If you want to understand the strange currents running through American Catholicism today, you could do worse than to look inside the U.S. Capitol at 8:00 a.m. on a Monday.
That’s when dozens of young Congressional staffers—most in their 20s—gather weekly to pray the Rosary before walking into the machinery of national politics. Many attend the traditional Latin Mass. And recently, dozens of them invited Fr. John Perricone to the Capitol to discuss his new book Torches Against the Abyss.
The crowd was so large the event had to be moved to a double-sized room. “These were bright, searching Catholics,” Fr. Perricone said. “Their questions weren’t theoretical—they were existential.”
They asked why their generation had been “cheated out of the Church’s patrimony,” why so many priests downplay the crises in the Church, and what it means to become a saint when so many around them seem deprived of even the basics of Catholic faith.
Fr. Perricone answered bluntly: charitable action demands evangelization.
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