On Catholic Jobs, Breast Implants, and Books (lots of books)

Weekly Notes

Happy Friday! Welcome to the only place on the Internet where in one single post you can find reflections on the struggles of working for the Church, an outline of Church teaching on breast implants, and book lists about the Catholic literary revival. This eclectic collection of mini-essays is brought to you, like everything else I write here, by full subscribers to this newsletter, who make it possible for me to keep this newsletter coming, week after week, with only the occasional pay wall (one paywalled essay a month). Whether you have been reading these free newsletters weekly or just stumbled upon my writing through an accident of the algorithm, I hope you’ll consider supporting the work I do here by upgrading your subscription today. In addition to access to the paywalled essays, you’ll have access to the audio podcasts of those essays, the full archives, and the comments section (plus the satisfaction of helping put food on my family’s table.)

Question Box

How can I leave corporate America and get a Catholic job?

I’ve heard variations of your question from many people over the years. Usually, the person doing the asking is struggling to find meaning in their secular job and believe they would find more fulfillment working for the Church. I don’t know if that’s your reason for asking the question or not. I’m guessing it might be since you asked about a generic “Catholic job” and not about how you can become a Catholic school teacher or parish youth minister or CFO for a Catholic apostolate (all very different jobs, which require different kinds of training and career paths). So, if you indeed want to flee a corporate job for Church work because the grass looks greener over here, then my first piece of advice is “Looks can be deceiving.”

Over the past 27 years, I have worked for or with a private corporation, a non-profit think tank, the U.S. government, a Protestant apostolate, and over a dozen Catholic institutions. My husband and most of my closest friends are all employed by the Church in one form or another as well. So, I know from experience that the Church employs many wonderful people who do many wonderful things. There is lots of good, meaningful work being done by parishes, dioceses, religious orders, and apostolates. But I also know from experience that working for the Church is not an escape from boredom, annoyance, incompetent bosses, backstabbing co-workers, petty bureaucrats, badly formed Christians, pointless projects, poor financial management, nightmarish HR offices, and just about any other sin or struggle you can name. All the various institutions within the Church that employ actual human beings are rife with problems (and if you don’t believe me, just read The Pillar).

Those same structures also have more than a few employees who have grown lukewarm in their faith through working for the Church.

When I took my first “Catholic job,” several people warned me that working for the Church can be the quickest path to losing your faith. Thankfully, that hasn’t been true for me. But it is true for many. Working for the Church forces you to grapple with the depths of humanity’s brokenness, a brokenness so profound that it affects even those who have dedicated their lives to working for Christ. It also forces you to grapple with the craftiness of the devil, who makes new Judases within the Church every day. And it forces you to grapple with the limits of grace, which requires our continual cooperation and also works far more slowly than most of us would like. Learning how often the Church’s work is undermined from within both hurts and infuriates. It can be, for many, profoundly disillusioning. And when you find your own reputation, work, or livelihood undermined by your fellow believers who are working alongside you, lasting wounds to your faith can result.

I’m not saying this to discourage you from pursuing a job within the Church. If God is calling you to serve Him from within an institutional Church structure, you need to say yes. But that call absolutely needs to be there. That’s why you go to work for the Church. Because God is calling you to do it. Not to escape from the problems of the secular work force. Because the reality is you can’t escape them. Most aren’t actually problems of the secular work force. They’re problems of humanity.

My second piece of advice is to remember that you don’t need to work for the Church to serve Christ. You don’t need to work for the Church to have a “Catholic job.” If you are a Catholic and you have a job, then your job is a Catholic job. It is where you have the opportunity to serve others through your work and witness to the Gospel through your words and actions.

The biggest problems in our world right now do not stem from a lack of lay people working for the Church. We have so few priests and religious in the West, that in most places lay employees and volunteers perform almost every major function there is to perform, short of offering Mass and celebrating the sacraments. What we do lack, though, are faithful, well-formed Catholics who don’t leave their faith at home when they go to work. That’s the real need. We need more Catholics putting Catholic social teaching into practice in their businesses and advocating for the ethical treatment of patients in hospitals and creating great works of art that reflect the truth about man and God. We need Catholics boldly living their faith in all the places where priests and theologians cannot go … like the corporate board room or office break room.

This is not easy. It takes courage to speak out against your employer’s sponsorship of Planned Parenthood or mandated participation in Pride events. It takes ingenuity to devise financially viable maternity leave policies that serve women and children. It takes great faith to adhere to the highest ethical standards when it will affect the bottom line. It is tough to be a Catholic in the corporate world (and in hospitals, movie studios, newsrooms, courtrooms, and pretty much every workplace in the secular world). But that is what the world desperately needs. We can’t build a culture of life without it.

