CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Americans could be on the cusp of a religious revival. according to Ross Douthat, an author, Catholic convert, and New York Times columnist.
Douthat, who often writes on the intersection of faith, culture, and public life in his column, shared his thoughts on all things American and Catholic, from Pope Leo XIV to Vice President JD Vance to the American religious landscape, in an interview with Anchor Catherine Hadro on “EWTN News in Depth” on Friday.
Douthat described the U.S. religious situation as a “a very unsettled but curious landscape,” particularly after a years-long decline in religious interest that plateaued during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s not that America is having a religious revival. It’s more that we’re considering whether to have a religious revival,” he said.
Interest in religion has moved beyond the hardline atheism of the early 2000s characterized by figures like Richard Dawkins, Douthat said. He observed that there has been “a surge of interest in religion,” especially among Generation Z.
Sometimes the interest is traditional, as reflected in rising numbers of converts to Catholicism in some dioceses, from Los Angeles to Dublin. Other times it takes on an alternative tone.
“You have a surge of interest in religion, and some of that shows up in traditional faith. Some of it shows up in anything from UFOs to psychedelics,” Douthat said.
Atheism, he indicated, has failed to keep its promises. In the early 2000s “there was a sense that once we get rid of these hidebound Bronze Age superstitions, everyone will get along better: Politics will be less polarized, science will be held in higher esteem and sociologically people will be happier. Kids won’t be afraid of going to hell, things like that.”
“And obviously none of that has happened.”
Douthat cited rising division, polarization, and “existential angst” in the nation in recent years as setting the groundwork for a resurgence of religion.
“You have a lot of people, some of whom are coming into the Church, others who are exploring around the edges, who are reacting to that environment,” he said.
First impressions of Pope Leo: a unifying figure
When asked to describe the new pope, Douthat called him “unifying,” “charming,” and “mildly inscrutable.”
Douthat says that inscrutability is “part of the reason he was elected pope in the first place.”
“There is still a hint of mystery to who the pope definitively is and what he definitively thinks,” he said. “And there may be a long period of time where that mystery gradually unfolds in the life of the Church.”
Douthat noted that Leo was a “dark horse” figure “who’s very good at making different groups of people feel heard and understood.”
Leo’s episcopal motto is one of unity: “In Illo Uno Unum,” meaning “in the One, we are one.” Douthat said he hopes Leo will bring about this unity.
“Obviously there were a lot of conservative and traditionalist Catholics who were frustrated or anxious at various moments in the era of Pope Francis,” he said.
“[Leo] hasn’t really done all that much — it’s been one month — but there’s so far this sense of just sort of relief at a feeling of kind of stability and normalcy in the papal office,” Douthat said.
Pope Leo XIV chose his name because the last pope with that name, Pope Leo XIII, “was pope at a time of huge industrial and technological transformation and offered a distinctively Catholic witness for that age,” Douthat noted.
“There is this landscape that people live in online, disconnected or connected in new ways,” he said. “That is, I think, clearly perilous to the soul in various ways.”
The digital and AI realms have “deep effects on family and marriage and community,” especially for parents raising kids in this environment.
“There are fundamental questions of morality and spirituality that are bound up in how you relate to your phone,” he continued. “And I think it is really important for the Church to figure out what to say about it.”
JD Vance interview
Douthat recently interviewed Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, about how faith shaped his politics, among other topics.
Reflecting back on a part of the interview where he asked Vance about the Church’s teachings on immigration, Douthat said that he was “pressing” the vice president because he believed there were “real tensions” in the dispute, citing deportations by the Trump administration.
Vance and Pope Francis had publicly disagreed on politics earlier in the year. In February, Pope Francis sent a pastoral letter to the U.S. bishops calling for the recognition of the dignity of immigrants after Vance, a Catholic convert, publicly advocated applying “ordo amoris,” or “rightly-ordered love,” to the immigration debate.
“[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens,” Vance said at the time, while acknowledging that the principle “doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders.”
In the letter, Francis tacitly rebuked Vance’s remarks, arguing in part that “the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution, or serious deterioration of the environment damages the dignity of many men and women.”
Douthat noted that Vance’s situation is a “tremendous challenge,” especially because he is vice president, not president.
“There’s always a certain kind of tension between being an elected politician in a pluralist, non-Catholic society and trying to be faithful to the teachings of the Church,” he said.
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“[Leo] hasn’t really done all that much — it’s been one month — but there’s so far this sense of just sort of relief at a feeling of kind of stability and normalcy in the papal office” (Douthat).
Yes, we’re all enjoying the peace. Considering the past there’s an urgency reminding us we can’t surrender to peace. There’s a time for war. Much of the past must be undone. Letting it be reinforces the mistakes that continue to undermine the true appreciation of the Christ revelation.
