The move by certain members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to “regulate conscience” illustrates neatly how far down the road of secular absolutism we have gone.

Its specific aim is to prevent those working in hospitals from citing conscience in order to justify not performing certain medical procedures on women. This is code for abortion. A regulation of this sort would essentially make conscience itself reliant on the State’s good graces and wipe out the concept of freedom of conscience as anything meaningful.

The assumption behind protecting freedom of conscience and religion is that Churches and other religious organisations, while they no longer play the central role they once did in ordering the moral fabric of society, still play an important part in maintaining a vibrant civil society. Also, great social unrest has been caused by the State imposing the moral viewpoint of one side upon another.

In liberal societies, until recently, it was understood that the State had certain duties and responsibilities, but that there were other areas, like belief, where it had no legitimate place. With the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church accepted this idea in full.

However, it is an insight which we appear to be losing. Now, the State appears determined to force those many of those with sincere religious beliefs out of the public sphere entirely..

The motion refers to “the increasing and largely unregulated occurrence” of religious freedom “especially in the field of reproductive health care”. “Reproductive health care” is one of the favoured terms of those who favour legal abortion. Why don’t they just come out and say it?

So we have the spectacle of politicians trying to radically restrict freedom of conscience without being fully transparent about why they are doing it.