Category: Catholic Church
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Nativity hijacked by woke priest — archbishop sends thoughts and prayers
Instead of the usual Nativity scene this time of year, St. Susanna Catholic Church in Dedham, Massachusetts, featured something far less Christmasy: a sign reading “ICE was here.” Rather than celebrate the joy of the Incarnation, the pastor, Fr. Stephen Josoma, wanted to suggest that Jesus and His family had been abducted by federal agents and couldn’t make it to Bethlehem.
To be fair, this year’s stunt was tame compared with the church’s 2018 display, when the infant Jesus appeared — in a cage. Back then, the leftist narrative insisted that Trump’s “goons” were snatching innocent immigrant families and throwing their kids in cages while deporting the parents.
Fr. Josoma is at least forthright. The pro-immigration bishops, by contrast, wrap their open-borders stance in warm, fuzzy language about ‘compassion’ and ‘Christian charity.’
When complaints poured in, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston offered mild disapproval and asked that the display be removed. One wonders what he would do if a priest used the Nativity to condemn transgenderism — perhaps a bubble of Mary saying, “It’s a boy!” and baby Jesus responding, “Of course I am.” Would the archbishop quietly distance himself again, or would he move to defrock the priest by morning?
The bishops’ real position
By now, it’s no secret that many Catholic bishops share Fr. Josoma’s immigration politics. Their public statements this year made that obvious: endless denunciations of border enforcement and deportations and near-total silence on the humanitarian crises created by Biden’s failed border policies — including the disappearance of some 400,000 migrant children, many of whom ended up in forced labor and sex trafficking.
Pope Leo XIV has only magnified this confusion. Though he recently muttered a few words denying he supports open borders, his actions and rhetoric signal the opposite. He consistently encourages mass migration into the West, especially from the poorer regions of the Global South.
Passive-aggressive rhetoric
All this might be tolerable if it weren’t so passive-aggressive. Fr. Josoma is at least forthright. The pro-immigration bishops, by contrast, wrap their open-borders stance in warm, fuzzy language about “compassion” and “Christian charity.” They never explicitly endorse illegal mass migration, but every message they send clearly communicates support for it.
Worse, they frame the debate as a false dilemma: either welcome millions from the Third World with open arms and open wallets, or turn everyone away and treat them like garbage. In their telling, unrestricted immigration is Christian charity; any attempt at regulation is moral failure. Like the Good Samaritan caring for the mugging victim, Americans are told to fund luxury-hotel stays and generous entitlements for ex-convicts from Haiti.
Little is said about the profound cultural and social challenges posed by non-Christian mass migration. Western Europe’s experience with Muslim migration is well-documented: spikes in crime, poverty, and urban decay.
In the United States, Muslim and Hindu migrants increasingly form self-segregated enclaves, complete with their own customs and sometimes their own informal legal norms — communities where Christian Americans are outsiders in their own towns.
Some progressive Christians claim this is an opportunity for evangelization. Yet no one in the church seems interested in actually evangelizing. Instead the faithful are browbeaten to be more “accommodating,” while bishops host endless interfaith dialogues with leaders who preach backward belief systems fundamentally at odds with liberal democracy.
Follow the money trail
Why then have bishops embraced such a self-destructive position? Two reasons stand out.
First, many bishops are simply committed leftists. Under Pope Francis — for most of the woke era — this meant preaching climate dogma and celebrating the LGBTQ agenda. Under Pope Leo, it means promoting open borders and a global welfare regime. The ideology changes, but the political alignment remains.
Second, mass migration pays. State and federal governments funnel enormous sums to Catholic NGOs for immigrant resettlement. “Caring for the stranger” has become a lucrative business. Vice President JD Vance, himself a Catholic, was blunt when he said much of the bishops’ outrage at border enforcement comes down to the billions of dollars at stake.
By shutting the border and deporting illegal migrants, the Trump administration is threatening a revenue stream.
Lingering hypocrisy
For conservative Catholics, the bishops’ partisan protests have become intolerable — especially after their submissiveness during COVID. Having failed as shepherds when it mattered most, they still presume they possess the moral authority to demand open borders forever.
It feels reminiscent of the Catholic Church’s reaction to the Black Death. As Barbara Tuchman recounts in her excellent history of the 14th century, the Catholic Church ramped up the sale of indulgences to replenish its coffers after the plague. Revenue rose. Respect collapsed. The peasant uprisings that followed eventually swelled into a continent-wide revolt that split Christianity.
Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Today’s immigration racket is unlikely to cause that level of destruction, but it is still a serious problem. Younger Catholics — anyone not a Baby Boomer — now tune out the clergy’s homilies about “harsh treatment” of migrants. They know it isn’t true. The Catholic Church in America is already as diverse and welcoming as a religious institution can be.
I was reminded of this recently at a Mass celebrating the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The only service I could attend was the evening Spanish Mass. Among Filipinos, Vietnamese, Latinos, Tejanos, and a handful of fellow gringos, I listened to our Indian priest celebrate the liturgy in Spanish, accompanied by a choir singing mariachi-styled hymns.
