Today, Dr. Michael Dauphinais sits down with Dr. Julia Sadusky, Catholic author, speaker, and licensed psychologist, to talk about issues relating to sexuality and gender. During their conversation, they also discuss related themes such as how to balance sensitivity and honesty in this area and how to talk about sex and sexuality with your children.
How can faithful Catholics understand and contribute to the widespread conversation about sexuality and gender?
Today, Dr. Michael Dauphinais sits down with Dr. Julia Sadusky, Catholic author, speaker, and licensed psychologist, to talk about issues relating to sexuality and gender. During their conversation, they also discuss related themes such as how to balance sensitivity and honesty in this area and how to talk about sex and sexuality with your children.
Resources:
God doesn't just teach us how to talk about people in a way that honors them and honors ourselves.
He teaches us how to look at people, how to receive them and how to receive our own bodies, how to be in our bodies, be embodied in ways that bring glory to God.
Welcome to the Catholic Theology Show, presented by Ave Maria University.
This podcast is sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle, a community that supports the mission of Ave Maria University through their monthly donations of $10 or more.
If you'd like to support this podcast and the mission of Ave Maria University, I encourage you to visit avemaria.edu/join for more information.
I'm your host, Michael Dauphinais, and today I am joined by Dr.
Julia Sadusky, who is an alum of Ave Maria University.
I think you graduated back in 2013, is that right?
That's correct.
That's great.
Well, welcome to the show.
We are thrilled to have you here.
Thank you.
I'm so happy to be here.
That's great.
Now you went on and earned a doctorate of psychology from Regent University.
I think you spent both, I think you did a master's first, is that right?
And worked for a little in the field and completed your PsyD in 2019.
And now you're an author, speaker, licensed psychologist.
You own a Luke's Counseling and Consulting in Littleton, Colorado, offering individual family couples therapy in addition to consultations for individuals and families surrounding sexuality and gender.
You also work as a youth and ministry educator.
Also, in addition to all this, in your spare time, you've co-authored a book called Emerging Gender Identities, Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today's Youth, which is with Brazos Press, part of Baker Academic.
And you've also published two new books with Ave Maria Press, one called Start Talking to Your Kids About Sex, A Practical Guide for Catholics, and another one, Talking with Your Teen About Sex, A Practical Guide for Catholics.
I will say we're a big fan of the books, and I actually am, my wife and I wrote a blurb, an endorsement of Talking with Your Teen About Sex, A Practical Guide for Catholics with Ave Maria Press.
So these are really great books, I think great resources.
And so I just thought, how wonderful to get a chance to promote your recent books, Talking with Your Kids, Talking with Your Teens About Sex, A Practical Guide for Catholics.
And I also wanted to use this as a time to talk a little bit about sexuality and gender as a whole, because it seems that so many people today are confused, and even more than being confused, I find many people are afraid.
They're afraid to even talk or think about the subject, afraid that if they say the wrong thing, they might get canceled, somebody will yell at them, or that they might really hurt somebody.
I think a lot of people might also, they realize people are, they might have family members that are suffering with gender dysmorphia, or confusion, or same-sex attraction, or might be, you might have family members that are transitioning or different things.
And so I think a lot of people are really kind of nervous about how do we speak about this in a way that is loving, understanding, compassionate, while also trying to open up our minds to deepen our understanding of what is the reality that somehow we're created man and woman, even though our experiences of masculine and femininity are often very confused and very wounded.
Often we've been really harmed by maybe societies, often misunderstandings of man and woman, and there is a lot of hurts and wounds.
I loved, by the way, the fact that when you started the book about talking with your teens about sex, you said, before you talk to your teens about sex, you have to dress your own wounds.
If you don't, you will communicate those wounds to your children.
So maybe before we kind of dive in to some of the more controversial aspects, just how did you get interested in writing these books on talking with your kids and teens about sex?
And maybe how did you get interested in focusing on sexuality and gender as a primary focus of your psychological practice and work?
Yes, so I love sharing this because it's not an obvious area for me to step into.
I'm a people pleaser by nature, and you can imagine that sexuality and gender are not an obvious place to go if you want people to like you.
So I went to Ave Maria for undergrad, studied theology of the body there, and I remember being really interested in psychology and human relationships at that time.
So did my thesis on the hookup phenomenon and how does the hookup encounter impact the future expectations people have for relationships?
So I was already thinking at that time about sexuality more broadly.
And then I came across Mark Yarhouse's work, who's a Christian psychologist who specializes in sexuality.
Around the same time that I had people in my life sharing with me same-sex attraction, and they were Catholics and they were wondering how to not live in shame around sexuality and also how to be faithful to Catholic teaching.
