Steve Greene: Hey, hey, you good looking girl. I was just explaining that Caleb has a talent for going missing as I heard you wandering around trying to find where was he this time? He was outside the stench of marijuana outside, not from Caleb. No, yes, Caleb is also a druggy. That's other thing. He goes missing and he smokes a lot of pot. Hey, welcome everybody to Cradle and Convert. I am Steve Green, director of Holy Family Institute of Catholic Faith and Life. Director. Yeah. I already said the director part. Also host of Reasonably Rational YouTube podcast. And I'm the Cradle of Catholic. And I'm Becky Green. I'm the director of the Green. homeschooling Institute and everything else in our lives. I'm the convert to the faith. So did you successfully get the termite anecdote? Well, said we were talking about, he was holding a termite earlier today as one does and the chicken, we let Hensolo out. And so the chicken was roaming around and she was kind of standing near him, like almost waiting for him to, she's actually the most intelligent chicken of all of them that we had. will just say that she, we're probably beginning to realize why she is Hensolo, why she is the last chicken one because she's actually, so she's standing there like looking at him and he's holding this termite and I was like don't even come inside with that thing and he says to me, gee I forgot it, the neptule, he called it a nuptial dance or something like he said something about the nuptial migration or dance or flaw, I don't know. the termite or of Hensolo? No. of the termite. And so is doing a dance. She's like, I know you have a termite. Make with the termite. Let's go. Hand it over. was the termite because I was like, it or feed it to the chicken. Ideally feed it to the chicken. That's what I said. He was like, no, not this one. And Kateri's like, we should probably find one that he's not so attached to. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. The chicken is standing. The chicken is more utilitarian. The termite. is going to be burrowing in our yard and destroying our and and could our house at some point I don't know I don't know the difference between all the different termites but but the chicken actually provides us an egg a day so feed the chicken the termite yeah and she needs to get a taste for termites right so she would start like oh I like that because drizzling today in the middle of the summer so we actually like you do not do this in Arizona ever open the doors don't do it But because we have rain and it's under a hundred degrees, we have windows open to just try to air out because we know we have another two, three months of heat. It's a cool, breezy 97 degrees Fahrenheit degrees, yeah. With little light rain. And so I have them open everything. So I have the chicken out, letting the chicken kind of roam around, know. You don't have the doors open where Hensil can like come in the house and poop in our house though, do you? No, I don't, no, no. Yes, a little bit, maybe. She might be here now. Han Solo might make a bonus content appearance. With or without a child carrying her in to join us in our summer. need to tell you that Caleb is attached to this. attached to what he was. Yeah, he was studying doing the termites doing a nuptial dance. Not sure he's like a mating ritual or something. Ritual nuptial ritual. No, what did he say? He said nuptial was the word he used. I thought that was a great word. But I forgot the second word already. I'm not sure I care to... You know why I forgot it? Because I went and inhaled all of that marijuana. Becky is currently high. Becky is stoned out of her gourd. It makes me have a gag reflex. I just wanted to make the point that you got to witness the nuptial dance of a termite. don't know that I care to see that actually. It was just one. was just the one. OK. I see. two. No, there was not. That's why I was laughing because I was like, what? Okay, lovely. The miracle of nature. get to see a new generation of termites conceived. But speaking of small miracles and speaking of summer and things that maybe aren't healthy for you, but I don't care about that. This not being healthy for you because this is awesome. At the Costco recently. I know where this is going. I'm still sort of in rejoicing mode over this discovery. I was plowing through the crowded Costco and there, you know, I actually went over to look for the Kirkland. Um, we don't even, we don't get sponsored or anything by Costco. In fact, I was anti Costco. We, I'm not, we didn't do Costco. It all says stupid mask stuff that they did and COVID. And we, I cut ties with them and I vowed never will I return. Costco just waited you out. You'll be back. Yeah. So anyways, we came back. You have five children. We'll see you soon. Good luck with your whole protest. Exactly. Well, it was many years. And so I'm back and I was looking for their, their, what are they? Like the Haagen-Dazs, but the Kirkland brand. Yeah. Like the ice cream bars. covered ice cream. I'm not a huge fan of the chocolate, the hard shell kind of thing over anything, but these are actually pretty decent. so every now and again, we'll get them as a treat. And they did not have them. They were out. So I was kind of, you know, back and forth. was like, Oh, should I get the Haagen-Dazs one? We don't need this in the house. We don't need any of this. Why am I getting it? And then God, I saw a light shine down on this one section of the freezer. And you know, there's there's grandma's. I was like, out of my way. What is that that I see? Thrifty ice cream. If you're not familiar with Thrifty, Thrifty was like a was kind of like a Walgreens ish esque kind of drugstore, know, top of the line Walgreens ice cream. No, in California, the best you can possibly get, but they had an ice cream. was known for their ice cream. had like an ice cream counter up at the front. And you go and you get the cones. And it was those cylindrical ice cream scoops, not the circular ones, not the spherical ones. yeah, like they look more like the plop down on the cone, like a cylinder. have no idea what you're talking about. So anyways, this was not important. And I would get the chocolate malted crunch ice cream. This was my childhood. This is a throwback to the chat my childhood. And Then they started selling them in the little gallon or half gallon cartons. And so we would buy that and have it in the house. And it's my favorite ice cream ever. Then I came out to Arizona and went to school and wound up staying here. And then Thrifty closed down. Was there Thrifty in Tucson when you were at the University of Arizona being a gymnast? No, no, no. So you went without Thrifty once you moved to Arizona, without Thrifty, Ice Cream, and Tommy's. chili cheese fries. I'll talk about Tommy's. So I then went through the years and you know you have the withdrawal and you experience and I find some new ice creams but that was always the first love so didn't matter if I found the dryers brownie fudge or mint chocolate chips always a standard right standard you can enjoy that but I stand here in the Costco and I discover, no, and then they had it at the water and ice store. There was this water ice store by our first house on the north side of Phoenix and they sold it there. So occasionally. I remember that. that was a great discovery. I had been made aware of thrifty brand ice cream, specifically chocolate malted crunch. That was the... balls. Becky, dear viewer, is loyal. If you are looking for loyalty, this here is your gal. when she finds her thing, that flag gets planted and it does not move until she said so much of that thing that she's totally sick of it over it, in which case then she moves on to another thing. Most it's a, I'm it. That's why you are my man. That's right. live in it. I definitely benefit by but I definitely benefit by Becky's loyalty. I'm deeply grateful for that, but yeah, she chose to plant her marriage flag on me, but her ice cream flag has always been planted on Chocolate Malted Crunch by Thrifty. So when we discovered it early in our marriage at the Water and Ice, which was just a very unlikely place to discover it, but there's like the little sign in the window and she says, Thrifty ice cream. She went, chocolate, melted crunch. And so then that became a regular part of our life. the thrifty ice cream from, and I am fine with ice cream. enjoy it. nothing. I'm not, I've almost never been like a, want some ice cream right now, guy. So for me, I've never, that's true. I have never been pregnant. I have never been a pregnant human. I'm not a gestating human. No, nor do I intend to be, nor would I be interested in becoming if that option were open to me. So yeah, so anyway, so she just rediscovered it at Costco. She came in. first of all, just beaming with joy. Something incredible had happened, you could just tell. And there's no way to know until she says, and then with like- You were not expecting that. Like there's no way. No, the level of joy that came in the door with Becky after that Costco trip, I was thinking like you had a wealthy relative you didn't know about who just left you a million dollars. mean, it was like life changing good news kind of level. You have to understand for Becky, that's exactly what this is. This this is in that category. was only one flavor. That was the other thing. Only one flavor that they had. Which flavor did she find at Costco you asked? Chocolate vaulted. Get out of here. No kidding. What? That's mind blowing. Is that? Costco. In fact, I have to go back today because Avery wants to get a shirt. She's making a twin shirt with her bestie for some little movie night And we're going because I'm going to load up on some more because the other problem is we have a 19 year old who lives here and he knows about the thrifty ice cream in the freezer. We actually have two freezers. We have a freezer that we got during COVID, a small little one. And then we have this other one that we got from his sister and brother-in-law. were giving it away. So we have that one. chest freezers out in the garage. And so I, some stuff gets gathered onto that corner one that's not really being used much anymore. And I put it in there to hide it from the 19 year old. Because he will Becky's no fool. He's not going to eat my thrift. That is off limits. And you can ask me for it. maybe. then I can say no. That is mom's ice cream. That is my lifeline. it, love love love love it. That is mother's little helper. That is how I get through the day. No, you may not. Hey, here's some Kroger mint chocolate chip. barely worthy of the name ice cream. Not like thrifty chocolate melted crunch. It's precious. Becky's in love. She's in love. get some more today friends. they don't have it though. no. this going to be like one of those limited edition things? You that's I believe I am on record. I believe I'm on record. said from the day you came home with it, you better load up so that they don't do their inventory check. That thrifty malted crunch is really not selling that well. Maybe pull that and stick some some more Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry's hippie flavored speaking of pot, they probably have pot flavored ice cream Ben and Jerry's. Do you think so? That's insane. They actually that would not surprise me. Ben and Jerry's is notoriously like Northeastern United States hippie ish and whatever. So okay, anyway, we don't need to belabor the point about whatever we're belaboring the point about today. There's always some point we're belaboring. I am excited to talk to this lady. Well, we're not talking to her, but we're talking to the lady that translated this. We are talking to her, just not that her, the other her. Yeah. Yeah. So today, dear, dear listener, viewer, we are talking to Jennifer Bryce, and she is a fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center out of Washington, DC, although she herself lives in Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, one of the one of the two cities in Nebraska. And but we're talking to her today about a really incredible Catholic writer and thinker from the 20th century that virtually no one in the Anglosphere has ever heard of, but she is actually the translator from the original German into English of a number of her works. The writer is Ida Friedricha Goris, and she is a brilliant, brilliant Catholic writer. The book is Bread Grows in Winter, which is actually a collection of essays and lectures that Jennifer Bryson translated. So we're going to get introduced to Jennifer Bryson, who is herself. Like her story is fascinating. I already interviewed her for reasonably rational. Just her story is amazing. And then so is Eda Frederica Gorse. You're to meet two pretty incredible women. Say right where we are and we'll be right back on Cradle and Convert. Don't go away.
