Following in the footsteps of Brother LeBlanc (or at a respectful distance behind him), here are a few semi-serious, and semi-safe, predictions for the New Year.

* President-elect Barack Obama, who currently spends about an hour and a half each day working out at a gym, but hasn't attended Sunday services since the campaign end, will worship in a D.C. church -- on at least one Sunday of the New Year.

*Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams has been giving Labor Party P.M. Gordon Brown fits, likening his financial stimulus plan to "an addict returning to the drug." The New Year will see Williams continue his public tongue-lashings, leading Brown to call for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

*Not content with making the P.M. long for the good old days when bishops stayed in the House of Lords and kept quiet, Williams will also give secessionist Anglicans in America, Canada, Africa and Asia agita by neither endorsing or disapproving their plans for a separate province. This prediction will be repeated in 2010.

* In 2009, Roman Catholics will not only rehabilitate but celebrate former Inquisition target Galileo Galilei, marking the 400th anniversary of his invention of the telescope -- Anglicans will fete Charles Darwin on the 150th anniversary of the publication of "Origin of Species."

It may take a while, but eventually outside-the-box scholarship and contributions to world culture are appreciated in the sacred as well as the secular arena.

But it is safe to predict that it may take 500 years or more for the Church to recognize any contributions made to global civilization by Richard Dawkins, Britney Spears, Akon and Bill Belichick.

It may never occur. Belichick especially will be held accountable -- for never confessing that he stood on the shoulders of Giants.

Picture of Galileo by Justus Sustermans taken from Wikimedia Commons