Guidance for Catholics ahead of General Election due in 'next few weeks’

Bishop Davies addresses J&P group image: Simon Caldwell

Guidance for Catholic voters ahead of the forthcoming General Election will published by the bishops of England and Wales within weeks. The Rt Rev Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, told justice and peace activists that work on the document has been under way since the bishops announced its publication after they met in Leeds in November.

“The bishops of England and Wales have drafted a statement for the General Election which will be coming out in the next few weeks,” Bishop Davies told delegates at a Diocesan Justice and Peace Day of Reflection at St Columba’s Church, Chester.

“This is to help Catholics reflect on the questions at stake in 2015,” the Bishop said. “It will be a concise and readable document proposing a series of key issues which each Catholic voter should keep in mind before making that fateful decision.”

The Bishop told delegates that “convinced of our social responsibility we are gathered with a shared concern – the concern of the Church herself – for justice and peace, which is of course the right ordering of human affairs”.

Bishop Davies said: “We meet just months before a General Election, which places in sharp focus an array of issues which are part of the political choices of this moment in time entrusted to us.”

Such issues, he continued, might include economics, government spending, the provision of health care, the care of the elderly, welfare, the alleviation of poverty, immigration, religious freedom and education, human rights and multiculturalism.

He said there would also be questions about the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, British military intervention, humanitarian aid, and the value of human life itself.

The question of assisted suicide, he told the meeting, and its consequences for the future of society will be decided by the Parliament that voters are about to elect.

Bishop Davies also said that the health of marriage and the family must be issues of concern to the electorate.

“The family is the first and vital cell of society of which not only the health and well-being of the young depend but the health and well-being of the whole of society,” he said.

He encouraged the delegates to persist in their efforts, even when disheartened by setbacks, by focusing on the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ witnessed to in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

He also proposed the recent Address of Pope Francis to the European Parliament would serve an inspiration for work in justice and peace and for contemporary politics with its powerful testimony to the sacred value of the human person.

Quoting the Pope, Bishop Davies said: “Only a Europe capable of appreciating its religious roots and of grasping their fruitfulness and potential will be immune from the many forms of extremism spreading in the world today not least as a result of the great vacuum of ideals we are currently witnessing in the West.”

Bishop Davies added: “If we are not proposing true and good ideals then into that vacuum, Pope Francis is suggesting, other dangerous ideas will come – they have come, they are coming.”

The bishops’ pre-election guidance will not tell voters which party to vote for in the election in May.

A spokesman for the bishops said at the time that the text will be similar to statements issued before the 2005 and 2010 General Elections.

Besides examining a range of important issues, it is expected to include an encouragement to participate and vote.

The Commission for Justice, Peace and Social Responsibility of the Diocese of Shrewsbury has decided to this year focus largely on the issues of poverty in the UK and the plight of refugees in the Middle East.

The Day of Reflection also heard addresses from Barbara Davies, the Diocesan coordinator for the New Evangelisation, who spoke about the social doctrine contained in Evangelii Gaudium, the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis.

There were also addresses from Sue Bownas of CAFOD and from Deacon John Boggan about the Wirral Food Bank and Patrick Revans about the Friends of the Holy Land.