The under-the-radar growth of Catholic commitment

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jun 13, 2025

“It’s happening again this year. It happens every year.”

That’s how I opened a post that appeared in this space two years ago. Sure enough, it’s happening this year too.

It begins right after Ash Wednesday, when we begin to notice some new faces in the congregation at the little chapel where we attend the early-morning Mass on weekdays. Many of the same faces show up throughout Lent, and when Easter arrives, more than a few continue to come to daily Mass. So bit by bit, the congregation grows.

When we first began attending Mass daily at this chapel, we could expect maybe a dozen people, on average, at the early Mass. Now the congregation usually numbers over 20, and empty pews are hard to find.

Yes, I know; these are tiny numbers, in just one little rural town. But as I observed in another piece on the same topic, posted here three years ago:

It’s been nearly 40 years now since I made the commitment to try to get to Mass every day. We’ve moved a few times since then, and my job schedule has changed several times, so that over the years I’ve been “one of the regulars” in eight different churches or chapels. At every stop along the way, I’ve seen a steady increase in the number of people at daily Mass.

We all know the statistics about the decline in Sunday Mass attendance: the steady downward spiral, stretching out for decades, in most of the Western world. But if my experience is not atypical, there is another trend, less often noticed: a steady increase in the number of Catholics making a special effort to attend Mass daily.

By the way, in our little chapel, the new faces that began to appear during Lent were disproportionately youthful. (And I don’t mean simply people younger than me; I mean teenagers.) Again I realize that I am commenting on a very small sample, in a community with an unusual proportion of committed Catholic families. Still when I look at the news from other places around the world, I see evidence of the same phenomenon. At Easter this year, dioceses in England and France and Australia and Ireland and Canada and the US reported record numbers of adult conversions—with young adults leading the way in most cases.

Today’s CWN headlines include a report on a Gallup survey with another suggestions of a subtle trend. Most Americans, the poll found, think that the influence of religious faith is in decline. No surprise there. But wait. Last year 72% of respondents said that religion was in decline; this year the number dropped to 59%. At the same time, the number of people who saw religious influence on the rise jumped from 20% to 32%.

Those figures match what I am seeing. Most Americans think that religious faith is losing public influence, and no wonder: they see the decline in public piety; they see the shrinking congregations. Insofar as they are watching the Catholic Church, they see the continued decline in Sunday Mass attendance. The overall statistics look grim. But they don’t see the small but steady growth in the number of Catholics making a special commitment to the faith. They don’t see the figures on new adult conversions. They aren’t noticing the emergence of what then-Cardinal Ratzinger famously termed a “creative minority” of dedicated faithful Catholics. Yet some people are noticing, and their number grows every year. Which is, come to think of it, the result that Cardinal Ratzinger predicted.

“It’s happening again this year. It happens every year.”