The Vigil Mass next Saturday will be a long one. Nearly 60 people will be entering the Catholic Church at my parish. This is huge. In my 15 years as a member, this is more than double the best year. Our family will be attending the Mass on Sunday, and plan on sending a flying column ahead to secure adequate seating. It’s nice to see the huge crowds on Easter, but as our pastor reminded us today, every Mass should be like that.
There is some dispute within the Christian community regarding the extent of the current wave of conversions. It is a generational shift, or merely a demographic blip? Early reports of England experiencing a sea change in Christian faith, a “quiet revival” have since been withdrawn after more detailed analysis. It’s actually complicated.
Catholics very much understand the limitations of polling and self-reporting. The American Catholic Church has seen extreme swings in Mass attendance and surveys among “American Catholics” are all over the place. This is because the term is very elastic, encompassing everyone from devoted members of the Church to cultural Catholics who neglect the Mass altogether. I am a convert, but I shouldn’t be. My grandparents were staunch Catholics who raised their children in the faith, sent them to Catholic schools and yet the turmoil of the Sexual Revolution and the disruption of Vatican II caused their children to falter. At this late date, I’m not sure which of my relatives still got to Mass, but many of them still identify as Catholic to one extent or another. It very much depends on who is asking.
This is why opinion polls purporting to show that x percentage of Catholics support abortion are completely useless. Many of the respondents were raised Catholic, and relish in subverting their former faith. My mother has made the circuit twice, going from Catholic, to fiercely anti-Catholic, to reverting, and (as far as I know) apostatizing for a second time.
That’s pretty impressive, and it absolutely plays havoc with any kind of survey methodology.
What I do see, and what cannot be disputed, is that the number of converts is surging, as is the number of seminarians. The vocations for both men and women are seeing huge increases. This is wonderful. Though often portrayed as oppressive or superstitious. the fact of that matter is that life is hard, and a certain percentage of people just want to check out of it. They prefer a life away from the noise and conflict, and the vocations permit this. I think a lot of people who struggle with self control and addiction would also benefit from living in a community setting.
That’s how it was for centuries. I think it’s interesting that the term “asylum” carries connotations of insanity, but it really means a place of refuge. Oppressed by the world? Broke, lonely and hopeless? Go to an abbey and be comforted.
It was the original social safety net, and when the various Protestant rulers seized the Church lands, a lot of people were left with nowhere to go. The standard Protestant narrative is that monasteries and nunneries were essentially a drag on the economy, where people sat around doing nothing but praying rather than contributing to the Gross Domestic Product, which is of course the highest good.
But in fact, they were always self-sustaining, and a place where anyone could go and find useful work. Protestant princes didn’t seize them out of a desire to maximize economic outcomes, but out of pure greed covered by the veneer of Christian piety.
As I have pointed out before, look at the fruits of the Protestant Reformation churches. Every single one of them has collapsed into woke nonsense. It is true that the Catholic faith has also been dealt a heavy blow in the West, but the depths to which the state churches have descended can only be described as both retarded and also (conspicuously) gay.
In fact, Catholic adult baptisms seem to be on the uptick in Europe. Again, the extent is disputed – are these not simply deferred infant baptisms or are they a true societal shift? Further complicating matters is the demographic cliff the Baby Boomers created, which even if every child remained true to the faith of their fathers would still have created a reduction in numbers.
Again, I look to my family is an example: my grandparents produced five children, but they managed to produce only five grandchildren. They in turn produced six grandchildren, but four of them are Catholic (and one of those will baptize her kids into the Church this June).
So in absolute terms, a net loss, but proportionally, a clear revival. As is so often the case these days, it’s complicated.
Chateau Lloyd 
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