Behind the European Bishops’ Reluctance to Acknowledge Brexit, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, Feb 04, 2020

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

In case you missed the announcement, despite Brexit the Catholic bishops of the United Kingdom will continue to participate in COMECE. COMECE, in case you’ve forgotten (or never knew) is the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union. So the bishops of the UK—which is not a member of the EU—will remain active in an umbrella organization for bishops of countries in the EU.

There are precedents for this, actually. For example, the bishops of Northern Ireland are members of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, although Northern Ireland is politically separate from Ireland. This odd sort of arrangement usually reflects a tacit belief among Catholics (or at least among Catholic bishops) that the political boundaries are not properly placed—in this case, a sympathy for the age-old belief that Ireland is a single nation.

(There is more than a little irony, by the way, in the fact that many people in Northern Ireland are now anxious to achieve union with the Irish Republic, in order to avoid the consequences of Brexit and remain in the European Union. There’s still more irony in the fact that in all of Ireland today, the only major political party that supports the pro-life cause is the Democratic Unionist Party in the north—the party founded by the notoriously anti-Catholic Ian Paisley. But that’s another story.)  ….

Read more here  https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/behind-european-bishops-reluctance-to-acknowledge-brexit/