Some of you may recall I said something along the lines that nobody cares about Christianity any more. Well, in fairness to the Pope I'll start by giving a quick update to that affair. He has said sorry, albeit he did say he was deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries, rather than actually apologising for saying things which he rather politely says were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. But my thoguhts today are more about the original comments that people simply don't care rather than what the Pope did on his holidays.

Now obviously some people do still care about Christianity to varying levels, in fact I know a few people likely to see this enjoy going to church and such, but I'm really saying that the Christian religion has fallen from favour in society. We don't defend the Christian churches from the world because so many of us are distant from the church.

The idea was brought home to me a few days ago when I got an email from someone wanting to show me an effect on a web page. I've known the person who sent the mail for a while now, I've been to business meetings with them and I've also socialised with them, basically I'm saying that this is the kind of person you could still learn things about but you do know them well enough that you wouldn't really think much differently about them once you learnt something new. Anyway, this email started with the disclaimer No I'm not getting religion! - the bizarre thing about it being that had I not been told the sender was strictly religion free I probably wouldn't have even realised there was anything religious about the page, yet we're so worried about being labelled Bible-bashers or somesuch my sender felt the need to deny the charge before it even registered with me.

I think that's the point for me. When the hordes start shouting they can't bash $RELIGION and yet those $OTHERS can bash the Christians they seem to be oblivious to the fact that they themselves bash the Christians too. Usually the very same people who have taken religion out of Christmas and Easter (and heaven help us - St. Valentine's Day or St. Patrick's Days) are the ones who complain loudest that other people are the ones undermining Christianity.