For years, I believed that being a faithful Catholic meant abortion had to determine my vote. If a candidate claimed to be pro-life, every other political issue seemed secondary.

Eventually, I realized that isn't actually what the Catholic Church asks of voters.In this episode, I share my story of unlearning single-issue voting, the conversation with my mom that changed how I approached the ballot box, and what the U.S. Catholic bishops actually say in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.

I talk about abortion as a preeminent issue, President Trump, the dignity of already-born human beings, poverty, immigration, racism, war, healthcare, the environment, and why Catholic social teaching makes voting much more complicated than simply choosing the candidate with the “pro-life” label.

00:00 Why Politics Matter

01:24 Cradle Catholic Roots

03:28 Abortion Unit Impact

06:33 2016 Trump and Single Issue

08:10 Questioning Pro Life Claims

10:50 Mom Challenges Voting

13:51 Bishops on Many Issues

18:28 Not Single Issue Voters

21:51 Catholic Social Principles

23:33 Encouragement and Prayer

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.

Eliza Monts on Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Spotify: ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101⁠⁠

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Blessed Teresio Olivelli was a practicing Catholic who attended daily Mass, prayed the rosary, and supported Hitler and the Nazi movement.

Eventually, something changed. Teresio recognized the profound contradiction between the Catholic faith he professed and the political ideology he supported. He left Germany, fought against fascism, helped found the Catholic underground resistance newspaper Il Ribelle, and was eventually captured and sent to a concentration camp. At only 29 years old, he died after throwing himself over another prisoner to protect him from a guard's brutal beating.

In this episode of Fully Human, I explore Teresio's remarkable transformation from Nazi sympathizer to anti-fascist Catholic martyr, and what his life can teach us about cognitive dissonance, political tribalism, integrity, and the danger of assuming that outward religious practice necessarily means our beliefs and actions are aligned with Christ.

00:00 Nazi To Blessed

00:53 Saints And Politics

02:52 Early Life In Italy

03:33 Catholic Nazi Dissonance

06:05 Breaking With Nazism

07:07 Underground Paper Il Ribelle

08:32 Capture And Martyrdom

08:58 How Martyrs Are Formed

10:27 Prayer Lord Set Us Free

11:10 Reading The Prayer

14:16 Integrity And Survival

16:51 Warning And Benediction

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.

Eliza Monts on Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Spotify: ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101⁠⁠

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AI data centers are becoming one of the strangest bipartisan issues in American politics, and I think Catholics should be paying attention.

In this episode of Fully Human, I look at the environmental and human costs of AI data centers, why opposition to them is bringing together people across the political spectrum, and what Catholic teaching actually says about caring for creation.

Drawing on Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI, Laudato Si’, and the Church’s critique of the “technocratic paradigm,” I argue that environmentalism shouldn’t be dismissed as a partisan or “woke” concern. Caring for our common home is deeply connected to human dignity, our responsibilities to future generations, and our obligations as Christians.

00:00 Bipartisan AI Backlash

01:39 Why Data Centers Harm

02:44 Catholic Duty to Creation

04:09 Election Politics and NIMBY

05:48 Walterboro Victory Story

06:59 Laudato Si Warning

08:16 Technocratic Paradigm Explained

09:43 Benedict and Stewardship

10:30 Imperfect Environmentalism

12:11 Practical Steps and AI Refusal

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.

Eliza Monts on Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Spotify: ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101⁠⁠

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In this episode of Fully Human, I examine three of the most common arguments I hear against women having the right to vote: that husbands should cast one vote on behalf of the entire household, that women tend to vote for the “wrong” political party, and that women’s suffrage supposedly led to abortion, contraception, and other social changes.

I look at why I don’t think these arguments hold up logically or theologically, and why Catholic ideas about marriage, male headship, mutual submission, human dignity, and the common good don’t require taking political rights away from women.

Ultimately, I think the question is much simpler: women don’t need to prove that they vote better than men to deserve a vote. Women are human beings, citizens, and fully capable of intellectual and rational thought.

