Mary McAleese tells Catholic school girls some Church teaching ‘rancid’ and Pope a ‘stopgap’ -Belfast school posted podcast for Catholic Schools week - The Irish Catholic

Mrs Mary McAleese chatting with priests and Archbishop Farrell after the farewell Mass for the late Fr Dermod McCarthy Photo: John McElroy

 https://www.irishcatholic.com/mary-mcaleese-tells-catholic-school-girls-some-church-teaching-rancid-and-pope-a-stopgap-belfast-school-posted-podcast-for-catholic-schools-week/

Former President Mary McAleese has told Catholic school girls that parts of the Church’s teaching is “rancid” and warned that Pope Leo XIV is no reformer — but merely a “stopgap” Pope.

Speaking in a podcast interview with pupils from St. Dominic’s Grammar School in Belfast [McAleese’s old school] which was released to mark Catholic Schools Week, McAleese urged young women to be ambitious, to make their mark on the world — and to be alert to misogyny wherever it appears.

She then, unasked, turned her fire on the Church itself. McAleese said resistance to the ordination of women remains as entrenched as ever at the highest levels of Church authority.  “I look at what is happening in the Catholic Church, for example, where the pushback against the ordination of women — whether as priests or deacons — is as strong today among the hierarchy, what we call the Magisterium, as it ever was,” she said.

In particularly stinging remarks, the former President said Pope Leo XIV had failed to show leadership on women’s issues. “Pope Leo is no champion of women unfortunately and that’s tragic,” she said.  “Women look at that and they say, ‘You have a problem of relevance here, you’ve a problem of credibility here — and you don’t see it.’”

“ also took aim at Irish Synodal Pathway and its  meeting in Kilkenny last year, saying its output left her cold.  “I read their document the other day and I just found it so boring, and depressing and trite, and pollyannaish,” she said.
“It wasn’t really related to the world of faith that I live in.”

She said the Synodal Pathway was lacking the energy and imagination needed to inspire believers — and that she saw little hope of change under the current pontificate. “The dynamism wasn’t there, the energy that I would love to see that could galvanise the Church — but  isn’t going to, not in Pope Leo’s lifetime anyway,” she said.
“He looks to me more like a stopgap than a reformer. I hope I am wrong.”

In one of her strongest interventions yet, McAleese said the Church was squandering talent by excluding women — and accused it of clinging to outdated ideas. “There are lots of wonderful young women who would make a great job of priesthood and of diaconate,” she said. “There’s lots of intellectual energy that could really inform Church teaching — in particular Church teaching that is rancid and gone off and needs to be updated.”

She warned that reform would not come from an ageing, male-only hierarchy. “It’s not going to be updated by a bunch of an increasingly small number of male ordained bishops,” she said. “There’s a wastefulness there.”