speaker-0: Wife Becky the Convert. We're thrilled to welcome to the program first time guest Jennifer Bryson. Jennifer is a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In addition to that, she's the translator of the works of Ida Friederika Gurris, who is a less well-known than she should be German writer from the 20th century. who I'm gonna make the case, and I think Jennifer will also make the case, has a lot to say to us Catholics here in the 21st century. and we're gonna talk specifically today about work that she's translated titled Bread Grows in Winter. It's a available from Ignatius Press. My lovely wife is holding it up for you to view there, which is a collection of of Goris's essays. So Jennifer, welcome to Cradle and Convert. Thanks for joining us.
speaker-1: Delighted to join you. Thanks for the opportunity.
speaker-0: So given that this is your first appearance on the big show here, I'm wondering if maybe you could begin by giving us a little bit of an introduction just to you, a little bit of your your autobiography, and then of course introduce Ida Friedrika Gurres as well.
speaker-1: Sure. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, largely secular upbringing, public schools. My mother took us to a Lutheran church on Sundays, but it wasn't something meaningful at home and I didn't really like it. By the time I went to college, although I'm sure seeds were planted there by a few good people. But by the time I went to college, I was a person of no religion. And when I did an interview about my conversion story for the Coming Home Network, they asked, Well, were you an atheist or were you an agnostic? And I said, I just I just wasn't interested. I thought, I don't need religion. so I went off to Stanford for my first year. And during my second year of college, I went overseas because I'd already been overseas in high school for a year. Doing a year of my high schooling in Austria and I'd studied German before I went to Austria. So I already had German and I was adventurous and I went to former East Germany when it was still East Germany and the wall was up. And I studied Marxism-Leninism for a year. I was I wasn't a Marxist, but I didn't know enough to say I am not a Marxist, and I didn't know enough to say I am a Marxist. And when in Rome, do as the Romans do. So I was at the Karl Marx University, and what else do you study there? it was actually fascinating. And the best course, which for them was the absolute foundation, was philosophy. And that is what opened me up to questions of is it true? to questions of where does existence come from? and I began to consider that you know, maybe a materialistic explanation of the universe is actually what. Is reality and a materialistic explanation of the universe that the Marxists have says that physical matter is the first and primary thing in existence. they never explain where physical matter came from, it's just there. And that everything else, such as ideas we have and abstract concepts, are just are a result of that. And thus how you organize politics, how you organize economics. Changes radically when the highest meaning in life is simply physical matter. And they were insistent that you could not have this worldview without being an atheist. And so I thought, wow, I really have to consider this, might be true. And got broke into my life that year. I had an experience of God. while I was reading an essay by Lenin about atheism, this wasn't I this was God's idea. About how this worked. And that changed my life. And I experienced God as creator. my best friends that year were the Polish students. They were the only ones crazy enough to seek out an American in this communist city and want to be friends with me. and they were joyful and smart and intellectually engaged in countering the Marxist ideas in their classrooms. And this was such a great contrast to the grayness and Harshness of East Germany. So I didn't understand who Jesus was, but I I I was aware that this experience I had of God and what was going on in their lives, their Catholicism, even though I didn't like Catholics, was about, you know, we're talking about the same thing here, but I couldn't connect the dots. So I went back to college. A year later became a Christian, started to figure Jesus out through evangelical contacts, and a year, Two years after that, I came into the Catholic Church while I was in graduate school at Yale. And I studied medieval European intellectual history from St. Augustine up to Thomas Aquinas. As you might imagine, for one just discovering the Catholic Church, it was a fabulous foundation, and I was a child in a candy store.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: And that's how I discovered the Arabic works that were translated. of Aristotle from Arabic to Latin and were key to intellectual developments in Europe. And I thought, this is interesting. So one thing led to another. I went to the Middle East to study Arabic for two years because I wanted to use it in graduate school. I didn't want to be taking, you know, how to conjugate verb language classes in grad school. And then did my PhD. In Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies, studying the transmission of Greek, philosophy, natural science, and medicine from Greek to Syriac to Arabic to Latin, as well as the history of Islam. You can't study Arabic without studying Islam. These just go hand in hand. left graduate school, was unemployed in the fall of 2001, had been told I'd studied something useless. My brother said, no wonder you can't find a job. You studied something so useless here. And the attacks of 9-11 happened. wow. So sadly that was how my degree became very useful. And I went to work for the US military, which I would love. I was thrilled to get to work to help defend our country. And I also really work culture. of the military. I was a civilian with the military. And I spent almost all of that time with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Finished that up and went on to work for several think tanks. Now after leaving the military, I did a lot of things with Islam for a number of years and that had really reached its end. And by 2019, I career wise, I had absolutely no idea what to do next. Really no idea, which was a little harrowing. but I was you know blessed to have a great education. I've had a lot of experience in life, and I just thought, well, somehow I'm gonna find some way to put this together. And out of the blue in 2019, in the fall, while I was working on something completely unrelated, through Contacts in Austria, I stumbled on an author I'd never ever heard of through a Catholic group. This author's name was very long, Ida Friederike Gus. And what I saw, the first book I saw, was a book on marriage from 1949. And I thought, this was written before things went crazy. Maybe that'll have some of that great deep Catholic wisdom in it. So I tried to find information about the author. There was very little, but I did find some. And what I found fascinated me. And then I was able to order the book it from Austria. I was in the US at the time. And I started reading. And not within the first pages, but within the first paragraphs, I was blown away. And I thought, well, for one thing, how is it possible that this book's never been translated? But I also wondered, how is this woman not completely famous? and that's an interesting question we might get into.
speaker-0: Well, I so this is this is just fascinating. There are so many points in your story where I was like, I need to ask her about that. I want to ask her about that. And so I don't I I don't actually know which one we wanna t dive into per se, but I think Just a little bit of your own journey to then discovering this author, because where where were you in the the decision to become Catholic and your understanding of your womanhood, of your femininity and of marriage and all of these things that then piqued your interest when you encountered her? because I'm a convert as well and the exploration of the church's understanding of authentic femininity and the relationships between men and women and our h and our humanity as seen through that lens has very much been the catalyst for my ongoing conversion. even though I converted many, many, many years ago, 25 years ago, there's there's this ongoing exploration of that topic. And when you encounter something like this that just revolutionizes the the the whole way that we have been taught to to think and to believe. And especially with you diving so deeply into the the Mark, I mean, being in East Germany when it was still behind the wall, that's just fascinating to me that you you were there and and studying and under that whole umbrella of philosophy and worldview. And then here you are. So I think it's just a testament to the way God works, is often the the most extreme kind of perspective is how that pendulum swings swings over to the other side, and then you become this great warrior and you're a great thinker on it. So just maybe kind of unpack that. It's not so much a question, but I'm just kind of curious if you could dive into that a little bit.
