LABOUR PARTY members have been urged to ensure a statement made on behalf of the Irish Catholic bishops this week is made available in churches.Labour director of elections for the Lisbon campaign, Joe Costello, sent party members the statement made to an Oireachtas committee by Bishop Noel Treanor.
The bishop told the committee: “A Catholic can, without reserve and in good conscience, vote Yes for the Lisbon Treaty.”
He said there were “no grounds” to justify a No vote “on the basis of specifically religious or ethical concerns”.
Mr Costello suggested members ensure copies of the statement get prominence in churches. In an e-mail, he called on party members to bring the statement “to the attention of your local parish priest/curate so that it might provide the substance for a church homily”.
Members should ask permission to leave copies in the back of churches especially if the magazine Alive or anti-Lisbon leaflets are displayed in the church.
Speaking earlier in the week to The Irish Times, the editor of Alive, Fr Brian McKevitt, dismissed criticisms of Lisbon content in its September issue.
However, when he was asked for reaction to what Bishop Treanor had said about the treaty, he responded: “I don’t really want to go there”.
He said there was “a huge effort by the Yes side to suppress debate about the real treaty”.
Generally, he said, volunteers distributing the magazine asked permission of parish priests before placing them in churches.
Most of its 359,000 monthly copies were delivered door-to-door by its 1,500 volunteers, he added.
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