theresa may taking questions from members of the house of commons. later, james clapper talks about his career in thentel community and russia's interference during the 2016 residential election. -- presidential election. -- rossweek, rostov fed douthat. >> when you are here nine years ago, here is what you said about the republican party. the republican party is roughly where the democratic i was around the time

that ronald reagan was elected president, which is to say it is coming off a long period of logical dominance and it has lost its dominance temporarily. the question is how long will it take for the party to come back politically and intellectually as well. brian: what do you say today? i would say did not take that long for them to come back politically. whether they have come back intellectual he is an open question. we often have this nice idea that a party loses power because it does not have any ideas anymore and goes into the wilderness and find new ideas and is rewarded for those new ideas and is ushered into power. history does not work that

neatly. we all should have been aware that to begin with. the republican party has regained and maintained power primarily through a kind of anti-liberalism that has been pretty successful because liberalism has been culturally successful in various ways and republicans have been able to ride a political backlash against that. devoted toprise create a policy thinking, the republican party is still the wasteland it was with donald trump the fascinating figure. in many ways, he was a policy innovator in his very crude, trumpian way during the primary campaign. he ran against conservatism in all kinds of ways.

he would stand up on the debate cruisend marco rubio or would say you are not a conservative. president, trump being charm, he never had a plan to operationalize much of that, especially on economics. so the party has fallen back -- i've used the term zombie reaganism sometimes to describe it. does the same ideas that party has put forward before. they are not necessarily popular. you cut taxes and you call it a day. that is the republican party as a governing institution right now. brian: how has your thinking changed? ross: i looked so young. were 29 years old and

started writing a digital column. how has your changing -- thinking changed? era has partly vindicated some of the things i thought as a young man with more hair and less experience that than. i think trump's rise and victory shows that the republican party is an empty vessel that someone can fill. the natural way to fill it is an uses thepopulism that white working-class base. if you asked nine years ago where the republican party should go, it resembles a trump has done. but what trump has do is in a less substantive way and a than i wouldr way have envisioned as an optimal for republicanism.

he started his presidential mpaign as a birth certificate considered -- conspiracy thrists. -- conspiracy theorist. some things that i had hoped for have been paral ffilled t thnoway i expected. i think the whole trump experience should make everybody little -- think a little more pessimistically or a little more creatively about the kind of changes we need to make for our political parties and really our system of government to work again. something like trump selection is a sign that acre mentalist -- trump'sg like election is a sign that incrementalists.

writerswith a bunch of come a week, we had nice, incremental policy ideas that would move the republican hardy to the center and so on. if you had -- republican party to the center and so on. if you had me here three years ago, i would have said that we are slowly pulling the republican slightly to the center. trump came and blue all that up -- blew all that up. i think we should feel that our efforts were insufficient and we misread where the country was and really the seriousness of a lot of our problems here in bc d.c. but as a country as a whole. do you work for james bennett?

>ross: i do. i am not based in new york right now. i live in new haven. as hees, he is my bus, was my boss at "the atlantic." : what would he say your columns are about over the last several years? say: i think that he would is everyone is aware that "the new york times" has a fairly liberal readership. there is an inside the bubble thinking. i think he would say that the job of a good conservative columnist for his page is at least in part to sort of expose

readers to ideas outside the bubble in a way that interest them without infuriating them or alienating them or making them dismiss conservatism as simple bigotry or simple racism or anything like that. so to the extent that he thinks i am doing a good job, i think you would say that, in trying to do things along those lines, helping to make the op-ed page of place that helps reveal the world in all its complexity and you have to have people writing from a conservative perspective in order to do that. brian: do you write your own headlines? ross: not always, but i have a say. brian: this is digital but it is beloved,rancis his papacy is a disaster." " the conversation has become

