During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: โYour eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?โ The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: โYour majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.โ
Ross DouthatOur culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.
Ross DouthatInstitutional Christianity has had clear secular benefits to American life for hundreds of years. It's played both a prophetic role in terms of generating moral critiques of American excesses, and so on, and also a communal role, in terms of building community as the country moved westward to the role my own Catholic Church played in assimilating generations of immigrants.
Ross DouthatEvery Christian in every time and place is going to be tempted by certain forms of heresy. I'm sure I'm tempted by my own.
Ross Douthat