And honestly, that just spurred me on my own journey of trying to understand how are Christians called to accompany people in this space around sexual orientation and questions around sexual attraction.
And I went to Regent to do that research and to do that work.
And then gender really rose to the forefront of the cultural space that we are now in.
And at the same time, I was being supervised by a specialist in gender, Mark.
So suddenly about half of my caseload was people navigating gender dysphoria.
And it became more about stewardship for me that I had been learning a lot about this experience.
And I didn't see anybody in the intersection of faith, sexuality and gender other than my mentor who was doing work in this area that I respected.
And so honestly, I just stayed in this area and I was doing youth ministry at the time.
Later on, I came across a lot of people through other work I've done with eating disorders and in complex trauma, treatment settings, that there's a lot that is getting miscommunicated or not being communicated about human sexuality that has very little to do with what we're talking about a lot, which is gender.
And it became more and more evident as I work with Christian families that we are not better at this than other communities.
In fact, sometimes we have our own challenges with reducing shame around sexuality by virtue of some of the ways that we talk about it in our circles.
And so these books were a first crack at being proactive instead of reactive.
As a psychologist, a lot of what I do is helping people after harm.
And I'm trying to think more now about what can we do on the front end to help protect kids from harmful messaging and to really offer a Catholic ethic in a robust way.
I love that you deal with that question of shame.
There's a image from John Vianney, who's a saint of the Curateurs.
And anyway, people are going to confession in his church one day, and he looks out.
He was famous as a confessor, and people would go to him for confession all over the place.
He'd be in confession 16 hours a day, similar to Padre Pio in a way, because he had the gift of reading souls.
Why would you want to go to a confessor who can read your soul?
And the irony is that we're too embarrassed or ashamed to even sometimes admit to ourselves what most burdens us.
And so people would go then and go to confession, and he kind of like would unpack that, that deepest thing of which they're ashamed of.
One time he had an image of these demons that were in the church, tempting his, and he says like, why are you in my church?
And he says, we are giving back to your penitence the shame we took from them when they sinned, so that they will be ashamed to confess their sins.
And I think this dynamism between we want healthy shame, which is I don't do those things because that wouldn't honor myself or my loved ones.
But then once we've done that, then shame is kind of almost shame then becomes of the devil or of the accuser in the satanos, in the biblical version, right, is the accusing one.
And it's the Holy Spirit that's not the accusing one, but is the advocate, the consoler, the comforter, right?
So God comes in and says, really shame off you, right?
So I love this idea of that we really need to find a way to articulate the beauty of the Catholic teaching on sex and marriage, monogamy or celibacy or monogamy, right, for life, exclusively and for children, but also realizing that, right, we will fall countless times, especially, right, because Jesus shows that if we're lustful interiorly, well, we're lustful.
And therefore we also need to have our sins forgiven.
So whether or not it's people that have experienced pornography addiction or pornography just use or sexual encounters outside of marriage or just so many other different things, I think in our culture today, we really have a culture of wounds.
So to present the beauty of the message along with the kind of removing of the shame.
So how can you, how do you do that as a psychologist and also as a youth minister?
Right.
Yes, I mean, so often when I meet with clients, they're so afraid, Christian clients, that efforts to offer compassion, understanding, validation of the longing for whatever drove you, right, to do the thing that was harmful ultimately to you.
People get so defended because it feels like they're so unworthy.
And it also feels like I'm trying to just be dismissive or apathetic or prove of something that they believe is morally wrong, and maybe I believe is morally wrong, right?
So being able to offer compassion and teaching that it's actual self-compassion that motivates us towards behavioral change.
This isn't just an idea in psychology, this is well documented by research, that the more we can offer understanding, curiosity, compassion, we can really make moves towards our values in meaningful ways.
And so it's hooking people in to actually, if you want to change your behavior, or you want to learn to live in value congruent ways, shame that's toxic does not teach you to move forward and toward good things.
It keeps you looking in the rear view mirror.
And so noticing that process of shame, noticing that it actually compels you in the direction you don't want to go, acknowledging that yes, many of us are taught through our parents, through our family who are just limited and still learning that shaming our behavior will make us do better.
And that works in the short term.
And it does not work in the long term.
And that's where we find ourselves I think now.
Wow, that's really beautiful.
I love that it was that self-compassion motivates behavioral change.
Right, learning to love ourselves.
So in these two books, start talking to your kids about sex and start talking to your teen about, talking with your, I like talking to your kids and talking with your teen.
So just tell us a little bit about maybe if listeners here, maybe have younger children or have teens or probably everybody here has, knows, it seems to be like one of the, one of the conversations you don't want to have with your kids or teens is about sexuality, right?
This is a kind of thing that parents are often pretty nervous about.
So what are some practical tips that you offer maybe for some various ages?
