Is the United Kingdom, of which Northern Ireland is an integral part, on its way to becoming a Roman Catholic nation again?

The question posed is not as flippant or far-fetched as some readers might imagine. On the contrary, recent reports in responsible newspapers, including the 'Daily Mail' suggest that the huge immigration from mainly Roman Catholic nations like Poland, Lithuania, and Portugal, are leading to a situation whereby Roman Catholics will be the largest church in the nation.

Reports from England tell of Roman Catholic churches and cathedrals being packed to the doors, and a similar situation in schools run by the Church.

Running parallel with this upsurge in membership of Roman Catholics is the revival in some predictable quarters of the need to remove the ban on a member of that church becoming Monarch.

It's all a far cry from the assurances given in the early 1970s, when the UK joined the European Common Market, as it was then called, that the Protestant religion and ethos of the nation would not be affected.

Those few influential people who did argue at the time that the European Community had a hidden agenda - the creation of one single 'Christian Church' under the leadership of the Pope, would seem to have been vindicated.

Reading some of the recent comments and reports on the big increase in Roman Catholics, it would go along with the case that the Reformation could soon be overthrown in one of the countries which embraced the Protestant faith.

Tom Utley, a distinguished writer in the 'Daily Mail' declared "Suddenly, however, I find that I'm no longer in a minority and that for the first time since Henry VIII, Roman Catholicism is about to become the majority religion of the United Kingdom.

"This is an astonishing development in our social history, which would have been utterly unbelievable as recently as my schooldays 40 years ago."

Utley argues that there are plenty of demographic reasons for the resurgence of Catholicism in the UK. He rightly pointed out that one reason was Rome's insistence that the children of mixed marriages must be brought up as RCs. He admitted that his own father was made to sign an undertaking that he would bring up all his children as Roman Catholics, before his devout mother was allowed to marry him.

Utley omitted to mention that this rule - the Ne Temere decree - is one of the most biased and unfair rules ever devised.

One wonders why the Press and other sections of the media have not spotlighted this more often, or why all the campaigners for liberties and civil rights are so silent on it.

The media would certainly not be silent if such an unfair restriction was applied to gays, ethnic people, women, and other sections of the population. Why then are they not making the Roman Catholic Church discrimination against other churches an issue?

Tom Utley goes on to analyse why Roman Catholicism is becoming dominant in British society, and he argues that the answer lies in "the rock-steady certainties preached by the Vatican in a changing world desperately crying out for something to cling to."

He contrasts this with what he describes as the Church of England bending and swaying "with every puff of passing fashion".