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Warsaw, June 10, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a nationwide referendum, Polish voters strongly approved the ratification of Poland’s accession treaty to the European Union. President Aleksander Kwasniewski triumphantly stated, “We are returning to the great European family,” and “We are returning to the place which Poles and Poland deserve in 1,000 years of history.”

Others were not so happy about the vote. The EU’s developing secularist, almost anti-religious philosophical direction has faithful Catholics and others who cherish traditional moral and family principles worried.

The New York Times reports that “Populist political parties and many priests in this strongly Roman Catholic and often deeply conservative country had urged parishioners to stay away from the polls.” The Times says that “They feared the European Union’s relaxed stance on abortion, gay rights, divorce and pre-marital sex would undermine Poland’s national morality and see its national identity, only recently recovered from four decades of Soviet domination, dissolved in the multi-ethnic union.”  Catholic World New reports today that Poland’s government said today that it would insist that the European Union’s Constitutional Treaty include the continent’s Christian history “. Government spokesman Michal Tober told a news conference “The Polish government believes that … it is impossible not to mention Christian values as roots of the European culture and civilization in the preamble to the EU Constitutional Treaty”.  https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/09/international/europe/09POLA.html