How Feminism Infects Conservative Catholicism

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:14] Speaker A: Today. I want to talk a little bit about feminism. Now here's the thing. I know that in my audience made up of mostly conservative Catholics and conservative non Catholic Christians, it's likely everybody listening to this knows that feminism is bad, that it's been bad for society, it's been bad for our culture, it has destroyed many lives. It really is. Feminism really is a scourge on our world. And I think most people listen, probably agree with that. If you don't, well, you're really not going to like this episode. But even if you do, what I think is. [00:00:55] Speaker A: A problem is that I think feminism, I would argue that feminism has infected into conservatism and even into conservative Catholicism, that the feminism that we rightly reject and say with our lips is terrible. We then end up accepting in. In many aspects of our lives. And we don't even realize that it really is feminism that's doing that, that is the. That is happening here. Because feminism became so ingrained. This is something people need to realize. You know, feminism was mostly basically introduced in its full modern form in the 1960s. Yes, it existed before that, and you can date back to Susan B. Anthony and things like that, but. And there's some issues there too. But really what we're talking about, when it became successful as a cultural movement, I guess is probably the better way to put it. That was really 1960s because there's a fringe movement before that. But it's been so successful that it's everywhere and it seeps into our consciousness. Even those of us who might rightly reject feminism, we don't realize how much it's influenced us. And I'd be the first to say that this is true of me as well. I've tried to. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Break off the shackles of feminism in my own kind of thinking and the way I see things over the years. And it's an ongoing process. I don't claim that I've completely done that successfully. But this is something we need to realize as Catholics living in a dominantly anti Catholic culture. [00:02:36] Speaker A: That we don't even realize how much something like feminism impacts us as well. And it impacts us as conservatives, as conservative Catholics. So I want to talk about how it does that in our movement, so to speak, in conservative Catholicism, and what we can do to kind of resist it. The first area I want to bring up, and this is, you know, all these are going to be controversial, but this one might be the most controversial. Just start off with, and that is women in leadership in various pro life and Catholic apostolates. [00:03:12] Speaker A: I would, you know, I can't even think of off top of my head. I could probably do some research and find some. I can't even think of off the top of my head. A pro life organization that's not led by a woman. Now by definition, every pro life organization is conservative. A lot of them are predominantly Catholic. I mean, Catholics really dominate the pro life movement and almost all of them, if not all of them, are run by women. [00:03:39] Speaker A: Now this is, I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but in case you haven't heard, a little history lesson here for somebody who was involved in the pro life movement years over 30 some years ago, I've seen the history of it firsthand. In the late 80s, early 90s, the pro life movement was predominantly led by men. There were some exceptions, but in general most of your pro life groups were led by men. And the focus of the pro life movement at that time was very much this idea of it's killing a baby. That, that, that's what we're trying to fight is killing a baby. And so like the rescue movement was born out of that. If they're really killing an innocent baby in there, wouldn't you be willing to be arrested to stop that from happening? Use physical, not force or violence, but your phys put it in between the baby and the killer. That was the focus. But then what happened was there was this push. A lot of the arguments of the pro abortion crowd was like a man can't tell a woman what to do with her body. And so many in the pro life movement started to see this as a PR problem, a PR problem that we have men who are running these organizations supposedly telling women what to do with their bodies. Who. A way to blunt that, that argument of the pro boards was to, is to have women be in charge because then you can't say that it's a woman saying this. I mean it really became a thing in the 90s where it was like every pro life group was like, oh, we need to have women, if not leading, at least as spokespeople. That's so important because when we're talking to the mainstream media, we have to have the women talking. We cannot have men doing interviews in mainstream media. We cannot have that because it will just look like all these men telling women what to do and that would just be horrific. And so we got to put women in, in positions of the outward facing positions. So that might be your communications director, that might be your PR specialist, your, your, your spokesperson and then eventually became it needs to be your leader. It needs to be whoever is in charge. And so women became started to take over literally every single pro life group. I'm not even saying that was done like for some ulterior bad motive. And I'm not saying the women who took over had bad motives. I think every single one of them likely very pro life and wanted into abortion. But the reasoning behind it really is faulty because first of all, you don't let your enemies. