Most people know of Michael Knowles as one of the marquee personalities in a stable of strong conservative influencers at The Daily Wire. There are a lot of descriptors you can use to describe him, from “conservative” and “author,” to Yale alum, to free speech advocate. And while he’s hardly the only Catholic conservative media figure, there’s something a little different in how he incorporates his faith into his work.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of any number of young conservatives who unapologetically wear their Catholicism on their sleeves, from Jack Posobiec to Knowles’ colleague at The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the way anyone decides to factor their personal faith in their media work. But it’s actually refreshing that we’re seeing more younger people make their Catholic faith a part of their media persona instead of relegating it with a hard line to their private lives never to be mentioned in public.
This approach to matters of faith has been long overdue, and thanks to Knowles, Walsh, Posobiec, and others like Charlie Kirk and Allie Beth Stuckey, Jesus has had some really strong advocates of late, and He’s needed them.
What’s interesting about Knowles, however, is the way he does it. Let’s start with his origin story on his faith as I understand it from just listening to his podcast.
Born in 1990, Knowles is a millennial from New York, He’s a graduate of Yale University, where he majored in history and Italian literature. For a period of time in his younger years, he was a self-professed atheist, but that changed when, as a young adult, he started looking for answers to questions, and that quest eventually took him back to the Catholic faith. If you listen to his show, you will likely hear any number of references to literature through the ages, great philosophers, and sometimes more history on the Catholic Church than almost any other podcast host who isn’t solely focused on religion.
What makes this worth thinking about is that intentionally or unintentionally (I can’t read his mind), it would appear he’s bringing more people into the Catholic faith than I’ve seen a media personality do in my lifetime, and I’m…(clears throat)…older than Knowles. And he’s doing it in ways the church itself shies away from. He hits the issues head on, he often leaves little-to-no ambiguity, and he’s a firm advocate for and defender of some of the church’s more traditional rites, practices, and teachings.
This “Catholic” university admin disinvited me from speaking there because I hold Catholic views on sex and gender. https://t.co/yygdTXPjTV
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) February 23, 2025
As a result, even church institutions which have tended not to stand up for themselves, have had to stand by and watch people like Knowles and other usually young conservative Catholics do it for them.
Some non-Catholics are confused by this clip for two reasons. First, they might not know that the Catholic Church does not and cannot ordain women. Second, modern people have difficulty understanding any authority that does not lie with the individual or the demos. https://t.co/nFVVChHEHc
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) November 23, 2025
What I like about Knowles and some of the other young Catholic voices in conservative media is that it feels like the spirit of Saint Paul lives. Paul famously took a no-BS approach to matters of public discourse over the faith. It would appear he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Yet at the same time, he knowingly put himself out there and was willing to deal with the consequences for doing so.
In that spirit, Knowles, Walsh, and Posobiec, in particular, have taken a lot of heat for espousing values and concepts that not long ago were the norm for a society that was more aspirational and held itself to higher standards.
Insofar as Catholicism is concerned, Knowles, however, has taken this to another level, a sort of “ministry.” You hear it in his speech, his monologues, and his commentary. But where you hear it most clearly and consistently is during a regular feature on his show — his “mailbag” — where he takes listener questions. Sometimes the questions are submitted in writing; other times, the audience hears pre-recorded audio submissions from listeners like them.
Based on these questioners, it seems an unusually high number of Knowles’ listeners are young, probably Gen Z and millennials like himself, and they are thinking very deeply and quite a bit about their relationship with their faith. They seek Knowles’ advice on matters of faith, faith policy, and even how to put some of these things into practice in their own lives. Some of these questions are very heavy and deeply personal. It’s not uncommon for listeners to seek out Knowles’ religious perspective on whether they should or should not marry the person they are seeing.
Knowles almost never holds back. While not scolding his audience, he’s not afraid to tell it likes he sees it, and how he understands it, without reinterpreting church doctrine or dogma to suit himself.
He’s a regular attendee to the Latin mass, a traditional rite that pre-dates the “1962 Roman Missal” that came out of Vatican II. Vatican II ushered in the practice of having the priest face the congregation, instead of the tabernacle at the front of the church, and to speak in the language of attendees instead of Latin.
Libs might say this made the mass “more accessible” to the people, but Knowles has been quick to point out that in the Latin mass, which is a very beautiful service, it’s not that the priest’s back is to the pews, but rather, his back is not to the tabernacle, where the consecrated hosts of the Blessed Sacrament are kept.
Knowles has found a way to blend his conservative politics with what some describe as the views of a “Catholic apologist.” Knowles puts it this way when describing the need to express our faith in our own public life, as part of a community:
…we need to insist upon standards and norms that are properly Catholic, that is conducive to everyone’s flourishing. And we need to stop buying the nonsense fed to us by late 19th and late 20th century politicians who want to pretend that the American political order is supposed to exclude religion. That is not true today. That never has been true. And the very fact that our country is much more open to Catholicism than it has. We have a practicing Catholic vice president, for instance, something that most people would have thought was not imaginable. We can continue to promote that, and the secularists and the atheists can whine and scream. But the actual American political tradition, I think, is on our side. We just have to have the courage to follow it.
If you listen to Knowles often enough, you’re likely to get a drip-by-drip education on Catholicism. But is this having an effect?
I think it is. All you have to do is hear some of those questioners on his show. Many are lapsed Catholics who are now reconsidering jumping back in, but they want Knowles to answer some questions for them. Or they are people who haven’t had a strong religious upbringing or background, and their questions indicate they’re giving some serious thought to joining a 2,000-year-old church that’s usually written off as being out of touch with the modern world. But how does that explain all of those young people who are becoming Catholic now?
Certainly, the trend is much, much bigger than a single podcaster. But still, I don’t think it would be fair to underestimate the role Michael Knowles is playing in America.
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