Arrogance of former President

I am appalled at Mary McAleese’s recent attack on the Church as an “empire of misogyny”.

Is she stating that my late uncle, Very Rev George O’Hanlon, who was a parish priest up in Glenravel for many years, was a misogynist?

Is she stating that my late mother, a loyal servant of the Church for many years until her death in 2016, was a misogynist?

In her vicious, sweeping assertions which are not grounded in any objective reality, Ms McAleese is making clear she thinks faithful members of the Church are fools or worse.

As a lawyer, she seems to only think of the Church as a political, legal organisation, whereas anyone who has studied theology knows that the Church is much more than that – it is the people of God.

To get a clearer understanding of what the Church really is, Ms McAleese should read the beautiful descriptions of the Church in the important Vatican II document ‘Lumen Gentium’.

Instead, she picks out lines in obscure canonical law documents to attack the Church with documents that most bishops never refer to, never mind ordinary parish priests.

It is supreme arrogance on the part of Ms McAleese that she says that she won’t bother even engaging with the theological arguments against the ordination of women to the sacramental priesthood, as they are in her contemptuous and rather vulgar view, “codology”.

But if she was seriously interested in reform, that is exactly what she would do, namely come up with good theological arguments in favour of women priests.

The fact she apparently can’t be bothered even to do that shows she is not actually interested in reform; rather she is interested in grandstanding, making easy soundbites, and playing to the gallery.

Joe O’Hanlon

Clontarf, Dublin 3