Katherine DUGAN. Millennial Missionaries: How a Group of Young Catholics is Trying to Make Catholicism Cool. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. pp. 230. $34.95 hb. ISBN-10: 0190875968. Reviewed by Biff ROCHA, Independent Scholar, Mason, OH 45040.

Katherine Dugan spent fourteen months of field study working on her ethnographic study and dissertation, “Remixing Catholicism: Catholic Prayer and Millennial Catholic Subjectivity.” Her study focused on FOCUS; the Fellowship of Catholic University Students which is a Catholic apostolate which shares the Christian gospel with college students and sends them out into lifelong mission. Katherine Dugan graduated from Northwestern University in 2015 with a Ph.D. Religious Studies. In 2017 Dugan was rewarded a research grant from the Cushwa Center to supplement her project with archival data, ultimately becoming Millennial Missionaries: How a Group of Young Catholics is Trying to Make Catholicism Cool.

For her ethnographic field site, she chose FOCUS, an organization of Catholic Millennial missionaries (born 1981-1996) who are embodying conservative Catholicism. As of July 2019, Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the United States’ largest living adult generation; traditionally characterized by Sociologists as uninterested in religion and defectors from religious institutions, Katherine Dugan’ research brings to light FOCUS as a countervailing trend.

Curtis Martin founded the FOCUS, with two missionaries at Benedictine College, Atchison, KS in 1998. Martin had been employed by the incredibly successful interdenominational para-church missionary organization Campus Crusade for Christ, a.k.a. Cru. Adapting Protestant evangelization techniques for Catholic ministry, FOCUS missionaries go out to universities to meet students where they are: in the dorms, fraternities, and every corner of campus. Trained in the doctrine, liturgy, scripture, Christ-centered evangelization and discipleship, FOCUS missionaries encounter students, inviting them into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and building into them as they pursue intentional lives of virtue.

Dugan hails from academia, which is generally speaking progressive and operating within a secular worldview. She sets out to examine the lives of young conservative Catholics and each chapter is an attempt to address the questions that arise from the intersection of these two lived locations.
Millennial Missionaries is comprised of six chapters. Chapter 1, “The Making of Twenty-First Century Catholic Evangelization” answers the question: What forces in U.S. religion and American Catholic history led to the creation of FOCUS? Dugan does an excellent job at contextualizing the historical trends at play in the United States that enabled its birth. The initial hostility of Protestants towards Catholics in the 18th and 19th centuries which led to the building of the parochial school systems had steadily decreased as America grows increasingly secular. Such was the loss of theological knowledge and religious distinctiveness that in August of 1990 Pope John Paul II issued the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (On Catholic Universities) to address this crisis and slow the loss of Catholic identity.

The emergence of FOCUS is also indebted to the ecumenism affirmed by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which encouraged greater collaboration between Protestants and Catholics. Curtis Martin adapted successful techniques from Cru in fundraising, organizing, training, and evangelization. His missionaries were financially supported by an increasing number of post-World War II Catholics rising into the middle class and sending their children off to college, thus setting the stage for the birth of a Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

Chapter 2, “Hanging out with Jesus” answers the question: How do you pray? Dugan’s vivid prose situates the reader in the midst of Eucharistic Adoration, embodied prayer, Lectio Divina, spiritual reading, mental prayers, intercessory prayer and praying the Rosary. She richly describes devotional practices that shape missionary activity and identity. Similarly, one could ask how do the Saints speak to young adults today? The reply is found in Chapter 3, “‘Be Saints!’: Remixing Devotionalism.”
Following the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the waves of Feminism and the chilling rise of Political Correctness, modern college campuses are awash with mixed messages on romance, marriage and family life. Relying on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Chapter 4 looks at “‘Feminine Genius’ and ‘Authentic Masculinity.’” Chapter 5 continues with “‘Guard Your Heart!’: Embodying Catholic Romance.” Each chapter examines how missionaries apply Catholic theology and practice to life on campus.

FOCUS cultivates a culture of dynamic Catholicism—understood as a way of being Catholic that is fiercely loyal to the Vatican, and incredibly well-versed in American culture. Using Scripture and the Catechism, leaders teach students how to navigate US culture and Catholic identity. Chapter 6, “‘Party On’: Creating a Dynamically Orthodox Catholic Culture” is a look towards the future, examining both the lives of missionaries after leaving campus, as well as the organizations’ broader impact on American Catholicism.

In the study of American Catholic history, Dugan challenges the false dichotomy between life before and after Vatican II. Rather than perpetuate that dichotomy to position Rosaries, Latin, and Saints as defiant remnants of pre-Vatican baggage, she shows these prayers/practices are being remixed into a Catholicism that is proudly distinct from, yet conversant with the modern American popular culture. Millennial Missionaries will be useful to those interested the academic study of prayer, American Catholic history, and young adult religious identity. The portraits of young missionaries provide a level of depth missing from most scholarship on contemporary Catholics. By taking readers into the daily devotional practices of FOCUS missionaries Dugan makes a strong argument that prayer constitutes a transformational and generative spiritual practice.