Catholicism Is So Hot Right Now. Why? - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Audio

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08-05-2025

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Catholicism Is So Hot Right Now. Why? The Assignment with Audie Cornish 35 mins
Catholicism is having a moment. With Cardinals gathering at the Vatican to elect a new pope, social media is buzzing—there are silly songs and comedy sketches, fantasy pope drafts and power rankings, and last year's Oscar-winner 'Conclave' has provided an imaginary reference point for what's happening behind the Sistine Chapel's closed doors. But the interest goes beyond this week: Reports point to a rise in young converts, from JD Vance to Shia LaBeouf to a wave of Zoomers. Audie talks with Christine Emba of the American Enterprise Institute to unpack what's driving this renewed fascination. 'So we all know that the College of Cardinals has gathered at the Vatican this week to elect the latest Bishop of Rome and head of the global Catholic Church. But if you, my friends, have been following the coverage closely or maybe even made a prediction for who will step out onto St. Peter's Basilica balcony when the white smoke rises, well then, you might be what some people are calling Pope-pilled. That's right, as always, the internet was ready with songs, sketches, power rankings. We got a brand new season of the Pope Games coming out and the girls are going at it. 'And of course, the president got involved by posting an AI-generated meme of himself in the pope's white robes. Actually, my wife thought it was cute. She said, isn't that nice? There's plenty of jokes, but this really does feel like a race that everyone has a horse in. I'm not even Catholic! I'm an atheist! Like, I care a lot who the next pope is gonna be! But here's the thing, this moment has actually been building for a while now. There was last year's surprise hit movie and Oscar winner Conclave, but also a wave of very prominent Catholic converts in recent years, from Shia LaBeouf to conservative commentator Candice Owens to Vice President J.D. Vance. And this all comes as the Pew Research Center reports that the decline of Christianity in the U.S. has slowed, maybe even leveled off, and that's thanks mainly to young people. But there are lots of questions about what's driving this trend and whether it will last. So today I'm talking with a researcher and writer and Catholic convert herself about what might be behind this renewed interest. I'm Audie Cornish and this is The Assignment. My guest today, Christine Emba. She's a contributing writer for the New York Times and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. That's where she studies gender and youth culture. Those are her official titles. At her core, Christine Emba is one of those deep thinkers who enjoys spending her days wrestling with what she calls second order questions. One of the things that I suspect is that as our lives become increasingly disembodied and atomized, the idea of an embodied close community like a church will be increasingly attractive. Okay, see what I mean? Christine was raised in a devout household by immigrant Nigerian parents. 'I grew up in a kind of non-denominational, evangelical milieu where, you know, we went to church, we believed, but weren't really attached to sort of a thing like Catholicism. It sounds very American, and like, pretty much black. Like, I don't know, I'm sorry, Christine, like this kind of feels like all of us grew up religious in that way to various degrees. It's ambient to black American culture and also immigrant cultures. Yeah, and in some ways, American culture, I mean, the sort of the majority of Americans identify as Christian in some way. When she was in college, that instinct of hers to meditate on life's big questions led her down an unexpected path. 'I had to decide whether I was going to make my faith my own and what that would look like, or sort of leave it all together. And I found myself really attracted to, first, the beauty of Catholicism and the Catholic Church. I went to Mass in the Princeton University Chapel, which is one of the biggest sort of neo-Gothic structures in the United States, and it was beautiful. The liturgies were beautiful. Then also by what I eventually came to see as the truth of the Catholic Church. So, you know, reading the Catechism, trying to understand Catholic teaching around, you now, marriage, sex, Catholic social teaching, and kind of being like, oh, people have really thought this through. Now, that was back in 2010. Conversion stories were maybe a little less common then. Today, thousands of people can relate to what Christine saw in Catholicism, including the vice president. So JD Vance made headlines this year when he cited a medieval Catholic concept, Ordo Amoris, and he used it to defend the Trump administration's immigration policies. Pope Francis then responded with a sharp rebuke, warning against using faith to justify exclusion. Now Vance converted in 2020, brought into the faith in part by another famous convert, Peter Thiel. In a way, this story is tied to a larger movement of young men on the right turning towards Catholicism, a trend my colleague CNN reporter Doni O'Sullivan has actually been reporting on. Timothy has eight kids and preaches an interpretation of the Bible that is rooted in patriarchy. He hosts a podcast which his wife Stephanie sometimes appears on. Now, my wife doesn't have to be a follower of any of all men, but every woman is literally called in eight places in the New Testament to follow her husband under pain of sin. And that's the way it's good, that's a way she shows her love for God. Yes, that's right, it's gotten back to the political. But Christine Emba says there's more to