The Hunchback of Notre-Dame contains an interesting section talking about how the printing press would (perhaps Victor Hugo thinks "did"?) destroy the Faith.
In the first place, it was a priestly thought. It was the affright of the priest in the presence of a new agent, the printing press. It was the terror and dazzled amazement of the men of the sanctuary, in the presence of the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the pulpit and the manuscript taking the alarm at the printed word: something similar to the stupor of a sparrow which should behold the angel Legion unfold his six million wings. It was the cry of the prophet who already hears emancipated humanity roaring and swarming; who beholds in the future, intelligence sapping faith, opinion dethroning belief, the world shaking off Rome. It was the prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought, volatilized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic recipient. It was the terror of the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram, and says:--"The tower will crumble." It signified that one power was about to succeed another power. It meant, "The press will kill the church."[1]
He then goes on talk about his other idea, that the press killed architecture. This one is rather better supported, and, though tainted with his ideas on religion, is somewhat more valid.
But his idea that the printing press would or did kill the faith is so ludicrous as to be very nearly amusing. It is, incidentally, the same opinion that I read about on the part of the authorities and the doctors involved in Mary's apparitions in Lourdes. Perhaps in the 1800s it appeared that the faith was only for the uneducated? I do not know. All that I do know is that the faith has persevered far longer than the ideas of those who wrote them have. And I do know that it is not a rejection of the faith that liberates, but an embrace of it. The false liberty of rejection leads to the mental prison of materialism that Mr. Chesterton describes so aptly. We are free to believe in physical laws as strict or as breakable as we like, but the materialist is not free to believe in even the smallest miracle for example. I will take my reality of hope over the dark and depressing views that have lead to the disaster we are in now, thank you very much.
[1] Project Gutenberg puts this at Book 5, Chapter II. My printed copy puts it at chapter 23. The titles given to each are similar, but not quite the same. Either way, it is the second paragraph of the chapter. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/hback10.txt