0:00

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I'm gonna give you four

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sports terms. You tell me the

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for sports fans. To play

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now, go to the athletic.com

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slash connections. Hi

0:32

guys. I have so many

0:34

questions for you, Ross. My

0:36

children, I'm here. I'm here

0:38

with answers. Oh, Father Ross.

0:40

From New York Times

0:43

opinion, I'm Michelle Carl. I'm

0:45

Ross Dauphin. I'm Carlos Lozada.

0:47

And this is matter of

0:50

opinion. Our

0:59

Mary Moo band is back together

1:01

and this week we're talking

1:03

about religious faith, why it

1:05

matters and why we should

1:07

all have it. Fortunately, blessedly,

1:09

providentially, Ross wrote a book

1:11

about all of this. It's

1:13

called Believe, why everyone should

1:15

be religious. Hardy congratulations to

1:17

Ross, our beloved co-host. So

1:19

Ross's book is coming to

1:21

us at a very interesting

1:23

moment. There is a sense

1:25

that at least here in

1:27

the US. Maybe, less religion

1:29

isn't yielding the most stable

1:31

results, and maybe religion has

1:34

a little bit more to

1:36

offer. So, here comes Ross with

1:38

a guide for the serious rational

1:40

and modern to embrace religious

1:42

faith and recognize the supernatural.

1:45

So, gosh, shall we get into it?

1:47

Yes. You're going to have to

1:49

explain... the book to the Moopsters. The

1:51

Moopsters have, you know, listened to me

1:53

rant and rave about these things, probably,

1:56

in sort of the back ends of

1:58

episodes for a long time. So no

2:00

one who is a consistent listener

2:02

of this show, I'm sure, will

2:05

be surprised that I am pro-religion

2:07

and pro-religious faith. But this book,

2:09

well, it's an attempt to sort

2:11

of write into what I

2:13

think is a very

2:16

interesting religious moment in

2:18

American life, where we

2:20

have gone through a

2:23

period of disillusionment with

2:25

religious institutions. disaffiliation from

2:27

organized religion scandal and

2:30

polarization and politicization. And

2:32

I'm not sure about this,

2:34

but there's some evidence that

2:36

the current wave of secularization

2:39

has reached a limit. The

2:41

number of people who

2:43

have described themselves as

2:45

having no religious affiliation

2:47

has stopped rising. And

2:49

you do have a

2:51

lot of, I would

2:53

say, weird. supernaturalist interests

2:55

in American life. There's

2:57

kind of a 1970s

2:59

vibe out there. Oh,

3:01

sweet. Terror, astrology, UFOs,

3:03

of course, everyone's favorite,

3:05

psychedelics, and there is some

3:08

renewed interest in traditional

3:10

faith as well. So I've

3:12

written this book in part

3:14

as a kind of introduction

3:17

to religion itself for... people,

3:19

and there are now a lot of people

3:21

like this in the United States who have

3:24

been raised really without any kind

3:26

of encounter with organized religion,

3:28

traditional religion. And so it's sort of

3:30

interesting to think about what kind of

3:32

case for religion might one make to

3:35

someone sort of starting afresh. So that's

3:37

part of what I'm doing in the

3:39

book, but then the book is also

3:42

trying to get beyond the debates. that

3:44

people in our profession love to

3:46

have about the sociological benefits of

3:48

religion or lack thereof, you know,

3:50

is religion good for society? Is

3:52

it, you know, does it reduce polarization?

3:54

Does it increase polarization and so on?

3:56

And those are all really important debates,

3:59

but it's also... important to

4:01

ask does a religious perspective

4:03

on reality accurately describe the

4:05

world and there's a certain

4:07

kind of embarrassment I think

4:09

in you know the parts

4:11

of journalism and academia and

4:14

so on where we hang

4:16

out about just sort of

4:18

straightforwardly saying yes it does

4:20

there probably is a god

4:22

the universe is probably made

4:24

with you and you Carlos and you

4:26

Michelle and maybe even me So

4:28

that's part of what the book

4:30

is doing too. It's both an

4:33

introduction to religion for the curious

4:35

and an attempt to make a

4:37

case that you don't have to leave

4:39

your faith in science and progress

4:41

at the door in order to

4:43

accept some religious ideas about reality.

4:45

First of all, I have so

4:47

many questions to ask you about

4:50

this book. One of the things

4:52

that is most distinctive about the

4:54

book is that you're trying to

4:56

make this... rational, empirical, intellectual

4:58

case for religious belief. You're basically

5:00

talking to the, you know, in

5:02

this house we believe in science

5:05

types, right, to think their way.

5:07

Among others. Among others. To God,

5:09

right. So I would hazard that for

5:11

a lot of believers, faith comes, some

5:14

experience of faith comes first, and over

5:16

time they think their way through to

5:18

it, right? That was certainly what happened

5:20

to me. Why did you decide

5:23

that sort of rational empiricism? is

5:25

the best path to the divine?

