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The Conversion Explosion That Wasn’t · Crisis Point

• 0:00
  Foreign.
• 0:10
  Welcome to Crisis Point. I'm Eric Sammons. So I was thinking about doing an episode on the phenomenon of a lot of people becoming Catholic. If you're on Catholic social media at all, you see this a lot. There's a lot of stories about massive numbers of people becoming Catholic and they're shared all around. They go viral. And it's just, it's something that's kind of common knowledge among Catholics on social media, at least over the last few years, is that there's been an increase and a lot of people in America, this is becoming Catholic. In fact, recently I saw this. Let me just pull this up as a screenshot.
• 0:50
  A Fox News episode of Fox News showed this data shows surge in Catholicism at US colleges and said up 115% from last year. So this is from Hollow. They got from the Hollow app analysis of the 25, 26 school year that was 150, 15%.
• 1:15
  I'm not sure if that's interesting Catholicism or people becoming Catholic. Nearly 60 colleges and universities. And this went viral, this idea that there's all these Catholics, all these college students who are becoming Catholic or at least interested in Catholicism. And then you had, there was a story that went viral about a week or so ago, an article from the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, obviously Salt Lake City, that was saying that hundreds of Mormons were becoming Catholic.
• 1:45
  And so this of course also went viral, this idea that there's all these Mormons in Utah, in Salt Lake City, the home of Mormonism, were becoming Catholic.
• 1:55
  And then also you just hear anecdotal evidence, people share it all the time about this parish has this many people who are now in ocia and this, this community has a huge number of people coming at Easter.
• 2:07
  I know, for example, I was talking to my son in law who's the director of faith formation at a parish and he said they have over 70 people signed up for OCIA this year. Last year they had 50 people come into the church. I think that was up from the year before.
• 2:21
  Clearly there's been an increase there.
• 2:24
  At my own parish, we've seen an increase in people in our adult conversion class.
• 2:30
  I don't have the number of times people sign up for this year, but over the last few years, for example, I've been doing it, I've been helping out with the adult conversion class for probably 10 years or so and we've definitely seen an increase. We would maybe average 8 to 10 a few years ago and now we're around 20 to 30, maybe 40 people who come into the church. And so there's this anecdotal evidence that you will see on, on social media, often about people coming to church. So I thought, okay, I'm going to do an episode on this. Why is it that all these people, why so many? Why is there such an increase? I thought maybe it's connected to Pope Leo or something else. You know, I was going to look, dig into that.
• 3:10
  There is just one problem.
• 3:13
  It's not true.
• 3:15
  It's simply not true. If you look at the actual data, there isn't some large increase in the number of conversions to Catholicism in America over the past maybe three to five. I've been hearing it for at least about five years since about COVID after Covid, there hasn't been some huge increase.
• 3:35
  And in fact, if you look at, compared to numbers from maybe three, 30 years ago, it's nowhere close to the numbers we had in the 1990s.
• 3:46
  And so it's a hard reality. And it's something I, I found that people, Catholics get mad at me when I say this. When, or at least when I suggest that maybe the good news isn't quite as good as we're kind of making it out to be. Almost as if I'm hoping that it's not true that lots of people come to church. I mean, hello, this is what I want more than anything, is for lots of people to come in a Catholic church. And so if it was happening on some Mass level, I would be trumpeting it as much as anybody.
• 4:19
  And I also want to make clear each individual person who comes into the Catholic Church is great news. It's awesome. It's something we should celebrate. Whether it's one, whether it's a 100, whether it's 100,000, it doesn't matter. Ultimately, we rejoice. But I do think it's important that we look at the numbers and see what's actually going on, because that will help us in our evangelization efforts and how we run the church, how we run parishes and things of that nature.
• 4:48
  So here, the first thing that made me realize maybe this isn't true is when I was looking, I actually was. I wanted to dig out the.
• 4:57
  The story about the, the from the Salt Lake Trip Tribune about all the Catholics becoming Mormon.
• 5:04
  Well, I found two things. First of all, the article was just one in a series being done by the Saint, the Salt Lake Tribune, about Mormons becoming various different religions.
• 5:17
  It wasn't just, okay, Mormons becoming Catholic. There's this phenomenon of all these Mormons becoming Catholic let's do an article about that. No, this was actually second in the series. The first was Mormons who were becoming Jewish.
• 5:30
  And this was the second in the series, Mormons who were becoming Catholic. So it wasn't like there was some huge phenomenon in Utah of lots of Mormons becoming Catholic. They wanted to do a story on that. It was just, okay, Mormons are becoming various religions. Let's do a series of articles on what they are becoming.
• 5:47
  But then there was something deep in the article that I found that completely undercuts what, what went viral. And I'll pull it up here on the screen.
• 5:57
  It said, last year the Diocese of Salt Lake City reported 281 catechumens and 199 candidates for baptism. So we have about 480 people coming to church. That's great. In 2025.
