Introducing the ‘Gender Accompaniment Project’ — Part 1, with Abigail Favale

From the McGrath Institute for Church Life and OSV Podcast, this is Church Life Today.

I'm Leonard D. Lorenzo.

What do we do with unmet desires?

That is a deeply human question, but one that might not be addressed or attended to if

we have a view of life that avoids such difficulty and tension.

Some would seek to live the kind of life that tries to fulfill all desires whenever

they emerge.

Some others might seek to live in such a way that ignores or tries to suffocate desires

because that is seen as something like strength or virtue.

Others still might just live a life that has no consistent ethic, so that the question

of what to do with our desires, especially our seemingly discordant or contradictory

desires, has no central theme or reason.

But Christianity actually calls us to wrestle with such difficult things as directly addressing

and even confronting or living with unmet desires.

Christianity is, if nothing else, a call to wholeness, to integration, because Christ

is, in the words of St. Irenaeus, the whole man who brings his disciples to wholeness,

to integration in him.

In the new Podcast series created and hosted by Abigail Favoli and produced by the Magrath

Institute for Church Life, the venture toward whole and integrated humanity is very much

on offer.

The Gender Accompaniment Project seeks to both identify a better understanding of the Catholic

vision of gender and attend to the personal stories of Christians who wrestle with gender

as they seek Christ.

The project is an exercise in encounter, going toward rather than away from points of

tension precisely by going toward rather than away from each other in our pursuit of

life in Christ.

This episode right now is the first of two episodes with my colleague Abigail to introduce

this project.

The project itself consists of ten episodes released in batches.

The first of these episodes will appear just about the time this episode, which you're

listening to now, is released.

Check out our show notes for ways to connect and listen to the Gender Accompaniment Project

and for other resources that are sure to be of interest to you.

Abby, welcome back to the show.

Yeah, good to be here.

So Abby, your new ten episode podcast is terrific.

I got to listen to it in advance, so very, I feel very honored about that, but you titled

this series, The Gender Accompaniment Project.

In episode two, you actually dive into the term gender.

Most of the podcast, as people hear when they listen to it, it has to do with story and

storytelling, but episode two really kind of like focuses on this term and it's a little

bit more digging in together.

So we understand what we're talking about when we say gender, because it's used often,

but it's used in many different ways and we may be talking past each other when we use

that term.

So we could start our conversation there and in many ways, though, it makes sense.

Let's talk about what do we mean by gender here, but I actually thought we might start,

not with the first term, but the second term, accompaniment.

There is not an episode that focuses on that term accompaniment, but I thought that would

be a really interesting place to start our conversation.

That term's actually been used quite a lot, probably especially in the last ten to fifteen

years and just, you know, I'm thinking that maybe it really started to come in more

fully in the Catholic world with Francis' pontificate, a real focus on accompaniment.

But there's probably a lot of different ways in which many of us think about accompaniment

and we strangely might be talking past each other even when we use that term.

So I wanted to start there and ask you, what is the meaning of accompaniment in this

project?

That's a good question.

Yeah, because I think, I mean, I've only been Catholic for ten years, so I don't.

You came in with a coming in.

Exactly.

But I am most familiar with the term through Francis' work, but it's, in some ways,

I think about accompaniment almost, like, how do you encounter someone, like first and

foremost, like, encountering a person, right?

And then a company, right, it comes with this idea of like, you're going somewhere, right?

So how do you encounter someone well and in a way that you could then sort of walk alongside

them, right, as they continue on their spiritual, their spiritual walk?

So accompaniment has that idea, has the image of walking with, I think, so meeting a person

and walking with, but there's also a sense that accompaniment has a destination, right?

So I sometimes think there's a, a maybe, a sin or kind of too, too flimsy understanding

of accompaniment, which is just almost like, hang it out, you know, like, as long as we're

together, it's all good.

You know, and whatever man, like wherever we end up, that's cool.

But there actually is a sense where the destination is Christ, right?

And so there is, there is a tell us, I guess.

So you're accompanying someone, you're walking with someone in a way that will lead you both

more deeply into the life of Christ, right?

So it has a trajectory to it.

But it's not like, you're not kind of like heckling someone along the road, you know,

like a little stick that you're sort of poking and trying to get them to move quickly.