5:27

Well, first of all, I don't think

5:29

it's the only path to the

5:31

divine. And I agree. For lots

5:34

of people who are religious

5:36

or who are sort of

5:38

drawn to religion, some kind

5:40

of particular experience or encounter,

5:42

it might be mystical, it

5:44

might be personal, it might

5:46

be a relationship. That comes

5:49

first, right? Obviously. But nevertheless,

5:51

I think there are... a

5:53

lot of people in the

5:55

world for whom the idea

5:57

of even sort of taking

5:59

a step in that direction comes

6:02

freighted with a certain kind of

6:04

baggage about, you know, the idea

6:06

that you are leaving something

6:09

behind, something about sort

6:11

of reason and modernity and

6:13

so on, and that that

6:15

faith is this thing that

6:17

is completely distinct from reason,

6:19

that these things operate in

6:22

completely different categories and never

6:24

the twain shall meet. So

6:26

I think there are people

6:28

for whom a path to faith can

6:30

be made easier if they can

6:33

be persuaded, which is obviously no

6:35

easy thing, right, that there are

6:37

good reasons to be interested in

6:39

religion, and that being interested in

6:41

religion is the kind of thing

6:44

that a serious person thinking about

6:46

their place in the world should

6:48

do. But then it's also written

6:50

for people in the category you

6:52

just described who have an attachment

6:55

to religion based on what they

6:57

inherited from their family, their personal

6:59

experience, their sense of the divine, but

7:01

might feel like there isn't

7:03

necessarily a foundation of reason

7:06

underneath. And definitely one thing that

7:08

you see in our culture, especially

7:10

in the last 10 or 15

7:12

years, in a period of kind

7:15

of anxiety and crisis for religion,

7:17

is you'll see people who do

7:19

what the evangelicals call deconstruct. They

7:21

will be raised in a particular tradition

7:24

and feel like there's something wrong

7:26

with that tradition. It seems, you

7:28

know, politicized or corrupt or maybe

7:30

it gets, they think that's wrong

7:32

about some point of doctrine and

7:34

they'll start to sort of essentially

7:36

take it apart. And what my book is

7:38

trying to do is kind of put a

7:41

floor on that process to say, okay, deconstruction

7:43

doesn't go all the way down to atheism.

7:45

If you're deconstructing, you should go

7:47

back down to a point where

7:50

you say, okay, the religious path

7:52

I was on may have been

7:54

the wrong one, but there's

7:56

still good reasons to look

7:58

for a new path. to throw the

8:00

baby out with the baptismal water?

8:03

I mean, you know, the baptismal

8:05

water, if it's blessed, Michelle, you

8:07

shouldn't throw that out either, right?

8:09

Although I'm from an immersion, you

8:11

know, denomination, so you got a

8:14

dunk. You got a dunk, Ross.

8:16

Continue? One thing, Ross, I want to

8:18

ask you about your trajectory,

8:20

not as a person of faith, but

8:22

as an author. Some years ago, you

8:24

wrote a book called Bad Religion.

8:26

And the basic argument there. if

8:28

I may be so bold, as

8:30

to summarize the work in front

8:32

of the author, is that Christianity

8:35

in America was, too many Christians

8:37

were sort of focusing on prosperity

8:39

or just their self-esteem, and the

8:41

problem wasn't like too much religion

8:43

or too little religion, but just

8:45

kind of like bad versions of

8:47

it. Christianity was basically going to

8:49

hell, colloquially speaking. So with this

8:51

book now, however, I get the

8:53

sense that you're maybe more open

8:55

to people finding some path to

8:57

faith. kind of whatever path to

8:59

faith. So to what extent

9:01

is believe the new book

9:04

in conversation with and conflict

9:06

with bad religion, your earlier

9:09

book? Yeah, that's a really good

9:11

question, especially for completists of

9:13

my, you know, all my

9:15

work. So yeah, I think

9:17

bad religion was written as

9:19

a kind of critique of

9:22

a culture that still seemed

9:24

to some degree essentially

9:26

Christian. but in which all

9:28

kinds of forms of what

9:30

in the subtitle I called

9:32

heresy seemed to be crowding out

9:35

rigorous internally consistent less easily

9:37

politicized forms of faith. So it

9:39

was a critique of everything from

9:41

the sort of prosperity theology that

9:44

was a little bit more on

9:46

the political right to the kind

9:48

of health and wellness and self-help

9:51

Christianity that was a little more

9:53

on the political left. I think

9:55

the world that I was writing

9:58

in then was meaningfully different. from

10:00

the world that I'm writing in

10:02

now, even though only 15 years

10:04

or so have passed. I think

10:06

that in that world, the

10:09

United States was sort

10:11

of less post-Christian than

10:13

it is today. Institutional

10:15

religion was embattled

10:18

and declining, but

10:20

stronger in 2010 than it

10:22

is in 2025. And that means

10:24

that... it makes sense to make

10:26

a different kind of argument to

10:29

some extent in that space, right?

10:31

If you're in a context where

10:33

not just Christianity, but any kind

10:35

of religious belief is just much

10:37

less assumed by everyone, then it

10:40

feels like you, yeah, you have

10:42

to sort of start afresh a

10:44

little bit and not have arguments

10:46

about orthodoxy versus heresy, but just

10:49

have more basic arguments about belief

10:51

versus non-belief. And in a landscape

10:53

of post-Christian Christianity, Maybe you

10:55

want to be more understanding

10:57

of tendencies that I was

11:00

critiquing 15 years ago. But I

11:02

would also say that the critique

11:04

still stands, right? Like there's nothing

11:06

in belief that is meant to

11:09

say that when a pastor stands

11:11

up and says God wants you

11:13

to be rich, that that's totally

11:16

fine and cool, right? It's just

11:18

that as the culture shifts

11:20

the aspects and issues that...

11:22

the religious writer focuses on

11:24

have to shift as well to some

11:26

degree. But this is, you know, I'm

11:29

telling people, this is, in certain ways,

11:31

it's a very liberal book by my

11:33

standards, right? It is very much,

11:35

like, you know, try things out, right?

11:37

Try things out and see what

11:40

happens. Whatever works for you, dude.