speaker-1: Sure. That this this womanhood, Catholic faith, my background is actually something that I really want to write about because this has become a really major issue in my life and in my work now. So I came into the church in 1990. As I mentioned, I was in grad school at Yale at the time. I'd had this secular upbringing. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 19. You know, by that point in the San Francisco Bay Area, nobody talked about feminism. It was already in the air and in the water. It was it was simply a fate accompli. And I was raised in my schooling and mostly on what my father wanted. That I existed to do two things in life. To excel in my career and show the boys I could beat them. Because that's why females exist.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: I I really knew nothing else. I was in competitive swimming by age five, all throughout elementary school and into middle school. this was the 1970s. There was already a vast girls' soccer program. every fall and then in the winter, you know, there was baseball and in the spring softball. and so I knew nothing else. I went off to college. I got into Stanford, which was very exciting. It really was an amazing environment. And I was there, I was one of the last classes that still had the great books program at Stanford. So some aspects of the education were really great, especially just With the other students because the intensity level on campus was so high and I loved that. and I was very pro-abortion. And this really has a lot to do with my concept of what it means to be a woman. I wasn't an activist in any way. My parents were both from little towns in Montana. And I loved visiting Montana with them and our relatives. I had a an intuitive sense that there was something solid there that was different from the San Francisco Bay Area. so I wasn't, you know, out there at protests all the time. But since career was what I was supposed to do, well, of course women have to have abortion. I mean the greatest threat to my existence, since my existence was my career and my career was my existence, would be pregnancy. But I'd never ever thought About what it is. I never thought about the implications of abortion for how men and women relate. I was very fortunate in the second half of college after I came back from East Germany when I started to rethink some things. I became very grateful for the good things that we have in America. And I no longer took the American way of life, our political system and our culture for granted. And so I got involved in politics on campus and the college Republicans because after East Germany, I felt I had a civic duty to be involved and do my part. And through that, I met some very fine young men. Fortunately, they were most they were Christians and they were Jews. And that was, I was inadvertently fortunate to have a morally relatively healthy environment through that social group. I dated a young man in that group who was an evangelical. Again, I God, my guardian angel were watching out for me. because I was really quite, quite clueless. and so he was a very wholesome, morally upright, good man. And he was the one who challenged me on abortion. And then as I started to figure out how Christianity related to this experience of God, I had. Then when that became clear overnight my view on abortion changed 180 degrees. overnight. And week just so that was about six, eight weeks later, then once the fall started at Stanford after that summer when I I between my junior and senior year, when You know, Jesus Christ, Christianity, God made sense. And I started to realize what abortion is. I was in the pro-life group immediately. And that is where I started to see that I had been sold something very false in the culture I had grown up with. I started to see that abortion is a disaster for women, makes women vulnerable to being sexually exploited by men and then men using abortion. To not deal with responsibility. I saw how it was a disaster for men because any sense of personal moral responsibility and any sense of relations with women and sex being related to family was all cut. Yeah. So I I I I started to realize something was wrong, but I'd have this tremendous transformation in my life through Christianity coming in. Through the pro-life movement, then I meet Catholics. so this is all happening in the summer, the fall of nineteen eighty-eight, nineteen eighty nine. I graduate from college and by the spring of nineteen ninety, I'm in the Catholic Church. And what happened to me was that I came into the Catholic Church and I felt like it was a dramatic new chapter. I was thrilled, I was happy, I was delighted. And I was unaware how many assumptions I was carrying with me, like bricks on my shoulders, from this very secular upbringing I had had, especially, for example, about what woman is, what women's role is, how women relate to men. And it took years, really I would say 25 years. For me to deeply realize that I'd put this solid stone building of the church onto a foundation that still had a lot of sand in it. And that sand was all of these secular ideas I had about, you know, we need to have women in charge and women's liberation and all this stuff. And once that started to crumble, and it was like it was cleansed. I mean, like cleansing waters washed through and wash that sand away. so I after twenty-five years as a Catholic was when Mary started to make sense to me. And
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: it was only with me recognizing that I was still looking at Catholicism Catholicism through assumptions I had brought with me and began to let go of those. Began to trust God, began to discover the saints, began to discover great Catholics. A key thing was also developing friendships with Catholic women who were married, and in a very few instances, I'm still I'm single, I've never married, having opportunities to be in homes and beginning to discover. Catholic homes with where faith is alive, families valued. I started to discover there's something really different going on here in a profound, beautiful way. And so yeah, that's all been a big process. And then you know, I this is happening around 2015, 16, 17. So I come into the church 1990, 25 later, 25 years later. these these shifts and changes are happening. And then 2019, I discover Edagurus. And I'm starting to discover Catholic women who are happy in their faith, who are at peace, who aren't feeling bitter against the church and like, well, it's our task as Catholics to change it. And Edagurus played a large role in this. Sigrid Unsett, for example, and some others. And so I what I think God in a way maybe saved her for me. So that I would discover her at a time that my heart would be open to what she and others were doing.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's that's a lovely way to put it. There's that just the you know, the the the beauty of divine providence working in those mysterious ways through you know the the best that we have to offer and the worst and the the constant. I one of the great things about being Catholic is is the fact that you you never touch bottom in this ocean. It it's just it doesn't matter how deep you go, how high you reach, there's just greater depths and higher heights, and which is such a beautiful thing. And then of course. Once you begin to really recognize that, I I think the proper response is gratitude and humility, you know, before a thing that is so much bigger than you and so much deeper and so much more powerful. but so what when you first when you first encountered Ida Frederica Gurres, what what was it specifically? So the the interesting that, you know, so you said, although you're single, never married, the first book you read by her was a book on marriage, and it immediately resonated. I mean, like in the first paragraphs, it already grabs you. Looking back on that, what was it specifically, do you think, that grabbed you? Like you you've given us a a context for at that point in your life and in your journey, you were open for some a thinker like this, you know, to encounter a writer and a thinker like her. But what was it specifically? Was it something about what she was saying, the way she was saying it? Was it something that was a a particular context or a new idea, or was it resonating with something that you were already kind of coming to see and she was just clarifying or amplifying it for you?
speaker-1: So let me offer, if I may, one more bit of context for what's happening in my faith life when I encounter her. And that is starting to figure out what marriage is and what the church teaches. I've been involved in pro-life stuff since 1990. And after about 20 years of that, I'm very aware that we've got a crisis of how what's happening with pregnancy in society. But I had all of these assumptions that came from my my cultural social environment. You know, I spent years and years at Stanford and Yale. and this is shocking for me in retrospect, but by around 2009, when I went to work, I was very fortunate to get to work at the Witherspoon Institute, with a lot of Catholic or Catholics, I also, you know, had had colleagues from other backgrounds, but there were a lot of Catholics there. And this is when the big political fight over marriage is heating up in the United States. And the effort is being pushed hard for allowing same-sex marriage. And I just kind of thought, yeah, you know, if two people love each other, what's the big deal? But I was around All of these colleagues who were working very hard at the time, even before it became a big public issue, realizing that redefining marriage would have profound implications. And as I started to hear them talk about what research actually showed these negative implications would be for the well-being of children, also for for men and women, if we take sex out of marriage and take children out of marriage. and I started to hear Catholics talk about marriage in ways that I just I'd I'd never heard before. And I began to very privately and quietly, I didn't admit this to anybody around me. I began to suspect I think maybe I don't know or understand what the church teaches on marriage. How can that be? Like I've I'm one of the you sort of Conservatives, I love great liturgy, I'm pro-life. But I had just been in environments where nobody talked about this. It was just it never came up. And so I made a conscious choice. And also at this point in my life, you know, I don't know, am I gonna meet someone to marry or not? You know, and I'm wondering also, well, what do I do about this odd situation that I'm still single? And I thought, okay, one thing I can do. If God is to call me to marriage, is to become a person who's ready to be married if I meet someone. So maybe I should actually learn what this marriage thing is. And also as a Catholic, this is one of the sacraments. So, you know, this is obviously pretty important. So I was already beginning to read and read and read and having to admit, wow, I had a very shallow, partially false understanding of what marriage is. And I also realized also as I began to, you know, to deal with the fact that I'm, you know, I'm, you know, getting into my forties and moving on, older than that even, and I'm not married. What does this mean for me and my, you know, role in spiritual life? And so the I'm starting to realize, well, God loves family, God loves marriage. And this is part of the connective tissue in the body of Christ. So this is incredibly relevant to me as a single person. I need to understand what marriage is. And well, you know, maybe one thing is that I have time that married people, especially those with children, don't have. Maybe there's ways I can serve in my local church, you know, extra help out. And so I began to understand my life as a single person in relationship to others who are married. And also began to see much more deeply that our crisis leading to abortion was really a crisis of marriage and of understanding man and woman in society. So when I encountered this book by Itagoris, the title of this book is On Marriage and on Being Single. The first chapter is a letter by Itagoris, a young woman who's about to be married. I find Itagorus explaining to this young woman what marriage is in a way I I'd read, you know, by this point now lots of abstract stuff and doctrine stuff, but in a way that started to just make sense and connected this vision that God had that we first see in Adam and Eve to human life today. in in a way that real and realistic and also sensitive to difficulties and challenges. And and it was also peaceful and confident.
speaker-0: Is she married herself?
speaker-1: Yes, and that's interesting. She just after she finished her schooling, she she grew up in a remote area of Bohemia where she was born on the family estate, but then went to later on went to Catholic boarding schools, Catholic girls' schools in a different part of Austria. And she after that she had a very bad experience with faith growing up, but just went along with it. Everybody was Catholic, was in the culture. But while she when she was 14, she had an awakening of faith by discovering the saints, and that changed her whole life. This after schooling, she spent two years in the novitiate of the Mary Ward sisters. One of her boarding schools had been run by the Mary Ward sisters. And she discerned that was not her calling and that her calling was to be engaged in the world. She became involved very early in the 1920s as she became known already for her leadership in ministries and apostolates, sorry, for girls and young ladies with the Catholic youth moon. She was a writer, she was one of the editors of the journals of this time of Catholic awakening in Germany. and she then also by I don't know when she first did this, but I think by the early 1930s, maybe. She took a vow and lived as a consecrated virgin and was then hired by the bishop for the diocese of Meissen, today the area near where Dresden is. and she was the leader for the diocese of apostolates for girls and women. And then she met a young man, and by this point, she's in her getting to her mid thirties, which Think about it, you know, she's born in 1901, culturally, historically, in that setting, that's considered, you know, over the hill and very old old even not to be married. And so she is very surprised by this. but this happens. she goes through a process of a bishop releasing her from her vow as a consecrated virgin, and she gets married. and that is where her name Gurris comes from, from the man she married, Carl Josef Guris. And they then struggle with infertility, which she describes as the greatest pain sh and suffering in her entire life. Her passages on that are really beautiful, but she's not defeated. she throws her her heart. And her spirit into her role as a wife and in serving the church as a Catholic writer. so that is you know her personal experience with marriage, but she also very early on, she writes, I would say, if I had to identify three main topics in her work, she wrote a lot. so the first is certainly the saints and sanctity is at the center of it, what she's most well known for. And the second would be the church. the church itself, the churches, and questions of faith. And the third would be questions of marriage and man-woman. So this is actually a really big topic in her work. And she just sees very early on in the Western culture of Europe where she is, that very deeper rooted pillars that are holding up the civilization and these. basic unit of the family are beginning to crumble. And she's very prescient. And decades before some of these issues become big public issues, she's pointing them out, writing about them, sounding some alarm bells. And and con and constantly helping to explain what the church teaches, because for her it's just intuitive. deep in her faith that there's such beautiful truths in the church, that that is where healing and solution is gonna come from.
