Before we get to what young Americans want from their Catholic parishes, let’s see what old people want.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC recently stated: “I was born and raised in a conservative Catholic family.  After having not considered myself [Catholic] for some time, I do consider myself to be back in the faith.”  She credited this “to Pope Francis and his message of not just empathy but solidarity with immigrants the world over.”

Democratic politician Christopher Hale then added:  “Coming out as a lesbian in her youth, Maddow had drifted from the Church for nearly 30 years. But now, she said, Pope Leo’s witness on issues like immigration has drawn her back to her religious roots.”

I too would celebrate her return to Mass if it actually included a conversion to living chastely.  But Miss Maddow has not said she will leave her “wife.”  It seems she’s quite happy with her two favorite “Popes” blessing her lifestyle.

Maddow is now in her 50s, but she may maintain the moral theology of those very-rare young liberal Americans now turning to urban Novus Ordo parishes, namely, those who want to be “spiritual but not religious.”   That is, those rare new converts to mainstream urban parishes often want deep emotions in Church, but no sexual morals at home.

Their lightweight faith won’t last.

Yes, the recent FOCUS conference was slightly more conservative and it just broke the world-record for the biggest group of speed-daters.  But when we look past such silly games, we still find a third of Gen Z has left the Catholic faith since 2018, and many of the remaining Zoomers desire only traditional Catholicism.

As we will see with statistical proof in this article, for every convert to a Novus Ordo American parish, eight frustrated Catholics leave that parish.  Yes, one to eight is the ratio, and that includes Gen Z.  In fact, if current statistics prevail, the only parishes that will exist in the United States by the end of the 21st century will be Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) parishes.

The young man above goes by TLM Ryan and has a YouTube channel called Pre-Conciliar Radio.  He is part of Generation Z (aka Zoomers born somewhere between 1997 and 2012.)  I have never met him, but he seems to be a very skilled statistician who is able to slice-and-dice numbers of Pew Research studies in a sober but striking way.

Ryan hardly comes across as a “Rad-Trad.”  In fact, the priest-friend of mine who sent me his videos is a conservative in the South, but he never learned the TLM.  Thus, TLM Ryan is reaching much more than TLMers with his data.

One video he made is called The Data Is In: Gen Z Wants Nothing To Do With Vatican II.  It’s only 21 minutes, so I would encourage you to watch the whole thing where you can see his statistically significant sources and graphics.

Here’s some of the things I learned from Ryan’s statistical analysis.  Bullet points are my summaries of his research.  Quotes come directly from him:

  • In 2018, 32% of American Zoomers identified as Catholic.  But in 2024, that number dropped to 21%.  That means that over the last six years, a third of all mainstream Gen-Z Catholics have left the Catholic Faith—or at least Mass-attendance.
  • For every convert, 8.4 leave the Catholic Church in America.
  • “If you get twice as many converts who come into the Church as you did back then [in 2018] you’re still losing four for every convert.  We would need to ‘quin-triple’ our converts to even break even.”
  • “If you had five people, you need to see fifty people for us to grow via converts.  That’s how terrible the retention rates are in the Church.”
  • “Gen Z is completely rejecting Vatican II.  They may not explicitly say it.  They vote with their feet.  They’re simply leaving the post-Conciliar Church.”
  • Young men are much more conservative than young women, so they want nothing to do with female-run parishes as seen in nearly all Novus Ordo parishes.
  • “Gen-Z that utterly rejects the world will utterly reject the Vatican II reforms… That’s so obvious.  I haven’t met a single Gen-Z male who is attracted to ‘beige Catholicism.'”
  • “I think the [hierarchy] will burn these buildings to the ground before they decouple from whatever insidious spirit accompanied Vatican II when ‘the world’ decided to accompany Vatican II.”
  • There is a 75% retention-rate to the TLM but a 30% retention-rate to the NOM.
  • “Gen Z—they just want the Latin Mass.  They want the Faith that it used to be.  They want tradition.  Give them tradition because this right here is showing you they want nothing to do with your Second Vatican Council.
  • “And it doesn’t matter if they’ll verbalize it or they won’t.  They will leave with their feet.  And that speaks volumes.  That speaks a lot more than whether or not you pester them online and ask them ‘Well, you have to submit and you have to accept this Council and everything that’s written in it…’ Really?  That’s the way?  Even by Vatican II standards, that’s not the way to evangelize anybody.  It’s immensely hypocritical.”

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