Aw, diddums!

Britain is “unfriendly” to religionists, says the chief Catholic for England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. What he means is that it is harder for people like him to cling to the power and influence they wield without being exposed to challenge.

The Telegraph tells us:

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor claims that the rise of secularism has led to a liberal society, hostile to Christian morals and values, in which religious belief is viewed as “a private eccentricity” and the voice of faith groups is marginalised.

The cardinal warns that Britain shows signs of degenerating into a country free of morals, because of its rejection of traditional values and its new emphasis on the rights of the individual.

The voice of “faith” groups is marginalised, when more and more taxpayers’ dosh is being pumped into ever more superstitionist sectarian schools? Come on, Cardinal! Get real! And should we not think about the rights of the individual? Yes, we need to take a broad view, too, but not at the expense of the rights of individuals and marginalised groups. We need a balance.

And, anyway, is this not the pot calling the kettle black? You were happy to keep gays as invisible as possible while it was easy to do so. If it really is the case that your potty ideas and “faith” groups are finding it hard in an ever-secularising society, tough! It just shows that most people are seeing through the bullshit and aren’t as happy as they once were to take all the crap from the likes of you.

Murphy-O’Connor says, according to the Telegraph, “that Catholicism has borne the brunt of ‘liberal hostility’ in its battles to fight for values it considers to be ‘fundamental pillars of a rightly ordered society’ ”.

And just what are these “fundamental pillars of a rightly ordered society”, Cardinal? The Catholic Church, with its spotless record of wanting equal rights for all, gay and straight? Pull the other one, pillock!

And a “rightly ordered society”? The way you would order a society?

If there’s a deterioration of moral values in society, it’s not down to a lack of belief in sky fairies. If it were as simple as that, one might be persuaded that it would be a good idea to turn a blind eye to an official propaganda exercise to get everyone believing, encouraged by the notion that a peaceful, just, fair society is worth the price of a belief – pretended or induced – in invisible people. But it’s not that simple, is it?

Society’s downturn in certain areas is the fault of a complex, interwoven whole bunch of things we may never be able to unpick without taking a tabula rasa approach and starting afresh.

But without the imposition of religion, thank you very much! Let it remain as a hobby – and preferably performed in private between consenting adults.

And that last phrase, you’ll recall, Cardinal, is more or less word for word what the 1968 Sexual Offences Act used when it partly decriminalised homosexuality. But your lot would want us to go back to before even that small concession, and have relationships between two women and two men made illegal again.

So I really hope you are finding it difficult with all this “aggressive” secularism and atheism all around you. I think the words chickens, home and roost spring to mind.