Election Guidelines

Bishops pull their punches

Not for the first time, an election issue given top priority by the Catholic bishops of Scotland fails to receive even a passing mention in an equivalent statement from their episcopal colleagues south of the border. The Scottish bishops’ pre-election message is unambiguously in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, hence against the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. This aligns them with the position of the Scottish National Party. Yet Britain’s nuclear deterrence policy, it hardly needs saying, is as much a matter for English and Welsh voters as it is for Scottish ones. And if it is as immoral as the Scottish bishops say it is, it cannot only be immoral north of the border.

Brendan Walsh