New Books Network — Interview with Colleen Dulle

Episode: "Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter"

Host: Chris Odeniec
Guest: Colleen Dulle, Vatican Reporter and Author
Date: October 6, 2025

Overview

This episode features Vatican correspondent and journalist Colleen Dulle discussing her candid, personal new book Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter. Dulle opens up about navigating her journalistic calling and personal faith amid the traumas and scandals of the contemporary Catholic Church. The conversation, both intimate and wide-ranging, touches on the Church’s open wounds, grief and community, polarization, women's leadership, the economics of canonization, and ultimately, hope through wrestling with God.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Wrestling with God During Scandal

• Dulle’s faith crisis sparked by reporting on sexual abuse scandals ([01:45]–[02:18], [09:58]–[14:27])
  • The 2018 “summer of scandal”: Pennsylvania grand jury report, McCarrick allegations, Archbishop Viganò’s accusations, and the Vatican’s summit on abuse.
  • Personal spiritual disorientation: “I felt like kind of the floor had been ripped out from under me. Like, the place that I had often gone for solace in hard moments in life was suddenly the source of my anger.” (Colleen Dulle, [01:45])
  • The retreat in Montreal and wrestling with the passage of Jacob and the angel:
    • Not just permitted, but necessary to wrestle with God, to “throw plates.”
    • The value is in the struggle ("God could have beat him right away... there had to be an inherent value that God wanted to communicate in the wrestling." [14:29])
  • Dulle’s journey: angry, spiritually lost, but finds solace and direction through honest confrontation with pain.

2. The Scandal’s Spiritual Dimension & Accountability

• Why the Church’s failings cut differently than others ([08:47]–[10:02])
  • “Your run-of-the-mill pedophile doesn’t claim to have a special relationship with God… that’s the biggest, most damaging part — it messes people up spiritually as well as psychologically.” (Colleen Dulle, [08:47])
  • Anger and disappointment with institutional responses: “That wasn’t a satisfactory answer. It wasn’t the point.” (Chris Odeniec, [08:30])
  • The additional gravity and betrayal because clergy claim to mediate the sacred.

3. Power, Persistence, and Theodicy

• How abusers maintain power and the deeper question of theodicy ([16:16]–[19:33])
  • The “cult of personality,” benefits to the institution (e.g., ability to bring in money), and blackmail dynamics inside the Church.
  • Why do monsters persist in leadership? Power, ego, covering up for others’ secrets.
  • “The other and maybe more fundamental question... is the theodicy question, right? It’s why does God let these things happen? Why does God let these people continue in their offices? And yeah, that’s the hard part. That’s the wrestling part.” (Colleen Dulle, [17:17])
  • The host reflects on Satan as the archetypal unrepentant sinner as a comparison ([18:23]–[19:03]).

4. Grief, Suicide, and Community

• Reconciling doctrine and community after a friend’s suicide ([22:02]–[26:34])
  • The Church’s evolving stance on suicide and hope for mercy.
  • The biggest crisis wasn’t loss of faith, but fear of the community’s judgment: "I feared judgment from that community. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to grieve there." (Colleen Dulle, [23:33])
  • Contrast between two experiences of grief, the first resulting in withdrawal, the second—after her grandfather’s death—leaning into community support, echoing the Synod’s theme of moving “from I to we.”
  • Ends with Dorothy Day: “We’ve all known the long loneliness, and the solution is love, and the love that’s found in community.” ([26:34])

5. Polarization, Liturgical Preference, and the Hope for Unity

• On the Latin Mass, ecclesial division, and Pope Leo’s path ([26:42]–[33:54])
  • Dulle’s personal experience attending the Latin Mass: initial anger, then growing comfort. Recognizes diversity of spiritual needs and the challenge of Catholic unity.
  • The schism “of the heart”: “I draw a parallel to this thing that Jesus says—if you look at somebody with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart... even if you're not schismatic... some of us have, like, schismatic tendencies, in terms of viewing each other as the wrong kind of Catholic.” (Colleen Dulle, [32:24])
  • Host and guest reflect on the growing polarization and the hope that Pope Leo’s inclusive, listening-oriented style will help “lower the temperature.”

6. Women’s Leadership in the Church

• Dulle’s nuanced take on women in ministry and leadership ([35:27]–[39:15])
  • Dulle distinguishes her own vocation to the lay state and journalism, but strongly affirms the pressing contributions of women to church leadership in all the roles canon law permits.
  • “I see women who really feel that they’re held back from serving in the church in the way that they feel called to. And I’m a big believer in… our ability to discern what it is that God’s asking of us… I think it’s worth listening to people when they say that.”
  • Pushes back on the “Mary as queen” argument as sidestepping real inclusion.
  • Finds inspiration in Mary Magdalene as the “apostle to the apostles”—the first witness and messenger of the Resurrection ([38:06]–[39:02]).

