Catholicism’s rise in America is a reaction to, and a rejection of, the Left’s relativism. Today, self-styled “progressives” are in the vanguard of America’s Left and at the core of progressives’ agenda is a vacuous relativism.
Both ends of America’s political press, the New York Times and Washington Times, recently ran features on Catholicism’s rise in America. Data from 140 of America’s 175 Catholic dioceses showed the number of converts to Catholicism jumped 38% during the last Easter weekend: 139% in L.A., 52% in Chicago, and 36% in New York City.
Time will only tell if this conversion surge will continue, or if converts will continue in their new faith — as Jesus taught in the famous “Parable of the Sower” (Matthew 13), the seed of faith falls on many types of ground. However, the times are already very telling as to why this surge is occurring.
America’s Left has long dominated America’s education, entertainment, and media — in a word, they are the “elite.” For several years, America’s Left have in turn been dominated by a self-styled “progressive” wing. Overall, these “progressives” have pulled the Left from their traditional claim to support the nation’s working class to unabashedly supporting the nation’s elite.
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel recently epitomized the entire Left’s transformation when he mocked new DHS head Markwayne Mullin’s working class background: "Trump's got a whole new generation of thinkers lined up, including his newly confirmed secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne ‘Chuck Mike Bruce Dave’ Melon — Mullin…He's the now former senator of Oklahoma. Before he was elected to the Senate, Markwayne Mullin was a low-level MMA fighter and a plumber. That's right. We have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now. It worked for Super Mario. Why not Markwayne?"
There was a time when the Left lionized working-class roots: Joe Biden repeatedly called himself “lunch bucket Joe” and aimed to be the “face of the lunch-bucket Democrats.” No more. Now Jimmy Kimmel is their face, and his audience are the under- and unemployed, over-degreed Left who can stay up late because they do not have real jobs to go to in the morning.
“Progressives” have also pulled the Left into extreme versions on issues: the civil rights agenda has shifted to critical race theory; abortion has shifted from Roe v. Wade to unrestricted abortion on demand; gender equality has shifted to transgender issues.
At the core of these “progressive” agendas is relativism. For them, truth is mutable. It only exists according to “progressives’” perspective and determination. And it can, and does, change at will: their will.
Of course, without immutable truth, there are no principles. As well as wrong, the “progressives’” platform is unmooring: It sets people adrift in a theoretical world without permanent attachments and meaning.
Adrift is an especially unsettling feeling in today’s world where unceasing movement does not simply cast people adrift in theory. Our modern world casts them adrift in practice: The result is it produces atomized lonely people.
The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby said, “Look at all the lonely people, where do they all come from?” six decades ago. Unmoored by “progressives’” theory and the modern world’s practice, today there are even more of them, and they are even lonelier. They live in impermanent families (something the Left encourage if family members’ politics does not reflect theirs), and work in impermanent jobs (and often impermanent careers). While they communicate more, they connect less, trading screens for faces and chatbots for humans.
Catholicism and religion in general fill the void “progressives” are creating and accentuating and that the modern world is reinforcing. Catholicism is not just about permanent truths, but an eternal one. It “stands in the breach” against “progressives’” relativistic mindset, as well as against most of their specific positions. In the face of “progressives’” infinites shades of gray, Catholicism offers a world where black and white definitively exist.
To rebel today — really rebel against the prevailing ethos—means going counter to the elite. Marlon Brando’s character in 1953’s The Wild One was asked, “What are you rebelling against?” “Whaddaya got?” Brando’s character replied. What today’s elite “got” is a smug “progressive” relativism that allows them to dictate the rules the rest of society should follow. Behind it is an undisguised disdain for those who should follow.
Why wouldn’t the rest of society push back? Unsurprisingly, they are. And many are pushing toward Catholicism.
Catholicism and religion are perfect ripostes to elites’ “progressive” ethos. Today’s “establishment” is no longer the middle class of The Wild One’s 1950s; it is a “progressive” elite. A perfect form of rebellion against it — and an ideal antidote to it — is Catholicism. Only “progressives” find it surprising that such rebellion is occurring.
Catholicism is the most formal and structured branch of Christianity, with the longest tradition and the largest corpus of writings. It stretches back to the origins of Christianity and forever ahead to Christianity’s eternal promise. And most notable for today, it is anti-relativism. It is the embodied counterargument to “progressives’” vacuous relativism. For just as nature abhors a vacuum, so too do an increasing number of Americans.
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.
