5 hours ago
7
Name: Catholicmaxxing.
Age: Less than a year.
Appearance: Catholicism, but jacked.
What’s with all this maxxing business anyway? Oh, don’t concern yourself too much with the nomenclature. Maxxing is just a gen Z term for reaching your full potential.
Right. So looksmaxxing is just about boosting your appearance? Well, no. Looksmaxxing is when young men go to genuinely wild lengths to try to resemble Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants. Perhaps that isn’t the best example.
So Catholicmaxxing isn’t about trying to be as Catholic as possible? Not quite. Consider it a catchy term for young people discovering religion.
Well, that’s nice. How did this come about? Largely on TikTok, led by influencers such as 22-year-old Anthony Gross, whose 49,000 followers have come to lean on videos such as “Everything I consumed while fasting for Lent”, in which he stands around topless talking about all the coffee and Tic Tacs he’s wolfed down.
That feels quite bro-y. Of course. Catholicmaxxing is for theo bros.
For what now? Theo bros. One parishioner who spoke to the Washington Post described the theo bro as “the extremely online religious man – that usually is a convert – who experiences the faith in either a rules-based or power-based understanding rather than a service- and community-based understanding”.
But don’t service and community form the core of Catholic belief? Maybe in your time, Grandpa. If you’re Catholicmaxxing then, as Gross puts it, “a huge selling point is finding a potential partner”.
Of course. Hey, don’t be cynical. If this is what it takes for people to flock back to churches, then so be it.
And are people flocking back to church? Not exactly. A study last year found that while just 1% of adults in the US aged 18 to 24 had joined the Catholic church, 12% had left.
Oh, so this is a US thing? Oh yes, absolutely.
And it sits across the entire political spectrum, rather than being something weird and slightly Magaish? That isn’t for me to say. However, JD Vance’s new book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith will be published in June.
So will Catholicmaxxing catch on elsewhere? Possibly, but let’s not overstate it. In the UK, gen Z is less likely than anyone to attend church of any kind. Can we make secularmaxxing a thing?
Do say: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth – John 3:18.”
Don’t say: “But first let us film a TikTok of us flexing in front of a mirror with our tops off.”
