Where to start with this from Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor? It’s certainly a ’sausages are good for you, says sausage-maker’ piece.

He opens up with:

This simple reality belies the caricature of the Catholic church as some heartless, insular institution that wants to deny people their freedom. It is a distortion intended to persuade us that the church has no constructive role to play in our society.

And finishes with a distortion of his own:

Atheistic secularism ultimately diminishes us; it kills the human spirit under the pretence of liberating it.

As do lies, Cormac, as do propaganda. It is a distortion intended to persuade us that athiesm has no constructive role to play in our society. I would say escaping the emotional straightjacket of Catholicism and embracing atheistic secularism can have the opposite effect on this human spirit. I certainly felt lighter after rejecting the creeping fear, guilt and intimidation of my Catholic education.

Cormac also says:

This is why I wonder if there is not a lie that lurks in the appeal of an atheistic secularism. It is not its attacks on religion that gives me pause for thought, but its vision of what is human. It says that this is all we are, this is it! We have no significant purpose; we’re merely chance products of material processes.

Does he really believe this or is the good cardinal peddling another lie himself? Which athiests say ‘we have no significant purpose’? Even Richard Dawkins at his rawest says our purpose is to pass on our DNA in order to ensure the continuation of the beauty and majesty and complexity of awe-inspiring existence.

Take a look at some famous athiests and secularists. Think about their effect on the human spirit. Did their endeavours try to kill it or nurture it?

Abraham Lincoln, Van Gogh, Thomas Edison, Oscar Wilde, Mary Wollstonecraft, Albert Einstein, Arthur C. Clarke, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Ann Evans, George Orwell, Thomas Paine.

Do you die inside a little every time you expose yourself to what they left behind? It’s precisely the certainty of ‘this is it!’ that drives many to leave their mark on the human spirit. ‘Seize the day’, anybody?

It’s precisely my belief ‘that this is all we are, this is it!’ that shapes my moral outlook. I’m not on my own. I don’t believe in God but I never raped children or stood by while others did, unlike some. This is it! This is all we have. When it’s gone it’s gone. Let’s try and make the best of it. That’s what drives much of atheistic secularism. That and the certainty that life is a lot more joyless being a pawn of the likes of Murphy-O’Connor’s vested interests.

It’s why I think that people who believe that we go to a better place when we die can be the most dangerous. It gives an excuse for the most excruciating suffering. It’s the Arnaud Amaury defence. It certainly seems to be how and why those good Christians Tony Blair and George Bush can countenance the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Under their (and others) good offices, it is religion that ultimately diminishes us; it kills the human spirit under the pretence of liberating it.