THE SUGGESTION by Cardinal Seán Brady that the European Union is aggressively secularist and has excluded religion from public life is remarkable and wrong, the Institute of International and European Affairs has been told.
Speaking on Christian Values and the EU, Ronan McCrea, barrister and researcher at the London School of Economics, said the EU neither threatened nor excluded religion from public life.
The cardinal had made his comments during a speech to the Humbert Summer School last August.
He had said the experience of many Christians within the EU was that they were "being denied the right to intervene in public debates or at least were having their contribution dismissed as an attempt to protect unjustified privileges, such as, for example, the right to employ people who support the ethos of a Christian institution".
Mr McCrea said Cardinal Brady had used the case of Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione as an example of Christians' exclusion from public life.
Mr Buttiglione had been nominated to the European Commission and was to be given the justice portfolio, which included anti-discrimination. He was rejected by the European Parliament on the grounds that his views were sexist and anti-gay.
"What occurred in this instance was not the exclusion of religion from public life but the treating of religious beliefs in the same manner in which all other kinds of beliefs are treated," Mr McCrea said. "A failure to do so would involve a serious failure in democracy."
He said the EU had privileged religious bodies with the establishment of "A Soul for Europe" programme, which aimed to encourage religious input into law and policymaking. It received official status in the Lisbon Treaty, he said.
"In these circumstances, to assert, as Cardinal Brady did, that religion is in some way excluded from public debate in the EU, is really rather remarkable," he said.
Mr McCrea said the EU had also been at pains to steer clear of hot button social issues. It had never sought to require member states to permit abortion or recognise gay marriage.
"The EU has been very deferential to religion's cultural and institutional role in the member states, and the cardinal's critique is not supported by the facts," he said.
