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Episode Description
This week Betsy Fentress sits down with Catholic writer Leah Libresco Sargeant to discuss her widely talked-about new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. Leah argues that women’s equality is not grounded in sameness with men and that dependence, not radical autonomy, is the true pattern of human life. She examines how modern culture treats women’s bodies as defects to be managed, how laws often criminalize care for the vulnerable, and why embracing dependence offers a more humane and hopeful vision for families, workplaces, and communities.
Monsignor Roger Landry reflects on the retirement of Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the appointment of Archbishop designate Ronald Hicks as New York’s next shepherd. Msgr. Landry shares personal insights into Cardinal Dolan’s extraordinary legacy as a preacher, pastor, and joyful witness to the Gospel – one who made St. Patrick’s Cathedral feel like America’s parish church.
We wrap up the show with a festive roundtable conversation as our hosts share their favorite Christmas movies. From White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life to A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Star, the group reflects on why older films resonate so deeply with children today – and how stories of honor, sacrifice, and heroism help families reclaim the true spirit of Christmas.
Catch the show every Saturday at 7amET/5pmET on EWTN radio!
And don’t forget to subscribe to TCA’s daily media roundup for smart Catholic news and commentary delivered straight to your inbox.
Bios
Leah Libresco Sargeant is an author, freelance writer, speaker, and Catholic voice whose work explores feminism and the moral foundations of human dignity. A convert to Catholicism, she is author of Arriving at Amen, Building the Benedict Option, and her latest work, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. She is a contributing author to the Catholic Ideas for a Secular World series. She publishes the Substack Other Feminisms, and her freelance writing has appeared in The New York Times, First Things, The Dispatch, and The New Atlantis among others. She has spoken on CNN, Theology on Taps in multiple countries, and World Youth Day, and serves as Senior Policy Analyst for Family Economic Security in Washington, DC. She is a former news writer for FiveThirtyEight and served in campus ministry at Princeton. She holds a B.A. from Yale in Political Science and Government. Leah lives in Maryland with her husband and children.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. In 2024, he was appointed National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and served as executive editor for the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. He is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God, and leads pilgrimages to Rome, the Holy Land, and other sacred destinations. He was an on-site commentator for EWTN’s coverage of the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis. He is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and New York Chaplain for the Leonine Forum. Father Landry traversed the 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024, which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 348 Transcript
| Betsy | Welcome to conversations with consequences now on EWTN radio. And I'm your host, Betsy Fentress, and we're thrilled to have with us Leah Briscoe Sargeant, a Catholic convert known for her book arriving at a man. She now lives in the D.C. area with her husband and three children, and she's here to talk about her book that came out this fall called The Dignity of Dependance A Feminist Manifesto, part of the Catholic Ideas for a Secular World Series. Welcome back to the show, Leah. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Thank you for having me. |
| Betsy | So this book, which has made a big splash, you were on a podcast with Ross Douthat, at the New York Times and things went viral from there. But let's talk about what inspired this book. You know. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | I'm really interested in how do we figure out what it means to be just to women and men in a world that's increasingly confused about both? And the core two arguments of my book, I would say, are, first, that women's equality with men is not premised on our interchangeability with men. And second, that dependance, not autonomy, is the pattern of human life. And my hope is that those two ideas fit together. Help people figure out how to talk about gender differences without worrying that they're degrading one gender or the other by acknowledging them. |
| Betsy | And how do you think things got to the point where people thought this should be interchangeable? Do you have markers that you see in the last 50 years that produced the situation that we're in now? You know. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | I can kind of point to a philosophical marker as well as a political marker. You know, I really love the work of Alister McIntyre on becoming a part of different languages around virtues. And I think one of the struggles people have is that when you don't have a strong tied with philosophy, when you're not comfortable speaking in a philosophical register, it's hard to talk about why men and women are equal in dignity. You kind of run into this problem of, well, what does it mean to be equal? What does it mean to be dignified? And you can sidestep all that if you just say, well, look, men and women are basically the same. And if they're basically the same, differentiating between them is not only discriminatory, it's arbitrary, it's made up. But once you take that tone, anytime you run into the very real differences between men and women, you're very tempted to cover them up, because to acknowledge those differences will destabilize your claim to equality. So I think people get there with the best of intentions that they really have their heart pulling them to a truth that men and women are equal in dignity. They don't know how to ground that truth. And then they make compromises about how they describe the world. To hold on to what they know to be true, but can't articulate or justify. And for some more obvious political consequence is for me versus Wade. It's that claim that women's political equality depends on being able to be interchangeable with men, that women being able to turn their backs on fertility, being able to walk away from a baby in the same way a man can act for a man that only takes cowardice, to abandon a child who's fathered. But for a woman, it has to involve an abortion, and that claim that men and women cannot be equal when they have these different asymmetrical relationships to a child, I think has really driven a very painful way, that people can't acknowledge the reality of what it means to be an embodied woman. |
