Guestsplaining: Erika Bachiochi on Catholic Feminism | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Patrick Briscoe
August 19, 2024
Fr. Patrick: And this is Father Patrick Briscoe.
And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining, wherever you listen to your podcasts. For this episode of Guestsplaining, we’re very excited to be joined by Dr. Erika Bachiochi. Thanks so much for joining.
Dr. Erika: Thanks for having me.
Fr. Gregory: So folks might know you from various things. I first met you in the great city of Boston attending an event hosted by the domestic institute. And you were on the one hand, like telling stories with students on the other hand, pushing a stroller with a small child. And on the other, I guess you only have two hands. So maybe there wasn’t another hand, but I was impressed by your capacity to hold life together, even as I had like a half a task assigned to me, and I was fretting about it. But in addition to holding it all together and working for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who are you? What do you do? Where are you these days?
Dr. Erika: Yeah, that’s a big question, of course. I am a happily married mother of seven. I’ve been married more than 20 years now to a really wonderful, wonderful man. And my kids are 22 down to five. And then I, my work, I’m trained, I have a master’s in theology, systematic theology, and then a law degree, and I kind of work at the intersection of constitutional law, kind of legal and political theory and women’s history. And I just released a book. It’s actually not just anymore. It’s a couple of years ago, but people seem to still be reading and talking about it, which is exciting to me, called The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, where I sort of reread the history of the cause of women’s rights, starting with the 18th century British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft up through our own, the woman we can claim as our own, the great Mary Ann Glendon, and sort of push forward to how we should be thinking about rights in general and then women’s rights in particular today.
Fr. Patrick: For a second, I thought you were going to say Judith Butler, so I’m really glad that you had that.
Dr. Erika: Not a fan.
Fr. Gregory: Hot takes here on Godsplaining, all hot takes. Okay. So thinking then about your work, your publications, but thinking about the culture more broadly, is it possible to think of all those things at the same time? I don’t know. But in the genre of, they’re out there saying… I think a lot of times we just hear sound bites or tidbits. It’s like dignitas infinita coming out, and we’re hearing about surrogacy, or like Harrison Butker, gave a commencement speech, and he was talking about homemaking. And this person over here says that and that person over there says this, we sometimes kind of formulate our opinions on the basis of whatever shocks us most recently or whatever upsets us most lately. If you were to identify like the heart of the matter, perhaps like what the culture is missing out on or the kind of not merely teaching, but the reality that we have in some way, shape or form failed to lay hold of with a vidity with delight in recent years, thinking about these women’s issues and especially motherhood. Like where do you begin that conversation? Where do we start?
Dr. Erika: Yeah, it’s always a hard question of how, where the beginning point is because there’s so many inlets as you notice. I mean one of the things I just want to point out right at the beginning is the new journal that I’ve been happy to launch over the last year and a half Fair Disputations where we’re doing a lot of thinking, kind of hard thinking about these questions that nobody else really wants to tackle with a lot of nuance and intelligence with a lot of, you know, sort of philosophers, some theologians, people kind of all over the sex realist map by which we mean that there is, that sex means something that there are biological differences between the sexes, but that we’re, you know, created equal indignity, we don’t start from a Catholic perspective, but many of us are informed by a Catholic perspective, which our interlocutors were part of this journal with us well know, and it’s been really exciting, I think, to do all that. So I just send listeners to Fairer Disputations, kind of like fairer sex, the fairer sex. Lots of double-triple-on-tundras in our title. So I mean, I think that one of the most beautiful things about being human is how complex we are and that’s because we’re created by a really magnificent God who is, you know, both simple and deeply complex in so many ways. And I think the way I’ve sort of thought about it is similar to how Edith Stein talked about it. I wrote about this in first things at a piece called Sex Realist Feminism that we’re commonly human, we’re commonly rational animals as the great Thomas Aquinas, but also Aristotle. And one of the women I study, Mary Wollstonecraft talked about, we’re also sexually dimorphic. So we’re created, we’re differentiated by with regard to our reproduction, which actually impacts us kind us all the way down and all the way up in a lot of ways. And then we’re individual. And that individuality is really important to God in the sense that we’re individual persons who have a special vocation that is given by Him. And so a lot of these in a lot of ways as humans, we’re very similar. We have a telos, an end, which is, you know, obviously, ultimately eternal life with Him, but also happiness, um, through by means of, of carrying out our kind of ordinary duties, um, virtuously. But then as men and women, you know, there are ways in which we are very, very distinct, but then as women and as men, we are individual in our own sex. And so there are these properties we could say that are similar in all women and similar in all men or tendencies and all that. But they tend to be kind of these overlapping distributions. They’re outliers. And that’s why I think the vocational sense is really important. Though we can say things certainly about all men and women with regard to reproductive differences, mostly except for those kind of intersex outliers. But then with regard to vocation, I think those are really, really important questions about how it is that I live out my vocation as a woman who’s created in the image and likeness of God and how you two do as men. And I think those are personal questions that only God can help us and spiritual direction and in our spouse hopefully if, if he or she’s a good one can help us ascertain. And so that’s what a lot of my work is kind of at the kind of complexifying things that are simple, which of course means that I don’t necessarily hit a popular audience all the time, though sometimes I do. And then thinking also about sort of the way in which our work has changed, men and women’s work over time, especially after the industrial revolution and how that inspired real questions among women’s rights advocates and all those kinds of questions about technological and economic social shifts that have happened over time. And so all of this is very complex. And so we have to try to keep a lot in our mind as we’re thinking through these things that a lot of things aren’t so black and white.