predictable. a friendly acquaintance, a real estate agent, asks about my work. i say i have been writing a book about the pope. the acquaintance smiles and nods and says is it he's a wonderful? or that must be uninspiring thing. or i have a friend who would like to read it. i eventually find myself saying uncomfortably, well, they should know that it is not entirely favorable." tell us how it is not entirely favorable. has: it is a book that taken his whole papacy. frances is probably the most fascinating religious figure of our era. he is the figure that people in my profession has -- have been most interested in. as john paul ii was, but in a different way. he is a celebrity pope, a pope

who has successfully harnessed the pope's position as a focal point for media coverage of the church to a remarkable effect. and he is also a liberaliser. he thinks the church needs to change in various ways, particularly around issues related to the sexual revolution, marriage, divorce, and so on, where prior po pes basically said these are changes the church cannot make. these are fraught places in his pontificate where he has clashed with his cardinals and theologians over just how far he can touch -- can researchers to change, what the church can change without under coming its own traditions. part of the book is tried to tell this story, which i think is independent of whether, you

know, how fondly you feel about the pope. it's an interesting religious story that has applications religion thatr has a wrestling match with modern society. also, the book has judgments. my judgment is that, on a lot of these issues, the pope has been making a mistake. of course, i am a lehman catholic journalist. i am not a theologian or bishop. so my authority to say these things are fairly limited. at the same time, i am speaking for a lot of people who are more theologically serious in various ways that i am. job of the journalists' is to share the story in a way that others cannot. there's something presumptuous for any catholic writer

criticizing the pope. in offering it, i am speaking for an important part of the church and explaining important side of what is the most important religious argument going on certainly in the western world and ably the whole world today. thingsof the recent that has caught my eye is there skelfari.w named i have an article here from "the catholic herald of great britain." he quotes francis is saying, from an interview that he had with him, and i will show you some video and a second -- "the souls of those who do not rip went and therefore cannot be -- do not repent and therefore

be forgiven, disappear. a hell does not exist. what exists is the disappearance of souls. before i ask you to ask you to explain all this, let me show you some video. he is 93 and he has a newspaper " in rome,publica italy. [video clip] said some of my advisors said to be careful talkingo you because you are a clever man and you will try to convert me. me, converting the pope? invited him for a chat. an article attracted worldwide attention. when it came to the church

hierarchy, francis was uncompromising. heads of the church, he is quoted as saying, have often been narcissist, flattered by their careers. this vatican-centric vision neglects the world around it and i will do everything to change it. n: put all this in the context of what we just heard. ross: essentially, the pope's position combines a kind of absolute power with absolute limits on his power. he is the monarch of the catholic church. except, ass goes, pope, he is not supposed to be able to change anything. in fact, the whole doctrine of papal infallibility that is a misunderstood is a limit.

the pope is supposed to be protected from the holy spirit from saying anything that contradicts what past popes have taught her said. so every pope is very aware of this kind of pressure on their utterances, the constraints on what they can do. the interviews with scalfari, which is -- who is not merely in his early 90's, but he is healthy in various ways. he does not take notes in the reconstructs the conversationfrom mory. what having conversations with this journalist does for francis is it enables him to basically slope theological speculations that a pope is not supposed to deniable yound of can't prove that i really said it that way. is probably getting

part of what francis says wrong. that is a reasonable assumption. holye same time, the father has conducted five separate conversations with him, and was consistently -- in which consistently he floats theological speculations that skirt the boundaries of catholic orthodoxy. pope trying to a find ways, in some cases, to explicitly change the church. in other cases, to introduce a kind of ambiguity and openness for conversation and debate around official teachings, and --ng this kind of in formal catholics use the word magisterial to describe formal papal teaching. is whatl magisterium the pope has always taught and said. he is stepping outside that role in these interviews.

