Oh dear.
Right. Well, in my family there is a priest. By default this means I am a 'ahem' strongly devout (Read as 'Christmas and Easter') churchgoer. Thankfully he's not a fire and brimstone type, and is generally just a lovely chap and altogether not forceful on the whole 'COME TO CHURCH, HEATHEN!' front. Which is nice.

By default this also means that whenever he has a celebratory dinner such as a birthday, there are invariably several members of the clergy, including nuns, as well as my family and my own, rather idiotic, handsome*, self.

Anyone who knows me will undoubtedly know that on such outings I have a tendency, in so much that every time I put my foot in my mouth, it is to replace whichever one was there previously...

I can remember on one such occasion, there was a happy gathering round the table, and much vino had worked its ways into our collective gulliver (This being a Catholic priest, we were drunk as... well.... Catholic priests....).

As we were gathered, the talk turned to religion and in particular, how religion was so popular/enforced many hundreds of years ago and 'wouldn't it be rather darned good if we still had the same sort of devotion to church nowadays, lol' etc.**

At this point in the conversation I felt the great need to put in my two cents, now worth at least double that in my sozzled head.

My logical, well thought out argument for the popularity of Jebus:

'Yeah, but I suppose the real reason church was so popular back in the day is because there was bugger all else to do.....'

Cue silence.... Stoney faces.....

'What do you mean?' piped up one of the nuns.

'Well, there was bugger all else to do but fear God. They must have been bored as hell, you know.....'

More silence....

'So you think the reason they went to church was because there was literally nothing else to do.....?'

'Erm...... Yeah...'

It was roughly two minutes after that I fujlly realised I'd just basically implied that their chosen profession was made possible through the collective boredom of previous generations. By that time it was too late to do anything but giggle inside and drink more wine....


*Handsomeness changed to protect fugliness.

** for the record, this was a jokey situation, not a God bothering plot to enslave us all.
(Scrumpy does not negotiate with terrorists,, Thu 11 Dec 2008, 17:46, Reply)