Fr. Patrick: Erika, I’m so grateful for the nuanced perspective you’re bringing to this conversation. I mean, our approach here on Godsplaining tends to be more to go after flies with hand grenades. So (laughs) sometimes we fail in our precision and delicate nature. But, but this has a kind of larger trend, you know, beyond just our, our foibles and silliness here on a podcast. Um, in Catholic culture, so you’ll, you’ll find a kind of reactionary movement that’s concerned about the role and identity of women, uh circles that doesn’t want to use the word ‘feminism’. So I wanted to ask you, should we be calling ourselves Catholic feminists, should we use that word? How should we respond to some of the concerns that are represented by people that are afraid of identifying as a feminist?
Dr. Erika: Yeah, and there it makes a lot of sense to be afraid to identify as a feminist because we’ve had you know 50, 60 years of feminism that’s based on a really false understanding of who we are as human beings. So I totally understand the hesitancy and really the reaction against it. I mean, I fully understand that, knowing as much as I do about the history of feminism. So, my view of this is, first, I actually never call myself a Catholic feminist. I think there are those who do that and who are very much orthodox Catholics who use that. And that’s because I’m older, maybe than they are, and I studied theology. And so I know of sort of a whole bunch of people who call themselves Catholic feminists who are really working against church teaching. And so I think that ‘Catholic’ has to inform our feminism or my pro-life position has to inform my feminism. And so I do really call, I do call myself a new feminist or pro-life feminist or a sex-realist feminist. I don’t like the term ‘reactionary feminist’ as much as my friend Mary Herrington does, but we could get into that if you want. I’m more of a natural law thinker than I think she is. So I think that that’s why I’m not as crazy about reactionary. I think that what’s beautiful about getting back into the history of the cause of women’s rights is though feminism is an anachronism when you get back to the earliest women’s rights advocates, you can find there, women who really thought about what it is to be human and the role of kind of duty and virtue with regard with, you know, as the ends of or the purpose of rights. And really thought beautifully had beautiful things to say about marriage, about motherhood, you know, all are, ardently pro life. So why do I want to use the word feminism today? I mean, I think really it’s because there’s been an internal combustion due to, I think especially within liberal feminism, you know, in the same ways that liberalism by putting sort of a false understanding of the human being, especially with regard to autonomy, as not having kind of an end, right? But just sort of self-defining, self-owning that kind of thing. It eats away at itself. And so it has to have something else toward which it’s directed, like freedom for excellence. And so because of that eternal combustion within feminism that we’ve seen sort of come to, you know, it’s zeneth with the transgenderism that really ends up like not caring about women as women at all, which is the whole purpose of feminism. I think this is the perfect opportunity for something like John Paul II’s new feminism, but not only in a Catholic vein, but also argued from a philosophical perspective to really basically, as I’ve said before, kind of rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the internal combustion. So I think it’s time to take the word back. Now people have argued with me for decades about this, but I actually think we’re making headway and taking the word back. I mean, there’s been, there’s a lot of progressive feminists who are now seeing what progressivism and their sort of version of feminism where it’s got women, especially when they become mothers. And so I think we actually have done quite a lot to bring women to be open to sort of thinking about things, even questioning things like abortion, but especially things like surrogacy, pornography, prostitution, and all of that. So I think we’ve made it great headway and we should keep at it because we should be the ones who, those of us who understand that women and men are different that we are equal in dignity, should be the ones who say like, we’ve got something great to offer for women and their needs and interests. And so I’m all for taking that back. And let me, the last thing I’ll say is that I don’t think if I hadn’t used the word feminist all these years, I don’t think that the left would listen to me as much as they do and they tend, you know, some tend to pay attention. So I think that that rhetorical, like it’s the meeting people where they are, that I think has been really important. And then just meeting them as much as I can on the grounds where we have great common interests and then trying to help, I think, see that, you know, a realist perspective that I think is theologically deeply, theologically informed answers the feminist questions better than the autonomy perspective does. And we can talk more about that, but I think it’s been highly successful, actually.
