PRIEST'S VIEWS:A DUBLIN priest has denied distributing a leaflet in his city centre parish last week, though it was signed by him.
It claimed that a “vote for the Lisbon Treaty is a vote for the culture of death. I would urge people to be a light to the nations, be a light for life, and vote No.”
However, Fr Anthony Scully of North William Street parish,agreed he wrote the leaflet, which also claimed that “the European Union has embraced the ‘Culture of Death’. Yet again, Europe has become a slaughterhouse. Millions of its own children have been exterminated.
“Defenceless human beings have been and are being denied the right to life” .
Fr Scully said yesterday that he stood over the content of the leaflet.
It is understood the leaflet was widely distributed in the parish last week.
It was put to him that the Catholic bishops had said the treaty did “not undermine existing legal protections in Ireland for unborn children” and wished “to make it clear that a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote Yes or No ” in the referendum.
Fr Scully drew attention to remarks of the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in the Czech Republic last week.
Queried about the referendum, the cardinal said: “individual European countries have their own identity. The European Union prescribes its laws or views to them and they do not have to fit with their traditions and history. Some countries are logically resisting this, for example, Ireland.
“If Europe recognised homosexual couples as equal to marriage, for example, it would go against its own history. And it would be right to stand against it. The Church wants to encourage states in this.