Here’s an up-to-the-minute oddity of the three intertwined spectra that are American Christianity, American aesthetic culture, and American politics: in some online circles the phrase “adult Catholic convert” has become a proxy for a very specific public expression of a very specific flavor of Catholicism. Namely, a highly-trad aesthetic, a masculinism (recalling, perhaps, the muscular Christianity of an earlier century, politically aligned with evangelical Protestantism, and dismissing the social doctrine of the Church as unimportant or too weak for the moment.
I suppose this is a reaction to J. D. Vance and the publicized parts of his conversion story, combined with his public disagreements with both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV. Regardless of the origin, it seems unfortunate that “cradle Catholic” vs. “adult convert” has become a shorthand used to represent an apparent cultural divide. On the one hand, the mass of ordinary American Catholics, members of a local parish and aligned more or less with the Pope, although they may have personal disagreements with this or that specific teaching. On the other hand, well, to be blunt, American Catholics who identify strongly with MAGA.
It’s not a good proxy, even if there is a newly prominent subset of recent converts that seem to fit the bill. Remember, every year there are plenty of new adult converts who are not extremely online, and lead relatively normal, non-extreme lives, finding their way and figuring it out under your radar. And the cradle set has its own fringe!
A couple of points, though…
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First: Some of this discourse, the calling-out of the Weird Adult Convert, appears to be coming from adults who were raised Catholic but who are currently only loosely attached to the Church. I can’t be sure, but I think I am detecting a sort of… renewal, revival, of Catholic identity? Among people who identified until recently as “raised Catholic” or “former Catholic”, there seem to be some expressions of… well, indignance, that a newbie with a certain political bent appears to be trying to define American Catholicism. It looks to me like people who previously were content to distance themselves from the Church are sitting up and saying: Hey, this guy doesn’t get to say what Catholicism is and who gets to be Catholic. Who does he think he is, the Pope?
I suspect some of these folks are feeling that even if they once walked away, they count as Catholics too, and that their voice matters. They were inculturated in a Catholic community and parish, they have this in common with many, many others, perhaps they went to Catholics school and may have been well catechized, or are still close with devout family members. They may find themselves approving the pastoral priorities of Pope Francis and Pope Leo, and feeling more connected to the Church as a result (and inclined to defend these Popes against their critics). Oh, and by the way, they were baptized into the Church, which means that they are absolutely correct that they count as Catholics too, and that they always will.
Obviously, if there’s a media “feud” between a politician and a Pope, folks who are inclined to dislike the politician will almost reflexively feel themselves drawn to the Pope a bit, and vice versa. This is just human nature. But I would caution people: don’t be too quick to dismiss this movement in people. It is likely to bear fruit somewhere.
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Second, the observers have noticed something true. They are not wrong that there exists, in some Adult Converts, a certain type of…. enthusiasm.
New converts can be excited about their faith. They can be zealous, and it can be their most favorite thing in the world to talk about. Some of them are experiencing being members of a like-minded community for the first time in their lives. Some of them are refugees from strict, high-control religious communities; some have come from a background that was indifferent or hostile to religion. All of them are doing something new. Interesting. Some of them feel like the discoverers of a new land!
It’s a honeymoon. And when honeymooners look at long-married, calmer couples, it might be hard to see the difference between a couple who just go through the motions because the spark has gone out; and a couple who are confident and comfortable and at ease in each other’s company, in belonging to one another, in living a life of deep and quiet, private interconnection.
A good posture to have in the “newbie” position is humility, but… it can take some wisdom and experience even to be aware of that!
Anyway, it’s not unusual and it is very understandable that many new converts want to talk and write about what they’re experiencing and learning. They come from a variety of backgrounds: some not so demonstrative, but many from Protestant denominations where witnessing, testifying, evangelizing are an integral part of the tradition to various degrees. Others are, to put it plainly, nerding out about it (because there’s plenty material to nerd about!). And everyone is trying to figure out what their new life requires of them, sometimes through discussion and argument, with limited experience.
Patience.
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Here’s where I say the equivalent of Ask me how I know, lol. I sometimes feel like I straddle the worlds of adult convert/cradle Catholic. I entered the Church voluntarily, and independent of family influence, at age eighteen: I lack childhood formation, I was not inculturated from birth, I came in from outside. But I was young enough that I still had a great deal of growing up to do; my sense of self and my identity were not fully formed. And yet I thought I knew a great deal.
Coming in with no inculturation meant that I never had any of the harmful formative interactions that some people remember as children: there were no bad catechists, there were no forbidden questions, I never experienced the intense shame some people report about learning to go to Confession or around the development of their sexual awareness. It also meant that when I began parish life, I was bewildered by the variety and diversity of Catholic devotions (and degrees of devotion).
I had a lot to learn. And that learning went on for years, and hasn’t stopped, and I’m confident now that it won’t. Meaning: that over the years I’ve changed my mind about certain things, and I’ve changed the way I speak about things. I don’t think I’ve retreated from doctrinal positions or rejected essential theological truths, though. Most of all I’ve come around to a certain order of priorities, and formed particular opinions about what priorities should matter most in parish life, in a pluralistic society, in religious formation, in evangelization, in public policy.
I have an impression, in my first skim of Magnifica Humanitas, that Pope Leo XIV is in the process of reinforcing my preferred ranking of priorities. What I’m not so sure of, since it’s been a while since I dug into the writings of (say) Benedict XVI, or John Paul II, is whether there’s been a real shift in those priorities during my lifetime. Are my memories of them having different priorities accurate, or were my memories formed more by the American Catholic media, by popular Catholic writers, by regular journalism, or by the writings of other amateurs like me on the Internet? Do I have time to get into that?
Maybe because I don’t expect MH to be very philosophically challenging to me, in the sense of telling me things I’d rather not hear, I find myself wanting to measure my priorities against it and consider what they used to be. If the priorities do align, though, I’m not off the hook. There’s still having to confront whether I actually live in accord with the priorities and truths I hold true. The answer to that? Well, I’ve never known it to be soothing.
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