For two decades, Maggie Gallagher was a leading voice writing about the importance of permanent, monogamous marriage to society. At first, that included pointing out the problems with divorce, feminism and single parenthood. Then as same-sex marriage became the predominant issue, Gallagher became the public face of the movement against it. A few years after the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal across the 50 states, Gallagher switched gears when Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco asked her to be Executive Director of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, which he founded in 2013. She says that to avoid despair, we have to build beautiful things.
In this interview Maggie discusses:
- How becoming a single mother in college led her to focus her career on the defense of marriage
- Her time in the pro-marriage movement, including co-founding the National Organization for Marriage
- Why the defenders of marriage were less effective than the pro-life movement
- Why certain critiques of the pro-life movement’s political involvement are unfair
- American classical liberalism’s inability to think about social institutions
- Meeting Archbishop Cordileone and getting involved in the BXVI Institute
- The BXVI Institute’s patronage of the arts, especially the liturgical arts
- The Archbishop’s campaign of prayer and fasting for the conversion of Nancy Pelosi
Links
Benedict XVI Institute on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4a0pooErfPoWck0xc7WHGg
Maggie Gallagher, Enemies of Eros https://www.amazon.com/Enemies-Eros-Revolution-Killing-Marriage/dp/0929387007
Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite, The Case for Marriage https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/184776/the-case-for-marriage-by-linda-j-waite-and-maggie-gallagher/
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