Ep. 369 Katie Prejean McGrady Talks Pope Leo XIV & Leah Libresco Sargeant on 'The Family Plan'

Conversations with Consequences

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Episode Description

Bestselling author, SiriusXM host, and Catholic media personality Katie Prejean McGrady joins to reflect on the first year of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate and what makes this papacy feel uniquely personal and accessible. Katie shares what it was like to moderate a groundbreaking live conversation between Pope Leo and a group of teens discussing mental health, prayer, social media, and AI. We also look ahead to the pope’s upcoming encyclical and the lens of joy he might bring to the topic of humanity, while delving into the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Author and columnist Leah Libresco Sargeant discusses Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha expecting their fourth child, and why family life so often unfolds differently than people originally plan. Leah explores shifting attitudes toward fertility, openness to life, natural family planning, and the growing national conversation around declining birth rates. She breaks down the bipartisan Supporting Newborn Parents Act and explains why practical support for families can make a meaningful difference for parents navigating the early years of raising children.

The team reflects on the remarkable conversion story of Tammy Peterson, whose encounter with the Rosary during cancer treatment eventually led her into the Catholic Church. Drawing from author Margarita Mooney Clayton’s recent interview, Ashley and Betsy discuss Mary’s maternal role in leading souls closer to Christ.

TCA chaplain Monsignor Roger Landry helps prepare hearts for Pentecost with a reflection on the Ascension, the Church’s first novena, and the indispensable role of the Holy Spirit in Christian mission and daily life.

Catch the show every Saturday at 7amET/5pmET on EWTN radio!

Bios

Katie Prejean McGrady is a wife, mom, award-winning author, speaker, and one of the leading voices in Catholic media today. A former youth minister and high school educator, she transitioned to full-time speaking in 2017 and travels extensively sharing her faith at parishes, retreats, and events. She is the author of six books with Ave Maria Press, co-hosts the popular Ave Explores podcast, and hosts The Katie McGrady Show — the morning drive-time program on SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel. In addition, Katie serves as a Vatican analyst for CNN and regularly contributes to outlets such as Our Sunday Visitor, Blessed is She, and Aleteia. Known for her engaging, humorous, and practical approach to living the Catholic faith, she helps people encounter Christ in everyday life with joy and authenticity. She lives in Louisiana with her husband, Tom, and their two daughters.

Leah Libresco Sargeant is a Catholic writer, speaker, and policy analyst known for her insightful work at the intersection of faith, feminism, family policy, and human dependence. A Yale graduate and former atheist blogger, she made headlines with her conversion to Catholicism in 2012. She is the author of several books, including Arriving at Amen, Building the Benedict Option (a practical guide to building Christian community), and her most recent work, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. Her writings have appeared in The Dispatch, First Things, and numerous national publications. She currently works as a Senior Policy Analyst focused on family economic security in Washington, D.C., runs the Other Feminisms Substack, and writes on religion and culture. 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 Diocese of Fall River weekly paper. He is the author of Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God, and was an on-site commentator for EWTN’s during the 2013 papal conclave electing Pope Francis. He is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and New York Chaplain for the Leonine Forum. Msgr. Landry traversed the 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024, coinciding with his 25th year in the priesthood.

The following transcript is machine generated.

Episode 369 Transcript

Ashley	Welcome back to conversations with consequences here on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire.
Betsy	And I'm Betty Fentress.
Ashley	And we are delighted to have the one and only Katie Prejean McGrady join us this week. She is one busy lady hosting her own daily radio show on Sirius XM. The Catholic Channel. And she also hosts RV explorers with Father Patrick Mary Briscoe, and she's a mom of two. Katie, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today.
Katie Prejean McGrady	Thanks for having me. Long time listener, first time caller, as they say. Great.
Ashley	Well, welcome. We're honored to have you on. And we have so many things to talk about. But the thing I'm most interested in hearing about was your moderating a conversation with the Holy Father and youth. I watched it, you did an amazing job. But tell us what it was like to moderate a conversation with the Pope and a room full of teenagers and young people.
Katie Prejean McGrady	I mean, only slightly terrifying, I have to say. I finally come down from the, the high of all of it. Months and months later, next month, my family and I get to go to Rome and we get to thank the Holy Father in person for the time that he gave us. So I'm excited to ask him what he thought of it all, because we all loved it. It was remarkable. The back story when the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry invited him to really at first it was like, do you want to make an appearance? Like, could you just show up for like 15 minutes on a zoom call, answer like a couple questions because you're the Pope, you're busy. And the Vatican came back with, we'll give you 45 minutes. And then we ended up getting like an hour. He's very generous with his time, and there have been a lot of instances where people have kind of referenced his schedule gets messed up during the day because he spends longer and longer with each person who comes in for an audience. And I love that. It was truly remarkable, though, the thing that I keep going back to, we did all this prep, we had all these questions. The young people really thought deeply about what they wanted to talk to. The Holy Father about and get his insights and his advice. But there's a moment in every interview you'll interview a lot of people. I interview a lot of people. There's a moment when you know you've got them like they're a little settled in and they kind of lean back in their chair. They're comfortable. And the Holy Father about 21 minutes into it. So we're at the halfway point. He leaned back and I noticed it very subtly, and I was like, oh, we've got the Pope. Like he was so happy to be there. I think he would have kept staying on the line if we'd had more time to give to him, and it was just such a cool thing to to then see he's done this now in a couple of different places. So he's done Q&A is in person. He did some in Africa on his most recent journey. He did a youth event with questions and answers when he was in in Turkey, in Lebanon. He's done it with the youth of Rome. The bishop of Rome has spent time with the youth ministry of Rome. So we I kind of like to think we Americans set the stage for the Holy Father hanging out with young people in this conversational setting. And to get to moderate it. I started with a joke. Nobody knew how I was going to start. I've been praying about it. I knew I wanted to kind of set him at ease because it's a little awkward, you know? He's over there. We're over here. It's a zoom call. Everybody's tuning in. But we need this to feel intimate and he he volleyed right back. He made a joke right back. It was a Wordle joke. And then he made a sock joke. And it was. He had no idea that's how I was going to start. So he's pretty quick. And it was just such a joy. My kids thought it was really cool. I've got the picture right there of him looking at me on the screen that a friend of mine at the Vatican snapped on his iPhone and texted me. So it was easily a career highlight.
