Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, says baptising babies is a violation of their human rights. By baptising children before they have reached the age of reason, the Church is creating “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience,” she says. “You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old Read more
Ireland’s former president wants Pope Francis to develop a credible strategy to include women at every level in the Catholic Church’s global structure. Mary McAleese says women’s exclusion from decision-making roles “has left the church flapping about awkwardly on one wing.” Read more
Artificial contraception and the Catholic church’s ban on it is the subject of a statement challenging the church’s ruling. Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, is among more than 100 international Catholic academics who have signed a ‘Scholars’ Statement’ challenging the church’s stance. Prepared by independent think tank the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, it will Read more
A Marist priest and theologian who died last week in Dublin had his heart and spirit broken by the Vatican, a former president of Ireland has said. Mary McAleese was speaking of the late Fr Seán Fagan, who died at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin last Friday. For many years he was critical of Vatican Read more
A former president of Ireland has said that an entrenched clericalism in that country used to view any opposition to itself as militant secularism. Speaking in an interview on the Crux website, Mary McAleese said Ireland had, at least in part, been dissuaded from anti-immigrant movements because of its rich Christian culture. She was asked Read more
Former Irish president Mary McAleese has raised the issue of the Church’s attitude to corporal punishment of children with Pope Francis. Ms McAleese’s revelation that she did this came as Ireland’s parliament last week removed the common law defence of “reasonable chastisement” of children. In an interview, the former Irish president said she raised with Read more
Former Irish President Mary McAleese has been in a testy exchange with a US archbishop over whether homosexuals are “disordered”. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia spoke to media about Ms McAleese’s recent claim that the Church’s description of homosexuality as “instrinsically disordered” with a tendency to “evil” led to homophobia. The archbishop stated: “I’ve read Read more
An English bishop has admitted that he struggles with the notion of hundreds of celibate men discussing family issues at a synod. Speaking ahead of the synod on the family in Rome, Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton said “there is a bit of an issue”. “I thought I understood marriage and family life because I Read more
Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, has spoken of her son as a devout young Catholic who was made to feel lonely and was bullied because he was gay. Mrs McAleese said her son Justin was a “willing and happy” altar boy and an enthusiastic member of his local Catholic youth club. But he went through Read more
One good thing has come out of the fuss over the pope’s comments about it being ok to smack your children (so long as their dignity is maintained); it has flushed out the former Irish president, Mary McAleese, as tiresomely conventional in much the same way as her predecessor, Mary Robinson – the very incarnation of PC. Read more