JPII Conference Panel Discussion (2025): Marriage and Sexuality

The panel discussed the historical and contemporary challenges of marriage and family, drawing on insights from Pope Leo XIII and Pope Francis. Featuring Dr. Matthew Walz and Mary Rice Hasson, J.D., the conversation emphasized the need for wisdom, intelligence and courage in addressing these issues. Both speakers advocated for a renewed engagement with Catholic teaching and a strong Church voice in shaping cultural norms.

Dr. Matthew Walz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Dallas and St. John Henry Newman Visiting Chair in Catholic Studies at Thomas More College. 

Mary Rice Hasson, J.D., is the Kate O'Beirne Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Good afternoon and welcome to the second panel this afternoon of our conference on Pope Leo the 13th and um the 14th and the problems of modernity. My name is Matthias Forvack. If you haven't been here before, I'm the provost of the University of Dallas and just stepping in on short notice for Ryan Anderson, who is unfortunately ill and unable to moderate uh our session. Uh we have as our guest speakers on the topic of marriage and sexuality um two wonderful experts um and and colleagues. Um I start with uh Mary Rice Hessen, uh who is I hope I pronounced it correctly, the Kate O'Baron Senior Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and uh um a recognized expert on matters of marriage and sexuality uh from uh the viewpoint of uh Catholic um morality. Um we also have with us Dr. Matthew Waltz, who's an associate professor in the Department of Psychology uh sorry, philosophy, not psychology, philosophy here at the University of Dallas. Um he uh is a Thomist and uh and has a keen interest um in matters Catholic and people, um, if I may say that, um, and in particular the flourishing of the human person. Um he uh is, I would like to note that as well, also the director of the program of uh philosophy and letters uh that is part of our seminarian formation here at Holy Trinity Seminary. And with this very brief and short introduction, I pass it on um to our first speaker.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Um that's you, uh Dr. Waltz. In 1846, John Henry Newman made a trip to Rome to undertake seminary studies for the Catholic priesthood. He had converted a year earlier, and now he was 45 years old and wanting to be a Catholic priest. Nowadays they might call this a late vocation. But Newman was a late vocation like no other. He had already written his book, Arians of the Fourth Century, published his parochial and plain sermons in eight volumes, delivered and published his well-known Oxford University sermons, the prototype of the idea of a university, and released a seven-volume series called The Lives of the English Saints. And by the way, he had just completed a little work called Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which, theologically speaking, was perhaps just a little bit ahead of its time. To say the least, he was a rare bird as a seminarian. There's a story about this trip of Newman's to Rome that I've heard once or twice, although it appears to be apocryphal. It goes like this: Newman traveled to Rome in part in order to find someone from whom he could learn the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Since Newman, now a former Anglican, judged that such learning would be obviously necessary for any man who wants to become a Catholic priest. He searched all over for Rome for such a teacher, and alas, none was to be found. In light of all this, Newman is said to have quipped rather dejectedly, they're all Hegelians now. As I said, this story may be apocryphal. Sometimes I wonder if I made it up myself. Nonetheless, we do know from letters that Newman wrote from Rome during that period that he was asking seriously about intellectual preparation for the priesthood, and in particular, whether it included studying Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In one letter, he relates a conversation about this very thing. You have it on your hand out there, at least a portion of it. He's telling about a claim that someone made to him while he was visiting Milan, namely, that the current age required a philosophy, for at present there was none. Newman goes on to write as follows. Hope told me we should find very little theology here in Rome. And a talk we had yesterday with one of the Jesuit fathers here shows we shall find little philosophy. It arose from our talking of the Greek studies of the propaganda, now called the Dicaster for the Doctrine of the Faith, asking whether the youths learned Aristotle. Oh no, he said. Aristotle is in no favor here. No, not in Rome, nor Saint Thomas. I have read Aristotle and Saint Thomas and owe a great deal to them. But they are out of favor here and throughout Italy. Saint Thomas is a great saint. People don't dare to speak against him. They profess to reverence him, but put him aside. I asked what philosophy they did adopt. He said, None. Odds and ends, whatever seems to them best, like Saint Clement's Dromata, they have no philosophy. Facts are the great things and nothing else. Exegesis, but not doctrine. He went on to say many to say that many privately were sorry for this, many Jesuits, he said. But no one dared oppose the fashion. When I said I thought that there was a latent power in Rome which would stop the evil, and that the Pope introduced Aristotle and St. Thomas into the church, and the Pope was bound to maintain them, he shrugged his shoulders and said, The Pope could do nothing if people would not obey him, and that the Romans were a giddy people, not like the English. Now it would be fun to unpack all that Newman writes here, but we lack the time. As I see it, there's much to be gleaned from this story that's relevant to Leo XIII and marriage, as I hope to unfold in these remarks. First of all, Newman's experience reveals the philosophical and theological health of the church in Rome in the mid-19th century. It's not a happy diagnosis. It turns out that Newman benefited very little intellectually from the seminary instruction that he received there. In fact, it appears that he began to cut classes. Remember, dear students who are here, saints are to be venerated, not imitated. It also turns out that this intellectual climate in Rome in 1846 that Newman found so dismaying, and as calling for the Pope to exercise some authority in the matter, had not changed much 32 years later when, in 1878, the almost 68-year-old Giacchino Pecci was elected pope, taking the name of Leo XIII. Politically speaking, however, certain factors had changed and rather significant ones. I'm thinking in particular of the loss of the Papal States, the last Papal States in 1870. Leo XIII was the first pope in a long time not to exercise temporal governance over any Papal States. The Pope was not a political player on the world stage. When he took his seat in the chair of Peter, the church had been divested of having concrete political interests in the world in the way that normal polities do. This divestment had been forced upon the church, to be sure, but in many ways, or so it seems to me, it was a tremendous blessing. One that Leo seems to have understood quite profoundly. Now the church, now the church was freer to teach about social matters, providing teachings that bore on the political, but were not themselves properly speaking political in character. The church could offer a teaching that addresses the human and the social as such, in a manner that does not articulate positions regarding this or that policy that a particular community may be facing. The church then could appeal first and foremost and most directly to the hearts and consciences of men and women, especially Christian believers who by nature are social. It seems to me, by the way, that the church is still learning how to speak in her distinctively magisterial voice when it comes to sharing wisdom about human and social matters. It turns out to be a very difficult tone and timbre in which to speak and to teach, directly aiming not to shape policy, but to form hearts and consciences so as to enable and to enhance the virtuous exercise of human freedom within the social and political sphere. No doubt we could have endless debates about the prudence of this move by Leo XIII, as well as about the quality of its fruits. Let's leave all that aside for now. Allow me to point out, though, a few crucial things about Aternipatres. The first thing is the intellectual context in which it was written, which I've tried to depict in broad strokes with the prologue about Newman. When Leo is elected Pope, at best, the church is somewhat flailing philosophically and theologically. At worst, the church had genuinely lost sight of St. Paul's warning to the Colossians. Watch out that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental principles of the world, and not according to Christ. This is an intellectual temptation that believers always face, of course, but it seems that Leo is aware that the church of his time was facing it in spades. A second thing is how early in his pontificate Leo publishes Aterni Patres. He does so in August 19, sorry, 1879, just a year and a half into what ended up being a pontificate of over 25 years. In many ways, then this encyclical stands as a principium, a beginning and governing source of Leo's subsequent magisterial teaching. A third crucial thing is that at its heart, Eterni Patres is a social encyclical. For me, at least, this was very eye-opening when I recognized this. The way that Leo leads us into his diagnosis of the situation of the faithful in the world and the reasons why he is calling for the church to look to Thomas Aquinas for guidance, all this makes the social teaching character of this encyclical evident. In calling upon Aquinas, Leo is chiefly concerned, like a good pastor, about the moral, political, and social conditions that have arisen from the upheavals, deconstruction, and revolutions, both intellectual and political, that seemed to be his age's unfolding of the philosophy and vain deceit that are not according to Christ, against which Paul had warned us. Leo calls St. Thomas Aquinas off the bench and into the game in order to teach us again a more profound, holistic, and sapiential approach to the social question. Rooted in sound philosophy, suffused with the light of faith, especially faith in the scriptures, and driven by the love of Christ. No more of those philosophical odds and ends that Newman encountered. In place of that, Leo puts forth the teaching of Aquinas, which embodies his all-encompassing desire for truth no matter where it may be found, an all-encompassing desire that is capable of putting in