Betsy	So I was listening recently to your conversation with Father Patrick, Mary Briscoe about one year in and give us your take on the first year and which what things have particularly struck you?
Katie Prejean McGrady	It's been interesting to see him kind of settle in to the role of Pope. I talked on that podcast about when he came back from his first couple of days at Castel Gandolfo. It was very evident that one he'd gotten Catholics refitted like they fit him a little better. And if you think about the fact that, like, one day he can walk around in a clerical suit unknown to anybody, and the next day you are, like, forced to make sure you don't spill on yourself at every turn. Like, that's a, that's a mental shift. And so he got his his first little vacation and came back. And the first big event he had was the jubilee of digital missionaries and influencers. And I watched from my spot as he came out into the crowd and seemed surprised that all the people were so excited to see him. And then later that night, he surprised the young people in Saint Peter's Square. And so as he's settled in and it's been this gradual, I'm the Pope. They're here to see the Pope. Let's do the Pope's job, which is to be this voice on the global stage. He has not been a conflicting voice. He has not been this, you know, like, let's get into this drop down, drag out fight. He said the word peace over 400 times. He's talked quite intentionally about how we can be different on a global stage and the soft power that the Vatican wields, that he is wielding in this gentle but but mighty way, has really been encouraging to see because I think it's in line with his personality. Cardinal Dolan described him to all of us at the Archdiocese of New York. He runs a good meeting, and that doesn't seem like the best compliment in the world to somebody until you realize, yeah, the Pope's in a lot of meetings, like he does need to run a good meeting. And so I've been really struck by he the man is very much still Robert Prevost, but has embraced the shoes of the fisherman, has settled into the white cassock, has has taken up the mantle of needing to preach some hard truths to the world and, I it's inspiring. I've been inspired by all the popes of my lifetime, but I'm really inspired by how the world seems to be listening to this one in a new way.
Ashley	You know, on the topic of tech, this was a topic that came up in the conversation that you moderated. I mean, even just the event itself was made possible by technology. I mean, I we, we take for granted for the fact of like our grandparents, as my husband said the other day, for most of the history of the church, they didn't even know what the Pope will look like. And now we're we're seeing his tweets daily. You know, everything he says is shot across the world instantaneously. But he's clearly got his eye on tech, especially AI. And we have this encyclical coming out. What are you what do you hope that he tackles with this encyclical and and with his focus on this topic.
Katie Prejean McGrady	I loved it. We got the title of this encyclical rather early. That was like a very pointed leak from inside the Vatican. And it wasn't AI bad. It was humanity. Good. Magnifica. Humanity was coming at it from look what human wisdom is. And you, who human beings are in the world, in, in creation, in the order of creation and so I think he's going to come at it from that positive perspective of AI as a tool. This is something the Vatican has been very, very careful about. It's like a machine. Think of it like a microwave. And so I think what he's going to tackle, what I hope he tackles is how do we use it responsibly? How do we use it ethically? How do we ensure it does not harm marginalized populations? I mean, all of these server farms in these AI locations have to take a lot of water that fits very closely in line with everything Francis was saying about the environment, which Leo has still talked about, not as loudly, but is absolutely still on the agenda. So I think he's going to weave together a lot of what we saw in the Francis papacy. But at this current moment where anybody can go to a chat bot, there was a Buddhist monk ordained in an AI robot last week in South Korea. I then found out that the robot, like, went back to the factory. It was totally a publicity stunt to get us all talking about it, but I think he is also not. He's not a noob for lack of a better way to put it. The man still has a phone in his pocket. He wears an Apple Watch so he understands tech. He's still texting, he's still using Duolingo, so I think he can speak about it from a place of authority. You know, we all remember Benedict the 16th sending the first tweet back. And I think it was like oh 7 or 8. They had this giant iPad and all they did was press the button. Oh, that was the biggest technological moment. And now we have Leo being like, hey guys, don't let I do your homework. He said that to the teenagers. They cheered. Every Catholic school should have that in their classrooms. Don't let I do your homework, Pope Leo the 14th. The fact that we'll have in the record a Holy Father speaking about artificial intelligence, talking about tech in this way, I imagine, is just as revolutionary as when Leo, the 13th wrote Rerum Novara and called out unfettered capitalism and called out factories. Everybody's like, wait, the Pope knows about this? Oh yeah, he knows. And he's got something to say.
Betsy	Well, you're kind of at the epicenter of the Catholic podcasting world, and a lot of people go back and forth about people who are online all the time. And this is really unhealthy. And we have a lot of mental health crises with our youth. How do you see your role and the role of people kind of adjacent to you in the conversion or the reversion of, of a lot of especially our young men people are talking about. But really this whole sector, especially the post-Covid years, how does that feel to you?
