20. The Gender Debate, The Feminine Genius and Nuns in Pop Culture with Sister Helena Burns, fsp

Join Sister Helena Burns, fsp, and Sheila Nonato on Veil and Armour as they explore a profound question: Can understanding our divine nature and the Christian perspective shed light upon the ongoing gender debate? Sister Helena brings remarkable insights from Pope Benedict’s reflections on modern rebellion and the vital role of the body in today’s contentious discussions. During this week of Canadian Thanksgiving, we're filled with gratitude for our global listeners, both past and present. We invite women and mothers to join our private Facebook group for a community of shared faith, prayer and growth.

Our conversation takes a philosophical turn as we examine gender, identity, and the body through the lens of ancient Greek philosophers and the late St. John Paul II's philosophy. We consider the friction between embracing our biological nature and the contemporary gender identity challenges and transgender ideology. Sister Helena explores the consequences of resisting our innate nature and reflects upon the personalistic norm, setting the groundwork for a richer understanding of the theology of the body.

We also explore how radical feminism has influenced beliefs and the importance of critical thinking in reassessing these deeply embedded views. Parents play a crucial role in shaping their children's identity and Christian faith by modeling positive and diverse role models, from historical figures to religious icons. With Sister Helena's guidance, we discuss encouraging religious vocations for daughters, highlighting the inspiring lives of nuns, and providing practical advice for parents navigating media literacy and moral values in a world filled with challenging influences.

To connect with Sister Helena Burns, please visit:
https://www.hellburns.blogspot.com
https://www.x.com/@srhelenaburns
https://www.youtube.com/@UCxGFTGHfbppZF7u3_4Q6rDg 

To connect with Veil + Armour podcast:
https://www.veilandarmour.com
Email: veilandarmour@gmail.com
https://www.instagram.com/@veilandarmour
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565632921650
Facebook: "Veil + Armour" and "Our Lady's Prayer Warriors" (private prayer group)
https://veilandarmour.buzzsprout.com
https://www.x.com/@sheilanonato
https://www.sheilanonato.com

Chapters

• 0:04 The Gender Debate and Theology
• 10:18 Seeing the Body through the lens of the Christian perspective
• 17:02 Reading one's way out of Radical Feminism
• 24:21 Discovering the Feminine Identity in Christ
• 31:53 Gender Identity and children
• 35:23 Finding Feminine Role Models for Children
• 49:31 Parental Guidance in Media Literacy
• 54:19 Inspiring Daughters to Religious Vocation
• 1:04:20 Concluding thoughts and Evangelizing in small groups and apostolates

Transcript

Sheila Nonato: 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Veil and Armour podcast. This is your host, Sheila Nonato. I'm a stay-at-home mom and a freelance Catholic journalist, Seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the inspiration of Our Lady. I strive to tell stories that inspire, illuminate and enrich the lives of Catholic women, to help them in living out our vocation of raising the next generation of leaders and saints.

Co-Host: 0:27

Please join us every week on the Veil and Armour podcast, where stories come alive through a journalist's lens and mother's heart.

Sheila Nonato: 0:37

Friends, listeners, our YouTube audience. Since Canadian Thanksgiving is around the corner, I just wanted to say a heartfelt "hank you to each and every one of you for watching every week. If we can help just one person to feel encouraged in their vocation as a stay-at-home mom or a work-from-home mom, or a mom or a woman, we are most grateful and very blessed to be doing this family apostolate. And I just wanted to give a shout out to the incredible listeners around the world, and I will be listing the countries according to Buzzsprout, which is our podcast host Canada, United States, Philippines, Ghana, Guam, the United Kingdom, North Macedonia, Netherlands, Mexico, Australia, Belarus, Switzerland, Slovenia, Sweden, Ireland, South Africa and Côte d'Ivoire. Wow, thank you so much for spending some time with us, giving us those precious minutes, that precious 30 minutes or hour that you have in your day to listen to the people that I've interviewed who can give you hope and encouragement, and to share with you how God has worked in their lives, how Mother Mary, how the saints, they have been inspired by the holy people around us according to our tradition, and also in our everyday lives, how they have encouraged us and helped us to see how Jesus is our light and the cross. There is Resurrection after the Cross, and thank you so much. Now this week.

Sheila Nonato: 2:11

I just want to introduce again Sister Helena (Burns) since her first interview. The first part was many weeks ago. In the first part of her interview, Sister Helena quoted the late Pope Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, when he said that, We are experiencing a rebellion against the Creator." She also went into a deep dive into Theology of the Body and divine design. Why is the body important? Because we were created as body and soul. God created us as body and soul and the gender debate that we are experiencing now. That is the hot topic in our community, in our schools, in our world. The gender debate is over the body, and this is what Sister Helena will be discussing in this coming episode.

Sheila Nonato: 2:53

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen, come, Holy Spirit. Help us to listen and to understand how our Catholic faith can inform our decisions in our world and in our decisions that will affect our children and our families. Amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you again, thank you. We are most grateful to each and every one of you and I am praying for you. We are praying for each and every one of you, and I actually created a Facebook, a private group, for praying mothers, praying women. It's on if you search Veil + Armour on Facebook and you will be taken to the group and I hope to see you there. Hopefully we can pray together on Instagram or on a Zoom live, and the next stage would be meeting in person. So if you'd like to know more details, please email us at veilandarmour at gmailcom, and that email address will be in the show notes. Armour will have a "U" because I'm Canadian. Thank you so much, god bless.

Sister Helena Burns: 3:57

What does transcendence mean? Like I said, going out of oneself, going beyond oneself, encountering and bettering the world by working on it. Men's sexuality is external to their bodies. That's part of transcendence. This means something because the body has meaning. The body already has meaning. We don't assign the body meaning. The body already has meaning.

Sister Helena Burns: 4:22

What are some ways that men express transcendence? Sports, throwing things. Everything is a projectile with guys. Have you ever noticed that? Spitting disgusting. We could spit. Women can spit. We never do. It's disgusting and gross. But men are always spitting Construction, building, going out into nature, things like camping, fishing, hunting, video games to a degree, although it's just virtual, always wanting to fix the problem, get her done, being singularly focused on tasks, zoning out in man caves that is a part of transcendence.

Sister Helena Burns: 4:54

What if the man doesn't? He's not interested in these particular activities. It's okay, he has them in some degree. He's still a man. He will do everything as he does as a man. He will express his transcendence as a man in his study, home life, family life, work, business, arts, media, technology, travel, hobbies, friendships, etc.

Sister Helena Burns: 5:13

Now women image God's imminence. Imminence means here and now, in the moment, totally present, not out there. You know, men are the explorers, and you know all this going out, out, out. Women make the world a better place by drawing it to themselves and working on it. That way, we women, we can dominate in our own way. I ask men, my audiences, I'll say, "Guys, have you ever been dominated by a woman? Do you find you know women dominating? Oh yeah, we have our own ways by pervading all things. I would say we're like the sunshine, we're like the air and the water. We women are so resilient and resourceful, we kind of permeate everything. The way I like to think of it is men are the brick and we are the mortar. We keep everything together. We connect everyone and everything. Men are the stalwart bricks that support everything and do their job, and bricks just pile on top of each other, are going to fall down and mortar by itself is just a big heaping mass of cement. Right, we need each other.

Sister Helena Burns: 6:33

Another aspect of imminence is again designed based on the design of a woman's body. Our sexuality is internal to our bodies and that means something, because the body means something. The body already has a meaning of its own. We don't have to assign it a new meaning or try to take away the meaning that it has. We're a mystery even to ourselves, because we can't see inside our bodies, even right.