their place all the partial or deformed or disintegrating accounts of human nature and human society that are on full display in modern thought and politics. It is crucial then to see Aterni Patres as the magisterial fountainhead of Leo's social teaching, especially when it comes to marriage and the family. Now, what was the first burst of water that came forth from this magisterial fountainhead? Only six months after Aterni Patres came out, on February 10th, 1880, Leo published Arcanum Divinae, which is, he indicates, De Matrimonio Christiano, on Christian matrimony. This is a not so subtle message from Leo, it seems to me, that the church's teaching on Christian matrimony constitutes the first fruits, as it were, of her social teaching. Or if I could deploy another metaphor, the church's teaching on matrimony and on the first society that grows directly out of matrimony, i.e., the family, is the very heart of her social teaching. This heart metaphor is apt because the vitality of the church's social teaching flows from her reflection on matrimony and the family, which is rooted in what has been entrusted to us through faith in the scriptures, as well as in what reason sees by its own lights. In turn, the truth and mercy of the church's social teaching flows back, as it were, onto matrimony in the family, revealing, among other things, its central place in the social order, both pedagogically and in reality. This then is my basic claim about the place of marriage and the family in Leo's social teaching. I hope to unfold this claim somewhat in my remaining time. Were I to sum up my point more concisely, I might paraphrase the words of that great communicator, former President Bill Clinton, and say, It's marriage and the family, stupid. It really is. For in Christian matrimony and the family, one finds the school of Catholic social teaching, the primordial and indispensable community in which we learn both experientially and through instruction the underlying principles of that teaching, the dignity of the human person and the reality of the common good, solidarity as well as subsidiarity and participation. Each of these three necessary societies, family, nation, and church, is called to embody these principles. But it's in and through matrimony in the family that the church's social teaching shapes the heart and informs the mind most primordially, thereby enabling a sort of habituation in the living out of these principles, which in turn enables us to bear fruit as living members of the church, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to be effective as citizens of a nation. It's worth noting, moreover, that Rerum Navarum was not published until May 15, 1891, more than 11 years after Arcanum Divinae. I say this not to diminish the importance of Rerum Navarum, which is a great and insightful encyclical, but when it comes to Leo's social teaching, Rerum Nivarum is derivative, as it were, dealing as it does with the condition of the worker in the Civitas, the civil community which is posterior both pedagogically and metaphysically to matrimony and the family. Now, if you walk away with anything worthwhile from my remarks today, I hope it is this phrase, or this word even, the protocendent character of matrimony and the family. Yes, I made up this word proto-cendant. Or at least I've never seen it in use before. And that, of course, is a rather superbious thing for me to do. But bear with me, I'm trying to find a word that is analogous to transcendent and yet has to do with the other side, so to speak. Not the side of reaching forward and upward, which is usually associated with transcendence, but the side of reaching backward and downward. In Catholic social teaching, it's crucial to see that the ecclesia, the church, transcends the political. It transcends the city of man, even as it finds itself in the midst of it. To transcend, though, suggests the reaching of a peak or a telos. It means going beyond the given and the experienceable and the present. Matrimony and the family have a similar intelligible space, as it were, but they exist metaphysically speaking on the front end of the social order. In other words, they are at work on the side of origins or beginnings, not on the side of teloi or ends. Matrimony and the family precede the nation, and in a way, and I want to be careful here, they precede the church herself. Indeed, in their own way, they prefigure both the nation and the church. Moreover, as I've already suggested, matrimony in the family embody in a primordial way the very principles of Catholic social teaching that shape the other two necessary societies. All of this is what I mean when I speak of the protocendant character of matrimony in the family. And I think Leo's decision to publish Arcanum Divinae very closely on the heels of Aterni Patres suggests such protocendence as he unfolds the church's understanding of matrimony in the family. Indeed, consider the opening words of Arcanum Divinae, which I think are on your handout there. Its full Latin title is sometimes given as the first four words of the encyclical, not just the first two. Arcanum Divine Sapiencia Concilium, the hidden plan or council of divine wisdom. Dare I say that matrimony and the family are indeed the hidden plan or counsel of divine wisdom? The underlying secret that unlacks, as it were, the intelligibility of the polity as well as the church? And perhaps the intelligibility of existence itself. If so, I would argue, then one can see that the thinking of Thomas Aquinas is very much at work in Arcanum Divinae. For Aquinas sees the creation of the man and the woman, united in matrimony, as well as the family to which matrimony directly and freely gives rise, as something like the telos of all God's creative activity in the first place. Indeed, this is the hidden plan or counsel of divine wisdom at the beginning. Genesis suggests as much. Doesn't God take counsel with himself, eventually putting the human to sleep, and then building the woman out of the man's rib? All because it is not good for the human to exist alone. What God creates in order to consummate his original creative activity is not just another human being, but a pair of human beings, a couple, human beings in relationship who are able to share in one another's life, and indeed can choose freely to collaborate as a unity in an act of generation, thus giving rise to the first society, the family. In Arcanum Divina, Leo articulates this divine origin of the man and the woman, and in turn the divine origin of matrimony. The family, then, is the fruit of the freedom of the man and woman who activate their God given natural powers and carry forward God's creative activity in the world. First and foremost, in the family. Family and in the domestic life that constitutes the family's actuality. Now, a decent philosopher looking at this situation would see that in creating the woman, God was simultaneously creating friendship, filia, amicitzia. God was creating, in other words, that greatest of relationships of which humans seem capable, and which philosophers ponder deeply throughout history, or at least up until modernity. Licid then to how Thomas Aquinas considers friendship between spouses in the Summa Contra Gentiles. This is on your handout. He's arguing for the indissolubility of marriage. The greater the friendship, the firmer and longer lasting it is. Now, between man and wife, there seems to exist the greatest friendship, for they are brought into unity not only in the act of fleshly union, which even among animals brings about delightful society, but also with respect to the shared lot of domestic life as a whole. Hence, as a sign of this, the human, on account of a wife, leaves even father and mother, as is said in Genesis 2.24. It is fitting, therefore, that matrimony be altogether indissoluble. Here is a philosophical vision of friendship worthy of illuminating Genesis. Indeed, by deliberately putting Aquinas back into action in the church's intellectual life, Leo recovers the sound philosophical understanding of nature and the naturalness of human society deeply rooted in Aristotle. Thereby the church can begin to fill in the gaping holes of modern anthropology and social thought. Thus, the church can approach the social question more profoundly, holistically, and sapientially, rooted in her distinctive expertise regarding the human being and human community, which she has been pondering in her heart in light of the scriptures for centuries. The philosophical dimension of what Leo is doing regarding matrimony in the family, as well as in his social teaching as a whole, is crucial. Given the central place of marriage and the family in human experience, and given the way that the church's social teaching touches our everyday lives, the church has to be doubly attentive to the contributions of philosophy in addressing these matters. With respect to marriage and the family, this means recovering a vision of these primordial social realities that accords with the truth of their naturalness, their pre-existent character in relation to the political community, and the indispensable role they play in giving rise to a healthy polity and a healthy church. Such a vision can be found in Aquinas, to be sure, but he himself is mining the teachings of Aristotle, Cicero, and other philosophers, even pagans, whose thinking strives to adequate itself to the full intelligibility of friendship, marriage, and the family. For example, what I just quoted about friendship from Aquinas is clearly rooted in Aristotle's thinking in the ethics, where he expresses similar insights into marriage. This is on your handout. The friendship between man and woman seems to be in accord with nature. For a human is by nature a coupling being more than a political one. Inasmuch as a home is prior and more necessary than a city, and the begetting of children is more common to animals. Among other animals, then, community exists to that extent, whereas humans share a home, not only for the sake of begetting children, but also for the sake of those things that contribute to life. For the tasks are divided in a straightforward way, those of a man being other than those of a woman. They suit one another, then, by putting what's proper to each in service to what's common. Sometimes Aristotle is strikingly brilliant. I'd love to say more about this passage, especially the human is by nature a coupling being more than a political one. But I ought not, in the interests of time. The church can find a dear friend, by the way, also in Cicero, who teaches about the family as the first society, the prima societas, and as the nursery of civil society. My general point is that when it comes to matrimony in the family and to social teaching