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Can You Keep Your Kids Catholic?

Can You Keep Your Kids Catholic?

Update: 2025-08-25
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Earlier this month, The Church Life Journal ran an article by Michael Rota and Stephen Bullivant sharing some rather grim data on Catholic parents’ ability to raise Catholic children who stay Catholic as adults. In short, even with a little help from Catholic immigrants, the Church in America is essentially losing 9 out of 10 Catholics, once they become adults. “Rather grim” was a bit of an understatement, I suppose.

Regardless, since all four of us have seemingly defied the odds by growing up Catholic and remaining Catholic, we thought we’d parse that data through the lens of our own (wildly) different experiences in (wildly) different Catholic homes. What did our parents do that helped? What didn’t they do that might have helped more? And how much of it has nothing to do with our parents and much more to do with temperament, community, and grace?

That’s what we’re talking about today, on Visitation Sessions, which thanks to all of you wonderful listeners has now well surpassed 200,000 downloads! That is crazy. And amazing. Thanks so much for spending an hour of your week with us! And, don’t forget, if you want even more content, the very best way to get it is to become a full subscriber to the podcast today. Not only do our full subscribers help keep the podcast coming, but they also have access to subscriber only content and regular behind-the-paywall Q&A’s.

Show Notes:

Religious Transmission: A Solution to the Church’s Biggest Problem by Michael Rota and Stephen Bullivant

The Village Nobody Wants, Cartoons Hate Her

The Inner Sea Film



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit visitationsessions.substack.com/subscribe
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Can You Keep Your Kids Catholic?

Can You Keep Your Kids Catholic?

Emily Stimpson Chapman, Chris Chapman, Casey Stapleton, and Kate