Sister Helena Burns: 7:01

The Bible talks about. You formed me, Oh Lord, you know, in the darkness and the mystery of my mother's womb. I don't know how you did it. The mother of the Maccabees, the seven Maccabee sons, she said I don't know how you were formed in my womb. Please don't apostatize against our faith, because God is the one who made you. I didn't even make you know. I don't know how you were made.

Sister Helena Burns: 7:22

Women are not physically stronger than men, but we are stronger in our ability to endure pain and we are emotionally stronger than men because we process our emotions better. We talk about it, we get it out, we go to our friends. Now, part of that is cultural. Two men are told not to cry, to keep it bottled up, and some of the other things that I also mentioned about women in those characteristics, with the science to back it up, about what is the feminine genius. Does this make women superior to men? No. Are men superior to women? No, we're just different. We are the way God made us to be.

Sister Helena Burns: 8:03

I would highly recommend that you go online and check out a woman named Vicki Thorn, v-i-c-k-i Thorn without an E. She founded Project Rachel, which is for post-abortion healing. She died rather young. She was a good friend of mine. They're young. She was a good friend of mine. She had a stroke and died but she moved on from like because the post-abortion healing really took off and in the US the bishops really supported this project and got it into the parishes and the dioceses and it really took off Post-abortion healing for both women and men.

Sister Helena Burns: 8:40

And she moved on to do the biology of the Theology of the Body. So some of the science facts I got from her. That's all she does and she goes into. She used to go onto secular campuses and just they would beg to have her come because people don't know this stuff. We should know about our bodies, how amazing they are, and I think that would make us love our bodies more, both as men and women, if we started to understand how amazing we are and how different we are, the beauty in that difference. So check out Vicki Thorn, her biology of the Theology of the Body. She has some YouTube videos on that.

Sheila Nonato: 9:19

Okay, thank you for that. I will definitely check that out. That sounds, that's really, that's really interesting. I'm just wondering, from what you've been saying about Radical Feminism and the masculine and the feminine, is it, I guess, in a way, trying to do away with I guess it's doing away with God's divine design, his divine plan, and there's also sort of an underlying hatred. Is that like a very heavy word, a hatred of the body? Is that sort of what you're seeing? And then how can we sort of read our way out of this Radical Feminist mindset?

Sister Helena Burns: 9:55

Yes. So I think it would depend on the individual woman how much she resents being a woman. And again, this woman may not. I mean, back in the day there was no such thing as transitioning or anything like that. So I think a lot of women who are, they're happy, they like they're not going to, they're like I'm not a man. They know that, they understand that I am a woman, but they don't like what a woman is.

Sister Helena Burns: 10:18

And we have to live in accord with our nature. These were the ancient philosophers. They lived before Christ. They were not Jews with our nature. These were the ancient philosophers. They lived before Christ. They were not Jews, they were not Biblical people. They lived in Greece. Right, these brilliant philosophers.

Sister Helena Burns: 10:29

They came up with the truth, they knew. They knew the truth, though, about if you're fighting your very nature and, like I said, our whole entire bodies are gendered. So if you just take a bunch of hormones opposite sex hormones or have some surgeries, that changes nothing and you've actually, you know, damaged your body. But we can damage our souls too by resisting God, you know, resisting a loving creator who created you in love. Now, if someone's been abused, that's a whole another story. That was not done to you by God, but by evil people. And so I understand why you may say well, if I wasn't a woman, I wouldn't have been abused like this. But men can be sexually abused too, right, in different ways. So that's a whole other important topic. But why are you angry at God? Just for who you are, you know, I thought we were supposed to love ourselves and be ourselves.

Sister Helena Burns: 11:32

All these slogans that the world offers us, they don't really mean it. So I always tell young people you can learn. I said I would say to them okay, we're supposed to be body positive and sex positive, right? And they go, yeah. And I say so, tell me, which is more body positive and sex positive to say you were born wrong, you have to have expensive, painful surgeries that's going to weaken your body and you're going to be on big pharmaceuticals for the rest of your life and you're going to be compromised.

Sister Helena Burns: 11:59

And when they say trans health, what does that mean? Oh, it means going to get your hormones. No, it doesn't mean just that. It means you are now a very sickly creature because you destroyed your body by forcing it to be something it's not. So what's happening?

Sister Helena Burns: 12:16

Estrogen, we know, is pre-cancerous, right? So the boys, the young boys that are trying to be girls, they're getting cancer from the estrogen the young women are having from the testosterone. That stuff is powerful. You do not want to mess with testosterone. Even old men shouldn't be pumping themselves full of testosterone. There's a reason why their bodies can't handle it anymore. So what is it doing to the young women? It's making their bones brittle. They're 16-year-old and they have Osteoporosis. These girls that are taking tea and they have lung problems from the testosterone, et cetera, et cetera, and also the surgery.

Sister Helena Burns: 12:53

Usually people can't urinate normally anymore. This is like hideous. It is a hideous form of child abuse, one of the worst. Don't get me started because I get really, really upset. But as far as a woman hating her own body, it depends on how strongly she is rejecting her femininity, her being a woman. So hatred may not be too strong. Or she might think it like, oh, it's a pesky thing, I wish I didn't have these pesky cycles every month. Might think it like, oh, it's a pesky thing, I wish I didn't have these pesky cycles every month. Well, we can, all you know, be inconvenienced and even the most Christian or religious among us can get to that point, you know, of exasperation, but ultimately, if you really sit down, think about it and pray about it, are you really telling God no, you know, I remember I had horrible, horrible periods myself like just the worst.

Sister Helena Burns: 13:46

I couldn't go to school for the first day and a half in excruciating pain. It was just I couldn't eat, I couldn't. Feminist. At this age, I remember thinking about this creator force. I did believe in a creator force because it was ridiculous that something came from nothing and this beautiful world that I loved, nature. There had to be an infinite divine design, intelligence behind it. Right, that I always knew. And I remember thinking well, if this is what I have to go through, to give life.

Sister Helena Burns: 14:26

This is how new human beings come to be like well, I guess, okay. So at that moment I did see myself, I suppose as a part of nature, but not connected to a good God, because I believed this divine power, this divine intelligence was not personal. I was a deist. I believed in the watchmaker, god, who created the world and then stepped back and it was all up to us. But we had to get it right, Like I believe. We had this onus on us. I was very existentialist. We had to figure out the best way to live. So again, it's possible to not believe in God and accept who you are if you believe. But see how it's always tied to something like the universe or Mother Nature, or we always personalize it. Why? Because we're persons, and then we blame the universe or we blame God. It's because we are persons. And John Paul II was all about personalism. It was the type of philosophy that put the human person at the center, which I think is amazing, and there's different types of personalism. And he had something called the personalistic norm.

Sister Helena Burns: 15:35

And when I teach Theology of the Body, I always start with creation, atheism we talk about. Is there such a thing as evolution we talk about? Where did the human body come from? We talk about what? Is there such a thing as evolution we talk about. Where did the human body come from? We talk about some philosophical principles, about personalism, what does it mean to be a person from a non-person, all of that stuff. So we lay some really good groundwork, because there's the philosophy of the theology of the body also, which John Paul II laid out in his book Love and Responsibility, which some people call the philosophy of the theology of the body, and that came out in 1960, way before theology of the body. It was actually before that. It came out in English in 1960. And it's just kind of like what is the nature of human beings, therefore? What is the nature of love, human love, what does it require of us? Not, what do we require of it? And he answers Freud, he answers Immanuel Kant, he answers Nietzsche. He goes through all the big names and the current dominant philosophies and he'll take what's good in them, but then he'll correct them from a Christian point of view and from his brilliant philosophical mind. So that's a long answer to your question. But radical feminists are definitely rejecting their bodies in some way, shape or form.