Yeah, so the first piece of advice for parents is just pulling for your commitment to have uncomfortable conversations.
These will be uncomfortable with children as is so much of parenting, right?
And so just expecting that there's no need for you to do it only when you're ready.
If you wait till you're ready, you'll never do it.
So being able to start when they're quite young, I always say infant to two, you can start teaching your kid accurate terms for genitalia.
And you can actually practice that when you have a baby, because they won't remember your quivering voice and how awkward you feel saying it out loud, but you're changing a diaper and you can just describe what you're doing.
I'm going to wipe your penis now, and I'm gonna wipe that area of your body, keep that clean.
You're just practicing as a parent.
And it's honestly more for you than for the kid in that moment.
They're not going to remember that, but it's helping build that comfort.
So you can start that zero to two.
And then as they get a little bit older, about two to five, this is a big time for what we call exploratory play, which kids are learning through their senses about different parts of their body and their environment.
So it would be common for kids to start touching parts of their genitalia.
This is a first moment where parents start to panic, especially if parents have their own history of shame around embodiment, own reactions from their parents when they engaged in that type of play.
And it's not to say because it's normative, you don't engage with it.
And you say, oh, good for you, keep doing that.
No, it's you're teaching them what to do with that part of their body and what it's for.
So if I see a child, you know, touching their genital area and they look bored and they're in the car and they're driving, just asking a question about what are you thinking about right now?
Oh, I'm thinking about this game or I'm thinking about this book or whatever, and you know, a five year old and it's, okay, do you notice that you're touching your, let's say, your penis?
You notice you're touching that?
Yeah, okay, what do you like about that?
And do you see, I'm just being curious.
What is that about?
Because that's teaching that child to use that same approach to their behavior is, what am I doing that for?
What's that doing for me?
What do I like about that?
And they may say anything from I'm bored to I'm interested to I'm curious to it feels good.
I mean, they can say all kinds of things.
And then, oh, yep, that makes sense then that you would be touching that part of your body because it's an area you're noticing now and you're curious about it or it feels silly or whatever.
And then it's, wouldn't you know that that part of our body actually has a really important purpose?
That's why we keep it clean.
That's why we cover it.
We cover it to protect it because it's a really good part of our body.
And as you get older, you're gonna get to learn more about your body and what God made it for.
So because it's an important part of our body, we keep it clean and we only touch it when we're cleaning it or when it needs to be looked at by a doctor with mom and dad present.
So what can we do?
What can we come up with to remind you what that area is for?
Because you'll probably touch it again because it is kind of interesting, right?
And that's how you're learning.
So you're doing all of that.
With a five-year-old, you're gonna have to say that more than once, right?
But you can see how you're just setting such a framework for what that part of the body is for, what it's not for, without being punitive and shaming.
And you're also anticipating it will happen again and trying to come up with a plan with your child for how to help them manage that behavior.
Yeah, so that's just a great image.
I love the fact of kind of expressing the curiosity, modeling that, and then also redirecting as well that there's something really beautiful and meaningful in these parts of our bodies, right, and that we'll continue to learn.
So we also want to protect them.
So what then when the, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you have a, I don't know, you know, a 10-year-old, 10-year-old or beyond who's probably exposed to other people that have, you know, beginning to go through puberty, or I suppose a 10-year-old not, but at least they begin to have friends that have, they're maybe looking at stuff online.
What would you say in this kind of preadolescent and then adolescent phase that goes from maybe like 10 to 15?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so at that point, you're really wanting to start, help a young person become aware of their changing body and what that's for, right?
So that's where you can pull out diagrams, and I provide these in the books, to like, here's your reproductive system, and what questions do you have about that?
Now, parents can feel really hesitant to do that because they don't want to violate their child's innocence prematurely.
And so you have to be thoughtful about, you know, what your child's exposure is to, to other kids, to social media, to peers at school.
But for most kids today, it is naive to think we can wait till they're about 12 or 13 to have these conversations.
It's just not where we are anymore.
And so instead of being afraid of saying too much, say something and see what your child is thinking about, about that area.
So maybe asking, you know, this is a time in life where kids start talking about crushes a little bit more, kids sometimes talk about the word sex.
And we've talked about sex being male and female, and that's one meaning of sex.
There's other meanings.
What have you heard at school about sex?
What have you heard online about sex?
What have you heard about this time of life and what's happening to girls' bodies and boys' bodies?
They've heard things.
So get them talking about that and see what questions they have.
And then you can respond to those questions, right?
As opposed to, oh, and I bet you're wondering X, Y and Z.
You don't have to do that.
But around this age, you also do definitely want to initiate conversation about pornography and masturbation for boys and girls, young teen boys and young teen girls.