11:42

Well, in making your case, you do

11:44

take a big step back to the fundamentals

11:46

of non-belief. You anticipate

11:49

some of the stumbling

11:51

box. that keep people from

11:54

believing. And actually, you

11:56

even lay out three that you

11:58

think are the big ones. Why does

12:00

God allow so many wicked things

12:02

to happen? That's a big one.

12:04

Yes. Why do religious institutions do

12:07

so many wicked things? And

12:09

then my favorite for the

12:11

purposes of this show, why

12:13

are traditional religions so hung

12:15

up on sex? Yes. Which

12:17

one of these are you

12:19

thinking is the biggest stumbling

12:21

block and just kind of walk us

12:23

through, you know, your argument

12:25

on a couple of these? Yeah,

12:27

I think it just actually... it

12:30

completely varies by the individual. And

12:32

one of the things that's been

12:34

interesting about doing some conversations to

12:36

promote the book is, you know,

12:38

people clearly have totally different objections

12:41

to religion, depending on where they're

12:43

coming from, and also totally different

12:45

forms of attraction to it. And

12:47

I think it's the same way

12:49

with the stumbling blocks, right? Like

12:52

you'll have people for whom it

12:54

really just is the problem of

12:56

evil all the way. And what's

12:58

interesting about the problem of evil

13:00

is it isn't really an argument

13:03

against the existence of God. It's

13:05

an argument about the nature of

13:07

God. It's saying effectively, if there is

13:09

a God, he can't be as good

13:12

as the Jews and Christians and, you

13:14

know, as the monotheists want us to

13:16

believe, right? And that's actually one of

13:18

the points that I make in the book,

13:20

right, is that if you're interested in

13:23

religion, and a particular

13:25

conception of God, that

13:27

shouldn't actually end your

13:29

engagement with religion, right? So

13:31

with that kind of issue,

13:34

I'm trying in part to

13:36

get people to not reject

13:38

the primary idea that there's

13:40

probably a God because of

13:43

a particular issue with a

13:45

particular conception of God. The

13:47

sex stuff is a little

13:49

different. That's, I think, much

13:52

more about... the sociology of

13:54

modern America. If you

13:56

go back to the America of

13:58

1945 or 1955... It's not that nobody

14:01

was having sex before marriage and

14:03

nobody was committing adultery and these

14:05

kind of things, but there was

14:07

this sense that Christian morality and

14:09

like normal middle-class behavior sort of

14:11

fit together reasonably well, right? It's

14:13

like, okay, the New Testament's a

14:15

little extreme, but the basic idea

14:18

that you should try to only

14:20

have sex with one person and

14:22

heterosexual marriage is the norm and

14:24

so on. That was a really

14:26

strong. sort of non-religious cultural idea

14:28

and with the sexual revolution that

14:30

just went away for various reasons

14:32

and so we're in a world

14:35

where there just is this deep

14:37

tension between how like normal people

14:39

live and what not just Christianity

14:41

all really the big old religious

14:43

traditions say about how and when

14:45

and with whom you're supposed to

14:47

have sex and that's not really

14:50

an argument about like the nature

14:52

of God or anything like that

14:54

it really is just a sense

14:56

that the traditional religious rules just

14:58

don't fit with the way we

15:01

live now. I want to jump in here

15:03

and kind of push back a little bit,

15:05

not at your book, which as you

15:07

note is being very, you know, small,

15:09

ill liberal in its approach to

15:11

this, but I would venture that as

15:14

noted, we've got a nation

15:16

that has soured on organized

15:18

religion, and so there's a

15:20

huge space between what... you're

15:22

talking about in terms of

15:24

starting people down a path

15:26

toward an organized religion and

15:28

a lot of where these

15:30

religions end up which is

15:33

with a very very strict

15:35

our way or the highway to

15:37

hell approach to this like there

15:39

is the only path to God is

15:41

through his son Jesus Christ. So I

15:43

think where we run into a lot

15:46

of trouble with people is getting turned

15:48

off in the space between, oh, let's

15:50

go explore, and once you've explored, pick

15:52

a religion which is going to lock

15:55

you down. So I'm just saying, like,

15:57

yes, I love where you're going with

15:59

the... approach, but then later in the

16:01

book you talk about needing to join

16:03

one of these faiths and a lot

16:06

of these faiths are very unforgiving,

16:08

so to speak, about the wiggle room

16:10

on who gets to go to heaven.

16:12

And I think you wound up with

16:14

a lot of alienation at that point

16:16

if people even make it that far.

16:19

Yeah, well I think there's a couple

16:21

things, right? One is that I

16:23

think the landscape of American religion

16:26

has changed profoundly even

16:28

relative to when... we were kids

16:30

and obviously I didn't grow up

16:32

in the Bible Belt, right? I

16:34

had a very distinctive sort of

16:36

Northeastern religious experience where we were

16:38

in a secular milieu but doing

16:41

a bunch of strange religious things.