in general, there's much gold and silver to be plundered from the pagans. For Leo, this is crucial, that the philosophy underlying the social teaching be sound, maybe more so perhaps than other areas, because of the everydayness and the experiential character of matrimony in the family. And in some ways, therefore, all of this only highlights more the significance of Aterni Patres as the fountainhead of his magisterial social teaching. At this point, though, I've said too little about marriage itself. I hope that I've identified its central place in Leo's social teaching in light of its protocendant character in relation to both the polity and the church. You may have noticed, too, that I have altogether skirted the other topic, namely sexuality. This is because, as far as I can tell, sexuality as such is not on late Leo's radar, or if so, only obliquely. His fundamental concern when it comes to matrimony and the family is their metaphysical and theological character. More concretely, in Arcanum Divinae, he is dealing with those whom he calls the naturalists, who are angling to subsume marriage in the family altogether under the purview and authority of the polity. This was clearly one of the aims of the French revolutionists and their intellectual and political progeny. Their influence was spreading. Different nations are talking about civil marriage as separate from and in the end as superior to that religious or sacramental thing that the church does. Leo's response to such a diminished conception of marriage is unsurprisingly a resounding no. But it's a no rooted in an even more resounding yes. This is because, as Leo teaches, God is the primary author of matrimony in the family, not the polity. Indeed, even in non-Christian societies and even in non-Christian thinkers, there are hints of this special connection of marriage in the family to the divine and to religion, even prior to the polity. Yet it is in the pages of the scriptures, especially Genesis, that we are taught this truth most potently and most beautifully. And I would argue, it is Thomas Aquinas who unpacks these scriptures most comprehensively and clearly. What then has God authored that gives him and by extension the church ultimate authority over matrimony and the family? God has authored these primordial social realities as having a natural dimension and a sacramental one. These belong essentially to their very social form, which is a natural reality in the world and not merely an artifice of human beings or their conventions. To put this more concisely, Leo teaches that God intended from the beginning the sacralized naturalness of marriage and the family as determinant realities of the social order. In fact, it is precisely the sacralized naturalness of marriage and the family that makes them protocendent in relation to both the polity and the church. Matrimony and the family bring together the natural and the sacramental in a manner that bespeaks the hidden intelligible structure of the whole social order as God intends it. Or to put a fine point on it, this sacralized naturalness of matrimony in the family, which openly hints at the logic of both the incarnation and the Trinity, which Leo points out, is the Arcanum Divine Sapiense Concilium, the hidden plan or council of divine wisdom that underlies all of creation. This, I believe, is Leo's compelling vision of marriage, matrimony, and the family at the outset of his magisterial social teaching. And he encourages us to recognize these as naturally sacrilized realities that ought to inform deeply the ways we think and choose prudentially within the social order. Brief conclusion. We Christians who are married, and any of us who have experienced family life, which is pretty much all of us, have no idea, perhaps, what mis mysteries we have touched and are touching in our everyday lives by means of these primordial social realities. But it is precisely in the realities of matrimony and the family that Leo teaches us to find the deepest intelligibility and the first principles of the social order, and thus the key to the church's social teaching. This, I believe, is what Leo XIII teaches us in Arcanum Divinae, following on the heels of Eterni Patres. These encyclicals set the metaphysical and theological stage for the unfolding of this vision in Pius XI's 1930 encyclical Casti Canubii, in the Second Vatican Council's teaching on matrimony in the family, and I dare say all that John Paul II accomplished in bringing to light the hidden plan or counsel of divine wisdom. It is left to us, of course, to live out this vision, to embody in all our social activities, familiar, political, and ecclesial. Only then will we be able insterare omnia in Cristo to restore all things in Christ. Thank you for your attention.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Thank you for that earlier introduction. My task is to talk more about the challenges, the challenges that Leo XIV is facing when it comes to marriage and sexuality, although I would broaden that to marriage, sexuality, and the family. So, first a note about context. As I was rereading our canum and rerum Navarum in preparation for this conference, I was struck by a couple of things. First, the realism of Leo XIII towards the times and the cultural and legal distortions that had undermined marriage and the family. He didn't mince words. For example, in Rerum Navarum, he criticizes, quote, prevailing moral degeneracy. We don't usually hear that these days from Rome. In Arcanum, he critiques the manifold vices and the shameful acts that defile marriage, and cites the errors of sorting women into wives and concubines, the double standard that treated women poorly while excusing male lust, the distorted dominance of fathers and husbands who would meet out punishments, even death, to family members. It's a very specific catalog of human weakness and sin. Put differently, there's nothing new under the sun. He also rejects the state's intrusion into the realm of the church, its attempt to control marriage as a contract, separating it, as if the church's interest could be reduced, if it were, if you put it in those terms, only to the sacramental ceremonies. Second, just a contextual point, Leo XIII gives a forthright unapologetic statement about the church's mission in response to this. By command of God, he says, the church's mission is to set in order, quote, whatever might have become deranged in human society and to restore whatever might have fallen into ruin. Again, not mincing words. Pope Leo XIV has only just begun, so it's we'll withhold judgment as far as predictions about where he's going to go. But he too seems to see something in the current moment as pivotal. In a recent address to the Jesuits, he said, We live in what many describe as a change of epoch, an age marked by rapid shifts in culture, economics, technology, and politics. In particular, artificial intelligence and other innovations are reshaping our understanding of work and relationships, and even raising questions about human identity. He goes on to list ecological threats to our common home, political systems that are indifferent to the poor, ideological polarization, consumerism, individualism, and indifferentism. He's a bit more polite and nuanced than Leo XIII in calling out evil, but he's equally firm, I think, in recognizing that the church has a very specific mission. So he punctuates in this conversation with the Jesuits, he punctuates his list of societal ills by pointing to Christ and saying, yet into this world, Christ still sends his disciples. So we, the church, have a mission. And as Pope Leo XIV seeks to lead the church in its fundamental mission to preach Christ, to evangelize, and to make disciples of all nations, I'd like to highlight two particular challenges in this area that he's going to face in promoting the truth of the human person, marriage, and family. First, in some respects, reminiscent of Pope Leo XIII's challenges, Pope Leo XIV must elevate, my view, must elevate the church's voice to forcefully rebuff the state's intrusion into the sacred sphere of the family. This is in addition, of course, to the state's intrusion into the church's sphere in religious liberty, but that's been pretty much addressed. Second, the cultural challenges related to sexuality, marriage, and the family are best understood as challenges to the Christian vision of the human person, anthropological challenges that must be countered by the truth. Relegating these issues to the realm of, quote, pastoral accompaniment fails to address the serious ways in which this anthropological challenge undermines Catholic teaching, catechesis, and in a very practical way, living, marriage, and family. A related concern, one that's too often whispered about rather than confronted directly, the church's proclamation of the truth of the human person, specifically her proclamation of the teachings on sexuality, marriage, and family, is being undermined today by a fifth column within the church sympathizers and saboteurs who must be confronted and rebuffed. So I think that's an essential aspect of him confronting the anthropological challenge. So to the first point, the need to protect the rightful sphere of the family from intrusion by the state. Poplio, in recent remarks, Poplio XIV, in recent remarks celebrating the 60th anniversary of Vatican II's document on education, gravissimum educationis, I'm not a Latin scholar, reinforced that the family is, quote, the first school of humanity. He emphasized the role of parents as first educators, described a vision of Christian education that embraces the whole person, spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, and physical, and that it measures Christian education, measures its value on the basis of dignity, justice, and the ability to serve the common good. All wonderful phrases we've heard before if you're familiar at all with Catholic teaching on Catholic education. But the church and Catholic families face serious intrusions from the state that undermine and even cripple the efforts by the family to educate children in the truths of the person, especially in areas related to sexuality, marriage, and family life. So let me give you some examples. The country of Denmark can require parents, particularly those of indigenous backgrounds, to take a parenting test in order to keep their children. It's an arbitrary, arcane test that most of us probably would fail. And if you fail, they get to decide arbitrarily if you have to take this test. And if you fail, the state can take custody of your child. It's an inversion of the truth, of the natural order. The state can't grant parents the right to parent. They have that right by the order of nature, by God's wise plan. The