Katie Prejean McGrady	I'm I'm cautiously optimistic that we have baptized social media now, baptism is forever, right? So I don't know that we've actually won forever the the internet wars and the scrolling because there are still so many negative effects of it, whether it's the constant comparison, especially with young people looking at other people's lives. I heard somebody say once, Gen Z is the first generation that will remember other people's lives more than their own, because we're watching everybody's life like, like a reality show. I mean, just this week, I'm prepping for this family pilgrimage to Rome. My entire my entire algorithm is just roam content, eat here, go there. And I've almost felt. I mean, I've been to Rome many times. I know my way around. I've planned this trip for my family. But social media is making me anxious that I'm going to miss something before I'm even there, before I've even gone and come back. I'm already worried I will have missed out on something, but I think what happens with Catholic content that tries to draw people in in the same way eat at this restaurant content might is that Catholic content is always pointed towards hopefully come to a parish, come to a church, come an encounter, a person. You cannot become Catholic online. You cannot get baptized over a DM, you cannot be confirmed or go to confession by way of a text. It is an in-person, sacramental, tactile experience, and I think it's beautiful to see digital content, whether it's moms posting about how they juggle life and find community that way. So many moms started posting because they were lonely and they just wanted to talk to other moms. And then that draws people in to, oh my gosh, like Catholic motherhood is so beautiful and I can learn things from these other Catholic women all the way to you mentioned young men. There is a boom of young male Catholic influencers who are talking apologetics, who are responding to some of the negative stuff in our culture and kind of pushing back on that, calling that out. And that's that's encouraging to a young man who's looking for something greater than that, elevating their hearts in their minds. And you mentioned we used to never be able to see the Pope as accessibly and as quickly as we do now. There's something about people can see what's coming from Rome for better or worse. It leads to some commentaries. But I also think it gives people the opportunity to like, hey, do you want to know what the Pope said? Go to the Vatican website. We have it. Do you want to read some smart commentary? Here's a collection of people who are writing about it. It'll be careful that it's not being too politicized, but you can actually access it. So I think that access is inviting people to notice is bringing people, hopefully into a church. My worry is that your average parish secretary or your average youth minister, or a person who's, you know, in the trenches of parish life, won't know what to do when people show up and say, I listen to a podcast, I read the Bible in a year, I want to become Catholic. Like they won't know how to meet that moment. So I think that's the next frontier. We hooked them. How do we keep them?
Ashley	Yeah. No, this is a this is a topic we've been exploring with guests because there's a need for ongoing information even after you've come in. Even if you hook them and you bring them into the church to continue to form them, and also as you know, as somebody who's in in the digital world probably understands to help steer them away from some of the the toxic, heretical stuff. And it's out there on, on all the, all the angles, all the sides. Speaking of motherhood, in addition to, being a go to voice on all things church, you also do a lot of writing and speaking about being a mom, mom, life, a lot of stuff that resonates with me. And you wrote a piece recently in the National Catholic Register about a hack that you and your husband have called no spoons. And, I read the piece with keen interest as a, harried mom of five myself. And there's a line in there that I especially loved you. You wrote. While marriage is commonly viewed as a 5050 proposition, adopting an all in 100 100 mindset can be a game changer. What is the no spoons hack and how can it help other married couples?
Katie Prejean McGrady	Yeah, my husband actually brought this into our marriage. He's a teacher. He's an educator, and they had a speaker come in one year for like Professional Development Day who taught teachers the no spoons hack, which was when you are at the end of your rope, you've spooned out everything that you possibly can in your classroom. You just call an audible. You say, I've got no more spoons. I've got a I've got a pivot. I've got a, you know, we're going to put on a movie, we're going to hand him a worksheet, we're going to go outside and hit the reset button because, you know, you have no more to give. So he liked that idea. We started talking about it kind of within our marriage. And it became this recognition of sometimes you're at the end of your rope, or sometimes you have every other attention moment, every other moment of your day has drawn your attention to where the kids are screaming. The the pot of mac and cheese is boiling over on the stove. The ice machine is making this weird noise again, and like, the cat starts vomiting on the rug. These are all things that happened in the past week, and you have to look at each other and be like, I, I have none left in my tank and in marriage where it's give and give and not give and take, there's this recognition of you've given as much as you can. Now it's my turn to give even more. And so it's not this like perfect formula, other than when we can look at each other and be like, I've got like two left. Well, two spoons left. At the end of the day, I'm taking bath time and you're going to do the dishes because you can put your headphones in and listen to a podcast and just be kind of by yourself for a minute, or the story that I told him that piece that particular day. My husband took like one look at me. I said, I have no spoons. He took the kids and just left. He just gave me all I needed was an hour. And in the course of that, like restoration of okay, my brain settles. It's not noisy anymore. I'm not constantly being asked to do a thousand things. I can then actually restore a bit to then turn around and give more. So it's this just this understanding of in marriage. I think sometimes we keep score and we don't mean to like, well, I took the trash out last week so it's his turn or oh, I can't believe he left his shoes out again. Or I'm sure he has plenty of things to keep score against me for. And you're not in a competition in your marriage. You're on the same team. You're running to the same end zone, and sometimes you have to pass the ball off to your teammate. And I that's really changed even how we look at our kids. So like, hey, Rose, how many spoons do you have at the end of school? And she's got none left because it was a tough day. All right. We're gonna take a break. Before we dive into homework. We're going to take a take a walk around the neighborhood. Or, you know what? You can sit on the couch and read whatever you want for 30 minutes with the cat and and just kind of keeping track of one another. We all tend to get very overstimulated in my house. And so it's also just kind of a stimulus check, like how how much has been thrown in your direction, how much more can you take in? What can I do to kind of be that block? And it's worked for us in a decade. We're not perfect, but it's worked for us.
Betsy	So when I started reading the article, I thought, oh, poor thing, she forgot to run the dishwasher.
