Thoughts on Commencement Exercises

 I spent this past weekend in Omaha attending graduations. The one on Saturday was for our middle granddaughter, from eighth grade. The one on Sunday morning was for our oldest granddaughter, from high school. 

I am so proud of the girls and their classmates. They have worked so hard to get to this point. Both graduated with honors. I know the 8th grader has four more years, but it is an end and a beginning. She will be changing schools, and some of her friends and classmates will be going to different high schools. For the senior girl, she'll be starting college in the fall. She'll do fine, but it's a bigger change. A lot of decisions to make as far as majors and career aspirations.

I had a good time with family (my husband had caught a cold and stayed home). My son and daughter in law had an informal reception for the girls at their house on Saturday afternoon, with cake and snacks. I got to meet a lot of their friends. 

Now I'm going to vent a little about what the adults who plan commencements need to learn.  Homilies and speeches need to be brief and to the point. And there needs to not be too many of them. The high school graduation was on Sunday morning. It was a Catholic high school, so they had a Mass, which was appreciated, so they didn't make people miss Mass to attend the graduation. But the guest homilist did go on and on. And it was in a gym, so everyone but the parents, faculty, and students were crammed into the bleachers. After Mass were the actual graduation ceremonies. There was a speech by the principal. And of course one by the salutatorian, and the valedictorian. And another by the principal. When it was all over, everyone clapped madly. Because they were glad it was over.

The eighth grade graduation was in a church, no one had to cram into bleachers. And only one speech in addition to the homily ( which could have been briefer). But things were lower key, which was a good thing.

A brief springtime thought

I ran across this passage in an essay by Mary Harrington in First Things.  It's not the main point of her essay but sort of an elaboration of her main point (which is about using Aquinas as a philosophical starting point to stand against what she sees as some of the technocratic excesses of our present age).  But I offer this passage as a standalone occasion for contemplation:

I am indebted to the classical scholar Spencer Klavan for explaining to me that ancient Hebrew does not uses tenses as does modern English.  So where the English version says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," Klavan offers as an English approximation: "At the origin: God, creating heaven and earth."  In other words, a work of creation brings things into being, but it is also always active, and always complete.  Just so!  I look around me at the world springing back to life after winter, and it is easy to see at the origin God, creating heaven and creating earth.  Creating form and creating matter.

Every spring, the Resurrection, a historical event which happened many hundreds of years ago, becomes more manifest to me when I see the tulips thrusting through the greening earth, and the lilacs blossoming on the bush in our backyard.  Even the "helicopters" gyrating from the heights of our maple tree.

Public Health Preparedness

By now we have all heard of the outbreak of Hanta virus on a Dutch cruise ship.  In a way it is a kind of fire drill for how well we are prepared for an outbreak of a contagious disease.  The disease isn't particularly contagious, and it is "mostly" spread by rodents.  However it is serious and lethal, with a fatality rate of nearly 50%. And it has affected some American citizens. And it is the Andes strain, which can be transmitted person to person, though it requires close contact, and doesn't appear to spread through the air like Covid. 

There is a good discussion in an interview on The Bulwark with epidemologist, Katelyn Jetalina:

Why is the CDC Silent About the Hantavirus Outbreak? (w/ Katelyn Jetelina)

SAINT JOSEPH THE WORKER HYMNS

 Today is the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker.  My middle name is Joseph.  My father was a worker which is called techne in Greek and applies to workers in any material trade, steel workers such as my father as well as carpenter. I find some very interesting recent hymns on one website

Saint Joseph Hymn | Patron of Workers & Families 

| Healing & Protection | Feast Day Hymn |

Voice of Grace – Saints, Scripture & Sacred Songs

  

Saint Joseph Hymn | Guardian of Holy Family | 

Feast Day | March 19 | Powerful Catholic Devotional

Voice of Grace – Saints, Scripture & Sacred Songs

Saint. Joseph, Patron of Workers Hymn |

 A Prayer Song for Every Worker | St. Joseph, Bless Every Worker

Voice of Grace – Saints, Scripture & Sacred Songs

CARA on Catholic Conservative Republicans

 The Cooperative Election Study (CES) is the largest academic survey focused on American elections. Since 2006, the study has interviewed more than a half-million Americans to capture their views on contemporary policy debates, their engagement in political and social life, and their vote choices in federal and state elections. The study is a collaborative enterprise partially funded by the National Science Foundation and involving the participation of hundreds of scholars and students across dozens of academic institutions across the country. 