speaker-0: Yeah. So you said that she she she kind of had those three areas of of expertise and where she wrote about and the the the fascinating thing to me is that we don't know about her as you pointed out like you when you encountered her this was my first encounter with her was through this the you know in meeting you and and learning about her writings and so I'm I'm interested to know why you think that is.
speaker-1: It is so there's a lot of complicated reasons, but one of the main reasons is that she died in 1971. And she dies in 71, and thus at a point when the new progressivist powers rising fast inside the church in Germany are all they've already been. Taken over institutions
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: and inside the church and those inside the church in Germany who still have wider, broader, deeper roots of their faith, it's such such a short amount of time has passed after this huge event of the Second Vatican Council that Joseph Ratzinger describes. the work of Ida Goris as a contrast to what Ratzinger calls, who was a friend of hers, calls embarrassed silence in the church. All of these people who had other answers but thought, well, I shouldn't say anything. And so she was outspoken in the 1960s about things becoming unraveled inside the church and going in dark directions. And thus this book, you know, Bread Grows in Winter has four essays and two lectures by her from 1967 to 1970. So from this window at the very end of her life. And she's also known for writing about these questions of marriage and sex. She's an outspoken defender of celibacy for the priesthood, which you know in the 60s was it's hard for us to imagine now, but apparently a lot of Catholics and a lot of priests that That's gonna go away tomorrow. Right. she saw this as something very deep and she's writing about this. And so in 1971, when she dies, she's just the kind of voice that the new progressivists in Germany in the church they don't want to hear about. And
speaker-0: You're right.
speaker-1: so, and she also does not have children to follow on and be defenders for her legacy. her siblings, her own family history with her parents is complicated and difficult. Mother's Japanese, father dies when she's young. Most of her siblings don't go on to form families, and most of her siblings become secular, and some of the older brothers seem anti, anti-church, anti-Catholic. So there's nobody really to be a voice for her, except a few people who still know about her, and they include. And we find these references in their works. People like Joseph Ratzinger, Joseph Pieper mentions her, Cardinal Schaftzig, who's not so well known in the English-speaking world, but he's really a great figure of profound deep Catholicism in Germany in the 70s, 80s, 90s. and then a great German scholar who's not well known in America, but She's for me a shining light of the Catholic Church in this day is a woman named Dr. Hannah Barbara Gail Falkowitz. and she basically single-handedly alone tried to keep the light on so that Ida Goris wouldn't be completely forgotten. And so when I discovered her, nobody was studying her, nobody was writing about her, except this one woman, Dr. Gail Falkowitz. And she's so relevant to today. Everything I read by her is so relevant right now. Because I think because she both has such a deep connection inside the church. She's able to speak about the church and to the church across time. But she's also writing as somebody who's living in the modern era who understands some of the particular problems we have here and now. and so it's really a joy for me. to try to bring works like Bread Grows in Winter into print to English speaking Catholics. And some of her early works in the nineteen thirties were translated and also in the f fifties and early sixties from German and into English, but most of those works in English are out of print.
speaker-0: Yeah. So Jennifer, and we're speaking with Jennifer Bryson, fellow in Catholic Studies of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, translator of the works of Ida Ida Frederica Gurres. speak specifically to to bread grows in winter. just just give kind of kind of a brief overview of you said four essays and two lectures that are collected in this single volume. Maybe just kind of a a brief glimpse at each. And then what what is sort of the overall theme? Obviously, a collection is has some eclesicity to it, but it also has some unifying themes that make it a collection. for someone who's who's interested, especially having you having laid out, you know, kind of who Ida Marie Goris was Frederica Goris. I don't know why I keep calling her Ida Marie Goris. Ida Frederica Goris. especially like laying out who she was. And the context for her work and the the kind of the contribution. what what would be what would be kind of the the pitch that you would make for someone who might be interested to pick up a copy of Bread Grows in Winter and actually encounter gurus for their for themselves?
speaker-1: So as I mentioned, Growth and Winter has essays and lectures from 1967 to 1970. And interestingly, the book was published in 1970 in German. You know, so she was well known. And she was doing very important work that time to address the crisis in the church. I mean, that really is the central topic throughout the six chapters. She's looking at very different angles. She's looking at the how we talk about who Jesus is, the relationship of piety and the practice of faith and spirituality to the study of theology. She's defending celibacy again. She has two very important chapters in the book. One is called Demolition Troops in the Church, and one Trusting the Church, that is about the heart of the crisis. But that that really is the Common thread throughout these books and something, these six chapters, and something that's so astonishing in Bread Grows in Winter, and a reason I thought it was so important to make it available in English. And also I think a reason why Bishop Eric Varden, who's a fan of Itagorus, was willing to write a preface to the English edition, is that Bread Grows in Winter is so relevant right now as we're speaking in 2026 to how. Help Catholics navigate a challenging time in the church.
speaker-0: What do you what do you think if she were here, she I like you said, her her writings are almost they're they're timely, and they they relate to a an era that she didn't live to see, but you it's almost as if she's speaking to this generation. what do you think her take on, based off of what you know with her, what do you think her take would be on the current status? Of where things are on marriage, where things are in the church, where things are in just the the the very deep as Steve always terms it, the anthropological revolution happening where we just don't even understand what it means to be you know, can't define what woman is, let alone what and then you can't define what human is. So it's just it's it's really we're we're off the maps. And based on your understanding of where she was at, where do you think she would Look around and say today.
speaker-1: So there's two remarks that she made in 1970. And these are both in chapter six of Bread Grows in Winter in her this lecture that's chapter six called Trusting the Church. One is she says, this is 1970. She says, I imagine that things could and even will get darker, even darker.
speaker-0: A lot.
speaker-1: So she saw a very, very deep, profound darkness. And keep in mind, she's saying this in a lecture that's called Trusting the Church. And also in that lecture, she says something. And I remember while I was reading and working on this translation, I I just I was startled at one point because I thought this is she saw exactly what would be happening today. And she says, and perhaps even at some point, the grandchildren of those who are I'm paraphrasing here, who are doing the destruction now, will want to try to recover what is great and good and beautiful, even perhaps out of generational, you know, contrary. So I we're I think we're watching some of that happen right now. And I I I I think that what she would say today was what she said in 1970. And I would also add that she would be She would be able to help us see how deep the problems are about these questions of what is human being and marriage and sex. For example, she has an essay she wrote in I think around 1954 on reproductive technology, which she saw as a very profound horror. And when I think about how clear-sided she was in seeing how deeply horrifying the implications of separating human life from you know the nest of man and woman as mother and father and the family. She I think she wouldn't be surprised, although some some things are so crazy and wild, you know, that if she were in a time machine and came back that especially with the issues of, you know, saying, Well, we can no longer define what male and female is. Right. Right. She
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: would say, Well, I could see, you know, years ago that's where things were heading, but I think she would also say, Wait, what? Yeah.
speaker-0: Right. Well, this Jennifer, this is this is such good stuff. I'm I'm so pleased that we had the opportunity to have this conversation and and to have you introduce us to to Ida Guris and and this great work, Bread Grows in Winter. So again, this is from Ignatius Press, Bread Grows in Winter, the English translation that Jennifer did of Ida Frederica Goris's nineteen seventy book. But A book that clearly has a lot to say to us now. and is still a great travel companion, as as Bishop Varden said in in his preface, is still a great travel companion for Catholics who are even in the present day navigating a lot of the turmoil and looking for reasons to hope. But that's that's definitely the takeaway. that there's nothing to despair over here, but there is serious work to be done. so yeah, thanks, thanks so much for joining us. We'll have to we'll have to catch up down the road. So I know you're working on some other. Translation as well. in the meantime, if people are looking just to catch up with you and follow your work as well, where can they find you?
speaker-1: Sure, thanks. I have a website that's jenniferbrison.net. and there's more information there about my translation work and links to some of the articles I write, and a link there to a website about Itagorus, that's idagoras.org.
speaker-0: Excellent. All right. Thanks so much. And dear listeners, stay right where you are because we will be right back here on Cradle and Convert. Don't go away.
