Benedict’s clumsy conflation of atheism with Nazism and Cardinal Kaspar’s description of the UK as “aggressively secular” were without context or nuance. To be without belief is an entirely honourable and honest stance. If you have no faith, it would be a failure of integrity to pretend otherwise. It is as divisive and potentially malignant to suggest that all ‘non-believers’ are willing or unwilling agents of evil as to refuse to see that priesthood is not synonymous with paedophilia. And if so many are no longer engaged by the mainstream churches in this rapidly changing world, what questions should those institutions be asking themselves?

Our secular society is the best guarantor of the religious freedoms of all. Theocracies will always oppress those whose consciences are not in harmony with the ruling creed. Where no confessional strand is privileged above another or above the safeguarding adjudications of a democratic state, respect for difference is enabled to flourish and difficulties have at least the chance of being the subject of dialogue rather than denunciation.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/13141