by Julianne Malveaux
(Trice Edney Wire) – I was raised Catholic.
Not casually Catholic. My mother was the kind of Catholic who went to Mass every day. Faith was not something she talked about; it was something she did. In our aqua-blue kitchen, she had the lyrics, in white paint, “Holy Mary, dressed in blue, teach me how to pray.” She prayed without ceasing, and her prayers were deep and strong.
I went to a Jesuit college, Boston College, where faith was woven into the intellectual life—questions of justice, responsibility, and what it means to live a life of purpose. It wasn’t always comfortable, but it was always present.
So when I hear people arguing about the pope as if religion were a political sport, I find myself out of step with the conversation, because that’s not the faith I knew.
The noise is everywhere. Commentary about Pope Francis—what he said, what he meant, who agrees, who doesn’t—fills panels and social media feeds, turning belief into a series of takes. It is loud and, for the most part, unhelpful.
We have developed a habit of treating religious figures like political ones, as if they occupy the same space. They don’t. Political leaders govern behavior, while religious leaders, at their best, try to speak to conscience. But we have grown so accustomed to spectacle that even conscience has to compete for airtime.
The numbers tell us something is changing. Church attendance in the United States has been declining for years, and fewer people claim formal affiliation. Yet nearly nine in ten Americans say they believe in God or some higher power. Many are no longer sitting in pews, but belief persists. We measure what is easiest to count—attendance, affiliation, participation—but not what is harder to see: practice, discipline, belief.
Faith, as I understood it growing up, was never about being seen.
My mother did not go to Mass every day so someone could check her attendance. She went because that was how she ordered her life—discipline, gratitude, and a quiet insistence that there was something larger than whatever the day might bring.
My own relationship with Catholicism has been more complicated. I don’t come to this conversation as a defender of the Catholic Church; I come as someone shaped by it, challenged by it, angered by it, and still, in some ways, holding onto it.
As soon as I learned about the Church’s historical role in sanctioning enslavement, I was repulsed—and I made my opinion known, quite vocally: skipping Mass, arguing with priests, and sometimes embarrassing my mother. Sexual abuse in the Church repulses me. The betrayal of trust, and the lengths taken to conceal it, stand in painful contradiction to the values the institution professes. The codified inferior role of women has never sat easily with me either.
It is undeniably an imperfect church, but its imperfections do not diminish its relevance.
Years ago, I wrote about the patriarchy embedded in the Church, and one of my small, symbolic protests has been ending prayers with “amen, a-woman, and ase’.” Inequality does not disappear simply because we believe in our Creator. A mentor once asked whether I could point to any institution entirely free of racism or sexism. I could not.
When I hear that we are created in the image and likeness of God, I find myself looking for a stained-glass window with a pecan-colored woman with gray dreadlocks. I haven’t seen one yet.
And still, the quiet, practiced kind of faith does not lend itself to commentary, nor does it disappear simply because fewer people are sitting in church. There are still people who pray before the day begins, give thanks before they ask, and show up for others not because it is convenient, but because it is right.
It is also worth noticing the signals we choose to see. Pope Francis has chosen to live in modest quarters rather than the traditional papal apartments, a small but visible gesture in an institution known for grandeur. In a world accustomed to power on display, that kind of restraint stands out not because it is dramatic, but because it is not.
My grandmother used to say that some people come to God with their hands out and their mouths open. It was her way of reminding us that faith is not only about asking, but about recognizing, giving thanks, and showing up with something other than need.
We don’t talk much about that kind of faith anymore. It doesn’t fit neatly into our arguments or produce a headline, but it may be closer to what faith actually is.
If nearly all of us believe in something beyond ourselves, then the question is not whether faith is disappearing, but whether we have misunderstood where it lives. It may not be in the noise we amplify or the arguments we keep having, but in the quiet, daily practices that go largely unseen.
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Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC-based economist and author.