16:43

But you know, even there, like

16:45

being in evangelical and Pentecostalist worlds

16:47

in the 1980s, obviously you got

16:49

a certain kind of flavor of

16:51

what you're describing. You know, I

16:53

had, we used to go to

16:55

a... charismatic healing service and there

16:58

was you know I was reading

17:00

a fantasy novel and there was this bushy

17:02

bearded guy who had probably been in

17:04

a motorcycle gang and then found Jesus and

17:06

he came over to me and took the

17:08

book away from me because it would

17:10

had like had like magic on the cover

17:13

or something and it was like this

17:15

is demonic and my parents had to have

17:17

some big showdown with him to get the

17:19

book back. So that kind of stuff

17:21

is there. I do think America

17:23

in 2025 is a culture generally. where

17:26

many many religions that people

17:28

are likely to join have in

17:30

different ways transform themselves to become

17:33

very seeker sensitive and sometimes to

17:35

a fault right to the point

17:37

where they're emptying out core doctrines

17:40

and beliefs in the hopes of

17:42

sort of coaxing people through the

17:44

door and this gets to the

17:46

real challenge here and it is

17:48

a challenge and I don't have

17:50

a perfect solution for it right

17:53

the challenge is that ultimately in

17:55

order to attract people seriously to

17:57

persuade people to commit themselves to

17:59

a faith. Any religion needs

18:01

to take its own truth claims seriously,

18:03

right? You can't just be seeker sensitive

18:06

all the way down. At some point

18:08

you have to say, look, we think

18:10

these things are right and these things

18:12

are wrong. We think these are the

18:15

things that you should do if you

18:17

want to go to heaven, right? This

18:19

is the path to salvation. Religions that

18:22

lose track of that tend to eventually

18:24

just dissolve. At the same time, we

18:26

live in a pluralist society where...

18:28

Everyone can see, right, that lots of

18:31

people of goodwill end up in different

18:33

places spiritually. Like people you know

18:35

and like and take seriously are

18:37

going to end up on a

18:39

different spiritual path in this society

18:42

from your own. Not everyone, you

18:44

know, much as it disappoints me,

18:46

is likely to start going to,

18:48

you know, going to confession and

18:50

joining the highly superior Catholic model,

18:53

right? So I think it's a

18:55

big challenge for religions to figure

18:57

out how they can simultaneously simultaneously.

18:59

not just exist as kind of

19:01

bunker down redoubts fortified

19:03

against modernity telling

19:06

everyone inside that

19:08

hellfire awaits outside

19:10

right but also not sort

19:12

of shed and dissolve the

19:14

core teachings that actually

19:16

hold people in those faiths.

19:19

It is a really tricky

19:21

and difficult place. that religions

19:24

need to be in a

19:26

society like ours, in a

19:28

pluralist society. It's very challenging. We

19:30

have to pause here, but when

19:32

we come back, I want us

19:34

to stay on the personal, and

19:37

I hope we can explore the

19:39

role religion has played in our

19:41

lives and how it continues

19:43

to influence us. This

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guarantees. Ross, I want

21:01

to stay on your

21:03

stumbling blocks for a

21:05

sec. You mentioned the

21:07

problem of evil and

21:09

you just completely reminded

21:11

me that when I

21:13

was in college I

21:15

took a whole semester course

21:17

on the problem of

21:20

evil. The professor was Alvin Planta, I had

21:22

no idea, he was like a big deal

21:24

in the field. He was just the guy

21:26

teaching the class, you know, like when I'm

21:28

19 or 20 I have no clue. Uh,

21:31

spoiler alert, we did not solve the problem

21:33

of evil, but the class was the first

21:35

place that I read Milton, and that was

21:37

actually very cool. I think that that stumbling

21:39

block, like why would a sort of all-powerful

21:41

benevolent god allow all these bad things to

21:43

happen, is sort of a systemic

21:45

obstacle to religious belief, I think. The

21:47

second and third stumbling blocks you

21:50

identify, like, you know, why do institutions

21:52

of religion do so many bad things?

21:54

Why traditional religions hung up on sex?

21:56

I think those are stumbling blocks to

21:59

the institutions. which a lot of people

22:01

of faith live their lives, right, as opposed

22:03

to kind of a big broad systemic stumbling

22:06

block to believing overall. As far

22:08

as which matters most, I agree

22:10

with you that it's absolutely a

22:12

case for individual believers. For me,

22:14

it was the second one, why

22:17

religious institutions do bad things, because

22:19

the revelations of the Catholic Church

22:21

abuse scandal came at a time when

22:23

I was already sort of struggling in my

22:25

faith. I had a lot of ups and

22:28

downs over the course of my life. Now, If

22:30

I'm doing the timing right, you

22:32

were actually living in the Boston

22:34

area at the time that the

22:36

Boston Globe published its big

22:39

investigation of the Boston

22:41

Archdiocese. I was curious

22:43

that in Believe in your book, that

22:46

episode gets like one passing line.

22:48

Did it shake you at the

22:50

time? This is your second stumbling

22:53

block, right? And you were facing

22:55

it right there, like in your

22:57

community. So, well it didn't just

23:00

happen, it's more than that, so

23:02

I became a Catholic at age

23:04

17, so I'm in the unusual,

23:07

neither a cradle Catholic nor a

23:09

true adult convert camp, right? So

23:11

I'm 17. I actually didn't. My mother

23:14

had done RCIA and then the priest

23:16

in our parish just had some meetings

23:18

with me and explained why the Protestants

23:20

were wrong and I was like sounds

23:23

good father and I was signed up.

23:25

For the heathens among us it's right

23:27

of Christian initiation for adults. Yes, it's

23:29

the sort of bureaucratic mode of Catholic

23:31

conversion that the church set up after

23:34

the 1960s that I think probably is

23:36

in need of some streamlining. So I

23:38

yeah I was in Boston or you

23:40

know in college and then connected to

23:42

Boston various ways and it was like

23:45

you know four or five years after

23:47

becoming Catholic and then it was also

23:49

sort of a rolling thing across the

23:51

course of the first decade of the

23:53

21st century where you had the Boston

23:56

revelations you had broader revelations around the

23:58

country and then you know five years

24:00

later you would get another wave

24:02

of revelations. So actually just after

24:04

I started at the times, you

24:06

know, he started the times and

24:08

I'm tired and here I am,

24:10

the, you know, nice conservative Catholic

24:12

on the opinion page. I'm here

24:14

to explain the Catholic Church to,

24:16

you know, people on the outside

24:19

and the first thing I have

24:21

to explain is another wave of

24:23

sex abuse revelations. And I would

24:25

say that that substantially changed

24:27

my relationship to and confidence

24:29

in... the Catholic Church as an institution.

