Pope Francis has passed. It has only been a few days. I’ve prayed for his soul and for the Church. But when I stop to consider Pope Francis’ papacy, it already seems to me like a relic of a bygone age.

Francis’ papacy already seems like a boomer fever dream with its calls for ecological kumbayas, synods on synodality, and paganism larping as ecumenism. I consider his airplane interviews obfuscating dogma in the name of inclusivity. I remember the reams of Vatican documents that read more like United Nations decrees pressed out by PR and HR departments.

And a great many in the Church have supported these efforts. But all along there was something happening in recent years. Unseen by the powerful. Unnoticed by the apathetic. And ignored by the media.

The Church was changing, not so much at the Vatican level or at the bishops’ meetings but out here in the world and in the pews. Traditional masses have been filling, despite intense pressure from the Vatican. The Hallow app became the world’s most popular prayer companion app, and beat out Netflix, Instagram, and Tiktok.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) hit #1 on Apple Podcasts twice.

Several well known celebrities turned to Catholicism in a public way. These conversions worried Vanity Fair so much that they published a piece earlier this year warning of the “Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex.” (Oh my. Sounds scary.)

Young men are reportedly returning to Church in large numbers throughout the western world. Adult baptisms are rising. Among churchgoers in England aged 18 to 34, Catholics now comprise 41 per cent, up from 22 percent a few years before, while Anglicans have dropped to 20 percent, from 30 percent.

For decades prior, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christian declined. Precipitously. Just about every news channel, newspaper, and magazine predicted that this was merely one step in an inevitable slog towards irrelevance and ultimately eradication of the Church. The media celebrated the “nones.” They gleefully pointed to the trajectory in polls which showed a slip of a few percentage points every year in those who consider themselves Christian or attend Sunday services.

Why was this happening? Maybe it’s because we were being taught that the Church isn’t very different from the world which left some wondering why it’s worth it to become Catholic.

So what changed? Maybe the world’s been winning for so long that it got cocky. It took off the mask.

The world got crazier, or at least made its insanity increasingly apparent. When we saw drag shows in kindergartens, we began questioning. When the president of the United Staters ignored Easter and rechristened it Trans visibility day, some woke up. When the government closed down churches for months but Wal Marts remained open, some knew something wasn’t right. When our politicians could no longer define what a human being is in the womb, or our scientific establishment couldn’t quite define what a woman was, or we were told that men changing in girls locker rooms is just one of the many blessings of liberty, people questioned where the world was taking us. People began looking for solid ground in which to dig their heels into. While everything whirled around, people noticed that the Church remained the same. While the world’s secularists gleefully marched us toward moral anarchy people noticed that the Church remained the Church, sometimes despite the efforts of its leaders.

The Church’s steadfast teachings for 2,000 years contrasted against the world’s almost weekly transformation as to what was offensive or even right and wrong. Some people wandered back towards the Church just seeking out some terra firma.

But they are not returning to the Church for the modern mealy mouthed platitudes from the religion of nice. They come for ancient truths and roll their eyes at the whims and fads of our Ph.D. elites. They seek the truth that sent the apostles out into the world unafraid of the violence that awaited them. They want the courage that Saint Stephen showed to forgive his killers. They yearn to understand Saul’s conversion. They want their road to Damascus.

Many are realizing that the call to Christ is a radical one asking you to pick up your cross and sacrifice. This runs counter to the world’s “do what thou will shall be the whole of the law” ethic. We are called to a radical transforming love. In this time where moral anarchy has been mainstreamed it makes sense that Catholicism is the new counter culture.

Why are men in particular responding now?

Maybe because young men have felt the crosshairs of the elite secular establishment aimed at their foreheads. Maybe they’ve been scolded one too many times just for being what they are. Maybe they were medicated too soon and too often. Maybe because the so-called “experts” that have demonized the Church have shown themselves to be ignorant bullies that only make the world around them worse in every measurable way.

Marinating for decades in the broth of tolerance, inclusivity, and subjective truth, many men are looking for terra firma. something to stand on. Something to stand for. Someone worthy of kneeling in front of. They stopped believing in the human experts because they suspect that there is truth, real objective truth. And once you accept that there is objective truth they will find Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

While the world has told them they are perfect just the way they were they now see they are called to a standard. They are called to be like Jesus which is a fairly high bar. That’s ok. Men like standards, keeping score, and advancing the ball up the field. No participation trophies. There is only one prize -eternal salvation.

I feel like the Church is changing even now. I believe we are approaching another Great Awakening in this country and the time is past when we strangle the miracles of Christianity to make them easier to swallow. The time when we said the miracle of the loaves and fishes is merely a miracle of sharing is over. The era of allowing Catholics to believe the Eucharist is merely a symbol must be gone.

We are returning to an intentional Church, one that is not afraid to counter the culture. One that stands apart and against the concepts of materialism. We will no longer pour the gospel through the strainer of modernity to feed the faithful the thin gruel of materialism.

Catholicism is wild, radical, and true. The world was created as an act of love, not an accident of stuff colliding with more stuff. Christ founded a Church. There is truth and angels and miracles. There is sin and demons and yet we are called to be saints. We are all part of a great story. We forgot that for a while but we’re waking up again.