Question 1: I have no idea. A bold historian, competent astrologer, or prophet of a certain kind may feel in a position to hazard a guess.

Question 2: See Answer #1.

Question 3: Depends entirely on Answer #2. A revival of the fundamentalist kind would be terrible. Terrible for the participants, because fundamentalism disables the brain-sometimes permanently. And unhelpful, or worse, for the rest of us, because fundamentalism focuses its followers on a socially sterile form of faith at the expense of the more useful pursuits of hope and charity.

Sadly, fundamentalist revivals are the most common kind, but there are others. Revivals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been credited for the abolition of slavery and the rise of the welfare state. Turn-of-the-millennium Canada badly needs an injection of tolerance and compassion; Christianity at its best feeds precisely these values, and Canadian mainstream churches, both Catholic and Protestant, have largely embraced them in a distinctive way.

But charity alone is not enough to sustain a religion. People also need hope and, yes, a faith that provides timeless meaning to replace the sorrow that cripples some or all of their days. Liberal religious groups have failed to find an intelligent modern substitute for ancient superstitions. Where they failed, Sigmund Freud succeeded, and twentieth century religion lost the war with secular psychology mostly without a fight. Self is god now, and any preacher who consistently calls for self-sacrifice and other-worship (which is the essence of Christ's message) will watch pews emptying as a result.

If, therefore, we must depend on a religious revival to keep the demons of greed and self-worship in check, then we can only hope (or pray, if so inclined) for the revival to be led by a modern-day Ignatius or Newman, rather than yet another Graham wannabe.

Ivor Shapiro, who lives in Toronto, is the author of What God Allows: The Crisis of Faith & Conscience in One Catholic Church (Doubleday).