Boomers run the Catholic Church. Now, I know that many in the Baby Boomer cohort react to the term “Boomers” like a black person reacts to a white Republican using the N-word, but hear me out for a minute. By “Boomer,” I simply mean the views that dominate that age group and what it’s most known for. I don’t mean that every actual Baby Boomer has this mentality.

In the Catholic world, it means an allergy to any devotional or liturgical practice from before 1960; a horizontal rather than vertical spiritual focus; an innate desire to please the world; and an equating of all religions as equal, with Catholicism just one option among many. Pope Francis was the poster boy of this way of looking at the Church and the world. This Catholic Boomerism worldview is firmly entrenched among our Church leaders, no matter their physical age.

Fortunately, more and more Catholics in the pews are recognizing this warped worldview for the shallow fraud it is, and so are rejecting it. Yet there are dangers in how one reacts to Catholic Boomerism as well. I refer to the “Doomers.” These are the Catholics—often either de jure or de facto sedevacantists but sometimes just traditional-minded Catholics—who are so upset by the Boomer leadership that they believe the Church’s sky is perpetually falling. No action by any prelate is seen as good news: they’re either an insidious plot to fool “true” Catholics or just a way to have us drop our guards and actually—gasp!—trust our leaders. And you know what makes these Doomer Catholics most upset? That not everyone else is upset as they are.

Don’t get me wrong: obviously I believe things are going poorly in many ways in the Church, and we can and should criticize the actions of our Church leaders when necessary. We shouldn’t be “happy-clappy” Catholics who refuse to ever speak up when souls are scandalized, believing any criticism, however slight, is somehow the sign of a bad Catholic who doesn’t trust Jesus. That’s a silly and immature way of looking at things. But the Doomers don’t just want constructive criticism on select occasions: they want every moment to be DEFCON 1, every controversy to prove that everything sucks in the Church, and every single action of Pope Leo to be an act of the anti-Christ (or at least an anti-pope). A Doomer’s identity as a Catholic is wrapped up in constant and unrelenting attacks on the Church hierarchy—a spiritually destructive way of life that undermines trust in Christ’s promises that he will always protect the Church. It’s also spiritually sterile; it leads no souls to conversion.

Which brings me to the other group I want to address, the Zoomers. They, of course, are the members of Gen Z, which everyone seems to be talking about these days. There’s a growing cohort of young cradle Catholics serious about their faith, and one of the miracles of the past couple years is the increase in Gen Z conversions to Catholicism (and, if I’m being fair, also to Eastern Orthodoxy). While it would take more than a few articles to fully dive into the reasons for these conversions, one thing is clear about these young Catholics: they reject both Boomerism and Doomerism. 

The shallow practice of Boomer Catholicism holds no attraction for these young people. They don’t want felt banners and insipid homilies and bland liturgies. They reject the religious indifferentism of 1970’s Catholicism. They want something solid and secure, clear and convincing—not the embraced ambiguities that have dominated Church life since Vatican II.

But before the Doomers—who are mostly trads, after all—get excited, the Zoomers aren’t interested in the nonstop negativity of the Doomer worldview. After all, why would they be? Like all youth since time immemorial, they tend to be optimistic about the future, even if they are realistic about what’s wrong in the world (and the Church) today. Why follow a Christ who apparently failed to keep things together in his Church? While these young Catholics—both the converts and the faithful cradles—recognize with clear eyes the problems in today’s Church, they still trust Christ and His Promises, and they have hope for the future.

So what does this mean for those of us who aren’t Zoomers? No matter what other generational group we fall into—Boomer, Gen X, or Millennial—we need to recognize that the future will not be defined by the battles of the past. Zoomers can and should learn from the wisdom of their elders, to be sure, but at the same time, they are wise to jettison a lot of the battles that have defined the Church since the 1960’s, battles which frankly become increasingly irrelevant with each passing day. Zoomers have no emotional attachment to Vatican II—or to the incessant arguments about Vatican II. They love many aspects of Tradition, but don’t want to be associated with the negativity that often overshadows the traditional movement. Ultimately, they look with optimism to the Church’s future, one that’s led by neither Boomers or Doomers. 

There’s wisdom there for Catholics of every generation, if we are willing to listen.