Steve Greene: I'm alone again. Earlier I was alone because Becky was trying to find Caleb so that she could have him remind her of the termite anecdote, the nuptial dance of the termite. And now I'm alone because Becky suddenly said, hold the phone and went running out. And I think I know why I'm going to just go, I'm going to make a bold prediction. I'm going to make a bold prediction that when my lovely wife returns She is going to have a little individual serving size mini cup of thrifty chocolate melted crunch ice cream. Yes. she brought the whole box. Nevermind. I thought she was just bringing one. Good luck getting back in. Okay. So this is, this is, don't normally do any kind of brand placement. but I need to tell you guys about this. Look at how cute those are. You only need like two or three to be satisfied. they come in these cute little, do you see how he's cylindrical? That's how they would scoop it into your cone. See that, that's gotta be a thrifty thing. Cause I've never seen that. I see what you're saying now. Like he's not a round scoop of ice cream. He's like a cylindrical scoop of ice cream. That is- a pushup. You know remember pushups? Kind of shape of a pushup. I liked pushups. No, those are gross. These. Just because you love thrifty chocolate, multi-crunch doesn't mean you have to bag on every other sweet treat. Pushups are terrible. They're not. But I, I find that one of these is not going to do the job as far as getting your fix. Set that right there. Yeah. Cause we could, mean, this, this outro that we're about to record could go on for. several minutes. You might need a of this. Just talk about. So anyway, yeah. So welcome back to Cradle and Convert. yeah, great conversation with with Jennifer. Her her background is fascinating. So dear listener, if you want like a deeper dive into her her whole story, because she goes into more depth on the Reasonably Rational episode that I recorded with her, you can hop over Reasonably Rational on YouTube. and catch it there. But yeah, just an amazing story of hers and the kind of the providential intersection of her story, especially kind of the part of her faith journey where she was beginning to really think, rethink, reconsider, rediscover marriage and like the church's position on it. And through that lens also really beginning to rethink like just the whole authentic femininity thing versus kind of the cultural defaults that she was raised with. And then having Itagoras kind of enter the picture at that point. then, mean, obviously, it's a labor of love for her to be translating these works. I will say to your listener, so grab a copy of Bread Grows in Winter. I think you'll enjoy it very much, especially if you're trying to just think and pray your way through navigating all the turmoil in the church and how can you trust the church and what are you supposed to make of all? She's excellent on all those points. But. In spring of 2027, this is upcoming spring, the book on marriage that Jennifer was referring to that she first read by Itaguras, that's also coming out in English translation. She's actually working on that project right now. I never got to ask her exactly how many languages she speaks. So a bunch. Because she said, obviously she's translating a German text in time in Germany, East Germany, no less. German, I think a couple different Arabic type of... That's just wow. And that's also a pretty fascinating like just autobiographical point that having completed a doctorate in like Greco-Arab Latin studies she was unemployable and everyone's like, ah, that was a stupid thing to get a degree in. And then 9-11. know it. And so then that's like the next 15 years of her that at all. I would have liked to have heard a lot We go into that a little bit more in the reasonably rational. if you want to... What was... Interesting stuff. What I thought was, I had written it down somewhere here. I I the mixer on top. There we go. No. Yeah. There it is. It was... she was talking about how at once she was in the church, even for many, many years already, she still had that worldview or the experience of her upbringing and her understanding of kind of her role and her mission was career. that took a, so she kind of brought that into her experience in the church with this sort of attitude of like, okay, well, we've got to do some things, we got to work here, we got to do that. And I think it's interesting the way that the church, Mother Church has this, when someone is open, when it's open, she was clearly, she was intelligent enough, but she was also open, had the right fertile soil for that truth to resonate with her. But I think, what Mother Church wants to do is take you in and wrap you up and then have you be renewed. But using your gifts, using what even the brokenness or the way that you were formed or malformed, I should say, and kind of like untwist that and help you to see. And then she's now becoming this voice who can write and speak and has such an education. And then she's helping to bring Itagores to the table for a generation of not just women, but men and women and the church as a whole. And I just find that fascinating. And I think about my own journey to Catholicism and how I was a high level athlete. And my entire upbringing was sort of rooted in this all or nothing perfection is the standard. And there's nothing in this world that you can ever achieve. Perfection and you really you can't no matter how much that is imposed and you can come very close with an elite You know journey like mine you can you can always be nitpicking and trying to polish and find you know the next thing that you can correct and improve on to become Perfect and perfection is the standard and everything else is failure and that that's a hard thing to then carry into life in the real world where that's not the case, but I credit in some ways like that longing for that with my attraction to the Catholic Church once I understood it, because this is the one true faith. you can't get, even though it itself, she itself, the church is so wounded in so many ways and is made up of wounded souls and imperfect, right? And it's journeying through this place and time, but This isn't our final home and our final destination. And you aren't going to get though, the perfect truth anywhere else than you will in the church, which then of course gives its credibility to the fact that it is what was founded by Christ himself. And there is a God and he is he, know, it's just, it's it's just, that's kind of one those things where I look at, you know, even when you're shaped and formed and you have a perspective that maybe you have to spend your entire life trying to shake. there's a place and a space for you in the church. she kind of speaks to that in a way to help you heal. Yeah, yeah, Very true. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, that's it for us. Rush right out and buy several copies of Bread Grows in Winter from Ignatius Press, lectures and essays from Ida Frederica Gurus, translated by Jennifer Bryson. And in the meantime, please like, share, subscribe, post. Whatever you can do to amplify this cute little channel we got going here, Cradle and Convert, we'll continue to pump out content, whether there's a million people listening or just you and your wife, husband, brother, sister, cat, goldfish, whatever. But we do want to say thanks for joining us on Cradle and Convert. Remember, the church has what the world needs. So learn your faith, live your faith, and share your faith. Till next time, God bless.
speaker-0: Wife Becky the Convert. We're thrilled to welcome to the program first time guest Jennifer Bryson. Jennifer is a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In addition to that, she's the translator of the works of Ida Friederika Gurris, who is a less well-known than she should be German writer from the 20th century. who I'm gonna make the case, and I think Jennifer will also make the case, has a lot to say to us Catholics here in the 21st century. and we're gonna talk specifically today about work that she's translated titled Bread Grows in Winter. It's a available from Ignatius Press. My lovely wife is holding it up for you to view there, which is a collection of of Goris's essays. So Jennifer, welcome to Cradle and Convert. Thanks for joining us.
speaker-1: Delighted to join you. Thanks for the opportunity.
speaker-0: So given that this is your first appearance on the big show here, I'm wondering if maybe you could begin by giving us a little bit of an introduction just to you, a little bit of your your autobiography, and then of course introduce Ida Friedrika Gurres as well.
speaker-1: Sure. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, largely secular upbringing, public schools. My mother took us to a Lutheran church on Sundays, but it wasn't something meaningful at home and I didn't really like it. By the time I went to college, although I'm sure seeds were planted there by a few good people. But by the time I went to college, I was a person of no religion. And when I did an interview about my conversion story for the Coming Home Network, they asked, Well, were you an atheist or were you an agnostic? And I said, I just I just wasn't interested. I thought, I don't need religion. so I went off to Stanford for my first year. And during my second year of college, I went overseas because I'd already been overseas in high school for a year. Doing a year of my high schooling in Austria and I'd studied German before I went to Austria. So I already had German and I was adventurous and I went to former East Germany when it was still East Germany and the wall was up. And I studied Marxism-Leninism for a year. I was I wasn't a Marxist, but I didn't know enough to say I am not a Marxist, and I didn't know enough to say I am a Marxist. And when in Rome, do as the Romans do. So I was at the Karl Marx University, and what else do you study there? it was actually fascinating. And the best course, which for them was the absolute foundation, was philosophy. And that is what opened me up to questions of is it true? to questions of where does existence come from? and I began to consider that you know, maybe a materialistic explanation of the universe is actually what. Is reality and a materialistic explanation of the universe that the Marxists have says that physical matter is the first and primary thing in existence. they never explain where physical matter came from, it's just there. And that everything else, such as ideas we have and abstract concepts, are just are a result of that. And thus how you organize politics, how you organize economics. Changes radically when the highest meaning in life is simply physical matter. And they were insistent that you could not have this worldview without being an atheist. And so I thought, wow, I really have to consider this, might be true. And got broke into my life that year. I had an experience of God. while I was reading an essay by Lenin about atheism, this wasn't I this was God's idea. About how this worked. And that changed my life. And I experienced God as creator. my best friends that year were the Polish students. They were the only ones crazy enough to seek out an American in this communist city and want to be friends with me. and they were joyful and smart and intellectually engaged in countering the Marxist ideas in their classrooms. And this was such a great contrast to the grayness and Harshness of East Germany. So I didn't understand who Jesus was, but I I I was aware that this experience I had of God and what was going on in their lives, their Catholicism, even though I didn't like Catholics, was about, you know, we're talking about the same thing here, but I couldn't connect the dots. So I went back to college. A year later became a Christian, started to figure Jesus out through evangelical contacts, and a year, Two years after that, I came into the Catholic Church while I was in graduate school at Yale. And I studied medieval European intellectual history from St. Augustine up to Thomas Aquinas. As you might imagine, for one just discovering the Catholic Church, it was a fabulous foundation, and I was a child in a candy store.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: And that's how I discovered the Arabic works that were translated. of Aristotle from Arabic to Latin and were key to intellectual developments in Europe. And I thought, this is interesting. So one thing led to another. I went to the Middle East to study Arabic for two years because I wanted to use it in graduate school. I didn't want to be taking, you know, how to conjugate verb language classes in grad school. And then did my PhD. In Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies, studying the transmission of Greek, philosophy, natural science, and medicine from Greek to Syriac to Arabic to Latin, as well as the history of Islam. You can't study Arabic without studying Islam. These just go hand in hand. left graduate school, was unemployed in the fall of 2001, had been told I'd studied something useless. My brother said, no wonder you can't find a job. You studied something so useless here. And the attacks of 9-11 happened. wow. So sadly that was how my degree became very useful. And I went to work for the US military, which I would love. I was thrilled to get to work to help defend our country. And I also really work culture. of the military. I was a civilian with the military. And I spent almost all of that time with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Finished that up and went on to work for several think tanks. Now after leaving the military, I did a lot of things with Islam for a number of years and that had really reached its end. And by 2019, I career wise, I had absolutely no idea what to do next. Really no idea, which was a little harrowing. but I was you know blessed to have a great education. I've had a lot of experience in life, and I just thought, well, somehow I'm gonna find some way to put this together. And out of the blue in 2019, in the fall, while I was working on something completely unrelated, through Contacts in Austria, I stumbled on an author I'd never ever heard of through a Catholic group. This author's name was very long, Ida Friederike Gus. And what I saw, the first book I saw, was a book on marriage from 1949. And I thought, this was written before things went crazy. Maybe that'll have some of that great deep Catholic wisdom in it. So I tried to find information about the author. There was very little, but I did find some. And what I found fascinated me. And then I was able to order the book it from Austria. I was in the US at the time. And I started reading. And not within the first pages, but within the first paragraphs, I was blown away. And I thought, well, for one thing, how is it possible that this book's never been translated? But I also wondered, how is this woman not completely famous? and that's an interesting question we might get into.
