Why Should We Trust Them? by Anthony Esolen

By Anthony Esolen, Catholic Thing, May 4, 2026

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. Among his books are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and most recently The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is Distinguished Professor at Thales College. Be sure to visit his new website, Word and Song.

The German episcopate appears all agog, not to say hot and lathery, to extend blessings to men who bed down with men, and women with women, apparently believing that Saint Paul and Saint Jude have nothing to teach them: Germany having led the way toward a world in which families are rich with children and stronger than ever; the love between man and woman is celebrated in song and confirmed in customs and laws; the popular culture is, in its most public manifestations, wholesome and clean; and what sleaze there is has to hide its rat’s head in dirty alleys, ducking and dodging if not the law, then the reproach of all decent people.

Is it so, reverend sirs?  

A commercial I saw the other day on German television, advertising a sexual prophylactic, featured two men snuggling in a bed, and a woman in black underwear, entering the room to have her fun with both of them at once.  “Mit beiden?” read the caption, meant to entice, while a strain of canned music, featuring the female “vocal fry” that is now worldwide, as of a woman straining very hard to pass a bladder stone, celebrates the delight to come.  ….