Both of my grandmothers were Methodist before they converted to Catholicism. Back then, marrying a Catholic usually meant joining the one true Church before the wedding. My mother’s mother maintained some of her Methodist beliefs—no card-playing or dancing—but my father’s mother went on to have some of the traits of the stereotypical zealous convert who could be, as the cliché goes, more Catholic than the pope. For most of the past century and the beginning of this one, the vast majority of new Catholics were like my grandmothers: joining the Church, at least in part, because they were dating or marrying a Catholic.
Today, as U.S. parishes are reporting the highest conversion numbers since before Covid, that is no longer the case. The percentage of converts joining the Church to marry a Catholic is now below half; another study shows it’s closer to one quarter. Yet even without that traditional driver, conversions are rising, especially among young people. Why are people from a generation distinctive for fleeing from commitment to institutions, particularly religious ones, joining the Catholic Church?
There are as many reasons for converting as there are converts, and each journey, ostensibly prompted and guided by the Holy Spirit, is unique. But some trends can be identified. Someanalyses celebrate (or warn) that the latest crop of converts is attracted by the cultural and political conservatism currently associated with U.S. Catholicism. While many converts are seeking truth amid misinformation and hungering for tradition in a time of chaos, they don’t all fit the ideological and political “rad trad” stereotype. Still, although converts make up only eight percent of all U.S. Catholics, the influx of those questing for certainty and orthodoxy—combined with the exit of cradle Catholics more focused on social-justice issues—has the potential to significantly alter the face of the U.S. Church.
Perhaps the most prominent Catholic convert in the United States today is Vice President J. D. Vance, whose recent memoir detailed, as the subtitle indicates, how he found his way back to faith. Vance’s transformation from Evangelical Protestantism to atheism to Catholicism, many reviewers agree, seems to have been more of a calculated or at least intellectual process than an emotional or spiritual one. Certainly, his penchant for publicly correcting and lecturing the pope is out of character for a newbie Catholic.
Vance could be representative of the subset of converts who seem to approach Catholicism more as a political identifier than a spiritual path, especially common among young men looking for a religious affiliation that fits their culture-war mentality. Some of the most prominent right-wing Catholics in the United States are converts, including those with an outsized media voice: apologetics author Scott Hahn, journalist Matthew Schmitz, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, political commentator Candace Owens, editor and author Sohrab Ahmari, and integralist Adrian Vermeule of Harvard University. Canadian social-media influencer Jordan Peterson is also allegedly considering becoming Catholic, after his wife converted in 2024. Trump’s cabinet, which is about a third Catholic, includes a convert, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Curtis Martin, who modeled the Fellowship of Catholic University Students on the Evangelical Campus Crusade for Christ, is a convert from Evangelical Protestantism. And three of the most powerful pro-life activists in the country all converted to Catholicism: Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America (formerly the Susan B. Anthony List); Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America; and Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action.
Also popular among this ideologically conservative demographic is a move toward Orthodox Christianity, which is perceived, like Catholicism, as “traditional.” Columnist Rod Dreher, of The Benedict Option fame, went from nonpracticing Protestant to Catholic to Orthodox Christian in thirteen years. Yet switching religious affiliation is not usually a spur-of-the-moment decision. Most who go through the Catholic Church’s nearly yearlong process have spent months or years considering their beliefs and values before making the move. And converting is still a relatively rare choice; the majority of Americans, about two thirds, identify as the same faith into which they were born.
Although not all younger converts embrace the rad-trad identity, many are serious about committing to an institution that demands something of them. Twenty-eight-year-old Joshua Baize, who works in communications in higher education, has a hard time articulating why he converted in Easter 2026, although he knows it was not a purely intellectual or emotional decision. “I wanted to make a commitment to an institution that is all about commitment,” he said of his eight-year journey to the Church.
For the past decade or so, there has been little focus on converts coming into the Church, because nearly all attention has gone toward those heading for the exits. The so-called “nones” include not only those who intentionally choose to disassociate with religion, but also those who grew up in nonpracticing families. What used to be a small sliver of Americans, some five percent in the 1970s, has now grown to nearly three in ten adults. Religious disaffiliation is arguably the most significant religious shift in our lifetimes.
Into this depressing tale of decline came a glimmer of light and hope last year: the numbers for the Church’s process of conversion, now called the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA), have been climbing. Many dioceses, after noticing increases in 2025, were shocked by their 2026 numbers. Oklahoma City saw a 57 percent increase, from 635 in 2025 to a thousand in 2026. Newark, New Jersey, saw a 30 percent jump over 2025 and a 60 percent increase from pre-Covid numbers. The trend created such buzz that bishops were reportedly asking one another “What’s your number?” at a recent gathering.
