The more modern any church is, the more likely people are to understand it.
Ergo; if you remove the mystique, and the superstition. What do you have left to control the members?
The church needs superstition and mumbo jumbe, in order to scare folks into obeying, and thus believing.
I think that, the printing of the bible in English, and the removal of the Latin mass, caused all the drift away from religion.
You see, once people understand things, they lose interest.

It's along the same line as the old warning mothers give their daughters. "If you let him do that, he won't respect you in the morning"