this trend, and so we started there. Yeah, that trend is new, but I think it's helpful to maybe broaden out to some bigger trends first. So America has seen just declining religiosity generally since the 90s. Just fewer people identify as religious and Christian in particular. But one of the things that we found recently is that that trend seems to have plateaued a little bit. The Pew Religious Landscape Survey that was released earlier this year shows that the number of people leaving seems to have sort of stabilized. And anecdotally, if you talk to Catholic priests or people who work in sort of Catholic ministry, they're like, yeah, my church is really full, actually. A lot of people seem to be converting. Compared to other faiths, maybe even let's say, Episcopal or other churches, where they might be like, well, we're not having as many young people as we would like come in. Well, what's going on with the health of our church? There's a real question there. And you're saying that that's actually a little different when it comes to Catholicism. Yeah, it seems that there are just more young people, young people or young families who are beginning to attend church or converting to Catholicism. And that's unusual because usually we see that people who are older tend to be more religious while the younger less religious. Or we get more religious as we get older, right? That was the theory for a very long time is like, oh, well, of course, people leave the church, they're out doing all kinds of things, having their rumspringa to borrow from another faith, but that as they get older and have families, yeah, exactly, that they come back. And you're saying that that isn't necessarily the requirement. Yeah, some people are sort of coming back much, much earlier in life or entering without any background at all. And not just, I guess, joining the Catholic Church or becoming Catholic, but you pointed out that, you know, people don't seem to be becoming Episcopalian, say, in the same way. And I think one of the interesting things in this moment that we're seeing is people are joining more traditionalist denominations or churches, including the Catholic church. Like they're going for the hard stuff. 'So I have a theory that's shared by, I think, a lot of other people who think and write about faith in public life, about why religion is becoming seemingly more attractive than you might expect in this moment of kind of mainstream secularization. I think a lot of young people, if you talk to them, especially young people who are considering or have re-joined religion in some form, will say that religion gives them a structure, a sense of the transcendent, sort of clarity of form of life that is in many ways absent in normal life. In kind of a modern secular society, especially for young people, you're told that you're free. You can kind of make up your life and your belief system as you go along. Like you need to figure out whether you want to have a family in this shape or that shape, whether he wants to get married or not get married, whether your job is what means the most to you or your dog is what it means the most to you. And I think that there is something attractive about a church that has very clear standards and norms for what is meaningful, where to look for the transcendent, also what form a community can take. And I thinking Catholicism specifically, the sort of more traditional forms of Catholicism, the more traditional practices do have just more structures and boundaries. And in a time when people feel really unboundaried and unmoored, having that clarity, having those rules is actually really compelling. What you're saying is fascinating to me for two reasons. One, coming from my own background of Baptist, kind of evangelical leaning, all of that is about a kind of exploration, a kind of independence from orthodoxy. Like, you can have church in the basement of a store, you know what I mean? Like, it's just kind of, like, what's important is you, your connection with God and like nothing is in between that, even ritual in some ways. The second is I also have a theory about what Gen Z is looking for coming out of the pandemic, that this is a generation that is in many ways shaped by a profound disconnection, profound disaffiliation to almost any and all institutions. And whether I'm on the show talking to someone about being a part of sororities, or I don't know, conspiracy theories, There's always this like looking for community. And this seems like a very straightforward way to do it. And a very straightforward way to do, it especially for men, because there are defined structural ideas about your role in that community. Yeah. And this, this kind of gets us to why men in particular may be attracted to Catholicism or traditional forms of religion. You're also seeing a growth in men converting to like Orthodox Christianity too, like Greek or Russian Orthodoxy, not just sort of general Orthodoxy. But yeah, there is something about, I think, the church and this particular religious space that actually does have a clear definition of, you know. What it means to be a man, what gender looks like, the role that the sexes maybe can and should play. And I think men especially, and I've written about this, I wrote an essay for the Washington Post called, Men Are Lost. Yeah, yeah. And surprising to me, a lot of men were like, Yeah, that's that's true. But I think men in particular feel kind of unmoored in this moment, even more so than like that, the general younger generation, because, you know, there used to be sort of a clear way of being a man, like a protector, provider, procreator, someone has a family, you know, they were roles that men were taught to play. Whether it's like getting a certain job and earning a certain amount of money, getting married in a certain way. And that clarity around gender norms and what it means to be a man, what men specifically are supposed to do has kind of muddied itself as, and I wanna be clear, this is a good thing, as women have sort of entered onto the scene and been able to do more of the things that men thought were theirs alone. And so I think there are a lot of men in particular who are out there who are sort of looking around like, who am I, what am I supposed to be? And perhaps a traditionalist religion that has a clear understanding of gender roles like Catholicism does is really attractive to men in particularly who are trying to figure out a space for themselves that tells them what it is to be a man, where they stand. 