rights and duties of parents are prior to and not granted by the state. One Danish woman was talking about this. There was a recent article about all this in, I think it was the New York Times. She said, the state is our father, mother, and nanny. She observed. Many Danes tend to think, I don't need God, because the state can provide for me. So that's one example of just an intrusion. Denmark's not alone among European countries. There are, I can think of at least six off the top of my head that have significant similar intrusions into not parenting tests per se, but intrusions into the life of the family. The European Commission, which proposes laws for the EU, has just published its LGBTQ strategy from 2025 through 2030. So it proposes that there be new laws across Europe permitting gender recognition at any age, just as an administrative matter, that MRF on your birth certificate, male or female, you can just go, it's a matter of paperwork. Choose your own and change it. At any age, regardless of parental notice or consent. Just imagine that. Your 14-year-old who's rebellious, who decides she doesn't like being a girl, she hates her body, can go through this process and change literally the sex listed on her identity documents. Malta, which has been consistently a Catholic country, but now consistently ranks first in the rankings, the Rainbow Index and has has ranked first since 2015. Twenty-five years ago in Malta, there was not even a gay movement, nothing. There wasn't even an organization. But now they're considered one of the most progressive in terms of this issue. So in 2015, they passed a law permitting children of 16 and over to change the sex on their legal documents. They were the first country in Europe to criminalize or ban so-called conversion therapy, which really is not and it's not the abusive practice that we may be familiar with from 40 or 50 years ago. What they mean by that is simple talk therapy. Okay. So Malta was the first country in Europe to criminalize that. Same-sex marriage was uh legalized in 2017. IVF is available to same-sex couples. So you see very quickly the deterioration of essential elements of the family, whether it's the parent-child relationship, um, matrimonial union, and the creation of children. Another example. In the U.S., across uh certainly much of Europe, Canada, uh, the Americas, we have what are called mature minor theories and attempts to continually lower the age of consent, that adolescents, uh the the age at which adolescents can make their own decisions, not about entering into a contract for a new car or about paying the bills, but rather their own decisions about contraceptive abortion, whether they're going to take sex-rejecting hormones, change their identity on legal documents, again, all without parental knowledge and consent. In the U.S., parents typically are prevented from freely accessing children's electronic medical records beginning about age 12 or 13, depending on the healthcare system, because children are deemed to have a right of privacy against their own parents. In government funded schools in Europe, Canada, the Americas, government sponsored, quote, comprehensive sex education catechizes children in a false understanding of the person, treats the body as simply An instrument of pleasure and presents personal desire plus consent as the only boundaries necessary in making decisions about sexual behavior. In fact, just yesterday I received a message from a priest I've been working with in the Caribbean for a while, just with the alarming note that CSE, Comprehensive Sex Education, is back. He has spent the better part of almost a decade, like the proverbial Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike trying to keep this out of their what really has been a very Christian country, but it's flooding in on UN money. The US has certainly played a part in that, at least up until recently. But it's flooding back in. His message, CSE is back. And what does that mean? It means it's in the schools, including the Catholic schools, and it undermines the family. It undermines parents' ability to have conversations with their kids at their own pace. It reduces sexuality to knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and with the message of, quote, empowering young people to make decisions according to their own desires. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing because it's often packaged as being for children's protection. So they understand good touch, bad touch, they are willing to speak up and they'll set boundaries. But the boundaries are very different from what we would set from with a Christian mindset. And teachers and school staff are presented as the ones who are who are willing to answer kids' questions, unlike parents. And they are presented as the trusted adults that children can go to without embarrassment to sort myth from facts, because of course you can't do that to your parents. Rarely do we hear the church take these issues on. Poblio recently lamented the birth dearth, right? The demographic crash that we're seeing just globally. And he talked about the need for policies that support family life. I'd submit the birth dearth, the problem, is less about family policies that put money in families' pockets, although that can play a role. And it's more about a distorted understanding of the human person, sexuality, the contraceptive mentality, the loss of religious motivation, the inability to even see the good of marriage and children. Continuing, just a few more examples. State schools promote gender ideology and, quote, inclusive sex ed in government schools in the UK, Canada, Ireland, and many U.S. states, including again Catholic schools in many of those countries because they have received federal funding or government funding, and that limits their ability to say no. In California, the Catholic Conference supported a bill, which is now a law, just signed in the past few weeks, that permits any individual to present a self-signed declaration that authorizes them to make medical or educational decisions for children to whom they're not related without parental consent or notice. It's kind of the equivalent of a kid writing their own permission slip to get out of school early and handing it to the principal and having the principal say, Great, go ahead, I'll take this. It's appalling. And yet the California bishops, through their Catholic conference, supported this. Why? Because I think of a myopia that looked at it as something that could possibly help immigrant families. If someone gets deported, you can have someone else say, I'll step up and take care of this child. There are better ways to do that. What you have done is created a system where parents have no idea, because in that affidavit, all you have to say is, I couldn't reach the parents. Turn in this thing, and you can make healthcare decisions, educational decisions. And in the California schools, some of the schools include they have services right there at the school to transition kids, contraception, et cetera. Again, I've yet to hear anything from the Vatican, which maybe you wouldn't want them, uh, opining on local policies per se, but even from most bishops in the relevant areas of both those countries or the particular locales. I could go on. The point is this Catholic teaching and parental authority is being directly undermined by the state, particularly in areas of sexuality and marriage. My question is: does the church recognize these intrusions? Does it see what's happening and the difficulty this poses for Catholic families and families in general? Pope Leo recently promoted the Global Compact for Education, an initiative that was created and supported by Pope Francis. And that compact includes wonderful quotes from, again, Vatican II on education about parents as primary educators, but it fails to acknowledge at all any of the many ways that the UN, Europe, Canada, various U.S. states usurp the rights of parents to guide their children's education and religious formation in matters of sexuality and marriage. It's as if it's happening on a completely different level and just continues on and the church says nothing. Pope Leo XIII had written back then the contention that the civil government should, at its option, intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious area. Error. A great and pernicious error. I'd like to hear some strong language like that. Because these pernicious intrusions are happening. Yet the church's response seems muted, leaving Christian parents without support. I hear from them all the time. The voice of the church is needed to mount strong protests against this intrusion. Surely this kind of concern is something that should merit a strong statement from the pontiff or local churches, at least as much concern over our common home or the ice flows of the Antarctic or the rainforests of the Amazon. Marriage prep, which the church has turned its attention to more recently in recent years, unfortunately is too little too late to encourage a Christian vision of marriage when you've already corrupted that child, not the church corrupting, but the state and the culture has corrupted that child's understanding of who they are and what it means to be a person. So, second, the cultural challenges related to sexuality, marriage, and family are best understood as challenges to the Christian vision of the human person. They're anthropological challenges. They're not about sexuality per se. They have to be countered by the truth about the human person. The global sexual revolution over a hundred years ago began campaigning openly to dismantle Christian moral norms around sexuality. And one early tactic that persists to this day is to switch the conversation from behaviors or vice to identities. And so we saw in the late 1800s the emergence of the term homosexual instead of talking about sodomy or particular behaviors. It's a person who has an identity, who is invested in having the freedom to be able to do, freedom as it was understood, to be able to do whatever activities were appealing. For the past 50 or 60 years, we've seen the same effort on behalf of the quote LGBTQ community, changing the conversation from behaviors, from virtue to questions of identity. But this embraces a false anthropology. The church has taught clearly that who we are is a relational identity that reflects our creation as beloved sons or daughters of the Lord. And it's interesting, Pope Leo recently spoke about the good of family relationships, and he he used those relational terms. He said, father, mother, son, daughter, grandfather, grandmother. These are words that in the Italian tradition naturally express and evoke sentiments of love, respect, and