Douthat does that sort of furtively in remarking on Leo’s alleged inscrutability. Let’s be realistic. We await with bated breath indicated by our pronouncements of how calm and holding ourselves together we are. While the honest admits the issue.
Youth are turning to Christ. Many may realize they’re at the red line of drug use and sex from which return is highly doubtful. My sense is that their reasoned decisions are likely inspired by the prayers of the many unknown saintly people out yonder praying for the conversion of souls. JD Vance, a recent convert, is an attractive model for youth. Again the ability of the convert to address life and morals with realistic candor.
I am a little tired of hearing about the “dignity of immigrants”. What about the dignity of the working stiff taxpayer??
People who break the law to bust into your country, then rely on the public dole, free medical care and other govt freebies which were intended for the citizens of the nation you broke into, are not entitled to any special treatment. Stealing from a grocery store, even if you “need” the food, is still stealing. I am tired of hearing those of us who believe in simple law and order derided as racists or unfeeling non-christian people. As far as I know there is nothing in Christianity that says you need to play punching bag to those who are taking advantage of you. MANY of us voluntarily support charities of various sorts to help others, as we have been taught to do. That should be enough. Largely unaddressed until recently are the crime statistics in which American citizens have been brutalized, raped and murdered by far too many immigrants who never should have been allowed to come here. Remember who let them in, the next time you vote.
Catholicism is NOT the same as Communism or socialism, in spite of liberal Catholics best efforts to make it so. Wealth transfer and other efforts to wrestle away what you have worked to earn to give it to others is what is done in Communist and socialist lands. Efforts to attack Trump or Vance because they believe in the rule of law is dishonest and unseemly.
LJ. Great set of comments. Hoping Leo XIV is not Pope Francis 2.0
So the billionaires deserve additional tax cuts? Cut Medicaid, cut SNAP, cut anything and everything for the poor, so Elon & co. can play less taxes? How Christian.
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. But it should work the same way for those who emigrate. They should respect the country and people they relocate to and obey the laws.
Decent hardworking people who come here aren’t the problem. It’s the organized crime cartels that bring them here.
We will be competing with other countries for immigrants one day and we need to find ways to increase legal and safe immigration. We should be in charge of who comes to our border, not the cartels.
and don’t forget federal funds may be borrowed; which mean the next generation is being dumped on
I agree with you. I think that a “Catholicism” that allows us to be trampled, taken advantage of, or in danger of personal harm when we are attempting to help people (unless we are called by God to sacrifice our lives for the sake of leading others to Him) is not really Catholicism. It seems to me to be what some parents do when attempting to raise their children without ever rebuking them or holding them accountable for their misbehavior–the result is a spoiled brat who often grows up to be a very spoiled adult who believes the world owes them a living and sometimes, turns to criminal acts to make sure that they get what they believe “special people” like them are entitled to.
I do believe that we desperately need to replenish our population in the U.S., which has been diminishing at an alarming rate–legal abortion especially has resulted in the killing of millions of babies over the last several decades! As a senior citizen, I fear that when I am in need of special care for aging infirmities, there will not be enough younger people to provide that care! Immigrants who intend to become good American citizens and work for their living need to be welcomed into the U.S. with open arms, as some of our natural-born American citizens seem to be afraid to have babies and raise children these days! I think that some people have become convinced that unless they can live in huge homes and enjoy the “HGTV” lifestyles, they will be unhappy! I think some of the happiest times of my life have been when my late husband and I and our two children lived in tiny apartments and ancient houses that we were never able to afford to “update!”
Lj : Neither is the Church Democratic and Capitalistic!!!
Douthat proposes that it makes more sense to believe rather than to not believe. As to what one should believe he, himself, acquiesces into “inscrutability.”
Reawakened by Douthat to the impulse of inborn and universal natural law, why shouldn’t the sleepwalking West just settle into any of a smorgasbord of natural religions and “beliefs”? Rather than, say, receiving “faith” in the person of Jesus Christ? Faith, as if we have to deal with the historical and historic self-disclosure (!) of the Triune God?
As for Pope Leo XIV’s alleged “inscrutability,” well, it’s the Allah of Islam who is inscrutable. And, therefore eclectic and arbitrary, and the source of alleged revelations that “abrogate” one another. The rolling consensus of process theology in a turban! Or, as some might say: ersatz synodality by another name?
Is the Augustinian pope “inscrutable”? Of the alternative “coherence” of faith & reason(!) as the incarnate LOGOS, it was St. Augustine himself who said “we can say things differently, but we can’t say different things.”
Vance really shouldn’t talk about Catholic belief until he renounces his mentor Jarvin.