Katie Prejean McGrady	I have a love hate relationship with my dishwasher. Because it's not. This is going to sound so strange and probably not relevant, but it's not attached to the top of the counter. So if you pull both of the racks out, it tips forward, and I we need to get it fixed. And it's like one of those tasks was like, we got to do that. We got to we need to call a contractor to do it. My husband can't do it, so I hate it. I just wash it. My hand because I'm annoyed by it.
Betsy	So we have a few minutes left, but I just wanted to say summer is upon us. It sounds like you have an epic trip planned. We do? But a lot of people are navigating what to do. Do you? What are some tips that you might be able to give people about the lazy days of summer, when you're not going to be in Rome?
Katie Prejean McGrady	Yeah. So we have a philosophy of two things a day, one thing in the morning, one thing in the afternoon, and then try to, like, set our kids up for getting to pick one of those things. And then we pick one of those things. So sometimes it's a summer camp. We try to go to daily mass during the summer. That became something that we really got into that last year. My kids came with me for a conference, and they got to go to daily mass every day of this conference, and then we came home. They came with me to another conference. They're like, mom, mass is fun. My kids had never said mass was fun. I was like, we're taking advantage of this. So summer is a great time to go to noon mass or 530 mass. And I don't have to worry about the homework that's looming or bedtime. But we try. We try to give our kids plenty of times for lazy boredom because that's when creativity happens. That's when fun happens. And my kids are at an age where I can say, go outside and don't come back in unless you're bleeding. So they're at an age where they can occupy themselves to some point. But I also think summer is such a great time as families to, like, try out some of those things you've never had the chance to do. Like, it's hard for us to fit in an evening rosary at 7:00 when it's just been chaos. But hey, like that might be something you can do in the summertime because bedtimes a little later and that's like over Catholic is your summer, but it is America. 252 we're also taking a bit of an America road trip, and we're going to hit up some of the big, like the Constitution and stuff is coming to Houston. So we're going to that with our kids, like they're flying archive things around the country. I'm a nerd, so I'm like, we're doing America 250 history things. But my husband also just changed jobs. He's no longer in the classroom. He's an admin, so he has to go to the office this summer. It's the first time he's had a job during the summer. So I'm we're like, pray for us because we're navigating this new routine of of dads not on demand to entertain kids the whole time.
Ashley	We'll definitely be praying. And I'm in the same boat with five kids and some are barreling towards me. But you're you're so right that it's a great time to reset. And certainly, with how digitized childhood is, how scheduled childhood is it? It's it's okay to not have a schedule. Yeah. Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can our listeners follow your different podcast? You have multiple and, where can they find you on social media?
Katie Prejean McGrady	Yes, I'm Katie P McGrady on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. And then I have a Substack where we post just kind of a rundown of what we talked about on the Sirius XM show. That's the main way. 730 to 10 Eastern Time on Channel one, 29 on Sirius XM, and then we post our best clips from that show. On more McGrady with Katie. Just a free podcast, and we have a new series about reading and Catholicism, starting with other explorers and a couple of weeks, so I'm super pumped about that. It's basically a fancy Catholic book club, and we're inviting everybody to join us so you can find that wherever you get your podcasts.
Ashley	Amazing. Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to conversations with consequences. Now on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire.
Betsy	And I'm Betty Fentress.
Ashley	And last week we had the pleasure of speaking with Marguerita mooney Clayton about her new book, When Mary Calls and the foreword of the book was actually written by Tammy Peterson, wife of Jordan Peterson, who really came to the Catholic faith as she was facing a cancer diagnosis and a friend of hers broached the idea of praying the rosary. So we actually asked Margarita about Tammy's conversion, and she explained how their friendship really began after she entered the church. I became friends with Tammy because of her newfound interest in Catholicism, which came really through Mary. So I first met Tammy just a couple of months after she received confirmation in the Catholic Church. And what really struck me when I interviewed her, one, she has this maternal, warm presence. We just talked and talked and talked off camera for like hours. But what got me about her story was that I think one aspect of it that is often underestimated is that she really resisted. She had a miraculous healing in the hospital from cancer. She learned to pray the rosary. She was reading scripture, but she didn't want to join a church initially because she struggled with the whole concept of authority. But at some point she realized, as she describes to me, that in order to keep alive, that that exuberant faith and hope that she encountered in her miraculous cure from cancer, she needed to commit to daily practices. And then she realized that to keep up those daily practices, she needed community. And then she realized that community has hierarchy and it has authority, and that she couldn't just stay on the margins of church and community authority because it didn't suit her personality or something. So she gave herself the task of meeting a Catholic priest who guided her section by section through the catechism. And she found, actually, that every single line of the Creed was something that she could understand and affirm. And so she says that Mary led her to Christ and that that desire to know Christ led her to the church and led her to the Catholic Church with its creeds and with its sacraments. But that journey took her five years. And when I met her, she was still at the beginning of this journey. And in many ways she still is learning. And so Mary's maternal love was essential to her. But it was, as she describes, a sign pointing her to what she really needed, which was Christ with his church and his mother.
Betsy	And so this journey actually, that was really five years in the making for Tammy all began with Mary, as Margarita said. And so Mary's maternal love was essential to her. But it was, as she describes, a sign pointing her to what she really needed, which was Christ with his church and his mother.
Ashley	And I really think that summarizes the theme or what it is that Margarita is trying to accomplish, which is to help people understand that that is the role of Mary in the church, which is to point people to Jesus. And so it's incredibly powerful to see how Tammy was grappling with that. With Mary, even as a little girl asking, where is Mary? And that she needed Mary because she needed Mary's maternal presence to understand that as a woman and a mother, that her sacrifices were really meaningful to God. Like that that blew her mind. Now she practice New Age kind of Buddhist inspired meditation, but there's frankly no dignity of motherhood or the body. It's it's about escaping the body. And so Mary's maternal embodiment resonated so much more with the bodily sacrifices that mothers make of giving birth, but also of giving up sleep and of nursing a sick child, giving up a career, giving up the capacity to earn money. And here's Christianity telling her that all of those sacrifices are a sign of love. And what is exactly what God has called her to do. And she never felt worthy for having made those sacrifices. And she says it's because she had imbibed new spirituality with feminist politics that if you don't have a public influence, you're nothing. And her mission is now to reach women who maybe got pulled in through one or another. Understanding that to be a real woman is to have kind of public power and to realize that that's great if that's what God's calling you to. But the power of motherhood and the private, simple acts of everyday love and obedience, scriptures tell us, is more powerful than the public power.