The positive news was somewhat tempered by the fact that most dioceses had only reached pre-Covid levels—and that some eight Catholics still leave the Church for every one who joins—but the increases still merited celebration. They also prompted questions: Who are these new converts? What attracted them to the Catholic Church? And how can the Church best serve them now that they’re here?
To help answer these questions, the Archdiocese of Chicago decided to survey OCIA participants in 2026 to better understand what was driving interest in converting and how the Church should respond; nineteen other dioceses eventually joined the project. Its thirty-three-page report, “Why Are So Many People Becoming Catholic?,” offers some conflicting information but also provides preliminary insight into what is motivating the growing number of people interested in Catholicism—and what is not.
In general, new converts said they were attracted to the Church for two reasons, both of which emphasize truth. The first is a personal hunger for truth, but also for goodness, inner peace, and joy; the second centers more on the Church as an institution that offers truth, tradition, and beauty in its teachings and the liturgy. More than three quarters of respondents said a desire for a deeper understanding of truth or to grow in goodness and virtue was either their most important reason for converting or one they considered strongly. The report also segmented respondents into five groups: the Deepening Catholic, the Spiritual Explorer, the Neutral Partner (someone dating or married to a Catholic), the Relational Newcomer (someone seeking community), and the Tradition-seeking Convert.
What isn’t attracting people to the Catholic faith, according to this survey, is the Church’s stance on social issues or its charitable work to those in need, which only about one third of survey respondents cited as motivations. The survey authors were also surprised that fewer young people are coming to the Church hungering for community, given the high rates of loneliness in America. The Catholic Church is not seen as a social club, a place to gather with travelers on a spiritual journey, or an NGO addressing social problems, but rather as a source of answers, stability, and hope in a confusing world. “The motivation was pretty consistent,” Patrick Brown, a strategy and research manager for the Chicago archdiocese and one of the study’s authors, told me. “They came to the Church searching for truth and inner peace in a world perceived as disturbing.”
New converts made their way to the Church via two equally common paths. The relational path included dating and marriage relationships, invitations from known Catholics, or having a faith-grounded family. A more experiential or content-driven path usually started with attraction to liturgy or inspiration from books and digital content. An open-ended survey question about digital content indicated that new converts consumed mostly conservative or traditionalist Catholic media. Most frequently mentioned were the Hallow app, Fr. Mike Schmitz and his Bible in a Year podcast, Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire, Matt Fradd of the podcast Pints with Aquinas, and Trent Horn of the podcast The Counsel of Trent. Perhaps not surprisingly, prospective converts were attracted to Catholic media that was educational or apologetical, although media involving Scripture and prayer was also frequently cited.
The survey queried anyone going through OCIA, which can include people not traditionally seen as converts. For example, one third of respondents already identified as Catholics—including one quarter as practicing Catholics—who needed to complete their sacraments of initiation (first Eucharist and Confirmation). About another third came from another Christian tradition. Baptized Christians are technically not catechumens who are converting, but candidates for full communion with the Church. About one third of OCIA participants said they had no previous religious affiliation. A smaller number came from non-Christian religions.
The demographics skewed white, young (Millennials and Gen Z), and highly educated. The popular image of a preponderance of young, male converts was contradicted by the survey, which found slightly more women (54 percent) than men (46 percent). However, other data from CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, indicates that the percentage of male converts has increased in the past twenty-five years. The CARA data also shows a regional shift, with some 45 percent of converts in the 2020s coming from the South. Few converts had a negative view of the Catholic Church before converting, despite its damaged reputation for covering up sexual abuse and for some of its leaders’ current political alliances. This seems to contradict a recent survey of Gen Z Americans in which almost half the respondents—including 42 percent of Catholics—said that Christians’ support of President Donald Trump has made them less likely to go to church.
Future annual surveys will eventually give a deeper picture of trends, the authors of the Chicago study say, but already the data can help parishes and dioceses better welcome new converts. Since many respondents felt anxiety and fear about navigating the liturgy and intimidated by the rituals of the Mass, a more welcoming attitude from local churches could help. Converts’ overall emphasis on truth rather than Catholic social teaching may also give hints about needed formation for new Catholics. “It does seem like many people are looking for black-and-white teachings to begin with,” says survey author Tim Weiske, director of the Chicago archdiocese’s Department for Parish Vitality and Mission. “But that is an opportunity to give them a fuller picture of our faith.”
