My brother wants to be ‘Auntie’, God is letting my mom waste away, and TOB talk gets awkward in midwifery school | ACW366
Ask Christopher West
Theology of the Body Institute
4.9 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
–This episode is sponsored by Truthly–
- My wife and I have been married almost 1.5 years and we just had our first daughter 2.5 months ago. One challenge we’re struggling to discern is that my younger brother is transitioning from male to female and calling himself “Auntie” in front of my daughter. I love my brother dearly, and this has been a long journey tied to brokenness I and others caused when he was younger. We want to raise our daughter in the truth of God’s plan for sexuality while still loving my brother well. What language and approach would you recommend?
- My mother is nearing the end of a six-year battle with a very rare condition that is eating away at her body. My father continues to struggle with the “why” behind this suffering, crying out, “Why would God allow this?”
- I’m a student midwife, and sometimes my faith comes up with my teachers and the other students. They often ask me questions about chastity, and I always try to explain it in the light of Theology of the Body, but I find it so hard when the other person has never heard of it. Do you have some ideas for how I could start—and keep going—on with those conversations?
Resources:
Course Schedule
Colorado Ski Retreat with Christopher
Good News About Sex & Marriage
Male, Female, Other? : A Catholic Guide to Understanding Gender by Jason Evert
Love & Responsibility YouTube Series
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JPII Legacy Foundation Website
Ask Christopher West is a weekly podcast in which Theology of the Body Institute President Christopher West and his beloved wife Wendy share their humor and wisdom, answering questions about marriage, relationships, life, and the Catholic faith, all in light of John Paul II’s beautiful teachings on the Theology of the Body.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the Theology of the Body Institute, this is the Ask Christopher West podcast. |
| 0:14.3 | Well, happy new year, everybody. Yes, happy |
| 0:21.9 | 2026 to all our listeners. First episode of 2026. Wendy, you were just saying before we pushed record. |
| 0:31.4 | Yeah, just thinking about the way the year comes to an end here with, did you want to say something about that? Well, I know you |
| 0:39.2 | want to say something about it. So I'll just let you keep going. All right, here I am. Go right |
| 0:46.1 | ahead. Well, I mean, it's a beautiful time, of course, celebrating Christmas and having, like, kids home from college and people on |
| 0:59.0 | break from work and just a little bit of a different time to be together with people we don't |
| 1:05.0 | always get to see a lot of and the gift of that. But a blessing for me in a particular way this year has been times when I've just noticed that you, my husband, are relaxed. |
| 1:19.1 | And it's not that you're doing no work at all during this break, but there's a certain different mode of kind of when you're not working, you're just in a |
| 1:31.5 | different place of kind of not rushed. And it's a beautiful gift to see. And I know it's a time of |
| 1:37.6 | just refreshment, replenishing, getting ready for the new season. That's beautiful. |
| 1:43.7 | Thanks, Wendy. I do need particular downtime in the work that I do because of all the travels. |
| 1:51.0 | And it's nice to have a solid chunk of no travel time. |
| 1:55.0 | Yeah. But my brain has already shifted to the trip to Australia coming up in a couple weeks. |
| 2:04.7 | Because it's a big deal to travel to the other side of the world. |
| 2:10.2 | I love Australians. |
| 2:11.5 | I'm coming to see my Australian brothers and sisters to teach T-O-B-1. |
| 2:15.8 | Can't wait to be there. |
| 2:17.2 | I don't want there to be any |
| 2:18.8 | sense of my not wanting to come in that sense. What I don't want to do, what I don't really |
| 2:25.6 | look forward to, is 15 hours in a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. That's what I don't |
| 2:32.5 | really look forward to. So please everybody out there pray. |
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