A lot of times in youth ministry context, we talk about pornography and masturbation as kind of a guy thing.
I've even had female clients share with me, they didn't know what they were doing with self-stimulation because it was always talked about as something guys did in the particular ways that men engage in those behaviors.
So being able to say, have you heard these words?
What have you heard about these words?
What's your understanding about them?
What questions do you have about them?
That's where you can offer, you know, it's not uncommon for kids at this age to start asking other kids, do you do that?
Have you seen this?
Or at different events for kids to even pull out phones and say, let me show you this picture.
And helping kids know what to do with that imagery and who to turn to.
It is unfortunately naive to think kids will not be exposed to these things.
It's what do they do next?
So in the event that that happens, they know there's nowhere else you'd rather them go than to you.
They will not get in trouble.
I think it's about 80% of kids first exposure to pornography is unwanted and unsought out.
So expecting it to be accidental or exposure from somebody else saying, I want you to tell me you will not get in trouble for telling me the truth.
And we can make a plan for what we do next.
That's a beautiful way of expressing it.
And I think trying to foster that sense of trust.
And I think we're kind of in a strange world too, because our children are often between maybe like eight and 12 exposed to so much, just being bullied at school, but being bullied online by schoolmates all the time.
Or even if they don't have a phone, their friends have phones and they tell them what's going on.
Or seeing pornography secondhand at lunch or anywhere.
So it does seem that there's a little bit of almost the parental role that almost has to adopt a kind of...
Maybe, I mean, in a perfect world, maybe it always has this, but it almost seems like it needs to really, we definitely need to pivot in this particular moment.
And perhaps maybe it's always would be good.
But as we're looking at these things, I can just imagine some maybe listeners or different things or young people saying, okay, well, that's all good.
But how do we also tell children that this is the way it ought to be?
Or that sex is really for maybe marriage, or that these sorts of different themes, or that yes, you might feel attracted when you had that sleepover to another girl, and of course, they're not yucky and itchy like the boys, so that's natural, right?
And understandable.
And yet at the same time, maybe that's not gonna make you happy over a lifetime.
Or you know what I mean?
How would you begin to introduce that there's ultimately a normative framework, but that you're not gonna get it from the culture.
You're gonna need to kind of discover it in some sense.
I mean, some people within the culture will see it from time to time, and then not only Christians.
But so like, how do you cover that?
One, being very welcoming, encouraging, you know, no shame, no punishment zone.
And yet at the same time, introduce them to that there are some do's and don'ts.
You know, there are some better ways of managing our sexuality that may be challenging at times, but will ultimately, you know, be more rewarding.
That's right.
Yeah, so one of the things that is really important is anchoring what and how we talk about sexuality and how we talk about all the other teachings that are within a Christian worldview, right?
That sometimes Christians feel overly apologetic to me for our theology, like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm that kind of Christian.
But just to be really owning of the fact that our worldview is different, which means our family is going to have different rules, different expectations, different frameworks.
And you, 10 year old, are going to meet lots of people who have not had the opportunity to receive that.
So we wanna make sure you know with clarity what the things are that God has to say and offer us about so many things, right?
About why is it that at sleepovers, we're not gonna encourage our kids to gossip and we're gonna address that and set boundaries around, hey, you know, you and your friend, I hear you guys talking about somebody in really harsh ways.
As Christians, that's not how we talk about people, right?
That flows really beautifully actually into a sexual ethic that God doesn't just teach us how to talk about people in a way that honors them and honors ourselves.
He teaches us how to look at people, how to receive them and how to receive our own bodies, how to be in our bodies, be embodied in ways that bring glory to God.
And that is what gives us joy.
It's also full of challenges, right?
There are sacrifices, which means we live differently in some ways than others.
By virtue of living differently, it doesn't mean we have to isolate from others, cut off others.
You will have friends who at school talk about maybe they're same-sex parents or, you know.
And because we're Christians, we're gonna hold out the fact that God's plan for sexuality is heterosexual marriage or singleness, right?
It's chastity.
And because we're Christians, we're gonna engage with people who disagree with us on that.
And we're gonna pray for guidance on opportunities to share what we've been given.
That's very beautifully put.
We're gonna take a quick break and we'll come back.
And I wanna dive a little bit more into then kind of this talking with teens and to children about sex.
And maybe kind of we'll move to like the next phase, I think when maybe they're a little bit older, either in high school or in college, and really maybe questioning or making mistakes or perhaps even trying to unpack this whole phenomenon as you called it in your book.
I think it's emerging gender identities, understanding the diverse experience of today's youth.
Because I think even Aristotle would say, if we wanna speak to an audience, we have to understand the audience.
And I do think it's important that we share that message, that we are different, we ought to be different based upon our beliefs.
