[Desdemona]

We don't have the gilded columns, stonework and filigrees, but we have our priests who are orthodox and reverent. The Mass is attended to capacity. If I get there early for the evening spoken mass, I invariably see, in the silence, 20 or 30 (often young) people, kneeling and praying.

My parish does have marble and mosiac tile. It's really a tourist attration. It's amazing how much more reverent the young people are who regularly go to Mass there. The tourist kind of look at us like we are part of the ambiance, I guess. The older people in the parish just don't get it.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I think we see all over the place, younger people flocking to where the services are orthodox and the priests actually believe what the Vatican teaches.

My parish seems to be growing in the number of young families with lots of kids. Our priest added two evening masses to his mass schedule, more time to his confession hours, and we're building a new, larger, and more reverently designed church, where we will no longer have to kneel on the floor and sit in movable chairs. With luck on the weather, we'll be in it by Easter.