Betsy	So you see that Tammy begins to realize, as Marguerita says, that she needed Mary's maternal presence to understand that as a woman and a mother, that her sacrifices were really meaningful to Mary. How that actually blew her mind. You know, as a cradle Catholic, Mary has just been part of my life from day one, and these are reminders when I hear these testimonials, a treasure that I don't always recognize is such a gift, this deposit of faith through Mary know.
Ashley	And, you know, as a convert, it's Mary has really helping to deepen my faith over the years, I had to learn how to pray the rosary. I had to ask a friend, hey, how do you pray the rosary? And, the Rosary has become a beautiful part of my life, and I was recently doing a study group through my church on, The Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. And to the point of things blowing your mind. This is so simple, but it was so illuminating to me. Somebody in one of these studies that we were doing pointed out that Mary was in the actual presence of Christ when she prayed. So there's just nobody who can better understand what it's like to be close to Christ. And that is her role is to help bring us closer to Christ. And it's so beautiful to see the way this clearly unfolded in Tammy Peterson's life, especially as she was facing this very daunting cancer diagnosis.
Betsy	As Margaretta points out, Ashley, it was through the rosary that Tammy's heart opened to Mary. It helped her to endure her cancer diagnosis and apparent healing. And we just pray as we have learned so much from these conversion stories, that Mary is alive and well and helping so many understand what God really wants for our lives.
Ashley	It's it's so true. And, her her witness is is beautiful and really does reflect again the themes that were Margarita's book, which is that Mary is very much alive. She's very much a part of deepening so many people's faith lives. So what a beautiful witness. To learn more about the Catholic Association, visit the Catholic association.org to follow everything we do in radio, TV, print, online and in our local communities. Welcome to conversations with consequences. Now on EWTN radio on your host, Ashley McGuire. And I'm thrilled to have with me today Leah Libresco Sargeant back on the show. She is a Catholic convert known for her book Arriving at Amen, and she now lives in the DC area with her husband and three kids. Her recent book, out last year, is called The Dignity of Dependents A Feminist Manifesto. Welcome back to the show, Leah. Great to have you.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	Thank you for having me on.
Ashley	So I read with keen interest a piece you wrote, just this week in the Dispatch. It's called Ideal Family size often changes. Just ask the Vances. And I love the way you open it, contrasting the different ways that, Mr.. And Mrs. Vance have talked about their decision to have a fourth child. But you talk about, people, I think couples being maybe more open minded than we sometimes think, are couples. Is this a new thing? Are people more open minded to being a little bit adventurous about family size?
Leah Libresco Sargeant	No. I think this is kind of a persistent pattern, which is that most people don't have totally firm plans about their fertility, and you can get a distorted view when you ask them in a narrow way. So one of the things that I discuss in the piece is that there was a study where they asked people, are you currently trying to get pregnant? And you're, yes. No, I don't know. And about 2% of women said, I'm not sure. But when they ask the question differently, yo, are you trying to get pregnant? Wouldn't mind getting pregnant? Don't know. Wouldn't mind avoiding trying to avoid then ten times as many women 22%. Given the ambivalent answer so people can lean in one direction or the other, but often don't have a totally firm plan about what happens next and are prepared to be a little surprised. Either way. And I think what's really a shame is when people kind of feel pressured into making a bright line decision when that isn't how they feel, and either up for sterilization or a long term, you know, semi reversible contraceptive. When people say, well, if you're not actively 100% affirmatively trying, then by default it should be no.
Ashley	Right? You mean you talk about something that I've certainly experienced a lot as a mom of five, which is, the expression or the question, are you done? Yes. Or I don't know if you've had this experience, but I get it in like grocery stores and things. People. It actually started for me. I had I had a girl and then a boy, and I couldn't believe how many times people say, oh, so you're done. Where does that mentality come from.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	You know I think it's noticing it's like and a desire for the world to be simpler than it is in some ways. Right. That people think, well if, if everyone's just trying to get a boy or a girl then fertility questions are easy. Like once you have them, you can stop. Not well, you probably don't really know yet whether you want to stop, even if that was your goal to have a boy and a girl or whatever proportions you need, a little more time to see what your life is like. You know, I've had friends get asked while pregnant, right? So it's a friend of mine who has three girls and is pregnant with a boy and someone looking at her belly hearing it's boy like, so now are you done? She's like, I'm still pregnant. Like. And I think it's really helpful to say, you know, for everyone, you really don't have to decide while you have a newborn whether or not you feel done or what you think your spacing could or should look like. For one thing, for most though, not all women, you you can't get pregnant right after you come home from the hospital. So the question of are you done is really irrelevant. And by the time it becomes relevant again, you'll know more than you do now about how you feel about getting pregnant again.
Ashley	And when you talk about natural family planning, and maybe a bit more, adventurousness or I like to say something like excited at the idea of being surprised. But I think a common criticism of natural family planning is that it's inefficient. I've also heard the counter argument that actually people who are practicing natural family planning are kind of, by definition, a bit more open to the adventure. Do you think that's true?
