Mary McAleese on baptism, women’s ordination, and a ‘savage’ GAA experience

Mary McAleese is in good form as we meet in the Dublin 2 apartment she and husband Martin use as a city base when they are not at home in Cootehall, Co Roscommon. She turned 75 last June and remains as engrossed as ever by the Catholic Church, as a woman of faith but now also as a canon lawyer. She studied for a doctorate in canon law, the inner legal system of the church, on retiring as president in 2011. Her latest book, The Baptism Bluff: Human Rights and the Canon Law of Baptism, has already upset some people, although she says: “I don’t know how it could, because it hasn’t been published yet.” That will happen next Thursday. “I think infant Baptism is a beautiful sacrament,” she says, and missing out on baptism when the parents want it for their child “is particularly awful for parents of children who die in the womb”. She was one such parent. READ MOREShe feels “very strongly” on the issue “as a mother of two children who were miscarried at 10 weeks and 12 weeks”. Both times she did not know she was pregnant until she miscarried, she adds. She has “real difficulty” with the concept of original sin. As to where the souls of her two miscarried pregnancies might now be, she says: “I have no idea.” Did they have souls? “Again, I don’t know.” Baptism, she says, consists of two very distinctive elements. “One is what I call ‘the divine’, the beautiful sacrament, the grace of God that is conferred as a gift on the child and expects nothing back. It removes original sin. It welcomes the child into the Christian community, and it names the child within that community. That’s all beautiful.”The second element, however, “is absolutely not divine. It is man-made. Unlike the divine – I’m not going to argue with God – but I can argue with canon law, as it’s man-made”.This canon law element “says that the minute you are baptised you are now a member of the Catholic Church and a member for life. You cannot leave, and here are the rules, the duties and the obligations that now bind you, among them obedience to the magisterium [Pope and bishops].”[ Mary McAleese: Baptism denies babies their human rightsOpens in new window ]All that changed, she says, with “the intervention of the UN Declaration on Human Rights [1948], which the church was fully supportive of, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child [1989], which the church was also supportive of.” “I believe these [UN documents] are God-given, that God gave me and gives every human being as part of their human dignity, these fundamental rights and freedoms.”She says her attitude to the canon law element of Baptism is: “excuse me, I have freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, [as] part of my human condition”.In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI announced there was no theological basis for Limbo where, until then, it was taught that unbaptised babies were destined. Since then “the church teaching is that it doesn’t know if the child goes to heaven, it just hopes for God’s mercy”, she says.What about previous Catholic church teaching [until 1869] that a pregnancy did not acquire a soul before 24 weeks and that abortion before that was not homicide? “That merely makes my point that very often the law of the church, that has been really hardline, in another generation disappears because it was untenable,” she says.Mary McAleese says she is the first writer in the field of canon law to explore the issue of Baptism itself and membership of the Catholic Church. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times The church had “backed itself into that situation by taking the view that we are human beings from conception. But then it also teaches that all human beings carry original sin”. The theology behind Baptism – rooted in the original sin of Adam and Eve who, in disobeying God, precipitated the death of Jesus so God might forgive humanity – “needs to be looked at again”, she says. “I leave it to others, because I believe that’s a very, very big subject that demands another book or set of books.”So too the “issue of Baptism itself and membership of the church has never, ever, been properly explored. I’m the first writer in the field of canon law to be doing this”.Her own faith goes “back to the simplicity of the nativity where the infant Jesus comes into a poor world and is a symbol of the possibilities of living a life in love”. That is “what always resonates with me”.She thought the general outcome of last month’s National Synodal Assembly of the Irish Catholic Church at Gormanston, Co Meath, at which women’s ordination was discussed, “very disappointing”. It followed five years of consultation about the church with Irish Catholics as part of a worldwide process. What had “started out with great hopes has become pretty much a damp squib”, she says. As for women’s ordination, she says: “I don’t think we can expect much from Pope Leo on it.” Last September, McAleese resigned as chair of the Steering Group on Integration (SGI), set up in 2022 to oversee the merger of three Gaelic games bodies – the GAA, Camogie Association and Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA). [ Mary McAleese’s accusations cannot be waved off by the GAA – they need to get integration rightOpens in new window ]Her sense of disappointment remains palpable. She was “definitely” let down, she says, as was “everybody who invested in the integration process”.The GAA, she says, “made promises that they would proceed to integration, that they would do it in a particular way and according to a particular timeline”. As SGI chair, she “spent four years building that process and doing it very thoroughly, may I say”. She says she noticed a change about a year ago. “Behind backs there were briefings, that there hadn’t been enough communication, that the 2027 date for integration – set by the GAA not by me – was unattainable.