And yeah, so there's very much a sense of, I think, relationality and patience, docility

to the spirit and, and just like, like interpersonal presence, you know, all of those things.

So, so that's kind of what I, when I use the word, those are all the things that I'm

meaning with it.

It's like a way of encountering someone and walking with them where deeper, where deeply

into the Christian life.

So in this project, as you conceived it of it, who's a company who, and, I don't know,

maybe that's the first question, and then I guess what are different people's responsibilities

or calls in that accompaniment?

Yeah.

That's a great question.

So, I mean, the project is a tent, so it's 10 episodes and almost all of the episodes

are centered around a particular person's story.

And this would be a Christian.

Most of them are Catholic, but there are some non-Catholic Christians we interview as

well.

But centered around a story of a Christian who's, you know, a serious practicing Christian

who has an experience of what we call gender discordance or a sense of disconnect with

their biological sex.

And we kind of hear their story about how God is working in that experience, how they

are faithful in the midst of that experience, what are the challenges but also the gifts

that that experience brings.

So those are the kind of stories that we're telling.

And so the accompaniment, I mean, it's kind of mutual, right?

Because I felt as I was doing this, you know, doing this project, it wasn't as though I'm

doing the accompanying, you know, it was mutual, right?

So I'm interviewing my brothers and sisters in Christ who have an experience that I don't

have.

And I'm learning from that, like I, I've very much felt in terms of like what it looks

like, you know, to, to be faithful in the midst of a very complex experience.

And so I felt my own faith, I've identified and energized by that.

You know, but at the same time, I think there's, there's kind of a mutual edification that's

going on, hopefully, hopefully I would say that.

So who's accompanying who?

That's a good question.

I mean, part of the problem, part of the problem, but part of the, I guess, purpose of the

podcast is also to model for people, especially just, you know, fellow Christians in the

pews, like, how do you encounter someone well, especially someone who has, you know,

is struggling with gender?

How do you encounter them well and walk with them?

So there's that dynamic as well.

So it is kind of both and how do you be open to being a company as well as a company?

Yeah.

Well, I want to, so I don't forget to ask you about this later, you already employed

that term gender discordance, which I actually wanted to ask about after listening to the

podcast because the term that most of us hear most of the time is gender dysphoria, which

you don't use.

And maybe use it like in passing, but then very clearly shift the, the language to gender

discordance.

Can you speak a little bit to the distinction that's embedded in that and why you've, why

you've opted for this term?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked about that because a lot of thought went into this because so gender

discordance was trying, we were like, okay, let's come up with a term that can kind of

capture the breadth of this experience.

Like what is the essence of this experience that we're trying to explore?

Because one of the things that readers or listeners will quickly realize is that, wow,

these stories are really different.

Like each of each of the stories, and that's something in my own kind of work on gender,

which has been unfolding for years.

I don't think I've heard, you know, the stories are so different in terms of what it looks

like.

And so, but the comment, like what is the common denominator, right?

It is a sense of like a disconnect or disharmony, or there's a sense of discord, right, between

maybe what, how one feels oneself to be in terms of gender, and then one's embodiment

is male or female, right?

So there's a kind of discordance in the experience of gender, right, in the experience of one's

gender.

Yeah.

So gender dysphoria is a clinical term, right, and I didn't want to use a clinical term

because it's, that's a, you know, it has its own kind of diagnostic criteria or whatever.

And so there are certainly people we interview who have gender dysphoria and who would maybe

fit the diagnostic criteria of that, but I wanted to even go a little bit more broadly,

right?

To kind of capture people who might not necessarily fit a diagnostic criteria, right?

So I kind of wanted to get a little bit away from a clinical term or a diagnostic term,

right?

Because that's not really what I'm doing here, and I don't have the expertise to even make

sort of a diagnostic, you know, a diagnosis of people, but so we taught, we use the term

gender disconnect as well, some of the people we interview use that term.

Some people do use gender dysphoria, right?

So there are kinds of terms that the people we interview themselves will use, but for

the podcast, we wanted something that really feels neutral, right, that cat, that like

articulates what it is that is being experienced, but that isn't like a clinical term, but that

is just kind of simple and neutral.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's hard to find, it's hard to find terminology in this area that doesn't have

a lot of baggage, both politically or, you know, that's not fraught, right?

