
Augustinian priest Fr Iggy O’Donovan
Boy could he play guitar.
…Many, perhaps most of us, will I suspect find that we are being asked to vote not for the right cause over the wrong cause. Matters are far more complicated than that.
Churches have views, ideals and laws about these issues and they, quite properly, teach their members about those views. (Although in churches, there are differences of emphasis and variations in pastoral practice).
When we become legislators, though, as we do when we vote in referendums, we legislate for ALL our fellow citizens. We do not vote as members of this or that church or faith.
Of course we cannot leave our religiously based moral convictions outside the polling station, but we do need to remember the difference between civil and religious law.
We also need to remember that it is possible to have deep and passionately held convictions without seeking to have those convictions imposed by the State on fellow citizens who do not share them and may have opposite convictions which are equally deep and passionately held.
When we vote in referendums we legislate for all citizens not just members of a church (Fr Iggy O’Donavan, Irish Times)
Earlier: Annagry Is An Energy
(Pic: Examiner)