Will Bishops Give the Surge of Catholics Ephesus—or the City of Man?

Mr Wells asks the question, "How are the Bishops going to receive the waves of new Catholics who are seeking Tradition and the fullness of the Faith?"?

From Crisis

By Kevin Wells

For young people, “dialogue”—U.S. bishops’ favorite buzzword—has become an eight-letter vulgarity. They’ve been choked, nearly to death, by the drowning tide of moral pus—the dialogue-minefields of LGBTQ+, BLM, and DEI, etc.—while few bishops helped them to break the surface.

A recent reading from the Acts of the Apostles brought back the memory of an image from a book of stories I used to pull from the blue bookshelf in my childhood bedroom.

It showed a small village in a valley, hemmed in by a cashmere blanket of green mountains. A handful of shops, a white-steepled church, and a dozen or so homes rested by a lake fed by a brook that zigzagged down a mountain. On a hill in the distance, a locomotive chugged along, passing by a few tidy homes that clung to the mountainside.

But it was the children and adults, lingering beneath that wide blue sky, who drew me in. I remember longing to be them, to belong to that peaceful place. In my imagination, I had already chosen my home on the hillside—where I had become the boy waving at the passing train.

It was this warming image that returned with Luke’s description (Acts 2:42–47) of the rhythm of life among the early disciples. He portrays a community in harmony, one that prayed, dined, and labored happily side by side. Just after Jesus’ crucifixion and Resurrection, they were “breaking bread,” elbow to elbow, in their homes, and worshiping as one in what were the first celebrations of the Sacrifice of the Mass.

“Awe came upon everyone,” Luke records. “And many wonders and signs were done through the apostles…every day the Lord added to their number.”

During a time of martyrdom, the Church grew. Over the past few decades, the Roman Catholic Church has erased from its number tens of millions of its flock. The mortal side of the Catholic Church has failed, in a catastrophic dimension, to end—or at least slow down—the hemorrhaging faithful.

This reflection is about the unexpected surge—the many thousands of 18- to 30-year-olds entering the Catholic Church, diocese after diocese, this past Easter. This influx of converts feels like a regenerative miracle of an awakening, an underserved grace given to a reeling Catholic Church at precisely the right moment in time.

Before speculating on what I believe is behind this spike (much of my guesswork is from conversations with my three children, who fit this demographic), I’d like to take you far, far away from April 22, 2026. I want to take you by the hand into the ancient port city of Ephesus on April 22, A.D. 33, just weeks following Christ’s crucifixion, when He still walked the earth.

Church scholars and patristics have discovered that the Aegean city of Ephesus, in what is now Turkey, included a flourishing population of retired Roman soldiers who had settled there after campaigns on distant frontiers. During the reign of Emperor Tiberius, around A.D. 33, many of these legionaries were granted generous tracts of land overlooking the sea and the sunlit hills on the far edge of the empire as a reward for their service.

These former centurions and soldiers were still relatively young, many having completed their service before the age of forty. Disciplined, practical, and educated, they brought order to the untamed land and laid out well-proportioned fields of wheat and neat rows of grapevines, alongside figs, vegetables, and racks of raisins beneath the Mediterranean sun.

They enjoyed other blessings as well: the nearby coast yielded a steady abundance from the sea and opened maritime routes for trade with Greece and Rome. Wild boar ranged across the surrounding hills, providing both sport and dinner feasts. And with few threats of invasion—and a city of soldiers to meet anyone who dared—they were well equipped to defend their small piece of earthly paradise.

Meanwhile, relieved wives took comfort in knowing their husbands would no longer be sent to war. Homes were kept in good order, porches neatly broom-swept. As the men worked the fields, their sons and daughters played happily in the valleys and hills.

This harmony, of course, was of human making. The one true God, and this Jesus still walking the earth, was not known.

And yet, even in an entirely pagan land, Ephesus was one of the healthiest and most restful places in the world.

Then something happened. The apostle Paul visited around A.D. 52. Perhaps because the Ephesians had order and reason, they were able to patiently listen to and receive Paul’s words. These old soldiers and their families understood sacrifice; so when Paul shared the noble tales of Jesus Christ, who had welcomed death to become their Savior, the soldiers’ pagan hearts brimmed over with a new kind of emotion. Paul had come to love the Ephesians so much that he returned for an extended stay a few years later.

Shortly after Paul’s second visit, the two whom Jesus loved most—His Mother and the Beloved John—arrived from the East. It is not difficult to imagine these converted soldiers regarding John and the aging Mother as a kind of two-person army, the vanguard who had refused to abandon Christ at Golgotha. To them, these two were living heirlooms of the Cross, perhaps recalling the story they were told from one of their own—the marveling centurion, Longinus.

It was through Paul, John, and the Mother of Jesus that Ephesus came to know the Gospel as well as any community in the world. Pagan Ephesus had taken on a sacred ordering, reshaped into something resembling a City of God. And can’t you see why?

Can you not picture, in your mind’s eye, the Mother of God seated beside a night fire, warming soldiers’ hearts with stories of Joseph’s quiet courage on the road to Bethlehem and then softening the hearts of their wives as she spoke of the reverence with which Joseph guarded her purity?