In some ways, Molly Ponce de León Watts fits into the Tradition-seeking Convert group: she was drawn to the structure, teachings, and historic continuity of the Church. A doctoral student in physics at Yale University, she likes the philosophical structure of the faith and sees value in discipline, especially weekly Mass-going. She prefers older hymns and has been to a Traditional Latin Mass and appreciated some aspects of that form of liturgy. When her ten-year-old son asked to be baptized into the Catholic faith of her nonpracticing husband, the priest asked the parents and godparents to assist with the boy’s formation. To her surprise, Watts not only found a healthy framework for her son, but also “a lot of truth, so much that I converted.”
But despite some of the external markers of a traditionalist Catholic, Watts describes herself as “traditionalist in a nontraditional sense” and says of right-wing politics: “I’m not into that kind of tradition.” Watts doesn’t want to be mistaken for “that kind” of traditionalist, the kind that some progressive friends or scientific colleagues have assumed she is. As someone on the content (as opposed to relational) path toward Catholicism, she has a deep interest in theology, Church teaching and history, and liturgical traditions. When I asked her if there were any aspects of Church teaching she struggled with, she mentioned the resurrection of the body. “I’m still working through my doubts on that one,” she said.
She and her son and husband went through OCIA at St. Thomas More Parish at Yale, an academic setting where such doubts were not chastised—and where in the past two years the number of adult baptisms doubled and OCIA participants tripled. Some of the catechumens and candidates are seeking traditional practices, and a few women are “experimenting” with wearing veils, says Sr. Mary Rose Irvine, assistant chaplain and Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist. But few students fit the rad-trad stereotype. “When we are teaching and instructing, we try to bring a balanced perspective, even on faith and politics. They seem congenial and open to listening to each other, and see the Church is big enough to hold all those perspectives,” she said. “Even for those seeking structure and tradition, it’s not a rigid approach.”
Like Watts, Blessing Oloyede converted after attending OCIA through a university parish, St. Mary at the University of Michigan, where she is a graduate student in chemical biology. She grew up Pentecostal and came to Catholicism via Lutheranism, where she was happy to trade churchgoers being slain in the spirit for lengthy theological sermons. She likens her generation’s move toward Catholicism to the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” movement in Evangelical Protestantism that saw a shift away from emotionalism and toward transcendence and tradition.
She sees herself as a Tradition-seeking Convert—she consumed plenty of apologetics media before converting, finds beauty in the Latin Mass, and is considering wearing a head covering to Mass to signal her commitment to her faith. But she worries veil-wearing will be misinterpreted and label her as a rad trad. She believes some in her generation who are joining the Church are more interested in “cottage core” aesthetics and too often separate piety from the Church’s social mission. That movement is also “European-coded,” says Oloyede, who is African American.
“I understand the hunger for something older,” she says. “And maybe I’m more like them than I care to admit. But a lot of them seem like they want control or want to feel like they’re part of something greater and are following trends. Or many of them seem to be doing it more for political reasons.”
Joshua Blake, who converted in part because he found truth and reverence in the Church, also does not identify as a “traditionalist.” “I feel sometimes people join the Church for the wrong reasons,” he told me. “Tradition can be sort of a way to mask, or a wish to alienate themselves from others. I try not to do that.” Blake also sees his conversion to Catholicism, after growing up in nondenominational Protestantism, as a return to his Colombian heritage. A student at Yale, he is interested in theology and liturgy and feels he still has much to learn. And like many Americans his age, he has LGBTQ family and friends, though he doesn’t see supporting them as contradictory to his new faith. He says he chose Catholicism because he wanted to better follow Christ. “Whenever I step into a Catholic Church,” he said, “it just feels like I’m home.”
In the end, many converts report a feeling of being called by God to the Church. As an adult adoptee, Kim Jassem has spent much of her life struggling with her identity, including her religious one; she fits into the Spiritual Explorer group. Raised Protestant, she has investigated Mormonism and Buddhism. When she got a job in Catholic health care, she became inspired by Pope Francis and Catholic social teaching, especially its concern for the poor. “These are my people,” said Jassem, who plans to go through OCIA in Colorado this year. “After a lifelong journey of [asking] ‘where do I belong’ and ‘what do I want to be,’ I just kept coming back to the Catholic faith.”