• 6:11
  The next line, though says that's down from 556 catechumens and 142 baptismal candidates in 2024, which is almost 700.
• 6:22
  It literally went down by 30% last year. The number of Mormons, or we don't know if they're all Mormons, the number of adult converts to Catholicism in the Diocese of Salt Lake went down by 30% between 2024, 2025. So this narrative that all of a sudden tons of people are becoming Catholic and here's just one example, it isn't true. So when it went viral that hundreds of Catholics are becoming Mormon, sorry, hundreds of Mormons are becoming Catholic in Salt Lake City, that's only, that's actually less than where became Catholic year before.
• 6:59
  So we saw, we see there the data that, that's really what stopped me in my tracks and made me realize, hold on a second, maybe we're not really looking at the data very carefully and maybe we're just sharing these anecdotal evidences. And so I thought, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to cara, the center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. They are by far the best when it comes to tracking a number of Catholic demographics, like number of priests, number of infant baptisms, number of adult baptisms, number of marriages, number of funerals, things like that in America. They're based out of Jorsham. But don't hold, hold that against them.
• 7:41
  And what they do is they're not, it's not just surveys they do. Some of the questions are surveys, but the data they have comes from the actual data being reported by the parishes. And then they cross check them. To make sure they're accurate. And they've been doing this. They have this data for going back decades.
• 7:59
  So you can really see the concrete numbers. Not just, okay, this diocese reported this number of people at their Easter vigil this year, or this. This parish said this, or whatever, or this news article said this. No, it's actually looking at, okay, look at the entire Catholic Church in America, all the diocese and eparchies, pull together all the data and present it very objectively.
• 8:24
  That's gonna. That's what's gonna give us our best information.
• 8:27
  And so I want to bring some of that up to you here.
• 8:30
  So what they do is I'll pull up some of the numbers here, then I'll pull up a chart, because numbers, probably you might not be able to see them. What they do is they do it every five years. And the questions that matter are number of baptisms, adult baptisms in previous year, and number of full communion receptions of full into full communion in the previous year.
• 8:54
  And so what you see is. And I pulled this. This is my chart from the last. From 1995 till now.
• 9:01
  What you see is. So if you. If you look at the date on the bottom, it says 1995, 2000, 2005 goes every five years. It's really the year before. So it's really 1994 to 2024. Because these are numbers from the previous year. It's just kind of the weird way they report it.
• 9:16
  But if you look, you see that the number of receptions into full communion in 1994 were over 75,000 people in 1995.
• 9:26
  And number of adult baptisms were over 60,000 in 1994. So 1994, you had over 130, 140,000 adults who came into the Catholic Church either through baptism or through just reception into full communion. To be clear on that. Baptisms are people who haven't been baptized. Obviously, reception into full communion are people who were baptized as Protestants. And so they're just being received in the church. So it's basically all the converts combined, over 130,000. Then if you look at 1999, says 2000. The chart, it spikes up to even more.
• 10:05
  It's over 100. It's. I think it's like around 160,000, something like that, which I pull up the actual number, if I can see it. Yeah, it's like over 160,000 people came to church. That's a huge number of people.
• 10:18
  But then look what happens after the year 2000.
• 10:21
  It just goes down and it goes down precipitously between 2000, 2005. And I think one of the things, and by the way, these are just every five years. It doesn't do every year. I think one of the things you can see, one of the things you could probably say is that is the time of the great scandal of the abuse crisis in the clergy and the bishops covering it up came out in 2002, 2003.
• 10:48
  And so you see a big decline number of receptions, full communion. You actually see about the same number of baptisms, but a huge decline in receptions into full communion.
• 10:58
  Then there's a huge drop to baptisms and even receptions full communion. And so in 2009 you only have about 60, about 70,000 receptions in full communion and only about 40,000 baptisms. So you're down now 110. But then it continues to go down 20, 20, 2019, it plummets to only about 50,000 receptions in full communion and Only about 30 some thousand baptisms.
• 11:32
  And this is before COVID so this isn't the COVID year. And then it just, it stayed about steady. There's a slight uptick to 2024 in receptions into full communion and there's basically say steady, a little bit of decline in baptisms. So what this shows very definitively is there has been no massive increase all the way up to 2024. And remember we've been saying, they've been saying that people have been saying this for years now, for at least five years. There's been no massive increase in the number of conversions into the Catholic Church in America over the past five years. It just hasn't happened. The numbers just don't play it out.
• 12:14
  And in fact, if you look at compared to 30 years ago, it's a huge drop off, a huge drop off from 1999, so 20, 25 years ago until 2024. So 20 over that 25 year period, the number of people coming to the Catholic Church has been a huge drop off.
