Gen Z and a Catholic Revival

[Highlander]

Gen Z faith sees comeback as young people drive church attendance

A new study reveals Gen Z's religious commitment is linked to increased responsibility and civic engagement. Catholic influencer Anthony Gross discusses the role of faith in younger generations.

Generation Z is ditching the "spiritual but not religious" label for the pews of the Roman Catholic Church, fueling a conversion boom that experts say is driven by a desire for moral order, ancient tradition, and a rejection of modern secularism.

What was once dismissed as a post-pandemic fluke has transformed into a measurable cultural shift. According to recent data from the Barna Group, a firm tracking U.S. faith trends, Gen Z Christians are now attending church more frequently than Millennials, Gen X, and even Baby Boomers.

In 2025, the typical Gen Z churchgoer attended services nearly two weekends a month—the highest level since tracking began and a 100% increase from 2020 levels.

Young people, particularly young men in urban areas like New York City are driving a boom in both conversions and attendance of church services and social gatherings.

The shift is particularly pronounced among young men, a demographic that has become an increasingly pivotal and competitive voting bloc in recent election cycles.

A Gallup poll released in April 2025 revealed a staggering rise in religious importance among young males. Approximately 42% of young men now report that religion is "very important" to them, up sharply from 28% in 2023. For the first time in recent history, young men have overtaken young women in religious devotion—a reversal of a decades-long trend in American sociology.

The epicenter of this revival is surprisingly found in deep-blue urban centers. In New York City, parish communities are struggling to find enough floor space for the influx of new converts.

I have seen several articles and reports of this phenomenon. The one above is a bit slanted, so I discount it somewhat. I haven't personally seen an attendance increase by young folk. If accurate, I would expect an explosion in RCIA attendance.

Have y'all seen, or heard of, any such increase in attendance and participation?

[zeno]

I hope it's true. I can't say I've seen it personally, though.

[Doom]

People as young as Gen Z would not likely be attending a regular parish with us old folks.

They would be attending college ministries, which are indeed seeing remarkable growth. Just yesterday, the Newman Center at a college I used to work at posted that this year they had a huge class getting confirmed, 29 students, all of them undergraduates. This is a college that has a student population of maybe around 5,000-10,000, so 29 confirmations in one year is a very large number.

[Highlander]

I've seen several articles for this purported phenomenon, but have seen no substantiation other than a few big city parishes. I certainly hope it is a shift in the wind. Thanks, Doom, for first-hand second-hand confirmation.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

The University of Illinois had well over 100 at the Vigil. Illinois State has a smaller Newman Center (and is a smaller school), but they also had record numbers.

[Doom]

Another bit of anecdotal evidence is the wide popularity, last winter, of the "Ice Mass" on college campuses.

On the Notre Dame campus, they sculpted a cathedral out of ice and held an outdoor Mass inside it; so many students showed up that they ran out of communion hosts.

https://admissions.nd.edu/visit-engage/ ... -together/

A similar event at Michigan Tech drew an equally large crowd

https://www.keepitintheup.com/event/ice ... ce-chapel/

Keep in mind, these events are held outside, in subzero temperatures, in a building made of ice, where they were seated on pews made out of ice. And the attendance at both events was enormous.


A common cliche in politics is that you want voters who are so devoted they would walk barefoot over a parking lot covered in broken glass to vote for you. Well, how about Catholics so devoted they willl sit in a cathedral made of ice in subzero temperatures to attend a Mass?

[Highlander]

All interesting. And encouraging.

Based upon snippets over the years, I'm surprised that Mass is allowed at Notre Dame. Seems that ND, and other "Catholic" universities have become bastions of secular humanism over the last decades. But my information is based upon occasional sensational news articles from random sources.

[anawim]

They've been doing an "ice Mass" at Michigan Tech for at least 10 years.

Good thing we're having global warming.

[Doom]

They've been doing an "ice Mass" at Michigan Tech for at least 10 years.

Good thing we're having global warming.

It isnt the event that is unusual, it is the unexpectedly large attendance.

[Doom]

All interesting. And encouraging.

But my information is based on occasional sensational news articles from random sources.

Many of those are frankly false; for example, there was a recent uproar over the "Catholic values" being removed from the University's mission statement. This never happened. What actually happened is that "Catholic values" was removed from a list of random things at the end of the statement to become an umbrella term at the beginning. What this actually represents, in practical terms, is that the Catholic mission was promoted to a higher and more important place in the mission statement. This is actually a growing trend at the university; for example, after decades of secularization in the athletics department, the football and basketball teams once again celebrate Mass as part of the pre-game ritual.

[Highlander]

Well, good.

[Highlander]

OTOH--

Some of the country's most prominent Catholic colleges and universities are holding separate LGBTQ-affirming graduation ceremonies this spring, including one that also plans to include a drag performance.

At least 20 colleges or universities associated with the Catholic Church have held, or plan to hold, these "lavender graduation" ceremonies and celebrations, which are done separate from the main commencement ceremony and are intended to "honor and celebrate the achievements of our LGBTQ+ graduates," according to a Fox News Digital review of university websites and social media posts.

...