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Tell you how you need to act and do things. If your enemies are telling you how you should run things, guess what? It's probably not going to be to your benefit because they know how to weaken their opposition and so they can use this to weaken their opposition. And I think that's exactly what happened. I think the pro life movement was weakened when all of a sudden every leader became a woman because the message really did shift. There was much more of a push against like photos of aborted babies that used to, you'd see them outside of abortion clinics, we'd hold those outside, you'd see them online a lot. It really got to be point, oh, you can't do that. I really think that is a something that the women dominated nature of the pro life movement really kind of turned against that because it is a very shocking thing. It is almost like it's not. It's not, but it's almost like an act of violence, an act of force to show these pictures because it has such an effect on somebody. Now I don't think it is and I think it should. And I still personally am a supporter of showing pictures of aborted babies. I remember in the 1990s there was a guy who ran for Congress in Indiana, near where I lived at the time and still live. And he realized that if you, if you became, if you ran for Congress, basically the TV stations had to run your ads by law, by federal law. And he ran for Congress. So. [00:07:55] Speaker A: He ran commercials with pictures of aborted babies that would run on television because he knew they couldn't stop it. I'm not sure if they changed that law, but it was a man who did that. I don't think a woman would be likely to do that. It's probably going to be a man who does that. So that's one thing. Another thing is you really got to shift to seeing the mother, the mother going in for an abortion as a victim, you know, two victims. It was a big thing. Now, I'm not saying that some of these women who have abortions aren't Victims because some are, you know, your 16 year old girl who gets pregnant and her parents really encourage her and basically pressure her and force her to get an abortion. She's a victim, she might not have wanted to get the abortion. There are situations, however, the reality is most women who get abortions in this country are not victims. They're living a promiscuous lifestyle and they decide to get an abortion due to just lifestyle convenience, for convenience reasons. They're murderers. And I know people don't like people saying that. Some people don't like people saying that. But women who get abortions for convenience reasons because they're promiscuous, they're murderers and they should be considered like murderers. And so. But you don't do that in the pro life movement anymore because women began to dominate and they really want a softer pitch, so to speak. Again, I'm not saying their intentions were bad. In fact, I think they were good. I do think they were misguided and I think it led to an imbalance in the pro life message that what we have here is the real killing of an innocent human child. That is paramount. That is the crux of the pro life movement, is that we are against killing innocent children. But then it got into, you know, we started to believe a lot of the lies or accept some of the premises of opposition like, oh, we need to, maybe we need to end poverty or something like that because then fewer women will get abortions. We need to supply all these support services for women to help them. And I, I'm totally supportive. I mean, literally my family's helping out with the crisis pregnancy center drive right now for the Christmas season. I'm not against those things. But when that became the entire message and we lost sight of the fact that somebody's being killed and we need to stop that. That is a difference, that really is a difference between how men look at this issue and how women look at this issue. There should be a complementarity between of them. Complementarity is the key point here, this whole podcast. But what's happened with women basically running every pro life organization, we've lost some of that focus on the. [00:10:43] Speaker A: Inhumanity, the evilness, the demonic evilness of ripping a child limb from limb in the womb. This is a horrific thing and we've forgotten how horrific it is. We buy into the opposition when we allow them to, when we allow them to shift the conversation away from that evil. And I do think that has to do with the fact that we have women predominantly running things now. It's not just pro life organizations. A lot of apostolates are now run by women. And what I've also noticed, a lot of them run by women of childbearing years who were having children while they run these organizations. And I just have to ask ourselves, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? What is the goal? What is the goal of, like, pro life, these Catholic apostolates? What is the goal? The goal, hopefully, is the salvation of souls. The goal, hopefully, is a transformation of culture. But what are we trying to transform it into? Are we trying to transform it into a culture where men and women are treated the same, where kids are in daycare all the time and things like that? What are we doing here? I mean, I saw, like, everybody was praising when, when Trump came into office this time, and that that young woman who is his press secretary, who does a phenomenal job, by the way, in many ways, but, like, she's a young woman who has young children. Why are we praising that and saying that's such a great thing? I mean, honestly, is it such a great thing? I mean, if the goal is the salvation of souls, raising our children to worship the one true God and to be, you know, be faithful Catholics. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Is a woman going out to work and leaving her children at home or in daycare, Is that really the solution? Now, I know some of these women, they have their husbands stay at home, and we're going to talk about that in a little bit later about the role reversal there of the man staying home with the kids while the woman goes out and works. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Now, I'm not saying women can't ever be leaders and no woman qualify them. There's been queens in history who have been wonderful rulers, and they were women, obviously. But the priority of women is to take care of their children. If they have children, that is their priority, and it should be their priority. So if all of a sudden these women who are talking about being pro life, running pro life organizations or categorizations, and then they leave their children, they're not caring for their. It really does send a mixed message of what's the priority here? Because if you deprioritize, if you deprioritize children, the raising of children, can't you see that that is a direct line towards. [00:13:38] Speaker A: Not having children? So contraceptive mentality and then killing children when you get pregnant, unintentionally or unexpectedly or unwantedly, I just don't see how we can't see this as a direct connection here. I mean, honestly, I'm even against in general, women politicians. Now, again, you know, we say these things and people like to make their absolute statements. And I just said, I just made an absolute statement. But it's not absolute. I'm not saying that. You know, let's not say. Let's not. You know, here's something I'm not saying. Excuse me. What I'm saying is, is that all things being equal, it's better to have a male politician than a female one. Now, all things are not equal in this world. And so there are times where a woman is going to be better than a man in a certain race or something like that. Like a woman conservative, Catholic, running against a liberal, you know, gay guy or something like that. We know which one it's going to be better in that race. But on a whole, culturally, men should be the ones stepping up to run for office. Men should be the ones stepping up to say, I'm going to help lead this country by running for governor or state senator or congressman or dog catcher or whatever. Not women. Now, there are some fine women politicians and leaders in the past. I'm not claiming there haven't been, but in general, it's not something we should be. What I see is a lot of conservatives, they get more excited about a woman because they feel like that blunts attacks from the left. And I just think that's stupid. Again, you're listening to the left to determine. You're listening to your enemies to determine your own strategy. And so don't get me wrong, I think women should absolutely be involved in improving our culture. They have very important roles to lead. They can be writers, they can be commenters online, they can be doing various things like that. [00:15:42] Speaker A: But that doesn't mean that that should be their priority. I'm talking about particularly mothers with children at home, because if you're trying to improve the culture, which pro life groups, Catholic groups, all stuff are saying they're trying to do, guess what the number one way a young mother can improve the culture is? Stay at home with her kids. That's the number one way a young mother can improve the culture, improve the pro life movement, help the pro life movement improve politics. Everything is if she stays at home and raises her children. That's number one way. Now, there are situations in which a mother can't do that. I get that. We live in a real world here. We live in a world where not. It's a fallen world, not everything is perfect. We have women who simply have to work. Now, I do think the number of women who say they have to work. And the number of women who actually have to work is very different. The latter is much smaller than the former. A lot of people say, a lot of families say the woman, the mother has to work, when really she doesn't. They just need to make some very significant sacrifices so she doesn't have to work, which might include, you know, really cutting down on expenses, living in a smaller house, living in an area of the country that's much cheaper to live in, lots of different ways in which that, you know, can happen. Now, again, there are situations where a woman just has to work, you know, single mother, you know, things like that. I'm not claiming that doesn't exist. I am saying it's much more rare than it. It should be much more rare than it actually is. I'm talking particularly among conservative Catholic women in general. And so I really think, though, that we need to realize if we really want to improve the culture, we need to do it in God's way, not our way. And God's way is how he designed us. He designed us so that the man is the leader of the household in, in. In the nation, in, in your community. The men are providers. They are, they're tasked to provide families and communities and they're, they're the. Of the faith or the, you know, the lay priest. Not. Not or priest of the family, whereas are there to care children, to, to raise, to be the heart of the family. And, and their, their role is so vital, so important. Anybody who thinks this is somehow denigrating women, you don't. What you're doing is you're denigrating the role of mothers. You're denigrating how important mothers are in the life of their children. That's what you're doing. If you think that I'm denigrating women by saying that they should. Their primary duty in life, if they're, you know, obviously