Right, we've had the millennium - now get ready for the post-denominational era. Personally I think of it as the Eason's era, but more of that later. The coming of this era was forecast at the weekend by the Right Rev Paul Colton, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross.
He was commenting on the recent exchange of tetchiness between Dr Desmond Connell, the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Very Rev Robert MacCarthy, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral. Dean MacCarthy invited Dr Connell to have Mass celebrated in St Patrick's for the benefit of Catholic tourists. Dr Connell declined. Dean MacCarthy issued a press release regretting the archbishop's decision. Dr Connell issued a statement declaring "it is difficult to understand why this proposal was made and how it might be implemented".
Bishop Colton's point of view is, if I understand him correctly, that this whole row is irrelevant. We are about to enter a post-denominational era which will roll over the churches and oblige them to co-operate for survival.
In this era, in a society with less and less interest in organised religion, the churches will have to share buildings and other resources.
More startlingly, he suggests the arrival, in this new era, of "interchangeable ministries".
I take it that this means different denominations agreeing to share such functions as chaplaincies. And I am tempted to say that I will eat my hat if the Catholic Church ever agrees to share a ministry with anybody else. But . . .
Already, the religious have disappeared from most of the schools. It is no longer a rarity for congregations like the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy to merge schools to survive.
And I wonder how many Catholic parishes will be forced to close outlying churches in this decade when a priest retires? Indeed, how many will lose their clergy altogether?
Even if the Pope does something amazing and ordains women priests or allows priests to marry, will it make any real difference?
In the Eason's era, it may be too late for all that. By the Eason's era, I mean one in which people take their religion off bookshelves.
There you can surf your way through hundreds of books on the New Age religions, Celtic religions, shamanism and all the rest of it. You can change your religion every week or you can pick and mix and create your own religion.
In all bookshops, this area of interest has been booming for at least a decade and a half. Somebody is buying a lot of these books or they wouldn't be getting the shelf space.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Given a choice between Eason's and the Christian doctrine classes of my youth, I'll take Eason's any day. But it certainly suggests that the post-denominational era of which Bishop Colton spoke is close if it is not already here.
There is some evidence for this in an IMS poll conducted in November. It found that 57 per cent of people attend religious services once a week. Well, maybe they do, or maybe some of them interpret "once a week" rather liberally.
What struck me as remarkable is that only 27 per cent regard God as "very important". What that seems to mean is that most of those who go to Mass, for instance, don't put God in the "very important" bracket.
You have to wonder if a sizeable proportion of churchgoers are children, dragged along by parents. Perhaps some also attend because the churches provide a centre for communities without which we are all segregated in our individual boxes.
Sixty-five per cent said they pray/meditate. Put that against the far smaller proportion who regard God as very important and it seems to me that we are already into Eason's territory.
Perhaps the most striking evidence of all for that is the finding that some 44 per cent believe there are many true religions.
Well, there's your post-denominational era for you with a vengeance. And I suspect that among that 44 per cent there are many who lump all the Christian churches together as representing just one of the "many true religions".
In the 1960s I waited for the bus home from school outside a Protestant church. Sometimes the wait was boring and sometimes the church was open but I never went in to have a look.
As a Christian Brothers boy I was well aware of the rule - you didn't go in to Protestant churches and that was that. The Christian Brothers in question were, by and large, quite tolerant people. They liked disputing questions of religion in the Christian doctrine classes. But one thing was for sure: there was only one true, Catholic and apostolic church and that was the one headed by the Pope in Rome. Protestants were to be pitied for having had the misfortune to have strayed from the true path.
Then came the Second Vatican Council which seemed to consign the old, rigid, Catholicism to the grave. Suddenly Catholics were going around saying, of the various Christian religions, "we're all the one now". That was how the people interpreted the atmosphere of the Vatican Council. I don't think the hierarchy interpreted it that way but the people did.
It was not long before the Eason's era began to arrive.
Masses and services of other Christian churches in St Patrick's Cathedral would fit in with that era.
Now, I can see that there could be a reasonable objection to turning a cathedral into a sort of spiritual shopping mall. And there is no shortage of Catholic churches in Dublin city centre for tourists to go to.
But Bishop Colton's post-denominational era has been working its way through for a long time. It looks unstoppable now. "We're all the one now" remains the belief of many nominal Catholics.
This decade is likely to see profound changes in, so to speak, the landscape of the churches.
And the scary thing, for church people, is that most of us won't be particularly moved by the changes. We'll be down seeking salvation in Eason's.