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By Max Towey
Earlier this month, I went to the 6 PM “young adults” Mass at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, New York City. It’s a mass I’ve attended on and off for several years, but never before had I seen it like this. The church was utterly packed.
There was no special occasion, no feast day – nothing that would explain the crowd. Every seat in the church, including in the lofts, was taken; latecomers were confined to standing in the back or sitting on the stairs going up to the loft.
I was one of those huddled on the stairs (picture below). There were probably a dozen of us there. Everyone on the stairs – like in the rest of the church – was young and looked, for lack of a better term, normal. Maybe even too normal; the guy in front of me was sitting next to two takeout boxes. Those behind me looked like your typical twenty-somethings in lower Manhattan who work hard and play hard. Little did I know they also pray hard.
Three years ago, showing up late to this Mass did not relegate you to the stairs. In fact, you could show up whenever you wanted and still get a seat in pew eight. But not last Sunday – last Sunday, the church looked like a hole-in-the-wall restaurant the weekend after a food influencer posted a viral video. Sitting on the stairs, I kept thinking: Was I going crazy or did this church used to be half-empty?
“Your observations are totally correct,” the priest – the bearded Fr. Boniface from Cincinnati – told me a few days later.
“The numbers are huge and you're not the only person who’s noticed it. The week before, you know, we had another parishioner who works for The New York Post who wants to do a story on the same thing.”
What he told me next stunned me: “Before the pandemic, if we had only 25 people wanting to become Catholics, that was a pretty normal year. Last year we had 46, our biggest. This year, we have 135. And almost all young adults.” A more than fivefold increase in seven years – unbelievable.
Fr. Boniface said it’s not just newcomers: When he arrived at the parish in 2018, the “In Vino Veritas” mixers that followed the young adults mass would draw around 20 people. Now, they draw between 120 and 150. My jaw dropped at this, too. When I shared the numbers to the office later, our head of video, Drew Braaten, joked, “People must be getting sick of run clubs.”
But what is actually driving such a sharp increase in church attendance at St. Joseph’s? After all, the neighborhood around the church has hardly changed since Fr. Boniface arrived. Greenwich Village is still its young, preppy, and stylish self – a far cry from the Greenwich Village where Bob Dylan made his name – and looks just like it did in 2019. So what changed?
And is it just happening at St. Joseph’s, or are young people going back to church everywhere?
In this deep dive, we explore the trend nationwide and report the personal testimonies of Roca community members who have decided to head back to church.
This full report is for Roca Members, who fund our journalism. This week is our Black Friday sale: The complete Roca platinum membership for 50% off! Take advantage of the offer here. After subscribing, you can access all of our articles here!
Editor’s Note
Perhaps you’re reading this article before or after going to church, or perhaps when you could have been going to church. We’re curious to hear from all types of readers, believers and non-believers alike: Why is this change happening? Why have you decided to – or decided not to – pursue a faith? Let us know by replying here.
If you want some more Sunday reading, check out our last five articles:
We received a HUGE number of replies to yesterday’s story on chemtrails. Here’s a selection.
Melody wrote:
Because what the government has done in the past, agent orange, atomic testing, experimental drugs on service members, is there any reason we shouldn't be suspicious of everything we see!?
Tobias from Germany wrote:
How are "Chemtrails" a relevant topic? How is "because Tucker Carlson talked about it" a valid argument to spread conspiracy theories on your outlet, while claiming to conduct journalism. Please be better.
Editor’s Reply: We see a lot of value in searching for the truth in topics that are drawing a lot of attention. The goal of this newsletter is to cut through the noise. People like Tucker introduce noise; we then sift through it so people can make sense of what’s happening. So for that reason, we think this was a great topic to cover.
Daniel wrote:
As a corporate pilot I always tell my conspiracy friends that we have a guarded button that we press to release the chem trails. It's the one called Dump (It dumps the cabin pressurization) and we press it according to a specific schedule on a small piece of paper (navlog). In reality we do none of that. But I know that if I tried to explain contrails or tell them we don't have a button to control the weather they wouldn't believe me. I've learned from a lot of my heavy conspiracy riddled friends that it's not so much the conspiracy itself. Instead it's the lack of trust in anything above them and they want to be on the fringe and feel like they know something others don't. They don't want to feel like sheep and they're clawing for control of anything they can. For big podcasters it's all for clicks, views, money, power, fame, etc. Often times these people aren't looking into any facts that make sense. They go to that one article at the bottom of Google that agrees with them, or worse, 4chan, and get their facts from there. The amount of people looking for real truth anymore are far and few between. I used to believe the moon landing was fake, but thanks to your facts and some more research on it I've changed my mind. I still think JFK was a set up though 😉
That’s all for today. Thank you for reading and writing in. We’ll be back tomorrow with a deep-dive on Marjorie Taylor Greene!
–Max and Max
