Bridget Mary's Response: Former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese challenges Pope Francis to practice what he preaches. Mary McAleese is right about the failure of Synod to include the voices and votes of women who have changed children's nappies!
The Family Synod excluded women in decision making. No votes on any issues were cast by women!
Pope Francis should invite passionate feminists like Mary McAleese and representatives from all nations and movements including women priests to a Synod for Gender Equality!
Now this would be a holy shakeup for the Vatican!
The Family Synod excluded women in decision making. No votes on any issues were cast by women!
Pope Francis should invite passionate feminists like Mary McAleese and representatives from all nations and movements including women priests to a Synod for Gender Equality!
Now this would be a holy shakeup for the Vatican!
Special thanks to John Cooney for the good news about Mary McAleese's advocacy for a more inclusive church!
Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP, www.arcwp.org
sofiabmm@aol.com
"The Church of Rome is constituted under the rule of a
monarchical papacy and prides itself on not being democratic. However, in the
more relaxed reign of Pope Francis there is a mood for change seeking a heavy
hitter to break down the portals of male clericalism. Enter former President
Mary McAleese, the de facto Leader of His Holiness’s Loyal Opposition.
Since her liberation in 2011 from the Phoenix Park as First
Citizen, Mary Mac moved to Rome to pursue theology studies at the Gregorian
University which she had begun part-time during her Presidency at the Milltown
Institute from which she obtained an M A. in Canon Law. This addition to her
many civil law parchments resulted in her obtaining a Licentiate in Canon Law at
the Greg the following year which became a bestseller in the religious books
charts, Quo Vadis, Collegiality in the Code of Canon Law.
The surprise election at the conclave of March 2013 of
Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio created expectations that McAleese would be
appointed by Pope Francis to the Roman Curia. This did not materialise. Instead
Francis has come under siege from a series of tirades from an increasingly
radicalised McAleese on behalf of women and gays.
In rapid succession she scolded Il Papa for saying it was OK
to slap children who misbehave, and claimed it was “completely bonkers” for the
Pope to ask the advice of cardinals, archbishops and bishops who constitute his
“old boys club” on family issues. This consultative body of prelates, known as a
Synod, met both last year and again for three weeks last month.
McAleese made international headlines when she insisted there
was “something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking “150 male celibates”
without adult experience of rearing children to review church teaching on family
life; and when Rome sent a questionnaire to the Catholic faithful Mary sent her
own single “serious question” to the Holy Father asking just how many of his
advisers “have ever changed a baby’s nappy?”
When the bishops – including Ireland’s two Martins, Eamon of
Armagh and Diarmuid of Dublin - presented recommendations in a 66-page report on
October 24, Mary gave an interview to her biographer, Patsy McGarry, which
appeared in the Irish Times claiming that the Princes of the Church
‘produced nothing new’.
In issuing her unilateral judgement McAleese was correct in
that the bishops, while wanting to provide pastoral care to gays and lesbians,
refused to recognise gay unions as marriages, but she failed to acknowledge a
win by Francis over his reactionary bishops by being given flexibility to issue
a declaration next month allowing divorcees admission to Holy Communion, a move
which will represent a major rebuff to journalist David Quinn, who warned in the
Irish Catholic that such a move “would be anything but merciful.”
No doubt, McAleese’s intemperance of language will be
attributed by critics to her son being bullied at school for being gay, but this
underrates her belief that canon law obliges Catholics to speak out against
church teaching on homosexuality as an “intrinsic disorder” which spreads
homophobia.
Few bishops have the intellect to stop her rocking the barque
of Peter. She is gaining further eminence in academia as a Professor at St
Mary’s University in London, while completing a PhD for the Gregorian. And the
Lady even found time to present an RTE programme on All Saints Day on the
1400th anniversary of St Columbanus.
Mary remains unrepentant. As she said in Sydney, trying to be
heard by the Catholic hierarchy was comparable to shouting at children: "If I'm
yelling it's because you didn't listen to me when I said it nicely.”
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