And yet at the same time, we should not be surprised that other people hold different views and figuring out healthy and helpful ways to interact in that world.
So anyway, we will return after a short break.
You're listening to the Catholic Theology Show, presented by Ave Maria University and sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle.
Through their generous donations of $10 or more per month, Annunciation Circle members directly support the mission of AMU, to be a fountainhead of renewal for the church through our faculty, staff, students and alumni.
To learn more, visit avemaria.edu/join.
Thank you for your continued support, and now let's get back to the show.
Welcome back to the Catholic Theology Show.
I'm with Julia Sadusky, who is a doctor of psychology and the owner of Luke's Counseling and Consulting in Littleton, Colorado, a graduate of Ave Maria University many years ago, and also the author of two books, Talking to Your Kids About Sex, a Practical Guide for Catholics, and the same one from Ave Maria Press, Talking with Your Teen About Sex.
Also the author of a book with Brazos called Emerging Gender Identities, a co-authored book with Mark Yarhouse, Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today's Youth.
So one of the things that I think is really unique about your knowledge of Catholic theology, both from your studies of Ave Maria and your ongoing just knowledge and growth in the faith, allows you to speak about the theology of the body, to speak about issues of sexuality, gender from a philosophical and theological perspective.
But I really appreciate the way that you're able to integrate that with a psychological perspective.
And to help us to understand that many people today are genuinely confused, genuinely experiencing a lot of different, kind of, the surgeon general described an epidemic of loneliness.
Youth mental health reports are, almost every study shows that they're bad.
Right, and we have so many people that are just kind of like struggling to figure out any meaning in work and study and life.
As I said, sometimes people will say that the Catholic Church's teaching on sexuality seems overly strict and harsh.
But one of the things that I think you can sometimes also wonder is the culture's teachings on sexuality are also rather strict and harsh.
If you listen to people's experiences, young people's experiences, they're often in a, has nothing to do with the faith, but they're in a catch-22.
If they don't send pictures, if they don't send nudes via social media or texts, they're prudes, and if they do, then they're easy.
And there's really no middle.
And if the guys watch porn, they're normal.
If they don't, it's just like, and the women struggle with this as well.
I like the fact that one of your, your book was blurbed, by the way, by Rachel Kolacki, another Ave grad, who's the founder of Magdala Ministries, a book, or ministry that focuses on really helping women who struggle with sex and porn addiction find recovery.
But so maybe just kind of as we're entering this world then of like older youth struggling in high school and in college, how do we kind of interact with that generation, maybe as family or friends, aunts, uncles, right?
And in a time when I think people's, when the secular worldview is very dominant as well, which kind of has this rather strong post-modern view, Jean-Paul Sartre said that our essence is not prior to our existence, but our existence is prior to our essence, right?
He says, there's no human nature because there's no God to conceive of it.
So, we have this idea that we really are what we make ourselves to be, and my body is really something I can reshape according to some kind of inner identity.
So, what would you talk about these questions about sexual orientation, sexual identity, maybe a little bit about where did these come from, so that now they've become so common?
I don't know, I think I read some study recently where it was maybe 20% of middle school, I don't know if it was middle school children or middle school girls, but 20% now believe that they are LGBT, Q plus or something.
So, what's involved with sexual identity, sexual orientation, what's been going on?
How do we talk about it?
How do we come to understand it?
Especially maybe for audience members who are, both for younger audience members who are maybe experienced this, but also maybe older audience members that are kind of feel a little bit like they just really don't understand what's going on.
Right, well, as a psychologist, right, I'm always thinking about, yeah, what do we do with our anxieties when we don't know what's going on?
Some of us scoff and mock and tease and belittle.
Whatever it is we don't understand.
Some of us blend with what we don't understand and say, well, I'm just gonna swallow it whole, right?
And so there's a lot in between.
But I think it's worth people asking themselves, you know, yeah, what does this conversation bring up for me?
Because everything I say next, you're gonna filter through how you feel about where we are.
And many people, especially many people not raised in the current generation, are really scared and really protective and feeling really confused and disoriented and some angry, right?
So there's all kinds of things there.
But what I would say is that I think in the current youth generation, what we see is the trickle down effects of moral relativism in a really profound way, postmodern theory and this real eradication of a sense of absolute anything.
There's a removal of a framework and not just a removal of a framework, but the assertion in the most extreme application of this that norms of sex and gender are sources of oppression.
That presents enormous challenges for teaching sexual ethics to this generation because by virtue of you being a source of authority, which you are when you're a parent and you are when you're a teacher and you are when you're a pastor and a priest and a nun, I mean, suddenly you're not only not trustworthy, but you're a source of scrutiny as if you can't be trusted because you are a source of authority.