24:32

Absolutely. It changed that in

24:34

pretty important ways. And I

24:36

think the story of Catholicism

24:38

right now is that first

24:40

liberal Catholics lost confidence in

24:42

the institution because they disagreed

24:44

with the church about a

24:46

bunch of issues after the

24:48

1960s. And then conservative Catholics

24:50

lost confidence in the institution

24:52

for reasons that started with

24:54

the sex abuse crisis and

24:56

then continued with Pope Francis

24:58

who was... fairly hostile to

25:00

conservative Catholics, right? So the church

25:02

has managed- That's another Ross book.

25:04

That's another Ross book. Well, that's

25:06

part of the reason I didn't

25:08

go too deep into the Catholic

25:11

stuff in this one. But I guess,

25:13

though, it always felt to me like it

25:15

was possible to have a

25:17

changed relationship to a religious

25:19

institution that did not

25:21

change your fundamental confidence

25:24

in- that God exists and

25:26

that Christianity is true

25:28

and that Catholicism for all

25:30

its sins and faults is carrying

25:32

forward the message of Jesus Christ.

25:35

And I mean just to personalize

25:37

it a little more I came

25:39

into Catholicism from a world of

25:42

very sort of personalized Christianity where

25:44

it was you know mystical experience,

25:47

people speaking in tongues, people putting

25:49

their hands on your shoulder and

25:51

telling you to testify to how

25:54

Jesus changed your life and so

25:56

on. And I was a, you

25:58

know, awkward teenager. I know

26:00

that's hard for listeners to

26:02

imagine since I'm so suave

26:04

and sophisticated now, but things

26:06

were different at age 16.

26:08

And I was really happy

26:10

to come into Catholicism, a

26:12

church that was sort of,

26:14

to me, it emphasized the

26:16

idea that, look, you know,

26:18

the church is promising you

26:21

that God is present in

26:23

the mass, even if you

26:25

aren't having... a dramatic experience

26:27

of God at that moment.

26:29

God is still there, right? But

26:31

that kind of depersonalized aspect probably made

26:33

it easier for me to then deal

26:35

with the sex abuse crisis. It was

26:37

like, all right, what am I here

26:39

for? Well, I'm here for the mass

26:41

and the sacraments, right? I'm not here

26:44

because I think that the Pope and

26:46

the bishops are our holy saints

26:48

of God and are sort of

26:50

prophets chosen in some particular way

26:52

in the way that some people

26:55

in charismatic Christianity present themselves right

26:57

so that background and that sort

27:00

of sense of what I was

27:02

joining the church for was probably

27:04

helpful but still there was a

27:06

view that a lot of conservative

27:09

Catholics had when I became a Catholic.

27:11

which was basically that there had been

27:13

a bunch of debates in the church

27:16

in the 1960s and then Pope John

27:18

Paul II had settled those debates, right?

27:20

That was a very powerful idea that

27:23

I would have endorsed, right, at age

27:25

23 or whatever. And I think the

27:27

sex abuse crisis, again, leading into

27:29

the Pope Francis era, just

27:32

unsettled that confidence. And I

27:34

think generally my sense of like

27:36

where I stand in terms of internal

27:38

Catholic debates is more unsettled. than it

27:41

was when I was 23. I want

27:43

to keep with the personal line here.

27:45

Carlos, you are a different path

27:47

to Catholicism. You did not have, at

27:49

least to my knowledge, the early

27:51

snake handling speaking in Tongues experiences.

27:54

Never handled a snake. Oh, cut on Ross.

27:56

For the record. I think you were in

27:58

the wrong state to have done it. snake handling.

28:00

I'm just going to go out on

28:02

a limb. I'm sure Connecticut, Connecticut's got

28:05

to have some laws against snake handling.

28:07

Anyway, go ahead. Carlos, Carlos, Carlos. Oh

28:09

no, so I'm all for just continuing

28:12

to listen to to Ross, but so

28:14

what was that movie, everything, everywhere, all

28:16

at once? All at once? Yeah, that

28:18

was Catholicism for me, sort of at

28:20

the beginning, right? I was baptized. you know,

28:22

five days after I was born.

28:25

Smart. My great uncle, Alsida Mendoza,

28:27

was the youngest bishop at the

28:29

Second Vatican Council. What? When... Get

28:32

out, wait. Yeah, seriously? Yeah, he later

28:34

became the archbishop of Gusco in Peru.

28:36

Did you know this Ross? I did

28:38

not know this. This is amazing. Oh

28:40

my God. When John Paul II came

28:42

to Peru in the early 1980s, I

28:44

was there like youth day services, right.

28:46

I went to Catholic grade school, high

28:49

school, college. The church was, was, was,

28:51

was, was everywhere. And so it wasn't

28:53

like a thing that informed my worldview,

28:55

it was just my world. And

28:57

like Ross, I came to

28:59

really love the kind of

29:01

peculiarities of Catholicism, right? The

29:04

intercession of the saints, the

29:06

sacraments, the rituals, the Trinitarian

29:08

God, right? It wasn't just a

29:10

belief, it was a belief system. And

29:12

that... suited me. The music became really

29:14

important to me when I was in

29:17

college at Notre Dame in the early

29:19

90s. I sang with the liturgical choir.