many things, but he is very media savvy. he has an awareness that, if he hell to scalfari about will make headlines around the world. way of the pope's dealing with these powerful constraints on the office. brian: what do you think of this idea of talking with scalfari, who is an atheist and doesn't take notes? lord,my reaction is, oh, help us. not again. toon't think it is helpful the catholic faith to have a pope sort of doing this. introducee wants to different theological ideas

about hell, t should be open enough to do it publicly and -- he should be open enough to do it publicly and risk the backlash. credit, has to his do that on divorce and marriage and whether catholics remarried without annulment can take communion. that is a central controversy of his pontificate. francis did push for a certain change. out inthem argue it these two senates in rome. the reaction from the bishops put limits on what he could do. but his response to those limits was similarly a kind of ambiguity, where he issued a long document on marriage that included a small footnote that seemed to open the door to communion for the remarried and basically became a permission slip for some countries and some dioceses and some bishops to go one direction while others went

another. the ultimate effect is a kind of shift for the catholic church toward a slightly more and work in model. the anglican -- sortie slightly more anglican model. the anglican church had ideas about communion, substantiation, different liturgical forms, all central things, without doctrinal teaching that has been the selling point of the catholic church. you know where the catholic church stands. the and look in model hasn't -- the anglican model hasn't been working well for the and lukens -- the anglicans. taking the catholic church in is a betrayal of what the pope is supposed to do. the pope is supposed to provide unity and continuity rather than

opening a perpetual conversation about what catholicism is. brian: let me be very simple. why would god care at the end of someone's life whether they fussed all over this liturgical divorce, not divorce, if you have basically been a good person all your life? i guess there is a hell. basically, that, saying he did not say that. ross: the church is still teaches that there is the possibility of hell. this: why all of handwringing whether you are a protestant or a catholic or a jew? in the end, isn't it about how you lived your life and whether you have been a decent human being?

some extent, yes. but the state of a person's soul, what comes across in a secular frame as are you a good person or not is really a question of the state of your soul after 30 or 40 or 60 or 70 years of life. what kind of condition is your soul in? perspective,olic the condition of your soul is shaved by the moral choices that you make, whether you confessed sins and repent them or whether you maintain that is part of your being and the sacramental life of the church, the mixture of the rights of marriage, the sacrament of confession, taking communion and so on is itself supposed to be a source of grace, a place where grace is entering your life and making you closer to the kind of

ultimately if not good at least better person. communion, when you are living in a second isriage in the church's eyes fectively an adulterous marriage. what you doing it to community in that situation -- take communion in that situation is a kind of sacrilege. and sacrilege is bad for your soul. instead of communion making you a better person by infusing you it turns yourace, sins back on themselves and hardens you in the place of beginness you are int to with. i think it is very easy to see the very understandable, psychological reaction people

have to these rules but they are in fact for your protection. so participating in the life of the church when you are in a state of mortal sin is not good for you. it's not how you get to heaven from the catholic perspective. does that make sense as an answer? not for you to say, i guess. brian: flemish are show you something that you talked about in your book -- let me show you something you talked about in your book. this is a stamp published by the vatican. luther stamp with martin on the right-hand side, at the base of that crucifix. why did that irritate you? ross: did only mildly irritated me. brian: why would the catholic church want martin luther on a stamp anyway? are a lot of people in the vatican making choices.

but the view is the conflict between lutheranism and catholicism or part to some -- or protestantism and catholicism is something that needs to be effectively transcended, which is ideally something i agree with, too, but the best way to transcend it is to have these acumen oh partnerships where everyone gets together -- this was for the 500th anniversary of the reformation -- and says wasn't this a regrettable thing the 16thn all agree century popes had good ideas and luther had good ideas and it was a shame they could not figure things out. again, i think the impulse behind some of this is that it is admirable and there are ways wherech questions catholics and lutherans have come to common ground about grace and sin and justification

that were central to the reformation. at the same time, in other areas, the gap between official catholic teaching, where a letter protestant churches are, has gotten wider, like religion and sex and rally since the 1960's. so it is not the case that there is this obvious convergence between catholics and protestant churches. and for catholic teaching to make sense, for catholicism to be taken seriously, i think it should be taken seriously in its claims to be the church founded by jesus christ and all the rest of it. the reason -- the issues that split the church in the reformation were important issues. it was all just a misunderstanding. maybe it started as a misunderstanding, but within years and decades, lutheranism dissolved all kinds of catholic institutions. it changed the teaching on the eucharist, on

