As the Brexit referendum vote looms nearer, posters for Leave and Remain are going up all over our small Kentish town. A sociologist would observe that, on the whole, the more affluent parts of town sport a Remain poster, while the more modest quarters show the Leave stickers (sometimes alongside a St George’s flag).
The Catholic hierarchy is nudging us towards a Remain position, and that is wholly in line with Catholic thinking since the inception of what was once the European Economic Community (EEC)
As has often been pointed out, the founding fathers of the EEC were Catholics who believed that a more united Europe would bring peace: Robert Schumann, Jean Monnet, Alcide De Gasperi; though another early Catholic adherent, Charles de Gaulle, was ambivalent, believing in a “Europe of nations”, and that Britain would never be organically part of the arrangement. (He described the British as insulaire, which is sometimes translated as “insular”, though the correct translation, according to the authoritative Le Petit Robert, simply means “people who inhabit an island”.)
Fair play to the European ideal, which surely supported peace on the Continent after World War II. But on the voting issue, I’m with Blessed John Henry Newman, who said that he would indeed drink a toast to the Pope, but he would still put his conscience first. I would say: when you enter that voting booth, or even before you do so, examine your conscience. Do what you truly believe will be right.
I meet many individuals who say they are still wrestling with their consciences. On the one hand, to leave could damage the common good. On the other, to remain might mean there is no corrective to an institution which has grown distant from the people, unaccountable and often unmanageable. So far, my conscience is leading me towards the direction of abstaining. To withhold a vote can also be the right thing to do.
…
A Dublin friend now in her 80s was recently recalling her girlhood. She started working aged 14 in Jacob’s biscuit factory – a company with a reputation for being a good employer. Her job included inserting the sweet fillings into Kimberley biscuits.
One day she was instructed to do a heavy lifting and pulling task for the packaging department. This was beyond her job description, and she also felt the labour involved was too weighty for a young teenager. Moreover, her parents were trade union members: she knew she had rights.
So she refused to do this task and was brought up before the boss of the department. He tried to bully her, but she stood firm: this assignment was not part of her job. If she was coerced, she said, she would get the trade unions to arbitrate.
The boss, she remembers, put his face close to hers and shouted: “You are the scum of the earth!” But he desisted from further coercion. “And that,” she laughed, “is the moment I became a communist.” To hear a person’s own story is surely to understand the narrative of their lives.
I couldn’t but admire the spirited response of a 14-year-old factory girl, who knew that she was entitled to be respected in her work – however junior her position – and that she should not be bullied into doing something she shouldn’t be asked to do.
I didn’t blame her political conclusion. To call any human being “the scum of the earth” is morally deplorable. The story also shows that not every young teenager sent to work in the 1940s was a timid wee mouse who couldn’t stand up for herself.
…
Whoa! The Scottish Kirk has certainly changed, with its endorsement of gay marriage among the clergy. It may be recalled that one of the fiercest prosecutors of homosexuals in the 1950s was the Scottish Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, a Kirk member.
There was a traditional story about the flintiness of the old Kirk. A group of Scottish sinners were wailing in hell about the errors of their lives: “Och, Laird, Laird, we didna ken!” And the Scottish God looked down in his wrath and thundered: “Well, ye ken the noo!”
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