Northern Ireland

Former president Mary McAleese calls on Catholic Church to allow women to become deacons

Former president Mary McAleese has urged the Catholic Church to allow the ordination of women as deacons. Picture by Julien Behal/PA Wire.
Former president Mary McAleese has urged the Catholic Church to allow the ordination of women as deacons. Picture by Julien Behal/PA Wire. Former president Mary McAleese has urged the Catholic Church to allow the ordination of women as deacons. Picture by Julien Behal/PA Wire.

THE former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, has urged the Catholic Church to allow women to become deacons.

Ms McAleese, who is the incoming chancellor of Trinity College Dublin, was speaking at an event at the university on Saturday.

Following a recent synod in Rome, bishops are to consult with a papal commission on the potential ordination of women as deacons.

Deacons cannot celebrate Mass but can assist a priest in a number of duties including performing baptisms, witnessing marriages, and leading funeral and burial services outside of Mass.

The role of permanent deacon is currently reserved exclusively for men who have no intention of becoming priests.

Ms McAleese said: "It won't solve the problems in the church but it would be a breakthrough. It would be a breach of the bunker in some ways, because the bunker ultimately is the bunker of really embedded misogyny.

"It goes very, very deep. It goes so deep that good men don't even see it themselves," she said.

Joining the former president at the conference was US theologian and Benedictine nun Sr Joan Chittister. The pair were billed as "the women the Vatican couldn't silence".

Sr Chittister said women "make very good window dressing" in the Catholic Church, but added "in terms of being able to contribute as a baptised person to the development of the church, we are not there".

"Some day you have to wake up and say what you see, and what I see is that the Catholic Church, for women, is a totally owned subsidiary of pious males. We really are not full members of the church. We are the outside edge."

On the subject of asylum seekers, Ms McAleese, who was president for 14 years from 1997, said the fact migrants were "not experiencing the kindness that I know is the ethic of our country and our people" was something which "bothers me greatly".

In recent weeks there have been protests against the accommodation of asylum seekers across several counties in Connacht.

Ms McAleese did not refer to those specific cases but said: "My God tells me I have to be the stranger who is kind. That simple . . . it bothers me greatly finding that (in) a country that I’m so proud of, that sometimes people are not experiencing the kindness that I know is the ethic of our country and our people.

"We relied on it (kindness) ourselves so often when we went as emigrants to other countries, poor, our two hands the one length, looking for opportunity."