Fr. Gregory: Okay, so I’m interested in the word that you’ve used or referred to a couple of times, mainly, ‘complementarity’, or whether or not you would use it, whether or not you would grant that it’s a good word. And I suppose in light of what you discussed, like, OK, we’ve got human nature. And then we’ve got human nature as embodied. And so nature obtains always or for the most part. And we’re going to be able to see some characteristics, which are typically masculine and some characteristics, which are typically feminine. But then we think about human nature with this mat- not like just this matter, but like with this flesh and these bones, you know, we’re talking about an individual, then we’re going to see something different, right? Like some expression of what pertains to the jet-, like what pertains to the sex and maybe some particularity, maybe some peculiarity. And so I’m wondering like if there is something to be said for complementarity, at what level does it register, you know, are we just talking about the fact that like men and women broadly conceived seem to be complementary or this man and this woman are complementary, notwithstanding differences or varying strengths or ways in which their masculinity and femininity is peculiarly and particularly expressed. Because I think that a lot of people when they come up against complementarity, they might reject it or they might react negatively to it because it feels like it type casts them or puts them in a small box to which they don’t want to be consigned. So like, do you think, I mean, is the term helpful and if so, what concepts does it surface?
Dr. Erika: Yeah, no, I think that’s an excellent question for all the reasons you’ve just stated. So I think Prudence Allen, Sister Prudence Allen, in her three volumes of concept of woman has done great work and sort of thinking about the word and the complementarity, especially showcasing how it doesn’t work and how it works. So her view is that there’s fractional complementarity and integral complementarity. And so fractional complementarity is best seen, I think, in Rousseau, where there’s kind of like a set of, there’s women and men’s education is entirely separate. Women and men’s natures are entirely separate and women and men’s virtues are entirely separate. So women are expected to be chased and modest, which of course they are, but, and men are expected to be courageous and just, which of course they are, but there’s like, and of course yes, Russeau scholars will come here and say, wait a second, you know, there’s more overlap. But for the most part, like, he sort of saw this bifurcation that was pretty sharp. Whereas integral complementarity, you know, she far she starts seeing, well, with like, Hildegard, a little bit we see there, but some other women thinkers, and then of course, John Paul II is much more of an integral complementarian, where we’re all, you know, we’re each fully human and then there are these differences as you’ve explained. So I think obviously biological complementarity is very obvious, right? And so as you move up through sort of a hierarchy from biology and all that up through sort of psychology into sort of other aspects. I think it gets more complex for sure, but do I think we can still talk about complementarity? I do think we can. I like integral. I actually like Ivan Ilich’s term ambiguous complementarity better. And not because there’s ambiguity with regard to each sex at all. I mean, he really wants to say there’s dualism, right, in the terms of the two, man and woman separate. But because there’s kind of a kaleidoscope of ways in which each couple can become or each, I mean, whether it’s a spousal couple or even in a working relationship, that kind of thing that because no man and no woman is exactly the same because God created us each, beautifully different and in all of our diversity, there’s a kind of kaleidoscope of ways in which this kind of complementarity can come to be and it’s really beautiful. And one of the things that I think that he says that I’ve noticed and I think is right on is that it’s hard. I’m a lawyer, right? And I have a philosophical background. So it’s hard necessarily to get it this as well as poets do, and as well as literature does, and all of that where you can see the way in which men and women have a complimentary nature. It’s much harder when you’re just speaking in terms of like strict kind of legal code, right? So this is why for me, as a lawyer, I get very nervous when people want to say men are like this and women are like this because are you going to take that into the law and say that women and men should be restricted from certain things? I would say certainly women cannot be fathers and men cannot be mothers. That’s a clear biological thing. Are there other places- So that would, in my view, and the church’s view, say that women cannot be priests, just like men cannot bear children and nurse them. So I think that there’s all sorts of ways in which women and men, in my own relationship, my own marital relationship, there are many aspects in which I have more masculine, traditionally masculine characteristics, and my husband has more traditionally feminine characteristics. I am still very much a woman, very proud to be a woman. He’s very much a man. And I think a very manly man, but he is one who say, is docile and listens very intently. He’ll be in the one in the corner and the real listening to the grandma, no one is paying attention to you know, and I’m much more opinionated. And so in a way, it room listening to the grandma, no, it’s paying attention to, you know. And I’m much more opinionated. And so in a way, it works really well for us, right? But to say that there’s only kind of an archetype of feminine and masculine, I think, can be a bit dangerous because of the way it kind of leaves people out. Are there ways in which you can see an archetype in terms of psychology? You know, yes, I think there’s, you know, I think it’s hard to say, to argue against this idea that women are deeply attracted to persons and concerned with persons. And men, not so much things, but systematizing the concern of kind of with the– not so much the whole, but how systems systems work and kind of, you know, this is why I think Camille Paglia was right when she said if there were no men, we’d all live in grass huts, but I think there’s something to that as well, you know. So it’s exciting and complex and I think fun to really think about, and I’m always learning new things here, but I think we just, you know, as a lawyer, I think we have to be a bit precise and careful.