dedication, sometimes heroic, for the good of the family, the community, and therefore for the society as a whole. But these very relationships go by the wayside under the weight of gender ideology, which permits the individual to self-define an identity. But when a 15-year-old girl self-defines her new identity, rejects her female identity, and self-defines as a trans boy, she's changing every other relationship she's in, or at least demanding a change. She's no longer the sister to her brothers. She wants to be the brother to her brothers, no longer the daughter of her parents, wants to be the son, no longer the granddaughter, the grandson, et cetera. But the truth is we're not defined by our desires. And yet there's been continued pressure from within to adopt the flawed terminology of, quote, LGBTQ as a primary identity term. We're seeing that a lot of pressure. Certainly we saw that under Pope Francis, but uh I've I'm seeing an uptick in in recent weeks as kind of the pressure escalates on Pope Leo to adopt those terms. There was a recent interview with Pope Leo by Elise Allen from Crux in preparation for a biography she's writing. And there was a video of it as well as the written transcript. And the the question is served up. She asks about LGBT issues or questions. And Pope Pope Leo answers actually in a way that reinforces the anthropological truth. He says, What I'm trying to say is what Francis said very clearly when he said, Todos, todos, todos. Everyone's invited in. But this is the important part, he said. But I don't invite a person in because they are or are not of any specific identity. I invite a person in because they are a son or daughter of God. That's our primary relationship with God. So he reinforced that. And then he continued, he said, You're all welcome. Let's get to know one another, respect one another. At some point, when specific questions come up, people then want the church doctrine to change. They want attitudes to change. And it was interesting, if you just hear the words, you think he's suggesting that the church doctrine can change, just like attitudes can change. He said, I think we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the church says about any given question. But in watching the video, it's like he's saying, People want church doctrine to change, and they've got attitudes. I think we ought to change the attitudes. In other words, the the uh message seemed to be the opposite, suggesting it's the attitudes that should change to conform to the doctrine. However, the spin from the fifth column, if you will, within the church reinterpreted this comment. For those of you who are unsure, the fifth column is defined by the dictionary as a group of persons inside the battle lines of a territory engaged in conflict who secretly sympathize with the enemy and who engage in espionage or sabotage. Now, I will note, fifth columns are often surrounded by dupes. So it's not that everyone who who parrots a certain line that's that's destructive is being malicious. I don't don't want to imply that at all. Sometimes they're just uninformed. They may be dupes. But in truth, the church has a fifth column and it's escalating. Uh so its tactics are to spin statements, to capitalize on ambiguity, and to attempt to normalize anthropologically flawed language as if it's simply a pastoral matter. Father James Martin, for example, in the wake of Pope Leo's interview, said, Todos, todos, todos. He's continuing in the vein of Pope Francis. And then on Twitter he cited the uh the quote, which again didn't come from Pope Leo referring to LGBTQ people. It was questions or issues, but it was fun as he's using the language. He's saying LGBTQ. Therefore, he's validating the claim that this is who we are. Our primary identity is, in fact, defined by our desires. And then he pivots to the question about attitudes and things. And Father Martin says, nothing changes a person's attitude to LGBTQ issues faster than their child coming out to them and basically saying it's just a matter of time. As more people identify this way, more people know people, welcome and include. That's all we need to know. Similarly, the Italian Bishops Conference approved a statement just in the past few weeks, or I think last week, that said they were talking about how important it was that they as a conference would support with prayer and reflection, quote, the days promoted by civil society to combat all forms of violence and demonstrate sympathy towards those who are hurt and discriminated against, parentheses, days against gender violence and discrimination, pedophilia, bullying, femicide, homophobia, and transphobia. In other words, if you hold to the church's teaching, there were created male and female. If you hold to actually natural law and science, you can't change sex. But if you hold to that and say that I will love someone by affirming the truth about who they are, you're transphobic. And the Italian bishops say, we're going to uh align with those who have their days against transphobia. They say also that they, as uh a conference and also the local churches, would commit themselves to promoting the quote, recognition and accompaniment of homoaffective and transgender persons, as well as the parents who already belong to the Christian community. And to that I would say this yes, people belong to the Christian community. We are invited in. The church welcomes everyone in, we're all sinners. But to use the language to talk about transgender persons as if it's a new kind of person is to adopt a false anthropology. So this is what's in front of Pope Leo XIV. So again, relegating these issues to the realm of pastoral accompaniment fails to grapple with the serious ways in which this presents an anthropological challenge that undermines Catholic teaching, catechesis, and marriage and family. So this brings me to another point. The church must speak clearly about homosexuality, about same-sex attraction, about appropriate sexual relationships. And one reason why we are in this position today, one reason why Pope Leo is facing these kinds of questions is because the church's voice was muted after humane vitae. Because once you separate this idea that the sexual act is about union and procreation, you say, we can get rid of the procreative aspect, it's all about pleasure and sex, then why do you care whether you have sexual difference there? Right? It's a natural follow-on. And we've seen that in people's attitudes. So the church's silence has had a real impact on this next generation. You may have seen a new story that came out last week about the number of uh college students identifying as trans is in a free fall. It's not actually true. There's another uh better uh analysis that came out a few days ago. It's actually in a plateau, but it's at this point about 20 times higher than you would ever expect. Um, and for every person who's self-identifying that way, there are multiple people who love them who are confused and unsure of how do I love this person uh in the face of all this. Surveys by Pew and Gallup show that 70% of Catholics believe same-sex sexual activities are moral, about the same percentage approve of, quote, same-sex marriage. And alarmingly, the CDC has reported this year that one in four teens identifies as LGBT. And a new study I just got two days ago showed that it was a study of um nine-year-olds to 13-year-olds, which in any sane society, you're not going to be asking nine-year-olds to give their sexual orientation. But that's what this was a longitudinal study that followed kids for four years, starting when they were nine, asking them about their sexual orientation. And so what this showed was a radical upshift around when kids were nine, almost none of them self-identified in that way. By 13, you had 15% of girls identifying as quote gay, that was the language they used, and another 9% saying maybe. Okay, so close to one out in four. Boys was a lot lower, it's about 5% total, 2.8 saying yes, and 2.3 maybe. So it's unclear how Leo is going to address this. There needs to be clarity, there needs to be teaching. Um, in 2012, uh Robert Prevost criticized what he called sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel, including the homosexual lifestyle. While serving as a bishop in Peru, he opposed the government efforts to include gender identity, education in schools, and called the promotion of gender ideology confusing and saying it created genders that don't exist. You know, so there's some good language, and at least that was what, 13 years ago. There was some awareness of what was happening on the ground and how it was affecting families. And he's an Augustinian, and you know, Augustinians, it should be easy for him to talk about the fact that your loves and desires are not meant to define your identity. He could unpack that anthropological issue and reinforce the importance of sexual difference and the Catholic vision for marriage and sexuality. But we'll see. You know, truth matters and leadership matters. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, I am, I personally am profoundly grateful for the statement that he came out with in January that said this administration is as a policy matter, is going to acknowledge the science that there are only two sexes, male and female. And our policy is going to align with that. And there have been radical shifts in policy. That's my world. I'm not a philosopher, I'm a policy person and attorney. Radical shifts. We'll see, a lot of that has to be codified. You can't do everything by executive order and regulations. But leadership matters. Leadership matters, and the church needs that kind of leadership, that kind of clarity. Because unless we address the underlying anthropological issue, we're going to have more and more confusion. So let me just close with an encouraging statement from Pope Leo XIV. He again talking to the Jesuits, he was talking about their mission, right? Their mission to the world. And he said, to accomplish this, and I think we can generalize this to the church's mission. He said, I encourage you to remain close to Jesus. As the gospel tells us, the first disciples stayed with him, quote, the whole day, remain with him through private prayer, the celebration of the sacraments, devotion to his sacred heart, and adoration of the blessed sacrament. From this rootedness, you will have the courage to walk anywhere, to speak truth, to reconcile, to heal, to work for justice, to set captives free. No frontier will be beyond your reach if you walk with Jesus Christ. So I think that's good words for us to take with us as we consider the challenges facing the church and our culture on these important issues.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:13