if they're married and have kids, is to care for their children. [00:18:36] Speaker A: So that's the first thing I want to talk about was women's role in, like, society, you know, as leaders of apostolates and pro life groups and Catholic groups and politics and things like that. Really, the men need to step up. And yes, so I know I mentioned this about women leading not, you know, my problem, women leading all the pro life groups. Somebody said, well, men need to step up. Men aren't stepping up. First of all, like I said, I know the history. That's not how it happened. But I do think men do need to step out, step up. And they do need to say, okay, I need to take some more leadership roles. If a pro life group won't have a man as a leader, and I think there are many that won't. They purposely would not. If they had two, two candidates, they would pick the woman over the man. Well, then men, go start up your own pro life group. Start up a pro life organization that is, that's done in the way you think is best. [00:19:29] Speaker A: So that's my first kind of overall category. I wanted to talk about how feminism infects even conservative Catholicism in that we accept women as these leaders in society in roles that they really should not be in ideally. Second is this idea that you see a lot of women commentators talk about like they see women as always victims. That women are never the perpetuators of evil or problems. They're always somehow the victims of it. It's always the men who are the problem. You see this in abortion where like every woman who's going for an abortion is a victim somehow, but they're not. Many of them, if not most of them likely are not victims. They're murderers. Some are victims. We need to help them as much as we can. But not, you know, we need to recognize they're not all victims. We also see this in pornography. Like every woman who's involved in porn is somehow a victim. And that's, I mean, the rise of onlyfans should tell us that's simply not true. A lot of these women who are involved in porn are not victims. They purposely and they consciously and voluntarily decide to be involved in porn and what they're doing is evil and they need to be condemned. There are victims, you know, child trafficking kids and you know, people who are pressured into it all. Again, let's not, let's not. When I say something about the norm, don't like think your first thing shouldn't be thinking the exception that that somehow disproves it. That doesn't disprove. It just means it's an exception. But women who are involved in pornography are not, many of them are not victims, and we shouldn't treat them as such. You also see this in situations like, for example, you know, two college kids, a young man, young woman, they both get drunk at a party and they have relations and all of a sudden the woman. [00:21:25] Speaker A: Acts like it's rape and she's the victim. I'm sorry, you both got drunk, you both made dumb decisions. That's not rape. Likewise, if a woman is very provocative and she does things like, you know, at a party, she Dresses like an almost nothing and she's flirting and she's really, she wants to do things and stuff like that. And, and then she claims that somehow she's a victim. Okay. Obviously, if it's a forcible rape, I'm not saying the woman's not a victim. I'm not even saying she's not a victim in other situations, similar situations. What I am saying though is there needs to be discussion of a woman's responsibility in these situations. That's not 100%. The woman is innocent. Dove did nothing wrong and the man is evil. But you see a lot of women leaders, Catholic leaders and conservative leaders who talk like that when the reality is, is that there's, there's two sides of the equation when these things happen. And just in general, I'm not even talking about situations that might involve, you know, rape or some, or accusations or anything like that. I'm just talking about just simply where a man, you know, the, the, the, like there's this idea that the man needs to be 100 responsible, which he does for his, like how he looks at women, stuff like that. But a woman's not at all responsible for how she dresses. I'm sorry, that's just wrong too. A man is 100% responsible for his, you know, his custody of his eyes and how he looks at women and things like that. 100%. And men, if you're listening right now, porn is, is evil. Have nothing to do with it. If you are involved with porn, do everything you can to escape it. I mean, literally everything you can, because it will send you to hell otherwise. So if it means you have to get rid of your smartphone, you have to not be on computer. I don't care what it is, do it, do it to get off of porn. And if you, if you're, you know, doing porn, go to confession. Go to confession. Go to confession all the time. I mean, seriously, if you have to go every week, every day, your soul is too important. Okay, that's all, that's all true. It's also true that women need to conserve a Catholic women talking to you. I know that people who aren't even Catholic or conserved, they're not going to dress well. I think I told the story when I went to the Turning Point USA event in June of. [00:23:42] Speaker A: 2024. Trump was speaking. I spoke at this thing and this was one of the first, like big like conservative group, you know, conferences I had gone to. I was honestly a bit, I was scandalized. I don't, I don't Want to act like I wasn't. The women were dressed. So many of the young women there were dressed like they were later going to be working in the streets, if you know what I mean. And I was just like, what are we doing here, people? We're the conservatives and the women are dressed like, you