I posted a reply today on FaceBook to someone else's comment, and I will expand a bit on it here:
I love Europe. I am thankful that the US helped in two world wars so that the nations in the continent of Europe could be free.
Having been a pipe organ builder for much of my life, I would like to visit Germany and France to see all sorts of organs and churches, and also to attend EF Masses. I am also 1/2 German (and that 1/2 Protestant and 1/2 Catholic). But I feel no affinity with either country, nor do I desire to be German or French.
There are places in Spain and Ireland that I would like to see - both architeture and countryside. And I am almost 1/2 Irish (and again, that 1/2 Protestant and 1/2 Catholic). But I feel no affinity with either Ireland or Spain, and even though my AOH brothers might be sad to hear it, I have no desire to be either Irish or Spanish.
There ARE a number of reasons why I do feel an affinity with Great Britain - bell ringing is only one of them. I would like to be British, but I have no real desire to be European. It only means as much as being an American citizen makes me a North American. Sitting here across the Pond and seeing an entire continent of sovereign nations become as powerless as any State in the USA has been painful for me to watch. I am so proud of the British, including the Monarchy, that the Pound Sterling was kept even when almost all the other countries climbed onto the Euro bandwagon, and that there is still a more than significant military. I firmly believe that, not just England, but every country that would leave the EU, will be better off as sovereign nations once again. As human beings we all know that it takes time to fix repercussions from bad decisions we have made in the past.
2 comments:
Brexit is the hardest because it is the first. The EU means to punish Britain with harsh trade policies.
However -- those countries wishing for referendums also to exit the EU can logically expect amicable and favourable trade relations with the UK.
Bishops who advocated the UK remain in the secular humanist EU in the name of "solidarity" should stop and consider that Brexit is actually a triumph of the Catholic principle of subsidarity.
Bishops who advocated indiscriminate welcome of all migrants in the name of Christian charity were ignorant of or else forgot the Church-approved social justice teaching of St Thomas Aquinas on prioritising the rights of migrants and the duties of the state, and the principles by which to balance Charity to strangers with the the common good of society.
Google "Thomas Aquinas on migrants" and you will be edified.
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