That broad gave us a broad range from well, the beauty of reflection on the nature of the family and uh the roots of it in um in Greek philosophy and um to mystic thought on the one hand, and then a very different kind of res novae, um new things, new order, uh that is driven, as the ancients knew, by a Cupiditas reumnovaum, a desire, uh an inordinate desire simply for change towards something that is new. Um you know, these days people want to be on the right side of history. Um that's maybe a modern version of that. So, with that, I open the floor for questions. Dr. Hansen.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:01

Um what's it provoked? Um ideal preservation. So um we've known about this problem with language for for so long. It's like the 20th century hasn't happened and we don't Joseph Kiefer talks about the abuse of language being related to abuse of power, and when people change the term to change the language, that they're controlling the whole narrative. So do the the bishops are are they of a certain age that they're just unaware of the danger of changing the language of the church? Um to use the terminology that's become culturally current. Um are are they just unaware?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

Personally, I I think some of them are a little naive. I think others are like on their heels feeling defensive because they feel like, okay, we've we've made people feel bad. And we're responsible for people suffering if they're experiencing same-sex attraction. So we have to go out of our way to figure out how it is that we're gonna reach out and then become persuaded by certain people, like Father Martin, that the way to reach a handout is to use the language to validate the identity. So I I think it's again, it's a defensive posture. It comes out of a sense of maybe we didn't get it right before, not in terms of teaching, but how we relate it to people. But you can relate to people in love without using anthropologically false terms. I do it all the time. I talk to people who identify in all sorts of ways. And you don't have to use those terms. You don't have to capitulate on the pronouns, but you have to be standing confident on the truth and realize the importance of that and realize you have something better to offer. You you want to pull people towards the truth. So I think that would be the other part I would say is that I I think we suffer, um, at least in some corners of the church, with a lack of confidence that what the church teaches on these matters really is true and really is what is good for the person. Because if you lack that confidence, why pick a fight over it?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:20