“I have to say that during Larry McCarthy’s term [as GAA president to 2024] we had a fair wind.” The SGI was satisfied that, financially, integration was possible within the four-year period set. “The only real problem is the county boards and the way they fund elite county players. They spend a lot of money on them.”The SGI met the Gaelic Players Association [GPA], which represents male and female intercounty players, “precisely about this”. The GPA “told us, emphatically, that whatever the pot of money is, it would now be divided across all players, male and female”.In September, Mary McAleese resigned as chair of the Steering Group on Integration, set up in 2022 to oversee the merger of three Gaelic games bodies – the GAA, Camogie Association and Ladies Gaelic Football Association. Photograph: INPHO/Morgan Treacy However, “the current president of the GAA [Jarlath Burns], an SGI member, has put figures out about integration costing half a billion. I’ve never seen a paper that tells me that and he, certainly, never put that to our committee or explained it in any way”. [ GAA president says equal funding for intercounty teams a concern of integration processOpens in new window ]McAleese says Burns also “talked about money being doubled if women came in, whereas the GPA said, ‘No, the pot of money would be divided,’ which is a very, very different proposition”.She was invited to a meeting of the GAA management committee “about this time last year”, saying she thought this odd as three members of the SGI were already on that committee, including Burns and GAA chief executive Tom Ryan.She says she was told “they’d just love to hear from you and it’ll be very benign”.“Well, it wasn’t very benign. It was a savage meeting – it was horrible – at which I was told that the SGI’s plan for integration, that this group [the GAA management committee] would not support it.” They gave two reasons, she says: “One was finance, and the other was that volunteers would walk away from integration.”She was “excoriated”, she says. She pointed out: “These are not my ideas, it’s the distillation of their [SGI] ideas and I’m merely presenting them.” There was “a rumour going around that the plan for integration and the timetable was all my idea. That is the greatest load of old codswallop”. Jarlath Burns and Tom Ryan “never spoke at that meeting,” she says.The SGI was invited to appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Sport on December 17th last year. Before the meeting, she says, “we agreed what would be said to that committee”. This included plans for a roadshow, where the timing plan for integration would be outlined, beginning in 2027.‘I think [John Horan’s] appointment shows a belief that the main obstacle [to integration] lies within the GAA and he’s a heavyweight within the GAA’— Mary McAleeseShe says she directly asked Burns and Ryan, “Are you committed to this? Because I’m not going to go in there and say that you’re committed if you’re not.” She told them, “I’m perfectly happy to resign and [you] get a different person, because there’s a view going around that somehow I’m the problem, and I asked: ‘Am I?’ They both emphatically said, ‘No.’” She says she then asked, “So, are you [GAA] as an association 100 per cent committed to what I, on your behalf, am going to say to the Oireachtas Committee? And they said, ‘Absolutely.’”There was a similar exchange, with similar commitments given, before the SGI appeared at the same Oireachtas Committee on June 17th last, she says. There they announced “that in October [2026] they would hold special congresses of the three associations and that this would give the green light to start the process of implementing integration, beginning in April 2027″.It all came crashing down at an SGI meeting on September 7th. “We all get a document from the GAA which said they can’t deliver it [integration] and they don’t know when they’ll be able to deliver it and they don’t want to talk about equality any more, they want to talk about equity.” [ Mary McAleese may have done the GAA a favour by burning the boatsOpens in new window ]She “hasn’t a clue” what they meant by “equity”, she says. Then, “out of the wide blue yonder, suddenly on the table, just a few words thrown into the mix, I was told by Jarlath Burns that two out of the three associations supported federation, the GAA and the LGFA.” Under federation, each organisation would maintain its independence while operating collectively within an overarching association, with each organisation managing its own budget.At one of the earliest SGI meetings, McAleese says, it was “agreed that federation wasn’t compatible with integration”. She believes federation “really isn’t a matter for the SGI”. She felt, “Well, this is pointless. I couldn’t see the point in me continuing.” She has “huge respect” for John Horan, who succeeds her as chair at the SGI. “I think his appointment shows a belief that the main obstacle [to integration] lies within the GAA and he’s a heavyweight within the GAA. He has to shift the obstacle. Can he do that? He probably has more chance of doing it than I had.”As for herself, she had “twice gone to the Oireachtas Committee and told our elected members of the Oireachtas and, through them, the public, that ‘here’s what the three associations together, their chief executives and their presidents, had agreed and they had asked me on their behalf to relay’ and it turned out not to be true. I could not do that again.”A GAA spokesman said: “As previously stated, the GAA reiterates its full commitment to integration and is working closely with the Camogie Association and LGFA to ensure that all aspects of the process are addressed comprehensively.“Our shared objective is to achieve an integration that is carefully considered, properly structured and delivers a fair, balanced and sustainable outcome for all, including those boys and girls who will play Gaelic games in the years to come.”The Baptism Bluff: Human Rights and the Canon Law of Baptism is published by Red Stripe Press on November 18th