CARA analyzed the data from the CES. 

In 2026, we are finally at a point where we can confidently report survey findings about the youngest (and oldest) American Catholic adult generations. To do so we use the Pew Research Center’s generational year definitions. The youngest, Gen-Z were born between 1997 and 2012, however we can only “see” those born 1997 to 2006 in current adult survey data (i.e., ages 18 and older). It’s with these youngest Catholics that there seems to be the greatest interest in data. 

How Democratic or Republicans are Catholics by Generation? 

How Conservative or Liberal are Catholics by Generation?

ADULT CATHOLICS	ALL	SILENT	BOOMERS	GEN-X	MILLENIALS	GEN-Z
REPUBLICAN	24	21	25	26	24	19
NEITHER	43	52	44	42	41	45
DEMOCRAT	33	27	32	31	36	36
CONSERVATIVE OR VERY	29	52	36	31	21	16
SOMEWHAT CONSERVATIVE	12	9	14	12	11	10
MIDDLE OF ROAD/UNSURE	34	20	30	35	36	45
SOMEWHAT LIBERAL	10	8	8	8	12	11
LIBERAL OR VERY LIBERAL	15	11	12	13	20	19

CARA answers

Overall, in 2024, adult Catholics were 33% Democrat, 24% Republican, and 43% independent, affiliated with some other political party, or were unsure of their party affiliation. Gen-Z Catholics were a bit more Democratic (36%) and a bit less Republican (19%). The most Republican segment of Catholics were Baby Boomers (25%) and Gen-X (26%). All generations were more likely to be Democrats than Republicans and all have a plurality who do not affiliate with either major party.

Party affiliation is only half of the story. Overall, Catholics tend to be more conservative than liberal when describing their political ideology. I have often described the median Catholic voter is a center-right Democrat and we can see the Catholic vote shift from Democrats to Republicans and back over time. Forty-one percent either describe themselves as very conservative, conservative, or somewhat conservative compared to the 25% who say they are very liberal, liberal, or somewhat liberal. Broken down by generation, there is a distinct pattern where we can see older Catholics being more conservative and younger Catholics less so. However, rather than liberals supplanting conservatives among younger Catholics it is more likely that they identify as middle of the road or not sure of their political ideology.

CARA on AI

Nineteen Sixty-four is a research blog for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University edited by Mark M. Gray. CARA is a non-profit research center that conducts social scientific studies about the Catholic Church. Founded in 1964, CARA has three major dimensions to its mission: to increase the Catholic Church's self understanding; to serve the applied research needs of Church decision-makers; and to advance scholarly research on religion, particularly Catholicism. 

I wondered if they had anything to say about media reports that the number of people participating in OCIA had greatly increased.

Are people flocking to Catholicism in the US?

Conclusion

So, are people flocking to Catholicism in the United States?

The available data do not yet allow us to answer that question definitively. What they do show is a more nuanced and interesting picture than either optimism or skepticism alone would suggest.

After years of steady decline prior to the pandemic, total entries into the Church returned to their expected trajectory by 2022 and then exceeded that trajectory in 2023 and 2024. Whether this reflects delayed participation during COVID or the beginning of a new pattern remains uncertain.

At the diocesan level, the story is uneven. Some dioceses appear to be experiencing something genuinely distinctive, while others look much as they have for years. Differences in population size, demographics, and institutional structure all shape what entry patterns look like on the ground.

When the 2025 data are finally released, they will matter not because they confirm a headline, but because they will tell us whether recent increases represent a short-term rebound or a more durable shift in how people are entering the Catholic Church in the United States.

For now, the prudent conclusion is simple: something may be happening, but the data are still catching up

Much more interesting was the following post on June 12 2025

Does AI know who the Pope is?

MAGA split is a struggle for the church's soul?

 Many believed that the last three elections were an existential struggle for America’s soul, reflecting a struggle for the soul of Christianity in this country—not just evangelical Christianity but of the Catholic Church too. Unfortunately MAGA won and the gospels lost. 

  Rebecca Bratten Weiss discusses this in her latest column in NCR.  She has an interesting background. She graduated from Steubenville but eventually rejected much of the right- wing Catholicism of that college. She suggests that Trump’s assault on Pope Leo is creating a split between white MAGA Catholics and white evangelicals.  Agree?