'I mean, when I look at the surge of sort of right-wing affiliated Catholicism, it does come hand-in-hand with that conversation of the role of women for women. So whereas you talked about this kind of like roadmap, doctrine, ritual, spiritual growth, that's like, that path feels wide open and towards something, I would think, for a young man. And a woman might sit through that whole same service, have all those same conversations, and feel like, well, this isn't a broader path for me. This isn't more choice for me! Obviously, people of faith can feel differently, like I said, like, I go to an Episcopal church now where there are women clergy. But in some of these traditions that are bringing in more people, that's not the case. It's not, to me, like welcoming to those kinds of breaks in tradition for gender roles. 'Yeah, I mean, so I think, you know, sociologists talk about three things that religion can provide, right? Like the three Bs, it's belief, belonging, and behavior. So belief meaning like a way to understand the big questions in life. Belonging is sort of just having a community that you're part of, and then behavior, showing you, you now, how to be, what being good looks like, what being a good man or a good woman or a family member looks like. And I think one of the things that tends to be emphasized by the sort of traditionalist and right-wing sort of reactionary converts to Catholicism, and unfortunately, like the version of Catholicism that is right now seen more often in the public square because, you know, the vice president is just in the Public Square more than sort of a lay Catholic. Like, he makes a comment and... He makes a comment and the late pope answered. Like, it is a different scale. 'Right. It is a different scale. Yeah. Yeah, but what I think is emphasized in, you know, this sort of traditionalist reading of Catholicism that's getting a lot of attention is the behavior part. They seem really intent on talking about, well, I'm Catholic and that means that women do this and men do that. Or I'm catholic and that mean that a traditional family looks like this. I'm Catholic and means that, you know, we should be extremely pro-natalist in these particular ways. And that is not necessarily reflective of the church as a whole or Catholic teaching as a hole, but if that's what is most visible in the public square, then yeah, you know, young women who are like, oh, learning about Catholicism or not, but the thing that I hear the most often combined with Catholicism is you can't have an abortion and you need to get married young or something. That is not going to make the church look particularly attractive to them, which is unfortunate, I think. What's that like for you? I mean, this must be such a strange collision of your worlds in life, because you've been talking about men and the crisis with men and social, sexual etiquette, and then also you are a convert, and you're thinking about these things. I've listened to you on podcasts in the Manosphere, so to speak, and they're like, yeah, tell us what the think about us, you know? And I'm like, Christine, just... Going into the lion's den. Yeah, the girls are not happy. The girls are not happy. Can you tell me how strange it's been? Yeah, it is, it has been a little whiplashy. You know, I converted to Catholicism and like that's a big part of my own life, but suddenly to see like the convert experience or this particular brand of convert experience in the public square is like, oh, I didn't expect that. And then I think there is the assumption that sort of JD Vance's version of Catholicism and JD Vant's conversion story is like what mine is like or that I must agree with all the things that he's saying. And that's not really the case. You know, one of the things that I was really attracted to about the, attracted to by the Catholic Church is that there is a lot of space in Catholicism and a lot sort of different interpretations and practices. And you know, when I hear JD Vance using Ordo Amoris to justify mistreating migrants, that is kind of not the Catholic faith that I recognize. And in fact, it wasn't the Catholic Faith that the late Pope recognized. Considering that he really clapped back at him in this moment. But you know, there is this sort of like orthodox or tradier combative vision of Catholic converts to have. 