that knowing her is going to help us do what she did at the enunciation, discern what is this message. What am I to do? She is an incredible model of spiritual discernment, receptivity to God's grace, and we are called, I believe, to know her and to imitate her in following Christ. But we can't do that, Eric, if we don't talk about her in scripture. And if we don't remember that sometimes God's calls come through the cross, as in the chapter

with my mentor and colleague Albert Rabatow, who talks profoundly about the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering, which is also something people don't want to hear about anymore, that our suffering, if we allow it, can be transformed by God into bringing about a greater good. This is a countercultural message, but Mary's compassion participates in God's mercy and compassion. And I talk about in the book, my struggles to forgive. My struggles to forgive when my father died and was buried the day before 9-11. And I had never forgiven him for when we were children and he was a damaged military veteran, he had a lot of anger. And I shared that story in this book, not to say anything bad about my father. He was a wonderful man, but because I know a lot of people have suffered this.

And it made me realize that I couldn't forgive myself. But God forgives me. He forgives my father. He healed my family. And Mary can help us. She is our advocate. She's our mother. She's there. She's a model of that compassion. and a sign of what God can do if we let him. I want to also mention that, you know, in choosing Mary and in choosing to reveal himself to the world in this way, which is, again, very, I mean, to focus on this, this is like our heads explode,

thinking about the intensity of this, that God chose a young woman to reveal himself to the world. He could have done it any other way. He could have just appeared. So in doing this, God is making several statements, theological statements. He is basically affirming human flesh. Our bodies are good.

They're not dirty. He affirms this. He doesn't bring Jesus into the world apart from human birth. It's just, again, what a statement. And it's also God, so God's affirming our bodies, which is the opposite of what non-Christians often say about Christianity. Oh, you're all the spirituals. It's like, no, no, no, look how God did it.

And then God is also affirming women in a way that is just absolutely radical for the time. The sake, the sanctity of this woman, he chose her. you know, it really is, it's as countercultural as it gets. And I, and I think part of the, the conversation is that I think that God wants women in particular to look to Mary as a role model. And you can't look to Jesus as a role model in quite the same way. And, and that that's God's design. And again, I can see people pushing back on this, but I just think it's healthy to talk about

it. I think it's absolutely healthy, Eric, because God is a father. He's not a mother. There's a reason we call him the father. He's the generator. The mother is the receptive one. Mary received God's grace, but because of her receptivity to God, the father, the generator, knew she was the medium then of God's transforming grace. She's not the origin of it. He's the generator. He's the father. Now, people don't like these masculine and feminine terms. You know, that's kind of down. But the reality is God created us, male and female, and female. And there's a deep, deep spiritual complementarity between men and women, in between femininity and masculinity. And I'm telling you, my liberal Protestant students, my evangelical Protestant students, they're hungry for a way to think about femininity as a typology of receptivity to God. Why do Greek Orthodox monks, like the one I talk about in my book, who's now a married layman and an artist, why do they revere Mary? Why do communities of priests revere the mother of God?

Because her femininity, her being the bride of Christ, the bride of the church, sorry. No, I just realized we're going to a hard break. I'll let you continue that sentence on the other side of the break. We'll be your right back. While the corrupt federal elites have been quietly building wealth through cryptocurrency, hardworking American patriots have been left behind. Today, I want to tell you about metaxis crypto.com. They're bringing access to cryptocurrency.

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that's finally giving forgotten Americans access to the greatest crypto wealth opportunity in history. For a limited time, they're offering my viewers up to $2,500 in bonus crypto when you open an account. Crypto created 80,000 new millionaires last year under Trump's money. phenomenal economic leadership. Why not you next? Welcome back, Margarita Mooney. I had to cut you off for the break there. My apologies. Please continue that thought. What I was trying to get across is that, again, scriptures tell us to think of Christ as like a bridegroom, longing for his bride, the church. Christ loves us so much. He longs for us. He thirsts for us. And so Mary, as the bride of the church, reminds us of this kind of incredible intimacy that God is offering us, which again is not what

people outside of Christianity oftentimes think it's about. They might think it's about discipline and rules, but all of that is in service of this love. And so we need to recover and to maintain this bridal imagery of God's love for humankind and Mary the feminine archetype, the feminine typology complements our understanding of who God is because again, we're looking at who God is in relationship to us. So talking about Mary and Mary's femininity is not to do what I thought people, or mostly feminist, were telling me that you have to fulfill this particular role. And if you don't have a large family, you're not worthy. If you're not married or married by a certain age, you're not really a woman. There's all these things that women tie up in their heads,

but they're not really coming from Christianity. Mary elevates all of us. She elevates, as you said, the status of mothers and the status of the womb, the status of the family. But she ultimately is elevating humanity to this spousal relationship with God because that's the best human analogy we can have for God's outpouring, pouring out of himself into us.

The spousal imagery helps us to even begin to fathom what you rightly have said is a mystery, which that God loves us so much, he came to us this way. And I think we who have the faith need to remember that incredible mystery that Mary points us to. Well, and yes, and at the heart of there is a mystery. Some people are uncomfortable with mystery. And so they have to just kind of like get it all chopped up and ordered and that's that. If there's a mystery, they're kind of repulsed by that. And I think that's just silly. There's so much we can't understand. We have to sort of hold it as a mystery.

It's not that we want it to be a mystery, but you can't be cavalier in talking about certain things. They're sort of a little bit beyond us, so we can know what we know. And part of it, I mean, I think, you know, when you talk about this spousal relationship, clearly, you know, Jesus is a man. Jesus refers to Abba father, God the father.

