[Julie Steiner]

Yes, this New York Times op-ed portrays young, conservative Catholics as the so-called cool kids. But consider the source. It was written by one of the senior editors of First Things.

Of course Julia Yost would like to think that her social-justice-rejecting brand of Catholicism is trending among the hip and happening.

But the real trend in modern Catholicism is that droves and droves and DROVES of young people, in every neighborhood and demographic of New York—and the world at large—have already abandoned the Church due to:

1) the Church's hypocrisy in imposing strict sexual rules and terrifyingly harsh consequences for breaking them (in this world and the next) on everyone but the child-rapists among its own priests—while it simultaneously acts bewildered that the moral authority it once commanded has been undermined by this "do as I say and not as I do" approach; and

2) the glaring cognitive dissonance between the Good News of compassionate mercy and and the core mission of today's trad Caths: namely, to gain political power so that they can legislate their version of morality, instead of having to preach and persuade, since fewer people will sit still to listen to them anymore (see 1). Trad Caths want to deploy the power of secular government to make sure that women and queers suffer for having sex, and that the rich and comfortable are not too inconvenienced by paying for the needs of the poor and vulnerable.

Frankly, the political goals of the First Things crowd worry me. A lot. But the tiny number of young Catholics in Dimes Square? Don't they seem pretty insignificant, next to the growing number of former Catholics, everywhere?