Sister Helena Burns: 16:54

And a wonderful way to get yourself out of Radical Feminism is to read your way out. You know, you hear about people reading their way into the Catholic faith. There's this one guy I know. He's got a bunch of kids. His oldest son became a priest and he's on Twitter as Seven Sacraments Guy because he has all seven sacraments. Now he's married, he's a deacon, so he's ordained. He's had the anointing of the sick, you know, baptized, he's done it all right. So he called himself seven sacrament guy and he said he was a very devout evangelical and he raised his family devout and he kept reading these Catholic books. And he said one day he stood up in his living room he said I'm Catholic, I agree with all these Catholic books, and he of course came into the church, et cetera, et cetera.

Sister Helena Burns: 17:42

So you can also read your way out of wrong headed thinking. You can undo the lies, right? Satan is the father of lies. What did he do in the Garden with Eve? He lied to her, lie upon, lie upon lie. There are five major lies embedded in his one sentence to Eve and of course she bought it hook, lie and sinker, but it's tough. It's a tough thing to Eve and of course she bought it hook, line, sinker, but it's tough. It's a tough thing to do.

Sister Helena Burns: 18:07

C. S. Lewis, in his book "Abolition of man, talks about how we form our beliefs at a very young age. He says, like you go to school and they're teaching you X, y and Z, or sometimes they don't even say what they believe, but the way they talk about things, the context, the framing, the framing that they do of certain questions, or maybe some scoffing, some gentle scoffing, here and there, you start to just have these ideas that you think are your own ideas. You think these are original ideas, but they actually are coming from probably some very big, nameable philosophies and ideologies that maybe your professor, your teacher, your parents, the media has accepted. And then they just spew it out as something original and fresh and cool and new. And it's not. It's as old as the ancient serpent, and we need to.

Sister Helena Burns: 19:04

When you have some doubts, when you start to say I think I've been lied to about whatever it is, keep at it. This is what I believe you got to. Keep reading, keep researching, keep digging. You will find the truth. This is why there's so much censorship now in establishment media, heritage media, mainstream media, and they're trying to go after social media, where people have more freedom and they can speak out the truth right, and they're trying to shut people up right, left and right, because they don't want you to know the truth about many different things. Okay, why? Because there are social engineers who, for their own reasons, want you to buy certain things, act certain ways, do certain things that in the end, are not good for you, and the only one we should follow, like that, is Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life.

Sister Helena Burns: 19:52

So I have a blog post. If you go to hellburns H-E-L-L-B-U-R-N-S dot com, it says how to read your way out of radical feminism and I've kind of grouped it. There's some videos, there's things on the Bible. Is the Bible anti-woman? What about Mary? Is she some shrinking violet freak of nature plaster of Paris statue that we can't imitate or we don't want to imitate?

Sister Helena Burns: 20:19

Women saints can they tell us something? They are so varied, our women saints. They are not all cloistered nuns, mystical cloistered nuns packed away in some climate. There are so many women saints and there are so many mothers. Some of my favorite actually are women who had big families, like Anna Maria Taiji and the Ulma family that were just all martyred together. There is Elizabeth Kindleman. She's not a saint, but she was a visionary of Our Lady, very recent, from Hungary. She was a widow with six kids. So our Lord chooses all of these amazing women. Some of them were women and then they entered the convent, like Mother Seton who set up the Catholic school system in the United States.

Sister Helena Burns: 21:02

Then I have some of the top theology of the body, introductory books, and some of them are free. You can just click on the link online with little descriptions so you know what you're getting into. I have books from former radical feminists who did a 180. I have books, other types of resources, by women. I have resources by men who love women and who are talking about the feminine genius and then what the dark side can teach us, meaning the exorcists.

Sister Helena Burns: 21:32

There's so many high-profile exorcists today that are teaching us the Catholic faith and, strangely, are informed by what some of the demons say. Once they're bound and they have to stop lying and they're forced to tell the truth. They tell us how they're disrupting the family, how they're leading women astray in particular, and wrecking society. Very fascinating how we have to have the divine order in the family, where the man is the head. He is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the church. Would you like to have Christ be your head? I would. You know, men have to be the Saint Joseph to Mary, and and when that doesn't happen, there is great disorder and chaos in the family, which translates directly to chaos in society.

Sister Helena Burns: 22:19

Then I have the whole question, which really isn't a question of priesthood and ordination, and then I have a bunch of articles that I wrote for The Catholic Register, Toronto's Catholic Register, about women, deacons, women's ordination, authentic femininity, five ways feminism went wrong and five ways to fix it, et cetera, et cetera. So I tried to just really go to the jugular on this blog post to things that women really are. Just, I think so many more women than we think are open to hearing the truth, but they just don't know where to get it. You know, they don't know who's going to help me, and I had to do this kind of on my own and really cherry pick this and go down that rabbit hole and read this, and sometimes it was the wrong thing and I'm like, no, I don't think that's right.

Sister Helena Burns: 23:09

I think that's part of the lie over there, and again, it wasn't until I found theology of the body. That brought me back to myself, brought me back starting with my body, starting with the physical, created world that all philosophy and all theology is supposed to be grounded and based in and is not. When you trip out in your head, you can make stuff up. If you just do all spiritual, spiritual, spiritual and you spiritualize everything, you you're going to, I promise you, you're going to get into error. You need the physical world, creation, the body, to bring you and keep you in reality.

Sheila Nonato: 23:50

This is awesome. Yeah, it's like a utterly fascinating topic to me because when I was doing my master's in international relations at the university, where Dr. Jordan Peterson was teaching, I was taught gender is social construction and race is social construction. But that's another topic for another podcast. But how do we for myself as a mom, for our listeners who are parents how do we help our daughters discover their true feminine identity in Christ?

Sister Helena Burns: 24:21

I wanted to add something to the reading what we just talked about reading your way out of radical feminism, absolutely yeah. So I'll just start talking again. Another way you can help yourself out of radical feminism is to be kind of forensic. You know you have to. It's hard. Like I said, it's hard because some of these ideas were embedded in us at a very young age. That's why the Bible says you know, parents, put the word of God into your kids when they're little, and even if they stray later in life, they will come back to it because it's in there. They'll have it right. This isn't programming and indoctrination. This is telling your children the truth. Isn't that nice? Wouldn't that be nice if somebody formed you the correct way when you were little and gave you the truth? We're always able to reject certain things that we don't believe, but so often we are malformed in the beginning and we're warped by schools yes, by colleges and universities and the media, and it takes something's a lifetime to undo it all right. So, but that's okay, that's okay, and when you have to undo it, you can help other people. So I have.

Sister Helena Burns: 25:28

I know that I've been instrumental in helping a lot of other women who just didn't know where to turn, and so I kind of did some of the work for them, and as a sister who works in media, a sister who studies a lot and I have the time I don't have children to take care of, so I have the time to do this for you and priests and nuns. Our number one job is to help families. It's to help parents, why? Because you guys are the future, you are raising the future and we are freed up, in a sense, to help you. So be a little bit forensic, try to scratch down to the you. So be a little bit forensic, try to scratch down to the surface.