speaker-0: Well, I so this is this is just fascinating. There are so many points in your story where I was like, I need to ask her about that. I want to ask her about that. And so I don't I I don't actually know which one we wanna t dive into per se, but I think Just a little bit of your own journey to then discovering this author, because where where were you in the the decision to become Catholic and your understanding of your womanhood, of your femininity and of marriage and all of these things that then piqued your interest when you encountered her? because I'm a convert as well and the exploration of the church's understanding of authentic femininity and the relationships between men and women and our h and our humanity as seen through that lens has very much been the catalyst for my ongoing conversion. even though I converted many, many, many years ago, 25 years ago, there's there's this ongoing exploration of that topic. And when you encounter something like this that just revolutionizes the the the whole way that we have been taught to to think and to believe. And especially with you diving so deeply into the the Mark, I mean, being in East Germany when it was still behind the wall, that's just fascinating to me that you you were there and and studying and under that whole umbrella of philosophy and worldview. And then here you are. So I think it's just a testament to the way God works, is often the the most extreme kind of perspective is how that pendulum swings swings over to the other side, and then you become this great warrior and you're a great thinker on it. So just maybe kind of unpack that. It's not so much a question, but I'm just kind of curious if you could dive into that a little bit.
speaker-1: Sure. That this this womanhood, Catholic faith, my background is actually something that I really want to write about because this has become a really major issue in my life and in my work now. So I came into the church in 1990. As I mentioned, I was in grad school at Yale at the time. I'd had this secular upbringing. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 19. You know, by that point in the San Francisco Bay Area, nobody talked about feminism. It was already in the air and in the water. It was it was simply a fate accompli. And I was raised in my schooling and mostly on what my father wanted. That I existed to do two things in life. To excel in my career and show the boys I could beat them. Because that's why females exist.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: I I really knew nothing else. I was in competitive swimming by age five, all throughout elementary school and into middle school. this was the 1970s. There was already a vast girls' soccer program. every fall and then in the winter, you know, there was baseball and in the spring softball. and so I knew nothing else. I went off to college. I got into Stanford, which was very exciting. It really was an amazing environment. And I was there, I was one of the last classes that still had the great books program at Stanford. So some aspects of the education were really great, especially just With the other students because the intensity level on campus was so high and I loved that. and I was very pro-abortion. And this really has a lot to do with my concept of what it means to be a woman. I wasn't an activist in any way. My parents were both from little towns in Montana. And I loved visiting Montana with them and our relatives. I had a an intuitive sense that there was something solid there that was different from the San Francisco Bay Area. so I wasn't, you know, out there at protests all the time. But since career was what I was supposed to do, well, of course women have to have abortion. I mean the greatest threat to my existence, since my existence was my career and my career was my existence, would be pregnancy. But I'd never ever thought About what it is. I never thought about the implications of abortion for how men and women relate. I was very fortunate in the second half of college after I came back from East Germany when I started to rethink some things. I became very grateful for the good things that we have in America. And I no longer took the American way of life, our political system and our culture for granted. And so I got involved in politics on campus and the college Republicans because after East Germany, I felt I had a civic duty to be involved and do my part. And through that, I met some very fine young men. Fortunately, they were most they were Christians and they were Jews. And that was, I was inadvertently fortunate to have a morally relatively healthy environment through that social group. I dated a young man in that group who was an evangelical. Again, I God, my guardian angel were watching out for me. because I was really quite, quite clueless. and so he was a very wholesome, morally upright, good man. And he was the one who challenged me on abortion. And then as I started to figure out how Christianity related to this experience of God, I had. Then when that became clear overnight my view on abortion changed 180 degrees. overnight. And week just so that was about six, eight weeks later, then once the fall started at Stanford after that summer when I I between my junior and senior year, when You know, Jesus Christ, Christianity, God made sense. And I started to realize what abortion is. I was in the pro-life group immediately. And that is where I started to see that I had been sold something very false in the culture I had grown up with. I started to see that abortion is a disaster for women, makes women vulnerable to being sexually exploited by men and then men using abortion. To not deal with responsibility. I saw how it was a disaster for men because any sense of personal moral responsibility and any sense of relations with women and sex being related to family was all cut. Yeah. So I I I I started to realize something was wrong, but I'd have this tremendous transformation in my life through Christianity coming in. Through the pro-life movement, then I meet Catholics. so this is all happening in the summer, the fall of nineteen eighty-eight, nineteen eighty nine. I graduate from college and by the spring of nineteen ninety, I'm in the Catholic Church. And what happened to me was that I came into the Catholic Church and I felt like it was a dramatic new chapter. I was thrilled, I was happy, I was delighted. And I was unaware how many assumptions I was carrying with me, like bricks on my shoulders, from this very secular upbringing I had had, especially, for example, about what woman is, what women's role is, how women relate to men. And it took years, really I would say 25 years. For me to deeply realize that I'd put this solid stone building of the church onto a foundation that still had a lot of sand in it. And that sand was all of these secular ideas I had about, you know, we need to have women in charge and women's liberation and all this stuff. And once that started to crumble, and it was like it was cleansed. I mean, like cleansing waters washed through and wash that sand away. so I after twenty-five years as a Catholic was when Mary started to make sense to me. And
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: it was only with me recognizing that I was still looking at Catholicism Catholicism through assumptions I had brought with me and began to let go of those. Began to trust God, began to discover the saints, began to discover great Catholics. A key thing was also developing friendships with Catholic women who were married, and in a very few instances, I'm still I'm single, I've never married, having opportunities to be in homes and beginning to discover. Catholic homes with where faith is alive, families valued. I started to discover there's something really different going on here in a profound, beautiful way. And so yeah, that's all been a big process. And then you know, I this is happening around 2015, 16, 17. So I come into the church 1990, 25 later, 25 years later. these these shifts and changes are happening. And then 2019, I discover Edagurus. And I'm starting to discover Catholic women who are happy in their faith, who are at peace, who aren't feeling bitter against the church and like, well, it's our task as Catholics to change it. And Edagurus played a large role in this. Sigrid Unsett, for example, and some others. And so I what I think God in a way maybe saved her for me. So that I would discover her at a time that my heart would be open to what she and others were doing.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's that's a lovely way to put it. There's that just the you know, the the the beauty of divine providence working in those mysterious ways through you know the the best that we have to offer and the worst and the the constant. I one of the great things about being Catholic is is the fact that you you never touch bottom in this ocean. It it's just it doesn't matter how deep you go, how high you reach, there's just greater depths and higher heights, and which is such a beautiful thing. And then of course. Once you begin to really recognize that, I I think the proper response is gratitude and humility, you know, before a thing that is so much bigger than you and so much deeper and so much more powerful. but so what when you first when you first encountered Ida Frederica Gurres, what what was it specifically? So the the interesting that, you know, so you said, although you're single, never married, the first book you read by her was a book on marriage, and it immediately resonated. I mean, like in the first paragraphs, it already grabs you. Looking back on that, what was it specifically, do you think, that grabbed you? Like you you've given us a a context for at that point in your life and in your journey, you were open for some a thinker like this, you know, to encounter a writer and a thinker like her. But what was it specifically? Was it something about what she was saying, the way she was saying it? Was it something that was a a particular context or a new idea, or was it resonating with something that you were already kind of coming to see and she was just clarifying or amplifying it for you?