Leah Libresco Sargeant	You know, I think there's also various a lot in terms of how reliable particular method is for you. You know, some people have very regular, predictable cycles with clear signs. They feel like, well, NFP takes almost all the ambiguity out. And my husband and I always feel like we know what's going on and we're in control. And their neighbor down the street make it like that's that's really not how NFP feels at all for us. You know, we get ambiguous signs and we're we're constantly living not know. Well, this is the fertile time and this is the infertile time saying like, well, a lot of our time is spent in the possibly fertile time. And we have to decide, do we want to or be cold to make the sacrifice of abstaining for a lot of the time, because there's some real impediment that makes it dangerous or impractical to get pregnant right now? Or are we using some of these semi usable times and seeing what happens? You know, and it's a little funny because of course, you know, contraception, contraception can also fail. But I think with NFP you have more of a sense of like, okay, well this is kind of an unambiguously like if we if we make love tonight, we're very open to life, you know, based on the science setting. And this is the period, you know, in the later luteal phase where it'd be shocking to get pregnant. But I think all couples who are really experiencing NFP as a dialog, not just that, just a sense of rules, will have this one say like, well, we're probably not going to get pregnant if we use this day. But if we do use this day and we go back to our instructor and say, well, now we're pregnant instruction and be like, well, that really wasn't an unambiguous day to use. And I think that's kind of helpful within a marriage. So you can say like, I don't think we should actively seek pregnancy in a really deliberate way at this time. And I don't want our lives to revolve around seeking pregnancy, but I'm okay with a 5% chance of a baby. That seems like it kind of meshes well with where we are in our level of readiness.
Ashley	You you also tease out a little bit of the sex differences in the way men and women, experience this differently, and I once heard somebody, woman from an older generation make a point that I've never forgotten. She said, you know, she grew up in the time before there was any kind of reliable contraception. And she just said there was no there was no planning. You just you got married and the babies came and you didn't know how many were going to come, and you didn't know when they were going to come. And her argument and interestingly, she was not Catholic, she was Jewish. Her argument was that contraception has put the burden of planning on women all the anxieties about am I ready, you know, things like that. And in your article, you cite Guttmacher, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, and their own studies, discovering that they should be targeting men. So talk a little bit about the differences between how men and women, experience, openness or lack of openness or maybe it's just different for everybody.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	Yeah. I think what's really hard in any relationship is both both parts of the couple feel like the woman is the gatekeeper of this, right? Where she's always the one saying, no. The man is always saying like, can we, can we? And she says, no. And I think even within, you know, good Catholic marriage, you can have that challenge of this. The woman is the one charging it feels like she's the one who's in charge of saying, well, now we're allowed, now we're not. And I think in the best scenarios, it is always a collaborative conversation between both partners.
Ashley	Right.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	You know, the way I think about it is I'm never in a position to say, like, we absolutely cannot have sex. We absolutely can't. I'm saying, like, here's what the data says about what may happen if we do this, then it's up to us. NFP can't tell us we're not allowed to do something. It can tell us about what may happen if we do. And then we decide, you know, a chart is not in charge of our lives. Which I appreciate. You know, Guttmacher has kind of the observation that in couples where either partner feels kind of ambiguous about having kids, men are more likely to kind of let contraception go once they're in that ambiguous state. And I think that's particularly when it's, you know, they say male dominated contraception, things like condoms rather than the pill that men are more likely to say, well, I'm, I'm kind of open for a baby and be the one who starts to opt out in the couple of contraception, though even then, of course, that is a conversation the couple is having. It can't be a unilateral choice.
Ashley	So you also, you reference your own painful experience with miscarriage. And I've just seen, even in the last decade, a real shift. It seems like, with the public in terms of, you know, where it's once natural family planning was sort of scoffed at as backwards or Vatican roulette. It seems like actually, with a more open conversation about infertility and miscarriage, there also seems to be a more cultural openness to, the approaches that the Catholic Church really pioneered, to understanding women's fertility. In the context of infertility. Are you seeing that and are you what do you think are some of the kind of key advances? If so, in that.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	Yeah, I think a couple things are kind of driving more attention here. One is kind of the overlap between kind of the tech quantified self movement, where people are just more interested in knowing about their bodies in particular, not just the aggregate or average bodies of people who are already tracking their sleep or already tracking their blood glucose levels, like, oh well, what? Why wouldn't I track my cycle? Doesn't that tell me something about how my body is functioning and how I can best steward my body? And you'll see some of those same interests coming from the more crunchy Maha side, where it's the sense both of I'm genuinely curious about my body, and I'm suspicious of homogenized, one size fits all medicine. I want to look at something that's really responsive to my body as it is, rather than tailored to an average body, and then wants to change me to fit the average. And I think, you know, in both cases that impulses sound. And NFP really has expanded to meet both those desires.
Ashley	Yeah. Another thing I've seen you, talk about on social media engaging in this, conversation has been about, a mismatch between, you know, in the in the context of the conversation about, you know, family planning, a mismatch between the number of kids that women have and the number of kids that they want to have. What do you think is is the cause or the causes, for that delta?
Leah Libresco Sargeant	Well, you know, the gap is about half a child per woman, which, of course doesn't mean that every woman wishes they had a half child. But when you kind of sum up the kids women are having versus the kids they want on average is a gap of about half a child per woman between people's hoped for family size and what they're actually getting. And, you know, I think that's really driven by a couple things. And one of the most simple is there's a big decline in marriage. Marriage is happening to fewer people and for the people, for whom it's happening, it's happening later in life. And that just makes it harder to have the family size you hope for. The later you start, the harder it is. And if you really hope for marriage and don't succeed at getting married at all, of course, children are much harder to come by for very natural reasons. So I think of that fertility crunches being mostly downstream of the decline in marriage. You know, married fertility has actually stayed pretty stable. A lot of the fertility gap is driven by a decrease in unmarried childbearing. And, you know, I don't regret I don't think it is an unhealthy thing that fewer people are choosing to have kids out of wedlock. But when more and more people aren't achieving the marriages they hoped for, that's boxing them out of kids as well.
