It’s a strange self righteous yet defensive tone this liberal article takes. Liberals know somewhere they are wrong but they keep persecuting others and themselves nevertheless into their nonsense.
Note also the false charity tone of it all. They talk of CHristian domination but they hardly talk of other faiths as something they’d embrace, but as weird cults and poverties which seem to frighten them. To lop Christianity within these poorer religions is typical materialist lusty behavior for modern niceties: as if genetics persecuted them and blackmailed them to material submissions that allowed them to ignore their worst persecutions to neighbors and unborn.
Last but not least, faith for life is not an illusion, for illusion is a false life and a death by definition. They confuse faith and superstition because they seek superstitious means devoid of understanding of things like courage.
Well of course they forget the contributions of Christianity to western civilization from hospitals, the colleges and universities, labor laws, and philosophical thought on issues of “just war” and the link between God and man and his environment.
More generally see:
http://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Church-Built-Western-Civilization/dp/0895260387