know, women of the night. The conservative women are. I mean, what are we doing here? What are we even trying to conserve? And so women do have a responsibility to dress modestly. Absolutely. I'm not saying they're to blame. If a man sees them dressed and modestly and then he goes and he views porn because it, it. [00:24:34] Speaker A: You know, it stimulated him to go do that. By the way, ladies, that does happen to young men in particular. And so you have a responsibility, women to dress modestly. I'm not saying you wear burkas, but I am saying that you cover up. You cover. You know what? You know what? You know what modesty is? Here's the thing. Any debate about what's modest dress is always just a joke because everybody knows what it is. Everyone knows what you need to cover up and how much you need to cover up. I mean, they should know. I should say that. So. But we don't talk about this because if the second you say second, a man in particular says women need to dress modestly, immediately you get some screeching conservative women who are like, you're blaming the woman. When you need to have responsibility, you need to have self control. Yes, I know that. That doesn't mean you aren't part of the equation here, though. [00:25:26] Speaker A: I mean, here's the thing. A mature young man who's trying to do everything he can to be, you know, be holy. He avoids going to websites that could be a problem. He avoids watching shows that could be a problem. All this stuff. And then he goes to mass and some girl is dressed like, you know, very immodestly. What's he supposed to do? I mean, he's supposed to control himself. The point is he's trying. He's doing everything he can to. And then you throw this right in his face. You're making. If you understand how men work, you understand, especially young men, you understand this is. You're not helping any. You're leading them into sin is what you're doing. So let's stop acting like all women are victims and women never do anything wrong. Men do plenty of evil and we all know it. We talk about all the time. I don't need to talk about here, but women do as well. Another thing I Want to talk about in like. And this is, is a point like, now let's get back into the home. Let's go into the home situation. I have six daughters. I don't claim to be the perfect father. I don't claim to have raised them all perfectly or anything like that. I have daughters ranging in age from almost 30 to 10. And here's the thing, and I do have, and I have a son as well. You raise daughters differently than you raise your sons. That just should be very obvious. They're not the same. We need to raise them very differently. And so because of that, things like, here's an example where this comes into effect. Sports. Now I have a daughter who's. Now she's grown up and married and she played softball, fast pitch softball for a number of years. And it was one of the joys of my life to be involved with that because I was the scorekeeper. I would travel to the games with her. I loved watching her. So don't take this as I am against girls sports. I am not. But I do think there has been a push to get girls involved in sports as much as guys. Like, if you have a daughter, she has to play soccer because your son plays soccer or plays baseball, whatever the case may be. And that's just silly. Most girls don't really have a real desire to play sports. And so pushing them into it at a young age. Yeah, maybe when they're five, they see their brother kicking the ball around, they want to kick the ball around too. But organized sports where all of a sudden now the girls are doing travel soccer or travel softball or whatever the case may be, nine times out of ten, if not more, that's simply. It's not. [00:27:52] Speaker A: It'S not what you should be gearing your daughters towards because the parents are forcing is what I'm trying to say. It's not a natural thing of like, the daughter really is like, I really love to play softball and I really want to do that. It's more like the dad wants his daughter to play sports and so he kind of pushes her into it instead of pushing her into things that might be more connected to her, you know, feminine nature. Like I said, I have a daughter who played fast pitch softball for probably about five years. And it was. I loved it, but she did too, and she loved it as well. And we made sure we played in a league where there would be no, like, weirdness going on. It wouldn't be a time commitment more than it should be. The point of all this is simply that Women, daughters should be treated different sons. Another way they should be treated differently is what happens to them after they grow up. Now I caused a lot of controversy on X a couple months ago when I said that like basically once sons are 18, you know, I would want him to be able to support himself outside the house. I'm not saying that like a, a young man, a son can't live with his parents after their eight, you know, the day they turn 18, like after that they can't lose their parents. I'm not saying that. I get that there's economic situations and personal situations like that where it just happens and it's a good thing. It's a good thing in a sense that it's better than the alternatives. That being said though, you should raise your son so they can support themselves and a family as soon as they become adults. So when they're 18, they can hit the ground running. Now they might decide to live at home for longer because of college, because of like trying to raise some money to start a business or whatever the case may be. So I'm not saying, you know, you're kicking them out. What I'm saying though is you gear them towards supporting themselves and a family when