| Betsy | Well, you talk early on in the book about how the world is not really made hospitable for women. Can you give a couple of examples? I mean, they were just marvelous. Whether it's you're talking about the automobile industry or the kitchen design. Tell us a little bit about that. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Absolutely. A lot of this kind of fall into the pattern that we designed something neutrally to accommodate everyone. But we make that neutral male tilted so it's an easier neutral for men to use than women. One example that stood out to me, I think it was highlighted originally by Caroline Criado Perez, is that many surgical tools are kind of proportioned for men's larger hands rather than women's hands, and there's a kind of funny, sad study where they evaluated surgeons on their dexterity, and women scored higher for how dexterous they were with their hands, and they scored again on how dexterous they were with their tools. And that advantage that women had was neutralized because their tools were harder for them to hold, harder for them to manipulate. They use them against the grain of their design, holding them differently so that they could manipulate them accordingly. And I think we kind of see again and again the different parts of human life that we design, a normal that doesn't actually fit very many people, particularly women, but it will always exclude some men as well. Rather than thinking, how do we make all people welcome using this tool, navigating this house, working in this workplace? |
| Betsy | So even though you talk about like some of the hardships of women in the workplace, I wanted to go back to a friend of yours. Erika Yockey, wrote about the book that it was a kind of a love letter. Do you see your book that way? And and what do you think embodies that, that love letter aspect in the book? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | I love that description, and I think someone might think that it's a love letter to women broadly, and I think you could describe it that way. But what I hope it is, is it's a love letter to the reader that I want someone picking this up, including someone who disagrees with me to feel that I love them and will. They're good, and that what I'm inviting them into is that the world is capable of being more just than they think possible. A lot of these kind of fearful responses, or attempts to treat women as defective men accept that framing of women and then say, well, how can I help women cover up the fact that they're women? How can I help women navigate the disability of being women come from the assumption we'll never be able to have women welcomed as we actually are. And I really want to give a reader hope that that is possible. It's worth fighting for. And some of the painful compromises she's made don't have to be the pattern for the rest of her life. |
| Betsy | And so you talk a lot about how women are looked at as sort of disabled, because they have this thing called pregnancy that happens to them. Talk a little bit about that. And how, how we combat that, how we come to see that as, you talk a lot about these interruptions that occur, whether they're monthly for women or in pregnancy, how do we integrate that more fully into especially the workplace? Can you talk a lot about the workplace? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Absolutely. There's a lot of ways the, you know, natural embodiment that we all experience, but particularly for women, is treated as though it's a design flaw that something going wrong with women that hopefully we can fix for them. You know, there are people who really focus on this with respect to the menstrual cycle and periods that, well, men don't bleed all the time. They don't have this variability in their hormonal response. It's flatter for them. There's not this natural cycling. And since it's different for women, it's probably all bad. So could you take continuous contraception so you have almost no periods or maybe four periods a year. Not because you have debilitating periods just because it's one of the doctor says, well, look, doesn't the set the girls behind the boys, they might have their period during an exam. A boy never will. So shouldn't we restore to them what they ought to have? And I think this framing just concedes that there's something bad about being a woman, when what's often the case. And it's something where I really borrow heavily from disability advocates or disability theorists. You know, that assumption that what's bad here is who you are, not how we respond to who you are. That there are ways of being more accommodating. I look at this particularly with regard to nursing and pumping at work especially. Yeah. Where you know I don't think there's anything wrong with using the breast pump. I managed to avoid it, which was my preference for my first two babies, and then did rely on it to be able to work two days a week in the office with my third. But a lot of the time, the way we design these tools is not ordered to the good of the woman or to the good of the baby. It's ordered to the good of her boss. And you see kind of the compromises people make, even just in prioritizing. You know, much weaker but invisible pumps that you can fit inside your breast where the inside your bra, where the assumption is while you're doing this at work, you have a legal right to do it. But gosh, it'd be terrible if anyone knew you were doing it, or it'd be terrible if you actually had to take a break to do it. Versus yeah, why don't you have the more powerful pump that does a better job, that does require privacy and does require time away from your desk because you a human being serving your baby, another human being, are allowed to take a 30 minute or 20 minute breaks to, you know, nurture this relationship versus make it as unobtrusive as possible for your boss. |
| Betsy | Right, right. And you talk also, about the idea of radical autonomy in the book. And can you share with us how that contrasts to be two? Embracing dependance is not a negative. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Absolutely. I think a lot of the images of autonomy, particularly as they come up around abortion, but you'll see them crop up again and again in less politically controversial spaces, have this idea of untouchability. You know, it requires my active willed. Yes. For someone to be able to make a demand on me. There are no preexisting demands. You know, my plans, my desires. They have this force to them that presumes interruptions are illegitimate. And I think not only is this not true morally, that people really can make demands on us that we don't like, but have to respond to that. We can have relationships that have imposed real duties on us that aren't chosen. That not only is it wrong morally, it's also just wrong descriptively, that this image of autonomy isn't something that people enjoy. And when we set up this false image of the human person, what we really do is we describe everyone, not just women, as in some sense a defective human being, because our bodies are not strong enough and inviolate enough to carry us through these our lives. In this way, we will love people whose own needs interrupt our lives. And this image of autonomy kind of frames each of those interruptions as though it's a failure, a promise being broken. But this is a promise none of us were ever given. And if we start from what's true, that we're bound to each other in webs of both chosen and chosen relationship, that our dependance forces us out of ourselves toward, turns us towards others, then we're able to reason well about how to live in community, because we're not starting with a totally fictitious image of the human person. |