• 12:37
  And so this is something we, we need to, to recognize also if you look at just the overall numbers, in fact, I'm going to try to pull this up. I, I had it, let me try to find it here, the data, here we go. I'm going to pull it up on my screen here.
• 12:54
  So if we look at actually, so let me give you the exact, the exact numbers.
• 13:01
  So the number of adult baptisms in 2024 was about 34,500, 34,500 and receptions in full communion about 55,600. So total, you're going to get about 90,000 people. So about 90,000 people, adults came into the Catholic Church in 2024, in 10 years ago, in 2014, it was over a hundred thousand.
• 13:29
  It was about 105,000.
• 13:32
  So you see a drop over that 10 year period in 2020. Actually, in 2019, I should say that before that it was about 87, 88. So about the same between five years ago and now. And like I said, it's been a drop off since 2015. And like I said, in 1995, the number was over 140,000 people came to church. But then if you go back Even further to 1965, they didn't have numbers for receptions into full communion. But the number of adults baptized in 1965 alone was 118,000.
• 14:09
  Again, there were 34,500 adult baptisms in 2024. There was 118,000 adult baptisms in America in 1964.
• 14:25
  So over that 60 year period, it's been a huge decline and nothing recently has really made it, made it to be more.
• 14:36
  And so I think we just make it, it's pretty clear here that there isn't some great Mass event of, of adult conversions into the Catholic Church. We don't have a lot of people coming in, even though that does seem to be the narrative. And so the question is, what's going on? Why do we have this kind of disparate data between what the data is actually showing us and what we're seeing on social media, hearing about.
• 15:05
  I do think there's something going on. I want to make sure that's clear. I do think there's something going on today that wasn't going on maybe 15 years ago or 10 years ago.
• 15:15
  I think what's happening, personally, this is, and I will say this is a guess we'd have. You'd have to do surveys of all the people coming into the church. You'd have to get deep into where they're coming in the church and their ages, their demographics, all that stuff to really know for sure.
• 15:30
  But based upon what I see, I believe what's happening is there are pockets.
• 15:38
  There are pockets in the Catholic Church, church in America where you are seeing an increase in the number of conversions.
• 15:46
  But that does not outweigh the fact that most places, most Catholic parishes just simply don't have that many people coming in the Catholic Church.
• 15:56
  And so what you see is places like if your parish is more conservative, more traditional. And by the way, I don't, I'm not saying this is a traditional Mass Novus Ordo thing.
• 16:09
  I do think traditional at Mass parishes are, have seen the biggest increase. This is anecdotal. I do think they've seen the biggest increase in the number of people coming to church. But I do think also like more conservative and traditionally minded Novus Ordo parishes are also seeing it.
• 16:25
  Like my son in law who like I said is the director of faith formation at a parish, it's just a diocesan parish, Novus Ordo Mass, but it's a very conservative traditionally minded one. Like they don't have, they only have altar boys, they celebrate ad orientum, things like that, the orthodox preaching, all that.
• 16:43
  And so I do think that those type of parishes are seeing an increase over the last five years and particularly seeing an increase in young men coming into the Catholic Church.
• 16:54
  And I think that's a real phenomenon that we are seeing an increase in certain areas of young men coming to Catholic Church to directed towards certain ways. But the reality is it's simply not happening across the board.
• 17:12
  Like I, I was just recently, I, I don't think I told it on the podcast. I know I was talking about on X, but I don't think I talk about in the podcast here.
• 17:21
  I recently, because of a sick kid and some other factors, I went to just a local Novus Ordo parish for, for Sunday Mass a couple weeks ago.
• 17:30
  And this parish, there's nothing like progressive about it. It's kind of farm country. There's nothing crazy about it. The, the, the, the priest who relatively young, I'd say probably in his 40s, he didn't celebrate the Mass in some crazy way. He basically said the black followed the red. I almost got mixed up there.
• 17:54
  And so he followed the rubrics and all that, but there was so much about it that was just simply what I would say anti evangelization. I mean there's the armor army of Eucharistic minister. There was a terrible music. The architecture of course was not very good. Even though it was a relatively new church, it wasn't very, it was pretty plain and, and beige. In, in many ways the homily was just weak and just didn't. You couldn't remember what he said five minutes later. It didn't mean anything. He just like threw out a bunch of code words, churchy words about like righteousness and, and justice and things like that and didn't really say anything. Everybody there was either dressed for going to the golf course afterwards or to go watch a football game. I mean it was just the whole thing, everything about it screamed we're not taking this seriously.
• 18:41
  And I think that's the average. Oh actually that average parent in America, the bringing in people, they're not bringing people into the church. Those parishes are anti.
• 18:54
  And more have to always remember data we found years ago, Eight leave for every person that enters into the Catholic Church, eight of them, eight Catholics leave.
