Paul KeenanThe Pioneer Total Abstinence Association (PTAA) has called on the Irish bishops to re-introduce the pledge during Confirmation as “a first step” in tackling Ireland’s destructive relationship with alcohol.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic this week as it was revealed by a leading medical practitioner that three people in Ireland are dying each day as a result of alcohol, the PTAA’s President James Shevlin said everyone has a role in finding a way “to deal with the blight of overindulgence in alcohol”, from parents, to legislators and the Church.
“I would ask the bishops to bring back the pledge,” he said. “It is at least a start, a stepping stone on alcohol.”
Over-indulgence
Leading an organisation working to educate people, especially the young, on the dangers of over-indulgence, Mr Shevlin welcomed the latest revelations from the President of the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Frank Murray, who spoke in stark terms of the damaging impact of Ireland’s relationship with alcohol. Prof. Murray revealed not only had rates of liver disease doubled in Ireland over the last 20 years, but that deaths from liver disease are now occurring among people in their early 30s, where such mortality was previously confined to those in their 40s and 50s.