A letter from Dr Anthony Coughlan to Edward Spalton

 Dear Edward,

Thank you very much for sending me those interesting documents on the  Christian Churches and particularly on the Church of England.  I have printed them out and they contain some illuminating stuff.  I remember Jens-Peter Bonde introducing me to an EU-critical Lutheran clergyman in Denmark some time in the early 1990s, who described how  the  EU Commission and the European Movement at the time were making a  particular effort  to co-opt the Christian Churches into supporting the EU  project.

They seemingly set this objective as a key  political  goal  following the  Danish and Irish Maastricht Treaty referendums  in the early 1990s, when  the Lutheran clergy in Denmark, for instance, tended to be  on the No  side.

Traditionally, it seems,  the Lutheran Churches of Scandinavia, which are  all State churches as you know,  tended to be EU-critical, as they stood  by the sovereignty of their respective Crowns/Monarchs, representing their  national State sovereignty.

As regards the Church  of England, you have heard the old wisecrack, I am  sure, that the Church of England is the Tory Party at prayer!   So I  expect that the evolution of opinion   in the C. of E.  over the years has  mirrored that within Conservative circles as a whole.

I do not know how successful  the  EU’s cooption exercise has proved with  regard to the  Lutheran Churches, but it has certainly been hugely  successful as regards the Roman Catholic Church, which is my own  background, especially in the 1990s/early 2000s… I expect that the  post-2008 financial crisis has brought new issues into play  –  the growth  of poverty, unemployment etc. –  which perhaps reduces the Europhilia of various  Church hierarchies, as they have to pay attention to such  developments and deplore them from a Christian perspective.

 The Catholic Church in Ireland, influential though it was,  did not involve itself officially in any way in the 1972 EEC Accession referendum  or in our 1987 Single European Act,  1992 Maastrihct Treaty  and 1998 Amsterdam Treaty  referendums.

However in the 2001 Nice Treaty referendum, the newly formed European  and International Affairs Committee  of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy caused  consternation among the many Catholic traditonalists on the No-side by  coming out with a statement shortly   before the referendum which implicitly pointed towards the desirability of Catholics voting Yes.

Frantic efforts by some of the Catholic No-side people persuaded two of  the Bishops to say  or imply that they supported the No side, but a lot of  damage was done. Similar interventions occurred in subsequent Irish referendums –  in the  aborted one on the proposed EU Constitution  in 2005, and the 2008 and  2009  Lisbon Treaty referendums.

Sometime in the 1990s the Committee of Catholic Hierarchies of the  European Community/Union was established – known by its French intitials  as COMICE.   It had a full-time office in Brussels, whose full-time  secretary was  for years  Monsignor Noel Traynor, who was promoted to the  Bishopric of  Down and Connor – i.e. Belfast – a few years ago. The  current  Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, is also a strong Europhile.

One can “google” COMICE on the internet and find various  further items of relevant information there.  Traditionally in the RC Church each Bishop was, as the old saying  put it,  Pope in his own diocese.   Each one did his own thing, so to speak. But in  recent decades Bishops speak on political issues through committees of  their respective  national Hierarchies.   So that when it comes to an EU  issue, they ask themselves: what does our European or International  Affairs Committee  or sub-committee think.   These sub-committees of half  a dozen or so people are usually strongly Europhile, having been wined and  dined for years in Brussels and gone  to symposiums on such matters as  “Christian ethics and the EU” etc.  in castles in Germany and so on.

These sub-committees  sometimes include lay people who are Eurofanatics.  For example the European Affairs sub-committee which advised the Irish  Catholic Hierarchy on its 2001 statement on the  Nice Treaty included  among its members a former Irish EU Commissioner (Richard Burke), plus a  woman  (by name Kahn-Carroll) who worked full-time in the EU Office in  Dublin.

A  relevant consideration for the Catholic Church may be that the German  Hierarchy, where citizens as you know pay an annual Church tax, is one of  the principal funders  the Vatican and through the Vatican of the RC Church as a whole.

The last but one Pope, John Paul( the Pole  Karol Wojytala),   was very anti-communist  and had some kind of vision of the EU replicating the  Europe of the Middle Ages, when  the Roman Catholic Church had such influence, which made him strongly Europhile.

The last Pope, Benedict, was a German, which may also be relevant.  The  Roman Catholic  Church, being a world-wide body with over a thousand  million members,  does  not have a uniform view on  any non-religious  matter of course. Even Catholic religious orders will have different  traditions.  My own impression  is that the Jesuits, for instance – an  order of which the present Pope is a member – is traditionally very  Europhile,whereas Opus Dei,  another  influential religious order, is said  to be EU-critical…  But within each order there will of course be  diverse  views held by their individual members.

The CIB  conference is clearly important and I hope that it goes well. It reminds us EU-critics here in the Republic of  Ireland  that we should pay  more attention to the  current state of play regarding the Catholic Church  and the EU.

I am not going to the TEAM meeting  either, but  it was nice to meet you again at the TEAM  meeting in Riga last September.

I trust that your political work  and that of your colleagues goes well in  the  months ahead.

All the best for now

As ever,

TONY

Anthony Coughlan