On the Feast of the Holy Family, I went to Mass in my hometown’s Cathedral in Colorado Springs – a town many refer to as the “Evangelical Mecca.” The pews were full of Hispanic couples in their 20s and 30s, children tottered about in the aisles, and the baby-faced Mexican priest firmly admonished everyone in Spanish to obey Pope Benedict’s call to Catholics to hold fast to traditional family life.

Not long before that, I walked past the Catholic Information Center on a chilly, dark D.C. evening. Nestled amid the country’s most powerful lobbying firms on K Street, darkened for the night, the brightly lit bookstore was filled with young Catholics in suits sipping wine and flocking around the evening’s speaker, the head of a prominent think tank.

And Friday in Washington, D.C., tens of thousands of young Catholics in North Face and sneakers who have travelled in from all over the country will mark the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade by marching against abortion on the national Mall.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Great Catholic Awakening.