If God is calling you elsewhere, then go. But before you do, stop and ask yourself how well you are serving Him where you currently work. How faithfully are you following Him as you go about your day? How actively are you putting the Gospel into practice as a professional? How lovingly are you witnessing to Him in your office? Can you do better? Can you do more? If the answer to those last two questions is yes, then strive to do better and do more first, before you go anywhere else. Those efforts have the potential to make a real difference now, where you are, and they will serve you well if you ever do work for the Church in the paid kind of way.

My husband asked me to get a breast lift and/or augmentation. I have had several children and nursed them for a long time. My breasts are sad. His question surprised me (and hurt me), but we have an otherwise good marriage. Can I honor his request.

First, I am so sorry that your husband asked this of you. As a mother, you have laid down your body again and again in the most sacrificial of ways, and no matter what you think or your husband thinks, this has not made your breasts “sad.” It has made them beautiful. It has made them holy. And one day, it will make them glorious. When your body is resurrected and glorified, every mark motherhood left on your body will be radiant. Your breasts and your scars, your stretch marks and your split stomach muscles—all of that will shine like the sun.

When God looks at you, He sees that beauty already. Your husband should see it too. What you have done, in bringing those children into the world and keeping them alive,  should make your body more beautiful in his eyes, not less. The fact that it hasn’t reflects a shortcoming in him, not you. He’s not seeing you, and I can imagine the hurt that’s caused. Every time we stand naked before our spouse, we exercise a tremendous amount of trust. We are trusting that they see and love the whole of us . We are trusting that they won’t use us. We are trusting that they won’t reduce us to a mere body. Your husband’s request violated that trust. He is treating you like an object. He is not seeing the whole of who you are. He is not seeing the beauty of your precious body that has been transformed though motherhood. And I am so, so sorry.

You say you have a good marriage, so I trust your husband has lots of wonderful qualities and loves you very much, despite his failing in this area. I also understand that our over-sexed, pornified culture has made it difficult for many otherwise good men to see women as subjects, not objects. They’ve been conditioned to accept a false reality. That kind of conditioning takes time and grace to overcome. I hope your husband has good friends who will encourage him to go to confession or spiritual direction or therapy (or just for a lot of long walks) so he can sort through the problems in his own expectations and heart. Because he absolutely needs to do this.

Your husband needs to remember that you are his wife, not a sexual object, who can be molded and remolded to accommodate his desires. He needs to understand that he vowed to love you and honor you all your days, not just the days when your breasts are perky. He needs to recognize that his request is a massive failure to honor you and all the sacrifices you have made with your body for him and your children. And he absolute needs to come to terms with the reality that even if you were to accede to this request, time isn’t stopping. It is marching up and down and all around both of your bodies, stretching some things, shrinking others, and moving all sorts of parts around. You can diet and exercise every day of your life. You can nip and tuck until your retirement account is drained. But in the end, it won’t matter. Both death and old age are still coming for you. If old age gets you before death, your body will show it. Your face will wrinkle, your hair will thin, and a whole lot more than your breasts will sag. The same is true for him. Your husband can choose to make peace with this. He can choose to see and rejoice in the beauty of you at every stage in life. He can choose to love you and honor you and earn back the trust he has broken. Or, he can choose to hold tight to unrealistic expectations and make both himself and you miserable in the process.

I really hope he chooses the former. Not only because you both will be worlds happier that way, but also because while the Church doesn’t have any line items in the Catechism that directly forbid breast augmentation, the little guidance she has given us in this area suggests that you would be pushing the moral envelope by honoring his request.

This guidance comes in four pieces.

The first piece is an address given by Pope Pius XII in 1958, to a group of cosmetic surgeons. In his address, the pope honored the surgeon’s work with people who truly needed plastic surgery, people such as burn victims, wounded soldiers, and those with particular medical conditions, injuries, or deformities which make life difficult. At the same time, however, he referred to the “unlawfulness” of procedures rooted in “mere vanity, caprice or fashion” and that “cause injury to regular functions of physical organs.”

The second piece of guidance comes from paragraph 2289 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which tells us that morality “rejects a neo-pagan notion that tends to promote the cult of the body” and warns us to not” idolize physical perfection.”

The third piece of guidance comes from a 2015 working paper on women and culture put out by the Pontifical Council of Culture, which condemns cosmetic plastic surgery purely for the sake of conformity to cultural standards and compares it to the Islamic burka.

And the fourth piece of guidance comes from Pope Francis, who has spoken on the issue twice, including in an address to young people where he said, “Plastic surgery serves no purpose, because this beauty is eventually going to fade.”

“We all have our beauty, and we have to accept it and live in harmony with it,” he continued. “When a woman is pregnant, when she is expecting, her body-shape is not beautiful per se, but expecting a child is one of the most beautiful things ever. So, it’s not only a question of measurements or sizes, it’s a harmonic beauty that every woman, every man has, and we have to cherish that.”

