At a moment when trust in institutions is at historic lows and the public square rewards noise over substance, one question keeps pressing itself forward: What actually produces people of genuine character?
Misryoum newsroom reported that the Catholic Church in America has been working on that question in earnest — not in theory, but in practice. Through programs, communities, and vocations quietly built over decades, the aim has been to form men and women who can contribute to the common good. And the results, at least to those paying attention, are starting to show up.
There’s a surge of adults entering the Church, and—here’s the part that feels hard to fake—people do not convert in meaningful numbers to an institution that has nothing to offer. Something is being offered here, and something is being received. The attention from mainstream media outlets tends toward the performative: Catholicism as aesthetic, as identity marker, as influencer content. It’s like people only notice what’s loud and visible, and miss what’s actually consequential. The real story is quieter. It has been building for years.
Misryoum editorial desk noted some of the clearest examples are also, oddly, some of the least flashy. The Sisters of Life accompany women facing crisis pregnancies with a joy that disarms. The Dominican Sisters of Nashville have grown into one of the largest communities of women religious in the country, attracting young women precisely because they offer a demanding vocation rather than a diluted one. The Dominican Friars, meanwhile, are forming men of intellectual seriousness and apostolic purpose. And in many dioceses across the nation, there are record numbers of young men entering the priesthood.
I keep coming back to that phrase—quietly built—because it’s almost obvious but somehow people forget it. These are not people abandoning the world. They are not scorning it either. They are transforming it, in classrooms and clinics, in parish halls and the spaces where decisions get made. One small real-world detail sticks with me: the faint smell of coffee—burnt a little at the edges—during an early-morning conversation after Mass, when a volunteer was talking about service like it was the simplest thing in the world.
Two programs, in particular, show the lay dimension of this renewal. The Leonine Forum, begun in Washington with Fellowships now in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Denver, cultivates emerging leaders to bring serious moral formation into public and private sectors. The Tepeyac Leadership Initiative, based in Phoenix, forms young Catholic professionals who understand that integrity and excellence reinforce each other. Both rest on a conviction that should resonate beyond any religious audience: durable institutions require people of genuine character, and character requires formation—not just ambition. And it seems like that formation is actually landing.
Meanwhile, a generation of young Catholic professionals is showing up in courtrooms and classrooms, hospital corridors and corporate boardrooms, city councils and think tanks and newsrooms. They are bringing a coherent vision of human dignity and the common good to bear on the actual work of American life. They are not waiting for the culture to become more hospitable. They are engaging it as it is. This is not a narrow sectarian story: the institutions Catholics have built in America include hospitals, universities, charities and legal organizations that have served others regardless of creed.
The legal environment has shifted, too. Recent Supreme Court decisions — Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, Carson v. Makin, Kennedy v. Bremerton and Mahmoud v. Taylor — have substantially restored the ground rules for religious exercise in American public life: churches able to freely direct internal operations, religious schools participating in public programs, individuals free to practice their faith without government reprisal, parents retaining rights over their children’s formation. These are victories for every American who believes a free society requires the freedom to live by one’s deepest convictions.
And then there is Pope Leo XIV — a son of Chicago who spent years as a missionary in Peru. Misryoum editorial team stated he brings to the Chair of Peter a rare combination: fluency in the American democratic tradition and a pastor’s feel for the spiritual hunger of the Western Hemisphere. His pontificate is not a footnote, and—honestly—I like to call this time we are living in “Our Catholic Moment.” The noise in our culture will have its moment. The men and women quietly building, serving, forming the next generation — and the converts who are joining them — will have the century. Or at least, that’s the wager being made. It still feels worth watching.