What’s Up with the Church?

For the last six months (and probably longer), the press has foregrounded an eye-catching development. Against the grain of American religion, Catholicism is gaining a steady influx of adherents. It started during the tenure of Pope Francis, of blessed memory, but it seems to be continuing during the first stretch of Pope Leo.

And it’s not just celebrities like J.D. Vance, or the notorious case of David Brooks, erstwhile Jew and now hemi-semi-demi Catholic luminary. Washington-based converts are an old, interesting story of successful, intellectually seductive persuasion. The Church has had a knack for placing attractive priests in the epicenter of political power. If Judaism were conversionary, it would have done the same.

What’s happening now is further down the food chain: rank-and-file converts and those returning home to a civilization that clings to its traditional practices. Indeed, that seems part of the appeal, at least according to some insightful observers. This line of analysis may be superficial, but it carries the force of intuitive truth. In periods of upheaval, uncertainty, and change, American seekers are looking for a kind of sacred certainty. The idea that a church captures ancient truths, which it has affirmed over centuries and continues to propagate, is hugely appealing in a time of vulnerability. Hardly anyone wants to climb a shaky ladder. You might make it to the top, but you could as easily die trying.

I accept that proposition, but I also see something else. When I look at pictures of the new Catholic Church, I see rows of yearning, young American men. Others have pointed to the same phenomenon. The number of believing young women is in a state of decline, while men are ascending on the scale of religiosity. This is the first time in recent American history that the Church has been marked by such a gendered surge.

That also makes intuitive sense to me. If this is a period of intense vulnerability, that applies more often to men than to women. It catches up the domains of college acceptance and matriculation, professional advancement, and political power. The first real female candidate for the American presidency came within a couple of points in the popular vote. Kamala Harris lost, but not by much.

For a certain kind of man, this new competitiveness is terrifying. It undermines a sense of natural entitlement and threatens a permanent new balance of power. In a period like this, a conservative church, with deeply held notions of patriarchal authority, represents a refuge for those who may be troubled by feminism. It might be useful to imagine it as a branch of the manosphere, where an older version of authority is still intact. The Vatican continues to make an effort in a new emphasis on the role of Mary, but it is unlikely to open the priesthood to women.

For the record, there are other forms of religion which function similarly. Haredi Jewish Orthodoxy is a fortress of masculinity which will never accede to the prompts of modernity. I am personally repelled by its contempt for women, and its effective use of coercion and gaslighting, but I don’t want to sound like a mindless critic of the Church. There’s a potent minority in my own community that secretly appreciates the strictures of the Vatican.

But what’s interesting to me is the arc of religious history. Just when you’ve identified an irresistible form of “progress,” the lived reality of believers proves you wrong. The gusts of the spirit are unpredictable, and they blow in many directions, sometimes all at once. The surge of Catholic converts may soon be over, but the crisis of masculinity goes on and on.

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Written without the use of Artificial Intelligence, this is the actual product of a struggling human mind.