| Betsy | And do you view, to quote Alexis de Tocqueville in the book, do you feel that this is a particularly American feature, this rugged individualism, or do you see all these same trends that you talk about in your book in, in Europe as well? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | You know, I think you see this desire for autonomy pop up in many times and places. In some ways, it's the desire that we see at the very beginning of the history of the world when Satan says he wants to be alone, right, rather than to serve. So it never surprises me to see. But I think in America we've always had more of a belief this is achievable in a way that isn't as plausible in other countries and cultures, both from our frontier culture, our lion ization of striking out, sorting things out for yourself, the chance that you could just get away from other people. I think about, Paul Ingles, Paul Ingles in the little House stories where every time he sees a chimney on the horizon, he's like, well, we've got to move out further. That's that's a very American ideal in Europe. You can't go that much further out most of the time. And there's both admirable elements to it. I like the desire to take risks, to do big things. But it's all got to be framed against that fundamental truth of you will never find a frontier far enough to go to where you will be able to exist alone. Because even if you set up your own house by yourself, with no family, you remain entirely dependent on God. You remain in relationship with the natural world around you. |
| Betsy | And that's a theme that goes all through your book. Whether you're talking about disabled people or elderly people or, you know, children and then children in utero, there is this myth that doesn't really even exist in the world at all. Right? That's right. Yeah. And, back to Europe for just a second, there was some really sobering statistics that you had. I think it was in northern Europe about the number of men who are not fathers. And it's that maybe in Finland. And, let's talk a little bit about fatherhood and, and the particular problems that you see with for men when, they don't understand that they're vital to just this circle of dependency. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | You know, one way I think about this is the idea that you're an autonomous human being is false. It's false for everyone. But you may find it easier or less easy to pass for autonomous for a while. Like you're wearing a disguise. And there's always the question. The way I think about it is when will you get caught? If your goal is to pretend to be autonomous, to pretend to even to yourself, how will you get exposed? What will expose you? And I think for women that exposure comes much, much earlier than for men on average. And that's because for women, just the onset of menstruation really emphasizes I am not entirely my own. My body is every month preparing to be hospitable to another person, whether that's my goal or not. I'm reminded constantly of this relationality, and even a woman who's trying very hard not to become pregnant, you know, is then constantly remembered of the fact that she could become pregnant. And then for men, the question is, what pushes them into this acknowledgment that they can't quite pretend to be autonomous reliably, that they might get caught? And for a young man who's in good health, whose parents are also in good health, because that's one place you could get tripped up who's maybe athletic but not so athletic. He's dealing with injuries from his chosen sport. It might be a much longer time before that sense of my body, you know, is not totally under my control. My goals can be interrupted by both my frailty and the frailty of those who depend on me. And I think for many men, it's marriage and fatherhood that really brings home that recognition. I remember my husband when we were headed to the hospital for our first baby, and we got in the car, we're driving to the hospital and he starts the car, and then he just paused for a moment before driving. But I think even though he was already a good man and already not bought into that lie of autonomy, there's just a real moment of thinking. We're about to go to the hospital, and at the end of all this, someone will hand me our baby. And for the rest of our lives, you know, we're responsible for this person so that he couldn't quite start the car. And then he got me there in plenty of time, don't worry. But it really makes it visceral in a way that it may have just kind of been imagined or something you observe in other people's lives. |
| Betsy | You know, and at the same time, you have these beautiful examples toward the end of the Book of Men saying how, how this changed them so profoundly and how being needed was really something that they didn't realize that they needed. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Well, in a number of them saying they didn't know they needed to be needed, but couldn't find a way to be asked. Right. Which I think is the other really painful thing for a number of men. That marriage is an invitation into this though. When marriage gets pushed back later in later in the culture, and children get pushed back even later than that, that men who are made to shelter, others, who have this excess of strength and of stability, you could say, who aren't fragile in some of the ways women are fragile or are exposed in some of the ways women are exposed. Well, what is all that extra strength for? It can feel superfluous to the actual life you're living if there aren't other people who depend on you. |
| Betsy | Right? Right. We'll talk a little bit about the disabled. You have this phrase where it's, you talk about being illegal to care what's going on there. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Do I think there's a lot of ways in which we place unnecessary legal or regulatory barriers to relationships of love? And I talk about a couple of ways this has surfaced. One is just and I know these parts are dryer, but they have real consequences through the way we approach zoning and housing regulation, ways that make it hard for a group of friends to set up in a home together. Yes, and take care of each other, both for the long term or the short term, in a neighborhood that says, well, this is just for family housing. And if too many unrelated people live here legally, that's a brothel. And you might think this are purely outdated, but people really go to the maps to enforce them because they have a very narrow sense of what their neighborhood should be. And it's not amendable to younger folks who want to start building a life in community, not in a bunch of isolated studio apartments. You see this also in kind of the different pressures that parents face of how can we find a way to have some level of childcare for our kids that leaves us room for more time with our kids. Some states make it easier for you to turn to family care, even if you're getting childcare vouchers and treat that just the same way. So if my mom is watching my kids, but I'm eligible for childcare vouchers, I could use that to help compensate her. Some treat those relationships of family care as suspect as well as families doing it. That doesn't really count. We're only here to support people who want a stranger to take care of their baby, and I think that's just profoundly unjust. |
