Mary Mcaleese Blasts Catholic Church’s ‘disorderly and Intrinsically Evil’ Teachings on Homosexuality

By Eva Wall
Extra.ie
June 30, 2020

https://extra.ie/2020/06/30/news/irish-news/mary-mcaleese-catholic-churchs-teachings-homosexuality

Former President of Ireland Mary McAleese has blasted the Catholic Church’s ‘disorderly and intrinsically evil’ teachings on homosexuality.

Ms McAleese, 69, is a renowned Catholic academic, obtaining a Licentiate of Canon Law in 2014 and a Doctorate in Canon Law in 2018 from the Pontifical Gregorian University.

A law lecturer by profession, Ms McAleese has been an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church’s exclusion of women from the priesthood, its legacy of institutional abuse and its stance on homosexuality, which she maintains ‘conduces to homophobia’.

Former President of Ireland Mary McAleese has blasted the Catholic Church’s ‘disorderly and intrinsically evil’ teachings on homosexuality.

Ms McAleese has also been a leading advocate of LGBT+ rights in Ireland, and campaigned for marriage equality in 2015, arguing that the referendum was about wanting the next generation of gay Irish children ‘to be born into a world where if they fall in love with someone they can express that love fully’.

Speaking to LGBT+ ambassador David Watters on his podcast Dive In…With Watters ahead of last weekend’s Pride celebrations, the Belfast-born woman condemned the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality in no uncertain terms.

Ms McAleese, 69, is a renowned Catholic academic, obtaining a Licentiate of Canon Law in 2014 and a Doctorate in Canon Lw in 2018 from the Pontifical Gregorian University. Pic: Rollingnews.ie

‘It has never been looked at it in the light of the new sciences and it’s not only a pity, it’s worse than that.’

Ms McAleese, herself a committed Catholic, went on to say: ‘The Church describes homosexual acts as intrinsically evil. I would regard the Church’s teaching as disorderly and intrinsically evil. Why is it intrinsically evil? Because it conduces to homophobia.

‘Look at the language that is used — “the homosexuality is disordered”. Who wants to believe that their God-given nature is disordered? That homosexual acts, how they express their love in a loving relationship, for example…that that is regarded as intrinsically evil. I don’t think so.

Ms McAleese has also been a leading advocate of LGBT+ rights in Ireland, and campaigned for marriage equality in 2015. Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

‘And that by its nature…that language of evil and disordered trickles down into the thinking and it empowers the homophobe, it empowers the homophobic bully. It gives him or her permission to be homophobic and I think the Church has got to answer that.’

Ms McAleese also took aim at Pope Francis and the Vatican hierarchy, despite the current pontiff’s reputation for being somewhat more progressive and open to social change than his predecessors, but welcomed the fact that some bishops and cardinals based across Europe have begun to instigate a more positive conversation around homosexuality and the Church’s stance on the matter.

Ms McAleese explained that her advocacy of LGBT+ rights is derived both from her background as a Catholic growing up in Belfast in the 1950s and 1960s and her legal education.

The former President, who served two terms between 1997 and 2011, stated: ‘I’ve always been human-rights conscious and civil-rights conscious, that’s why I did law. You know, a Catholic from Belfast, that’s our thing, and when I came to Trinity in ’75, I moved to Trinity and took up a job there as a law lecturer.

‘One of the first friends I made there was David Norris and we got chatting and one of the first debates I ever attended was on LGBTI rights. David and I got together and chatted about [it], we’re talking about a time when homosexual acts were criminalised, you can imagine the impact of that on people.

‘The one thing I knew was there was something seriously wrong here. In all my life, I’m happily married here for over 40 years to the man that I met when I was 17, I’ve never been attracted to another woman. I’ve only been attracted to men, not a whole lot of men incidentally, and I remember saying to myself: “What must it be like to be attracted to another human being and to know that you can’t go there?”‘.