Religion of an older, traditional form is increasingly returning to fashion

Despite the nightly impression given that news of Islamic religious fervor dominates the mass media in the West, the figures tell a different story. The Vatican is winning the religious media war hands down! ... By Ron Fraser

While the mass media of the West fixate on the rise of Islamism to the detriment of Western society, another major religion is rapidly gaining ground in terms of its appeal to youth in particular, and more worryingly, its political clout. The plain fact to which Western media have yet to awaken is that secularism is on the way to becoming passé. The liberal socialism that morphed out of a combine of godless German rationalism, child of the 18th-century period that historians label the Enlightenment, and its clone, godless communism, so long the mentor of our campus intelligentsia, is on the back foot. Religion of an older, traditional form is increasingly returning to fashion.

The arm-waving, foot-stomping, stupefyingly hyped-up emotionalism of so much of the evangelical Protestant movement that captivated a generation in Anglo-America seeking to fill the spiritual gap left by the three decades of experiments in social engineering during the 1960s through the ’80s has had its day. A powerful force is rising across the Atlantic, destined to pale all religious competition into relative insignificance. It’s centered around a highly intelligent and articulate personality holding an office of increasing political significance. It has an annual budget founded upon assets that make it the richest institution in the world. It has greater command of media than any single one of its competitors. It’s simply the oldest religion in the world, mother of them all, an imperial power in its own right...

Having witnessed the powerful influence of Nazi propaganda during his days as a member of the Hitler Youth, Pope Benedict xvi is well aware of the mind-controlling power of effective communications psychology...“During his Friday audience the pope took note of the important changes in the media industry, including the rising power of the electronic media and the waning influence of print. He pointed to the concentration of media ownership as a matter for concern, and the spread of the Internet, which ‘has opened up a world of knowledge and learning that previously for many could only be accessed with difficulty, if at all’” (ibid.).