The schools that have held, or plan to hold these graduation events, include Georgetown, Gonzaga, the University of San Francisco, Boston College, College of the Holy Cross, Fordham, Fairfield University, Marquette, Xavier, Seattle University, Saint Louis University, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara University, St. John's, Albertus Magnus College, St. Mary's College of California, Regis University, Siena Heights University, St. Thomas University and Our Lady of the Lake University.

I note that Notre Dame is not on the list. In general, I am opposed to devices, practices, and philosophies which segregate Americans of any stripe.

[Doom]

It is time for the bishops to begin the process of stripping colleges which refuse to abide by Catholic teaching of their "Catholic" identity

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

It's already been done, but not to any high profile institutions.

[VeryTas]

Have y'all seen, or heard of, any such increase in attendance and participation?

The OCIA team at our parish in a town of 9000 (25 miles outside of Seattle) is my wife and I. We used to see 3 or 4 go through the process. This year we had 10. At the end of the classes they didn't all receive the sacraments they were lacking, because half of them have to resolve previous marriages first. That can take 12-24 months, which is almost like walking a distance over broken glass; not so much like turning out at an ice cathedral (even though that is really cool, right? ).

Their average age was 30. There was a Missouri Synod Lutheran couple in their early 50s whose 10-year-old daughter had got them looking into church history when she asked why their church had a portrait of Luther up front but a smaller one of Jesus in the back. "And a little child shall lead them." The daughter was received this Easter (vigil) and the parents have to wait on their marriage cases.

[Highlander]

Heard a very interesting bit on a podcast, which I shall imperfectly relate. Something like this ---

Vatican II went a good way to harming the laity. When the Mass transitioned to the vernacular, the congregation reacted with incredulity, thinking, "That can't be true. That is incredible. How could that happen? That makes no sense." They heard only common, everyday speech. But Latin generated piety and veneration. It was numinous The vernacular removed the awe and reverence inherent in the Latin.

I have heard that many of the returning and the new are attracted to the Latin Mass.

[Doom]

Heard a very interesting bit on a podcast, which I shall imperfectly relate. Something like this ---

Vatican II went a good way to harming the laity. When the Mass transitioned to the vernacular, the congregation reacted with incredulity, thinking, "That can't be true. That is incredible. How could that happen? That makes no sense." They heard only common, everyday speech. But Latin generated piety and veneration. It was numinous The vernacular removed the awe and reverence inherent in the Latin.

I have heard that many of the returning and the new are attracted to the Latin Mass.

There is something called the "sinking costs fallacy", which is when the powers that be convince themselves that they have devoted so much time and energy to a project that is failing, that they have no choice but to keep going, even though all sense would suggest abandoning it.

Something like this happened after the introduction of the Novus Ordo. Recently on Facebook, an article from a Catholic newspaper from 1971 has gone viral. In the article, a priest talks about how surprised he is that as soon as the new Mass was introduced, Mass attendance plummeted. Adults who were regular Mass attendees for decades suddenly stopped showing up, while young people left the Church in droves. A diocesan spokesman is quoted as saying, "I don't understand it. We are experiencing liturgical renewal, and young people aren't interested". The article goes on to say that they will continue to implement the New Mass.

The sinking costs fallacy in a nutshell.

One doesn't have to be a rad trad who thinks the Novus Ordo is invalid to recognize that suddenly stripping the Mass of everything that people had grown accustomed to, removing the elegant Latin for poorly written English (the retranslation in 2011 was a dramatic improvement) from Gregorian Chant and polyphony, from incense to bells, stripping out the altar rails and replacing all this with folk guitar Masses with banal hymns was almost guaranteed to drive people away.

Nothing in Vatican II justifies any of this. Vatican II recommends retaining Latin, says that Greogian Chant is to be retained, and says nothing about eliminating ad orientum in favor of versus populum, replacing altar rails with communion in the hand, or anything of the sort. All of these things were introduced by radicals who wanted to destroy everything. And instead of fighting back and insisting on preserving tradition, bishops all over the world, including the Pope himself, decided to lie down and die, letting the radicals do whatever they wanted. Everything they introduced without authorization was retroactively approved by Rome on the apparent grounds "they are going to do it no matter I say so I may as well say they are allowed to do it"

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I've never heard it called "sinking cost". It's "sunk cost".

I once asked a priest where all the animosity against old things came from. He said that there was a whole generation of priests who became priests because they loved the old Mass. It required considerable mental flexibility to reject the old and accept the new, and it's hard to go back once you've done that.

Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to dying religious orders.

[Doom]

It is also why wars, such as the disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the First World War, go on and on and on and on for year after year without resolution, because everyone convinces themselves, "We have lost so much blood and treasure that we just have to keep going," even though common sense would say, "No one is ever going to win this, so let's negotiate an armistice and end it"

[Highlander]

Self-deception and self-justification are very human. There are all sorts of sayings addressing the idea that once a line is crossed, you have to go all the way.

Use whatever cliche you wish — "in for a penny, in for a pound," "crossing the Rubicon," "down the rabbit hole" — but ultimately it's all the same thing.

I really like the bit of Latin and the bit of Greek we hear in the Mass. “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison” and the "Angus Dei". They are, in many ways, the highlight for me. I anticipate them. They just seem to have more weight.