00:00 Why This Matters

02:03 From 13 Arguments to 3

03:14 Household Vote Myth

06:18 What Unites Marriage

07:29 Voting and Human Value

08:54 Headship Is Service

10:17 Do Women Need Men?

13:27 What About Single Women

13:43 They Vote Wrong?

14:43 Blaming Suffrage for Liberalism

16:08 Little Women Nails It

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.

Eliza Monts on Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Spotify: ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101⁠⁠

#catholicism #catholicchurch #catholicsocialteaching

The pro-life movement in America hasn't always looked the way it does today. In fact, some of its earliest advocates were Catholics whose defense of unborn life was deeply connected to their concern for the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable.

After reading Daniel K. Williams' Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade, I was surprised by just how much the movement, and its relationship with American politics, has changed.

In this episode, I explore the Catholic roots of the pro-life movement, how abortion became increasingly associated with Republican politics, the impact of the sexual revolution and birth control, and why I believe today's pro-life movement needs to recover a truly consistent life ethic.

00:00 Pro Life Origins

02:48 Catholic Action Book Club

04:28 Choosing a History Book

06:24 Science and Personhood

09:46 Early Liberal Catholics

13:13 Politics and Sexual Revolution

16:24 Birth Control Split

20:19 Modern GOP Tensions

22:24 Consistent Life Ethic

24:12 Bipartisan Path Forward

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.

Eliza Monts on Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Spotify: ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR⁠⁠

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101⁠⁠

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What happens when democracy begins slipping toward tyranny, and what are ordinary Catholics supposed to do about it?

In this episode of Fully Human, I explore Plato’s warning in The Republic about the progression from democracy to tyranny and put it in conversation with Catholic social teaching on human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, and political participation.

I also look at why Catholics cannot simply retreat from politics when government becomes unjust or authoritarian. Through the examples of saints and blesseds like Pier Giorgio Frassati, Jerzy Popiełuszko, Franz Jägerstätter, and others who resisted fascism, communism, and political oppression, I explore what courageous Catholic citizenship can look like, even when we have very little political power ourselves.

00:00 Catholic Teaching on Government

01:42 Plato and the Common Good

03:48 Why We Live in Democracy

06:11 Democracy Sliding to Tyranny

08:06 After Tyranny Wreckage

09:15 Numbness and Sanewashing

13:53 Saints Under Totalitarianism

14:39 Virtue Makes Democracy Work

17:42 Faithful Citizenship Framework

20:46 Saints Who Resisted Regimes

23:13 Franz Jägerstätter’s Witness

27:31 What We Can Do Now

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.

Eliza Monts on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/⁠

Eliza Monts on Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR⁠

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101⁠

#catholicism #catholicchurch #catholicsocialteaching

What does it mean to be human in the world of AI? Why should we recognize that every human being has equal value? What does Catholic Social Teaching have to do with this? In the inaugural Fully Human show episode, speaker, Substack bestseller, and Penguin Random House author Eliza Monts shares her “pro-human manifesto” of what the Catholic Church teaches about the inherent worth of every single human being alive.

00:00 Industrial Revolution Misery

00:41 Rerum Novarum Begins

01:36 Romanticism Then and Now

02:51 Welcome to Fully Human

03:45 Why This Podcast Exists

05:46 Episode Roadmap

07:16 State of the Union 2026

10:46 Attacks on Human Dignity

12:28 AI and Human Worth

13:11 Why Humans Matter

15:11 Imago Dei and Pope Leo

19:04 Fully Human Manifesto

21:27 Seamless Garment Teaching

23:19 Reading the AI Encyclical

25:38 Romans Benediction Outro

Fully Human exists thanks to the support of people like you. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and consider becoming a paid subscriber for access to Eliza’s best writing: elizawritesthings.substack.com.Eliza Monts on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizawritesthings/

Eliza Monts on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JQzX1pCVaXOhKuNIp3hzR

Eliza Monts on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-human-with-eliza-monts/id6812877101

catholicism #catholicchurch #catholicsocialteaching