The EU referendum: 'Why Catholics can't agree on Brexit...'

An interesting and balanced article from Dan Hitchens at the Catholic Herald:

Fimister speaks of a “culture of death – the general drift of all Western societies towards a weird, radically atomised individualism where you create your own identity”. This is so corrosive and demographically lethal that it cannot last – but it will cause “an enormous amount of damage in the meantime”.

How much this is the EU’s fault is an open question. But it is interesting to reflect that, when Catholics cast their votes on June 23, they will be giving their verdict on a project which, without Catholicism, might never have even begun.

Full article here.

The article captures well at least one aspect of the Brexit debate. One the one hand, the EU has a clear historical link with Catholic social teaching and a general consonance with the Catholic aim of international co-operation. On the other hand, some will argue that aspects of the EU, as it has developed since that foundation, are either directly at odds with that teaching, or at least at odds with the general well being of constituent nations and citizens. Father Lucie-Smith is surely right when he argues in an earlier article in the Catholic Herald (here):

Catholics believe in subsidiarity, solidarity and participation. That is not up for discussion. What is to be discussed is the best way of achieving this. It is surely arguable that we can best promote these goals from outside the EU as from within it. Again, what do we do when we find that there is an apparent contradiction between the goals? In other words, when we are in a political system that promotes solidarity at the expense of participation, and at the expense of subsidiarity?

(The lightly Eurosceptic tone which pervades the article is worth comparing with Father Lucie-Smith's earlier declaration that he would remain in the EU (here):

So why on earth vote to stay in? The answer is because I am a Catholic and, as such, an internationalist. The single greatest threat to world peace is nationalism. Serb nationalism and Russian nationalism between them have given us a series of wars in in Europe in the last two decades. 
 
Coupled with this is the threat of religious sectarianism, with which, Catholicism, properly understood, must always find itself at variance. The EU, defective as it is, does represent an attempt to overcome nationalism. The idea of Germany invading Poland would nowadays seem unthinkable. )


The basket of principles by which we will decide our vote are relatively clear, but the application of those principles to the present concrete case requires the virtue of practical wisdom, prudentia.