• 19:25
  And so even with the, the poor numbers we have, you have to multiply that by 8 to see how many people are leaving. And so our numbers are definitely going down. Yeah, I got a message in the comments. A weak signal. I know. I hope, I'm hoping it's back. I had a little bit of connection problem there for a moment. I'm not quite sure why.
• 19:44
  But the point is that what we see is a lot of people leaving and we don't see a lot of people coming in at most parishes. And those two things are connected because your average typical Catholic parish in America, like I said, it's anti evangelization. It does two things.
• 20:05
  The people who come to Mass, it does nothing to inspire them to want to go out and share their faith.
• 20:14
  Because if it's just something you're doing on Sunday morning because you're kind of supposed to, and it's just a social activity, you don't really take it seriously. You don't really consider it like the most important activity of your life. You're not going to go out and tell your co workers or your family members or your neighbors about it and invite them to come.
• 20:31
  I mean, if you can't even be bothered to wear something other than a football jersey to Mass, what's to think that you're actually going to go invite somebody else to come with you someday?
• 20:41
  You're not going to.
• 20:43
  And it also turns away, especially the young people who grow up in it.
• 20:49
  And so it keeps people from evangelizing, bring others in, and it turns them away and makes them want to stop going themselves.
• 20:57
  This, I think I've said this before, but this is the real crisis in the Catholic Church is parish life.
• 21:03
  The crisis in the Catholic Church in America primarily is parish life. It does everything it can to turn people away from the Catholic faith.
• 21:12
  And so that is the norm now. Like I said, there are people coming to the Catholic Church, but guess how they're coming in. They're coming in primarily online.
• 21:23
  They're finding out about Catholicism, unapologetic Catholicism, Catholic, the true, like traditional Catholicism, all that, all that type of stuff they're doing, they're finding out and that's what they're embracing. Like, yeah, this is something I want to change my life for.
• 21:41
  And then typically, what happens is they end up going to a parish that embraces that, that unapologetic, full throated, bold Catholicism. They end up going to one of those type of parishes.
• 21:54
  And so that's why the good parishes, the strong parishes, the traditionally minded parishes, the conservative parishes, they're the ones who are bringing in most of the converts.
• 22:03
  And I think they're not losing as many too, I would imagine.
• 22:07
  So I do think this is. It's important that we are honest about this.
• 22:14
  The reason is because I feel like there's the possibility, the likelihood, in fact, that. That we will become complacent, like we're doing a good job. We don't need to change anything. Howard, the status quo is just fine.
• 22:28
  Well, let me tell you people, the status is not quo. Bonus points if you know where that quote comes from.
• 22:35
  The status is not quo.
• 22:37
  And so what we're seeing is like, people just keep doing the same thing. And if you try to challenge the status quo in the Catholic Church by criticizing how parishes are run in any way, criticizing youth ministry, criticizing permanent deaconate, criticizing how the liturgy is celebrated, criticizing, for example, the eucharistic ministers, whatever, the preaching, whatever, people will freak out because they're like, no, this is. This is how we do things. And if they think it's successful in keeping people in the church and bringing more people into the Catholic Church, they're going to continue to do that. But the reality is it's not successful. In fact, the people who are the parishes and the people who are bringing in all the Catholics are the ones who are not the status quo.
• 23:20
  Which is why, honestly, as Catholics, that's our number one duty, I feel like, is to challenge the status quo. What do I mean by the status quo, by the way? I don't, of course, mean the divinely given doctrines of the church.
• 23:35
  I'm not saying you challenge, like, the teaching on contraception or something stupid like that.
• 23:40
  That's what the progressives want to do. They just want to change the church into their image. I don't want to do that. And we shouldn't want to do that.
• 23:46
  I don't want to. We're not challenging that. But we are challenging how things are run in the day to day, how a parish is run, how the liturgy is celebrated, how, like, youth ministry is done, if it should even be done, how outreach is done to the community, things like that. All those are human activities that we just do a certain way now. And we think that's kind of how all Catholics have always done it. But if you look, that's absolutely not true. Almost our entire parish status quo today dates back no more than the 1970s. It dates back no further than the 1970s. We just established a certain way that parishes should live their life. Like the whole youth ministry is mostly taken from Protestant churches.
• 24:32
  You know, the eucharistic ministers, an army of them. That's obviously only came after the council.
• 24:37
  Not because of the council, but after the council.
• 24:39
  I mean, the permanent diaconate, that's all that came after the council as well. All these things came up in the 60s and 70s. They became the way you do things.
• 24:48
  And the casualness of going to Mass in your, in your football jersey or whatever, that also, that's a recent phenomenon that wasn't the case 100 years ago.
• 24:59
  And so we need to challenge those type of things and really say, okay, that's not the way things should be. And because it's not working, that's the most important thing. That's what gets me, drives me crazy when people are defensive about the status quo. When you're like, well, why do you defend something that's a failure?
• 25:19
  It'd be like the Koch executive defending New Coke when it's an object failure, saying, no, no, we gotta keep doing this. Now we're doing it. But why? It's not working.
• 25:28
  And that's the reality.
• 25:30
  I mean, parish spiritual life is largely anemic and it's anti evangelization. The biggest issue today in my mind is keeping people Catholic.
• 25:41
  In fact, I would say if we spent all our energy on keeping people Catholic, we would end up bringing in a lot of non Catholics as well. Because the things we would do to keep people Catholic would attract non Catholics as well.
• 25:54
  I mean, here's just one example, and that's youth ministry. I had a debate, a discussion really, with Trent Horn about youth ministry on a podcast about a year or so ago. So you can look that up if you want to see more details.
• 26:06
  But I'm convinced this idea of separating youth away from everybody else and trying to minister them directly, separate from their parents is not successful. It's not good. I'm not saying there aren't successes.
• 26:19
  What I am saying though is you look out. Every single parish in America, I would guess, has a youth ministry.
• 26:25
  I mean, maybe there's a few exceptions, but just about every one of them, the non trad ones, I should say, all the diocesan parishes, they have a youth ministry.
• 26:33
  What is also true, a huge, huge number of Catholics after They leave the home when they become young adults, they leave the Catholic Church. They leave the practice of the Catholic faith. So to me, that seems pretty obvious that you can't judge youth ministry as a success. But what we do is we. We just look at, oh, how about Sally? She was, you know, from this terrible family, and she. We got her in youth group, and now she's. She's a practicing Catholic. I mean, I love it. It's wonderful for Sally. But what we're not doing is looking at Everybody else, the 30 other young people in the parish, or however many there are, who. 29 of them left because parish life was so anemic and so just like, just not attractive whatsoever.
• 27:22
  And so like, my. My argument always should be that Catholic parishes should just dump youth ministry and they suspend those resources in building up family life. Because here's the reality.
• 27:34
  The likelihood of a young person remaining Catholic is correlated very, very closely with the family, their family's spiritual life, if their family has a strong spiritual life that they grow up in. So they go to Mass regularly, go. They go to the sacrament regular. The parents go to the sacrament regularly. The kids go sacrament regularly. They pray as a family regularly. They encourage prayer. They do. They do works of charity together. All these different things.
• 28:04
  That family.
• 28:06
  Those kids are far more likely to stay Catholic. So why aren't we emphasizing that? Here's a radical suggestion. You know what I would say instead of. Instead of doing youth. Youth outreach, encourage families to homeschool.
• 28:19
  Because the reality is, if you homeschool, it's not a panacea, it's not perfect, it's not guaranteed that your kid's going to stay Catholic. But your chances go way, way up simply because as parents, you're spending time with your children and you're developing a deep relationship with them in a way that isn't possible if you throw them into daycare at birth and then in the public schools after that.
• 28:43
  I'm sorry, but that's just the reality.
• 28:45
  And you can develop that deeper relationship and they see your faith and you can encourage and foster their faith.
• 28:52
  And so if parishes would encourage homeschooling. But of course. Oh, we can't do that. That's too controversial. We might offend somebody if we do that. What about the. The family? That's. That's a. They're. They're very active in the parish, and they. They send their kids to public schools. Oh, we might offend them. They might be turned away.
• 29:07
  Okay, let's just keep doing what we're doing, and we'll keep seeing these crappy numbers.
• 29:11
  We'll keep seeing tens of thousands of people leave the Catholic Church every year, and we'll see a trickle of people come in and celebrate the trickle. Like it's. Like it's also in this massive movement. I'm sorry, but it's just not. I mean, we do celebrate the trickle, but we all. But we need to keep in context that it's not like all of a sudden things are just going great and we're doing everything right. We have to challenge that status quo. That status is not quo. I'll say it again.
• 29:38
  Frankly, most Catholic evangelization today is almost completely online.
• 29:44
  It's almost completely online. That's where it's happening. And it's introducing people to a version of Catholicism, for lack of a better term, that is just simply more attractive than what they see at the local parish.
• 29:57
  And that's why you do see some people convert. A certain demographics are converting. And I will say the online Catholicism does seem to be more attractive to young men than young women and more attractive to young people rather than old people.
• 30:10
  But honestly, I think that's okay, first of all, because the reality is, excuse me, the Catholic Church in America has been horrific, horrific at attracting young men for decades.
• 30:26
  I've told this story before, but the most popular article in the history of Crisis magazine that we have a record for was an article I wrote before I even became editor called no Church for Young Men. And it was simply lamenting the fact that parish life seems to turn away young men. And it wasn't some great article that I was like, oh, my gosh. I was just. I was just feeling it. I mean, it was just simply stating something that nobody seemed to have said before. And all of a sudden it went viral and people were talking about for. For a very long time.
• 30:55
  And that's because people do recognize it, that it's been awful. And online Catholicism has been much better attracting young men. And frankly, if you attract young men, that is, if you're going to pick a demographic in. In the world. Okay, what. What do you want to attract them? What's. What demographic do you want to attract the most? It should be young men, actually. Why? Because those young men will get married and have kids. And it's also been shown that fathers have a huge impact on the faith of their children, more so than the mothers. God bless the single mothers who are doing their best, or the mothers who are Catholic and their husbands aren't Catholic and they're doing their best to raise their kids. In the faith, God sees you and he will reward you. But the reality is, the harsh reality we might not want to hear is a child's much more likely to follow in the footsteps of their father than just their mother. Obviously, both parents being Catholic is the best situation.
• 31:53
  So if we attract young men, they end up getting married, having kids were more likely to retain future generations, especially if these young men are accepting a. A more bold and forceful and real Catholic faith than. Than what's been presented over the years.
• 32:12
  And so I really think this is something we need to be honest about again. We need. Let me pull up the chart one more time.
• 32:18
  Those dump. That's not a good chart. From 2009 to about today, it's been. We flatlined. We're about the same number of people coming to church, and it's a huge decrease from the 1990s. That's just a reality. We need to do more. But honestly, I think, maybe counterintuitively, I don't think our number one focus should be evangelization. It's coming from somebody who was a director of evangelization, wrote a book on evangelization, think evangelization is very important. I'm just saying the real focus should be on parish life, retaining Catholics, keeping especially young people Catholic, which we do a terrible job of doing. And so that's what. And there's so many aspects of that. Obviously, the liturgy is number one. How the liturgy is celebrated is. Is foremost. But there's so many other aspects. I'm not going to get into all that right now. So. Okay, end of rant. Let me pull up the.
• 33:10
  The. Some of the live chat. Thank you. By the way, it's Tuesday afternoon, so live and so. Thanks for the live chat. Tom sidejust says our last de facto parish before we left the RCC was basically like this. Completely inoffensive, nothing evil about it, but completely uninspiring. No reason to bring a friend. Come and see. Yeah. Tom, when you say you left the Roman Catholic Church, I hope that. I hope you're still Catholic. Maybe you're Eastern Catholic. I'm praying. I don't know what you are, but thank you. I appreciate that you saying that. Because you're right. You're absolutely right. It's not that it's like. Like, I think what he says is right. Completely inoffensive, nothing evil about it, but completely uninspiring. That's a perfect description. And no reason to bring a friend or come and see. I. Absolutely. That's our parish life.
• 33:53
  Tom also says I Don't know, Eric. People wearing three piece suits wouldn't have made us stay or tell people to come and see either. I mean, obviously, Tom, I'm not trying to say. Listen, your name's Tom. I hope so. I'm not trying to say that just, you know, dressing up alone is going to do it. I do think though, it does send a message. When you walk into, for example, at my parish, most people are wearing nice outfits. I'm not even. I mean, there's people in jeans, there's men in jeans in there. I'm not. But like, there's no. Nobody in flip flops and shorts. Most of the men have a jacket on or a nice shirt on, something like that. And some people wear a jacket and a tie, some people wear suits. I mean there's, there's a range. And the ladies, they all look lovely.
• 34:32
  They're dressed very nicely within a range. I, I don't know women's fashion, so I can't even describe what I'm talking about here. But they all look very nice. And it, it is a little bit, honestly, because I go to this parish every week. It was, it's a little bit shocking when I walked into the local Novus Ordo parish, diocesan parish, and I saw the girls were dressed in like gym shorts and T shirts because I'm used to seeing young ladies in dresses and they look very nice and all the women of every age look very nice.
• 35:02
  And I think it does send a message. People walk in, they're like, okay, these people take this seriously. It's a subconscious message. It's not enough. It's not by itself going to bring people in or keep people in.
• 35:14
  But at the very least it does say, okay, these people at least believe something's different about this. Like they, they're taking this time out as a special time. It's not just like a social gathering. So I do think it matters. I'm not, just to be clear, I'm not. I wear a jacket and tie to Sunday mass. I am not a huge guy who's like looking at what other people wear and carrying what they wear in that sense. I do think though, overall, like in the sense, like, oh, some guy has genes. I'm like, oh, that guy shouldn't be here. I don't think that at all.
• 35:46
  I'm just saying though, the overall message that's sent when the majority people are dressed nicely, defined nicely, however you want nicely, is different than when they don't. So that's kind of the point I'm making. So. But thank you, Tom. I appreciate it. And if you're not, if you left the Catholic Church, Tom, I do. I do urge you to rethink it, look back into it. I'm sure you had reasons that you thought were legitimate at the time and maybe you still think are legitimate. But I'm. I do. I urge you to. To relook at coming back to the Catholic Church and maybe finding a parish that wouldn't be like that. So, I mean, no parish is perfect. We all got our problems. My parish has problems. Every parish has problems. But, you know, hopefully you can find one.