Sister Helena Burns: 26:04

What are my deepest held assumptions? Put it into a phraseology, put it into a slogan that maybe you heard. What was a book that you read that you said this is it and you took off from there. Or you heard a talk or a TED talk or whatever it was that set you on this path of conviction about radical feminism. Go back to that. What do you tell yourself? What is your interior monologue? What is going around in your head every time you think you're being oppressed? What are the little words that pop up, the little slogans or phrases. Listen to those. Sometimes we don't even listen to our own interior monologue. What do I take for granted as bedrock truth that maybe isn't bedrock truth? What changed my thinking? Maybe I wasn't a radical feminist, but then I became one. What changed?

Sister Helena Burns: 26:53

And bring this all to prayer, because our Lord, in the twinkling of an eye, the Holy Spirit, can just bring that to your memory. He can unearth that for you, because it's really hard work, let me tell you to do that. But through this discerning and unearthing and bringing it to prayer, I was able to think back on my influences and undo them. You know, our Lady, that beautiful devotion to Our Lady Undoer of knots. Sometimes we need that to change our thinking. Look back over your influences, hear the arguments that you embraced and sometimes maybe, like I said, it's just embedded in the culture and you just did what your friends were doing, you just did what your mother was doing, maybe, or you didn't really think for yourself. You just imitated what you saw around you. Well, maybe it's time to read some of the like both sides, the feminists what they said, that informed these people around you that you imitated. I'm all about critical thinking skills and media literacy. Is that I have a master's in media literacy and we apply critical thinking skills very specifically to different forms of media, and so we do want to hear both sides in order to do that.

Sister Helena Burns: 28:07

Is there a fear that, oh no, you're going to go even deeper into radical feminism if you read what these ladies are saying. Well, there's some truth in what they're saying, so it's okay to acknowledge some truth we have in our Pauline family. I'm a daughter of St Paul, and in our Pauline family we had our founder, who was a priest from Italy. His mentor was the spiritual director at the seminary, and modernism was raging in the early 20th century in Northern Italy the heresy of modernism and some of the seminarians were sneaking and reading modernism books, and it was warping them as priests, future priests, and everything so, and it was forbidden. Everything was forbidden, right, and there's something to that, though, like it's okay to have some good guidance from the church to tell you no, this is heretical, no, that's an error, the rest of that book is okay, but there's one error in it. I think we need more of that.

Sister Helena Burns: 28:57

But what this priest did, Father Chiesa? He told the seminarians we are going to read some of this modernism and we're going to talk about it and we're going to point out how it's incorrect and what the truth is. And I think that is so powerful because you take away the verboteness of this error and you pick it apart and you're kind of defanging it and shining the light of truth on it. And if we do that with our kids too, like our young people, then they can stand on their own two feet and say no, I examined that. No, I took a look at that and I don't think that's right anymore. I don't think that's correct. I think this is correct because we've helped them to do it and it's their own personal conviction.

Sister Helena Burns: 29:41

Now, not like I'm not allowed to read that book and again, I'm not talking like small children or age inappropriate stuff or even garbage, pornography or graphically erotic, stupid erotic novels or whatever. None of that. I'm not talking about something that automatically corrupts you and automatically is intrinsically evil and arousing or whatever. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about errors of the mind, because it all starts in the mind how we think about something. As we think, so we act. Thought that was so brilliant.

Sister Helena Burns: 30:23

This priest, who's a part of my spiritual heritage, who took the time to do that he said guys, you need to know, as priests, your people are hearing these modernist lies too. You are going to be able to. You need to help them deconstruct as well. So we're going to, we're going to look at these things and I think we should do that. You know, in our homes too. Take some of these errors like really have these conversations about and sometimes can easily happen through a song that comes out that your child is like mommy, what is the song saying? Or like a book that they saw at a friend's house or even a cousin's house. You know, sometimes it's within your own family. You know you're not. You can choose your own gender. You had to pick your own gender and it's a wonderful opportunity to help your kids think correctly and teach them how to discern, teach them how to bring things to prayer, how to find the good nourishment, the good sources.

Sheila Nonato: 31:12

So, sister Helena, how can mothers and fathers help their daughters discover their true feminine identity in Christ?

Sister Helena Burns: 31:20

That is a great question and I think it's something that really needs to be done very intentionally these days, because of the gender wars and people who are like hands off, this is not your child, right? But they want your child, they want your child's mind, they want your child's body, they want to, you know, confuse your kid at these very delicate moments moments you know, as a parent, how impressionable children are, right. They say it takes just one experience. It can take just one experience. This is from Walt Heyer. He's the granddaddy of detransitioning. He lived as a woman for about 10 years and then he detransitioned, and so all the detransitioner kids, they all look up to him. His website is sexchangeregretcom. You can check him out. He's just a wonderful, wonderful person, and so you know that there are people out there who are dying to confuse your child in any way they can. They want to transition them and they're passing laws where they can snatch your child out of your home. You know, you know right, parents, it's horrific, it's horrifying, it's terrifying, but I think it can be done very organically. You don't even have to necessarily be talking about it in those terms all the time. The first thing is just your example as a woman, as a mom, but not just as their mom, but as a wife. I think that's super important to show them how you relate to your husband, how you relate to men, and then how you relate to your friends, how you are an auntie, how you are a cousin, how you are a worker, how you do all these different roles right. That's the biggest thing, because the same- sex parent is what helps solidify the child's sexual identity and the opposite sex parent is the one who confirms it. You know, I'm daddy's little princess, not spoiled, but my daddy doesn't treat me the way he treats my brother. You know they just pick these things up. You're probably doing a better job than you think.

Sister Helena Burns: 33:28

I always like to encourage parents because everybody's yelling at you all. You're not doing it right, you're not doing it enough, you're a terrible parent, you're going to warp your kid, your kid's not going to turn out okay because you didn't do this or you're doing that. I was talking to Sheila, our host, our podcast host, the other day. I'm like we need more slacker moms. We need more moms who are.

Sister Helena Burns: 33:53

There's this theory. I don't know if you heard of it. It's called the good enough mother and it's saying that perfectionist moms are the ones that are doing a lot of damage to their kids. But the good enough mother. She gives them enough nutritious food, the house is just clean enough. You know she's going to teach her kids that we don't have to worry, we don't have to live in fear, we don't have to be crazy, crazy busy all the time, we don't have to do everything perfect or we won't do it at all or we get all frenzied, you know.

Sister Helena Burns: 34:24

So fathers can also majorly help form that true identity in Christ by being St. Joseph, by showing their daughter what a good man looks like, because daughters tend to look for daddy when they're picking a mate, unless they had a horrible father intentionally. But even then they can pick out a horrible mate because dad did X, y and Z and that's all I know about a man, right? So we want our daughters to be honored as the women and the girls that they are, and men do that instinctively, right. Dads do that instinctively, treating their daughters as they are women. I think holding up role models to your daughters as they are women, I think holding up role models to your daughters, they have to be themselves, but be careful, like, for example, if you are giving them saint books which you should be and saint movies or whatever, don't have it always. Just be Saint Claire, you know, who lived in a monastery and had mystical experiences. Let's have some Joan of Arc's. You know, I love: Joanie Joanie's one of my gals.

Sister Helena Burns: 35:23

They can look at Mother Teresa, who worked with the poor, or Saint Kateri, who stood up for her faith amidst unbelievers, right, isn't she a model for our world today, where people don't believe anymore? And she was just so stood up for her faith and actually she wanted to found a community of Native, indigenous sisters, but the priests that were guiding her told her no and she died at 24 anyway. But I often thought, wouldn't that have been something? If she did, maybe they should have let her? Even saints that are just blessed, and the saints that were moms or that they weren't nuns, but they gave their whole life to Jesus, because that's just what they wanted to do, you know, they didn't want to do anything, but just live for God. We can talk about that in a moment, about also encouraging vocations like to the sisterhood amongst your girls.