When Indiana University won the national football championship this year, among those celebrating was Dominican priest Patrick Hyde, head of campus ministry and pastor at the university’s St. Paul Catholic Center. But an even more joyful cause for celebration, he says, has been what he describes as a “revival” of the faith at the public university. Mass attendance has more than doubled, there are long lines for confession, and interest in Eucharistic Adoration is strong. The OCIA program saw a fivefold increase last year, with 150 catechumens and candidates. In an article for America, Fr. Hyde writes that other campus ministers are reporting similar record-breaking numbers.
After the steep participation declines of the pandemic and amid the overall trend toward disaffiliation, this good news brings relief to some Church leaders. It could also be reason for a certain smugness among conservative Catholics who have insisted that traditionalist beliefs and practices were the answer all along. For more progressive Catholics, an influx of traditionalist Catholics can be a little unsettling, especially when combined with a general drift toward ideological and political conservatism in the Church. A majority of Catholic voters have supported Trump, and as older priests retire, cassock-wearing young priests have alienated some more liberal parishioners. With new Catholics, especially younger Catholics, saying they like the black-and-white answers of the Church’s truth and tradition, progressive Catholics may feel uneasy about what some are calling a “Gen Z revival.”
Gen Z’s entire lives have been marked by upheaval. The first generation to grow up with smartphones and social media, they now face a particularly chaotic future of financial instability, political chaos, and climate crisis, just as they enter adulthood. Twenty-three-year-old Sophia DeBlaze sees a lot of sadness, anger, and frustration among her peers. Too often, she says, her generation seeks misdirected solutions in partying or social media. “I often see my generation hurting and not going to options that have existed for a long time to help people deal with pain,” she said. “It’s easy to see tradition as a cage, but it can be a foundation to help you stay even.” DeBlaze—and some others in Gen Z—are rediscovering that religion, specifically Catholicism, can offer ancient answers to the timeless yearnings for inner peace. She is going through OCIA at St. Clement Parish in Chicago and expects to be confirmed this fall.
It makes sense that a generation that grew up with the anxiety of social media might seek peace in ancient practices, but the Church has always offered truth and beauty—and people have always hungered for it. So why the uptick in conversions now? Michael Lovette-Colyer, vice president for mission integration at the University of San Diego, where OCIA numbers also have set records for the past two years, does not see it as driven by people who are politically or ecclesially conservative. Nor do the increases track with only “red” states or areas. In fact, he attributes the current increase to the so-called “Francis Effect”—the late Pope Francis’s emphasis on mercy, care for the earth, and compassion for our neighbors. “If you put all those things together, the Church seems unique among institutions, with an enormous amount of credibility and speaking to their concerns.”
While it’s tempting to believe that a faith that so many of us value might be attractive to our children and grandchildren, the numbers unfortunately don’t support the optimistic language of “revival.” A leveling-off of decline, maybe. Religion-data guru Ryan Burge is insistent: “There is no Gen Z religious revival,” he told me in an interview earlier this year. “There is just nothing in the data that points to that.” About 48 percent of those born after 1995 identify as “nones,” compared to 25 percent of Boomers. Gen Z is the first generation in history in which nones outnumber Christians. And Burge says retention—not conversion—is the key indicator of a religious institution’s health. In the United States, Catholics have one of the lowest retention rates, and the rates are even lower among young Catholics.
So while “revival” may be an overstatement, we may be seeing what one podcaster calls “a concentration of commitment”: more-devout Christians remain and become a larger percentage of total Christians as less-devout cultural Christians disaffiliate and real numbers still decline. That concentration applies to converts, who tend to be more active in their parishes. Although they pray, go to confession, and have attended a Latin Mass at the same rate as cradle Catholics, they are more likely to be regular Mass-goers. Recent data show that converts are somewhat more Republican and politically conservative than those who grew up in the Church. And the fact that converts to Catholicism are disproportionately white can add to the perception that the white Catholic Church, like white Evangelicalism, is becoming synonymous with conservatism.
There is no reliable data about how many Catholic converts remain Catholic, nor any tracking of whether their penchant for truth, tradition, and black-and-white answers evolves as they age. The spiritual journey of a convert does not end at the Easter Vigil, and their subsequent life experiences will shape their relationships with God and with the Church. But for now, the U.S. Church is experiencing an influx of young folks more curious about the Latin Mass than about Catholic social teaching, which stands to change parish life and how the Church is perceived by others. These new converts are serious about their faith and, for the most part, have not been pressured into joining the Church because they fell in love with a Catholic. Not all who come searching for answers are rad trads—at least not yet. We owe them a warm welcome, but also a full picture of the breadth of the Catholic tradition.
We welcome your comments about this article. Please send your response to [email protected].