So that was also part of it, like how do we, how do we talk about this without immediately

kind of, you know, stepping on political landmines, which is, you know, probably impossible

that to do that.

It was fun.

I'm just thinking back to in the second episode, your guest says, oh, you know, you might

want to just call this podcast walking together on a landmine.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

You know, the, the project seems to have two foci, in fact, you name these.

So it's not like I'm discerning this out of it.

You name it and I think it's true after listening to it on the one hand, it's to strive after

a better understanding of the Catholic understanding or Catholic vision of gender.

And the second is to, as you've already spoken about, to attend to these firsthand stories

of Christians who wrestle with gender as they seek Christ.

I'm wondering your thoughts about the relationship between those two, like, it seems to me very

clear that these are not just two aims and they happen to be going on parallel to each

other at the same time.

But seems to me, there's something about coming to a better understanding of the Catholic

vision of gender in and through these stories.

And then at the same time, there's a better, maybe there's a, the listener is better positioned

to attend to the stories with this bearing in the Catholic understanding or Catholic vision

of gender.

I don't know if that's too convoluted, but it's the way I was pondering this and wondering

about the relationship of those two to each other.

Yeah.

I wonder if you have thoughts on that.

Oh, yeah.

I do.

I mean, you know, if one way of thinking about it a lot is, it's often like what's the

relationship between love and truth.

And in fact, in my own kind of mind and notes as we were developing this, this, this project,

I would often think in my head of like the truthies and the levies, you know, you know,

you sometimes in the church, we have the truthies that are very much like, okay, what, what

are the philosophical assumptions that play?

What does the church teach?

Like how can we like dig into what the Catechism is telling us here and, you know, all that's

like richness of the faith, like what is the truth of gender, right?

And I'm, you know, yes, we need that side.

We need, we need to have a robust and well developed kind of philosophical and theological

vision that we're working with, right?

And if we don't, then we can pretty easily kind of go off into the weeds in ways that

we don't want to.

And then on the other side, you know, the levies, there's, well, we meet, we meet people

where they are and we receive their experience and like, that's the most, that's the most

important thing.

Like, I don't, like what the Catechism says, like what the Magisterium says, like, eh,

that might be out of touch people's experience, right?

And so I think there's like both of, both of those, I kind of went, went truth and love

becomes split off into those sort of camps like that.

They're both holding on to something so vital, but you have to have both, right?

You have to reunite those two things.

And I think, you know, for, I don't know, I hate using terms like conservative, progressive

or whatever, but for I think like faithful, serious Catholics who want to think with the

church on these issues, I think often we'll get, you know, we'll get kind of, I don't

know, criticized for not being loving, right?

Yeah.

I'm like, well, that's, that's not good.

Like we should also, we should also be loving like without letting go of what we, what we

know to be true about the human person.

So really trying to knit those two more closely together when our culture is just constantly

pulling up the seams.

I mean, that was, if anything, that's like the central thing I'm hoping to do with the

podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this podcast is a production of the McGrath Institute for Church Life and certainly

building on and coming from the work that you've done over a decade or more now.

But that particular sort of tension that you're trying to hold or that sort of creative

encounter between those, the truthies and the lovies as you put it, which I love.

I don't know, in your view, like, how does that seem to fit the approach of the McGrath

Institute or how does it echo the sort of commitments of the institute?

Well, I think it really does.

I mean, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to come here.

Yeah.

It was to do kind of work that's like seriously and on a pod, politically Catholic.

But that is also oriented toward the world and kind of an invitational posture that's

not, doesn't have this kind of bunker mentality or a kind of hard sort of rigorous spirit.

But that is really kind of open and warm.

Like there's just a lot of warmth here and there's a spirit of encounter and invitation.

There's a sense that we need to be theologically rigorous but also pesterly attuned and that

I think is also, I mean, that's like the heart of what this institute does.

So I'm really trying to also model that in the podcast as well to have these kind of more

pesterly and spirit encounters with people while also digging into some of these more,

the theological depth there about what the church envisions when she speaks of men and

women and sexual difference.

So wanting to bring both of those forward, which I think is really what the institute

is.

But what we're about.

Yeah.

