Sunday, May 20, 2012

Cardinal warns of ‘dangerous religion' of secularism

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said that distorted notions of equality, freedom and tolerance are "three monsters on our cultural landscape" that formed part of a new and "very, very dangerous" secular religion.

Speaking in Leicester Cathedral earlier this week, the archbishop emeritus of Westminster said: "In the name of tolerance it seems to me tolerance is being abolished. Our danger in Britain today is that so-called Western reason claims that it alone has recognised what is right and thus claims totality that is inimical to freedom."

He cited the Government's refusal to allow the Catholic Church an exemption from a law forcing adoption agencies to accept homosexual couples, which led the Church to close its adoption agencies.

He said that "the new secular religion" was "not pure reason but rather the restriction of reason to what can be known scientifically - and at the same time the exclusion of all that goes beyond it". 

He added: "It is very, very dangerous."

He went on: "The propaganda of secularism and its high priests want us to believe that religion is dangerous for our health. It suits them to have no opposition to their vision of a brave new world, the world which they see as somehow governed only by people like themselves."