Sister Helena Burns: 36:16

But I think that the women of the Bible are so important, and the women of church history and saints. Certainly, these are the people we look to, not women who are Instagram models or influencers or you know they're famous for being famous or movie stars or singers Like no, we don't want to hold those people up, but women who were women of God, christian women, women of the Bible, et cetera, and saints. So your daughter this is important for especially moms to think about. Your daughter may have a very different personality from you. She may even be a daddy's girl or she even takes after her father. So it's okay, it's all right if she's not choosing you as her model, it's okay. But she should still see a good model of a woman in you, and that can start even really young. Sometimes the daughter just you have a personality clash even at a very young age. It's okay, you're still her mom, you're still the main woman in her life showing an example of a mom and a woman. So I do think that topics have to be brought up. It's great if they can happen organically, but sometimes they don't.

Sister Helena Burns: 37:33

You need to talk about these issues about did you know that there are little boys that are being told that they are little girls? Oh, you don't want to like freak them out because that is traumatic. There was a little girl in Ontario who went to school. This was several years ago In pre-kindergarten. She was told by her pre-K teacher you may not be a girl just because mommy put you in a dress today. You may not be a girl. This little girl went home. She was melting down what am I? I'm not a boy. But she told me I'm not a girl. What am I? And they sued and these parents won for trauma. So we need to get a little more litigiously active too, because there are victories. I'm telling you there are victories. There was a little boy in British Columbia and he was.

Sister Helena Burns: 38:20

I know I'm getting into trans stuff here, but this is where gender is at today, folks. It's not just about radical feminism. As you know, this little boy in Vancouver was kept aside by his teacher every recess. They didn't allow him to go out and the teacher kept saying you're trans, you're a little girl, I like you, and made him, forced him to read these little transitioning books for children and would let him. You know, those parents sued and they got that teacher fired and they got a lot of money, okay, and it was hidden, you know. And they kept telling don't tell your parents you know All right. So bring up these topics, educate yourself so that you know some of the little issues of radical feminism that a little a daughter, a three-year-old, a five-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 15-year-old may be putting into her mind, and then talk about it and then provide some good resources.

Sister Helena Burns: 39:13

Abigail Favale, who's been doing F-A-V-A-L-E she's been doing a lot of work on gender. She's come out with books for kids, called here I Am. There's one for boys and one for girls. I haven't looked at it yet so I'm not endorsing it, but it might be something good. There's a book called "Wonderfully Made and it has little babies on the front and it's about where do babies come from and it's good and it's straight up theology of the body, like the family as an image of the Trinity. But it's called Wonderfully Made and it is a big white book with babies drawn, pictures of three little babies on the front. It's good for age five to 11, I would say, or even five to 12, depending on your child really, really is the best amalgam of science and health and God and theology and scripture. It's just incredible. It was written by a nurse and a mom.

Sister Helena Burns: 40:13

So it's important that when you talk about these issues, to not be fear-based and not even to give off those fear vibes. If parents are living in fear, one of two things is probably going to happen your kids are going to be fearful, and fear is from the devil. The devil feeds off of our fear. You can't live in fear very long. Your kids are going to be fearful and fear is from the devil. The devil feeds off of our fear. You can't live in fear very long. Young people are fearless, right, they tend to be like oh, I'm immortal, nothing bad is going to happen to me if I go, you know 90 kilometers an hour and you know on this little tiny street.

Sister Helena Burns: 40:45

So we don't want to give that message of fear. We want to give the message of empowerment. He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world. They should look at mom and dad and say mom and dad, don't take any guff from the world, from the culture, from society. They may not have that sentence in their mind that I just said, but they're knowing that, mom and dad, they know how to enjoy life. They know how to have fun in a good way. They give us what we need how to enjoy life. They know how to have fun in a good way. They give us what we need. They tell us the truth. They're lying to us out in the world, you know.

Sister Helena Burns: 41:18

So there's some really great books, to,o for parents on these topics of not just keeping your kids out of the trans cult, but how to bring up boys, how to bring up girls, how to make strong boys and strong girls right. Dr Leonard Sacks S-A-X is a great one. He's got just about a handful of books that are really critical. His website is gendermatters. com and he kind of came from the other side. He believed all this like radical feminism and genderless nonsense, and until he in practice he's an MD and a psychologist. When he would see what it was doing to people young people in practice, he totally changed his tune and he's our friend now. Dr Meg Meeker, m-e-e-k-e-r. She's got incredible books about dads raising daughters, moms raising sons and vice versa.

Sister Helena Burns: 42:12

And don't let your kids watch cartoons. You can't even let them watch cartoons anymore the usual cartoons, because they are slipping all the gender garbage into the most innocent looking cartoons. Don't let them watch kids YouTube, because what they're doing is they're taking like Peppa Pig or something. I again, I don't know too much about children's entertainment, but they will. Where do you think the predators are going to go? They're going to go at things that are kids only and they know how to be behind this stuff, and the kids know how to access it too. The front of these things. So, for example, there was like episodes of Peppa Pig where they changed out the middle. It was a real episode of Peppa Pig, but somebody went on and uploaded onto kids' YouTube what looked like Peppa Pig and they put some horrible stuff in the middle and then it finished out hoping that the parents might not be in the room when the kids were accessing this stuff.

Sister Helena Burns: 43:05

And this is not just a one-off, an unusual circumstance. This is happening all the time. So unfortunately, we can't trust anybody. But like Christian outlets, you know that. So PluggedIncom if you don't know what PluggedIn is, it's from Focus on the Family and they will review all the latest stuff entertainment for children. They are up to the minute, they give you the best guidance and you really got to find alternative media, even if it's just going to a Christian channel or older content. So get an old DVD player, get a bunch of CDs from TV series that were good, for example.

Sister Helena Burns: 43:44

I know this is going to sound crazy, but I would force my preteen boys to watch Psych. Force my preteen boys to watch Psych. Remember Guster and his friend there, the white guy and the black guy, and they solve crimes. It's so innocent and pure and fun. Towards the very end of it he spends a night with his girlfriend but it doesn't show anything. But it was very sad that they had that. But it's really fun, cute stuff which is showing our young people that you can be wholesome and have a ball.

Sister Helena Burns: 44:12

And if you are on social media a lot you'll see the word wholesome popping up. They'll say this is so wholesome and it'll be a little kid with a dog. It's like adults are looking for wholesome stuff too. We're so sick of the garbage. It brings you down so much. Okay, but if kids don't have like we grew up with the Peanuts cartoons and we had whole cartoon books of healthy, funny stuff.

Sister Helena Burns: 44:39

I used to read Dave Barry, you know, like things that could form you so that you could be funny, you know, and if we don't have any of that, our kids are. That's why you know the homeschoolers, they'll put them into like a great books program. You know when you start reading all the great literature and great children's literature that's out there so that you can be the new authors and artists and funny people of our day. All right, I'm just all about that. But I'm all about parents not projecting fear. I had one mom also. She was a graphic artist and she had five kids, and she said the worst thing you can say, especially if you say it in front of your kids, is what can you do? And you throw your hands up in the air and you're sending the kids the message that you are a victim. We're all a bunch of victims and the powers that be whether that's the media or the school or the courts or the government, whoever it is we can't do a darn thing about it, and neither can the adults. So just go with the flow, you know?