Well, and it also seems to me, having listened to this, that there's a challenge to the

listener.

There's, I think even in one of the early episodes, maybe the first episode, you might

speak about risking discomfort.

And there is a kind of risk that has to take place here and this isn't the kind of podcast.

I mean, for those who haven't listened to it yet, which people listening to this probably

haven't listened to it yet because we're talking just as this podcast is preparing to

launch, the tone of the podcast is not to shock and provoke and to poke at the sort of

the warmth of the podcast itself.

And I think the way in which you so wonderfully hosted it and the sort of approach of your

guests does, does nothing of that sort.

And yet at the same time, there is a kind of risk of discomfort for the listener.

Can you speak to what that risk is and what is that kind of discomfort?

Yeah, I mean, there really is.

But I think it's, it's impossible to have really honest and really in depth conversations

about gender without, you know, we talked about, like stepping on a few landmines, we're

just like touching very deeply held positions or assumptions or opinions, right?

And I think another aim of the podcast was to present stories that aren't really being

told in the kind of clash of the culture wars.

So there's a lot of, I think, just so stories around gender.

And I think, so I'm guessing that, you know, listeners will be, no matter what your

kind of assumptions are about this topic or about some of the issues that cluster around

it.

There will be certain parts of the podcast where you think, oh, I don't know if I agree

with that.

That's pushing me and you know, that's, that's, you know, clashing with my assumptions

or, you know, that, so I think you will, you will have kind of occasional experiences

of dissonance when listening to it.

But I actually think that's okay.

I felt the same way even just making the podcast, right?

There were times when I thought, okay, you know, this, this part of someone's story, you

know, is, is challenging me in a way that is kind of making me uncomfortable or maybe

I can't go there, you know, I, I, you know, like lovingly disagree with where this person

ends up, right, in terms of their conclusions about gender, right?

So, but we have to be willing to wait into that, right?

We have to be willing to have those moments of dissonance and discomfort and disagreement

in order to just, I don't know, really meet a person, you know, and I think one of the

frustrations that I have with our culture is that we, we don't really see people, we see

walking ideologies, right?

And we're kind of immediately trying to clock someone like, okay, what, how can I, you

know, code this person politically or ideologically?

So whether I know they're on my team or not on my team, right?

And I think that, that kind of disposition certainly can, I'm kind of seep into the

church in ways that I think are, the really hold us back from that unification of truth

and love.

So I think we need to risk being, just come, you know, being uncomfortable sometimes.

And I think the stories that we tell, I mean, the podcast is thinking with the church

on this, right?

I mean, this is not like a, this is not a podcast where we're trying to be subversive

in any way in terms of church teaching.

At the same time, there are really complex, pastoral realities on the ground when it comes

to gender.

And if we just kind of retreat from those into a place of like theological clarity where

we are bracketed away from the person, then that's a problem, right?

So we have to be willing to kind of engage with people where they are and to have some

of our, yeah, to be pushed, I guess, a little bit, right?

And I think depending, and there are other ways, what's interesting I think is that some

listeners will be pushed, like I can even think of the episodes and I can think like,

okay, the truthies are going to love this one, you know, they're going to love these

episodes.

This one's probably going to be like, whoa, a little bit, a little bit harder for them.

And then vice versa, right?

The loveys are going to be like annoyed here, but they're going to, you know, love this.

But I'm hoping that whether you're more a truthy or a lovey, you know, I hope that the

listeners who are honestly desiring again to be both a truthy and a lovey will be willing

to kind of risk that occasional discomfort, you know, yeah, listen to that.

I certainly don't want to, you know, sort of go through everything in the first episode

because the first episode sort of sets the tone for the whole podcast series, I feel,

like we start, you start with story more than you start with teaching the second.

The second episode gives us some grounding, like I said before, like we dive into what

we mean by gender and put out sort of, here's four different concepts that you get with

the person you're interviewing and that's really helpful.

But most of the podcast series itself is storytelling and attending to the people who

are telling their stories and reflecting on it in your company and then in our company.

So in the first episode, the primary storyteller, the person who is giving us a share of his

life is your guest, Jean.

