I have my rosary hanging from the rear view mirror of my 2010 Ford F-150.
I will admit that it’s truly baffling to me that the northeast, the most politically liberal area of our country, is also our most heavily Catholic region, yet our good friends on the left love to spend their time bashing Catholics. It kind of makes me wonder just how actually Catholic they are.
Our 46th President was famously Catholic, attending Mass frequently, but he nevertheless supported but he prenatal infanticide, including wanting the federal government to pay for abortions including helping to pay for women in states which ban abortions to travel to states which do not, homosexuality, transgenderism, including overturning bans on transgender surgeries for minors, all things which the Church says are sins. Under his Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was surveilling “radical traditionalist Catholics,” due to the alleged:
probability that policy issues of mutual interest to RMVEs (Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists) and RTE (Radical-Traditionalist Catholics) adherents will remain in the public spotlight. Catalyzing events in which RMVEs and RTC adherents might have common cause include legislation or judicial decisions in areas such as abortion rights, immigration, affirmative action, and LBGTQ protections.
After this was exposed, FBI Director Christopher Wray lied through his scummy teeth as to the extent of the program.
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported, undoubtedly to their discomfort, that “Catholicism is growing in Philly and New Jersey. Who’s filling the pews? Local diocese officials are confirming what’s becoming a global trend: more people are converting or coming back to Catholicism.”
That would undoubtedly appall the very lovely Jennifer Palmeiri, once Hillary Clinton’s director of communications, caught in this exchange when Mrs Clinton’s campaign e-mails were hacked and disclosed by Wikileaks:
Center For American Progress fellow John Halpin: Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) …they must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations.
Miss Palmieri: I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.
That was then, and this is now, where we come to Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, by Vice President J D Vance.
by Steve Contorno | Monday, June 15, 2026
When JD Vance published his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016, he had drifted away from the Christian faith of his childhood — a familiar story amid a broader national retreat from organized religion that had left church pews emptier than in previous decades.
Now, Vance as vice president — and likely 2028 presidential contender — is a practicing Catholic, a conversion he has chronicled in his second book, “Communion,” publishing Tuesday. And it’s landing on bookshelves amid a remarkable turnaround: Catholicism is, by some measures, experiencing a resurgence in the United States unlike anything in recent memory.
An American-born pope presides over the Vatican the first time in the church’s history. While Catholicism still faces long-term demographic struggles, conversions are surging, with some dioceses reporting record highs. Accounts of Gen Z converts filling church pews have injected new energy into the 2,000-year-old religion and have surprised even Catholic leaders who had long braced for continued decline.
I note, with some amusement, that the CNN article did not include a link to Mr Vance’s book. I am not particularly surprised.
St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, where I attend Mass. Photo by D R Pico.
My small parish, St Elizabeth’s, is too small to be statistically significant, but we have seen that new energy as well. We have a couple and another man coming in as
catechumens, and two new already Catholic families, along with another man, have moved in as well. For a small parish, in a small county, in an area of the country with few Catholics, it’s noticeable.
“Rather than doing the JFK thing and saying, ‘I’m not going to be a Catholic president,’ (Mr Biden said), ‘If I’m elected president, here is how my Catholic faith will inform my presidency,’” (Terry Schilling, the founder of American Principles Project) said.
President Biden’s Catholic faith didn’t inform his presidency very much it would seem. Rather, Mr Biden, like so many other elected Catholic Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, found that being a Democrat was far, far, far more important to them than being Catholic.
Polling shows that Catholics are moving in the direction of those who identify as evangelicals by becoming more conservative. Trump won 59% of Catholics in 2024, according to CNN exit polls, higher than any Republican presidential nominee since at least 1972. New converts and recently ordained priests and nuns also appear to be considerably more conservative than those born into the religion and older clergy, said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at the Washington University Center on Religion and Politics.
You mean, Catholics are becoming more Catholic? That’s what we need to see!
We are seeing the weirdness of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate from the Lone Star State, and a Presbyterian Church USA seminarian, telling us that he is a devout Christian, but he supports prenatal infanticide, using the story of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) as a supposedly Christian argument for it, supports “trans children”, and The Advocate, a ‘magazine’ which supports homosexuality and transgenderism, has said the candidate “has positioned himself as a fierce queer ally, even using the Bible to advocate in favor of LGBTQ+ rights.” With that kind of idiocy oozing from a supposedly Protestant Christian church, we need more men like Vice President Vance to argue and testify for the truth.
