Courtney McGrailPope Francis has ‘allowed Church to breathe’
Martin O’Brien and Greg Daly
Former president Mary McAleese has insisted that her Catholic faith remains strong despite her public opposition to the Church during the recent referendum on same-sex marriage.
In an exclusive interview with The Irish Catholic this week, Mrs McAleese defends her decision to defy Catholic teaching and campaign for the redefinition of marriage and insists that she is still a committed member of the Church.
Mrs McAleese also reveals that she has often considered leaving the Church in favour of another denomination, but Catholicism has always called her home.
She admits to “looking at options” regularly but “had never found anything to attract me because the Catholic Church is woven into me and I relate to it and for all its messiness it calls me home”.
“I see myself as a member of the Church trying my best to be a member of that Church, trying to live the faith that I inherited and grew up with and have decided to remain with,” she insists.
Mrs McAleese also says that prayer is a vital part of her daily life. “Sometimes it is petitioning, chatting to God about things I need help with.
“I feel that God is always present, of course, but I use this time [prayer] to make myself more present to God,” she says.
Mrs McAleese also expresses the hope that Pope Francis will put structures in place so that lay Catholics can make their views heard. However, she “accepts that legislation and governance is always going to be in the hands of the Pope and bishops”.
Mrs McAleese also repeats her support for female priests and is critical of both St John Paul II and Benedict XVI. She praises Pope Francis for “welcoming debate and allowing the Church to breathe.”
“I don’t agree with him on everything but I really like the man,” she says.
Mrs McAleese said “I like the fact that Pope Francis welcomes debate. That is by far the greatest legacy he has given the Church.”
She said there had been “this culture of imposed silence, this idea that unless you conformed 100% to the Church’s Magisterium in everything you said, you were expected to remain silent.”
She claims that “the Catholic intellectual world has been suffocated by this inability to talk, debate and discuss, to push the envelope out without being seen as being heretical or schismatic”.
Mrs McAleese also reveals that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was always keen to support the peace process “out of her deep sense of Christian conviction”.