From strident Catholic to Church rebel, Mrs McAleese is religious about her (changing) beliefs
HOWEVER the World Meeting of Families concludes next week – and let’s hope it does so on a joyful and optimistic note – there’s no doubt that the preamble to the historical occasion for the country has been overshadowed by controversy and anger.
The ugly and unresolved legacy of the scandalous cover-up of clerical child-sex abuse has disrupted the smooth running of the occasion, with two cardinals pulling out of the event due to child-protection issues in their own dioceses.
In the Pro-Cathedral yesterday Archbishop Diarmuid Martin stood with survivors, saying that it was not enough to simply apologise for the abuse and that Pope Francis must take practical steps to safeguard future generations of children.
And if that weren’t enough to raise the expectations of the faithful and put it to foot-dragging Vatican officials to finally lance the festering boil of institutional self-preservation before the Church in the West shrinks to nothing, Mary McAleese gave the event another kicking, condemning the World Meeting of Families as a ‘right-wing rally’.
‘It’s always been essentially a right-wing rally,’ said the former president in a radio interview. ‘And it was designed for that purpose: to rally people to get them motivated to fight against the tide of samesex marriage, rights for gays, abortions, contraception.’
Given the myriad denouncements by Mrs McAleese against the Catholic Church of late, few eyebrows may have been raised at her latest gratuitous outburst.
The thousands of practising Catholics from across the world who are eagerly awaiting the red-letter day, not to mention the hundreds of families in Dublin who have willingly opened their homes to them, may bitterly object to her tendentious view of an event they have been looking forward to for years.
But they will not be surprised. In recent times Mrs McAleese has excoriated the Church as an ‘empire of misogyny’, because of its refusal of female ordination. She also insulted committed Catholics when she called baptised babies ‘infant conscripts’.
At the prospect of an international meeting of Catholics, what can one expect from a person with such a degree of loathing and contempt for the modern Church, who seems to have embarked on a campaign to single-handedly destroy it other than another diatribe?
The former president is nothing if not consistent in her antipathy towards the church. But only of late.
For one does not have to travel far back in time – before Mrs McAleese reinvented herself as chief critic of the Catholic Church here and fearless spokesperson for liberal values – when the entire counNorthern try would have been convulsed in shock at any heretical words at all from Mary McAleese about the One True Faith.
In 1997 when she started hustling Fianna Fáil to support her nomination as presidential candidate, she seemed the epitome of traditional Catholicism. It’s hard to credit now, but back then the most common reservation about Mrs McAleese in Fianna Fáil circles was that she was ‘too Catholic’ to win the presidency.
In fact so nervous were her supporters about her alienating large swathes of the party grassroots with her regular chat about God’s grace and the power of prayer that there was widespread delight when Dana Rosemary Scallon entered the race.
Fervent
Against Dana’s more fundamentalist faith, it was thought, Mrs McAleese looked almost moderate.
The opinion of Mrs McAleese’s fervent Catholicism wasn’t formed on a whim, or overnight. Her application to the party hierarchy was endorsed by psychiatrist and passionate pro-life campaigner Patricia Casey, patron of the Iona Institute who she worked with in the early 1980s on the anti-abortion campaign.
In 1985, television audiences watched her accompany the Catholic Bishops to the New Ireland Forum, as an adviser. In 1987 Mrs McAleese fronted a video for the Catholic Church which used bad science to condemn IVF. She was a strident opponent of contraception, advocating the Billings method for family planning, and she was against granting an abortion in the tragic Miss X case.
Like Mary Robinson, her predecessor in the Phoenix Park, Mrs McAleese is a lawyer but the two leaders took opposite sides in the debates on abortion and divorce in the early 1980s.
While Mrs Robinson readily embraced the crusade for a pluralist Ireland, Mrs McAleese appeared the opposite; a proud Catholic on affectionately familiar terms with the hierarchy, and with the lives of the saints at her fingertips. To her credit, she was always a strong campaigner for gay rights, assisting David Norris in his High Court case to have the legislation on homosexuality declared unconstitutional. Her son Justin’s coming out may have intensified her commitment to the cause but it was not the catalyst.
Also, like many observant Catholics, she was in favour of women priests and an advocate for prisoners’ rights.
But during the presidential campaign she highlighted no social issues, while mainstream today, which were either potentially divisive or of more minority interest back then. Her fierce rage and deep-seated resentment towards the Church may well have been simmering in her breast but there was not a hint of it as she traversed the highways and byways of Ireland, pontificating about building bridges and the gospel of love and hope.
As her appeal spread among the electorate, culminating in an extraordinary 14-year spell as president, the only stumbling block she encountered were questions about her involvement in nationalist politics in the North and her role in the Redemptorist Peace Mission.
As president she never rose a critical voice against the Church, which in fairness may have been in line with what she believed her duty and the restrictions of her office were.
It’s also the case, however, that before the clerical sex-abuse scandals rocked the Church to its foundations, speaking against it required the virtues of courage and conviction, unlike today when the opposite almost holds true and it’s defending the Church that requires guts and nerves of steel.
When she left the presidency, Mrs McAleese’s piety was so firmly established in the public mind that taking herself off to Rome to study Canon Law seemed an obvious step.
The first clue the public had of her relaxed and progressive values, and not to mention her ill-will towards the Church, was her Meaning Of Life interview with Gay Byrne in 2012. Many viewers were astounded at her advocating gay marriage and hitting out at the arrogance of the ‘princes of the Church’ one minute while exulting about the miracle of transubstantiation and the presence of Christ the next. Her brand of Catholicism suddenly seemed complex and conflicting and arguably in tune with the prevailing attitudes of many Catholics.
In recent months her attacks on the Church have become increasingly recalcitrant and forceful, although she counters any suggestion that she just leave the Church by declaring her undying love for her Catholic ‘family’.
Who knows where her long journey from strident Catholic to fiercely liberal Church rebel will end. The folksy president turned controversial figure may believe she’s still on the side of the angels, but the angels might beg to differ.