Should mothers work outside the home? If you want an answer more solid than groundless internet opinion or conveniently vague appeals to personal discernment, this is the podcast for you.

Margaret McCarthy joins the Catholic Culture Podcast to discuss her essay on why anti-sex-discrimination law's treatment of the sexes as abstract interchangeable units hurts real women, real men, and real children (and real workplaces!). Then we dive into the neglected teachings of John Paul II and earlier popes on the objectively different relationships that men and women have to the home and to work outside the home.

Margaret Harper McCarthy is associate professor of theological anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family, at the Catholic University of America. She is the editor of Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture, and Science, serves on the editorial board of the English edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, is a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and is a consultant to the USCCB's Committee on Doctrine.

00:00 Introduction

2:30 Anti-discrimination law discriminates against real women, children, men, and workplaces

34:30 Sex difference: division of labor and customs

1:03:43 Catholic teaching on working mothers

1:33:08 Contraception and public life vs. the real feminine genius

Links

Margaret H. McCarthy, "The Case for (Just) Sex Discrimination" https://newpolity.com/blog/sex-discrimination

Thomas's article citing John Paul II and earlier popes on working mothers https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/why-young-catholics-are-rejecting-feminism-pt-2/

Humanum Review https://humanumreview.com/

Some other articles mentioned:

Helen Andrews, "Lean Out" https://americanmind.org/features/rule-not-by-lies/lean-out/

Maria Baer, "Maybe Women Can Have It All—But Can Their Kids?" https://ifstudies.org/blog/maybe-women-can-have-it-all-but-can-their-kids

Matthew Mehan, "Wanted: Men of Purpose" https://americanmind.org/features/restoring-single-sex-education-at-vmi-and-beyond/wanted-men-of-purpose/

Magisterial texts mentioned:

Rerum Novarum, Divini Illius Magistri, Quadragesimo Anno, Laborem Exercens, Familiaris Consortio

Pope Pius XII's addresses to married couples, Dear Newlyweds https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=12716

Ratzinger/CDF, "On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World" https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_en.html

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An episode from Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast, too good not to share for Catholic Culture Podcast listeners!

Anthony D'Ambrosio directed, wrote, and produced the outstanding new film Triumph of the Heart about St. Maximilian Kolbe. In this inspiring interview, he discusses the difficult path he and his team charted to produce this independent film with a low budget, high artistic standards, and deep Catholic spirituality.

Film is an expensive medium. Since a high budget requires one to calculate mainstream appeal in order to make one's money back, a low budget can leave more room for artistic and spiritual integrity. Though the production faced many hardships, it was buoyed up by the hope that the project could break a new path for other Catholic filmmakers to follow.

Triumph of the Heart is available to screen at your parish, and will start streaming on its official website November 1.

Links

Show Triumph of the Heart at your parish https://www.triumphoftheheart.com/

Our review of Triumph of the Heart https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/triumph-heart-is-film-worthy-its-subject-st-maximilian-kolbe/

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

Highlight clips from two episodes of the Catholic Culture Podcast and one episode of Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast – links to full episodes below.

83 The American Founding's Medieval Roots – Robert Reilly https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-83-american-foundings-medieval-roots-robert-reilly/

85 Three-Fifths of Our Band Got Ordained - Luxury https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/85-three-fifths-our-band-got-ordained-luxury/

Are Heist Films Moral? The Lavender Hill Mob https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/lavender-hill-mob-1951/

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Dappled Things: The Quarterly of Ideas, Art, and Faith is celebrating its 20th anniversary. In its 20 years it has contributed to the beginning of a Catholic literary revival, nurturing the talents of many Catholic writers and visual artists. In recent years especially, many exciting new initiatives, presses, and magazines have branched off from Dappled Things. Bernardo Aparicio Garcia (founder and publisher) and Rhonda Ortiz (editor-in-chief) join the podcast to discuss Dappled Things's mission and various topics to do with Catholic fiction.

Links

Dappled Things https://www.dappledthings.org/

See the winners of the Sacred Heart Art Competition https://www.dappledthings.org/deep-down-things/winners-of-the-sacred-heart-art-competition

"The Off Season" by Ennis James Sheehan https://www.dappledthings.org/fiction/the-off-season

Rhonda Ortiz https://rhondaortiz.com/

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One of the most important encyclicals we need to rediscover is Pope Leo XIII's Libertas (1888), on the true nature of human liberty. This encyclical explains what true liberty consists of, followed by a lengthy exposition of the Church's condemnation of liberalism, in the Enlightenment/classical sense rather than today's narrower use of the word. Most people who call themselves conservative now would, in certain ways, fall into the category of liberalism as defined by Leo.

Prophetically warning of the evil consequences of political liberalism, Leo also takes aim at various false liberties in which modern people take such pride: freedom of speech, writing, thought, and worship. In each of these instances, liberals fail to recognize that freedom is not the right to do and say what one wants, but to do justice and to speak truth. As starting as Leo's teaching may be to modern Catholics, his fundamental principle is the one that Pope St. John Paul II enunciated when he said that "freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

Pope Leo XIII: "Man, by a necessity of his nature, is wholly subject to the most faithful and ever-enduring power of God; and that, as a consequence, any liberty, except that which consists in submission to God and in subjection to His will, is unintelligible. To deny the existence of this authority in God, or to refuse to submit to it, means to act, not as a free man, but as one who treasonably abuses his liberty; and in such a disposition of mind the chief and deadly vice of liberalism essentially consists.

Thomas's article on Libertas: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/leo-xiiis-condemnation-liberalism/

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=4885

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A number of doctrinal ruptures occurred in Catholic life after Vatican II – not in the sense that the Church's magisterium contradicted its previous teachings, but that the vast majority of Catholics, even conservative ones, tend to get these topics wrong. One of the worst examples is how the Church's traditional teaching on the Jewish people has been forgotten, with many people under the false impression that Vatican II changed Catholic teaching.

Gideon Lazar, theologian and Jewish convert to Catholicism, joins the podcast to discuss some widely misunderstood and controversial points about the relationship between the Church and the Jews.

(The views Gideon expresses in this interview are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the St. Basil Institute, where he is institute coordinator.)

Links

Part 1 of Thomas's four-part essay, "The Church and the Jews: Beyond the Platitudes" https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/church-and-jews-1-beyond-platitudes/

Gideon Lazar on Substack (a good article to start with) https://gideonlazar.substack.com/p/rex-iudaeorum-st-john-the-evangelist

Gideon on X https://x.com/ByzCat

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Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong joins the podcast to tell the inspiring story of her older brother, Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, the heroic Vietnamese Cardinal who was imprisoned by the Communists for 13 years, 8 of those in solitary confinement. Thuan was descended from a line of Vietnamese martyrs, and his uncle was the devout Catholic President and Prime Minister of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, who himself was something of a martyr.

Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan: Man of Joy and Hope https://ignatius.com/cardinal-nguyen-van-thuan-cfntp/

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My other interview with Jane: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/147-world-is-falling-away-jane-greer/