29:21

We did the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass.

29:23

We did Vespers on Sunday Night. Holy

29:25

Week was like our Super Bowl, right?

29:27

Those pieces of music are still in

29:30

my head. But all of that, that

29:32

kind of pervasiveness of it. Like graduate

29:34

school was the first time I was

29:36

in an environment that was not like

29:38

fully like Catholic immersive. And it was

29:41

after... college, right, like entering adulthood,

29:43

that I experience kind of a

29:45

letdown in it because it's easy

29:47

when it's everywhere, it's easy when

29:49

you're immersed in it, and suddenly

29:51

you have to work at it.

29:53

And I've had a lot of

29:55

ups and downs in my sort of

29:57

practice of the faith since then, right? Like...

29:59

A friend of mine from college used

30:02

to joke that you know people would

30:04

say like oh I'm Catholic but I'm

30:06

not practicing and he would always respond

30:08

and saying like well maybe if you

30:10

practiced you'd be good at it right

30:13

and but the the church I think

30:15

if I would look at it in

30:17

kind of a strictly secular sense I

30:19

think it's made me an institutionalist the

30:21

places that I've worked in

30:24

my life have always tended to

30:26

be big institutions. It's an environment

30:28

I'm comfortable with. But I think

30:30

it's also made me kind of

30:33

a small-sea Catholic, right? There's so

30:35

much variety in the Catholic Church.

30:37

I know to non-catholics, that may

30:40

sound weird, but like, I have

30:42

friends who are like Dorothy Day

30:44

Catholic worker house type Catholics, right?

30:46

Friends who are Opus Day Catholics,

30:48

or Knights of Columbus Catholics, a

30:50

lot of not practicing Catholics,

30:53

right? There's a great variety

30:55

within faith communities, and I

30:57

think Catholicism has helped me appreciate

30:59

those differences. Like, no one possesses

31:01

the full truth, even if we're

31:04

all sort of sharing in it.

31:06

So there's a humility that goes with

31:08

that, even with all the kind of

31:11

Pharisee righteousness that can go

31:13

with it, too. I do think, I

31:15

think Carlos that point about having a

31:17

religious tradition that has different corners

31:19

in it. It's very important not

31:22

just because it gives you, you

31:24

know, sort of exposure to the

31:26

diversity of experience and ideas. It's

31:28

also just helpful across one's own

31:31

life cycle, right? It's a good

31:33

thing to be in a religion

31:35

where you can feel like my

31:38

ideas have changed somewhat, but

31:40

there's still sort of places and

31:42

ways to connect with this faith.

31:44

And some of what I think

31:46

Michelle is describing, the

31:48

sense of claustrophobia. that you

31:51

get in some religious traditions is

31:53

a big problem just for sort

31:55

of the individual living their life

31:57

and going through the different faiths.

31:59

of life. Michelle, you had me bear

32:02

my soul so to speak a moment

32:04

ago. What's been your experience of faith?

32:06

Or maybe I should say of religion.

32:08

Those are not the same things. Look

32:10

I'm a big fan of faith and

32:12

generally it might surprise Ross of

32:14

organized religion. I do think people

32:16

have this innate longing for a

32:19

sense of purpose in order to

32:21

the universe and if you're not

32:23

believing in a divine power you

32:25

tend to gravitate toward less savory

32:27

options like... political messias,

32:29

whack job conspiracy theories.

32:32

But look, I grew

32:34

up Southern Baptist,

32:36

which had a pretty strong

32:38

our way or the highway

32:40

attitude. Now, as a child

32:43

prone to questions and skepticism,

32:45

this is basically a recipe

32:48

for total trauma. I cannot

32:50

tell you the number of

32:52

hours self-recriminatory. prayer and general

32:55

terror that I would wind

32:57

up damned forever because of

33:00

my just like failure to

33:02

believe sufficiently about some of

33:04

the patently BS stuff being

33:07

fed to me. Few groups can

33:09

rival the southern Baptist when

33:11

it comes to hair-raising visions

33:14

of hell or what happens

33:16

to you if you don't get to

33:18

go with the rapture. So as

33:20

I got older... I

33:23

shifted to the Methodist

33:25

Church, but broadly speaking,

33:27

Evangelicalism's call to belief

33:29

started to feel a

33:31

lot to me, like

33:33

smugly, non-disprovable. Anything that

33:35

seems slightly off could

33:38

be waved away as

33:40

an imperfect understanding by

33:42

creatures who are by

33:45

design imperfect, at which

33:47

point the whole enterprise

33:49

starts to feel a

33:51

little slippery. and unserious

33:54

and self-justifying. Now, all that

33:56

said, I still, again, big

33:58

believer in organized religion, big

34:01

fan of faiths, but have

34:03

I hitched my wagon back

34:05

to something? No, I'm still

34:07

seeking, so to speak, I

34:09

guess. Carlos, you look completely

34:12

traumatized. No, no, no, not

34:14

at all. Not at all. Like, I just,

34:16

you know, have you have friends

34:18

in your life, longtime friends,

34:21

who if you like, like, if you

34:23

met them now as an adult for

34:25

the first time, you might not

34:27

really click. You might not feel

34:29

that friendship, that intimacy, but they've

34:32

been in your life so long,

34:34

you can't do anything about it.

