(RNS) — The Roman Catholic Church in the United States will welcome record numbers of new members into full communion with the Church during this year’s Easter celebrations — and that should worry Catholic leaders as much as it heartens them. Catholic bishops are jubilantly celebrating the numbers. But there are good reasons to think the Church needs to scrutinize what is happening more closely. Surely many people joining the Church this weekend are coming for many different good reasons. There are reasons to worry not all of them are.

Stories abound right now of young people turning (or returning) to Christian faith in surprising numbers across denominations. For a few years, survey data confirmed that our country’s long-running trend toward secularization seemed to have bottomed out. Religious participation had stabilized by 2025 — lower than it was 30 years ago, but stable. Now in 2026, we are watching the numbers go up. 

This trailing revival following the COVID-19 pandemic might just be a coincidence unrelated to the time we spent locked-down and worried about our mortality (though, historically, plagues have sometimes been followed by religious revival). Young people returning to the churches (or coming for the first time) do not much mention COVID. Rather, they report how they are searching for something that will counter the alienation and isolation they find in the world around them. They are starved for the feeling of community human beings evolved to value and need. Yet, even these reasons might be related to the pandemic. We know the pandemic cut all of us off from sources of community. It sent us increasingly online just as online spaces became even more polarized and unpleasant. Increasing dependence on online community and the increasing ugliness we find online are downstream consequences of the pandemic. This church “revival” may be downstream of all that.

The online world is the world of influencers. This is one of those things about our world that has changed all of us insidiously and profoundly. More and more, our politics depends on memes more than arguments. Our leaders behave more like YouTube stars, searching out the quick “Like”more than the common good. And, influencerism has not left the churches untouched, either. I have written elsewhere about how — especially among Catholics — whole influencer ministries have sprouted up online. These ministries feed no one, clothe no one, shelter no one. They do raise enormous amounts of money, though. And unlike a parish, diocese or any other ministry, they can pour all of their enormous resources into amplifying their version of Catholicism. As a result, these Catholic influencer ministries are more visible than the Catholic Church itself. And, too often, their message is at odds with the Church.

“Do we want to continue with Pope Francis’ basically leftward, radical movement in the Church, or do we want a return to John Paul II and Benedict, which was to affirm doctrine?” When Father Gerald Murray, still a regular contributor to EWTN’s “The World Over,” asked that question on FoxNews, it was only two hours after the announcement of Pope Francis’ death. He went on, “we don’t want a Christianity that basically says before we read the Bible, read the headlines, see what they want. Then we’ll find a way to accommodate the Gospel.” And while he didn’t name his implication, what Father Murray implied was clear enough: Pope Francis did not “affirm doctrine,” Francis took his cues from “the headlines” and misshaped Church teaching to “accommodate” the world. 

This is rather typical of how Father Murray has spoken about Pope Francis on EWTN, which has platformed him since 2018. And, Murray is not the only Pope Francis critic found more than once on the global Catholic network. EWTN also has given airtime to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Cardinal Raymond Burke and Steve Bannon. EWTN will say it is offering “journalism,” and journalists ask critical questions. But the network’s own mission statement describes a “mission of evangelization,” while the head of its news division describes its work as promoting “conversion to live out the truth.” Its journalism is for evangelization, it says. Yet, frequent criticisms of a pope it did not like send an unmistakable signal about what message it is evangelizing.

Even more worrying stuff comes from a next generation of Catholic influencers who make EWTN and their peers seem tame. Nick Fuentes has gained a lot of attention since the death of Charlie Kirk, but he has been online since 2017. Fuentes describes himself as a “white nationalist” and has embraced “Catholic fascism.” He offers an even more cartoonish version of Catholicism based on a “redpilled” worldview, presenting a traditionalist Catholicism that rejects Vatican II and is mired in antisemitism. A larger online “Catholic manosphere” embracing the same traditionalist Catholicism preferred by Fuentes also shares his bizarrely toxic masculinity.

Matt Fradd is not so overtly extremist as Fuentes, yet he platforms people like Timothy Gordon and Mike Pantile who prod viewers toward archaic views of gender roles and traditionalist Catholicism at odds with Church teaching. Influencers with these views do not only target men. An entire online subculture for “tradwives” aims to tell young women how to align themselves to this worldview based on traditionalist Catholicism. 

This influencer phenomenon is big, and it is growing in ways largely unseen by those of us who are over 50. The trouble is that it all looks very Catholic to the unschooled eye, even if many influencers offer a version of Catholicism unfamiliar to the Church. 

The pandemic changed all of our lives. It affected young people the most — they are the ones describing a need for identity, community and clear moral structure since the pandemic. The Church can give them that. But it will be important to have our eyes wide open to all the reasons — good and bad — they are entering or returning to the Church. That is the only way to help them tell the world the good news of the Resurrection. They must be influencers spreading the joy of the Gospel, not the darkness of exclusion and fear.

(Steven P. Millies is the author of “Joseph Bernardin: Seeking Common Ground” and “A Consistent Ethic of Life: Navigating Catholic Engagement With U.S. Politics.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)