Fr. Patrick: Erika, what do you think are the most grave threats to women today? You know, I have my I have my own ideas, but you mentioned something, the cultural changes that we’ve seen in the 20th century, like the nature, the nature of the meaning of work and how other kind of revolutions have impacted Catholic life more broadly. Do you think the workplace and the modern understanding of work is the greatest threat to women? Is it the fact that men are pretending to be the best women? Is it the fact that the patriarchy still actually has all the power? What is the biggest challenge here to a rich understanding of women in our culture?
Dr. Erika: Yeah, not the last one. I mean, I just think, you know, patriarchal has kind of gone from, you know, our understanding of law for quite some time now. So, and I think, you know, are there men, mainly men, and like the C-suites? Yes, do, you know, more women want to be there, maybe. You know, I think probably the biggest threat in my view is that we, because of our sort of myth, because especially feminism, but a lot of ways in which we operate is built on this false understanding of who we are as human beings, that, and I see a lot of that coming out ofthe enlightenment. And so we have this understanding of who we are as kind of, you know, autonomous, um, individuals. And so that tends to be easier to live to kind of fake as a man, harder to fake as a woman. And so I think there’s all, a, though I wouldn’t say we live among patriarchy, I think that there’s a male normativity that still underlies a lot of our cultural norms. So certainly with regard to kind of casual sex. And I’m not saying that it’s male normative in the highest view of what a man ought to be, but just in terms of kind of how vicious men would like to engage in sex, with regard to casual sex, having lots of partners, that kind of thing. I think we do see this with regard to kind of how work, how will we understand of as work. There’ll be feminists who say the work of the home is just unpaid labor and therefore, and I just say, no, the work of the home is work. Some labor’s paid, some labor’s unpaid, but that’s not really the only way we think about work. You know, work is a much more sort of complex understanding than just the remunerative aspect of it. I think there’s a way in which, you know, there’s the commodification that comes out of modernity, you know, has Mary Harrington speaks really well about this in terms of technology and all that, the communication of, commodification of human bodies through things like, surrogacy, but then also female bodies, especially, and especially poor female bodies. I think like the pornification of society is really, really bad for women, for men too, and for the inability to really form really beautiful, good relationships. And I think all of this tends to, you know, the way in which abortion was elevated and really distinctively from the early, early understanding of women’s rights. As you know, in order to carry out duties is the way I always put it, that like everything was kind of thrown, went, you know, the opposite of what it once was. And so abortion is then considered sort of this, the holy grail of women’s rights. And that has been really, I think, bad for the, how we understand the goods of motherhood and the family, right? So that kind of a capitalistic understanding of what, you of what the workplace needs becomes more important for everyone. You know, I always talk about market equality becomes like the way in which feminists think and the way in which there are place things, like great. If we just have women and men all working and bringing the same number of hours and saying about a pay, then we have equality. And then what are the women to do who are caring for and men too who want to spend more time with their families, who are caring for the vulnerable and the dependent and those who need us, not only children, but also the elderly and others. And so I think it’s a real, you know, we’ve, when we don’t understand how human beings are born vulnerable and dependent and remain dependent and vulnerable through our lives and that we need one another, then we really make a kind of a mess out of everything. And I think because women are more vulnerable and because children are the most vulnerable, it ends up there the most hurt when we have autonomy as kind of our holy, the kind of holy grail of both feminism, but I think modern life. –
Fr. Gregory: In describing, okay, in describing dependence, I’m thinking of the question of headship, which is a thorny question. Anthropologically, exegetically, ecclesiologically. I thought about this recently in terms of the church, because the image there in Ephesians 5 is, as Christ said to the Church, so man, there’s an idea proposed. It seems like describing how grace comes to us in the life of the Church, how grace comes to us in the life of marriage and family. But I’m wondering, it seems like questions like that can be very polarizing among Catholics because you feel like you have to either choose the one or the other. And I don’t know that anyone quite likes what he or she gets in so choosing. Yeah, because it’s like on the one hand, if one says, yeah, man is head of woman without a sufficient nuance, then you end up like feeling yourself a troglodyte. But then if you say, if man is not the head of woman, then I am reading around or just reading another text. I’m just not like I’m not reading the Sacred Page. So I just wonder in your own like approach to questions, you know, pertinent to the question of headship, what do you find are fruitful avenues of inquiry or like where do you draw resources with which to explain this in a way that people can understand that people can love?