So you do want to say, okay, so we're women in this. And the point is, God in so many other ways, and through Mary, makes it clear that he is affirming women, makes it clear that he doesn't think of women as second-class citizens. He makes it clear over and over again. And I think the spousal thing, I remember the writer Thomas Howard, who was a dear friend of mine.

I interviewed him at Socrates and City on his great, great book, one of the greatest books, Chance or the Dance. And I remember him talking to me about, you know, Jesus. is the second Adam and Mary is the second Eve. And I thought, wow, I've never heard that. That's really beautiful. That's a, what a beautiful idea. And again, I think that's a biblical idea.

I don't think that that's against the scripture. But I know some of these ideas are like, well, it doesn't say that in scripture. It doesn't say all kinds of stuff in scripture. The question is, is it scriptural? You know, scripture doesn't talk about dinosaurs. that doesn't mean it is against dinosaurs or it says dinosaurs never existed, you know?

So we have to have a biblical view, but we have to be careful about what that means. And I really do feel like that is just one of the most beautiful things. Thomas Howard talking about that to me. And I need to mention, folks, if you haven't watched my interview with Dame Alice von Hildebrand, oh my goodness, at Socrates in the city, she talks about this stuff.

All right, please continue. We've just got about a minute and a half left. Eric, that was beautiful. Look, a lot of the concern about titles for Mary like the New Eve, certainly we need to be able to have those discussions, but we need to recover the poetic, the beauty. Because as you said in Thomas Howard's book, right, to understand God's plan, it's completely past, it is rational, it's reasonable, and it's beautiful, and we should be able to use poetic language. The reason that Catholics as well as Protestants need to think about Mary in devotion, because we definitely want to avoid excesses. Look, Catholic popes, Pope Benedict, Pope Paul the 6th have cautioned against Catholic excesses that are not biblical, that are not liturgical.

As you mentioned, Protestant reformers, Martin and Luther, and John Calvin had held Mary in high esteem. So these often Mary as a dividing point between Protestants and Catholics, I think we need to get over that. We need to understand Mary as a point of unity and discussing these questions around Mary as helping us. That's the point of wanting to have this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, the book is When Mary Calls by Margarita Mooney-Claidon. Thank you so much. Thank you, Eric. It's finally here, our second annual mega sale.

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even more special when you order right now your order's going to ship absolutely free hey there works welcome back i i want to uh remind you to pre-order my book revolution there are many reasons for that, but this is just a daily reminder to please pre-order it. Go to my website and you'll see you can read the book today. If you pre-order it, you'll get your copy, your physical copy, soon,

but you can read it. We'll send you a PDF. You can actually read it before the physical copy sent to you. But I wanted to do a segment on what I watch because a lot of times, you know, I'll come home, tired, and I'll turn on the TV. And I almost always go to Turner Classic movies, which is an extraordinary gift to anyone who gets that on your TV,

if you have a TV, because usually they're playing classic old films that are great. Not always, you know, sometimes they'll play something which they think is a classic, which is from like 1992, which I consider like, didn't that just happen? happen. But last night, I turned it on halfway through one of the greatest films ever made, 1956, The Searchers, starring John Wayne. And Natalie Wood is featured as well. But John Ford is the director, and it is one of the greatest American films ever made. And one of the one of the greatest American films ever made. And one of the things that makes it great is it is so American.

It is so pro-American and so powerful and so beautiful and real. And I just want to say I don't get to talk about this a lot on the program because lots of times we're talking about news or whatever. But it's very important for us to be. culturally literate. And when I say that, what do I mean by that? I mean, there are things that, you know, if I could, you know, raise a kid, or if I could have an influence on young people, I'd say,

here are the things I think you should know. You should know the Bible. You don't need to be a Christian, but you should know the Bible. Western civilization, especially America, you need to know the Bible. You need to know Shakespeare. You need to be conversant. in the basics of great literature. And that also goes for media and film.

And so there are films, and I mentioned a bunch of them on the program, that will help you understand the world that will bless you. And one of those films is The Searchers with John Wayne. It is simply extraordinary. And I don't know how many times I've watched it. I know that my friend Tim Raglan, who one of my dearest friends in the world,

who's, he's helped me a lot in terms of, you know, life, whatever, he's the one that turned me on to like, hey, men should, you know, should dress well and be conversant in the basics of, you know, how to dress like a man. This is how man dress, you know, put on a jacket most of time. You're an adult now. You can lose the hoodie. Actually, I never, never wore a hoodie. But Tim Raglan also really helped me a lot with classic film, understanding this stuff. So he probably is the one that introduced me to the searchers. But it is one of those films that, first of all, it makes you see what people went through to create this great nation, the greatest nation in the history of the world, which is the subtitle of my book. What they

went through and what they suffered. And it's so beautiful. Now, first of all, the film is gloriously shot. A lot of John Ford's films are shot in what's called Monument Valley, so it's glorious to look at. But there is so much in it that is just powerful. And, you know, some of it if you're very modern and have modern sensibilities it'll rub you a little bit the wrong way uh but that's okay it was made in nineteen fifty six and uh it's about i don't know 1856 i'm not sure this the when it might be later than that but um you know and it's it's uh it's about the search for a young girl who's taken by uh i believe it's the Cherokee and And they search five years to find her.

And man, it is just, I don't want to spoil it. But I just want people to know what I'm watching and I want to recommend. There are things that I think are worth watching. I think old films are worth watching almost always. But Turner Classic movies, I tell you, I just take my hat off to them for the gift. But last night watched The Searchers. I won't go into any more detail. But just wanted to say that.

that I recommend it. And there you go.