On this episode, Chris is joined by Katy Faust, Founder and Director of Them Before Us, an organization formed to advance and defend the primacy of children’s rights above adult desires. Chris and Katy unpack the issue of surrogacy, a process by which a child is deliberately subjected to mother-loss. Katy shares that only 7% of children created in vitro will survive — the rest die, are destroyed, or are indefinitely frozen. Unlike adoption, in which mother-loss sadly occurs as a result of a broken situation, surrogacy deliberately manufactures mother-loss as a feature of the contract. Industry advocates want you to believe “the kids will be fine,” but Katy knows the kids aren’t “fine.” By their own testimony, later in life the kids express feelings of genealogical bewilderment, commodification, and guilt surrounding the financial and eugenic aspects of their creation.
Faith & Politics
F&P Episode: 101 – Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World
On this episode, Chris hosts Dr. Michael Naughton professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas and author of Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World. They discuss 'leisure'....and no, they're not talking about polyester wide-lapeled suits from the 70's. Drawing from the definition articulated by the 20th century German Thomist Josef Pieper, leisure is "an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world" as it truly is. Mischaracterized as "wasting time," it is fundamentally about being, not doing, in a way that our hearts and minds become more open to the good. At the core of leisure is Sunday, the Lord's Day. In order to get Monday right, Dr. Naughton argues, we must first get Sunday right. The conversation draws on Pieper's famous 1947 book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture.