How Modern Society Accidentally Created a Catholic Boom

Despite all the scandals of the Catholic Church in the last 60 years, despite the mainstream medias and Hollywood's mockery of her greatest saints, despite record-breaking Christian persecution worldwide, the youth of all people are knocking down the doors to get into the church?

Why? It turns out every generation from Cain and Abel to today's young people face some pretty primordial questions. Who am I? What's the point? What gives meaning and purpose to our lives? Today, we're watching Gen Z choose between two rising forces, Catholicism and radical gender ideology. These forces occupy fundamentally adverse moral universes. They are not merely divergent trends. They are rival answers to the questions we all have to face sooner or later. Welcome to the battle of the trans, where transcendence and transgression are fighting for the soul of the world, and yours.

This spring, the Pillar put out a truly astonishing report. In 2025, 26 American dioceses reported a more than 50% increase year-over-year since 2020 in the number of converts. A new study from the United Kingdom has found that among members of Gen Z in the UK, Catholics now outnumber Anglicans 2 to 1. Take that, Henry VIII. In 2018, just Four percent of 18 to 24-year-olds said they attended church at least monthly. Today, that has risen to 16 percent, quadrupling, with young men increasing from 4 percent to 21 percent, and young women from 3 to 12 percent.

Over in France, in 2025, the Catholic Church experienced a record-breaking surge in conversions, with over 17,800 people baptized during the Easter Vigil. A 45% increase from 2024. This included a significant rise in adult conversions, with over 10,000 adults being baptized, marking another 45% increase. While the trend toward religious disaffiliation also continues, it has slowed, and among young Americans, has halted altogether. In fact, we just got this from The Economist. For decades, America's fastest-growing religious affiliation. was no religion at all. In 1990, just 5% of Americans said they were atheists, agnostics, or believed in nothing in particular.

By 2019, 30% ticked those boxes. This was known as the rise of the nones. Those who left the pews became more socially liberal, married later, and had fewer children. A lot fewer children. Churches, where once half of Americans mingled every Sunday, faded in civic life. And yet, For the first time in half a century, the march of secularism has stopped. Not only that, at the same time as younger Americans are finding religion, fewer older Americans are giving it up. Between 2020 and 2024, the share of Christians in the population as a whole fell by just one percentage point.

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A combination of pandemic disillusionment, moral exhaustion, and deep cultural confusion is leading many to search for something more grounded, more permanent. A creed, commandments, mercy, and salvation. People are looking for coherence in a fragmented world. They're looking for beauty, healing, and truth, and the church offers those in abundance. And it's not just numbers. It's who's converting. Shia LaBeouf, the actor known for his chaotic Hollywood persona, to say the least, shocked the public when he shared how preparing to play Padre Pio led to his personal conversion.

He spoke of finding silence, peace, and identity in the mass, something no therapy or fame ever gave him. Leodaro, a former America's Next Top Model contestant, now speaks to thousands about finding true beauty in the Catholic vision of womanhood. Missing is still Jordan Peterson, and he should just come on in because the water's great. But it's not just celebrities. A growing number of young adults are discovering Catholicism online through YouTube, TikTok, and ministries like Word on Fire.

They're drawn to the richness of Catholic thought, the dignity of the human body, the stability of Church teaching, and the beauty of the liturgy. They find God. These converts often describe their journey not as conforming to a set of rigid rules, but as a return to reality itself. They say things like, I found peace. I found my true identity as a child of God. In a culture obsessed with self-creation, the church says you are already created, with purpose, with identity, and with dignity.

This isn't about politics. It's It's about transcendent meaning in the God beyond all praising, and people are hungry for it. Which brings me to the other religion on offer today. There's another kind of trans, especially among Gen Z. It's transgression, a kind of Marxist sexual ideology that vows to liberate young people from the patriarchy by which it means the family, the church, and even their own bodies. More young people than ever before are also identifying as trans, transsexual, and being educated to offload their humanity to AI.

The transhuman. A recent Gallup report shows nearly one in five Gen Z adults claim an identity under the LGBTQIA plus umbrella. At Brown University here in New England, over 38% of students identify as something other than heterosexual. This isn't just about sexuality, though. It's about transgressing what it means to be human. In this faith system, gender is Transgression is fluid, changeable, and even optional. For some, this represents self-actualization and autonomy, but for others, it raises deep questions about stability, truth, and the nature of the human person.

This is the battle of the trans. One side sees transcendence, rising above brokenness by conforming to divine design. The other pushes transgression, rejecting fixed truth in pursuit of self-invention. Make no mistake, a collision is here, and it's so massive that it will define reality for generations to come.

The two rising forces, Catholic conversions and radical gender ideology, cannot occupy the same moral universe. They're not merely divergent trends. They are rival answers to humanity's most primordial question. We, you and I, right now, are living the days when these competing forces have come to a head, and the outcome of the battle, our battle, will shape the soul of the world.

The Catholic vision that we are integrated beings, body and soul, created male and female, called to live according to a given order and destined for heaven. The other vision? Radical autonomy, gender fluidity, transhumanism, a belief that human limits, whether biological, moral, or metaphysical, are just things to be overcome.

This battle plays out in our schools, laws, on social media, and even inside our churches. But at its core, it is a spiritual war over the human person. Are we creatures with a given purpose, or canvases for self-expression? Are we loved into being, or do we make ourselves through the force of our own will? The Catholic Church is not just another cultural option. It transcends all cultures. It offers something no ideology can, integration.

For young people coming in as refugees from the trans ideology, it doesn't deny human complexity. or the drama of human history. The church is a refuge offering healing, a unifying and true story that holds body and soul, love and truth, suffering and redemption, all intention and harmony. To the indifferent. To those who shrug, she offers the parable of the ten virgins. Keep your lamps trimmed. This is why the converts keep coming. Not because it's easy, but because it is real. A real cross, yes, but also a real resurrection.

In a world that's constantly changing, the church still dares to say, your life has meaning, your suffering has eternal value. And your identity is not something you have to invent, but something that you receive and participate in. You are so precious, so irreplaceable, you cannot stay on the sidelines. Life is too short. So, is Catholicism cool again? Short answer is yes. But the deeper truth is, it was never about being cool. It's about being whole. It's about discovering the sacred in a world that is starving for it. About saying yes to beauty, yes to truth, and yes to a world shot through with the grandeur of God.