Archbishop's comments on EU

Madam, - I find extremely unfair your Editorial comment of January 19th that "the churches have important insights to bring …

Madam, - I find extremely unfair your Editorial comment of January 19th that "the churches have important insights to bring to the EU integration process, notwithstanding Ms Patricia McKenna who yesterday insisted that they should be silent. A strange attitude to free speech."

This reference to my response to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at the National Forum on Europe last Thursday gives readers the impression that I am somehow opposed to free speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been a strong and vocal opponent of Ireland's political censorship laws. I have gone to great lengths, including taking the Government to the Supreme Court at my own expense, to ensure that all Irish people, regardless of their political views, get the right to equality in constitutional referendum campaigns.

Your news report of the same day on the Forum on Europe session made no reference whatever to what I actually said at the forum and leaves your Editorial criticism of me devoid of meaning for your readers.

In my response to Archbishop Martin's presentation I criticised the fact that at the time of the 2001 referendum on the Nice Treaty a statement in support of that Treaty was issued on behalf of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy even though that Treaty's provisions and implications had never been discussed by the full Hierarchy.

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I pointed out that some bishops later dissented from this position. I also said that, as a Catholic myself, I found it unacceptable that my church should adopt a position on what was clearly a political matter and that it should try to use its power to influence Catholics to vote in a particular way on what was clearly not a religious issue.

I told the National Forum on Europe that I believed Catholics had a right to make up their own minds on such political issues and that the Church should as a rule not get involved in politics in this fashion. I know that I am not alone in this and that many other Catholics share this view.

The Nice Treaty was the first time that the Irish Catholic Hierarchy had taken a position on an EU referendum, as in earlier EU referendums the bishops had rightly stayed neutral. I also asked Archbishop Martin if he could give a public assurance that in the event of a referendum on the EU Constitution the Church would refrain from getting involved and allow its members and followers to make up their own minds. He gave no such assurance.

There can be little doubt that over the past decade the European Commission and other advocates of continuing EU integration have been seeking to co-opt the Christian churches in support of that project and that COMECE, the committee of EU Catholic bishops, whose vice-president is Archbishop Martin, has lent itself willingly to this task. In my view it is not appropriate that the Catholic Church, in this country or elsewhere, should become a political instrument in support of the EU or its proposed constitution. - Yours, etc,

PATRICIA McKENNA, Glasnevin, Dublin.