Mahan McCann

I was raised as an atheist, probably politically like left in terms of like left secular.

That would have been my kind of default operating system for most of my life.

I studied philosophy as an undergrad, briefly probably became an anarchist communist, like far left.

kind of thing but then through that I suppose became you know in the culture war thing that was going on as well a lot of young guys like myself found themselves kind of more going to the right online a lot the end point of that really was becoming a catholic at the age of 31 and getting baptized and I suppose concluding that that was for me the best worldview and ethical system and

That made sense.

I've encountered a number of kind of young people, early 20s, that would be either like reverting to Catholicism or converting.

Maybe they're getting baptized and stuff.

I think for them, there's less baggage probably than other generations.

I mean, I'm kind of like a millennial.

So like millennials, it's about 5% of millennials in Ireland identify as religious.

Whereas for Gen Z, it's almost 20%.

It's much more.

So I think for their generation, maybe it's less baggage.

There's less stigma around it, probably.

They would find communities online.

They might get into people like Father Mike Schmitz or Bishop Barron, and they start to learn from people online and then it comes offline.

So I think what we're seeing is a ripening of a lot of people that encountered this stuff online and then are trying to bring it offline into actual communities.

And that's why I think people get surprised.

Like even my parents' generation are like, why are young people becoming Catholic?

That's so weird.