Dr. Erika: Yeah, that’s really good and a hard question. I mean, because I’m generally interacting with people outside of kind of the Christian frame, I don’t really talk about this very much honestly, but I do think about it, and I do pray about it. And I am a Catholic woman. So I guess this is the way I would think about it, is that obviously, at the very beginning of Ephesians 5, we see the idea of mutual submission, and something that John Paul II really has brought to the forefront. And I think that’s really important why? Because we’re Christians. And so we’re submitting to Christ, and we’re submitting to one another. And so one of the places I think this is really important is with regards to kind of the so-called old marital right that as though like, you know, we do when we’re married give gift to the other, but versus like taking from the other. Does that make sense? And so a man does not have a right to take from his spouse, but a woman has, um, out of love ought to give the gift to herself and a man a gift of him himself. And so it’s always in the giving of the gift, which is important. I think it also helps us understand that the passage, you know, that men and women are different, you know, spouses are different. And so the way in which we relate to one another is… got to be different. And so what is that? What is the passage of Ephesians 5 asking us to do? I think it’s really interesting that it doesn’t say it’s not God’s saying. I mean there are other places where we’ll see like wives be subordinate. But here, as far as I remember, it’s asking men to love their wives and it’s asking women to respect their husbands. And I think, you know, when, and also, you know, loving, you know, when you love your wife and it starts with having, you know, been mutually submitted to one another. And so there’s a lot and loving as Christ loves that you’re really giving yourself over. I think it’s just something really when you see a man who’s capable of that through his prayer and through sort of his own self dominion and his own self sacrifice, like that kind of, you know, we think of them as the Christian gentleman. I think there’s nothing in my view as a woman more beautiful than that. We see it in our most holy, our holiest priests. And then, you know, who are able to live, you know, their beautiful call to chastity. I think we see it when we see it in really beautiful marriages when a man is able to do that. I just think it’s an incredibly attractive thing. I mean, because of how difficult it is to live in a lot of ways, because of the ways in which men are, have a harder time, I think, with chastity in my view. And I think that we see that in terms of testosterone and the impacts of that. And so with regards to women, then why women respect your husband? Like, why is that? And why is it like to put yourself subordinate, and even Wollstonecraft will say, subordinate to the family. Like, because I think there’s a way in which women, because of our capacity for doing many things well, and also caring for that there is a way in which women can have a tendency, even a great woman who’s trying to, you know, submit herself to Christand all that. We can tend to like, line up our husband with our children, like as if like, just like we tell our children what to do, we tell our husband what to do. And so there’s got to be a way in which like, and I think there’s, this is the other way I put in, I put this in a piece for first thing, this is called embodied caregiving, that women tend to see the immediacy of the needs of the family and men tend to have a longer term vision. And so what needs to be, what needs to be more subordinate? Obviously immediacy of the needs of the family and men tend to have a longer-term vision. And so what needs to be more subordinate? Obviously, immediacy is really important. But the long-term vision has to be like what’s more elevated in some sense, because if a woman is only concerned with what this particular child needs right now and loses the understanding of what the family’s mission, where we’re going, then that can be a problem as well, right? So again, there’s lots of complexity here. I think really, the, you know, the couples I see that are beautifully happily married are not sort of making commands of the other, but are really trusting that if he’s praying and trying to submit himself to Christ and for the goods of our family and if I’m praying and trying to submit myself to Christ and for the goods of our family and we’re really communicating and trying to work together as sort of, you know, rowing in the same direction for the common good of all, knowing that each has his own vocation and all that. And listening, obedience is listening, really listening well and hard. I think that these things tend to work out. And there’s very few times when it’s like, I just have to say to my husband, or he has to say to me, like, look, I’m going to make this decision here. Although that does happen, for sure.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. OK. As our episodes are brief, we’ve actually come close to the end of our time. But I’m hoping that by way of kind of like inclusion, if you would offer maybe a final word, a final commendation, and then direct folks to your book and then to your work more broadly.