transubstantiation to this lutheran, lies -- lutheran compromise. thee are also some ways church should be able to say we committed sins during the reformation. the popes of that era were corrupt. we should have done things differently without in effect elevating luther as the equivalent of a catholic saint. book, you point out that there are 200 hurdles. 100 -- 150inals, priests. 400 east' overs it, if somebody is 80, and they are a cardinal, they cannot go for the pope? ross: i think that is a decision that john paul ii made.

retirement from an active life as runningal, life an archdiocese or a departnt of the vatican and so on, corresponds a sort of stepping away from responsibility. of course, there's issues of senility and so on the inter in -- that enter in. distant from the constancy's are that you want in choosing the expo -- the next pope. choice theytrary can be changed by different pope. put -- and cardinals have to retire 75. ross: they have to offer their retirement at something five -- at 75. brian: there are 200 plus cardinals still live in the

world. why are 40 of them from italy? ta have the most responsible people in the world and catholicism to have a kind of dominance? back faryou want to go enough, st. peter was martyred in rome. the church recognized rum as its capital. that was true then and it has been true ever since. , if natural in certain ways the center of your church is in rome, just as the politics of virginia and maryland loom larger in d.c. -- there will always be italian influence. cardinals inid, 40 italy in a religion of over a

billion people seems disproportionate. benedict and john paul before him did that, too. italian influence has diminished somewhat over the last few generations. has made anncis effort to appoint cardinals were not just from outside italy but from more peripheral countries. instead of making carlos -- instead of making the archbishop of a big city here and there a cardinal, he has chosen more minor figures from small, caribbean islands and places like that. but the general intention is to address exactly that sort of disproportionate thing. but it is a hard thing to change. you had that quote from francis where he criticizes [indiscernible] the fascinating thing about his

pontificate is that it is consumed more by these issues i am writing about in the book, these moral and theological controversies, than by the clinic every organization of the church's governance, which is the reason why he was elected. he was elected by mostly non-italian cardinals who looked at how the church was run under benedict at 16th and how rome was run and decided we can do better. he wasn't seen as a charismatic figure, but someone who rode the subway and had a personal humility and was not correct -- not corrupt. he was brought in as a kind of fix it man for the internal culture. he preferred to condemn the internal culture in vivid and ways,totally reasonable

but spend much more of his time on these -- this attempt to shift the catholicism center of gravity to something more liberal. brian: let me ask you some basics. why is it that the catholic church thanks that it has to have men in the leadership only? and they have to be celibate, cannot be married, unless they were married and then became a priest? ross: it is a multilayered thing. i don't think there is any reason in catholic teaching why the entire leadership has to be male. in fact, another thing that francis has done that i agree with is try and find more appointments within the governance structure of the church for women. and i think you could go further. that, inchurch says is effect, the priesthood is for

men only. -- brian: why? ross: jesus institute of the 12 disciples, all of which were male. he was a gender egalitarian analyst all things, in ways that were radical by the standards of his time. the fact that he can find this the first priests as men is a strong indicator. and it is confirmed by the catholic view that the main role of the priest is to stand in persona christi, to perform the heart of christ in the second ice of the mass -- the sacrifice of the mass, the transubstantiation of bread and wine into christ's by and blood. jesus was male. and the church is supposed to be

the bride of christ in effect. the church thinks there's some intentionx and gender in god's choices. and jesus's choice for the 12 disciples and god's choice to be incarnate as a man, that basically limit the priesthood itself. brian: but it sounds a lot like what happened in this country with women and african-americans where white males said we are in charge and they don't get to vote. they don't have property and all that. isn't this just politics, men saying to themselves they are the only ones who know how to operate this thing? ross: i think there is unquestionably, in any male lead institution, there will be -- in -led institution,

