{"id":273385,"date":"2026-01-31T08:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/273385\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T08:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:21:07","slug":"some-catholic-teaching-is-rancid-and-needs-updating-says-mary-mcaleese-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/273385\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Catholic teaching is \u2018rancid\u2019 and needs updating, says Mary McAleese \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some Catholic Church<\/a> teaching \u201cis rancid, has gone off and needs to be updated\u201d, former president Mary McAleese<\/a> has said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s not going to be updated by a bunch of, a tiny and increasingly small number of celibate male ordained bishops,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

There were \u201clots of wonderful young women who would make a great job of priesthood and of diaconate\u201d with \u201clots of intellectual energy that could really inform church teaching\u201d, she said. Instead of this, there was \u201cpushback against the ordination of women, whether it\u2019s as deacons or as priests\u201d.<\/p>\n

This, she said, was \u201cas strong today among the hierarchy, among the magisterium of the church, as it ever was\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last month a report from a Vatican commission reiterated its ban on women deacons<\/a> in the church. A deacon can perform all the functions of a priest except hear confessions or celebrate the Eucharist.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo<\/a> was \u201cno champion of women, unfortunately, and that\u2019s tragic\u201d, said Ms McAleese. Women look at that \u201cand say: \u2018You\u2019ve got a problem of relevance here, you\u2019ve got a problem of credibility here, and you don\u2019t see it\u2019\u201d. The new pope \u201clooks to me more like a stopgap than a reformer\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

Ms McAleese was speaking in a podcast with Mollie Rodgers (18) and Kathryn Reynolds (17), who are students at her former school St Dominic\u2019s in Belfast.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Abuse survivor David Ryan to put \u2018tough questions\u2019 to Pope Leo XIV during private audienceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"PopePope Leo XIV. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

She was also critical of a document presented to church representatives attending a Synod on Synodality in Kilkenny last October. <\/p>\n

It was \u201cso boring, and depressing and trite and Pollyannish and not really related to the world of faith that I live in. The dynamism wasn\u2019t there that I would love to see, that could galvanise the church and probably is not going to during Leo\u2019s lifetime anyhow.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, clarifying what she meant by \u201crancid\u201d teachings in the church, Ms McAleese said she was referring in particular to its teachings on human sexuality, the ban on artificial means of contraception in its 1968 \u201cHumanae Vitae\u201d document, and the ban on women deacons and women priests.<\/p>\n

She \u201cdoesn\u2019t know\u201d Pope Leo but finds him \u201cenigmatic\u201d and believed he was elected last May as \u201ca safe pair of hands, to continue with the same old witter as a cover for doing nothing\u201d. <\/p>\n

She believed Leo \u201cwas deliberately chosen to follow the Pope Francis line on immigrants, the poor, climate and the environment\u201d, while disregarding those other issues.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Catholicism may be raising its head high but the body underneath is ailingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some Catholic Church teaching \u201cis rancid, has gone off and needs to be updated\u201d, former president Mary McAleese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4501,12780,42,5785,43,6318,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-273385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-catholic-church","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-mary-mcaleese","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}