7. The Economics (and Politics) of Canonization

• Why are there so few saints from poor regions? ([39:57]–[48:05])
  • Exposes the high (often $400,000–$1,000,000+) cost of promoting a canonization cause, which effectively bars poor communities from recognition.
  • “It’s mind boggling. It’s like 35% of saints lived in Italy when they died... and then you get to the other continents and they all get single digits and Africa is like 0.5%.” (Colleen Dulle, [41:03])
  • Canonization often politicized (e.g. John Paul II seeking a Latin American candidate).
  • Details technical and bureaucratic barriers: paperwork, printing standards, and a system with financial conflicts of interest.
  • Despite the flaws, Dulle feels the process still preserves the miracle requirement as an authentic sign of God’s will.

8. Personal Growth and Hope

• Coming to terms with Church humanity and renewed hope ([49:04]–[53:47])
  • “The first time I saw St. Peter’s Basilica, I felt nothing... the beauty of the buildings is seemingly in contrast with the ugliness of the decisions being made in them.”
  • Today, Dulle recognizes the Vatican as a human institution: “I have come to see the Vatican not as big imposing buildings... but as an institution that is made up of people...”
  • The key to moving forward: reckoning honestly with the truth and broadening participation. “My job is to help get the church closer to a place of healing, which I think happens by having an honest reckoning with the truth. Back to the wrestling—having value itself.”
  • Personally, parenting has deepened her understanding of God’s love: “This is how God looks at me. This is how God looks at everybody, even the people I don’t like.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On spiritual crisis:

  “The place that I had often gone for solace in hard moments in life was suddenly the source of my anger.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [01:45])

• On wrestling with God:

  “God could have beat him right away... there had to be an inherent value that God wanted to communicate in the wrestling. Right. The wrestling itself, all night long, evenly matched. That’s so frustrating. Like, that meant something.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [14:29])

• On systemic betrayal:

  “Your run-of-the-mill pedophile doesn’t claim to have a special relationship with God... that’s the biggest, most damaging part—it messes people up spiritually as well as psychologically and in every other way.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [08:47])

• On grief and community:

  “It’s not a crisis of faith, it’s a crisis of community. Right. At the time... I feared that I wouldn’t be able to grieve there... Instead, I pulled away. I kept myself away and ultimately ended up finding, like, other faith communities...”
  (Colleen Dulle, [23:33])

• On intra-Church division:

  “Some of us have, like, schismatic tendencies... viewing each other as the wrong kind of Catholic or, like, not really a Catholic. People say that... about, like, oh, you work for the Jesuits, not really Catholic... it’s actually a really harmful way to be viewing the body of Christ.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [32:24])

• On women in Church leadership:

  “I see women who really feel that they’re held back from serving in the church in the way they feel called to... I’m a big believer in discernment of spirits and our ability to discern what it is that God’s asking of us. And so I think it’s worth listening to people when they say that.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [35:27])

• On the cost of canonization:

  “I have like... the financial updates [on Dorothy Day's cause]. It’s going to be approaching a million dollars in cost by the time she gets canonized. And that’s relatively expensive for a canonization cause.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [41:04])

• On hope and institutional humility:

  “I have come to see the Vatican not as... big imposing buildings with kind of like, bogeymen inside... but as an institution that is made up of people... My job is to try to help get the church closer to a place of healing, which I think happens by having an honest reckoning with the truth.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [49:04])

• On parenting and understanding God’s love:

  “Sitting in my son’s room and watching him sleep and feeling this overwhelming love for him and then having the natural realization... this is how God looks at me. Two, this is how God looks at everybody, even the people I don’t like. That’s astounding.”
  (Colleen Dulle, [52:51])

Timestamps of Important Segments

• 01:45 — Dulle describes her experience of disillusionment with the Church
• 09:58 — 2018 scandals, professional crisis, and spiritual fallout
• 14:29 — Lessons from wrestling with God, Jacob’s story
• 23:33 — On grief, community, and the long loneliness
• 32:24 — Division within the Church: “schism of the heart”
• 35:27 — Women’s leadership and discernment
• 41:03 — Exposing the Eurocentric, expensive canonization process
• 49:04 — From institutional despair to hope and engagement as a layperson
• 52:51 — The spiritual transformations brought by motherhood

Final Reflections

The episode concludes with a hopeful message—that confronting ugly truths, participating honestly, and cultivating community are essential to renewing faith. Dulle’s path, marked by wrestling, grief, and eventual restoration, becomes a model for faithful resilience amid the Church’s wounds.

The conversation closes with a poetic prayer by Madeleine Delbrêl:

“You’ve chosen us to be in a strange balance, a balance that can establish and sustain itself only in motion, only with momentum. Rather like a bicycle that cannot stay upright without moving...”

Listeners are left with this encouragement:
“We are struck down but not destroyed. We are perplexed, but not [abandoned]...” (paraphrasing 2 Cor 4:9).