In 1987, the Lutheran minister Richard John Neuhaus argued that history had entered into a “Catholic moment,” in which the Catholic Church had a chance to take up its “rightful role” in constructing a “religiously informed public philosophy” for the United States. Given the Church’s declining numerical and institutional strength, it is striking to find that a strange kind of Catholic moment has indeed arrived—one in which the Church has a thinner presence on the ground but seemingly a greater one in public debates.

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Our Strange Catholic Moment - First Things

American Catholicism is in steep decline. In 2000, 2.6 million American children attended Catholic schools. In 2025, only 1.6 million did. In 2001, more than a quarter-million Catholic weddings took place; in 2024, around 107,000 did. In 2001, more than a million infants were baptized in the Church. In 2024, fewer than half a million were. These numbers presage a future in which the Catholic Church will be much smaller and poorer than it currently is.
Given these facts, talk of a Catholic revival—spurred this spring by a surge in adult conversions, many in urban and university churches—is misplaced. At present, the trend in conversions shows no signs of offsetting broader decline. And yet something is stirring in the Catholic Church. It is evident not only in the number of adults seeking confirmation, but in the way Catholic concepts and figures have moved to the center of public debate. Rather than simple Catholic decline or Catholic revival, we appear to have entered a period of …

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