Easter News: Love in the Pews

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

My Easter news basket this year included stories about a different kind of resurrection—an apparent American Catholic religious revival putting more young people in the pews of Catholic churches.

Catholic bishops are quite excited by the development. Others suggest a note of caution about the apparent surge in Easter baptisms: “All of that is pretty new, and would have been hard to imagine even 10 years ago. Before we declare ‘revival,’ though, we’re going to need more data.”

The news articles (from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Religion News Service) suggest several possible reasons for the upswing. Among them are a desire for community, social and political instability, an ecclesiastical outreach to young people, and technological changes. 

Of course, like everything else in American life these days, politics are mentioned too. These arguments come mainly from the thousands of people who have commented on the stories.

Some readers argue there is a wave of wannabe-trad-Catholics streaming into churches after Vice President J.D. Vance’s conversion and Charlie Kirk’s murder. Others contend that the sharp criticisms of President Trump by both Pope Francis and Pope Leo are bringing progressive people back to the Catholic church.

Maybe both these things are true at the same time. After all, Republicans sit by Democrats every Sunday in Catholic churches all across the country.

There are folks in my church who do not share my political views, but we still manage to go to Mass together each week. 

And just look at the Supreme Court. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito rarely are on the same side of any judicial opinion, but both are devout Catholics.

Among all the possible reasons I’ve read about for the possible religious revival, I must confess that my favorite is the claim that Catholic men are going back to church to meet women.

That’s the angle of a recent Washington Post article about a popular youth mass at a 200-year-old Catholic church run by Dominican Friars in Greenwich Village. One of the regular youthful attendees is an online influencer who rates New York City churches based on their youth appeal (and who seems to take his shirt off an awful lot in his videos).

Perhaps these young men don’t have the purest of motives. Still, it’s hard for me to be too judgmental about people looking for love in the pews. 

My Latter-day Saint friends here in Utah have singles congregations or wards. In fact, “Like it or hate it, one of the biggest parts of the singles wards’ social scene is dating. These congregations give people a chance to meet those with similar values and interests, and many happily married Latter-day Saint couples will tell you that they met in a singles ward.”

I met my wife in 1986 at a Salt Lake City Catholic church (also run by Dominicans) and we have been together ever since then. We even had a Catholic monk matchmaker.

His name was Father Jerome Siler. Father Jerome’s mother was born in Ireland, but he grew up in Philadelphia and served as an English Army chaplain during World War II. 

He lived and studied in Jerusalem, Egypt, and Northern Africa for many years before joining Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. In 1947, he travelled by train to Huntsville, Utah to help start the Trappist monastery there. 

That’s where I met him, when the old abbey was my boyhood home away from home. I tell that story in my 2021 book Monastery Mornings.

Father Jerome was a scholar and the abbey’s longtime librarian. In his later years, because of serious eye problems, he wore thick glasses and often walked in a tentative manner, but there was nothing uncertain about his sweet and gentle nature. 

Demonstrating the utterly charming simplicity of a monk, he once wrote to me in the springtime about important developments at the Utah monastery. His biggest news was, “Our lilac is now full of buds!”

I visited him at the abbey in the Summer of 1983, right after I graduated from the University of Notre Dame but before I started law school at the University of Utah. He kept insisting I go to the Newman Center at the University.

So I did, and that’s where I met my wife Vicki.

It also may be true that—just like some of those youthful Catholic men in New York City that The Washington Post wrote about recently—I kept going to Mass in hopes of getting to know Vicki better.

Forty years, three kids, and two grandsons later, I can say without any doubt that it was the best decision I ever made. My new novel is even about some monk matchmakers who help other young folks find love.

Of course, there also is other news every Easter, for example when the pope gives the annual Urbi et Orbi (Latin for “To the City [of Rome] and to the World”) blessing from St. Peter’s Basilica. During his 2026 message, Pope Leo XIV called for world leaders to choose peace and dialogue, urging those with weapons to lay them down.

It’s fine for love to start in the pews of a Catholic Church. That’s better than looking for love in all the wrong places.

But to be Catholic means that afterwards, it must radiate out from the pews and from the lovers…to a family, to the poor and disadvantaged, to the neighbor, to the city, and to the world.

When it does, then we know it’s true love.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.