there will be a degree of sexism. historically, catholicism has been an institution that has this reputation now in the wake of the sexual revolution and second and third wave feminism as this foe of gender equality and female progress. historically, the catholic church, compared to other religious bodies, including the 16tht churches in and 17th century, provided many more leadership opportunities for women than any other institution compared to the pagan rome that the church came in conflict with and transformed and so on. the church simultaneously had an all-male priesthood but was more gender egalitarian. the litany of catholic saints is filled with often aggressive and influential women. so the church has been put in an

unusual position by the cultural changes of the last 50 years where it has gone from seen often by protestants as is feminize form of christianity, where the role of mary is race,ed above the han to being seen the way you just menribed, an example of running everything. -- iny to do that is to some cases, this would be the restoration of roles that women played in the medieval period. in other ways, you have to be innovatlive in church -- innovative in church governance. my preference would be to have a lot more nuns running -- we haven't even got in into the celibacy -- gotten into the celibacy question. i can imagine a version of the

roman curia that has a very different gender balance. both compatible with church teaching and, if it happened, would be proof that the church's vision of why should be a man on the altar performing the mass is compatible with a basic the love male and female equality. brian: another thing i would like to ask you about his annulments. i've not enough people in my life who have gotten annulments and they have been very close to the hierarchy of the church. and when you have to hire a lawyer to go through all this thing, why does that make any sense? someone getting married and have children and some people can get annulments and others can't? ross: that part of it does not make sense. that is just corrupt. to the extent that the annulment process is available to the well-connected and not available

to the less well-connected is a failed process. the church in this country has worked pretty hard in the last 30 years to correct the problem. so annulment process can be burdensome in various ways. the fees are waived. it's not a financial burden on people, although it can be obviously a practical and emotional burden. and if you go through the process, at this point, again, in the u.s., minibar and almonds are granted van not at the end of the process -- many more annulments are granted than not at the end of the process. the opposite is true, too. there is the famous case of sheila routes candidate who famously appealed the annulment granted to her husband other way to rome and won. he did not get that annulment. that is where the influence

worked for him only until he did not. possibly the that case of embarrassment to the church if they had granted it and she was able to take it to the hierarchy and room and most people cannot afford to do that? to leverages able her own celebrity against his and various ways. the theory of the annulment process is that that should -- that is what is supposed to happen all the time. the annulment process is supposed to be distinct in various ways, but distinct from that ine process, effect of the church is judging by half of the marriage, that is not something that can be unilaterally pursued by one spouse or the other. if one spouse says, no, he abandoned me and this was a real marriage, that perspective is

heard. basically the way it ended up here in the u.s., different from around the world, is a compromise with the culture we live in. it is a way to maintain the church teaching on the install ability of -- the insolvent ability of marriage. i have very mixed feelings about it. popet's different from -- francis has pushed things one step beyond that to appoint where it seems to me that the idea of solubility is fully and -- emptiedand deed out. isyou say then on a process not necessary and people can effectively decide for themselves, then it is hard for me to see what is different from that catholic teaching and from what the culture as a whole says. me put on the

screen a list of the pumps that go back to the late 1930's and early 1940's and ask you to give us a brief. pope john was only there for about four years plus. pope paul vi was there for about 15 years. was 33 days.st 36 years.ii was there when you look back on that list, what is the difference between pope francis and the ones it came before him? besides the fact that you point out that he is a jesuit. rate is --eing ages

him being a jesuit is one intereway g looking at it. the jesuit order has a fascinating history. it has been seen as the most conservative order, fiercely loyal to the pope. it's also seen as the most liberalizing order. that has been true since the 1960's. people think of jesuits as the liberal intellectuals of the church. of them those modes of being ages would have in common jesuits have in common is they push envelopes in different ways to do what they think needs to be done to evangelize. the mentality of the juit 1960's is, look, you are in a culture that is falling away from catholic christianity from all sorts of understand the reasons.