Nothing about this scene matched the bishops’ narrative of a hostile, unwelcoming Catholic Church. Perhaps if more of them bothered to attend or celebrate such a Mass, they would drop the sanctimonious posturing and address real problems.
That alone would be a welcome Christmas gift.
Packed churches, skyrocketing conversions: Is New York undergoing a Catholic renaissance?
The years-long trend of American de-Christianization recently came to an end, with the Christian share of the U.S. population stabilizing at roughly six in ten Americans, according to Pew Research Center data. Of the 62% of adults who now identify as Christians, 40% are Protestants, 19% are Catholics, and 3% belong to other Christian denominations.
There are signs in multiple jurisdictions pointing to something greater than a mere stabilization under way — at least where the Catholic Church is concerned.
The New York Post recently found that multiple New York City Catholic parishes have not only seen a spike in conversions but their churches routinely fill to the brim. That’s likely good news for the Archdiocese of New York, which was found in a recent Catholic World Report analysis to have been among the 10 least fruitful dioceses in 2023 in terms of baptism, conversion, seminarian, and wedding rates.
‘We’ve got a real booming thing happening here.’
Fr. Jonah Teller, the Dominican parochial vicar at Saint Joseph’s in Greenwich Village, told the Post that the number of catechumens enrolled in his parish’s Order of Christian Initiation of Adults for the purposes of conversion has tripled since 2024, with around 130 people signing up.
Over on the Upper East Side, St. Vincent Ferrer has seen its numbers double since last year, jumping to 90 catechumens. The Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral has reportedly also seen its numbers double, ballooning to around 100 people. The Diocese of Brooklyn doubled its 2023 numbers last year when it welcomed 538 adults into the faith and expects the numbers to remain high again this year.
Attendance in New York City reportedly skyrocketed in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was apparently attending mass with his Catholic wife, Erika, and their children.
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Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images
“We’re out of space and exploring adding more masses,” Fr. Daniel Ray, a Catholic Legionary priest in Manhattan, told the Post. “We’ve got a real booming thing happening here, and it’s not because of some marketing campaign.”
While a number of catechumens cited Kirk’s assassination as part of what drove them to the Catholic Church, others cited a a desire for a life- and family-strengthening relationship with God; a desire to partake in the joy observed in certain devout Catholics; a desire for community; a desire for “guardrails”; and a desire for anchorage and meaning in a chaotic world where politics has become a substitute for faith.
“My generation is watching things fall apart,” Kiegan Lenihan, a catechumen in the OCIA at St. Joseph’s told the Post. “When things all seem to be going wrong in greater society, maybe organized religion isn’t that bad.”
Lenihan, a 28-year-old software engineer, spent a portion of his youth reading the works of atheist intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. After experiencing an anxiety-induced crisis at school, he apparently sought out something of greater substance, devouring the works of Marcus Aurelius. He found that his life still lacked greater meaning despite achieving material success.
‘The Catholic Church is a place of sanity.’
“I realized on paper, I had everything I wanted, but I had no fulfillment in my soul,” said Lenihan, who remedied the problem by turning to Christ.
Liz Flynn, a 35-year-old Brooklyn carpenter who is in OCIA at Old St. Patrick’s, previously sought relief for her anxiety and depression in self-help books and dabbled in “pseudo spiritualism.”
After finding a book about God’s unconditional love for his children in a gift shop during a road-trip stop at Cracker Barrel, she began praying the rosary and developed an appreciation for Catholicism.
“I’m happier and calmer than I’ve ever been,” Flynn told the Post. “Prayer has made an enormous impact on my life.”
New York City is hardly the only diocese enjoying an explosion in conversions.
The National Catholic Register reported in April that numerous dioceses across the country were seeing substantial increases in conversions. For instance:
- the Diocese of Cleveland was on track to have 812 converts at Easter 2025 — 50% more than in 2024 and about 75% more than in 2023;
- the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas, expected 56% more converts in 2025 (607) than in 2024 (388);
- the Diocese of Marquette, Michigan, was expected to see a year-over-year doubling of conversions;
- the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, was expected to see a 59% year-over-year increase;
- the Diocese of Grand Island, Nebraska, was set for a 45% increase;
- the Diocese of Steubenville, Ohio, was expecting a 39% increase in converts; and
- the Archdiocese of Los Angeles noted a 44% increase in adult converts.
Besides the Holy Spirit, the conversions were attributed to the National Eucharistic Revival, immigration, and evangelization.
Pueblo Bishop Stephen Berg told the Register that people are flocking to the church because it stands as a bulwark against the madness of the age.
“I think the perception of the Catholic Church is changing,” said Bishop Berg. “In a world of insanity, I think that people are noticing that the Catholic Church is a place of sanity.”
“For 2,000 years, you know, through a lot of turbulent times — and the Church has been through turbulent times — we still stand as the consistent teacher of the faith of Christ,” continued Berg. “The people are intrigued by that.”
As of March, 20% of Americans described themselves as Catholics, putting the number of Catholic adults at around 53 million nationwide.
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