It was brisk last weekend in College Station, Texas, but the weather did nothing to deter students from packing into St. Mary’s Catholic Center, which serves Aggie Catholics at Texas A&M. That Saturday night, 61 students were baptized, while another 67, already validly baptized in other Christian denominations, were received into full communion.
This is part of a broader and now well-documented trend. College students across the country are committing their lives to Christ, and many are turning specifically to the Catholic Church. Fox News, a reliable barometer of the national mood among cable news devotees, which I begrudgingly cite, reported that over 90,000 U.S. adults became Catholic in 2024. I was one of them, leaving my Protestant background to join the Roman communion two years ago this Easter.
Make no mistake. Catholicism has become cool. The Free Press declared as much last year. Dioceses are reporting year-over-year conversion increases. The Catholic Standard reports that in 2024, adult baptisms into the Catholic Church reached 34,552, while receptions into full communion totaled 55,453—both figures up significantly from 2023. The Archdiocese of Newark alone received 1,701 individuals this year, a 72 percent increase since 2023. Pew reports that roughly 59 percent of Catholic converts come from Protestant backgrounds. Indeed, all the students I spoke with—whom I did not hand-select but randomly approached—were former Protestants.
But why are so many formerly-Protestant students converting?
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