The picture is of a medium-sized church, well filled with mothers and fathers and children of all ages—a baby probably intent on also being heard, and dozens of very small children, restless, crawling about, biting father's ear and being shushed by mother. Besides the family groups there are young men and young girls, more or less aware of one another and the show they are putting up. As with the family groups, the old and the young may or may not have missals, a prayer-book, their rosary-beads. While one would hope that those who have come to Mass, armed with nothing more than their offering, are contemplatives who have passed beyond the stage of actually saying prayers and wondering whether mental prayer or the prayer of quiet is best suiting their spiritual progress, it is not, I think, uncharitable to assume that a high percentage are in church simply because Sunday Mass is an obligation under pain of mortal sin, because it is the custom to which they have been brought up, or because of some more or less clear conviction that bodily presence at Sunday Mass, with an attempt now and then to remember what they are in church for, is an act of religion.