That clerical celibacy doesn't guarantee asceticism is obvious, any more than attending Mass guarantees prayerfulness (trust me on that one). But it preserves the call even when the system is corrupted. — 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
