Bishop appeals for Catholics to vote with their conscience

Upcoming elections “offer opportunity to influence policy.”

In a Pastoral Reflection to be distributed throughout parishes in the Diocese of Down and Connor this weekend, Bishop Noel Treanor called on Catholics to vote with their conscience in the upcoming local and European elections.

“This is an important opportunity for each of us as Christians and as citizens to influence the values that will shape future public policy at both local and European level,” Bishop Treanor said.

“How we vote is ultimately a matter of personal conscience. As with every act that has moral consequences, we are called to inform our conscience,” he said. “This means weighing up the position of each candidate and political party in the forthcoming elections and deciding how, in exercising our Christian responsibility to vote, we can maximise the common good.”

Issues

The bishop said with many issues, “this is a matter of legitimate technical debate and sincere political difference”, but with other issues such as the right to life from conception to natural death, “the values at stake are so fundamental that they can never be undermined”.

Bishop Treanor lists four principles that have particular significance in the forthcoming elections: the right to life, upholding the special value of marriage between a woman and man as the foundation of the family, promoting justice, social inclusion and concern for the poor and promoting peace and reconciliation.

He said that as Christians we enjoy “both the great freedom and the great responsibility of participating conscientiously in the democratic process and voting in the forthcoming elections” and it is also important that we “commend and encourage all those who take up the noble vocation of politics” and “work with integrity and commitment for the common good”.