Sister Helena Burns: 45:39

Yes, so that's what I have to say about the feminine identity in Christ. Make sure that they're exposed to these good role models. Maybe it's something in your family you know that you wouldn't mind if they turned out like. But reading books and things is so important too. To have these heroines not these crazy like. She's a space goddess and she gets out there and she kills all the space aliens and the men were so stupid they just stayed in the spaceship. But she went like not these stupid books, these unrealistic you know.

Sister Helena Burns: 46:12

Women not doing typical women things, taking on male roles all the time and leading the men. She's the five-star general, like no, she can be a courageous woman. She could be on a pioneer. Like she's on her farm and the husband's away and she kills the wolf and eating the sheep, I don't know. Again, I'm not that up on women's stuff, but again, we're not talking stereotypes, but I think it's becoming a stereotype that these women are the warriors. You know "Avatar? I watched the first Avatar back when I used to review movies for Life, teen and Sirius, xm, catholic Channel and Chicago's Catholic Paper and also for some Canadian outlets. And Avatar there were no pregnant women in Avatar. It was just a bunch of warrior women with their swords and their arrows or these ads you see on TV, and all the women are kickboxing and there's nothing like. I like ballet, I like figure skating. Is there a place for me still in a woman's world or do I have to be a cage fighter? It's okay for women to do motocross or whatever the heck. But what about these other things that are seen as weak, or is that like a little weak and frail for us now to be like the stuff that I particularly like? So, anyway, and get your kids to think about that. Why do you think they're only showing women kickboxing these days?

Sister Helena Burns: 47:46

Use the Socratic method with your kids. This is what we do with media literacy. Don't tell them. I know you're dying to just protect them and steer them away and give them all the answers. Let them speak, ask them questions, watch how their little minds are processing things. You know they surprise you all the time, right when you give them a chance. Sometimes they've got it wrong, you know, but sometimes they've got it right and they've got it really right in ways that you never even thought of. They're like, well, I don't think that's okay, mom, because of this, this and this. Wow, well, you gave them the opportunity. You didn't tell them right off the bat whether something was right or wrong, or you know what to think, how to think. You let them process it and then you give the guidance. Give process it and then you give the guidance. Give the guidance afterward and, you know, hash it out with them, because if they make it their own, if they come to this on their own. There is nothing more powerful than that. It's not because mommy and daddy said although it has to be, and that's good, but as they get older we have this.

Sister Helena Burns: 48:45

I'm sure you've heard of this too, and this again, it's not to put fear into you, it's to just like the reality and how to avoid these bad outcomes. Right, there's always hope. There's always hope. But some kids that were never exposed to anything like they didn't, they weren't allowed to like mom and dad, didn't bring some a little bit of the world into the home environment and to hash it out and talk about it. They get out of the home at 18 or whatever, and they go hogwild, they go crazy, because all these enticing things are no longer forbidden and not all kids turn out that way. But if you show that you're not afraid of the world and, yes, we can bring some of the world into the home again, age appropriate, et cetera, et cetera Some things are never.

Sister Helena Burns: 49:31

I tell kids this too. When I do media with them. I say, "Why don't we watch this? Oh, we're not old enough yet, and I'm like we're never old enough for garbage. It's not just like, oh, you're going to get to a certain age and now you can do this Like no, it's not good for anybody of any age. So we are forming their tastes while they're young. And if they love, my brother and I, our tastes were formed so well by our parents and by the good parts of the culture which were actually dominant when I was growing up that we to this day my brother and I love nature shows, we just want to watch. We love to watch nature shows, we like good comedy.

Sister Helena Burns: 50:11

So it takes a lot of extra work on your part, parents. I know that. But don't think that you have to have a master's in media literacy or have read all the studies. You know. You know what's going on in the world, you know what's right, you know what's wrong. Don't be afraid to hash it out with your kids.

Sister Helena Burns: 50:26

And I have one mom she's just the greatest. She doesn't. She's not a big reader at all, but she always tells her kids I don't think so, you know. And if they're listening to something in the car on the radio, she'll be like she'll talk about it with them, but then she'll say let's go find the answer, because I don't have the answer.

Sister Helena Burns: 50:41

But in that way she shows them that mom and dad don't have all the answers but they know where to get the answers. Like she'll say they have a great priest at their parish. She'll say we're going to ask Father about that. Or she'll go home and check it out, like online on the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia or something you know. And what is she doing? She's showing her kids that we're all under the reign of God, right? We're all living in this sacred realm of God and he's going to help us ultimately to get the answers. We'll find what the scripture says about it. We'll find what the catechism says about it. I think that's so beautiful that witness of you know, not thinking the pressure's all on you to know everything and right in the moment, but telling your kids to hang on. We are going to find the right answer, the truth, together telling your kids to hang on.

Co-Host: 51:34

We are going to find the right answer, the truth, together. If you like our podcast, please like share and subscribe.

Sheila Nonato: 51:48

You can also leave us a comment and a review, please. We we were, my kids are hooked on Happy Meals, so we at McDonald's we saw the sign and it gave us an opportunity to talk about. The sign was living, live in my truth actually. So truth, what is truth? Is there only your truth? Is there the truth? And my husband and I we sort of segued into other things, but basically we're also talking about if somebody says this is a secret, you have to. You can't keep secrets. We have to have things in the light Jesus is from the light and things that are secret, that somebody is telling you might not be of God or of the light, and we always welcome you to talk to us.

Sheila Nonato: 52:35

And nowadays I feel like kids are not allowed to be kids. They're now forced to grow up. Really, there's so many distractions and there's so many expectations that if they are on social media my kids are not yet trying to hold that off for now, but there's so many, I guess, role models that girls look up to that are painting. You know, a reality that is not really a reality. It's a social media reality, in quotation marks, but it, you know it's filters and it's well. It's really selling an image that is not necessarily reflecting that reality and that they're wanting to. You know, there's different procedures and all that, like the clothing.

Sheila Nonato: 53:19

There's a lot of pressure on girls nowadays, and on moms as well, to act a certain way, to be a certain way, to look a certain way, and I feel like it's sort of an opportunity for my husband and I to sort of yeah, like you were saying about role models, who is a role model? Like actually, my, one of my kids. Last I forget when it was, but there was a whole Tim Horton's Justin Bieber collaboration and we bought one of our kids one of those bags, I think, and we bought one of our kids one of those bags, I think, and belt bags, and then she said, mom, who is Justin Bieber? But yeah, so now I can, I guess. I mean control is not the word, but I mean I introduce different songs. I mean it's not that they don't hear those kind of songs, but they don't really know who the artists are because they don't see the videos. They just kind of listen to the music. But I feel like it's an opportunity to sort of invite them to see these role models.

Sheila Nonato: 54:19

Like, honestly, yourself, my kids are fascinated with nuns when they see them at church. My little one. Sometimes he likes to dress as a priest, but yeah, the nuns and the priests, these are our role models that we are not seeing as much of, and I wish we were, and I'm really truly honored that you joined us for our podcast, for teaching us about how to live in authentic freedom in our identity in Christ, as women created in His image and likeness. Sister Helena, how can mothers and fathers encourage our daughters to think about becoming a sister, the vocation of a religious sister?

Sister Helena Burns: 55:00

Oh, that's great. I think there's a lot parents can do, because vocations tend to come, in general, from families that are around nuns and priests or encourage it. I think it's harder for your girls and your sons to see nuns because we live in clumps, we live in little clusters behind closed doors, sometimes right, whereas if you go to Mass you see a priest, right. So it's a lot easier to, and, if you want to, you could go up and say hi to Father after Mass and a lot of priests stand out and say hello anyway. So it's just, you've really got to seek out nuns.