That presents challenges here.
There's also the lack of a foundation that's solid, right?
Because moral relativism is itself internally inconsistent.
And so there's no truth except for the truth that I will assert.
And what you could do 20 years ago, which is maybe cognitively dispute that, with this generation seems to fall away.
The cognitive disputation route, particularly with youth, is not only not compelling, it's just not important.
It's not valued as a source of knowing.
Phenomenology is, human experiences, which is a beautiful way to incorporate John Paul II's teachings, because he was incorporating phenomenology.
He was not just talking abstract philosophy.
He was talking about experience, embodiment, which I think young people are hungering for.
When it comes to sex and gender and how those norms have shifted, I think a lot of times in this conversation, we can focus on the LGBT umbrella and kind of pinpoint maybe the last 15 years as a critical moment of shifts in sex and gender.
And I think it has been a critical moment.
To pinpoint that though, as the fragmentation of human sexuality in our Western thought is I think a mistake and a bit of a scapegoat.
The majority of people are heterosexual in Western thought.
The majority of people are not experiencing gender distress and our sexual ethics in our country and in Western cultures have been falling apart for decades.
And so it was Catherine Baculloch who taught me that.
She said, we have to point to heterosexuals to acknowledge the fragmentation that leads to some of the subsequent ideas.
Yeah, that's really well put.
There's been just such an increasing loss of meaning and significance in sexuality.
And this isn't just for the last 15 years with some of the more explicit questions or confusions, but really over the last couple hundreds of years that go back to, in some ways even, you can go back to John Locke's empiricism.
Marriage is simple, according to Locke, marriage is just a contract that's established by the state in order for children to be raised, largely.
And Locke's in some ways one of the political philosophers who's kind of one of the founders or was inspiring to the founders of the Founding Fathers.
And they're more than Locke because they also drew a lot on Christian themes.
But then again, is marriage just a contract?
Is that all it is?
CS.
Lewis writes about marriage in the 1940s in mere Christianity giving talks for the BBC during World War II.
And he just says already in say 42, he says the contraception is so available that no one will fundamentally think that sex outside of marriage is unjust because people don't think that children are fundamentally related to it.
So he's writing that based upon his experience of the 30s and the 20s and 30s, 100 years ago.
John Paul II writes his wonderful work on love and responsibility about the fragmentation of marriage, the way we tend to view sexuality either through the lens of sentimentality or sensuality.
If I were gonna get kind of maybe say something, I'll regret, but I'll try to say it anyway.
We either sentimentalize sex, which you almost kind of have like in Taylor Swift, everything is kind of about this incredible, romantic attraction, or other people that I really haven't listened to much, but somebody like maybe a Nicki Minaj or something where it's just, no, it's just sensual.
So, but yeah, but like in a way in contemporary music, we either have the breakup songs where it's all sentimentalism or the other songs that are all about sensuality and pleasure or, and we, this has been deep into our culture.
So, and John Paul II writes Love and Responsibility in the 50s based upon his experience, from growing up really in the 40s and of course Poland under Nazi Germany and then under the Soviet Union.
So this kind of, this emptying of the sexuality of any real meaning or purpose.
And ironically, we're in a time where we've just emptied all of life of meaning or purpose in many ways, right?
That's what we, you know, work is a distraction.
You know, relationships are, remain at the surface.
So what would you say then?
Just how do we recover a sense of meaning and purpose in talking about sexuality before maybe we deal with, and I do want to say something about some of these particular questions about sexual identity and sexual orientation, but how do we help people just recover that sense of meaning and purpose with respect to sexuality and maybe even the whole of life?
Yeah, I think what we often try to do, the strategy we've used has been to villainize the other side or to, again, cognitively dispute the other side or to make caricatures that we can easily deconstruct as obviously problematic, and in doing so, are insulting the youth who are drawn to them for some kind of reason.
So I think it's both honoring what of the current sociocultural landscape and commentary is pointing out something.
I definitely, by the way, was not mocking Taylor Swift.
I would never mock Taylor Swift.
My wife loves Taylor Swift.
And I don't want to turn off all the youth who might love Taylor Swift.
I'm just teasing, although I do sometimes wonder, but anyway, I'm kind of teasing, but I do think that's a good image, though, to say that we want to draw out contrasts, but also recognize that for many people, these sorts of intellectual cognitive criticisms and contrasts are often, we're very much a culture of feelings.
And even if we might think that's limited, we have to recognize that's our culture.
So really recognize that sense of honoring the people whom they look up to, even if the people whom they look up to might ultimately be potentially slightly shallow.
That's right.
And you can kind of honor that if a person is drawn into sentimentality, for instance, that it's because they're longing for a good thing, which is the facet of sentimentality that gets taken then to an extreme.
