An American Pope at an American Moment

The election of Leo XIV comes at a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States. Though Leo spent much of the past four decades outside the United States – primarily in Peru, but also in Rome – it would be hard to overstate the opportunity (and challenge) that comes with having a pope who is a native son of these United States.

Trying to predict how a pontificate will play out this early in the game is a fool’s errand, but there is good reason to suppose that Pope Leo is reluctant to appear more preoccupied with the affairs of the world’s only superpower than the responsibilities of his office require. In short, he won’t want to seem like a homer. Nevertheless, the energy and interest his election has created here is remarkable.

A 30,000-foot view of the cultural and ecclesial landscape provides some general sense of what this pontificate might mean for the Church in the United States.

Americans under the age of 40 mostly do not remember a time when the large institutions that form the pillars of our common life had been working well. Distrust of institutions is now widespread, and for understandable reasons.

The most fundamental institution of society, the family, has been in trouble for decades. Since the advent of the sexual revolution, we have seen widespread divorce, ubiquitous contraception, industrial-scale abortion, collapsing marriage rates, the legal redefinition of marriage, and sub-replacement birth rates.

The carnage and confusion this has produced are widespread and manifest. Young people are dissatisfied and disheartened, and have a hard time imagining how things might be otherwise. A shockingly high percentage of them no longer see marriage and family as important sources of meaning and happiness.

Our political life is not exactly a model of stability and civic-mindedness. Polarization has become a chronic problem. There is little consensus about the existence of the common good, let alone anything approaching a consensus about how to pursue it.

Both parties seem convinced of the righteousness of their vision of the American past and future, but neither seems able to find a way to govern on behalf of the whole. Perhaps worse, neither party seems particularly interested in doing so, each defining themselves at least as much in opposition to the failings and sins of the opposition as to some positive, coherent vision of a future together.

We are going on three generations of Americans – Millennials (who are approaching middle age), Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha – who have little or no memory of a Catholic Church unsullied by the abuse crisis and its fallout. The public moral authority of the Church, and especially our bishops, has waned.

We have also just lived through a contentious pontificate in which debates about how best to engage and evangelize the modern world have revealed even deeper divisions in which not just the means of proclamation but the substance of the message to be proclaimed have been called into question from within the Church.

The Church in every age faces obstacles to the proclamation of the Gospel, but a Church that lacks confidence in the truths it would proclaim would struggle to gain traction in any age.

One could go on: our popular culture seems stuck in an oscillation between transgressive vulgarity and nostalgia; the post-war international order is cracking if not actually broken; our educational institutions have lost sight of what education is for, except perhaps as schools of indoctrination or as inefficient and overpriced credentialing institutions for entrance into a meritocracy which has, itself, lost public trust; our media is adrift in a “post-truth” world they helped to create; and so on and so on.

All of this is exacerbated by accelerating advances in technology, especially media technology and the dawn of AI. Trust in institutions is dangerously low, and people are feeling adrift and isolated.

Not all is doom and gloom. In the midst of all of this, it is only natural that young people should be looking for something solid. Many dioceses in the United States saw a marked increase in the number of converts entering the Church at Easter this year. In some places record numbers. It’s not just the U.S., either; something similar seems to be happening elsewhere, for example, in France and in the U.K.

For the first time in a long time, the number of young people – and particularly young men – attending Mass regularly in the U.S. is actually trending upward. Adding to this, as I have written before, our youngest priests are the most theologically orthodox, politically moderate, and ethnically diverse generation of priests since before the Second Vatican Council.

True, the trend in Mass attendance among the young is recent and the absolute numbers are still relatively small. The increase in converts in most places is not enough to compensate for the number of Catholics who are drifting away or dying off. But there is cause for hope, even cautious optimism.

Is the tide turning? God knows. But at this moment in the life of the Church in the United States, providence has given us a pope from our own shores, one who knows us, as it were, from within and from without. An older generation, one which knew more secure in worldly things, less surety in spiritual things, is moving off the scene. Younger generations are looking for solidity and surety amidst liquid modernity.

A Church that proclaims uncertainty to the world will fail to find a hearing. A Church that is humble in her demeanor, gentle in her care for the poor and sinner, yet supremely confident in the liberating truth she has carried through so many centuries, is precisely a Church that can offer what the world is so restless to receive.

Pope Leo XIV begins his pontificate with a tremendous opportunity to lead the Church on this path. God willing he will succeed. And God willing, the Church in the United States will be ready to walk the same path.

AUTHOR

Stephen P. White

Stephen P. White is executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America and a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.