Sister Helena Burns: 55:39

I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me and say I've never seen a nun before. Or they bring their child up to me to say to our sisters and they say we haven't seen nuns or we haven't seen you in many years and we need you. I hear that all the time. So I tell them well, we're an endangered species, but we're making a comeback. So, but it's really true, we're so rare and because we live in communities sometimes large communities we're just in one space and if you aren't part of the ministry that we're doing, you're not going to see us, so it's almost like you have to bend over backwards if you want to expose your kids to nuns. Now, one way you can do it is through books, like if they're reading books about a lot of the saints were nuns, so they can kind of see nuns there. St Therese is the big one, but St. Claire, Mother Teresa, there's many, of course, saints that were nuns, but it's more real if they can see a living, breathing nun.

Sister Helena Burns: 56:37

So we've had so many people just call us like. Of course, we run bookstores so people can bring their kids right into our bookstores and see the nuns right there. You know, inhabit, but at other times we've had, like could I bring my daughters over and you have tea with them and just talk about religious life. You know, and we're more than willing to do that. It's lovely also to have a consistent presence, though, but you do what you can. Even if they see a nun once a year, that would be good, but we've found that, especially for girls, they need to have that consistent presence of. So this is what nuns do all day, you know, to have more than one contact with sisters movies. I know that might sound crazy, but there are some really good nun movies out there. I don't mean documentaries, and there's some good ones of that too. I have a blog post called Nun's Favorite Nun Movies, and it's on my blog, hellburnscom, but it's easier to just Google it Nun's Favorite Nun Movies, and it's on my blog, hellburns. com, but it's easier to just Google it "Nun's Favorite Nun Movies, because it's an old blog post. It will take you a while to find it.

Sister Helena Burns: 57:41

And the number one movie believe it or not, that nuns love about nuns, is "Trouble with Angels. That's from the 60s with Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell, and I think it really captures the spirit of the climate. Like you're, first of all, you're for Jesus 100%. You're his bride. That's the number one thing. Your ministry is second. No matter how much you love your ministry, how important it is, the number one thing is the offering of self. He called you to be his exclusive bride. You're not gonna marry a mere mortal. You're not gonna to marry a mere mortal. You're not going to have your own kids. You're going to be a spiritual mother, take care of other people's kids, other adults who are your children, you know, in a sense. So I think that movie, trouble with Angels, just really captures it. It's fun. These girls are at an all-girls Catholic boarding school. And is it realistic? Yeah, there's a lot of realism in it in ways, but just that exposure to seeing it. I mean even people who watched "Sound of Music, where she leaves the convent to get married, nun's Story, where she leaves the convent to get married. It still inspired girls to become nuns because they saw the convent life and in Sound of Music. Anyway, the nuns are great, you know, they're really awesome, the ones who had a true vocation.

Sister Helena Burns: 58:53

I have other ones on there too, other movies about nuns. There's ones you really want to stay away from. There's many bad movies. There's even like rated X movies they like to attack nuns, I don't know. But there's even other ones, like the horror movie "The Nun. There's some really bad ones, like Novitiate, Agnes of God, Philomena, Benedetta, like be careful, be very careful. So I'm giving you some good ones to show.

Sister Helena Burns: 59:21

And there's a lovely old one, a black and white, called "Come to the Stable" with Loretta Young and Celeste Holm, and it's just so much fun. It takes place after World War II and they're trying to start a children's hospital. So it's about the moral imagination being exposed to books about nuns, images of nuns, even Sister Act, the nuns in that convent. Okay, it's over the top and there are a little bit of caricatures, but a lot of that stuff. We say, yeah, the kids would always ask do you guys really do that stuff? Yeah, we'll have an ice cream party in the middle of the night. You know we do weird things like that and I think there's, you know, sometimes you'll just see a nun in passing in a show, but it's a really good nun, like in Entertaining Angels, the Dorothy Day story there's a great nun in there, and I could go on and on the Painted Veil there's a great nun character in that movie also. But you want the whole movie to be good, not just a little showing of a nun here and there.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:00:18

"Call the Midwife" done by the BBC is incredible and that's based on the journals of a real nurse who lived with these Anglican nuns. Now this would be for your teenage girls. But oh my gosh, that is so beautiful and it's so realistic about how the nuns are. It shows them praying. How so rarely do they show nuns praying in movies and it's like that's our whole life. You know, that's the heartbeat, that's the core. So they showed the nuns praying a lot, you know praying the Psalms, and they had their unique personalities and that older nun who had a little bit of dementia going on I want to point out too we just came out with a series of three.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:00:57

They're called the Sister Seraphina Mysteries and they happen to be mice who are nuns. They wear blue habits and they live under the floorboards of G. K. Chesterton's house, but you forget that they are mice because they're so realistic and they have a Catholic school down there for the little mice and they're always solving mysteries. I don't know what it is about. They love to have priests and nuns solving mysteries. Father Dowling series has a nun helping him. I don't think there's a nun in the Father Brown series. But there's even books. But again, be careful with the books. Some of them are creepy and I can't vouch for this. But there's a Sister Agatha mysteries, so you might want to check some of those out because, again, nuns, nuns. If they constantly have nuns in their minds and in the visuals of nuns, that's going to inspire them through the years. Also, it's important.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:01:53

I think to speak well of priests and nuns. I mean, we have this ongoing scandals right now in the church with the priests, right, and it's so sad because this guy just became a priest and his friend said you're going to join the pedophiles, that's what you're doing with your life? Like no, don't do it. It's very sad that that's what's seen now, but that hasn't really touched the sisterhood. We're still seen as the good guys, which is a good thing. So it's important to speak well of priests and nuns, not complain. Some people just say everything in front of their kids. I've been noticing that for the past what 20, 30 years that there's no division between the adults and the kids. The parents just spill everything out. That's so inappropriate, not just complaining about priests or nuns or things like that, but adult themes, adult even things about like or or that a child can't handle, can't process. So my parents always spoke well of priests and nuns.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:02:50

They didn't worship them or put them on a pedestal or idolize them, but I had a good impression of priests and nuns from my parents. And then you might want to pop the question have you ever thought of being a sister? Not to nag them because you'll send them in the opposite direction, or to be like cloying, like oh, it would make mother so happy if you could become a nun or like. We would really love it. You don't want to program your kids to like especially if your child is a people pleaser. You want that to be a free choice of theirs, but let them know that you would support them. You think it is a good choice, because a lot of the world doesn't think it's a good choice.

Sheila Nonato: 1:03:28

I am definitely going to be checking all those resources out and think it's a good choice. I am definitely going to be checking all those resources out and to find out more about your work people can go to hellburns. com, a most memorable website name, and your writings in Toronto's Catholic Register, catholicregister. org And your writings in Toronto's Catholic Register, catholicregister. org Was there anything else that any other links to your work, sister, that you wanted to

Sheila Nonato: 1:03:56

add?

Sister Helena Burns: 1:03:57

Well, I take care of my mom. Now I'm actually living with her. I'm not too far from our motherhouse, but I'm living with my elderly mom taking care of her and I'm not doing as much apostolate as I have been. But the one social media I'm very active on is Twitter, so you can find me at SR for sister Helena Burns on Twitter @srhelenaburns or X as they call it. So I am rather active there. But I'm kind of low key these days, being that I'm taking care of my mom.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:04:26

Awesome, how is she doing? She's well, she's doing very well. She's just basically elderly. You know how, when you get to a certain point, she doesn't have a whole lot of health problems, but you're very weak. She can't walk too well, she can't remember how to cook something or prepare something, she can't keep on top of her paying her bills and she lives at home. She chose to live at home and so we supported her in that, and then, all of a sudden, it was like she really couldn't do a lot for herself. So my congregation is very good about allowing us to take care of our parents in need, and I'm so close that I can pop over there on Sundays, you know, to the mother house. But thank you for asking. I'll let her know you asked, and yeah, it's just a grace to be with her.