| Betsy | You have so many good examples of that about how the tax laws and Social Security and what's considered a credit. And, it really struck home for me. I had a sister who took care of two disabled men, and she bought one of them a Coke one day, and she got written up. And you talk about this with SSI of how if the family gives anything to this person, then they'll deduct it from how much money they give these people who are not making, you know, who are not receiving a very large stipend every month anyway. But that story that you write about wrote about really hit home because my sister got in big trouble and almost lost her job over that. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | No, it's one of the most brutal one. So people in SSI, these are people who have disabilities that keep them from working, but haven't had a long enough work history to qualify for a more generous disability program. They're kept to very tight. Asset limits of $2,000 for an individual is all you can have at the bank at any time. If you go over just a little, you're kicked off. And 3000 for couples. So two people who want to get married will have to shed $1,000 worth of their assets and to be allowed to get married. So you require people to immigrate themselves to benefit from this relatively stingy program. And then on top of that, just as you said, if your parents make you dinner and drop off dinner or groceries, you have to deduct it dollar from dollar for your monthly benefits. And if you stay in your parent's house, you have to deduct the imputed rent. They would have charged a boarder who was a stranger. No matter that your parents have really no price for that because they don't want a stranger to live with them. They want their son to live with them. The government treats it as though they're trying to cheat the government out of money. |
| Betsy | So let's talk a little bit about blessings as a burden. And I would also love you to talk a little bit about how pain is necessary. And this idea of you use the word frictionless that we're moving toward wanting a frictionless life. What is the problem with that? And why is pain sometimes good and how are burdens blessings. |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | You know, I think the biggest way that pain can be a good thing, even though it's not something we desire, we're not masochists. Is that pain is a way of helping us navigate the world. You know, I had a coworker once that sprained his ankle. It's like, well, I'm a pretty tough guy. I'm just going to keep walking on it till I get home. And this was ridiculous. And he had a much harder recovery because of it, because his pain was not just a problem that he could ignore. His pain was telling him something about his ankle and what it was saying was, get off your foot. And I think in a lot of ways we say, well, how can I mask this pain instead of listening to what it's telling me? And when women have these kind of pains, physical or emotional, from navigating an unjust demand, often the help they're at is, how can you mask this pain, either from yourself or at least make it so it doesn't bother other people rather than, well, this pain is a signal that something is wrong. How can we address that root cause? And one thing I really love that idea about friction. This is a quote from Wittgenstein who I'll be clear. You know, it's not someone I would actually turn to for parenting advice most of the time. But this is one beautiful quotation that I love, which is we have gone on to slippery ice where there is no friction. And so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal. But also just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk. So we need friction back to the rough ground that we can kind of almost pull ourselves away from the reality of the world. The reality of embodiment, because that makes it less uncomfortable. There's less friction, but that at the same time, distance allows us from being able to live truthfully. |
| Betsy | Hmhmm do you see signs that things are changing in this direction, that young people are looking again at family life, and I know we have some pretty dire statistics for fertility and replacement rates, but tell us some signs that you've seen that maybe people are looking for these, communities of dependance, whether they're going back to near where their family live or they're caring for, you know, maybe their nieces and nephews. What are some signs you see? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | So I will say on net, the signs are not good that we do believe, based on the data, that more and more women and people tend to frame these surveys through women who want children will wind up with none because they'll have trouble matching and marriages trouble having kids in the winter. They want to and that that number of kind of bereaved isn't quite the word, but rest. Women who hoped for family life and didn't succeed in finding that it's going to be larger than ever. What I think kind of the best sign is that, you see, young people understand that the options on the table, the defaults for them, aren't good for them. And I think you see that most strongly, not through their approach to marriage and relationships, but through their approach to technology, that there's more and more the sense of, you know, whether or not a phone could be a good tool in the abstract. The people who built the apps on my phone don't. Will my good and to live a full and flourishing life, I'm either going to have to give some of these things up, or find a way to use them against the grain of their design, because these people just want to take me away from my real life. So how can I hold on to that? And so you kind of see this proliferation of different approaches. Both schools have been built to build bans on phones, which I think are good attempts to get men and women to meet each other in person instead of on apps or in kind of one community that I'm part of from when I lived in California date me docs, which I think are on net good, which are just like almost long personal ads of here's who I am, here's what I'm looking for in life. It's a big Google doc. Send it to all your friends and tell me if any of your friends want to date me. And that's so sincere and hopeful. In contrast to the flick flick, flick passes short photo based ads that have the sense of an abundance but no connection. So I'm enthused about those things. But I think we're a long way from having good patterns for young men and women to steer for if they want to get married. Instead, set up a family. |
| Betsy | I was thinking about this piece that Megan McArdle wrote about finding out that she had this brother that was born out of wedlock, and her mother didn't tell her till her deathbed. And, a lot of people were really moved by this piece. Do you see signs that the media is allowing more conversations about this dependance issue and the vulnerability and the, you know, the idea that abortion really is a bad thing? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | You know, I think the big gist of the Dobbs decision, aside from the obvious, is once you've returned this decision to the States, people have to talk about it and they have to talk about it person to person, voter to voter. You can't say all of our arguments and conversations about this are framed through constitutional rights. Now they're framed through values and through the very muddled feelings people have about what feels like conflicting values of what does it mean to be just to the woman here? What could it mean to be just to the baby? And what I hope, and I think Megan's piece is part of that, is more people who have mixed feelings or say, well, in some ways I've been pro-choice, but there are things that don't sit right with me and I wish better were possible, are kind of unlocked by the pressure to say, well, now this is up to you and your neighbors. You're going to have to talk about this. You can't just wait for the judges to weigh in. |
