On June 7, the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, on the border of Washington, D.C., will ordain 12 men to the priesthood. That may not sound like a lot, but in a diocese with fewer than 500,000 Catholics, it is a remarkable number, especially at a time when young people have largely rejected organized religion, let alone decided to devote their lives to its service and take a vow of celibacy.
But the dozen soon-to-be priests, from parishes within commuting distance of the nation’s capital, encapsulate a change within the Catholic Church in the United States. It’s a change defined primarily by its countercultural status, rejecting the mores of modernity for a life steeped in tradition and oriented toward the transcendent. After all, what could be more countercultural than becoming a priest?
On Sunday, Pope Leo XIV celebrated the inaugural mass of his pontificate, capping a 10-day whirlwind that began when he emerged on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on May 8 as the 267th pope and, most shockingly, the first American-born pope.
The Chicagoan, who took the name of Leo in homage to Leo XIII, a 19th-century pontiff whose many papal letters included a condemnation of the heresy of “Americanism,” has stepped into the position of leader of the Catholic Church at a time when the church in his birth nation is in a time of transition.
At age 69, the new pope is the youngest elected since Pope John Paul II was elected at the age of 58 in 1978. The first Polish pope ruled the Catholic Church for more than 26 years until his death in 2005. The first American pope may not be on the throne of St. Peter as long, but it is not hard to imagine that his pontificate will easily exceed the 12-year reign of his predecessor, Pope Francis.
But as he embarks on what will likely be the longest pontificate since the death of John Paul II, Leo is poised to make a lasting impact on the Catholic Church in the U.S., even as he seeks to downplay his ties to his home nation. His pontificate is quite likely to oversee what is effectively the last stages of a generational handover from a generation of Catholic laity and clergy that were far more liberal and sympathetic to modern cultural fads to one that is far more conservative and traditional.
According to data compiled by Georgetown University, there are about 75 million self-identified Catholics in the U.S., about 20% of the nationwide population. But that’s hardly representative of the state of the Catholic Church in the U.S. Of that 75 million, only about 20% report that they attend Mass on a weekly basis, or about 15 million. This is the primary explanation for why the Catholic Church in the U.S. has seen a decline in parishes. In 1965, there were 17,763 parishes nationwide. But by 2023, that number dwindled to 16,412, even as the self-identified Catholic population surged by more than 20 million.
Those who remain in the pews are far more conservative. A Pew Research survey earlier this year revealed that Catholics who attend Mass weekly were far more likely to oppose abortion, birth control, women priests, or the recognition of same-sex relationships. Most tellingly, 53% of American Catholics who attend Mass weekly said that the church should stick to its traditional teachings, even if it meant that the church would get smaller. Of those who didn’t attend Mass regularly, 67% said the church should change its teachings to be more “inclusive.”
The entirely predictable consequence of a secularized culture is that when religion becomes culturally outcast, those who remain are far more fervent believers, perfectly content with being societal outcasts seen as countercultural. A generation of culturally Catholic parents who attended Mass regularly with their children out of habit did little to instill a sense of belonging and belief in their offspring. Once their children became adults, steeped in the mores of the secular world, they predictably stopped affiliating with the church of their youth, leaving only the truest of believers in the pews.
This has had a dual effect. First, as previously noted, those who regularly attend Mass are now far more conservative, and so are their children (and with a moral prohibition on birth control, that can mean many children). But a second downstream effect is the changes it has had on the clergy.
There’s an axiom among Catholics that good families make good priests. A family of regular church-going Catholics who attend church out of a sense of moral obligation is far more likely to see at least one of their sons become a priest than a family whose Catholicism is limited to a sense of identity.
In 2023, the Catholic Project at Catholic University of America released survey results of American Catholic priests that showed a rather stark political divide along generational lines. For those priests ordained before the year 1995, a majority described themselves as either middle of the road, somewhat progressive, or very progressive, while those who considered themselves conservative or orthodox were in the minority. Between 1995 and 2005, it was an even split. For the newest priests, barely 15% of priests ordained since 2020 described themselves as even middle of the road, while 85% described themselves as either conservative or very conservative.
In the Catholic Church, priests and bishops generally retire at the age of 75, although some may stay active until the age of 80. And while the age or ordination may vary from priest to priest, most are ordained between the ages of 26 and 35. This means that the age demographic that is nearing the age of retirement is precisely the age demographic that was ordained prior to 1995. One aging liberal priest in Cleveland remarked rather candidly to the Associated Press last year that the young priests are “just waiting for us to die.”
In the U.S., the impending generational turnover is most pronounced among the bishops, a large number of whom are at or near the mandatory retirement age of 75. Between last year and this year, nearly 30 U.S. bishops will or have reached the retirement age, all from a generation of clergy that was far more liberal than their presumed successors, with dozens more by 2030. If he hadn’t been elected pope, Leo would have submitted his resignation in September of 2030. But now, rather than resign at 75, he will instead have the final say in determining who replaces these aging bishops. And the inescapable reality is that these new bishops will come from the very generation of priests where the progressive Catholicism of yesteryear is all but extinct.
As pope, Leo is the most visible figure in the Catholic Church. Anecdotal reports from at least one Catholic journalist indicate that the pope’s election has led to a surge of interest among young men in joining the Augustinian order, of which he is a member and former superior.
In the days before Pope Francis’s death on April 21, media outlets were reporting on a surge in conversions to the Catholic Church among Americans, primarily from young people. It is a trend that has been building for several years, and it is not hard to predict that the election of an American pope will likely inspire a new wave of converts.
AN AMERICAN PAPACY: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH DIDN’T CHOOSE POPE LEO XIV TO BATTLE TRUMP
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two parts—some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Church of Rome.”
Today, it’s hard not to see the prophetic wisdom in his words. But even de Tocqueville would have been shocked to see an American sitting on the chair of St. Peter, welcoming his countrymen to the Church of Rome.