IRELAND
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew
Sat, Oct 3, 2015
Former president Mary McAleese has ridiculed the concept of 300 elderly celibates coming together to discuss family questions.
Addressing a meeting of the Global Network of Rainbow (LGBT) Catholics on the eve of the Vatican’s Synod on the Family, Ms MacAleese said:
“In the days when I was president, we had workshops on various issues and if I wanted to look at an issue, I would consult the experts… But look at the Synod, I have to ask the question: If I wanted expertise on the family, I honestly cannot say that the first thing that would come into my mind would be to call together 300 celibate males who, as far we know, have never raised a child…
“Let me repeat a question I asked last year when I saw the Vatican’s lengthy pre-Synod questionnaire, namely how many of these men have ever changed a child’s nappy? For me that is a very important question because it is one thing to say that we all grew up in families, we had mothers, we had fathers but it is a very different thing to raise a gay child, a very different thing to live daily in a relationship and to police the relationships between children and the world.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.