| Betsy | Yeah. Do you feel that your book is particularly relevant with the assisted suicide bill that's sitting on the governor of New York's desk? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | Yes. And I really hope she won't sign it, though. I'm not optimistic, but I'm praying, you know, because anything is possible. You know, I think we've just seen and again and again that even countries that try and legalize a limited form of euthanasia wind up really eroding the sense of what a human life is very quickly, to the point where folks who supported the initial bill become very uncomfortable with where their country goes. And I think we've seen Canada kind of speedrun this, where at this point, one in every 20 deaths in Canada comes at the hand of a doctor, and they keep trying to expand what could open you up to state sponsored killing, whether that's mental illnesses like depression, opening it up to mature minors, which means children without necessarily a consult with their parents. And this comes out of this idea that, you know, taking almost a harm minimization approach to human life, that there's variability, there's ups and downs, and the ups are just not big enough. What it means to be human is just not good enough to merit being alive and supporting someone through the downs. |
| Betsy | So we just have about a minute left, and you shared a lot about your own community, and your book is has so many good examples. But how can our listeners learn to lift up their own communities in honor of dependance? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | I think the best thing you could do is in the next week, ask someone locally near you for help. And the reason I say ask for help rather than offer help is that when you offer help, you're kind of placing yourself in the superior position. Someone who can give from their excess. But that actually doesn't reassure people about accepting your help. But if you're opening move is asking for help with something you could have managed anyway, you are not only hopefully getting some help you really could use, you're teaching that neighbor that you are someone who thinks it's okay to make an unsolicited plea for help, and when they're in extremis or even less than extremists, they'll go, well, I can ask Leah because she thinks this is allowed within our friendship. She already asked me. |
| Betsy | That's a great way to end. Leila Briscoe. Sergeant, thank you so much for coming on. And how can our listeners find out more about you and your work? |
| Leah Libresco Sargeant | You can find my blog, other feminisms, and make sure you get that final essay, because it's a diverse and scrappy community. |
| Betsy | Other feminisms.com okay, to learn more about the Catholic Association and follow everything we do, please visit us at Catholic Association Morgue. And we're on in radio, TV, print and online. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back to conversations with consequences, where I am joined by our resident chaplain, Monsignor Roger Landry, with some very big news from his archdiocese. Monsignor Landry, what's going on in the Archdiocese of New York? |
| MSGR Landry | Well, in the archdiocese in New York, there's a big transition from the 10th to the 11th archbishop. Archbishop to our Cardinal Timothy Dolan, native of Saint Louis and Baldwin, Missouri, who has served the church universal, the church in the United States and the church in the archdiocese in New York. So well, since his appointment by Pope Benedict in 2009, his resignation, which he submitted February 6th this year on its 75th birthday to Pope Francis, was accepted by Pope Leo, and Pope Leo appointed a fellow South Chicago in, now Archbishop designate Ron Hicks. The present Bishop of Joliet, Illinois, to take Cardinal Dolan's place as the 11th Archbishop of Chicago. So the first thing we have to say is congratulations to Archbishop designate Hicks, who's a wonderfully affable young bishop who was only 59, who's served very well out there in Joliet, but an enormous and appreciative thank you to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has been one of the most influential American prelates in the last several decades, not only through his tenure in at the North American College in Rome, where he is rector training nine classes, a future priests for the U.S., but then as an auxiliary in Saint Louis as the Archbishop of Milwaukee at a very important time, a transition after the multiple scandals of Archbishop Robert Wicklund and then for 16 years, the Archbishop of New York. I wrote a piece for the National Catholic Register earlier the day of the announcement, to just highlight how grateful we need to be, because Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been the personification of the good news of Jesus Christ, not just a herald of the gospel, but someone who would show what it looks like even before he would very eloquently proclaim it. And so a huge, huge day for the church in the archdiocese in New York. And because in New York's prominence in the church in the United States and in the world, in, in the national and international scene. |
| Betsy | So what can you say are some of the legacies of Cardinal Dolan? Because you two were both in the same archdiocese. |
| MSGR Landry | Yet Cardinal Dolan of Cardinal Dolan first was my rector, so he formed me to be a priest. He was the one who approved me for holy orders and recommended that bishop or now Cardinal Sean O'Malley ordained me a deacon and then a priest, etc.. So I've known him for over 30 years now. And he's been a mentor to me. He was the one who originally suggested to the apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, who was looking for somebody to do multiple jobs at the Holy See's mission of the UN. The priest you need is Roger Landry and who's Roger Landry? And started that whole process without my knowing anything. Cardinal Dolan, likewise, had asked me to become the chaplain that, at Columbia University. And then he's the chairman of the board for the Medical Mission Societies, and was the one who called me to see whether I would be interested in serving in this position and one way or the other when I take it, if it were offered. And, so he's had an enormous impact on my life, but I think his great legacy beyond just me is he was one of the greatest preachers we've seen since Fulton J. Sheen, an extraordinary communicator. Second, he, he showed a real confidence in the gospel. He is the icon of what we might call affirmative orthodoxy, that all parts of church teaching are part of the good news. It's not part of the bad news. But we got to believe and we got to be able to preach that positive stuff. We've got to live that way. He clearly did. Third, he showed the happy face of the church, and it was the smile and the boisterous laugh of the mystical body of Christ. I mean, he would walk into the room with so much enthusiasm and energy and so much brightness. I mean, he'd lift everybody up by his infectious personality. The priest of New York are so grateful for his individual care for them. He would regularly phone on their anniversaries, on their birthdays, as soon as they were getting settled into a new