Secularism is trying to wipe Christianity out, the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor (pictured) has said.

Speaking on Tuesday in Leicester Cathedral, the Cardinal 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, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, 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 secular values were behind the violence carried out in totalitarian states and some of the 20th century conflicts that have killed millions.

“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 stated.

“No one is forced to be a Christian. But no one should be forced to live according to the new secular religion as if it alone were definitive and obligatory for all humankind.”

In a wide-ranging lecture, he also discussed the importance of the family unit, religious freedom and questions such as assisted suicide.

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: “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.

“They conveniently forget that secularism itself does not guarantee freedom, rationality … or violence. Indeed, in the last century, most violence was perpetrated by secular states on their own people.”

He also said the whole of society was guilty of “sanctioning violence” against the elderly by everyday prejudices, viewing them as an expensive burden.

He said a loss of “reverence” for humanity meant that some of the most vulnerable people in society are now routinely viewed as a “problem” or “threat”.

And he said that political decisions to cut back on vital care services amounted to denying older people’s fundamental right to life.

He quoted Cicero to illustrate that debates about care for the elderly date back millennia.

“An ageing population certainly presents its challenges – not least to our prejudices – but it is also an extraordinary gift,” he continued.

“When society only sees age as an expensive inconvenience, a threat to resources and lifestyles, it no longer sees a person but a problem.

“This permits a slow erosion of dignity; subtly and silently the process of dehumanisation has begun.”