speaker-1: So let me offer, if I may, one more bit of context for what's happening in my faith life when I encounter her. And that is starting to figure out what marriage is and what the church teaches. I've been involved in pro-life stuff since 1990. And after about 20 years of that, I'm very aware that we've got a crisis of how what's happening with pregnancy in society. But I had all of these assumptions that came from my my cultural social environment. You know, I spent years and years at Stanford and Yale. and this is shocking for me in retrospect, but by around 2009, when I went to work, I was very fortunate to get to work at the Witherspoon Institute, with a lot of Catholic or Catholics, I also, you know, had had colleagues from other backgrounds, but there were a lot of Catholics there. And this is when the big political fight over marriage is heating up in the United States. And the effort is being pushed hard for allowing same-sex marriage. And I just kind of thought, yeah, you know, if two people love each other, what's the big deal? But I was around All of these colleagues who were working very hard at the time, even before it became a big public issue, realizing that redefining marriage would have profound implications. And as I started to hear them talk about what research actually showed these negative implications would be for the well-being of children, also for for men and women, if we take sex out of marriage and take children out of marriage. and I started to hear Catholics talk about marriage in ways that I just I'd I'd never heard before. And I began to very privately and quietly, I didn't admit this to anybody around me. I began to suspect I think maybe I don't know or understand what the church teaches on marriage. How can that be? Like I've I'm one of the you sort of Conservatives, I love great liturgy, I'm pro-life. But I had just been in environments where nobody talked about this. It was just it never came up. And so I made a conscious choice. And also at this point in my life, you know, I don't know, am I gonna meet someone to marry or not? You know, and I'm wondering also, well, what do I do about this odd situation that I'm still single? And I thought, okay, one thing I can do. If God is to call me to marriage, is to become a person who's ready to be married if I meet someone. So maybe I should actually learn what this marriage thing is. And also as a Catholic, this is one of the sacraments. So, you know, this is obviously pretty important. So I was already beginning to read and read and read and having to admit, wow, I had a very shallow, partially false understanding of what marriage is. And I also realized also as I began to, you know, to deal with the fact that I'm, you know, I'm, you know, getting into my forties and moving on, older than that even, and I'm not married. What does this mean for me and my, you know, role in spiritual life? And so the I'm starting to realize, well, God loves family, God loves marriage. And this is part of the connective tissue in the body of Christ. So this is incredibly relevant to me as a single person. I need to understand what marriage is. And well, you know, maybe one thing is that I have time that married people, especially those with children, don't have. Maybe there's ways I can serve in my local church, you know, extra help out. And so I began to understand my life as a single person in relationship to others who are married. And also began to see much more deeply that our crisis leading to abortion was really a crisis of marriage and of understanding man and woman in society. So when I encountered this book by Itagoris, the title of this book is On Marriage and on Being Single. The first chapter is a letter by Itagoris, a young woman who's about to be married. I find Itagorus explaining to this young woman what marriage is in a way I I'd read, you know, by this point now lots of abstract stuff and doctrine stuff, but in a way that started to just make sense and connected this vision that God had that we first see in Adam and Eve to human life today. in in a way that real and realistic and also sensitive to difficulties and challenges. And and it was also peaceful and confident.
speaker-0: Is she married herself?
speaker-1: Yes, and that's interesting. She just after she finished her schooling, she she grew up in a remote area of Bohemia where she was born on the family estate, but then went to later on went to Catholic boarding schools, Catholic girls' schools in a different part of Austria. And she after that she had a very bad experience with faith growing up, but just went along with it. Everybody was Catholic, was in the culture. But while she when she was 14, she had an awakening of faith by discovering the saints, and that changed her whole life. This after schooling, she spent two years in the novitiate of the Mary Ward sisters. One of her boarding schools had been run by the Mary Ward sisters. And she discerned that was not her calling and that her calling was to be engaged in the world. She became involved very early in the 1920s as she became known already for her leadership in ministries and apostolates, sorry, for girls and young ladies with the Catholic youth moon. She was a writer, she was one of the editors of the journals of this time of Catholic awakening in Germany. and she then also by I don't know when she first did this, but I think by the early 1930s, maybe. She took a vow and lived as a consecrated virgin and was then hired by the bishop for the diocese of Meissen, today the area near where Dresden is. and she was the leader for the diocese of apostolates for girls and women. And then she met a young man, and by this point, she's in her getting to her mid thirties, which Think about it, you know, she's born in 1901, culturally, historically, in that setting, that's considered, you know, over the hill and very old old even not to be married. And so she is very surprised by this. but this happens. she goes through a process of a bishop releasing her from her vow as a consecrated virgin, and she gets married. and that is where her name Gurris comes from, from the man she married, Carl Josef Guris. And they then struggle with infertility, which she describes as the greatest pain sh and suffering in her entire life. Her passages on that are really beautiful, but she's not defeated. she throws her her heart. And her spirit into her role as a wife and in serving the church as a Catholic writer. so that is you know her personal experience with marriage, but she also very early on, she writes, I would say, if I had to identify three main topics in her work, she wrote a lot. so the first is certainly the saints and sanctity is at the center of it, what she's most well known for. And the second would be the church. the church itself, the churches, and questions of faith. And the third would be questions of marriage and man-woman. So this is actually a really big topic in her work. And she just sees very early on in the Western culture of Europe where she is, that very deeper rooted pillars that are holding up the civilization and these. basic unit of the family are beginning to crumble. And she's very prescient. And decades before some of these issues become big public issues, she's pointing them out, writing about them, sounding some alarm bells. And and con and constantly helping to explain what the church teaches, because for her it's just intuitive. deep in her faith that there's such beautiful truths in the church, that that is where healing and solution is gonna come from.
speaker-0: Yeah. So you said that she she she kind of had those three areas of of expertise and where she wrote about and the the the fascinating thing to me is that we don't know about her as you pointed out like you when you encountered her this was my first encounter with her was through this the you know in meeting you and and learning about her writings and so I'm I'm interested to know why you think that is.
speaker-1: It is so there's a lot of complicated reasons, but one of the main reasons is that she died in 1971. And she dies in 71, and thus at a point when the new progressivist powers rising fast inside the church in Germany are all they've already been. Taken over institutions
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: and inside the church and those inside the church in Germany who still have wider, broader, deeper roots of their faith, it's such such a short amount of time has passed after this huge event of the Second Vatican Council that Joseph Ratzinger describes. the work of Ida Goris as a contrast to what Ratzinger calls, who was a friend of hers, calls embarrassed silence in the church. All of these people who had other answers but thought, well, I shouldn't say anything. And so she was outspoken in the 1960s about things becoming unraveled inside the church and going in dark directions. And thus this book, you know, Bread Grows in Winter has four essays and two lectures by her from 1967 to 1970. So from this window at the very end of her life. And she's also known for writing about these questions of marriage and sex. She's an outspoken defender of celibacy for the priesthood, which you know in the 60s was it's hard for us to imagine now, but apparently a lot of Catholics and a lot of priests that That's gonna go away tomorrow. Right. she saw this as something very deep and she's writing about this. And so in 1971, when she dies, she's just the kind of voice that the new progressivists in Germany in the church they don't want to hear about. And
speaker-0: You're right.
speaker-1: so, and she also does not have children to follow on and be defenders for her legacy. her siblings, her own family history with her parents is complicated and difficult. Mother's Japanese, father dies when she's young. Most of her siblings don't go on to form families, and most of her siblings become secular, and some of the older brothers seem anti, anti-church, anti-Catholic. So there's nobody really to be a voice for her, except a few people who still know about her, and they include. And we find these references in their works. People like Joseph Ratzinger, Joseph Pieper mentions her, Cardinal Schaftzig, who's not so well known in the English-speaking world, but he's really a great figure of profound deep Catholicism in Germany in the 70s, 80s, 90s. and then a great German scholar who's not well known in America, but She's for me a shining light of the Catholic Church in this day is a woman named Dr. Hannah Barbara Gail Falkowitz. and she basically single-handedly alone tried to keep the light on so that Ida Goris wouldn't be completely forgotten. And so when I discovered her, nobody was studying her, nobody was writing about her, except this one woman, Dr. Gail Falkowitz. And she's so relevant to today. Everything I read by her is so relevant right now. Because I think because she both has such a deep connection inside the church. She's able to speak about the church and to the church across time. But she's also writing as somebody who's living in the modern era who understands some of the particular problems we have here and now. and so it's really a joy for me. to try to bring works like Bread Grows in Winter into print to English speaking Catholics. And some of her early works in the nineteen thirties were translated and also in the f fifties and early sixties from German and into English, but most of those works in English are out of print.
speaker-0: Yeah. So Jennifer, and we're speaking with Jennifer Bryson, fellow in Catholic Studies of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, translator of the works of Ida Ida Frederica Gurres. speak specifically to to bread grows in winter. just just give kind of kind of a brief overview of you said four essays and two lectures that are collected in this single volume. Maybe just kind of a a brief glimpse at each. And then what what is sort of the overall theme? Obviously, a collection is has some eclesicity to it, but it also has some unifying themes that make it a collection. for someone who's who's interested, especially having you having laid out, you know, kind of who Ida Marie Goris was Frederica Goris. I don't know why I keep calling her Ida Marie Goris. Ida Frederica Goris. especially like laying out who she was. And the context for her work and the the kind of the contribution. what what would be what would be kind of the the pitch that you would make for someone who might be interested to pick up a copy of Bread Grows in Winter and actually encounter gurus for their for themselves?
speaker-1: So as I mentioned, Growth and Winter has essays and lectures from 1967 to 1970. And interestingly, the book was published in 1970 in German. You know, so she was well known. And she was doing very important work that time to address the crisis in the church. I mean, that really is the central topic throughout the six chapters. She's looking at very different angles. She's looking at the how we talk about who Jesus is, the relationship of piety and the practice of faith and spirituality to the study of theology. She's defending celibacy again. She has two very important chapters in the book. One is called Demolition Troops in the Church, and one Trusting the Church, that is about the heart of the crisis. But that that really is the Common thread throughout these books and something, these six chapters, and something that's so astonishing in Bread Grows in Winter, and a reason I thought it was so important to make it available in English. And also I think a reason why Bishop Eric Varden, who's a fan of Itagorus, was willing to write a preface to the English edition, is that Bread Grows in Winter is so relevant right now as we're speaking in 2026 to how. Help Catholics navigate a challenging time in the church.
