THE RICH GET RICH & THE POOR GET CHILDREN

Twenty-year-old Laura Hall just may be the face of modern western culture. She is the first person to be banned from every pub, club and liquor house in the U.K. Talk about a swinging secularist! Her police blotter shows she's done it all. And more than once.

A few hundred miles from London are the ancient walls of the Vatican. The oldest continuing institution in the world. If Catholicism stands for anything, it stands for resisting secularism. Pointing instead to a lofty heaven of moral absolutes by which mankind should live.

Somewhere midway is author Susan Sontag who spoke existentially for many: "The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything."

The Church points upward to a natural moral law written in the stars...Sontag pointed to our personal choice of the words written in books...and Laura, well, Laura probably doesn't bother much with either. She represents the seize-the-day pragmatist who squeezes life like a ripe fruit.

All this is today. What about tomorrow? Quo Vadis?

Now here's the funny thing. Today's secularists and existentialists are heavily invested in personal freedom and self-fulfillment. Life is for living, not for breeding. So they have fewer children. Meanwhile, religious people -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim -- tend to have more. A variation on the old theme: the rich get richer and the poor get children.

While the Vatican struggles with the weight of inexcusable crimes of commission and omission, the number of Catholics around the world grew last year by 12%. The Church is not about to go away anytime soon. And if some extraordinary leadership really begins to refurbish a house in need of repair, who's to say what the future holds for faith.

Meantime, existentialists will keep reading Susan, and pubs will keep barring Laura. This sounds like a story worth following....