they become adults. You don't have to do, you don't do that with the daughters. The daughters can live with you and continue to live with you until they get married or they go off to a convent. And you're not gearing them towards, okay, you have to support yourself, you have to get a career. You know, this is something that started to bother me more and more as my girls got older, is how many people would ask them when they're in high school and stuff like, what are you going to do with your life? Like a career? Like the assumption was they would have a career, instead of the assumption being like, maybe they just, they want to be married and you know, be a homemaker. But you're not allowed to say that in most situations. You're not allowed to say, oh, I just want to be a homemaker. If you're, if you're a young woman, maybe a 16 year old young woman. But that is actually a great thing to want to be at 16 for a young woman. [00:30:26] Speaker A: That's one of the greatest vocations you could have in occupations you could have. But it's always the assumption like the girl's gonna also go to college, get a degree, get a job, get a career, and then maybe marriage and family will follow after that. But we shouldn't make those assumptions now, if that's the way it happens again, there are reasons why that can happen. Everything and it all works out fine. I'm just saying is, let's not have this mentality of the girls are treated exactly like the boys as far as the same path, career path and all that. Now, when we talk about in the home, now, of course we're talking about probably the most controversial, if not probably, the women in leadership might be in society, but the role at home of the mother and the father, of the husband and the wife. What are the appropriate roles for Catholic men and women in these situations? You see this debate all the time, usually online, in social media. It's usually very. You have the two extremes yelling at each other. The women who are like, you know, they can have careers and all that stuff. And then the men who are, you know, some men of the, like the BRO sphere or whatever, the manosphere, they're like, hey, you know, women should be shackled at home or something like that. Well, let's first remember what God's word says in Ephesians 5. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ is talking about wives and husbands. So first of all, we'd be subject to one another of reverence for Christ. I know that that passage is overemphasized a bit by the feminists, but it is there and it is something we need to take consideration. But how are we subject to one another? That's the thing is that first verse, verse 5, 21, says, Be subject to one another of reverence for Christ. Paul's going to follow up and say how we are subject to one another, and it's different. It's not the same. Not subject to one another in the exact same way. Verse 22, Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. And the church is subject to Christ. So let wives be also subject to everything in their husbands. So clearly there is a leadership role for the husbands, and the wives are subject to that. Just like Christ is the head of the church. So therefore a man the husband's head of the family. But then he says, husbands, love your wives. This is how a husband is subject to his wife. He loves his wife, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holding without blemish. In other words, husbands, you have to love your wife as Christ loves the church, which what did Christ do? He literally died. He sacrificed himself for the church. And also, husbands, recognize your duty is to sanctify your wife to help bring her into heaven. [00:33:18] Speaker A: It says this, husbands, love your wives that he might sanctify her. And so what we see here is this dual subjection, but it's not the same way. And so first is when we talk about leadership in the house. A lot of times it seems very like weird how people talk about it when they're debating by online, but like in a healthy relationship. And I'm a man of 30, married 30 years. I don't claim my marriage is perfect, but I do think I have some wisdom in this area. I'm happily married after 30 years and I've been happily married the entire three years. I love my wife deeply. I know she loves me deeply. And you know, it's been wonderful. So I have a little bit experience here. But I will say the key is how do you make decisions? That's really what leadership ends up being, is how do you make decisions for the family? You some places, you know, in most, like Catholic, conservative Catholics, it acts like it's a just a mutual, you know, you come together and you make some decision after talking each other. And like somehow it just gets made when really often probably what it means is the woman nagged the husband so that she would get her way or did something to manipulate the husband so she'd get her way when they talk like that. But then you also get some men who are like, act like the woman has nothing to do with decisions in a family. Like the man just, he's just in charge. He will make all decisions. The fact is decision making, the final decision maker always needs to be the husband in. I'm talking about major. I'm not talking about final decision maker, what you know, have for dinner that night or you know, what to shop for at the store or something like that. I'm talking about final decision making on major decisions that impact the whole family. The husband has to be the final decision maker. That does not mean though that the wife isn't involved in the decision making very intimately because she might have viewpoints, intuitions, information that the husband does not have. And any husband