34:36

Like they are your friends, they

34:38

are part of your life, and

34:40

you can't imagine your life without

34:42

them. And I think in some

34:44

ways, faith, religion has been that

34:47

for me. There's moments in

34:49

my life when I just, I'm not

34:51

entirely sold on them, but... It's something

34:53

I'm never going to shed. It's

34:55

something that is always going to

34:58

be part of me, in part

35:00

because I was baptized five days

35:02

after I was born. And this

35:04

has always been something that I'm

35:06

going to carry with me. I don't

35:08

know if that's just kind of like

35:10

a low-grade fever of religion that you

35:13

kind of have for a long time,

35:15

but it's sustained through these low

35:17

five decades. And look, I am envious

35:20

of that because religion was a

35:22

huge... comfort to me at times as

35:24

a child, even as it also provoked

35:26

this kind of trauma. And without that,

35:28

there is a whole. And so, you

35:30

know, my joke is always that

35:33

having been raised that way, I

35:35

now have questions about the existence

35:37

of God, but I still firmly

35:39

believe in hell and the devil.

35:41

Well, that's, I mean, that's just,

35:43

no, no, that's just empiricism though,

35:45

Michelle. I mean, come on. Like

35:48

everyone, I mean the... You know,

35:50

I'm not, I'm not completely joking.

35:52

But I would say it's interesting

35:54

because again, like, and

35:57

this is sort of liberal

35:59

Ross. for a minute, right? Like,

36:01

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that

36:03

person. Who's this? Well, here he is,

36:06

right? Like, they're really, it really

36:08

just is the case that when

36:10

you look at people you know,

36:12

people you read, people you're friends

36:14

with, and look at like what

36:16

happens to them over the life

36:18

cycle and how they relate to

36:20

religion and react to it. It

36:22

just clearly is the case that

36:25

if there is a God, he

36:27

operates through very different mechanisms. for

36:29

different people, right? And so like

36:31

I described, you know, something

36:33

not at all like Michelle's

36:35

primal trauma, but a feeling

36:37

of relief of coming out

36:40

of charismatic Pentecostalist Christianity into

36:42

the, you know, sort of

36:44

memorize the prayers and go

36:46

to mass model of Catholicism,

36:48

right? But there are, you

36:51

know, there are many people

36:53

for whom the intense

36:55

zeal of... evangelicalism is

36:57

like the greatest thing they've ever

36:59

found. It's like they're like, they'll

37:01

say, you know, I just felt

37:03

nothing. I felt no zeal for

37:06

God, no impulse toward God in

37:08

my Catholic upbringing, and I had

37:10

to go into an evangelical church

37:12

to really find it. The idea

37:14

of like the relationship with God

37:16

just wasn't there in Catholicism. But

37:18

then like clearly, you know, there

37:20

are people who just experience evangelicalism

37:22

in a totally toxic way. And...

37:24

the only path to God has to

37:27

go somewhere else, right? We're going to wrap

37:29

this up here, but before I go, I

37:31

just want to throw in your face that

37:33

I have been saved more times than any

37:35

of you, because I had a minister who

37:37

would sometimes on Sunday be like, he'd get

37:39

so caught up in his own message, he

37:42

is like, we are not going home till

37:44

somebody comes down this out. That alter call

37:46

would go on and on and on, and

37:48

I am like... I just want us all

37:50

to go home. So I got, I went

37:52

down that aisle, I probably got saved or,

37:54

you know, rededicated my life at various services

37:57

and revivals and things like that. Probably half

37:59

a dozen times. So as a Catholic

38:01

I'm going to say it'll stand

38:03

you well in purgatory when the

38:05

time comes when we're all when

38:07

we're all there podcasting together you'll

38:09

slip out now actually a nonstop

38:11

podcast is my definition of hell

38:13

but Ross purgatory you know what

38:16

this book that's trying to sort

38:18

of bring people along by their

38:20

minds persuade them intellectually and rationally

38:22

reminded me of a Bible verse

38:25

which I'm going to let you

38:27

complete for me, Gospel of John.