• 36:26
  Max says deacon at local. No sort of have a homily telling everyone to come up and receive Kenyan. It was mind boggling how he could say that. Makes you wonder what else he has been advising. Yeah, I had a post recently about permanent diacons, permanent deacons and the problems with them today. And boy, people don't like that either. And I'm not, of course, because they want to say I'm condemning every single permanent deacon and I'm saying none of them do good work. Of course, I'm not saying any of that. But I am saying there is a problem that most people will tell you that the homilies they hear from permanent deacons are usually not good and sometimes like this one, actually awful telling people, everybody come up and receive communion.
• 37:00
  Okay, Max says Sister Pantsuit became a new habit for many nuns. Yeah, that did not help, that's for sure.
• 37:08
  Phoenix XP says they're more likely to convert to Islam if you send them to public school. That might be true. I mean, the truth is, I don't know the numbers of people coming Muslim, but I do think at least the public procession perception of Islam is Muslims take it seriously. And I think that's attractive, especially to younger people.
• 37:26
  Tom. Hey. Thank you, Tom. You come. You came back from war. The reality is that TLM trad parish models is also limited to scope and appeal and. And creates insular subcultures that will plateau long before becoming significant mainstream. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna agree and disagree with you. I'm gonna agree and disagree with you.
• 37:43
  And he follows up. I just want to say I'm saying that descriptively, not judgmentally. It's a sociological reality. The same phenomenon attracting a certain subculture, say disaffected young men, will also limit it in other ways. Okay, I'm not. I want to make it clear I'm not really disagreeing with you. I'm also not completely agreeing with you.
• 38:01
  I do think it's true in the church today because of the reality of how things are around the country and around the world. But let's just stick to America.
• 38:12
  A TLM parish is a subculture that is different from and therefore attracts different people than your typical diocesan parish.
• 38:26
  And I do think there is a plateau to that as well.
• 38:29
  I completely agree.
• 38:31
  That being said, what I'm saying, though, is I'm not saying that every parish tomorrow needs to become a trad parish.
• 38:41
  I am saying, though, parishes, priests are going to be the name ones who do this, should be taking steps that are in the general direction of a lot that a lot of trap parishes are in, I. E. Just talking about, we were talking about before, encouraging people to dress nicer, having more depth in your homilies, having more reverence in the liturgy, focusing more on families rather than on youth, things like that. I'm saying if you do these things, I'm not saying overnight, all of a sudden, everybody's going to stay Catholic, everybody's going to become Catholic. But I am saying I think that's the direction we need to go in. And we. What I see is a huge resistance to that direction.
• 39:23
  Actually, what I'd say is it's almost like a lack of curiosity about going in that direction. Like, you see these parishes that are growing, and you're like, wouldn't you want to say, okay, what are they doing? Maybe you don't take everything they're doing, but you would at least be curious. And what I see is among bishops and many priests, they have zero curiosity. Or they. They actively try to find ways to diminish it because they are ideologically opposed to what those parishes are doing, and so their ideology doesn't let them to be open. I have an ideology, too, but I'm trying to say I'm not. I'm trying to say, I'm not just saying, okay, impose my ideology on every parish in the country.
• 40:06
  I am saying, though, clearly something is going on in which certain parishes are having a lot more people come to church and are losing less people.
• 40:16
  Why don't we look at some of the other things they're doing, at least implement some of them gradually into our. Our regular parishes and see what happens. So they're not like as you described earlier, Tom. They're not just simply uninspiring. They become more inspiring. That. So, okay, Phoenix XP says the Novus aura makes it impossible. Sorry, I disagree. I think it makes it more difficult.
• 40:41
  Tom Zyja says, yes, my name is Tom, so thank you. I'm just going to keep on with Tom's because he's got these great comments by the way, so I'm just going to keep on putting them up. My comment above on the TLM communities is born from personal experience and impressions that you're being involved in. Several just FYI. Yeah, and I, I want to say I'm not a, I don't have rose colored glasses when it comes to TLM communities. I've been in them for 15 years. Two different ones in particular. And I'll be the first to tell you, they're not perfect. They have their issues.
• 41:07
  So I don't, I don't want to downplay that. I just think that I, I think we can learn. I'm just trying to say is what diocese and parishes should learn from them. They don't have to imitate them slavishly, but they can learn from them. And I think that would be a good thing.
• 41:24
  Osazi I think. I hope I didn't pronounce that. As a recent convert, I find a disconnect between the online scene and the parish life. Yeah, Amen, brother. Only TLM in my area, in town, in the UK has no old people. I feel like my zeal isn't matched but not discouraged. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.
• 41:42
  It is true. It's funny. I mean the online Catholic scene is not the same as parish life. I mean some people act like that means it's not really real in the, in parish life.