who would not listen to his wife when making major decisions for the family is a terrible husband and is an idiot also. [00:35:26] Speaker A: And it's possible the wife could end up influencing his, her husband's decision to change his mind. That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends, of course, is she being manipulative? Is she just trying to get away? Is she always doing this? But it might be that really the husband didn't have all the information he needed to have. Maybe it has to do with like, for example, where does one of your children go to school next year? Are you going to homeschool them or you're going to send to the local Catholic school? What are you thinking? And perhaps the husband's adamant about, you know, sending them to the local Catholic school. And the, and the, and the wife is like, I really know this child, like, how he learns. And I really think homeschooling would be best. Now, the final decision is the husband's, but the husband would be an idiot not to listen to his wife very seriously and potentially change his mind, even based upon the wife's input. This is just common sense in my mind. I mean, it's just common sense. Now, another thing to note is that. [00:36:23] Speaker A: The personalities of the husband and wife do matter and how this is done. [00:36:29] Speaker A: There are marriages, happy, healthy, holy marriages, in which the man has a more passive personality and the woman has a more dominant personality. This is just how God made us and how you were raised and things like that. It's not a sin to be more passive or more dominant. You know, it can be sins in how you exercise that, but just having those personalities are not sins. And so you might know, there might be couples in which the woman is just the more dominant personality, the man is more passive. There's nothing wrong with that. And so day to day, the woman might be making more decisions. But as long as the man is the final decision maker and he's willing and able to step in at times and say, no, we're not going to do it like that. We need to do it like this. And here's why. That's the other thing. When a man makes his final decision, he doesn't just do it like some aloof dictator saying, here's how we're doing it. He explains to his wife how he came to that conclusion, why he made the decision he did. And the wife is at that point should be subject to him and say, okay. Even if she doesn't agree at that point, she says, yes, okay, that's what we're going to do. And so in a situation where the husband's a more passive personality, it might not be like this day to day or even week to week thing. Where he makes a lot of the actual decisions. But as long as he retains his role as being able to have veto power, so to speak, I still think that can be a healthy and holy relationship. So. So my point here is let's not make a specific. [00:37:56] Speaker A: A specific thing where, where like, it has to be seen done in a very rigid, specific way. It can be different for different personalities in different family situations. So that's the, you know, at the home then. And so like, for example, then the question becomes, of course, women working, mothers wise, working outside of the house. And this is the one where we have the two extremes. Like, yes, they should be allowed to work in the house. There's no problems whatsoever with a woman working outside the house to the women should never absolutely, in no situation ever have any paying job. Those are kind of the extremes. And as always, the truth is in the middle, more towards one side than the other. The fact is. [00:38:42] Speaker A: In general, the man should be the provider, the one working. He should be the one who's getting the job that supports his family. That is a duty of a man is to provide for his family. So if he's not working, providing his family, he's not really doing his duty. Now, there are situations in which that just can't. That doesn't happen where the woman is going to be the worker for whatever reasons. And I'm not, I'm not condemning every situation like that, but I do think again, there's probably way more situations where the woman works when she doesn't really have to. But also, like, there's also nothing wrong with the woman, you know, doing jobs like from the home, as long as it's not taking away from her primary duty to her children and to her husband, to the household. But, like, she could do things on the side to make money, help, help the income of the family income. This is very common throughout history. I mean, do you really think, like, you know, Ma Ingalls, you know, wasn't, you know, providing income for the family? Obviously she was, because she's helping run the household that. That's bringing them income, run the farm and things like that. She's helping out when needed, but her primary duty is raising the children. And that is the, the situation that we should strive for. It's not always possible. It's what we should strive for is where the. The primary focus. By the way, when I say the primary focus, that means the primary use of your time doesn't mean I think it's a priority, but I'm gonna spend most of my Time, you know, doing things, you know, trying to make money on my side gig or something like that, or spending all my time online debating people instead of watching my own kids, caring for them. Yeah, that's a problem. Women, that's a problem. Obviously, the man who comes home from work and he spends all his time online debating, so kind of being with his kids, that's a problem too. But yeah, ladies who spend all day online debating other people, but they have kids at home and they're neglecting them. They might feel like they're neglecting, but