Ashley	Interesting. So and what about I mean there's just been so much it almost feels like a kind of a merry go round conversation about the birth rate. And you know, some people are advocating that we need to fix this with policies. There's also a real allergic response to that, especially among some conservatives saying, no, this is entirely a social question, but what are your thoughts on that? I mean, is that, how how do we begin to start to, at a minimum, shape hearts and minds into viewing children as a gift? And then and also another thing I keep seeing is, is a real sense of fear and worry about bringing children into this world. And how do we both meet people where they are and understand that those fears, but also convince them that children are a gift?
Leah Libresco Sargeant	Yeah. So part of how we think about the state's role in this is obviously the state can't close the fertility gap by itself. You know, no one really maybe a couple of wonks in D.C. and they'd be the only one says, I really want to have a baby to stabilize the Social Security trust. Like, right. Like that's that's a legitimate thing for people at the federal government level to think about. But it doesn't motivate anyone to have kids, and it shouldn't. I think what's encouraging when it comes to public policy is the existence of that fertility gap. So if you want to see the fertility rate go up, you're not relying on twisting anyone's arm or trying to coerce people into changing their hopes about their family size. For the most part, you're trying to say, how can I lower barriers so that people are freer to have the kids they're already hoping for, but are having trouble having? And there I think there are things you can do at the Federal policy level, you know, that range from kind of how you approach family tax and benefits. You know, how you approach housing and zoning to make it easier for families to move into a house where they feel comfortable starting a family. So all of that is kind of lowering barriers. And then on the culture side is, I think, where you get the pull factors that make having a child attractive, that make people think, you know, this is a good time and place to have children. I'm part of a community where many people I know and like, or having kids where I'm confident that someone will watch my two year old when I go to the hospital. So I'm not frightened about, am I isolated? This is too much to do alone. That's on the culture side, but lowering barriers is on the policy side.
Ashley	Well, Europe has been experimenting with this, and my sense is that it's a bit on the inconclusive side as to whether or not this has really increased birth rates. What have you seen any any successful policy measures I know we're going to talk about here in the United States, but outside of the United States, where they've been trying to address this, you know, for at least a decade or two that have worked or that you think would work well here.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	So there are policies that are working, but they tend to be modestly helpful and have a modest impact. So if you have something like a newborn credit, a baby bonus if you expand family tax benefits, you will see a modest increase. I just feel like, well, it's not working. It's not taking you up to replacement rate. I'm like, well, you didn't spend very much money. So, you know, if you're saying this tax credit is worth a thousand more a year, I don't think you should expect hundreds of thousands of babies as a result of that. But you will move some people off the fence or really off and give people permission to go for the baby that they want, but maybe didn't feel that they had the room to go for. So I would say they're working, but they're modest in what you spend and modest in impact. One of the unusual ones I think has had a bigger impact is actually in France. It's the caregiver credit. So France has a pension system that's different from our social security system. But one thing that they had in common is that in the U.S., if you take time out of the workforce to care for your kids or care for your parents as they're aging, you kind of get a double whammy to your retirement. You're not making money that year that you are unable to save. And when you retire, you have this year that zeroed out when it counts to your Social Security or your pension. And what France did is they fixed half of that. They said, okay, well, when you take a step back from the workforce, it's true. You have no wages, but we are going to count a caregiving year as though it were waged at a lower level for the sake of your pension, because what you're doing is important. We don't want to treat this as though it is an unproductive year. We want to count it in our retirement system, and that has produced a little fertility bump.
Ashley	Well, certainly it's been a priority for the white House. And this week they launched a new website mom.gov. But you have your eye on a different bipartisan act, the Supporting Newborn Parents Act of 2026. What is this, piece of legislation and what do you like about it?
Leah Libresco Sargeant	So it's a $2,000 newborn credit for parents. This is $2,000 that almost all parents would get right after the baby is born. I think it's really good because it complements kind of a gap in our family policy generally. So I've had 2nd January babies, which means I'm entitled to the child tax credit and some other family benefits. But with January babies, that tax credit comes a year and a quarter after my babies are born. And this is something that really gets parents over that immediate financial turbulence right after a baby, $2,000 right away. And it's good because, you know, every parent has something that's a little hard to manage there. You know, for some parents, it might be just the diapers very straightforwardly, you know, getting. Yeah, expensive getting new supplies like a car seat or a crib for some parents. I think what will mean a lot to them is that if this passes, you might be able to take the FMLA leave that's unpaid, that you've earned, that's job protected leave, but you can't afford to take unpaid. And so this could help cover the cost of taking the leave you need. So it's really flexible. It lets each parent pick the right choice for their family. And I'm really happy to see that it's bipartisan. You know, it's led by, Representative Valido Swasey, Moore and Dingell. So you've got two Democrats and two Republicans who are all saying, okay, I think we can do a little better by families than what we're doing right now. And we can recognize that that period after birth is really critical. For parents to get through those first few months and find their way to a new normal.
Ashley	Well, and it's certainly, I would think, would help more families who are at least open to the idea of being surprised or, changing their thinking about what they originally thought was their ideal family size to have a little bit more flexibility. So, Leah, thank you so much for joining today to give us your insights. To learn more about her work, you can visit Leah Le Briscoe at Scratch That. Please visit Leah Le briscoe.com and to find out more about the Catholic Association and follow everything we do in radio, TV, print or online, visit the Catholic Association. Org Leah, thank you so much.
