It’s interesting that The New York Times gave a reasonably straight account of Michael Rose’s book that blames a decline in religious devotion among American Catholics on the anti-transcendence of recent church architecture. Rose is, of course, the author of Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church, which blames unorthodox, feminist and pro-homosexuality seminaries—and their gatekeepers—for the church’s current crisis. As he mentions in the Times account, his views on the two issues are very much of a piece. The easiest way to account for the column is that the Times finds intra-Catholic disputes that don’t deal with hot-button issues in an absolutely direct way remote and somewhat exotic. Still, they deserve credit for the curiosity about the world that the column reflects.