A climate of materialism and rejection of Christian values in the EU may be due to a lack of dynamism in the churches' pastoral structure for evangelisation, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said.
"Religion plays a large role in the personal life of most Europeans. The growing religious pluralism in Europe has brought home to those who had thought that religion's days were past, that religion is indeed an important social factor also," he said.
He felt it "useful to recall that the rejection of the appeal for an explicit mention of the Christian heritage of Europe [in the proposed EU constitution] was not some sort of a pan-European plot against religion, but de facto the result of the rigid and immoveable objection principally of one or two European nations".
Dr Martin was addressing the National Forum on Europe at Dublin Castle yesterday, in his capacity as vice-president of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community.
"For me, taking huge sectors of the European population out of poverty and precariousness is an achievement about which the Christian must only rejoice," he said. Values were not simply religious or personal values.
"When speaking of the EU, I tend to begin not with the controversial issues of personal and conjugal morality, but with institutional and economic values," he said. Later in his address he added: "Certainly I would not like the EU to be reduced just to a purely economic organisation but it is important that its economy be based on sound economic values."
As the EU enlarged, it should be developing models which aim at fostering economic progress, social equity and integration, he said.
He hoped an Ireland which benefited immensely from the generosity of European donors in the area of infrastructures will be in the forefront in pressing for similar preferential treatment for newly-acceded countries. He also hoped that citizens of Bulgaria and Romania will soon be welcomed in Ireland with the same embrace of equality as citizens of other EU states.
He said applicant states, such as Croatia, which implement the economic and democratic reforms needed to join the European Union, "should not be kept on the long finger".
He described the EU as a remarkable achievement and the most developed model of shared sovereignty to materialise since the emergence of the nation state. It had led to extraordinary peace and prosperity within the EU countries for the past 50 years.
Dr Martin said there was a need to reflect on and develop the democratic framework within which the European vision must be developed and a need to improve the level of interaction and debate between MEPs and their constituents.