The day after Pope John Paul II died, I visited a parish in Herndon, Virginia, to attend a late afternoon Mass. I sat in the back, like I usually do, and marveled at the crowd. It wasn't just middle-aged people like me, but young people -- married couples with children, giggly teenage girls attending with their friends, and boys and young men, many of whom came alone, not dragged by parents. I've been to packed churches in the middle of the summer on an Indian reservation and to standing-room only crowds in tourist towns from Grand Lake, Colo., to Palm Beach, Fla. Maybe church attendance is down -- I keep reading it is -- but I haven't seen it. Indeed, the churches seem every bit as full as they were when I was in grade school.
It's hard to know whether Pope Benedict XVI will, over time, arouse the same adulation as his predecessor, but his election this week surely evoked awe and wonder. In an age of instant electronic communication, when whole books can be transmitted through the ether of cyberspace in a few seconds, the Catholic Church still chose to announce to the world a new pope had been chosen through white smoke emanating from an old-fashioned stove-pipe chimney. I can't help but think that many people who watched the drama unfolding over the last few weeks at the Vatican will be inspired to return to church even if they haven't been there in years. Maybe that will be Pope John Paul II's most lasting legacy and a gift to his able successor.