Sheila Nonato: 1:05:11

Well, happy 4th of July. How are you celebrating?

Sister Helena Burns: 1:05:14

We are going to have corn on the cob and my mother's a very like indoorsy person. She doesn't like, but I'm going to make her go outside. We're going to drive around. We'll watch some fireworks at night. She loves onion rings, so we're going to go to an onion ring stand and maybe just do some horrible fried food.

Sheila Nonato: 1:05:37

Well, it sounds like a lot of fun. It truly does. Thank you for joining us and speaking with us from Boston, and all the best to your ministry. We will truly be praying for you and hope to speak to you again.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:05:50

Thank you so much for having me on and I hope I'll be praying for your apostolate. I really believe that it's not even the big podcasts or the big YouTube channels that are doing some of the most good, it's just this wonderful media that we have to talk to each other, family to family, right? You know, and share some of your wisdom and the truth that you found and the work that you've done. I just think it's so precious that we have these small apostolates, small groups, Like a lot of times I'll go on Zoom and do you know a handful of parents We'll do parenting the media or something, but I know those are very intentional. Parents are going to do something with it. You know, and it's not about numbers, it's not. It would be lovely if we had like big, big numbers, but we can do.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:06:37

If everyone use their voice, right, If everyone use their social media accounts to spread more truth, spread more light, like you said, we would cover the whole world. People don't think they're important, right? Like you were saying about your you know, these role models of women that are set up and they have to spend so much time and energy to get all those followers and likes that they think they might be doing something and I would share also with kids that, like do you think that girl's really happy? Do you think these women that all they do is their whole life is in front of a camera, and do you think they're nice people? What do they do behind the scenes? Are they exactly as they are on screen? That whole understanding of what's real and what's not, you know, virtual and actual.

Sheila Nonato: 1:07:28

You know, our true happiness is in God and absolutely, as you were saying, we are. There's the influence. I guess the influencer age. But if we look at who are really the influencers, when we're children, it's the parents, right, and it's their friends, and also when we go to church, it's the priest and if there are nuns, it's the nuns. But these are the real influencers. In my opinion, the og of influencers right.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:07:58

So if children are given a choice, they want more time with their parents. The parents find this to be astounding, but they've done studies where they said would you prefer the latest Xbox or one more hour a week with your? They all choose the dad because some kids are not getting enough time with their parents and so you could say their parents are not the most influence in their life anymore. Just because there's so much frenzy and kids are being farmed out here. There, people are too busy, you know. They need to just chill and just take a breath. Kids like to just hang out with each other in the backyard, make their own fun. You know like unstructured play is so vital to kids' growth and development, and get them off of those devices a little bit is okay, you know. That's why I love Carlo Acutis, because he would only do one hour a week of video games. He said there's more important things to be doing in my life. He did so much Like. He liked to help the homeless. He loved to pray, of course, and he had his website that he was building of the Eucharistic miracles around the world.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:08:59

So we think our kids prefer screens. If we give them unfettered access to screens, they'll become addicted. And so if you think addiction is preference, it's not. They're just addicted and they're not happy. They're not happy and it's so unhealthy on so many levels for their bodies and their souls If we would give them more time and parents.

Sister Helena Burns: 1:09:23

Even if your kid gets mad at you or, like I said, your daughter might not have the same personality as you and so you don't have a buddy relationship with your daughter. It's okay, there's other people in her life too, but you're still her mom. You know we have to believe in our roles as parents, and if you saw those stats that I see of children wanting more time with their parents, there's this visceral thing If a dad goes out and throws around the ball with his son, they don't even have to say much. That kid knows I am so important to my dad that he is taking time to throw the ball with me. It's a visceral thing, it's a rite of passage. It is foundational for things like that to happen in a child's life.

Sheila Nonato: 1:10:08

Absolutely, and one of our taglines is creating leaders and saints. And how do we do that? As you were saying earlier, modeling it, and I'm not perfect, neither is my husband, so we rely on. Well, I guess who is the ultimate influencer is Jesus Christ, right? God, the Father, the Holy Trinity, Mother Mary, all the saints. So those are who we want to look up to, and it's a journey that we are privileged to be on, with yourself being also an influencer, as you mentioned, Blessed Carlo Acutis. My favorite headline that I saw in a newspaper was he is "God's influencer," and I feel like you yourself are also in this ministry of influencing for God, for Jesus, and thank you so much for doing that, because we definitely need more people to be standing up, being that witness that is sorely needed in our world today. You're very welcome. Thank you so much, sister Helena, and all the best tomorrow. I hope you have a great time with your mom.

Sheila Nonato: 1:11:08

We'll be praying for you, thank you so much, God bless, God bless, Thank You, Take Care, Bye, Bye, God bless, God bless, Thank you,T ake care, Bye-bye. Thank you to Sister Helena Burns for a thorough discussion on the errors of radical feminism and her epiphany about the Catholic teachings on women and the feminine genius, as well as its effect on Catholic women and our families. What are your thoughts about the episode? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Feel free to leave us a comment or email us at veilandarmour at gmailcom. That's V-E-I-L-A-N-D-A-R-M-O-U-R. That's a special spelling for armour, because I'm Canadian. For the month of October, I'm working on a special episode to highlight the month of the Holy Rosary. Stay tuned and God bless. If you like our show, please do continue to pray for us and if you think it warrants a five-star review, please take 30 seconds right now to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to our show. Thank you and God bless. Have a blessed week.

Sheila Nonato: 1:12:07

I forgot to mention thank you to Buzzsprout again for sending us to the Podcast Movement Conference in Washington D. C. in August. They provided us with a free ticket because we had submitted our show and they picked some podcasters to pay for their ticket, and this is not an inconsequential price actually, so it was about over $500, I believe us. So that's I don't know 700 canadian. So I just needed to find a place to stay and a method of getting there and, thanks be to God, He provided. My husband drove, volunteered to drive. He's he's really my hero and he is the driving force behind this podcast, with his prayers, his support, his encouragement and also the family that we stay with in Washington, D. C. We are so grateful to you, Mary and Chris, and your family. You have such a beautiful, lovely family and you're such a shining example of the Catholic faith and and we are so inspired by you and grateful for your generosity. And I forgot to mention this pin that I'm wearing right now. It says 10. Because when I was at the conference, Buzzsprout was handing out these milestone pins and at that point we had 10 episodes.

Sheila Nonato: 1:13:34

We're now reaching I believe it's 18, if I'm not mistaken, and we have a very, very special episode coming up to mark a very significant and important anniversary in the Catholic news community, in the Catholic news world, and I can't wait to share that with you in October, the month of the Most Holy Rosary, and thank you, friends. And also we're going to be doing a giveaway featuring an upcoming guest and her book. It is called "The Little Donkey and God's Big Plan. Isabella Chinska is an Ascension Press illustrator, author and just an all-around great storyteller. So we are looking forward to her interview in the next few weeks, but I will give you more information about how to enter this contest to win this book. Thank you so much, god bless. Thank you for listening to the Veil and Armor podcast.

Co-Host: 1:14:28

I invite you to share this with another Catholic mom today. Please subscribe to our podcast and YouTube channel and please spread the word. Let's Be Brave, let's Be Bold and Be Blessed together.