Drinking crisis - Alcohol abuse critical social issue

In a deliberate attempt to initiate a much-needed debate Archbishop Diarmuid Martin launched his annual Lenten pastoral letter yesterday by emphasising the damage to society being caused by excessive drinking. The launch appropriately took place in O’Connell Street, Dublin, at the statue of Fr Theobald Mathew, the internationally famous 19th century temperance campaigner.

Bishop Eamonn Walsh, of the bishops’ alcohol and drugs initiative, emphasised the social difference between the present and the 1850s when Fr Mathew, the Cork-born Capuchin friar, was campaigning. Those were years of misery and despair throughout the island, while we now enjoy unprecedented prosperity. Yet we are again witnessing the destructive influence of a growing alcohol problem.

Are we going to ignore the growing problems and then in time lament, that “No one shouted stop”? Bishop Walsh asked.