As Catholics prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, America faces record-low marriage and birth rates that expose the anti-family biases embedded in secular culture.

Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research reports that the U.S. marriage rate in 2022 fell to its lowest level on record, 54 percent below the rate in 1900. In 1960, the average age at first marriage was 22.8 for men and 20.3 for women; by 2024, it had risen to about 30.2 and 28.6, respectively. The total fertility rate now hovers around 1.6 births per woman, far below the 2.1 replacement rate.

Catholics, once exemplars of large, vibrant families, now mirror these dismal trends. Data from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) show that while the Catholic population in the United States has grown by nearly 20 million since the late 1960s, sacramental marriages have fallen by roughly 70 percent. Large Catholic families are

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