assignment to see how that was going and he. Death of family members. Cardinal Dolan is one of the most effective prelates alive on the phone. I mean, he's just constantly calling their short phone call, sometimes 1 or 2 minutes. But, everybody very much appreciates that. And, you know, I have to say, one of the things I put in my article was, If Saint Patrick's is really America's parish church, and it is it's got this massive, really impressive live stream that everybody watches all over the country, then Cardinal Dolan really is America's pastor. And like he he celebrated the 1015 mass every Sunday. Not every bishop can be found in his cathedral on the Lord's Day. He was found every Lord's day in his cathedral. But not just that, he was found celebrating the 7 a.m. mass every day during the week, whenever he was in Rome, which was most of the year. Sometimes he'd have to travel. Sorry. Whenever he was in New York, sometimes he'd have to travel to Rome and other places. But he was always there. Everybody could find him. Everybody could hear him preaching the gospel. And so that's the way he connected with everybody coming in Manhattan. But when he was not there, like on Saturdays and on Sundays, he would travel throughout the archdiocese, taking the various parish masses in the in the expansive archdiocese in New York, which has many of the counties in upstate New York. He was ubiquitous. And so he's going to be a really tough act for archbishop designate Hicks to follow. I'm just so grateful that for 16 years we had him in the Sea of New York. As I as I wrote my piece, New York is the biggest city in people's imagination in the world. And Timothy Cardinal Dolan had the personality that was fit for New York. He had a personality as big as the Big Apple. And so how grateful we've been to have him in New York City since 2009. |
| Betsy | I had the privilege of having him confirm one of my children in Saint Louis. And so I share your joy and your enthusiasm for him, and we wish him well. And, we can't wait to see the next chapter with, the designated archbishop designate. |
| MSGR Landry | Bishop designate, if you go from priest to bishop or archbishop, your archbishop elect or bishop elect. But if you're already a bishop, it's archbishop designate. |
| Betsy | Okay. So thank you so much, Monsignor Landry, and we'll look forward to talking to you next week about Christmas. |
| Ashley | Welcome to conversations with consequences on EWTN radio, and I'm thrilled to be doing something we haven't done in a while, which is just have a conversation with all of us. So I'm joined today by Mary, Betsy and Lee. And as we are nearing the end of advent and approaching the Christmas season, we thought, what's more fun to talk about our favorite Christmas movies? And this is relevant because, we recently had on the show Joe Wilson, who is one of the two authors of the 100, the list of 100 movies that every Catholic should see. And we also just featured on our Substack, a piece about the Pope's movies. So we've been talking a lot about movies lately. And you know what better time to be watching Christmas movies or movies at Christmas time and after my conversation with Joe, I had asked him, what are his five recommended Must-See Christmas movies? Because the list that we were discussing has some Christmas movies on it, but it's not sort of schematically, and he gave me a list of five, but one of them was one I was embarrassed to say I had never seen, which is a total classic white Christmas. And so last weekend we watched that with our kids and absolutely loved it. And really an incredibly moving movie. And so, I'm wondering, have you all seen that movie? I was I don't know how I made it to the age and had never seen it, but now it's it's going to be in our permanent rotation. |
| Leigh | Yeah, I just rewatched it after many, many years. I think maybe even one of the last names. I watched it and I was like, home for Christmas break during college or something with my parents, and I was completely and utterly just delighted by it. And I'm actually going to make an a mandatory family movie night around White Christmas. I thought it was just so lovely. And I mean, just the talent of the the actors alone is enough to just suck you right in. I mean, Danny Kaye's like, physical comedy is just top notch, and I think it's easy. I know my kids do it to dismiss movies as old. Therefore bad, but that movie is just evergreen. |
| Mary | Lee, did your did your kids like it? |
| Leigh | They haven't seen it yet. |
| Mary | Oh, I thought about it. Would you watch him? Okay. |
| Leigh | And then I'm going to enforce it. |
| Mary | No, I've never seen it, so. But oh. |
| Leigh | Mary. |
| Mary | I'm never going to. |
| Leigh | Believe that for a treat. |
| Betsy | There's so many classic movies. The, the the excuse me. There's so many classic songs. Sisters, snow, Count Your Blessings, Blue Skies, and of course, Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, Christmas. I love that movie. |
| Ashley | Well. And the the, the I'm increasingly finding that I'm trying to create movies for my children that have, uplifting themes. And you can't say that about really increasingly, most movies that are being made. And it's something that's driven us back to older movies because, I mean, really, the theme I would say of White Christmas is, is honor. I mean, just the personal honor and integrity of of the men and the women, but ultimately them, the two main male characters seeking to honor the general that they served under during the war, which culminates in the very, moving finale. So what what are some of your other favorite Christmas movies? |
| Betsy | You know, really Little women has such an a moving Christmas scene, and the whole thing doesn't take place during Christmas. But I actually like the most recent 2019 version with Greta Gerwig. But, that movie to me and that story is a classic, and I don't want to spoil it for anybody who hasn't seen it, but, it's worth it for the Christmas scene. |
| Leigh | You know, Betsy, that's funny you should say that, because I saw, an Instagram reel about a woman who she hosted a Little Women movie. Watch ornament making party, and they all wore these, like, classic cotton white nighties, and they, you know, did things like they dried oranges and strung cranberries and popcorn and did the other sort of, like, old fashioned Christmasy cozy. And they had all these different little cozy drinks and a roaring fire while they watched Little Women. And I thought, oh, I that was a nice little girlfriend activity, as if I have the time for that kind of thing. But it was nice. I watched The Real a couple times, so that had to substitute for my own real life party. But yeah, I think that's a wonderful Christmas Eve movie. |
