[magisterium]

You're right. The Telegraph isn't actually a tabloid. I was thinking more of The Sun: real low-brow stuff, complete with the Page 3 girls. Well, from what I've seen of Telegraph articles linked by Drudge recently, most of The Telegraph's stuff filtering over to this side of the pond still reeks of Robin Leach's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The Brits seem to have a penchant for becoming absorbed with anything vapid and ephemeral, with the trials and tribs of the idle rich, the (generally) minimally talented entertainment celebrities, the rest of the undeservedly famous, and other people and things the Really Don't Matter. When all of this is done under an umbrella of near-universal agnosticism, it is a recipe for disaster. Even when they try to report on something a little more uplifting, their long-term unfamiliarity with Christendom really shows through, as this article demonstrates. And that circumstance, unfortunately, tends to run all through their press, from The Times down to the most plebeian rag that wouldn't be fit to line a bird cage.

[marshmallow]

Correct.

Then factor in television where religion is almost universally ridiculed. British programs, whether comedy or drama, are almost unanimous in their portrayal of clergy as hopelessly naive buffoons, sometimes well intentioned, but almost always dolts of the first order. The only favorable portrayals are reserved for those who have shed the yoke of traditional Christianity, such as The Vicar of Dibley.