Irish Times: Some Catholic teaching is ‘rancid’ and needs updating, says Mary McAleese
Ms McAleese was speaking in a podcast with Mollie Rodgers (18) and Kathryn Reynolds (17), who are students at her former school St Dominic’s in Belfast.
A bunch of celibate male bishops will not make required changes, says former president
By Patsy McGarry Sat Jan 31 2026 – 06:00
Some Catholic Church teaching “is rancid, has gone off and needs to be updated”, former president Mary McAleese has said.
“But it’s not going to be updated by a bunch of, a tiny and increasingly small number of celibate male ordained bishops,” she added.
There were “lots of wonderful young women who would make a great job of priesthood and of diaconate” with “lots of intellectual energy that could really inform church teaching”, she said. Instead of this, there was “pushback against the ordination of women, whether it’s as deacons or as priests”.
This, she said, was “as strong today among the hierarchy, among the magisterium of the church, as it ever was”.
Last month a report from a Vatican commission reiterated its ban on women deacons in the church. A deacon can perform all the functions of a priest except hear confessions or celebrate the Eucharist.
Pope Leo was “no champion of women, unfortunately, and that’s tragic”, said Ms McAleese. Women look at that “and say: ‘You’ve got a problem of relevance here, you’ve got a problem of credibility here, and you don’t see it’”. The new pope “looks to me more like a stopgap than a reformer”, she said.
Ms McAleese was speaking in a podcast with Mollie Rodgers (18) and Kathryn Reynolds (17), who are students at her former school St Dominic’s in Belfast.
She was also critical of a document presented to church representatives attending a Synod on Synodality in Kilkenny last October.
It was “so boring, and depressing and trite and Pollyannish and not really related to the world of faith that I live in. The dynamism wasn’t there that I would love to see, that could galvanise the church and probably is not going to during Leo’s lifetime anyhow.”
On Friday, clarifying what she meant by “rancid” teachings in the church, Ms McAleese said she was referring in particular to its teachings on human sexuality, the ban on artificial means of contraception in its 1968 “Humanae Vitae” document, and the ban on women deacons and women priests.
She “doesn’t know” Pope Leo but finds him “enigmatic” and believed he was elected last May as “a safe pair of hands, to continue with the same old witter as a cover for doing nothing”.
She believed Leo “was deliberately chosen to follow the Pope Francis line on immigrants, the poor, climate and the environment”, while disregarding those other issues.
[ Catholicism may be raising its head high but the body underneath is ailingOpens in new window ]
I was already experiencing the Synodal process with its controlling exclusions as trying to put new wine into the old patriarchal wineskins, but now I also picture rancid butter being spread on freshly baked bread… Definitely not very appetising!