Some church teaching is 'rancid' and must be updated, says Mary McAleese
Ottoline Spearman
Some Catholic church teaching is "rancid" and "has gone off", Mary McAleese has said.
The former president said that teaching "needs to be updated", adding that "it's not going to be... by a bunch of, tiny and increasingly small number of celibate male ordained bishops."
The former president was speaking on a podcast with students at her former school, St Dominic's in Belfast, Mollie Rodgers (18) and Kathryn Reynolds (17).
McAleese said that Pope Leo is "no champion of women, unfortunately", and lamented what is happening in the Catholic Church with the "pushback against the ordination of women, whether it's as deacons or as priests".
She said that women look at the pope's stance on women and say "you've got a problem of relevance here. You've got a problem of credibility here. And you don't see it, you know, because they're just not in that field."
In December, a report from a Vatican commission confirmed the ban on women deacons in the church. A deacon can perform all the functions of a priest except hear confessions or celebrate the Eucharist.
McAleese said that "There are lots of wonderful young women who would make a great job of priesthood and of diaconate."
She added that "there are lots of ideas from women" and "lots of intellectual energy that could really inform church teaching, in particular church teaching that is rancid and has gone off".
Referring to a document presented to church representatives attending a Synod on Synodality in Kilkenny last October, she said: "I just find it so boring and depressing and trite and Pollyanna-ish and not really related to the world of faith that I live in.
"The dynamism wasn't there... I would love to see the energy that... could galvanise the church. But it's not going to... probably not during Leo's lifetime anyway."
McAleese told the Irish Times on Friday that what she meant by "rancid" teachings was, in particular, its teachings on human sexuality, the ban on artificial means of contraception in its 1968 “Humanae Vitae” document, and the ban on women deacons and women priests.