And I wanted to maybe talk about some of the things that he brings forth in his testimony

that caused us, maybe to reflect a little bit more deeply, but maybe the place to start

is could you just give us like very briefly, you know, for people who are not yet acquainted

with Jean, what's the basics, the basics of Jean's story, who are we listening to?

Yeah.

So Jean is a married Christian who has a big, beautiful family, lots of kids.

He's a married for a long time.

And he is a convert to pathosism.

So his background is more in, I don't know, kind of an angelical Protestantism, right?

Like myself, I have a similar background.

And a piece of his experience is, you know, for most of his adult life or all of his, of

all of his life, really, he's had that sense of disconnect with his gender and the way

he describes it, it's really interesting.

That's actually one of my favorite parts of hearing people's stories is even just to hear

them describe their own experience of their discordance because it really manifests in

so many different ways.

Like for some people, it's very physiological.

For others, it's much more kind of psychological or even social.

I don't know, it's very interesting.

But so for Jean, it really, he describes it as kind of having this very like deep sense

of affiliation with the things of the other.

I wanted the things of the other, which is what I have written down, yeah.

Exactly.

Right.

I stopped listening and I like wrote that down.

Yes.

Exactly.

It's, you know, feeling kind of hemmed in to masculinity, but having this, this real

affinity with the feminine and what did he mean by that?

Like what are the things of the other thing?

Well, I mean, he, he talks about that a bit in his, in his story, but I think, I think

part of it is wanting to be known and respected for aspects of himself that are often

coded more feminine, right?

Because in our, in our culture, you know, men tend to get praised for certain things and

women tend to get praised for certain things.

And so I think there was, you know, kind of an aspect to his own being and his own personality

that was feeling kind of ignored or atrophied in a way.

Right.

So I think that's part of it.

I think there's aesthetics that's part of it too.

You know, again, like, male-ness and female-ness tend to be kind of expressed aesthetically

in certain ways.

And so, so there's, I think masculinity is more narrow in its aesthetic expression and

what men are kind of allowed to do in terms of like color and fabric and even things like

that.

So I, I think that's, that's part of it.

So that's, yeah, so he talks about, about his experience.

He talks about navigating certain aspects, certain expectations around gender and navigating

this in his marriage as well.

And how he's kind of come to, he's, he's sort of seeking integration in the midst of

this experience, right?

So he talks a lot about integration and wanting to be kind of seen and loved as his whole

self.

So integrating those aspects of his personality that, again, feel more kind of coded as feminine,

but then also embracing the fact that he is male.

Right.

He is a father.

He is a husband.

So moving toward, moving on a path of integration.

You know, he shared something in his story that his, I think his father had told him and

maybe was echoed by one of his best friends when he was just starting to kind of articulate

his experience, this discordance.

And what he said actually reminded me, Abby, of something that I read in one of the first

things that I read of your writing, which was that church life journal article from 10

years ago now, right?

The clips of sex by the rise of gender will link that in the show notes.

And you know, from that article, he clearly went on and wrote the genesis of gender, which

expands on a lot of those thoughts.

But if I'm remembering correctly, and I'm probably miss quote, I'm definitely miss quoting

you and it's a bad paraphrase, but you were imagining like a young woman who's having

these experiences, not unlike what you're describing here with Jean, where she feels

a sense of disconnect with the prescribed norms for her gender and more readily identifies

with the norms or the things that would be praised in the other.

In this case, what a young boy would be praised for.

And you brought this in that essay as I'm just recalling this.

I didn't reread it recently.

Rather than you say something like rather than or what we tell her, she needs to change

her gender in order to fit that rather than thinking with her about what it means to

be a young woman who has those desires, right?

And what Jean had said that his father and his close friend that he sort of shared

this with, what they'd said to him, and I wrote this down, he said, they said to him,

why don't you just assume that those things that you feel or prefer are okay for a man

to be, which is a total shift.

Like he, I think as he was telling the story, he was telling them, I, you know, I have

these desires, these wants that don't fit with what it means to be a man.

And they shifted it on.

And they said, well, what if you thought about this differently?

What if you started with the assumption that those wants are actually okay for you as

a man and try and figure out what integration means there?

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's no question.

I was just reflecting on that.

Yeah.

That's definitely a part of the story, I think.

And that's not like a, it sounds simple, but it's also not like a quick fix, you know?

