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** Daily Newsletter: June 26, 2026
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** In today’s newsletter:
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ROBERT BARRON: What JD Vance Found in the Church ([link removed])

JILLIAN PARKS: The Community Answering the College Faith-Abandonment Crisis ([link removed])
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** What JD Vance Found in the Church ([link removed])
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** Robert Barron
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Bishop Barron sees an Augustinian motivation at the heart of Vice President JD Vance’s account of his return to Christianity and conversion to Catholicism. In his review of Vance’s new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, Barron writes that, like Augustine, Vance grew disillusioned with the world in which his ambition had placed him.

“Though his lust for success had brought him to the heights, he realized he didn’t particularly like the law and certainly didn’t want to practice it. He was a success addict, or rather, an approval addict, and his heart was still utterly restless. It was this emptiness that opened him to a reconsideration of the Christianity of his youth.”

For further reading: The philosopher René Girard greatly influenced Vance by way of his mentor Peter Thiel. Thiel has been building on Girard’s work in a series of private lectures on the Antichrist. Read Anne Hendershott on these lectures in “When Envy Turns Apocalyptic ([link removed]) ,” or read Thiel’s essay on the Antichrist in literature in “Voyages to the End of the World ([link removed]) ” (November 2025).
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** The Community Answering the College Faith-Abandonment Crisis ([link removed])
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** Jillian Parks
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Studies have found that the vast majority of young adults who attend church growing up stop attending when they go to college. The Oaks Collaborative is on a mission to reverse this trend. By hosting three-day retreats before the school year begins, college students get an opportunity to surround themselves with Christian peers before they veer off into the typical, godless college experience.

“Before I even got a chance to live what people think is a great college experience of partying and everything, [the retreat] allowed me to meet and surround myself with people who encouraged and developed me, not only as a Christian, but as a man,” one student said.

Upcoming Newsletters
* July 1: The Jew From Nowhere by J. J. Kimche | Subscribe here ([link removed]*%20%3E%3E) .

* July 6: The Fourth Watch by James F. Keating | Subscribe here ([link removed]*%20%3E%3E) .

* July 14: The Protestant Mind by Dale M. Coulter | Subscribe here ([link removed]*%20%3E%3E) .

Until next time,


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VIRGINIA AABRAM
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Newsletter Editor
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