FOLLOWING THE Lisbon Treaty vote it was important “that people do not think that now we have cast our vote we can sit back and leave the rest to others,” the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said.
“Solidarity is participation; responsibility is taking part. There is an obligation on all those who are committed to a future vision for Europe that they take part actively and in such a way that the values they consider vital are fostered,” he said.
There was no point in blaming a European Union for attempting to impose alien values on one’s culture if one was not active within the European community in fostering those values, he said.
He was speaking yesterday in Gdansk in Poland at the opening of a conference on the theme “Solidarity – the Challenge for Europe” organised by the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community.
Dr Martin recalled the efforts of two Irishmen who worked in Gdansk in the mid-1930s.
They were the Bishop of Gdansk, Count Edward O’Rourke, of Leitrim stock, and Sean Lester, a Northern Irish Protestant who was an Irish diplomat, commissioner of the League of Nations for the Free City of Danzig and later secretary general of the League of Nations.
Both, he said, were among “the best of Europeans, of men and women who have worked concretely in their spiritual and political mission to create a different Europe, a Europe of many peoples and cultures”.
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