So I'll just make one comment. Uh Confucius, when he was giving advice to a ruler, they asked, What's the first rule he says? First, correct all the names.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:38

Uh Nestani the panel, excellent. Uh you uh tablock very well the uh problems that also basically the objections you might be can. But I I wonder if if uh there's something uh even broader in work here, and if that is the re-emergence of Gnostic Blue in uh uh the same things we that Augustine describes in his confession, the same things that we read dominant uh battle uh in the uh in the uh gentlemen with K H seems strikingly familiar. And so I wonder if is even in a and I don't mean to be flippant, but do it quite seriously, even things such as uh tattooing uh bespeaks the kind of consistent uh the body. Uh I was done just very quickly passing too we go past the uh judges against tattooing. Yeah, no, seriously, really good. But anyway, that that there even on that level, there there was something larger interesting. Perhaps it is the reimerfence of this this ancient era or so you had any thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:44

Yeah, I think that's definitely part of it. And because gender ideology, for example, rejects the idea that it's dualistic. It says who you are is who you think you are, and your body is simply a tool or an instrument to be used. So it's dualistic, it's it's the same thing. So you're right, but there's I would suggest that there's more to it than just a replay of the Gnostic heresy.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:05

Yeah, I think the more to it is um, and this is what I think uh Voituba recognizes early on as a priest, as a philosopher, is the conception of matter in a non-moral way. At least the Gnostics have the body within the moral sphere. When when matter and the body is conceived of as just extensive reality, res extensa in the Cartesian way, then you've actually eliminated it from the moral sphere. It's better that the body be bad than it have absolute no moral value whatsoever. Um so in some ways the the stakes are higher, uh, or at least the the questioning of the body is deeper in terms of giving it no value whatsoever, and therefore morally can be used in any way whatsoever. Um so philosophically and theologically, it's cutting at a level of Gnosticism that I think is quite new in that conception of the body and matter, and requires, it seems to me, what John Paul II did, a total rethinking of creation from the side of the body and the absolute affirmation of the goodness of the body.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:22

Three words wisdom, intelligence, and courage. Um with regard to the uh teachers of the church, do you have any does that raise any thoughts in your mind? Sounds more philosophical. What were the three? Wisdom, intelligence, and courage.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:44

Well, I got a lot to say about that. I don't know where to begin. Well, um I mean I guess I was present.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:52

The question is, how do we deal with this? Well, it would seem perhaps that we need these three qualities, or we're not going to deal with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:01