they are, at least emotionally, that's a problem. And so as long as we recognize the woman's primary role is taking care of the house, taking care of her husband, taking care of her kids, how that's exercised, as far as, like, the amount of work out, like paid work that the woman does is going to differ. It's going to differ. But in general, we shouldn't be sacrificing saying, oh, I have this calling from God to lead this pro life apostolate and I'm just going to leave my kids at home for my husband, take care of. No, I'm sorry. Men and women are not interchangeable. Men and women are not interchangeable. That's just simply. You're neglecting your primary duties. I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it. So how do we. Okay, so, boy, I've been going a lot longer than I thought I would. But I think this is very important. I think this whole issue of feminism inflicting, infecting conservative Catholics is a real issue we need to address. So how do we resist it? The first thing is to sort of recognize it. I mean, it's all around us and we don't even recognize it. When you get excited because some woman is now, you know, was elected and you think it's great that she's a woman or that a woman is leading some apostle, you think it's great because it's a woman out there, you got a feminism problem. If you don't recognize that a woman's primary role, a wife and mother's primary role, is to care for her husband and children and the house, you got a feminism problem. If you don't recognize that. [00:42:16] Speaker A: Men and women are not interchangeable in their roles in the household, you got a feminism problem. I've seen too often where Catholic women and Catholic men, they take the false premises of feminism and they kind of put a Catholic veneer on it. It's kind of like the JP2 feminism. I'm not using JP2 of this, by the way, but a lot of people, a lot of the women, they look to JP2 and some of the things he wrote about women or maybe Edith Stein or somebody like that, they create a Catholic feminism. There is no such thing as a Catholic feminism. Not a truly authentic Catholic feminism that's truly authentically Catholic. [00:42:59] Speaker A: It doesn't mean, of course we demean women or anything like that. Nobody's saying that. But it does mean they have different roles. We need to completely embrace the complement. Complementarity between the sexes. Complementarity means that they're different. They have different roles to fulfill. But when done correctly, they intermesh, they come together and it's a beautiful thing when it's done. That guy. It's based upon each person's state in life, their personality, all that stuff. But there needs to be a complementary. Women can't do everything man. Men can do and vice versa. Men are not better at raising their children at home and keeping housing at that. And women are not better at leading things, leading organizations. Yes, I'm sure there's. There are women who are better at leading organizations than certain men are and certain women. Men are better at home making whatever than certain women are. But we're talking in, in generalities. If you think you're the exception, you really, really need to rethink that and say, am I really the exception or am I just making excuse? We also can't go when we say we're resisting feminism that's infecting us, it's creeping into our Catholicism. We also can't go the extreme reactionary route either of like having a very rigid outlook of like, of roles that don't deal with the reality. First of all, we live in the 21st century. We're not all living on farms. And so yes, a woman who has to maybe make. Have a side gig to make a little money to help the family, it just might have to happen. I mean, you got to make all the sacrifices necessary so you don't have to do it. But sometimes it just has to happen. And so the men who kind of condemn every single instance of a woman like having an income, a mother having income, that's just not right. It also becomes very frankly, it goes over to demeaning towards women. It really does look at women as a kind of inferior in their role. Their role is as important as a man's role. It's very different in the role, but it is important. And so like kind of the, the manosphere, whatever you want to call it that that kind of goes the opposite direction because they. They recognize the evil feminism, rightly, but then they basically just react to that. They react to modern feminism without understand, like really looking at the Catholic view of things, how should we. And. And. And kind of the realistic, prudential view of things, of how we actually live in this world. So I think that's what we need to recognize, really. What that we have a feminism problem. And we need to recognize, see where it's kind of creeping into our own view of the world, our own worldview and things. Also don't overreact and become a reactionary, but really embrace the complementarity between men and women, that they have different roles in life and that in general, we should be striving for the ideal of the man providing for the family, the woman staying at home with her kids and doing that. Not everybody can reach the ideal, and a lot of it is not through their own fault. But we should at least hold up the ideal and strive for it and don't like, knock it down, but try to. Try to kind of direct ourselves towards that ideal the best we can. Our own situations. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up there. Just, you know, I just encourage you to really see if you have let feminism creep into your own worldview and do everything you can to. To get rid of it in your life. Okay, that's all for now. Until next time, everybody. God love you.