The weakening power of ritual; means that rituals can nowadays reliably induce evil, but not good

In the past, say High Medieval times, the performance of a ritual had an "objective" effect: that is, the participation in a ritual powerfully (and uniformly) made the participants think alike, be motivated alike etc. 
Participants would conform to ritual.
The external passed into the internal. 

Nowadays human consciousness has changed, such that the power of ritual has weakened greatly, or even ceased to operate; and ritual no longer works in an objective (almost irresistible) manner. 
What matters most now (at least in a positive sense, see below) is the internal - and the external is secondary.
Thus; an outward ritual may help, or may hinder, an intended internal state; but the ritual does not "compel" the mind, in the strong way it used to. 

One implication is that, because of the greater ease of destruction than creation, ritual continues to be pretty effective in a destructive way - but not in a positive, Christian way. 
So, while church rituals are feeble in effect; the rituals of leftism (e.g. the "training" in feminism, antiracism, diversity etc.), which employees are compelled to participate-in, do have some reliable negative and destructive effect on the participants. 
This; simply because it is much easier to encourage sin than virtue: even rather feeble external stimuli (images, songs, slogans) can objectively encourage sin. 

Likewise the coerced rituals of the birdemic succeeded in creating (the sin of) fear at a mass level; but it would not be possible to use these same propaganda and manipulation methods to en-courage people; that is, propaganda cannot, anymore, fill people with courage, or other virtues.

H/T A comment by Skarp-hedin.