During the 339th plenary session of the Polish Bishops’ Conference (13-14 March) the bishops approved a document that defines the position of the Church in Poland to the European Constitutional Treaty. There are, say the bishops, two “fundamental deficiencies” in the draft Constitution: “the first consists in the failure to refer to God, the second in the failure to underline the indispensable role of Christianity in the process of the construction of Europe”. “The reference to God not only communicates the position of the European Community to religion, but also acknowledges that neither the individual nor the democratic majority can command absolute power over another human being. The indispensable role of Christianity is an incontrovertible historical and cultural fact that also refers to the present. The Constitutional Treaty cannot fail to take it into account”. The Polish episcopate also expresses its appreciation for the proponents of those ideas that operate “in the name of the construction of the Eu in the measure of man, and in the name of historical truth”. It recalls that “the human being endowed with inalienable personal dignity, from conception to natural death, must be the subject, centre, principle and finality of the European Union”, and that “the Union in all its structures and projects must be at the service of an integral development of the person”. The Polish bishops further reaffirm the principal role of the family “based on the indissoluble union between man and woman” and warn against any attempt to equate with it, or “place on the same level, other forms of cohabitation that are a negation of the real nature of marriage and the family”.