So you're helping them, and this is how I think of it with youth, is I'm sitting next to you and we're looking at it together and saying, gosh, what is it that you love about that?
Or what is it that draws you to that Nicki Minaj song that sex is merely sensuality?
And you're giving them language in that, right?
Like your commentary is so helpful because it's helping them locate what they're listening to.
Most teens today, this is where they need us, is that they're not critically engaging and mindfully engaging with much of anything.
And to be honest, I think helping young people especially, but all of us reconnect to ourselves is the path to uncovering the truth of the human person because we are human persons, right?
And so helping point people towards yes, what they're drawn to, but then asking the next question, which is what feels limiting about the Taylor Swift approach, right?
Like what about that Nicki Minaj song doesn't account for some aspect of what it is to be fully alive and fully in love, right?
This is where even last week, I shared with a client who identifies as transgender and is kind of looking at Christianity, raised Catholic, looking kind of back into getting in a Bible study and curious, but critical.
And we were talking about human love and this person was saying, you know, I don't like that definition of love.
I don't like that definition.
And I said, you know, I've heard this definition of love is to love is to will the good of the other for their own sake.
Now she doesn't know who I'm quoting there, right?
But it's, she said, I love that definition.
That's so beautiful.
Why?
Not because a Pope said it.
If I said a Pope said it, she'd be like, get that out of here.
But it compels the human heart who knows what we're made for and what we're made for is a love that is deeper and richer and more abiding than what we are offered today.
And you mentioned earlier mistakes of youth.
I think unfortunately, or fortunately, we learn through trial and error.
And many of our teens, especially because they're saturated in what we all are saturated in, which is a super incomplete vision of the human person, they will walk out pathways and find them unsatisfactory.
And I'm always thinking, who's there with them when they come to that moment of dissatisfaction?
And who do they turn to and trust that that person's not gonna say, I told you so?
That's what we're trying to equip parents and mentors to be.
Yeah, that's just so beautifully put.
So you have quite a gift for expressing this dimension of accompanying people where they are and helping them to kind of see like the truth that they're seeing in shadows.
And just the way you articulated it, it's so beautiful to listen to you and your clients and the people with whom you work and the people who listen to you, I think are quite blessed.
I do want you to say a word.
So let's just say here, a lot of parents that are gonna be having, or again, these could be people, you might be in high school, you might have younger siblings.
I know a lot of people who have siblings that are struggling with sexuality or these sorts of different things.
But let's just say you have a teen or a friend or a sibling who is clearly beginning to engage in sexual relationships and is outside of marriage.
And so you have that situation.
You have then another one where they're questioning their sexual orientation.
You have another one where they're questioning their sexual identity.
Obviously, in about five minutes, you're not gonna answer any of those questions fully at all.
And people can read the books or contact you for more information.
But how would you begin to accompany and also unveil more truth for people that are struggling or beginning to act in those three different areas?
Yeah, I mean, no surprise here, right?
Part of this is formation for ourselves because you mentioned earlier fear that sometimes we can be afraid and in doing so, capitulate to culture or feign something that is not within our integrity.
So I don't want to offend or I don't want to say the wrong thing, so I'm going to stay silent.
And so I think of that as a cultural capitulator, which is a well-meaning person who often just has not been formed in these things and is trying to help and be kind.
And then on the other end, we have the cultural warrior response that people can kind of come at and say, okay, we're going to be together at Thanksgiving and that person's going to have their significant other.
And I'm going to read ahead of time all the arguments that for the debate that we're never going to have, right?
But I'm going to prepare myself for what I know to be true, and which is all well and good and usually ends up alienating people from the very faith that you want to invite them into.
So the framework that I draw from is this idea of what is it to be a cultural ambassador, which means critical engagement with culture.
It starts with formation of myself.
So for every article I want to send to my loved one to tell them to read it, to change.
It's like, no, I'm going to actually just read the article for myself, bring it to prayer, become the person who lives that out.
And then I have freedom, right?
That our sexual ethics are so solid, despite what any article in any news journal says, our sexual ethics are not changing.
And so I can feel very firm then when I'm sitting with somebody to find out about their life, the person that they're sexually active with.
I want to know who that person is.
I want to know what they like about that person.
I want to know what concerns they have about that relationship, if any.
I want to talk with somebody about if I know that they're experiencing attraction to the same sex, how long have they been noticing that?
What has that been like for them?
What questions do they have about it?
What things do they feel like they have figured out?
And what things are they not quite sure about?
And all of that is opening up a dialogue to where a person will be inclined to then ask me what I think.
And every conversation about anything of value starts with two people looking at each other and wanting to know the other and be known, right?
So inviting and actually modeling that willingness to receive somebody.