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:02

100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:03

Yeah. Yeah, and and a big part of that is knowing the order of things and where to begin. I guess that's partly that what was what I think is on Leo's mind is it begins in the family. It begins with the recovery of the reality of the marital bond as a real thing in the world, a real metaphysical reality that is the source of the first society. And what does a commitment to that of the sort that you were talking about? Confidence that that is real in the world. That can be transformative for spouses in their own individual marriage, but um in some ways, the the lady in particular are called to reveal that reality to the world in their own uh marriages and family life.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:49

For Dr. Waltz, um the the frames, the word of sediment. Speaking of the rectification of nature.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:58

Yeah, the innovatio nomines.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:00

Something I've been thinking about a long time is uh in your uh your descriptions too, not just with that with that title, but just of the nursery is primordial private school. And then you kept bringing up Genesis. So I would just I I would just invite you to comment on this. I've always found it very significant that following it. You know, Adam goes from naming, which is somehow scientific and in some way who's who speaks a sort of almost labor-like involvement with the world. But then he sees the world and he becomes a poet and he sings or views. Well, I guess I'm wondering is do you see as part of this sort of proto-cendant role of the of marriage in the family? Kind of the original opening to the contemplative life, even within marriage. Is that is that where the contemplative life first shows up for us in this kind of non-utilitarian appreciation simply of the beauty of the bond of the other, which starts tangled in the Yeah, I guess in some ways I'd just say, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:05

But to really see the the need for the contemplative life to be a fruit of friendship, um, which maybe the Greeks, I mean the Greeks know it. Like they always treat contemplation as like right after friendship. And I think there's always a hint that it arises out of that. It might, it might terminate in what seems like a one-on-one contemplation, but it has to be rooted in the kind of co-thinking and conversation and co-living that Amachitsi or Philia or friendship involve, and in particular, domestic life.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:42

So the follow-up, I mean, if we lose that bond, which we're obviously losing all sorts of ways that we don't think that's the root of the fact that we seem incapable of appreciating something like contempt. I'm not just talking about philosophy or something.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:54

I'm talking about just the general sense of Yeah, just leisure, like a sense of leisure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, uh yeah, in my own experience, without like the family meal and the family conversation before bed, it was resolve revolving around prayer or something. Like to me, that's like the best part of the day and the place where like we contemplate together, right? That we bring to our lives moments of reflection on what's happened throughout the day. Um I don't know what it's like. I mean, I I've been blessed to grow up in my own family when I was a kid that had some of that, and I've tried to have that in my own children's lives, and my wife and I have worked on that. I don't know what it's like not to have that. I mean, sometimes I sense it working with seminarians who've never had like a family meal before. It's very hard to know what that's like for me, but I can imagine it just there's gotta be a way in which you I think you haven't tasted the attractiveness of that moment of reflection in the day, that there's always gotta be a Sabbath moment in every day. And that's a Sabbath. Sabbath, the recovery of the Sabbath could be very important to that in the way that the church and especially John Paul II tied it to family life in particular. It's not just a church thing, it's also for the family.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:18

I think there were two more questions on this side. Is that right? And did you raise your hand? Yeah. And then Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:24

So uh well, I do a lot of work in transhumanism. So we were getting into these questions about dualism and so forth. I was just wondering about any of reflections you have about the sort of steady but widespread embrace of transgenderism in society and a kind of growing embrace of transhumanism.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:44

Yeah, it it's all connected. It's all connected. It's and that's where things are going, and biohacking and and all of that stuff. It doesn't stop with the transgender issue. And that's one reason why I think it's critically important for the church to really press the anthropological point, because we haven't seen the the far horizon of where this can go. And and so um I have found just in in giving talks all over the place, when you explain it, people get it. And then they see the clarity of of why the church cares about this. It's not because the church, you know, hates certain people or or, you know, all the caricatures. They understand, wow, this is something really profound about who I am as a person. And and that's not something to be compromised or bargained away or or treated as something um insignificant. So again, just you know, you're on the cutting edge. That's that's where it's it's all going and worse.

SPEAKER_08 1:17:44

Yeah, because I I I recall in Dignitas Persone back in 2008 references to radical forms of enhancement, but I don't think the term trans or post-humanism was used. And I know Antiqua Nova does in a footnote give a an extended but still very concise uh reference to both trans and post-humanism as an undergirding philosophy of AI development in some sectors. So I think that's the only kind of magisterial reference to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:12

But yeah, so let's see. Okay, and the last question.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:17

Thank you, panel. I my question is primarily productible, so I welcome you back from the mail as well. The paper touches on something I I've always found to be obscured and will continue to return to the sense in which the family exists for the city. But then, as you say, the city exists for the family. I I wouldn't want to put words in your mouth, but that seemed the second thing, uh a way of putting it seems uh important to me. I wanted to ask about the sense in which the family can be a school of virtue. Uh Brio also emphasizes that the family is a society, but isn't a perfect society because it cannot provide for its own members everything that needs. Yeah. And I was thinking then about virtue. And you know, we we speak of civic virtue or political virtue. It suggests to me that there's a strong sense in which uh a lot of what a human being needs to know can't be learned within the family, or the virtue that's necessary for fully human flourishing has to be learned uh elsewhere.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:33

Yeah, that's a great point. That's partly why I want to insist on the proto-s proto-sendens, um, because I think the the ecclesias stands on the other side of a kind of like to me, it looks like the polity becomes something like the opening out of virtue towards a common good that's larger than the family, and therefore calling upon levels perhaps of courage or other virtues that you wouldn't experience in family life. But all of that is for, it seems to me, from the church's vision, for the sake of properly understanding what it means to belong to the ecclesia, which in a funny way recovers the family language of brothers and sisters of Christ under the sons and daughters of the Father. So I don't know if that helps, but it's as if but that nursery of like that experiential taste of the principles of Catholic social teaching there's no uh there's no way to replace that, it seems to me. Because you could the polity doesn't provide it in ways that it seems to me that really habituated as a character of you, right? So uh the seeds of virtue, it seems to me, have to be planted in the family. It's hard to know how. And you know, I think a lot of the great thinkers would say that as well if you look at the way they begin their ethics, like sorry, buddy, if you weren't raised well. You know, and it's not it's just a truth, right? Like you can it's not that you can't understand ethics, but in some ways, if it's going to become truth as the reality of your own orientation to an adequateness to reality to reality as it is, uh, that begins from day one.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:16

Well, thank you so much to both all our speakers.