Taylor Swift engagement: Start of a promising cultural phenomenon?

Madalaine Elhabbal By Madalaine Elhabbal for CNA

August 29, 2025 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print

 

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Jan. 28, 2024. / Credit: Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 29, 2025 / 18:52 pm (CNA).

News this week of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement sparked positive commentary from a wide cross-section of Catholics on social media, who anticipate a positive cultural shift from the marriage between the beloved pop star and Kansas City Chiefs tight end.

“Expect a spike in marriage,” wrote marriage and family expert Brad Wilcox in a social media post. “Taylor and Travis put a ring on it.”

“The Life of a Showgirl” singer announced her engagement to Kelce in an Aug. 26 Instagram post, captioned: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

Wilcox, the author of “Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” noted in another post the engagement came on the same day as a new study highlighting the value of marriage for women today.

The study, “In Pursuit: Marriage, Motherhood, and Women’s Well-Being,” found married women with children make up the majority of women ages 25 to 55 who describe themselves as “very happy.”

Swift’s engagement “as a sort of left-leaning pop celebrity could create a space where it’s OK again for center-left Americans, both elite and ordinary Americans, to publicly embrace marriage,” Wilcox also told the Wall Street Journal.

“Marriage is a beautiful thing,” Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins chimed in, reacting to the news on social media.

She added: “I hope Taylor Swift’s engagement inspires young women to see the joy and purpose in getting married, starting a family, and committing to one person for the rest of their lives.” In another post, Hawkins expressed confidence that “America is heading into its ‘get married and have babies era.’”

Defending the singer against negative reactions on social media to the news of her engagement, CEO and founder of the Classical Learning Test Jeremy Wayne Tate wrote in a post on X: “I’m disappointed with some conservatives today … Boy proposed to girl to enter into the most traditional relationship in human history … marriage.”

“That’s a beautiful thing,” he added. “Just say congratulations.”

LiveAction President Lila Rose also congratulated the happy couple on social media and praised their decision to get married.

“Marriage is the best and tons of women look up to Taylor,” Rose said. “So happy to see her embracing it.”

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A Franciscan friar is DC’s first known coronavirus fatality

March 21, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Washington D.C., Mar 21, 2020 / 04:07 pm (CNA).- A Franciscan friar is the first person known to have died as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the District of Columbia.

Br. John-Sebastian Laird-Hammond, OFM, was hospitalized with the virus last week, and died Friday, the Washington Post reported.

The friar had been in residence at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America since the 1980s, Father Larry Dunham, superior of the monastery, told the Post March 21. Laird-Hammond, 59, had been battling leukemia for years, Dunham added.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had announced the District’s first death related to the virus on Friday but did not reveal the person’s identity.

Laird-Hammond was Secretariat of the monastery’s board of directors, according to the monastery’s website. The friar had been running the monastery’s day-to-day operations as business manager for the past 14 years, Dunham told the Post.

The friar had recently been approved for a transfer to an order in New York, where he was going to be involved in fundraising efforts for missions in Central America, according to the Washington Post.

“It was going to be like a whole new focus and life for him,” Dunham told the Post.

“That was to be his new assignment that never quite materialized.”

The monastery, which is a national shrine, has not yet been reached by CNA for comment.

A priory of the Order of Friars Minor, the Franciscans, has had a mission to support Christians in the Holy Land, and to serve as custodians, or guardians, of the sacred sites of the Holy Land since 1342. The Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC is affiliated directly with that mission.

Washington D.C. had 72 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of March 20. In the greater Washington area, which includes parts of Maryland and Virginia, the talley stood at 338 confirmed cases as of March 20.

A priest in the Diocese of Yakima, Washington was the first U.S. priest known to be diagnosed with COVID-19 on March 15. A second U.S. priest, Fr. Stephen Planning, SJ, president of DC’s Gonzaga College High School, announced this week he also has the virus.   In Italy, at least 30 priests so far have died of the coronavirus.

The global tally of confirmed cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus worldwide is now over 300,000.

 

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