The Popes Easter Massage.

A lovely sunny day in Rome to celebrate the Popes Easter Blessing given from the Vatican balcony overlooking the people gathered in the square below. Thousands gather, millions are tuned in all over the world as the faith in Christ and his message is repeated through this ceremony. The pious and the sight seer come together to listen to a script that is full of angels and arch-angles, the virgin birth and the liturgy of Catholicism with its sense of priestly guidance for the flock. 
Religion has the power of good who can argue with the Commandments, a touch stone for the way we should respect each other and work in harmony throughout our lives irrespective of belief. The humanist would argue that much is innate within mankind and that we have a moral and ethical compass to guide us between right and wrong.
I was listening the other day to a talk in show where a young man in his early twenties was questioning the use of the law to fine people who were caught using the train without a ticket. He was articulate in expressing his opinion that it was not the person who was fare dodging that was the problem but the lack of facilities provided by the rail companies to monitor the passengers where the fault lay. This shifting of responsibility for ones own actions to a third party is just such a situation that the church, through its teachings is meant to address and it is in the decline of attendance at church especially in the early stage of a young persons intellectual formation that we see the modern mind set appearing.
Of course good parenting is an even better counter but the church would say without the divine instruction we wouldn't have a base to work from.
If mankind needs to take on board the immensely complex and labyrinth storytelling of the Old Testament through to the New Testament with its miracles, virgin birth and the story of the resurrection to emphasise the weight of damnation for not following the  Commandments, then the Humanist gets my vote every time.