speaker-0: What do you what do you think if she were here, she I like you said, her her writings are almost they're they're timely, and they they relate to a an era that she didn't live to see, but you it's almost as if she's speaking to this generation. what do you think her take on, based off of what you know with her, what do you think her take would be on the current status? Of where things are on marriage, where things are in the church, where things are in just the the the very deep as Steve always terms it, the anthropological revolution happening where we just don't even understand what it means to be you know, can't define what woman is, let alone what and then you can't define what human is. So it's just it's it's really we're we're off the maps. And based on your understanding of where she was at, where do you think she would Look around and say today.
speaker-1: So there's two remarks that she made in 1970. And these are both in chapter six of Bread Grows in Winter in her this lecture that's chapter six called Trusting the Church. One is she says, this is 1970. She says, I imagine that things could and even will get darker, even darker.
speaker-0: A lot.
speaker-1: So she saw a very, very deep, profound darkness. And keep in mind, she's saying this in a lecture that's called Trusting the Church. And also in that lecture, she says something. And I remember while I was reading and working on this translation, I I just I was startled at one point because I thought this is she saw exactly what would be happening today. And she says, and perhaps even at some point, the grandchildren of those who are I'm paraphrasing here, who are doing the destruction now, will want to try to recover what is great and good and beautiful, even perhaps out of generational, you know, contrary. So I we're I think we're watching some of that happen right now. And I I I I think that what she would say today was what she said in 1970. And I would also add that she would be She would be able to help us see how deep the problems are about these questions of what is human being and marriage and sex. For example, she has an essay she wrote in I think around 1954 on reproductive technology, which she saw as a very profound horror. And when I think about how clear-sided she was in seeing how deeply horrifying the implications of separating human life from you know the nest of man and woman as mother and father and the family. She I think she wouldn't be surprised, although some some things are so crazy and wild, you know, that if she were in a time machine and came back that especially with the issues of, you know, saying, Well, we can no longer define what male and female is. Right. Right. She
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: would say, Well, I could see, you know, years ago that's where things were heading, but I think she would also say, Wait, what? Yeah.
speaker-0: Right. Well, this Jennifer, this is this is such good stuff. I'm I'm so pleased that we had the opportunity to have this conversation and and to have you introduce us to to Ida Guris and and this great work, Bread Grows in Winter. So again, this is from Ignatius Press, Bread Grows in Winter, the English translation that Jennifer did of Ida Frederica Goris's nineteen seventy book. But A book that clearly has a lot to say to us now. and is still a great travel companion, as as Bishop Varden said in in his preface, is still a great travel companion for Catholics who are even in the present day navigating a lot of the turmoil and looking for reasons to hope. But that's that's definitely the takeaway. that there's nothing to despair over here, but there is serious work to be done. so yeah, thanks, thanks so much for joining us. We'll have to we'll have to catch up down the road. So I know you're working on some other. Translation as well. in the meantime, if people are looking just to catch up with you and follow your work as well, where can they find you?
speaker-1: Sure, thanks. I have a website that's jenniferbrison.net. and there's more information there about my translation work and links to some of the articles I write, and a link there to a website about Itagorus, that's idagoras.org.
speaker-0: Excellent. All right. Thanks so much. And dear listeners, stay right where you are because we will be right back here on Cradle and Convert. Don't go away.
Steve Greene: I'm alone again. Earlier I was alone because Becky was trying to find Caleb so that she could have him remind her of the termite anecdote, the nuptial dance of the termite. And now I'm alone because Becky suddenly said, hold the phone and went running out. And I think I know why I'm going to just go, I'm going to make a bold prediction. I'm going to make a bold prediction that when my lovely wife returns She is going to have a little individual serving size mini cup of thrifty chocolate melted crunch ice cream. Yes. she brought the whole box. Nevermind. I thought she was just bringing one. Good luck getting back in. Okay. So this is, this is, don't normally do any kind of brand placement. but I need to tell you guys about this. Look at how cute those are. You only need like two or three to be satisfied. they come in these cute little, do you see how he's cylindrical? That's how they would scoop it into your cone. See that, that's gotta be a thrifty thing. Cause I've never seen that. I see what you're saying now. Like he's not a round scoop of ice cream. He's like a cylindrical scoop of ice cream. That is- a pushup. You know remember pushups? Kind of shape of a pushup. I liked pushups. No, those are gross. These. Just because you love thrifty chocolate, multi-crunch doesn't mean you have to bag on every other sweet treat. Pushups are terrible. They're not. But I, I find that one of these is not going to do the job as far as getting your fix. Set that right there. Yeah. Cause we could, mean, this, this outro that we're about to record could go on for. several minutes. You might need a of this. Just talk about. So anyway, yeah. So welcome back to Cradle and Convert. yeah, great conversation with with Jennifer. Her her background is fascinating. So dear listener, if you want like a deeper dive into her her whole story, because she goes into more depth on the Reasonably Rational episode that I recorded with her, you can hop over Reasonably Rational on YouTube. and catch it there. But yeah, just an amazing story of hers and the kind of the providential intersection of her story, especially kind of the part of her faith journey where she was beginning to really think, rethink, reconsider, rediscover marriage and like the church's position on it. And through that lens also really beginning to rethink like just the whole authentic femininity thing versus kind of the cultural defaults that she was raised with. And then having Itagoras kind of enter the picture at that point. then, mean, obviously, it's a labor of love for her to be translating these works. I will say to your listener, so grab a copy of Bread Grows in Winter. I think you'll enjoy it very much, especially if you're trying to just think and pray your way through navigating all the turmoil in the church and how can you trust the church and what are you supposed to make of all? She's excellent on all those points. But. In spring of 2027, this is upcoming spring, the book on marriage that Jennifer was referring to that she first read by Itaguras, that's also coming out in English translation. She's actually working on that project right now. I never got to ask her exactly how many languages she speaks. So a bunch. Because she said, obviously she's translating a German text in time in Germany, East Germany, no less. German, I think a couple different Arabic type of... That's just wow. And that's also a pretty fascinating like just autobiographical point that having completed a doctorate in like Greco-Arab Latin studies she was unemployable and everyone's like, ah, that was a stupid thing to get a degree in. And then 9-11. know it. And so then that's like the next 15 years of her that at all. I would have liked to have heard a lot We go into that a little bit more in the reasonably rational. if you want to... What was... Interesting stuff. What I thought was, I had written it down somewhere here. I I the mixer on top. There we go. No. Yeah. There it is. It was... she was talking about how at once she was in the church, even for many, many years already, she still had that worldview or the experience of her upbringing and her understanding of kind of her role and her mission was career. that took a, so she kind of brought that into her experience in the church with this sort of attitude of like, okay, well, we've got to do some things, we got to work here, we got to do that. And I think it's interesting the way that the church, Mother Church has this, when someone is open, when it's open, she was clearly, she was intelligent enough, but she was also open, had the right fertile soil for that truth to resonate with her. But I think, what Mother Church wants to do is take you in and wrap you up and then have you be renewed. But using your gifts, using what even the brokenness or the way that you were formed or malformed, I should say, and kind of like untwist that and help you to see. And then she's now becoming this voice who can write and speak and has such an education. And then she's helping to bring Itagores to the table for a generation of not just women, but men and women and the church as a whole. And I just find that fascinating. And I think about my own journey to Catholicism and how I was a high level athlete. And my entire upbringing was sort of rooted in this all or nothing perfection is the standard. And there's nothing in this world that you can ever achieve. Perfection and you really you can't no matter how much that is imposed and you can come very close with an elite You know journey like mine you can you can always be nitpicking and trying to polish and find you know the next thing that you can correct and improve on to become Perfect and perfection is the standard and everything else is failure and that that's a hard thing to then carry into life in the real world where that's not the case, but I credit in some ways like that longing for that with my attraction to the Catholic Church once I understood it, because this is the one true faith. you can't get, even though it itself, she itself, the church is so wounded in so many ways and is made up of wounded souls and imperfect, right? And it's journeying through this place and time, but This isn't our final home and our final destination. And you aren't going to get though, the perfect truth anywhere else than you will in the church, which then of course gives its credibility to the fact that it is what was founded by Christ himself. And there is a God and he is he, know, it's just, it's it's just, that's kind of one those things where I look at, you know, even when you're shaped and formed and you have a perspective that maybe you have to spend your entire life trying to shake. there's a place and a space for you in the church. she kind of speaks to that in a way to help you heal. Yeah, yeah, Very true. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, that's it for us. Rush right out and buy several copies of Bread Grows in Winter from Ignatius Press, lectures and essays from Ida Frederica Gurus, translated by Jennifer Bryson. And in the meantime, please like, share, subscribe, post. Whatever you can do to amplify this cute little channel we got going here, Cradle and Convert, we'll continue to pump out content, whether there's a million people listening or just you and your wife, husband, brother, sister, cat, goldfish, whatever. But we do want to say thanks for joining us on Cradle and Convert. Remember, the church has what the world needs. So learn your faith, live your faith, and share your faith. Till next time, God bless.