'Tradier, yeah, short for traditional. Traditional, instead of trad-wise. So now we're using, yeah. Trad-cath actually is definitely a term of art in the scene. TradCath. Now that people are TradCath, the thing about being TradCath as people in the scene say. Is it a trend? And for people like you who are deeply committed to this as part of your faith, are you essentially witnessing this political shift, right? This basically turning of the culture war into a very specific part of religious life. Yeah, I mean, it's disappointing to see religion and faith wielded for the purposes of politics because, you know, a thing about religion and faith is that it's not supposed to be of this world. Like, you don't use God to take a political side. Yeah, but all the people listening who complain about the religious right are like, Christine, give me a break. Come on, that's what, right? Like that's, certainly, if we're even just doing the cursory glance since the 80s. Yeah, you see that. The religious right has been a force in American life. So why would the Catholic right be different? Yeah, I know that's that's totally true. But there are, you know, other parts of Catholicism that are not as well represented in the public square, which I think is a shame. I mean, there's, you know a long and deep tradition of what's known as Catholic social teaching, right, which actually has a view towards promoting human dignity and the common good. And, you know, contra some Catholics who want to weaponize a faith to say that we should not care about the migrant or that, you know, climate change is a farce that they're using to pull one over on you. You know, Catholic social teaching emphasizes the idea of care for creation. You know it has the preferential option for the poor, the idea that when you're sort of thinking about policy or thinking about how to shape a society, you should think of the poorest, the neediest, the person most in need of help first and make sure that you're elevating that view as you make policy choices. Like that is Catholic teaching. But unfortunately, that's not the Catholic teaching that we're seeing exemplified in the public square by people who loudly profess to be Catholic. 'And to be clear, there's like hipster spaces where people are kind of like, every pope after Vatican II, I mean, is that even a real pope? And I'm like, why am I hearing this on this random Brooklyn-y podcast? Like, what's going on here? It felt, I don't know, am I, did you notice that as well? Yeah, no, I mean, it's fascinating to hear, you know, in sort of like the East Village, like people debating whether the Pope is the real Pope, or like which form of liturgy they like best or like their traditional like rosary prayers and which ones they use. But it's also really interesting too. And I think, I think to this point of like, you know Catholicism suddenly showing up on hipster podcasts also speaks to something specific that, a specific attraction that Catholicism has in the public square today. We live in a society, I think, that is just increasingly modernized and increasingly secular, especially in certain like hipster spaces or intellectual spaces. Like the default is to not be religious and to treat religion with skepticism or to think that people who believe in something who are Catholic or who are practicing are like kind of not that smart or they don't they don t get it. Yeah. And so in some ways being very Catholic, you know, sort of loudly talking about your Catholic beliefs can be seen as transgressive in an interesting way. Like in a secular space, being the person who s wearing a big silver cross is different, and that can be kind of cool. And then also frankly, the esthetics of the Catholic Church in the moment that we're in, which is increasingly focused on the visual, we're on TikTok, we're Instagram, we're looking at exciting photos of two Cardinals in full regalia, smoking cigarettes together. It looks cool. We're talking with writer Christine Emba, stay with us. It's funny, when I was reading the essay J.D. Vance did for The Lamp describing his conversion, one of the ways he talks about his secularism is how kind of easy it was to be that. And he said, I didn't think to myself, I'm not going to be a Christian because Christians are rubes and I want to plant myself firmly in the Merocratic masterclass. But he says socialization operates in more subtle and powerful ways. He really talked about this over and over again in this essay, this idea that he was trying to fit in in this world of elites that we now know, narrator, he rejected. But at the time, he was trying to feel embraced. And there was something about being a practicing Christian that was at odds with the community that he was aspiring to be in. I mean, he used the word rubes, we know Hillbilly Elegy, this is his thing, this kind of language. But I think you've been in all of these spaces in a way, right, you talked about converting at Princeton. Is there something to that? Because I think that also informs the way that people who get into power with this kind thinking govern. So, you know, yeah, JD Vance, I think, talks a lot about how the secular culture that he left, I guess, or that he first was trying to be a part of, was rejecting of and different from the Catholic culture or the Catholic faith that he joined, because it's a way to just sort of make the distinction between the two places. Peter Thiel, who is also Catholic. We talked about JD Vance. There are, I mean, multiple members of the Supreme Court. It's a fascinating moment in American politics when you think of a time way back when JFK actually had to make a speech, right, about his religion to essentially kind of reassure Americans that to be Catholic did not mean that you be loyal to the United States. Now, I think being Catholic, that doesn't even mean you're loyal to the Pope or the Vatican. That's no guarantee. This is a vibe shift. So, how do you see this moment for Catholicism and Catholics in modern politics? Because, like I said, because of JFK, they have a particular place. Right, I mean, the idea that Catholics would be accepted in modern politics is still pretty new, exactly as you say. JFK had to make it very clear that he was not going to be commanded by the Pope instead of the United States, for example. But in this moment where you see like sort of loudly, loudly Catholic figures in the public square, like JD Vance, I think I think a lot about how well Catholicism is being represented by these