you need to make the church as flexible and adaptable as civil -- as possible. if that means having gray areas around hard, so be it. distinct from that, there are differences from latin america to north america and europe, but he clearly partakes of that attitude as well. he sees too much of a focus on rules and doctrine at this moment in history as a big obstacle to teaching the gospel. the challenging thing is there has never been a jesuit pope. different job in the church from the jesuits. putting someone who belongs to an order that sees itself as the envelope pushers at the center of the church creates a fascinating dynamic. defenders says's that he is exactly what the church needs, to push the

envelope effectively from the center. by the center does not hold. that is the danger -- but the center does not hold. that is the danger of having a hope that complains about rigidity. a certain rigidity is actually as sort ofjob, frustrating as that may be for the pope himself. that is one distinction. francis is similar to john paul, as sort of this globetrotting media presence, even though his theological perspective is different from john paul in many ways. has beenf the papacy -- the crude way to look at it is that pious the 12th was a more conservative figure and and benedict, who had

been sort of liberals in the context of the 1960's said, well, things have gotten too far and we need to reinforce catholic orthodoxy. thathen francis sees reinforcement as having gone too far and wants to swing things back in the other direction. thereh political figures, is a pendulum miniature that swings from one hope to another. ian: what grade would you give the catholic church in the way it handled the sex crisis and what impact that has had on its membership. ross: f-. there are two defenses you can offer the church. since the worst of the revelations that came out in the early 2000's, the church in the u.s., where things were a public

scandal, they have done a good job instituting protections and removing abusive priests. you start the clock. but the clock does not store in 2005 the way the church handled it. of thea horrible mix worst of conservatism and the worst of liberalism in various ways. it was this intersection of this very hierarchical we have to church, a bishop has to be a father to his priests and protect his priests, even at the expense of parishioners' children. of the worst abuses were associated with a sort of -- i don't want to say roman pilanski-ish. there was a realm where it -- it was priests having

sex with teenage boys in the way that people justify having sex with teenagers in a secular context. bishops leading coverups. and you had consecutive -- conservative bishops. now we see how pervasive this has been outside the church. . we have the penn state scandals and boarding schools candles. at best, that shows that other places were just as corrupt. and the church's business is supposed to be better. instead, it was, at best, just as bad. that the it a fact church took parishioners' money and paid off people in that process? if i went to church on sunday

and dropped some money in the slot, that money was eventually paid back to these listeners -- these her listeners? ross: the church paid a lot of money. it's fungible, but ordinary catholics -- ordinary catholics pay for everything in the church. so they certainly pay for that. 10 they paid for it in other ways the -- and they paid for it in other ways. the archdiocese in boston had to close a lot of parishes. it would've had to anyway because boston is not as catholic as it once was and so parishes on there the margins that close because they had to pay the amount? yes. to the extent to which the ripple effect of that scandal was felt, not just among the people directly affected, but just about every aspect of catholic life. brian: what has happened with

the catholic population? hasn't gone down? -- has it gone down? up.: worldwide, it has gone in the south, especially in africa. a lot of those conversions, the fact is that africa is the only part of the world where the population growth is still rapid generally. in the u.s., the catholic population as a share of the stable.is pretty but part of that is because of hispanic immigration. if you look at mass attendance, you have a big collapse in the 19. 60's and 1970's then it andilizes and -- 1960's 1970's. then it stabilizes. then the decline has gotten sharper. countries, european the decline was steeper in the 1960's and 1970's.