And then they tend to say, yeah, what do you think about all this?
Well, that's where we get to give an account, right?
Well, here's how I think about that.
Here's how I process that.
I don't pretend to have it all figured out in every specific example, but here's where I am today.
I really do believe sex is for marriage and I try to live that way in my life.
And I, you know, I have my own challenges in that area.
And, you know, so being honest about those things.
And then, you know, I also care about you.
And I know that that's not where you are today.
And I wanna be able to be in an authentic relationship with you.
And there are times in all kinds of relationships, right?
Where we have boundaries, we have places we can't go.
I think of if somebody comes over and they're coming for a long weekend and I have plenty of people in my own life who are in partnerships outside of marriage.
And so I have a rule in my house that people who aren't married don't sleep in the same bed.
And that's just something I do.
And I feel really secure in being able to share that with people.
And time and time again, I'm struck by the receptivity of people who love me to wanting to honor the beliefs that I have.
And it ends up being a communal reflection, right?
Of God's best for people.
And I think those ways of having boundaries are helpful and important.
And they don't have to be a barrier to real encounters with people who are not understanding in their own way, what God has for them, or perhaps they are.
And we would learn that as we ask more questions.
That's really beautiful.
Thank you so much for walking us through that.
And we are kind of at the end of our time.
I do want to ask you three questions.
What's a book you've been reading?
I have been reading The Choice by Edith Ava Ager.
She is a Holocaust survivor who ended up becoming a clinical psychologist.
And she is, I think, 91 years old and has done just tons of work in treating PTSD and sharing her story of being a survivor of the Holocaust.
So that's something that has been pretty powerful recently that I've been reading.
And what's a spiritual practice you do on a regular basis to find more meaning and connection with God?
Yeah, one of the things I've been doing in the last year is waking up and reading the Psalms.
Scripture can be quite intimidating for me, and sometimes it can get a bit cognitive because I'm a thinker, so I'm trying to map it in my mind and just sitting with the Psalms and even just reading a part of a psalm and taking that to prayer.
And I've been really touched by how the Holy Spirit shows up and how it impacts the whole course of my day.
That's beautiful.
Athanasius has a letter to Marcellinus, which is often in the book that's associated with the life of Anthony, but he has it's on the Psalms, the letter to Marcellinus on the Psalms.
And in there, he describes the Psalms as containing the whole gospel.
And he says, they're not only for our minds, but for our hearts.
The word he uses is the thumos, the emotions, the spiritedness.
But he says basically he describes them as therapy for our hearts.
It is just kind of beautiful.
It's like, I love the-
Yeah, exactly.
I love the fathers.
And it's therapy is free.
That's right, yes.
And the last question is, what's a belief you held about God that you later discovered was false?
And what was the truth you discovered?
You know, I don't know that I thought I believed this, but I did believe that God loved me because I was good.
I was always a follower of Jesus as far back as I can remember.
And yeah, I think I had some sense that he loved me because I was good and behaved well.
And in the last few years, especially, I've come to know his love as being, yeah, so much deeper than a love that honors good behavior.
Wow, that's so beautiful.
So today we've been speaking with Dr.
Julia Sadusky, who as a graduate of Ave Maria, one of our alums and a graduate of Regent University, where she earned her Psi D.
She's the author of two recent books, Talking With Your Teen About Sex, A Practical Guide for Catholics and Start Talking To Your Kids About Sex, both from Ave Maria Press.
She's also written a more, maybe a little bit more technical book, co-authored with Mark Yarhouse, Emerging Gender Identities, Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today's Youth.
And for people who are interested in learning more, where would you have them look?
Yeah, so I have a website, firstandlastname.com, so juliasadusky.com.
They can check me out there.
I have an Instagram page, which is where I'm posting a lot of content about just my new books and also upcoming speaking engagements as well.
That's excellent.
And so where do they, just could you say that again?
Where was your page?
Yes, juliasadusky.com.
And that's the one that is also affiliated with the Luke's Counseling and Consulting.
Correct.
Private practice, excellent.
And also for listeners who might be interested in one of our first podcasts, I think it was the seventh episode or so.
Episode seven from season one was all on the theology of the body.
Is the theology of the body still relevant with Dr.
Michael Waldstein, who was probably one of your teachers as well?
And so if people are interested, they might want to go back to that.
So thank you so much, Julia, for being on the show, and we're really glad to have you.
And thank you also for our listeners, for our viewers, for being with us.
And if you enjoyed the Catholic Theology Show, please subscribe to it and share it with families and friends.
So thank you again, Dr.
Sadusky.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast.
If you like this episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app to help others find the show.
And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our Annunciation Circle so we can continue to bring you more free content.
We'll see you next time on the Catholic Theology Show.