The Vatican Urges A 'No' Vote

Cranmer has the full story.  The Vatican is urging the Irish people to vote 'No' in today's referendum.

"But in an astonishing intervention, quite out of character with previous Vatican pronouncements on matters relating to the EU, Bruno Waterfield reports that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, has warned the people of Ireland that the European Union threatens their country's ‘identity, traditions and history’.

"The Church wants to encourage EU states to assert their individual identities?

"Hallelujah!

"This is the first time there has been Vatican affirmation of the historic Protestant Christian identity and tradition of the United Kingdom.

"This intervention is an immense blow to the obsessively-secular EU, which seeks to ‘prescribe laws and customs’ which are antithetical to Christian history and tradition. The disgraceful treatment meted out to Italy’s prospective commissioner Rocco Buttiglione revealed what had hitherto been covert. The imposition of secularism as an assertion of ‘neutrality’ on the part of the state (for the EU is a de facto state, if not increasingly de jure) challenges the distinctive Christian moral vision of the common good..."

Full article at Archbishop Cranmer