it has plateaued. latin america. , the church is losing large numbers of people to not just the secular and to pentecostalism and evangelicalism. it's the largest christian community in the world. it has grown in various areas, particularly in the global south. there's 1.2 in catholics. its much larger than it was 50 years ago but also institutionally much weaker. you in theme go to time remaining, what do you believe? ross: in catholic christianity? i think that this story recounted in the new testament is very convincing and sort of the most plausible instance in human history where a direct

intervention into the drama of history. i am a catholic christian because the catholic church has the most plausible claim to the early church. that relates t these questions about divorce and every thing else. catholice things that church has done very well. jesus says a lot of strange things in the new testament. he says you can't get remarried if you get divorced. it says you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood if you want to be saved. he places this incredibly high priority on a kind of radical poverty. compromise ways, has been impressively true to that, true to the teaching on marriage, true to their view that it is the body and blood in communion, true through the

and many other orders down through history to radical experiments in poverty and service. ways, i believe that jesus christ was the son of god and i think of all the churches in christendom, the catholic church has the best claim to be the one that he actually founded. in 2010, you probably remember the "mother jones" article. let me read this and have you fill in the blanks. attended a sermon by grace james. with an amazing encounter christ, snow told me over lunch. from then on, the family allowed -- followed james around new

england from high school cafeterias to elks lodges to church basements here in the family later began sampling church after church in what ross calls a tour of american christianity. ross: that was my childhood. brian: were you going from church to church? were you following chris jones around -- grace james around? ross: yes. yell,at upper-middle-class connecticut person had a very intense spiritual experience. i probably was six years old at the time. i like childhood where to say, during the week, i went to a nice, liberal, secular public school. and on the weekend, i went and watched my parents speak in tongues. i had an unusual religious

experience, if you will, in that i was along for someone else's religious privilege -- pro -- pilgrimage. we all became catholic when i was a teenager. she is now a writer as well. she writes about some of these issues in a more intense way than i do. but she is a more mystical personality than i am. part of the baseline for my approach to all matters religious is that i hate religious experience is real. i can't claim these dramatic fiscal expenses, but i watched the -- mystical experiences, but i watched them happen to people i was close to. below the level of is the new

testament true, is the catholic true the one true church? my foundation is the idea that religion is more important and more important to figuring out the truth about the world than a lot of secular people tend to think. brian: in the same article -- ross >: yeah. brian: you are obviously not introverted anymore. totallywas not introverted.

i would say jokingly but not completely jokingly, that one of the things i like about the catholic church is what protestants find unpleasant about it. you have prayers that you memorize. you can slip into the back of a catholic mass in any parish and there won't come a point in the middle of the service with the priest says, all right, let's have everybody stand up and testify to how jesus changed your life. there's incredible religious energy in and costal is an and evangelicalism and so on. andmy -- in pentecostalism even develop -- in

pentecostalism and evangelicalism and so on. have been a few reviews that have said i'm just making things up and the complex i'm describing are not real. that is the harshest critique and that's wrong. i know it's wrong because i am not a real reporter so i just relied on better reporters than myself and the best reporting bears out the story that i am trying to tell. i don't know about the best thing. there have been a lot of critical reviews that have taken , of course, he is wrong about this, but he is a religious catholic. ani'm in the weird position of criticizing a pope and on terms that the secular world finds bizarre. sometimes, i have to take that kind of review as maybe the best

that i can hope for. , wherethe name douthat does it come from? ross: northern england. my protestant ancestors persecuted my catholic ancestors and we ended up in america and me and nou in the na one has been able to pronounce it since. brian: children? ross: three. brian: our guest has been ross douthat. thank you very much. ross: thank you. ♪

for free transcriptor to give us your comments about this thisraham, visit us at -- --a visit us at q&a.org -and-a.org. week, a history of faith and resistance, about the actions of the kingsville nine and other catholic activists who protested the vietnam war. that's next sunday night on human day -- on q&a. c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. monday morning, darlene

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www.c-span.org >> british prime minister theresa may takes questions from members of the house of commons. the former director of national intelligence talks about russian interference in the 2016 elections. at 11:00.m., another chance to see q&a with new york times douthat,t ross sout talking about the future of the catholic church. >> theresa may discussed brexit negotiations and the upcoming european union withdraw bill debate. it is scheduled to leave the e.u. in march of next year. this is 45 minutes. questions for the prime minister. the prime minister thank you mister speaker.