| Mary | And The Waltons have a Christmas episode. If everybody remembers The Waltons, you know when that was the big show and that Christmas episode, do you remember when they who were the two old spinster sisters who live together and they go to bring the Walton family, John-Boy and, Mary Ellen go to bring our Christmas meal over to them. And the two Spencer sisters offer them some eggnog, and it has either rum or bourbon in it. One of the two. And, but they drink it. They. And, of course, they're a completely, you know, being evangelical mountain people. They're completely teetotalers. And they didn't realize. So it's kind of funny, you know, because they get the they get a little tipsy from the whoever, these two, the spinster sisters eggnog with the rum in it. But it's very charming. And you see, too, you know, the efforts in those days that people put into their Christmas meal. I mean, I remember my mom, she would stay away. We didn't like technically fast, but she we she would stash away a few dollars from the grocery money every week so that we could have something really special on Christmas. And we all knew that that that's why, you know, we were having more modest meals during that month, but that mom was putting that money away for Christmas. And so you see how people really, made that effort and self-sacrifice and you don't see that, you know, because we just are it's such a wealthy society now that we don't really need to make those kind of sacrifices, for the most part, to have a nice Christmas meal. So that that was kind of interesting. And then just all the videos that are now circulating about Christmas shopping and like with, with shots from, like the big department stores of the 80s and 90s and how they've all but vanished now, like the big Christmas displays and the Christmas like the fact that you would go out to a store to go Christmas shopping, it's it's just completely changed. And it's been a, I guess, somewhat gradual. But now all of a sudden I was in Neiman Marcus the other day. Their Christmas section is like the size of my dining room table. That was like, there's it was it used to be like a whole floor, and there were food and ornaments. |
| Leigh | And it was like a destination, even if you weren't exactly. |
| Mary | Well, yeah. We, you and I, many years ago, do you remember we went to Nordstrom for that because this was pre-COVID. We went for a big, Christmas shopping thing in downtown Chicago. Now, like you know, I can't think of any stores that are really doing things like that. |
| Betsy | Yeah, well, that's funny you say that because, you know, miracle on 34th Street centers around the Macy's flagship store on 34th Street in New York. So that kind of catapulted this whole idea of, you know, Santa's at the store, you know? Yes. Virginia, there is a Santa Clause. That phrase, I believe, is where that came from. That movie, |
| Ashley | You know, that was one of the another one of the recommendations of Joe Wilson, one of his five. And interestingly, he was very specific. He gave a few different movies and was specific about which version he thought was the best. And back to our point about older movies. He recommended the original, which I think was made like in the 1930s or something like that. But, you know, we've, we found in our family, we try to do a family movie night every Friday, and we very quickly ran through kind of the more, modern movies, if you will, cartoons, movies. We thought, would be what our kids would be interested in pretty quickly before, you know, we ran out of appropriate content. So we started, pivoting to older movies that I at first was very skeptical that our kids would be interested in and be able to sit through. So, for example, the first one we tried was Ben-Hur, and I thought, no way are my kids going to want to watch a four hour movie made in the 1950s or whatever. And they love it. They asked for it all the time. And it's funny because I, I still keep falling prey to the same trap of thinking my kids don't like older movies. My husband proposed. We watched the old miracle on 34th Street and I thought, I. You're not going to want to watch a black and white Christmas movie. Once again, I was wrong. They loved it. What a magical movie. |
| Betsy | Well, I can't believe I haven't mentioned my hometown movie Meet Me in Saint Louis, which has a really classic Christmas scene and have, you know, Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a merry Little Christmas. But do you find your kids are a little bit younger than mine? Are they reticent to see a black and white movie versus color Day? |
| Leigh | Yeah. |
| Ashley | They were, but I think they're more open minded now because we've watched a few of them. Another one is, the one about song with Bernadette. That was another. |
| Leigh | One. |
| Betsy | That's a great one. Jennifer Jones. |
| Ashley | Yeah, they liked it. So I think, you know, the lesson that I've learned with movies and children is that, we think they want a lot of color and stimulation, but what they're looking for is heroism. Our stories that kind of raise their horizons and expand their imaginations. |
| Betsy | What about, all the various versions of A Christmas Carol? Do you all is that something that you do? And I actually, I think some people really like The Muppet Christmas Carol, but what versions? Okay. What versions do you all like of The Christmas Carol? |
| Mary | Oh, I love that. One of the older ones. Oh, I'm trying to think who plays, Scrooge in it. It's PBS rebroadcast it every year, but it's it really is terrifying. I mean, it shows the effect of personal sin, especially in those in those scenes where he's wearing, you know, the chain of of my own making. I forged this chain link by link and the whoever. Oh, I'm trying to think of the name of it. It'll come to me. It's one of the old black and white versions, and I do think the black and white, look is, is actually makes it even more scary than some of the color colorful Muppet ones. I find it hard to take them up one seriously. It does. I know, I know, I know what was meant to be, but like, I, I, and to introduce the story to maybe children who aren't ready for the real thing. |
| Leigh | Yet, but my kids hate it. |
| Mary | Oh. Do that. |
| Leigh | Yeah, I want them to watch it every year. And I watch it alone. I don't know, I grew up with The Muppet Show, so I think I have a just a nostalgic affection for that story. And the way that Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat tell it, but it's, I find it to be very sweet. But you know, also I had forgotten that Disney had done, I don't know, the kind of animation it's called, but it's like the Polar Express kind of. And so the, the animation looks like the real people who are voicing the people like Jim Carrey, I think play Scrooge. And it is it's also terrifying and very serious and not Holly jolly Muppet. But it's a Disney production. That was I was actually really impressed by it. My kids don't like that one either. Yeah, and I also love another one they hate that I love is Emmet Otter's Junk Band Christmas Jug Band Christmas. It's a very, very old Jim Henson production. About it's kind of like The Gift of the Magi told with, river otters and bands, and it just, I don't know, it's it, I don't know, I mean, I might not be selling it to anybody today, but it's a really good and it's on Disney Plus if you have that. |
| Ashley | Well, one black and white movie that was actually on the Pope's list of favorite movies that just came out is It's a Wonderful Life. |
| Mary | So yeah. And lastly. |
| Betsy | Iconic Christmas movie. |
| Leigh | Hard to Beat. |
| Mary | Yeah. |
| Betsy | Well, actually, I'm surprised you've been holding back on the movie. The, your kids basically want to play it on repeat all through the season. |
