Good Friday, good news, and the young

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 18, 2025

It’s Holy Week. Good Friday, specifically, as I write this. My family and I will be leaving for church as soon as I’m done. For “the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion,” that beautiful 3 pm liturgy that has moved my heart for decades.

It was not always so. I did not grow up attending most of the liturgies of the Sacred Triduum. Or most liturgies at all. We were Christmas-and-Easter Catholics until I was about 16 years of age. It was then, while taking Confirmation classes during high school, while my parents were ending their marriage, that I started attending weekly Mass on my own. It was not a straight line from there to here. There were a few detours along the way. And again, it was not until I was in my 20s that I even became aware of the full Triduum. It was only in my 30s, as a homeschooling dad, that I experienced things like May crownings, Corpus Christi processions, or Benediction for the first time.

Looking back from the perspective of Good Friday 2025, I’m struck by the fact that my parents’ divorce was in the mix. That it may have even been the catalyst, or one of them, for my spiritual journey. There was not a lot of discussion about that sort of nexus when I was a teenager in the 1980s. The closest thing to it that I can recall is a line or two in a Peter Steinfels article in the New York Times, covering Pope St. John Paul II’s 1995 visit to the United States, in which Steinfels mentioned in passing that the Pope’s opposition to divorce is one of the things the young like about him. That we appreciated how the Pope’s message validated our pain when the rest of the culture gaslit us about it. I’m paraphrasing from memory, of course. “Gaslighting” was not a word in the 1990s, not like it is now. But Steinfels’ brief mention stayed with me because it was the only time I ever saw anyone say it.

They’re saying it now. The media lately has been awash with news about young people embracing the faith in response to the chaos they see around them.

A new pew study says “Americans have stopped leaving Christianity,” thanks in part to Gen Z men. The New York Post says “Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse—driven by pandemic, internet, ‘lax’ alternatives.” We’re hearing that there’s an “Extraordinary Resurgence of the Catholic Faith in Britain” and that “Catholics Outnumber Anglicans Two to One Among Gen Z Churchgoers,” that “Young Europeans Are Reclaiming Faith and Tradition,” and that “Many Dioceses See Sharp Growth in Converts to Catholic Faith This Easter.”

In terms of overall numbers, the situation for the Catholic Church is still pretty dire. But something is happening. And I’m struck by how much of it is motivated by the same things that motivated me forty years ago. Click on the links in the previous paragraph and you will note a common theme. There is a class of young people who are repulsed by the direction society has taken and are embracing the only thing that can truly save them.

Or more precisely, the only one who can save them. And the Church he founded. And that is yet more good news on this Good Friday.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.

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• Posted by: Randal Mandock - Apr. 19, 2025 2:26 PM ET USA

  I am a bit concerned for the young converts who are in search of timelessness and tradition. For at least the last decade these anchors have been under attack by the older generation in the Catholic Church. Except for the authorized orders of priests, most pre-Vatican II parish Masses are banned almost everywhere. Innovation in liturgy remains front and center in many, if not most, Novus Ordo parishes. Fortunately, "tradition" is making a resurgence thanks to the new younger priests. Bless them

• Posted by: ewaughok - Apr. 19, 2025 12:41 AM ET USA

  Cor ad cor loquitor