i'll talk to the "new york times'" ross douthat about that times'" ross douthat about that when we come back. ♪ south l.a. is very medically underserved. when the old hospital closed people in the community lived with untreated health problems for years. so, with the county's help we built a new hospital from the ground up and having citi as an early investor worked as a signal to others to invest. with citi's help we built a wonderful maternity ward and we were able to purchase an mri machine. we've made it possible for the people who live here to lead healthier lives and that's invaluable. ♪ >>> the good seems light in this picture of the pope as he met with officials from the u.s. bishop's conference on thursday but the topic was heavy, the american contingent traveled to roam after a one-time vatican ambassador to the u.s. alleged publicly last month that top vatican officials knew about sex abuse allegations against former washington cardinal mccarrick but didn't act. the vatican ambassador says he even told pope francis himself about the allegations. also last month, pennsylvania

i wanted to talk about all of this with ross douthat.for "the new york times" and the author of a book "to change the church -- pope francis and the future of catholicism." so this is good time with the book because what you are describing in a way is another set of controversies. and it seems like this child abuse controversy, which has flared up, intersects with another one. >> it's the two big crises in the last 50 or 70 years of catholicism intersecting. one is the crisis of sex abuse and the srths this long-running conflict about basically how much the church can change to adapt to modernity, the sexual revolution, modern culture and everything else. and the two have always been intertwined in a sense so far as arguments about priest sex abuse have turned into arguments about whether priests should be ce celibate, or about whether the church should ordain women or have more women in positions of power. pope francis is seen, accurately, as a liberalizer. as someone who wants the church to change and his accusers, including the airrch

because in 2008, you and ross douthat published a book, and the book was entitled "grand new party: how republicans can win the working class and save the american dream." do you see echoes of your argument in this moment of conservative populism and the coalition that donald trump has assembled politically? >> i do. the argument we made in the book is that, over a very long period of time, the base of the republican party had changed, and what we saw happening is that the republican party became a more working-class party. it became a party rooted in different regions of the country than it had been in earlier eras, and as that changed, the ideology of the party's elite didn't really change with those changes in the base. >> were you arguing that the ideology of the party had changed or that the party was politically most successful when it was able to harness the enthusiasm and mobilize those voters? "those voters" being white, working-class voters, who you identified that, i think, if i understood your argument, the conservative movement had forgotten? >> it was a little bit of both.

you'll hear from mister ross douthat as he noted in his review, finds them mostly appalling. i do not. the sexual revolution in my opinion while disquieting in certain ways when it veers into access it has largely been a salutary thing. hefner is easy to forget first presented his message in an age when for many people what you had was a kind of stifling stifling of sexual mores. shame it, evaluation were common fair or anyone who dared to engage in premarital sex. the legal and political system censored almost everything on sexual information even in public males and in tvland it was mandated that even married couples had to sleep in twin beds and that they had to keep two feet on the floor at all times, even when they werekissing or embracing . as much as any other individual i think in this period, hefner was responsible for expanding the range of human choice regarding sexuality. opening it up to individual decision-making and liberating in many ways this most basic of human activities from a kind of excessive repression in this period. and he did so i would especially no