Leah Libresco Sargeant	My pleasure.
Betsy	Welcome back to conversations with consequences, where we are joined by our TCA chaplain, Monsignor Roger Landry, who is also the National director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States. Monsignor, we're looking forward to celebrating Pentecost. But before we get there, we have another special feast along the way. Can you talk to us about Ascension Thursday and its importance in preparing our hearts for Pentecost?
Msgr Landry	So Ascension was 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead. There's a little bit of a confusion in the United States because outside of the northeast in Nebraska, the bishops of those various regions have pretended as if Ascension Thursday happened on a Sunday. And that can be confusing, especially for a priest like me who travel sometimes. I travel from a place that celebrates Ascension on Thursday, and I'm in a place that celebrates it on Sunday, so I miss it on Ascension Thursday. And then I come back to the northeast, where we celebrated on Thursday, and we have the seventh Sunday of Easter. And so I'll miss it in both locations or sometimes I celebrate it twice in the course of four days. But yeah, the U.S. bishops back about 40 years ago now decided to translate a few of the fixed feasts like epiphany, like Corpus Christi, like Ascension Thursday to the closer Sunday, so that more people would be able to, profit from those mysteries. And underlying that means that people weren't going to mass as they should on holy days of obligation. But, where I am, we still celebrate on Thursday, but everybody in other parts of the country will be celebrating either on Thursday or Sunday. And there's such richness behind it. Jesus wanted to return to where he ultimately belongs to his father. That's where he belongs. And he rose as Pope Benedict used to like to say, focusing on Saint Luke's, verb tense and the Greek. He rose in the very act of perpetually blessing us. So he's gone to the father's right side to intercede and to bless us, to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. It was as he was ascending that he gave us what we call the Great Commission, that he trusted us enough, that he was going to, give us the completion of his mission on Earth. It was an option for Jesus to stay with us always until the end of time. He easily could have done that. Say, the souls that are at stake are too much for me to give you guys all the responsibility for it. But he didn't. He went to the father's right side, and he took our training wheels off, and he sent the Holy Spirit to help us. But he gave us the responsibility of sharing our faith to the very ends of the earth. I love the story of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Cardinal George was an oh, am I the former Archbishop of Chicago in my hometown of Little Massachusetts. We had six different of my parishes, but the all my eyes heard that word to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. And so they asked the question, where are the ends of the earth? And they said, well, one of the ends of the earth is the North Pole. And so they went all the way to the North Pole, a whole bunch of these missionaries. It's freezing like crazy up there. But they got to the North Pole, and they read the sacred scriptures aloud so that they weren't nervous. Nobody else around, but they wanted to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth. And so that's the type of zeal we're supposed to have to share the gospel with every creature. And Jesus at his ascension was entrusting us with that mission, and that should continue to blow our mind. And then the third thing he said is go back into the city and pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit about which I've spoken to you. And so after the Ascension, they return to the upper room, where, 43 days before, Jesus had given them his body and blood, in 40 days before he had appeared risen from the dead. And they prayed, and they prayed, and they prayed. Jesus didn't tell them how long they were going to be praying. He prayed that first day in the Holy Spirit didn't come. Second day he didn't come. Probably he was coming on the third day, as I like to think, because he rose in the third day. But no, on the third day, fourth through the ninth days, nothing. Finally, on the 10th day, he came down in that twofold image of the strong driving wind and the tongues of fire. And so they were praying close to Mary as she was teaching them how to get ready to correspond to the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, just like she had at Jesus's Annunciation and beyond. And so, it's also a time for us to pray. And the church has a practice we call the deaths in our home or in our home of the Holy Spirit. This ten days of prayer saying, come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful with the fire of your love. And so it really is one of the most intense and beautiful periods of prayer throughout the church's year. I'd encourage everyone listening to us from Ascension Thursday, even if you're celebrating it on Sunday, but from May 14th this year, all the way through May 24th, Pentecost, that you would say some different type of prayer to the Holy Spirit could be the Creator Spirit to us, which is translated in English. Come Creator Spirit, the sequence of Pentecost, which is the very same day spirit as the Come Holy Spirit. There are the prayers like the one I love to say, Come Holy Spirit, for the love, but for the heart of your faithful with the fire of your love, etc. or it could just simply be the three words come, Holy Spirit, but really be asking for the Holy Spirit to come, so that on Pentecost we're like dry wood ready to be ignited.
Betsy	We just have a little bit of time left. But tell us how Mary fits into the Pentecost in a way that maybe when we're praying the Rosary and the Ascension, that particular time, what are some of the pictures we can have in our mind as we pray?
Msgr Landry	Mary is the great teacher of prayer, and she taught the first followers of Jesus in those ten days in the upper room how to pray. She was probably leading, but we call today Alexios Divina. But it would have been in a margin echo divina at the time, because she was going to be describing Jesus earliest days. What happened with the Archangel Gabriel? What happened in Nazareth, in Egypt, in Bethlehem, Mary would have been talking about all of those types of things to them, informing their prayer. She would have been teaching them the child likeness by which we need to open ourselves up to God's action, as well as the responsiveness. Like we don't know how to pray, but the Holy Spirit of Saint Paul tells us, teaches us to pray as we are not helping us to cry out, ABBA, father! And so Mary's that great teacher. Prayer. The first members of the church huddled around her during these ten days of prayer. And we're so wise, especially in this month of May, dedicated to Mary. To huddle around her to the Rosary is a great means by which we can ponder with her all those mysteries of her son's life. There are other prayers that we can be asking, and we can even say in her, in our own simple words, Mary, mother, please pray for me that I might be as responsive to the Holy Spirit as you. What a beautiful prayer that would be.
Betsy	Thank you so much, Monsignor Landry. Happy ascension came to you.