Following the logic of those words, it’s hard not to see how breast lifts and augmentations are anything other than “mere vanity.” It’s not like removing painful varicose veins, altering the shape of a nose to help a person breathe better, fixing a cleft palate, or grafting skin onto a burn. It’s not medically necessary. It’s also hard not to see how breast augmentation doesn’t “cause injury to regular functions of physical organs.” Side effects from breast lifts and augmentation range from making it difficult or impossible to breast feed to loss of sensation around the nipples, an increased risk of cancer, and all the usual risks of surgery. It is a costly procedure which prioritizes outward physical perfection over actual health, and it is ultimately pointless because the very type of beauty your husband wants you to recover is on its way out the door, regardless.

None of these three pieces of guidance equate to magisterial teaching on breast augmentation. No clear and definitive teaching exists on the question. But the guidance which does exist should give any Catholic women pause before we decide to undertake such procedures. And plain old common sense should give husbands pause before they ask their wives to do the same.  

Do you have any book recommendations for a Catholic women’s book club? (They can even be yours.)

You are really kind. I would be super honored if you read any of my books as part of your book club. The three which would probably be the best fits are The Catholic Table (an examination of Catholic teaching on food and the Eucharist through the prism of my recovery from anorexia), These Beautiful Bones (a reflection on what John Paul II’s theology of the body can teach us about life outside the bedroom) or Letters to Myself from the End of the World (a collection of short essays on faith, life,  and womanhood).

If I were organizing a book club, though, I would be more inclined to pick something from one of the authors who was part of the Twentieth Century Catholic literary revival. So many women (and men!) have never read these classics, and fiction has a way of staying with us longer than non-fiction. Probably because stories put flesh on ideas. They make thoughts, struggles, and truth incarnate in people and places, which can then live forever in our imagination. (And they can be a faster easier read than non-fiction!)

Some of the books I’d recommend from that period, include:

Therese, Viper’s Tangle, and Woman of the Pharisees by Francois Mauriac

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Song of the Scaffold by Gertrude von Le Fort

Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos

In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden

The Master of Hestviken (a four book series) and Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge (who wasn’t Catholic, but whose characters are)

Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather (again, non-Catholic author, super Catholic stories)

Come Rack, Come Rope by Robert Hugh Benson (not the highest literary achievement on the list, but a fun romance about the English martyrs … and I love the English martyrs)

The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (don’t do more than one story at a time, though)

Things as They Are by Paul Horgan

Have fun! And I wish I could come!

Five Fast Things

1. Arbonne’s best offer of the summer ends Saturday, August 31. This is your last chance to spend $150 and earn a free Preferred Client Membership. This means you will get 20 percent off on every single order for a year, free shipping on every order of $150 or more for a year, and a free gift with every $150 order. When Beautycounter hit the pause button on operations last Spring, I tried soooo many clean skincare brands, and Arbonne was the only one that came close to Beautycounter in terms of both safety and performance. These are the products I’m currently using, but feel free to reach out if you need recommendations for the best products for you.

2. Visitation Sessions is officially back for its second season. Chris, Kate, Casey, and I kicked things off by talking about how vacation with kids is never restful, why Kate wants to spend a week a month on an island with only women, and how happy both Kate and I are now that our husbands have returned to the classroom (We love you, guys!).

3. Currently on repeat in my kitchen: Marigold, the newest album from my beloved Hillbilly Thomists

4. Many of the paying customers around here requested that I unlock last week’s full subscriber essay only: “Stupid Is As Stupid Does: On Politics, Prudence, and Priorities.” So, as a little end of summer gift, their wish is my command. Feel free to share far and wide (audio is unlocked too).

5. The best things in my life this week have not been things I can link: things like a certain toddler finally, FINALLY!!!!, pooping on the potty and a certain six-year-old enthusiastically unloading the dishwasher (my least favorite household task) every single day. We’ve had bats and mice and racoons and literal killer hornets occupying our home and property. I have no idea how we’re going to get all our lead abatement work done in time to meet our state-imposed deadline. I haven’t slept for weeks because kids are in our bed every night, which means they are literally on top of me. But that’s okay. It’s a beautiful mess, and I’m so grateful that it’s mine (and that moms weren’t lying when they promised me that everyone eventually learns to poop on the potty and that six-year-olds are the absolute best).

   In Case You Missed It

   Freemasonry, Hurtful Siblings, and Prayers About Hell (Free for All Subscribers)

   The Sources of Our Discontent: On Happiness, Feminism, and Grandmothers (Full Subscribers Only)

   Signs of Contradiction: On Trad Wives, Keyboard Warriors, and Saving the World While Losing Your Soul (Full Subscribers Only)

This issue is free to read and free to share, so please pass it on to anyone you think might benefit from it.