| Ashley | Oh. The star. Yes. And actually, no, no. So I think one of my my favorite interviews that we've done on this show was with Tim Record. I think Betsy and I did that, last year, the producer of The star and my kids thought I was the coolest cat on earth, that I got to talk to the guy who made the movie The Star. But, yeah, that's a very sweet, Christmas classic in our house. It's a beautiful retelling of the nativity story through the eyes of the animals, and I highly recommend it. It's it's fun. It's got humor that adults can laugh at. It's got humor that kids can laugh at. But it's also just a very sweet story. And I remember when we talked with Tim about it, talking about the fact, you know, it's just always good to reflect on the fact that there were animals at the Nativity. |
| Mary | |
| Ashley | And you know, that that God chose animals to have, to be a part of, of the nativity. |
| Leigh | Story. There's a whole sweet line about animals that again, maybe it's a really, really old Disney movie, maybe from the 60s. And it's not even a movie. It's like 30 minutes, but it's called small One, and it's about this week, little donkey that's beloved by this little boy who fights to keep him. And it's sort of like, what's the point? He can't carry the load. You can't do this. You have to sell him. But he ends up selling him to the Holy Family. So the you know, anyway it's all I think it's just another, it's just a sweet story. It's attractive to especially small children. But it was in the day when mainstream movies could still talk about, you know, the birth of Christ as the reason we celebrate Christmas. It's very sweet, small one. |
| Mary | And the Rankin and Bass, you know, claymation. |
| Leigh | Oh, yeah. |
| Mary | Shows are all. I was kind of reflecting back on The Little Drummer Boy, which I just love is a song, you know, which of course, they made into this movie. And one of my daughters was saying, mom, like, they let little kids watch this because there are some really horrible, violent scenes in there. When the parents are killed, when the parents are murdered and they set their house on fire, and they take the little drummer boy and throw him out the window, and the mom is screaming, run, run, run! And he runs. And then like, that's how he got, you know, gets captured into this caravan that winds up going to Bethlehem and that they put I mean, that was like geared towards five and six year olds. And I'm like, oh, there wasn't a lot of protection of kids in a sense in that regard back in those days. |
| Leigh | But there's another movie by those people that I accidentally watched because we were what's happened to find Rudolph on, which was a favorite of my youngest right now and right after it, it's called something like The Leprechaun. And that Christmas gold. And it is really scary with his the Banshees and the Banshees tears and the gold and it's Christmas and it's so crazy and it's very funny thing because it, it just, it shows like sort of maybe this weird subtle anti-Catholic bias. In fact Saint Patrick is referred to as the Lord of the leprechauns. |
| Ashley | It's very strange. |
| Leigh | Movie. I would I would not recommend that. Yeah. It's just, you know, curious. |
| Betsy | Did you know that Die Hard is considered like, the most popular Christmas movie ever? Isn't that sad to hear. |
| Mary | Someone explain why to me? Please? Because I, I, I don't I don't believe in that. The diehard world is there. Oh, because is there a a? Does it happen at Christmas? Why is that? Betsy not Betsy doesn't know. Does anybody know? I've never seen die. |
| Leigh | I don't know either. Because for me, I don't know if it's a Christmas movie, but I just qualified as a boy movie and I have no. Okay. |
| Mary | And I don't have any boys, so that that probably could explain it. You know, what's what's kind of an interesting and it is a movie length feature. It's a, it's an hour long is from the old PBS show Arthur, which was a very, very beloved show. My children loved it. And until like the last year where they went very woke and they had one of the male characters marry another male. And, you know, unfortunately, they kind of ruined it because it was a very everybody could watch it and learn something from it. But they have a beautiful Christmas special where they go through some of the different, ways that people celebrate and including one of the characters who is Jewish and they show how they light the candles in their window, and then they have a beer with one of the characters who's supposed to be of Norwegian extraction, and they do a whole Santa Lucia, part of it, where they actually sing the Santa Lucia song and, you know, so it's, everybody can watch it. And people of different faith traditions can watch it and gain something from it. And then, you know, the other thing I just love is that Rick Steves European Christmas special. Oh yeah, anyone has seen that. But I just read a reflection because it's like the 20th 20 year anniversary of it this year, 25. |
| Leigh | Year of the reminder marriage. |
| Mary | Of how he, how they they have a beautiful scene where they're in Austria and they're, I believe in the church where Silent Night was written and how and they have two, musicians by candlelight, singing the song with a guitar. And he had a beautiful reflection on how they were just, like, desperate to film something there. They saw these two men walk out of the church. They said, you know, Silent Night. They said, we just sang it for mass. They said, can we tape you? And they went back in the church and taped it. And it's like, it really is the central kind of a scene. But, you know, scenes of the father of the house blessing the house with holy water before Christmas dinner. It is so beautifully Catholic. I really recommend that. |
| Betsy | You know, my mom always used to have the Vatican midnight mass on when we. Yeah, at this time of year. So I think I'm going to try to do that this year. |
| Ashley | That's a great idea because we can watch it. It's not it's not too late for us. |
| Betsy | It used to be on on the, you know, regular when we back when we only had three channels, it was on one of them. Right. |
| Ashley | Well I'm definitely going to add the Rick Steves Christmas special to my must watch list. |
| Mary | European Christmas special, European Christmas special. |
| Ashley | And I'm definitely I love your idea, Betsy, of putting on the the Vatican's midnight mass. And, you know, I'll just briefly mention one last movie that was on Joe Wilson's five. Must see that. Gets back to your point that they don't make overtly Christian Christmas movies anymore, but the Charlie Brown Christmas special. So, yeah. |
| Betsy | That's, you know, that that's 60 year anniversary this year. |
| Leigh | Oh, yes. |
| Betsy | Yeah. |
| Mary | And does anybody's parents still call them to tell them like it's on ABC tonight? You have to watch it. |
| Leigh | I think he. |
| Mary | Would. Yeah. My father in law, who's 85 calls us like. And the kids do not understand why we have to watch it when it's broadcast live. And whatever station has it at CBS might have the rights to it now, but, that was because if you missed it, you missed it for the year. That was it. And so everybody's parents would call them. And so I think that's there is something fun about seeing it on broadcast TV as well. |
| Ashley | We've covered lots of ground, lots of great ideas. If you're looking for, wonderful Christmas movies to watch with your family. I also, commend, the list that Joe Wilson gave us, for more great family content. But what great fun chatting with you all about our favorite Christmas movies. So great talking with you all. |
| Mary | Merry Christmas everyone. |
| Leigh | A Christmas. |