For pro-European Catholics the last few weeks will have been dispiriting ones, with the ‘Leave’ side in Britain’s ‘Brexit’ referendum looking to be gaining in momentum, with just days until the June 23 poll.
Peculiarly, it seems that online British Catholics of a more ‘traditional’ mould to the majority are themselves leaning heavily towards voting to leave the Union, with Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society writing at lmschairman.org that he gets the impression that they tend “to swing towards ‘Brexit’ in the current referendum debate”.
Surprising
This, he says, is not surprising, “as being governed by the laws of our own nation-state (or four-nation state, depending on how you count) is in accord with the kind of human tradition which we Catholic traditionalists understand is important in maintaining stability, consent, and the kind of dense political culture which only stability and consent can bring, over centuries”.
“What I mean,” he continues, “is the kind of instinctive understanding of parliamentary democracy, and many other aspects of our political institutions, which come from it being part of the fabric of national life since, well, the Middle Ages.”
It’s an interesting argument, albeit one that seems less rooted in a desire for subsidiarity than some decidedly post-imperialist English preoccupations, and a more compelling one than his objection to arguments about the possibility of the UK breaking up.
“If the UK leaves the EU, the argument goes, Scotland and perhaps other parts of the UK will want to break up with the UK to re-join the EU,” he writes, continuing, “the problem with this argument is that it is precisely our membership of the EU which created the movement for Scottish independence in the first place.”
An odd line, one might think, especially since withdrawal from the EU will not cause the EU to disappear.
Coordinated
Following a ‘Brexit’, he says, “what will change is that UK policy will no longer be coordinated with those of the other EU states, in the detailed way it is today. Remainers should spare us the horror-stories, and tell us why that would be a bad thing.”
It’s telling, perhaps, that the impact of British withdrawal from the EU on Northern Ireland and the ongoing work for peace in the North is wholly absent from the otherwise comprehensive – if brief – analysis. Not for nothing have the Northern bishops warned of the possible effects of a ‘Brexit’ on the North, and not for nothing do 70% – if not more – of Northern Catholics oppose Brexit.
One might wryly observe that it’s no accident that those Irish Catholics who recall British troops and armoured cars in their streets are less likely than their British brethren to make ludicrous claims about how it’s vital to regain independence from Brussels.
Perhaps, though, it may simply be that through the responsible leadership over the decades of the likes of John Hume, Northern Catholics have a better sense than their fellows over the water of what the EU actually does and how it helps to build peace.
It’s been a trope of the Brexit debate that NATO, rather than the EU, brought peace to Europe, but those taking such a line would do well to use the internet to drag up John Hume’s 1998 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Describing the European Union as “the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution”, one that people have a duty to study, he said diversity is a fact of life, praising the peoples of Europe for creating institutions that respected that fact.
“They spilt their sweat and not their blood and by doing so broke down the barriers of distrust of centuries and the new Europe has evolved and is still evolving, based on agreement and respect for difference,” he said, continuing, “that is precisely what we are now committed to doing in Northern Ireland.”