Dr. Erika: Sure. So, I mean, a final conclusion. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say like a, I just, you know, as someone who was not raised in the Faith, who had a difficult childhood, who found the faith through, you know, came back to the Church. I was baptized, but came back to the church through AA. I would just say like the riches of the sacramental life of the Church, of the call to prayer and to Scripture. I mean, I just think the only way that we kind of get out of the civilizational mess that we’re in is through becoming saints. There’s no politics that gets us there. There’s no perfect argument that gets us there. I say this as a lawyer, as somebody who’s interested in policy. It’s really through sanctity. And so that every single interaction, you know, we ask, we ask the Holy Spirit to be with us. We put love ahead of all of it, even when we greatly disagree. And we try to see the good, and this is so your great patron saint, Thomas Aquinas, is always seeing the good of what the others after, and then trying to meet them there and then bring them further along. And I think we, as Catholics, understand this better than most, and that the civil discord that we have right now can really be, I think, you know, be really elevated and redeemed through, through a lot of Catholics becoming saints through living a true sacramental life and spending a lot of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament and like softening the heart as our minds get sharper. And really just loving those who are close to us first. So really making sure that our marriages are as solid as they can be, you know, putting that first and then our children and then our, you know, parent on and on and our vocation becomes first. And I think that’s the only way out and that’s the only way up. And to make friends with those we disagree, to bring them along like this is not about winning arguments. It’s about bringing souls to Christ to bring as many people to Heaven as we can, right? So like that’s our goal. And each of us has a different play role to play in that. So some of us like me, you know have apostolate of feminists. And so I speak to people with whom I disagree all the time. And I really love that. And I feel very call to that others, you know, like yourselves, but maybe less so, you’re on Godsplaining, but people who are, you know, really like serving the church in the sacramental life, or maybe that’s what they’re doing, they’re less outward facing, they’re more internal, they’re looking at the liturgy and the beauty of all that. So I think we just have to kind of respect the way in which each of us has that location and really pray for each other. And then yeah, my book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, really tries to showcase, although I don’t ever, I don’t think natural law ever comes up in the book because I was writing for a very broad audience, but the way in which the earliest women’s rights advocates had grounded their claims in a vision of that was very consistent with the natural law. And then my work, I mean, you can try to follow me on Twitter, X if you want. And then you can find me at the Ethics and Public Policy Center where all of my essays, both popular and scholarly are there.
Fr. Gregory: Wonderful. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks so much for sharing your heart and your thoughts.
Dr. Erika: It’s been really great to be with you both.
Fr. Gregory: All right, turning to you, the listener. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of God’s Planning. Please follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok. Like the episode, subscribe on YouTube or your podcast app and leave a five-star review, all of which helps to get the word out so that way people can profit from it and grow in their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. If you’d like to donate to the podcast through Patreon, you can follow the link in the description or show notes and in those same descriptions and/or show notes, you’ll find links for Godsplaining.org with merchandise options and then upcoming events of which there are some not more than three not less than one. I just don’t remember how many we have right now. So hope to see you at them. Know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.