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Papal Statements on Europe
Both Pope John Paul 11 ane Pope Benedict XVI, are on record as saying that the lack of reference to God and to Europe's Christian heritage in the EU's Charter of Fundamental Human Rights is a cause of concern. Pope John Paul 11 declared it to be an "anti-historic and offensive omission", and that the Charter "denies God and the family". Furthermore, he pointed out that one should be concerned about how certain of its articles are likely to be interpreted by the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
These concerns have recently been repeated by our Holy Father Pope Benedict 16th when he said;
"On the subject of Europe, [...] the "Europeanhome", [...] will be a goodplace to live for everyone, only if it is built on a solid cultural and moral foundation of common values drawn from our history and our traditions and if it does not deny its Christian roots.".
The concerns expressed by both Pope John Paul 2nd and Pope Benedict 16th have become even even more pressing. The Treaty will implement the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Ireland is likely to be the only country which will give its citizens a democratic choice in deciding the future of the EU. We are faced a grave responsibility and it is our fervent hope that the people of Ireland will listen to and take cognisance of the reservations, voiced by the two Holy fathers, prior to the forthcoming referendum.
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Solidarity
The people of Ireland should stand in solidarity with the people of France and the Netherlands who rejected the constitution and are not being afforded the opportunity of voting on this Treaty which is only a marginally changed version of the document they have already rejected. We are told the new version represents 96% of the original text. Nevertheless France and the Netherlands have been deliberately excluded from having a democratic say on this occasion.
The only way to remedy this is for the Irish people to reject this treaty and then for real dialogue to begin on the future of Europe
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The Irish Constitution
The Lisbon treaty if enacted will take precedence over the Irish Constitution.
The Irish people must decide whether this is acceptable or not.
The Irish Constitution, was enacted "In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred," and it humbly acknowledges "all our obligations to our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial",[...]
This constitution has stood the test of time and must not lightly be amended to make it subject to a new and godless Treaty. | |
| Greetings!
We are concentrating in this special issue on the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland is the only country in Europe in which the people will have a genuinely democratic say in whether this treaty should or should not be accepted. This fact alone exemplifies the serious nature of Europe's democratic deficit and places a grave responsibility on the people of Ireland. There is no doubt that economically the European Union has been good for Ireland and continued membership is desirable but at what cost? many of its social policies are unacceptable and need urgent review. The EU has rejected its Christian roots, moved away from natural law as the basis of human rights and seems intent on the introduction of socially engineered bogus rights based on currently fashionable ideologies. Clearly this will only lead to disaster.
Many people who are happy to be part of the great European project are ill at ease about the new Treaty. The Treaty was originally written as a Constitution for the new Europe but rejection by both France and the Netherlands was a major setback to the plan. The Constitution was amended in minor ways and renamed a Treaty, thus attempting to side step the central sovereignty issue in order to deny France and the Netherlands the opportunity to stop it this time.
Ireland as a nation needs to take stock and realise that the economy is not the only important facet of EU membership. The Irish Government must take steps to protect Ireland's culture, its values, its constitution, its laws, its sovereignty and all its citizens particularly the most vulnerable, the children before as well as after birth including those who are disabled. The children of a nation are the essence of its future and Ireland must continue to protect life from conception to natural death, rejecting abortion, euthanasia, embryo research, and other aspects of the culture of death. This is a real opportunity for Ireland to witness, to be sign to Europe that we will stand firm and that we will not accept the imposition of the culture of death or any attempt to curtail our freedom of speech, religion or conscience which were won for us at great expense. Ireland must say no so that this godless treaty can be disposed of once and for all and that work can begin on a new international understanding that respects life, family and all our cherished freedoms.
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Irish Sovereignty
Post Lisbon, EU citizenship will, (if the treaty is approved) take precedence over Irish citizenship. The first two sentences of the proposed Constitutional Amendment on which the Irish people are being asked to vote in the June referendum, under the 28th Amendment of the Constitution are as follows
"The State may ratify the Treaty of Lisbon signed at Lisbon on the 13th day of December 2007, and may be a member of the European Union established by virtue of that Treaty. No provision of this (Irish) Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by membership of the European Union referred to, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the said European Union or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the treaties referred to in this section, from having the force of law in the State."
The Lisbon Treaty would therefore be a complete subversion of the present Irish Constitution. It would be a profound betrayal of Ireland's national democracy and independence because post-Lisbon our EU citizenship and the rights and duties attaching to that would be superior to the rights and duties attaching to our Irish citizenship.
By transforming us from our current notional citizenship into real EU citizens for the first time and by making the Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding as our EU citizens' rights, the Lisbon Treaty would give the EU Court of Justice the power to decide our rights as EU citizens, and these rights would be superior to our rights as Irish citizens in any case of conflict between the two. If Lisbon is ratified, the EU Court would have the undoubted right - for good or ill -, to decide such very important issues as the meaning for 500 million EU citizens of the right to life, the rights of the child, the right to strike, the right to property, the right to fair trial, the right to public health, and all the other rights set out in the Charter, which the Irish Supreme Court currently has the final say on for Irish citizens. Because post-Lisbon our EU citizenship and the rights and duties attaching to that, would be superior to the rights and duties attaching to our Irish citizenship in any case of conflict between the two. |
The Charter of Fundamental Rights
One element that remained unchanged when the Treaty/constitution was rehashed is the Charter of fundamental rights
Despite the fact that the Charter in Article 51.2 tells us "This Charter does not establish any new power or task for the Community or the Union [...]" it nevertheless mandates an EU standard for 13 new areas not directly covered by the other European human rights Convention, the ECHR or any of its ratified protocols. These include rights pertaining to human dignity (Art. 1), integrity of the person (Art. 3), personal data (Art. 8), freedom to choose an occupation (Art. 15), asylum (Art. 18), equality (Art. 20), children (Art. 24), the elderly (Art. 25), disability (Art. 26), work conditions (Art. 31), child labor (Art. 32), social security (Art. 34), and health (Art. 35). In light of these broad new areas of EU concern, the assertion of Article 51 that the Charter does not establish any new "power" or "task" for the Community is bold indeed. In fact, the explicit codification of these areas of concern could have several notable consequences for the EU.
Some of these new rights are exceptionally broad. Take, for example, Article 1. Precisely what does the right to "human dignity" entail? This query, which is essentially unanswerable (at least for now), is vital because "human dignity" is declared to be "inviolable." This is an extraordinarily high level of protection for a right that is difficult to describe with any degree of precision. Such an open-ended declaration of a "fundamental right" may well invite judicial activism and experimentation. Next, the list of rights announced by the Charter includes not just civil and political rights, but social and economic rights. If all of the "human rights" set out in the Charter are justiciable, important questions of social and economic policy could be established - not by democratic organs of the EU - but by the European Court of Justice.
Precisely because the Charter will erode the sovereign decisional authority of Ireland and indeed all other
EU member states, the breadth of its enunciated rights is certain to prompt fierce future controversies. The ethical, moral, social and economic contours of the numerous rights proclaimed by the Charter are not yet fully known. Nevertheless, these potentially expansive rights may well be invoked by European legislators and perhaps most prominently - the European court of Justice to decide political questions of great import.
For the foregoing reasons the claim in Article 51.2 that the Charter "does not extend the scope of application or Union law" or "establish any new power" or "task," does not seem to be accurate | |
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