Can you not see wide-eyed children gathered close as Mary spoke of the miracles of her Son—and of how He grew in strength and wisdom in the hidden years? Can you see the sorrow in their faces as she recounted His Passion, and then their sudden light when Mary told them that Jesus had stepped from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, passing through death itself, just to save them?

At Mary’s dormition, perhaps it was the children who mourned her the most. The light in Mary’s eyes became the light in their own. It was a light that had permeated their hearts, and they carried that light with them as they left their childhood homes to proclaim the kerygma throughout the world.

What is Catholic Growth?

It is these Ephesian children I am thinking of now, as I often find myself these days thinking of the wide-eyed, new young Catholic adults. I wonder what it is they hope to find in the Roman Catholic Church? I imagine they’re seeking something like Ephesus: a sacred and peaceful home, in much the same way I saw a type of Ephesus in that storybook village all those years ago.

I wonder if bishops and clergy understand what they’ve abruptly inherited? It seems to me that they’ve been given a divinely-orchestrated invasion of many thousands of new Catholics eager to live for God alone. Do clergy understand the significance of this miracle; do they feel its weight?

Even more, do they feel the urgency to respond? Do they even know how?

These questions, and those like them, are the most pressing ones in the Roman Catholic Church today. Everything else, by comparison, is secondary.

Young Catholics thirst for a life nourished by the Blood of Christ poured into their souls. They’ve raced into the arms of Holy Mother Church because they had been left as orphans by a disordered world.

Do bishops know?

Of late, it doesn’t seem so. On behalf of these zealous new Catholics, I will propose a few things that may lay in their hearts.

This new wave of Easter Catholics doesn’t want Church leaders going on 60 Minutes to speak dogmatically about ICE, war, or immigration policy. They saw Trump’s Easter post—“A whole civilization will die tonight”—as clumsy bluster, not a literal threat to end Iran forever. They view the pope’s and bishops’ dire response as an overreach that casts him as something far more extreme than intended and that, instead of being “a master of war,” he’s just an imperfect orator often unable to master his messaging.

I have to imagine every single one of these new Catholics hopes Pope Leo XIV ends his dialogue with Trump.

The misfortune synodal-minded bishops and clergy in the United States have found themselves with is that today’s young Catholics see through a different set of eyes, almost as if a supernatural vision guides them to determine whether something is true or tinny, meat or thin gruel.

Their souls and consciences have not been numbed by warmed-over catechesis, weak preaching, or repackaged presentations of Christ. These new Catholics do not care about synods; they have come into the faith through the teachings of the Church Doctors, Scripture, and undiluted teaching. They desire to advance in prayer, virtue, and holiness.

Many of these new Catholics have returned to the way that the Church’s early believers lived, like those in Ephesus, and are seeking the face of God through contemplative prayer. Because their souls are ordered by God, they sense what is performative and what is real.

But perhaps most importantly for U.S. bishops and clergy, these new Catholic adults have fallen in love with the saints and martyrs; they are habitually ordered to do hard things for God.

One more thing: this new set of Catholics abhors the empty-vessel term they heard over and over from the mouths of U.S. bishops last week—dialogue. They’ve run out of patience for bishops who seek common ground with a type of Islamist who burns homosexuals to death and pushes them off tall buildings.

For them, “dialogue”—U.S. bishops’ favorite buzzword—has become an eight-letter vulgarity, the world’s most toothless word. They abhor it. Why? For the past decade, they’ve been choked, nearly to death, by the drowning tide of moral pus—the dialogue-minefields of LGBTQ+, BLM, and DEI, etc.—while few bishops helped them to break the surface.

Thankfully, these young Catholics hold no grudges. This set doesn’t expect much; they desire little more than God alone.

Although these new Catholics likely saw value in Pope Leo’s apostolic journey to Africa, many may wonder about its purpose, or the reason for what might be considered excessive deference to Muslim clerics and mosque leaders, near places where radical Muslims kill Catholics for sport. Because they are becoming infused by Christ, they see things for what they are; they see performative gestures and dialogue for what they are—methods unlikely to convert a single Muslim soul.

So, what did these young Catholic adults hope for from the Holy Father in Africa? This, perhaps: an event similar to what unfolded in Africa in 1219, when St. Francis of Assisi crossed enemy lines during the Fifth Crusade with a goal to stand before the ruler of Egypt, Sultan Malik al-Kamil. Francis had a singular aim: he wanted to convert the sultan to the one true Catholic Faith.

St. Bonaventure described the meeting:

The sultan asked them by whom and why and in what capacity they had been sent…Francis replied that they had been sent by God, not by men, to show him and his subjects the way of salvation and proclaim the truth of the Gospel message. …When the sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage, he listened.

Although the sultan did not convert, he revered the poor man in rough garments willing to risk his life to proclaim Jesus and to convert him to Catholicism. To honor his sincerity and bravery, the sultan permitted Francis to preach for several days in his court. He offered Francis gifts, but Francis refused, saying that his mission was not for material gain but to proclaim Jesus Christ alone.

A decision must be made by the spiritual leaders of the Church. How will clergy choose to nourish the souls of this clear-eyed flock of young adults?

It seems to be a matter of mystagogy; will our shepherds give them the tinny Kingdom of Man? Or will they become their handholds, ones who will lead them, with courage and conviction, into something like Ephesus—where the path to the City of God will assuredly be fraught with crosses, where danger lies in every shadow?

But isn’t this the only way there?