No.

There are no quick fixes when it comes to gender discordance, spoiler alert, just putting

that out there.

But nonetheless, like that does become that kind of reframing, I think is important, especially

for those for whom their experience of gender discordance really is kind of tied up in

these cultural scripts about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman.

And being able to kind of disentangle from those a bit becomes, I think, very important.

For sure.

So as you were introducing like a little bit of history, even here, the centrality of

wanting a desire is a big part of what he's testifying to, I found.

And he shares a phrase, press into the longing, which is very much with this Catholic approach

that you're seeking to sort of carve out, which is not to flee from, it's not to compartmentalize,

it's actually to go towards the encounter and towards the point of tension, seeking,

as he says, integration, the integration of the whole, but he also seems to be testifying

to, how do you deal with and how do you approach unmet desires?

And I'm just wondering, you know, having spent time taking in that story and reflecting

on it more than any of us have, even, you know, somebody like me that's now listened

to this episode, like I've only thought about it for a little while, but you sat with

it longer.

What did you learn about, like, what is, what is he showing us about something fundamental

to being human, like dealing with reckoning with integrating unmet desires?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that phrase, press into the longing.

So a lot of the people I interview are part of a Catholic apostolate or ministry called

the Eden invitation, and that language kind of comes from their approach, which is,

so Eden invitation is a ministry of, like, so by and of, but also for people who experience

same-sex attraction or gender disconnect.

And so Eden invitation is like, okay, well, what you have these desires, right?

So how can those desires be directed in a way that, you know, actually fulfills them

in God?

Right?

So the idea isn't just, okay, you know, white knuckle it, repress those desires, pretend

they're not there, like, you know, just totally compartmentalized, right?

And then the other sort of narrative is like, oh, you have these desires, well, then

you should express them.

You should define yourself by those desires, right?

And it's actually pathological for you not to enact them, right?

And so Eden invitation is trying to present this sort of third way, which is not to deny

the desires or to kind of blindly follow them, but to actually invite God into them, right?

In a way that, because I mean, underneath this is this sort of theological idea that in

every desire, there is a desire that is directed toward a good.

Very Augustinea.

Yes, exactly.

And so part of the kind of discernment of desire, and maybe that's like the nutshell

of the moral life anyway, is discernment among desires and kind of discerning one's desires.

And then forming one's desires in a way that you can pursue the ultimate good, right?

So it's not a path just of denial, but again, I think a path of integration, right?

So integrating those desires into, especially the spiritual life, yeah.

So that is a through line, I think, of the podcast, that kind of question, because what

it looks like in practice is very different from person to person, you know?

But that idea of kind of stepping into the longing rather than kind of running from it

or just becoming owned by it, I guess, that's where that's where the good stuff is.

And that's true not just when it comes to sexuality and gender, right?

Right.

And I think that's true even for like heterosexuals, right?

So that whole question of like, what do we do with a met desire, I think is a very important

question.

And that's one way in which hearing these stories can help the listeners be accompanied,

I think, more deeply into the life of Christ, yeah.

Yeah, love that.

All right, Abby, I think we have some more to talk about, but do you mind sticking around?

Oh, yeah.

We'll have a second conversation.

So friends, we're going to leave this episode here, the sort of first part of introducing

the gender accompaniment project, this new podcast that Abigail has created along with some

of our colleagues here in the McGrath Institute and a whole host of guests that joined her on

this 10 episode journey.

We are going to link in the show notes.

If the podcast hasn't quite dropped by the time we let this episode come out, we'll have

a sort of notification link that you can go in there and let us know that you'd like

to be notified when that drops, but this is coming out imminently.

And so if the podcast is out, you can also just link directly to the podcast in our show

notes here soon.

We'll also include in the show notes some related resources from Abby's own work and some

of the other things that have been mentioned here.

So you can check those out as well.

But we'll also have a second episode continuing this conversation with Abby about the gender

accompaniment project coming out the next time we drop an episode, which will be two

weeks after this first one, all right?

But for now, thanks for this conversation, Abby.

Thank you.

And we'll keep it going.

Thanks to all of you for joining us on Church Life today.

This has been a production of OSV Podcasts.

To learn more, visit osvpodcasts.com.

Thank you.

Thank you.