figures. Like when somebody who is unfamiliar with the church or the faith thinks this is who Catholics are, are they going to think JD Vance? Are they going think Peter Thiel? And then what are other parts of the faith, other visions of the church, other ways of being Catholic that I think are really good and important that get left out or pushed to the side? And I think a lot of Catholics, I think of religious people in the public square are thinking about how their religion is being represented by sort of the standard bearers who are making the most noise right now. And how they feel about how it influences policy, right? So like I have a Christian faith, I have kids. Do I want pronatalism? You know what I mean? Like, is that, do I want the number of kids I have to decide whether or not there's a train station near me or not? That feels like not what I have in mind. But it does force you to have that conversation with yourself, which is like you like the idea of your kind of ethic being reflected in the public space. I can get that. Yeah, I mean, to get a little sort of think tanky on you, there's I think a competition or like a figuring out going on right now with sort of what it means to be religious in a liberal society. And when I talk about liberalism, I'm not like talking about the left necessarily, but liberalism as the idea that, you know, we live in a pluralistic society. Everyone gets to make their own choices about their beliefs and how to be, you can't foist your choices on other people. We have to be accommodating to those. And how much does that accommodation undermine your own values and connection to your faith? Can your faith be private? If you say that you are Christian or Catholic, is that a personal choice? Or does the idea of being Christian or catholic mean that your faith should affect the rest of the world and how you interact with the world? Because it becomes a political statement. Exactly, like, do you bring your faith and, you know, the frameworks that that provides to you and demands of you to the public square with you, or can you keep them private? And I think a lot of people are realizing that that is more difficult than they might have thought. And then there are some people who have sort of abandoned that distinction altogether, and who think that, you, know, no, I can't be liberal about my faith. It's not going to be private. It is my politics and I have to act on it. What does all this mean for, I guess, the Gen Z of it all, the Manosphere of it, all? I mean, for you, what are you looking for next in terms of the next conversations that you think might be had within that world? 'That's a really good question. I think first starting in the world of just politics generally, I think especially on the right, there is currently in this moment sort of an alliance between the religious right or even sort of like the Catholic right, people like JD Vance and a sort of non-religious right. Like I guess you can compare JD Vance to Elon Musk who sort of both have visions of the world. One is Catholic and one is something else. And right now they're kind of working together, but eventually they're going to clash, you know. Catholic beliefs in what it means to be human, what it means to have children, what pro-natalism should look like, what a family looks like, actually stands in real contrast to Elon Musk's belief in how humanity should be shaped to be a machine or the ideal family, which is not sort of a two person Catholic household, but you know, a guy who has a mysterious number of children. Christine. No, you didn't. It's true. It is true. And I think, you know there's like an uneasy alliance right now between sort of the religious right and kind of the tech or other right. And that's going to come into conflict. I think in the broader public square and for younger generations for Gen Z, we're, we are in a moment where things are changing really fast, especially technology is shifting how we interact with the world. Again, this question of like, what does it mean to be human? How do we interact with each other? What should life look like? There are choices to be made. The sort of religious vision or the Christian vision has like a very clear viewpoint on what it means to be human, what it mean to live a good life, what community looks like, what is real, what is transcendental and what is not. And again, that is gonna come into conflict with I think where we're moving in many directions as a society, whether it's increasing sexual liberalism, whether it is differing versions of what it is means to human, whether it questions of where. And how life begins and ends, like either assisted suicide to IVF. And I think some people will find the religious framework or the Catholic or Christian framework, the Catholic answers to those questions really compelling and others will find principles of their own. 'Christine Emba is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing writer for the New York Times. And if I may, I want to suggest you check out her book, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, which is a great post-MeToo read. So The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio and this episode was produced by Madeleine Thompson and Jesse Remedios. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Our technical director is Dan Dzula. And the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. We had support from Dan Bloom, Haley Thomas, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, John Dionora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamis Andrest, Nicole Pesseru, and Lisa Namarow. If you liked this episode, please go ahead, hit that follow button. More importantly, share. And if you can, leave us a review. We love new listeners, and it makes a difference.