Mary McAleese for the Vatican

The Phoenix, Dublin, Ireland,
November 1, 2013.

MARY MCALEESE is one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of Pope Francis due to his apparent, but yet uncontested, advocacy of a return to Vatican II values. But the former President has particular reasons to welcome the new Pope’s ascent to the Throne of St Peter.

McAleese, it will be recalled has marked out a role for herself as a Renaissance woman with a reforming book Quo Vadis which challenges Vatican conservatism and argues for returning Mother church to the faithful, the laity and, most subversive of all, to women. McAleese has armed herself with degrees in canon law and theology before setting up a foundation and think-tank at her Roscommon redoubt, from where she threatens to pursue her mission for church reform. So challenging has McAleese been regarded by the guarantors of church orthodoxy – as represented by such as Papal Nuncio, Charlie Brown – that rumours of her being “delated” to Rome had spread in Irish church circles last year.

Mary’s first steps in religious academia came at the Milltown Institute, the third level college of theology, philosophy and spirituality. As Irish clerics will know, Milltown is the Irish academic centre of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. McAleese then proceeded to the Gregorian Institute (The Greg), in Rome where she studied for a doctrinal degree in canon law.

The Greg is the Jesuits’ oldest and most prestigious seat of learning. Most recently, McAleese signed on in Boston College as the Burns Library Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies. As Boston College puts it, “Boston College is transmitting to maintaining and strengthening the Jesuit, Catholic mission of the University, and especially its commitment to integrating intellectual, personal ethical, and religious formation.”

Is the Pope a Catholic? A more rhetorical question might be: Is Pope Francis a Jesuit? An even greater cataclysm for the soldiers of orthodoxy who ruled with such Roman absolutism under Pope Benny comes with the fantastic yet seriously regarded suggestion that the new Jesuit Pope will appoint a female Cardinal in the not so distant future. Apparently one does not need to have been an ordained priest to become a Cardinal and the church has seen female Cardinals before (admittedly it is 800 years since such an appointment).

Pope Francis has been given to remarking about the need to involve women in the Church, arguing recently that, “The woman is essential for the Church. The new Pope knows he cannot yet overcome the myriad obstacles to ordaining women priests b ut, ironically, he could appoint a female Cardinal.  The Spanish newspaper El Pais was the first to report that Pope Francis was considering such an appointment and it was picked up by the Catholic media in Italy and also the US. There, Phyllis Zagona, an academic at Loyola University (another Jesuit College), posited the suggestion as realistic. So, too, did Fr James Keenan (another Jesuit – the plot thickens!) a moral theologian at Boston College, would you believe, proposed a list of possible candidates, including Linda Hogan, a professor of Ecumenics at Trinity College, Dublin. One feels sure that another female Irish academic with a CV that would dwarf any other candidate, would also make any such shortlist.