“It is difficult to be a Christian in politics these days.” That’s your money quote for the day. America Magazine has a fine story on Ruth Kelly, an Opus Dei member and until here recent resignation the UK’s most prominent Catholic MP.

Until she stood down this week from Gordon Brown’s Government, Ruth Kelly was one of the most competent and effective Labor ministers and among the longest-serving. She is also an Opus Dei supernumerary, and until she resigned the UK’s most prominent Catholic MP.

She said she was going to time to spend more time with her four children. But that’s not the heart of it.

“It is difficult to be a Christian in politics these days,” she tells the Evening Standard. “The public debate has become more secular and believers are portrayed as being a bit odd. That doesn’t reflect the reality in communities, where church-going and belief is considered normal.”

Her remark echoes former prime minister Tony Blair’s complaint after leaving office that you were considered a “nutter” if you admitted religious faith while in Government. “They sort of [think] you maybe go off and sit in the corner and commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say, ‘Right, I’ve been told the answer and that’s it”, he told the BBC. The prevailing secularism at the heart of British public life under Labor prevented Blair from becoming Catholic until after he left office

The article details how Catholic adoption agencies fought to be excluded from new laws which will make it illegal for same-sex couples to be excluded. They lost.

But what triggered Kelly’s resignation was something even more serious — the Government’s treatment of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) legislation which first came before Parliament in May.

The HFE bill legalizes the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, “savior siblings” and other forms of human commodification deplored by the Catholic Church.

Can you imagine a world where creating “savior siblings” is allowed, never mind looked upon as the “enlightened” view? Kudos to Ruth Kelly for standing up to secularist lunacy. The problem is, however, that the secularists got their wish by removing a religious person from government service. The more religious people disqualified from public service, the better. Secularists seem to believe that the separation of church and state, means separating out morality from the public sphere.

You know, I hear often about how we’re moving into the 21st century; how advanced and enlightened we are. But the more I look around the more I think Sir Thomas More would recognize this world quite easily.