Brat Summer Is Out, Nun Girl Summer Is In

If your "For You" page looks a little more Catholic lately, you’re not imagining it.

Somewhere between the GRWMs, dating advice, and “what I eat in a day” videos, clips of nuns laughing with one another have wiggled their way into the mix, and we can’t get enough of it.

The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, launched a podcast earlier this year that has since exploded across social media, earning millions of likes and views, along with hundreds of thousands of listeners, believers and non-believers alike. 

What started as conversations between religious sisters, clergy, and scholars has quickly become the internet’s go-to comfort content, drawing in viewers who've never set foot near a parish.

In their most famous sound bite, Sister Miriam playfully praises another sister’s athleticism on the ultimate Frisbee field. Shortly after, the internet collectively lost its mind over the "hobbies feel like work" clip. 

“Sister is so real for that,” one user commented, with 82,000 people agreeing via heart tap.

Is being Catholic… cool?

But this goes beyond a fleeting viral moment. It’s part of a much bigger cultural shift, one that’s getting harder to ignore.

Just a few months ago, churches across the country made global headlines for packed pews, overflowing services, and a surprising surge of young adults turning, and returning to, Christianity. As we recently explored here at Evie, Bible sales are soaring, and Gen Z and Millennials are showing up to Mass in record numbers, making it arguably the hottest new club in town. It begs the question: is being Catholic… cool?

Since when did men and women who willingly entered into lives of poverty, chastity, and obedience become relatable?

It wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, but we are so here for it, and with high hopes that the Church is ready to meet the moment.

Young people are looking at the world as it exists today, with its endless screen time and app-induced dating fatigue, and they’re finding themselves deeply drawn to the charm and simplicity of religious life, even if they don’t personally buy into religion at all.

What’s most surprising is how much love these videos get from people who want nothing to do with organized religion.

If you spend even a second in the comments, you’ll see that not everyone watching the Dominican Sisters shares their faith, or believes in God at all. But the love and respect they’re getting anyway says something: people are starving for a little lightness and real connection.

In a culture that tells young men and women they need to earn six figures, drive a fancy car, invest in a brand-new wardrobe every season and have a ton of Instagram followers to feel fulfilled, seeing people who’ve detached from worldly possessions entirely yet still seem genuinely content is almost incomprehensible. And we’re totally enamored by it.

But the fascination has moved well beyond observing their day-to-day lives through a screen.

This summer, people across the country and even throughout Europe are opting out of overpriced beach houses and overcrowded bar crawls and are booking stays at monasteries and convents, trading traditional boys’ trips and girls’ weekends for a few days of silence, reflection, and life alongside their religious brothers and sisters.

They’re happily surrendering their phones at the door, dressing more modestly, eating in silent refectories, and spending their days walking through peaceful gardens and attending prayer time.

In fact, demand is so high that some are reporting as long as three-to-four-month waitlists, entirely filled by burnt-out twenty-and thirty-somethings looking for “therapy they can actually afford,” and stemming from a desire to unplug and immerse themselves in something meaningful. The thought of going off the grid, hanging out with friends, and not feeling compelled to check your phone every five minutes to see if your situationship texted you back is tempting. 

The comment sections are just as entertaining as the videos circulating:

“Brat summer is out. Vow of silence summer is IN.”

“The call to become a nun is too strong rn.”

“I lived with nuns last summer. They’re so fun!”

While young women fantasize about life in the convent, young men are having completely different conversations about the Church, particularly surrounding its framework for masculinity, discipline, and aura.

For the uninitiated, “aura” is Gen Z slang for that undeniable, magnetic presence some people just have. And according to the internet, Catholic priests are oozing with it. When they post videos in their beautifully embroidered, traditional chasubles, the comment sections fill up fast with guys hyping them up.

“10,000 aura points”

“The drip is immaculate!”

Millennial and Gen Z clergymen like Father David Michael Moses are taking over TikTok and Instagram by participating in viral trends with a wholesome, witty twist, showing the world that living a life committed to God isn’t boring or outdated at all.

This summer, people across the country and even throughout Europe are opting out of overpriced beach houses and overcrowded bar crawls and are booking stays at monasteries and convents.

Father Mike Schmitz, host of the record-breaking Bible in a Year podcast, has noted a massive influx of both young men and women showing up to church with absolutely no religious background.

Maybe that’s partly because, for decades, priests and sisters occupied a very specific place in our imagination. We pictured them as serious and a little intimidating, not exactly people you’d casually scroll past on TikTok. But in recent years, they started showing up in our feeds instead, and that alone wrecked those preconceived notions. The internet discovered they’re actually funny, and that underneath their Roman collars and habits were regular people with friends and family, favorite sports teams, inside jokes, and even gym routines.

Of course, most of us aren’t seriously discerning religious life, but like most jokes, there’s a little truth to every “just kidding.” Dating apps feel like a part-time job at this point, and our screen time alone is enough to give us tech-neck.

Our lives today offer endless distractions, but religion offers us a different kind of escape. The nuns represent something a lot of us are craving lately: a sense of purpose that has nothing to do with performing for an audience, days that aren’t built around buying things, friendships that don’t come with an expiration date, and conversations that go deeper than gossip.

We recognize that religious life is a sacred vocation, not a lifestyle trend, and that these men and women have answered a profound calling. But it’s easy to romanticize, and there’s a simple explanation as to why we can’t stop watching. It’s the same reason we yearn for the nostalgia of Blockbuster, flip phones and life before Wi-Fi. The sisters just happen to become the latest, and perhaps most unexpected, expression of that longing.

ChurchPOP writer, Leila Castillo, captured the source of their warmth beautifully, writing that while the nuns “may have gained attention through the algorithm, the peaceful and sincere personalities of these religious sisters spring from a way of life informed by a timeless and treasured rhythm of Catholic prayer and relationship with God.”

And that’s the real difference between the two.

While our “Explore” page may have introduced us to them, the joy that radiates through our phone screens wasn’t built for the algorithm. It’s there because they said yes to something far greater than themselves.

For our entire lives, the dominant narrative told young people that liberation meant ditching traditional values and treating yourself as the only authority that mattered. But after living out that experiment, Gen Z especially is realizing that absolute autonomy without a foundation tends to leave you more alone than free.

Our lives today offer endless distractions, but religion offers us a different kind of escape.

For many, the draw to Catholicism starts with curiosity, maybe it’s the “trad” aesthetic, the beauty of a Latin liturgy, or, in this case, a viral podcast full of laughing nuns. But the Church has always used beautiful things to point us toward something higher. It just looks a little different in the digital age.

Millennial Katie Prejean McGrady, host of the Katie McGrady Show on SiriusXM (The Catholic Channel), recently tweeted, “Are some of the newbie Catholics/church curious folks coming to Mass because of some social media influencers’ glitzy posts that make Church seem attractive, giving a sense of FOMO? Probably, yes. But can the Spirit move, even through Gen-Z’s fear of missing out, and draw people in? Of course.”

Whether you’re daydreaming about trading your heels for a habit or you’re looking for a good excuse to put your phone on "Do Not Disturb" for a weekend, there’s something undeniably contagious about the way these sisters live.

In our chronically online world, peace of mind has become the real status symbol, more coveted than a fat salary or a blue checkmark.

Finding God along the way might just be the ultimate plot twist of the summer.