A Matter of Honesty, Part III--Why Is Ross So Mad?
As they say, sometimes you go to the mountain, and sometimes the mount comes to you. Witness Sunday's column by Ross Douthat on his bete noir , Pope Francis. Douthat evidently is working on a book on how Pope Francis is destroying Catholicism and maybe Western civilization as well, so perhaps this column is some sort of trial balloon for that project. I love this column, because it is a perfect encapsulation of many of the sources of dishonesty that I want to talk about in this series, all in a nice package. There are several things I want to hit on in Douthat's column (probably requiring a couple of posts), but I want to start in this post with the question that I am sure New York Times readers who don't follow the ins and outs of Catholic politics are asking themselves---what is Ross's deal? Why is he so mad at Pope Francis? Here is my theory--Douthat is singularly focused on Pope Francis because Pope Francis has exposed that conservative Cathol...