38:29

No, no, I'm a Catholic, we

38:32

don't read the Bible, Carlos. Come

38:34

on. Blessed are those who have not

38:36

seen and yet believed. But one

38:38

of the reasons, right, that I

38:40

wrote a book about rational

38:43

arguments for religion is that

38:45

in the end, I really relate to

38:47

Thomas. you know, the guy who's

38:49

like, hey, it's cool that Jesus

38:51

rose from the dead, but I

38:53

wouldn't, I would in fact like

38:55

to see those wounds. And I

38:57

do think, I do think

39:00

it is important for people

39:02

dealing with these questions to

39:04

have some confidence, not that

39:07

like God's plan is all

39:09

immediately available to them,

39:11

but in fact, God is not as

39:13

hidden, I think, as it sometimes

39:16

may seem. perhaps especially to readers

39:18

of the New York Times. All

39:20

right, we're gonna we're gonna pause here. I

39:22

know, I know we still have a lot

39:25

to say, but we're gonna pause here and

39:27

we come back. We're gonna get hot and

39:29

cold. You know, hot cold makes me

39:31

think of, you know, hot now I'm worried

39:33

about the, you know, the flames of

39:35

Hades. I'm

39:52

Jonathan Swan. I'm a reporter at the

39:54

New York Times. You know, when people think

39:56

about the media, your favorite podcast, you know,

39:58

cable news panels and different... things. I think

40:00

it's fair to say that myself and

40:03

my reporting colleagues at the New York

40:05

Times exist at the more unglamorous end

40:07

of that spectrum. Our job is to

40:09

dig out the facts that provide a

40:11

foundation for these conversations. These facts don't

40:14

just come out of the ether. It

40:16

requires reporters to spend hours upon hours

40:18

talking to sources, digging up documents. Also,

40:20

if the story is a story that

40:22

a powerful person doesn't want in print,

40:25

there's threats of lawsuits and all kinds

40:27

of things. So, it's a really massive

40:29

operation. There aren't that many places

40:31

anymore who invest at that

40:33

level in journalism. Without a

40:36

well-funded and rigorous free press,

40:38

people in power have much

40:40

more leeway to do whatever

40:42

the heck it is that

40:44

they want to do. If

40:47

you think that it's worthwhile

40:49

to have journalists on the

40:51

job digging out information, you

40:53

can subscribe to the New

40:56

York Times because without you, none

40:58

of us can do the work

41:00

that we do. So I was trying to

41:02

do something that was sort of pop

41:04

culture appropriate to hot cold but also

41:06

had a religious dimension. So I've been

41:08

watching the Apple TV show Severance, which

41:11

is in its second season, and is

41:13

sort of developing some buzz, I think,

41:15

which is why I was encouraged to

41:17

go back to it. I had tried

41:19

it once and didn't get into it,

41:21

but now I've tried it again. I'm

41:23

almost done with season one. I'm well

41:25

into it. I'm enjoying it. I recommend

41:28

it. It is a show in the

41:30

kind of... puzzle box, lost kind of

41:32

mode, right, where, you know, there's

41:34

sort of a weird environment that

41:36

the characters are plunged into. The

41:38

premise is people sort of separate

41:40

their work selves from their home

41:42

selves. They are severed. And so

41:45

there are people who work in

41:47

the basement of this mysterious corporation

41:49

who don't remember their lives outside

41:51

until the workday ends. And then

41:53

they go back and lead lives

41:55

outside where they don't remember their

41:57

working lives. But the, you know,

41:59

the... engine of the show is figuring

42:01

out what this mysterious corporation is up

42:04

to and what it's doing with these

42:06

people. So I recommend the show, but

42:08

it does have a religious element in

42:10

it, which is that you guys mentioned

42:12

earlier, right? The ways in which when

42:15

people cease to be religious, they believe

42:17

in other things, but one other thing

42:19

that happens in an age of sort

42:21

of religious disillusionment is people can believe

42:23

in... a kind of Gnostic cosmology where

42:26

the world was made there is a

42:28

God but the God is bad or

42:30

you know is out to get

42:32

you or you were sort of

42:35

trapped in this system and certainly

42:37

I think some of these TV

42:39

shows where like there's some overarching

42:41

malign seeming authority people are

42:43

sort of living in a world

42:45

created by that authority and trying

42:48

to figure out how to break

42:50

out of it into reality does

42:52

have this very kind of religious-ish

42:54

element, but it is a kind

42:56

of pessimistic, anxious form of religion

42:58

that makes for interesting TV. It's

43:00

not how I would recommend actually

43:02

approaching, approaching cosmic questions, but anyway,

43:04

that was what I was thinking

43:07

about while coming up with a

43:09

recommendation. Have you watched it, Carlos?

43:11

Because I've seen the whole first

43:13

season. I don't want to do

43:15

any spoilers. I didn't have, um... and

43:17

don't have Apple TV and so

43:19

I watched I watched like the

43:22

first three episodes that were like

43:24

just like freebies and I was

43:26

very intrigued by it it's creepy

43:28

I find it's got a vibe that

43:30

I don't that I find creepy well

43:33

Ross what you just I mean the

43:35

way you described it some of

43:37

the best sticks for shows or

43:39

novels or stories is when you

43:42

take something that is very real

43:44

and take it to its logical

43:46

extreme, right? And like separating your

43:48

work life and your home life is

43:50

a very real thing that people do

43:53

every day without working for this, you

43:55

know, mysterious corporation that like, that like

43:57

screws with your head, right? And so

43:59

that... part of it is something

44:02

that I really appreciated. Because

44:04

even though I haven't had the

44:06

experience that they have on severance,

44:08

in some ways I have. I

44:10

mean, I'm recording this podcast literally

44:12

from my oldest daughter's attic bedroom.

44:14

So I struggle a little bit

44:16

right down to relate to the

44:18

concept. But I agree that's what

44:20

you're saying. Well, no, I mean,

44:23

that's part of the show is

44:25

like, why are people interested in

44:27

doing this, right? And, you know,

44:29

so. No, no. But I'm not,

44:31

just for the record. I haven't

44:33

started the second season yet, but

44:35

I hear it gets even better. So

44:38

it's on my list. I've got a

44:40

list. But I said, guys, whether you

44:42

are a practicing Catholic or a... Future

44:44

practicing Catholic, that's right. Whichever

44:47

you may be, Michelle. For

44:49

now, I'm just going to wish

44:51

you guys have a fantastic weekend.

44:54

Absolutely. Ross, congrats, Ross. God be

44:56

with you both and all our

44:58

listeners. And also with you. and

45:01

with your spirit. Thanks for

45:03

joining our conversation. Give

45:05

matter of opinion a

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You can also email us

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at Matter of Opinion at

45:38

nytimes.com. This episode was produced

45:40

by Andrea Batanzos, Elisa Gutierrez,

45:43

and Sophia Alvarez Boyd. It's

45:45

edited by Jordana Hochman. Our

45:47

fact-check team is Kate Sinclair,

45:50

Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle

45:52

Harris. Original music by Isaac

45:55

Jones, Carol Saboro, Sonia Herrera,

45:57

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46:00

Mixing by Carol Sabiro and

46:02

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46:04

Shannon Busta and Christina Samueluski.

46:07

Our executive producer is Annie

46:09

Rose Strasser.