• 41:54
  I'm sorry, online reality. I do think that we have to be careful what you see being talked about. Like for example, in X and Catholic Acts is, is nowhere near what is going on in the pews. And the funny thing is that's even true. Like my TLM parish, like what we're talking about after Mass when we're hanging out like at socializing afterwards, it's typically not what was the latest debate on social media.
• 42:17
  Most of the people aren't even on social media. They don't even know what's going on. I'm like the most in, you know, tuned in person. Some of the young guys are and so they might come up to me and talk to me about some of this stuff, but it's, it's not the same. And so I do think that's that, that, that there is a big disconnect there.
• 42:33
  Okay. Huskers in Royals Gal says I went to a Mass Endos Ordo parish on Saturday of Corpus Christi, Sunday weekend because my niece's baby boy was being baptized right after There were a lot of people wearing shorts. This was back in June, obviously.
• 42:48
  I was so glad when I was able to go to my TLM the next day when people were dressing becomingly for God. Yeah, I know. People don't like it. They act like we're being judgmental when we talk about dress codes and things like that.
• 43:00
  And obviously I'm starting to lose my voice. I wish I had some water on me here.
• 43:04
  And obviously you can take it too far.
• 43:07
  You can be too. You can be judgmental. If you see somebody dressed. Not that. Let's say you're at TLM parish and somebody's not dressed that great. They're dressed casually.
• 43:17
  Excuse me. If you're looking at them and judging them and saying something bad about them. Yeah, I think you shouldn't do that.
• 43:25
  At the same time, if you go to a parish and literally everybody is in, like, casual, casual outfit, I think you can say there's something there. There's something to that, and it's something not good.
• 43:38
  I think it's fine to say that.
• 43:40
  That something has happened in the life of that parish, which is, by the way, like most parishes, that is not good. It's not progress.
• 43:48
  It's a deformation of what it means to be Catholic and. And take seriously what's going on in. In parish life.
• 43:56
  Okay. Phoenix says objectively, if all parishes became tribe parishes tomorrow, Catholicism's death spiral would reverse within a year, Christendom would be restored. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. I think, by the way, just to be clear, I want. I think every. I think the. The traditional at Mass should be the one Roman. Right? I. I don't think there should be a no sword. I think it should be abolished. I think that would be best for. For the Catholic Church. That being said, I do think there's prudence to how such a thing should happen.
• 44:28
  There wasn't prudence in how it was implemented to switch in the 60s. And I think there should be prudence in how it's how you go back to the traditional Mass. What I think would happen if you did that, like, somehow that happened. I think what would happen is you'd have massive number of Catholics leave because they're just simply not catechized. They wouldn't understand it. They would. They're boomers and all that stuff. They would. They would just leave. They'd form. They'd form a schismatic church, frankly. They would break away and they'd form a schismatic church. You think the SSPX is bad. They would be far more out of, out of the institutional church if that happened. And I do think the people left would potentially be a more devout and more serious group of Catholics that could then grow the Catholic Church over time.
• 45:13
  Personally, I think the way to do it is the Pope Benedict way, maybe a little more aggressively than Pope Benedict did, where you let the traditional Mass be celebrated, you give it complete freedom, you don't prefer one over the other and you just let the chips fall where they may. And I think where it would fall is people the traditional Mass would win out over the end. Okay, last comment here.
• 45:35
  Nathan Roberts says I have definitely seen it. Some diocesan parishes fundraising because they are growing. They fail to mention that is because they have morphed into a family of parish. Yeah, good point, Nathan. That's a great point. I mean, you know, in my diocese they have your beacons of light, which is your, you know, the term they use for. We're closing a bunch of parishes. We're merging a bunch of parishes, which really means they want to close a bunch of parishes. That's the reality. That's the reality in the Catholic Church is that we're closing parishes. We're not, we're not adding parishes, we're closing parishes. And so we need to do something about that. So I, I want to say, I want to appreciate all the comments today in live chat. Great, great points. And I do think, you know, the online discussion gets very much just like, oh, we just need everything to be TLM and, and we all need to wear three piece suits or. No, no, that stuff matters. We just keep doing what we're doing and we, we shouldn't change a thing. Obviously it's somewhere in, in the middle there. It's somewhere. I think it's more towards the TLM and the dressed up and all that, but I don't, I don't think it's just a matter of one extreme or the other. I think we need to, but I think we need to take serious. What I do think we need to do is challenge everything that's not divinely given to us. Challenge every. How we do everything in the church should be challenged other than the things that are given us by our Lord. Other than that, I think we should challenge it because obviously the way we are doing it right now isn't working. So what would it hurt to try something else? It can't get any worse, frankly. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up there because I am starting to lose my voice. I appreciate, like I said the robust live chat. And until next time, everybody, God love you. And remember the poor. It.