Our Catholic moment

It delights us to affirm that whether readers who engage with the Register through our website or traditional newspaper in 2026, they will join the ranks of the trendy and uber cool.

Okay. We might be getting a wee bit New Year’s Eve giddy a few days early.

We can, however, soberly say that as a media outlet attached at the spiritual hip to Holy Mother Church, we are part of the latest fashionable wave washing over the wider culture.

Advertisement

Strictly factually, the news of Catholic coolsville comes from the pen of Toronto literary lion Randy Boyagoda, a justifiably noteworthy communicant of the Church of Rome and professor of English at the University of Toronto.

The very fact Boyagoda was able to publish a long opinion column in the Dec. 20 issue of the Globe and Mail headlined “Catholicism is cool again” confirms his thesis. 

When Globe founder George Brown’s historically anti-Papist Orange Order tip sheet permits something good to be said about the Catholic Church, we’ll accord it the credibility normally reserved for angels singing sweet hosannas.

Boyagoda, in fact, points to further convincing evidence of the nouveau fashionability of all things Vatican-aligned: he was recently told at a Toronto dinner party – of all places – that he is lucky to be Catholic.

“This is a phrase I never expected to hear in my adult life,” Boyagoda writes. “Under normal circumstances, I would wait for the punchline.”

Advertisement

No mocking blow landed, though. Esteemed academic that he is, the author of the forthcoming novel Lords of Serendipity set about gathering data to support his inkling that the culture is coming home to Rome.

Among the substantiations:

• The media-noted rapid rise in North American politics of Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, both openly and proudly Catholic, and both with close up and personal stories to tell about Pope Francis. “God only knows, of course, but suffice to say there’s something at work right now in the public life of Catholicism that’s encouraging this kind of attentiveness,” Boyagoda points out.
• The elevation of Leo XIV from ordinary “Bob” of southside Chicago to Cardinal Robert Prevost to the Vicar of Christ on Earth. “He’s still a Chicago guy: a White Sox fan and a devotee of Aurelio’s, a family pizza chain. In interviews, he shares tips for Wordle, which he plays on a daily basis (yes, obviously, religiously).”
• The growing, survey-verified appeal of Catholicism to younger people, especially young men, who are discovering that “being the first generation to try to live without God just…doesn’t work” and that the Church offers something “deeper, ancient and more rich.”
• The literary eminence of “intensely Catholic” writers such as 2023 Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse, and a new biography of William F. Buckley Jr. that reveals “Catholicism, not conservatism, as the most important feature of (Buckley’s) consequential life.”

 All these and others in Boyagoda’s text are points well taken and worth celebrating, although one slightly impertinent question arises: Does this mean people will now stop burning down our churches?

Fashionability can only go so far, after all, in countering the fanatical hatred of the Faith that exists in certain precincts such as, oh, say, Quebec as well as in pockets of the federal political establishment that intend to have our Holy Scriptures deemed hate literature.

And fashion itself is, of course, a flashing warning sign of a dead end to faith. The generational proof is the point in human maturity when we look back at the fashion-dictated costumes our younger selves wore and realize how idiotically ephemeral they were. The euphoria of crowds is, by definition, the antithesis of faith that endures. Having a moment is fine. Eternity? Infinitely better. 

Boyagoda rightly points out it is the Church’s unfailing endurance as the path to eternal life through Christ the distinguishes the pitfalls of mere popularity from the graces of genuine conversion. It requires, he warns, “knowing and accepting, living with” the reality that the Church is full of sinners – if only to avoid the inevitable spiritual discouragement that arises from “romanticizing (it) as some kind of impregnable fortress where you can be kept safe from godless modern living.”

Advertisement

 Those cautions considered, it is great news that Boyagoda’s observations about new-found popular receptivity to the Church’s proclamation of the Good News passed even the Globe and Mail’s editorial sniff test.

It is sufficient cause for us at the Register to say “hip-hip-hooray” and wish our readers a Happy New Year for 2026

A version of this article appeared in the December 28, 2025 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "Our Catholic moment"