I think generally, Pope Benedict did a good job cleaning up the way the church handled abusive priests but didn't go far… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
That clerical celibacy doesn't guarantee asceticism is obvious, any more than attending Mass guarantees prayerfulness (trust me on that one). But it… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
I didn't really start writing about the church in earnest until the mid-2000s, so I wasn't present for or a participant in… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
The idea that America has some distinctive role to play in the unfolding of God's plan is compatible with orthodox Christianity. But… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a fairly conventional intellectual path to the Catholic church, I would say. — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
The fact that institutional churches have gone into decline doesn't mean that we're going to enter some purely secular age. Secular people… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
Institutional Christianity has had clear secular benefits to American life for hundreds of years. It's played both a prophetic role in terms… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
Just as the superstar pastor model can have its problems once the superstar pastor gets old or has a scandal or something,… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
I think it is very clear that, though great difference remained, evangelicals moved closer to Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants moved… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
My mother converted when I was 16. She was the driving force behind religion in our family. So, I'm sure I was… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
In many ways, American evangelicalism is somewhat stronger today than it was in, say 1955 - certainly more mainstream and influential in… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
Americans are an "almost chosen people," which is meant to suggest that there are clear parallels, literal, theological and everything else, between… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
I think you can see a clear link between certain kinds of Christian nationalism and support for Trump. Then, I also think… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
The rhetoric of anti-Catholicism, whether its sources are Protestant or secular, has always insisted that the church of Rome is the enemy… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: Your eminence, are you not aware that I… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
Human beings seek community, and permanent openness is hard to sustain. — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
The American intelligentsia has been pretty secular for a long time. There have always been figures like Oprah Winfrey, let's put it that way. — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
“The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
There were times at Harvard when I actually longed to hang out with a few more Trotskyists, rather than yet another set of future… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity. — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
“What he felt during his Spanish encounter with left-wing anti-Christianity was similar to his reactions to the anti-Christianity of the right. The "novelty and… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
“In an age of stagnant or declining birthrates, too, these communities’ willingness to heed the admonition to be fruitful and multiply has led to… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
America's problem isn't too much religion or too little of it. It's bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
Where conservative Catholics have the power to resist what seem like false ideas or disastrous innovations they must do so. — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
It is not white nationalism to believe that countries like the United States would be better off with more babies. That belief can be… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
