Priests, Activists Welcome McAleese's Criticism of Church Stance on Gay People

By Genevieve Carbery
The Irish Times
January 8, 2014

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/priests-activists-welcome-mcaleese-s-criticism-of-church-stance-on-gay-people-1.1648210

Fr Tony Flannery said he was very happy with the former president’s remarks.

Former president Mary McAleese’s criticism of the Catholic Church’s stance on gay people has been welcomed by priests and LGBT activists.

Her comments will “send a profoundly positive message to all lesbian and gay people,” Kieran Rose, chair of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) said in a statement today.

“Mrs McAleese continues to be a wonderful advocate for lesbian and gay people out of office, just as she was as president,” he said .

Fr Tony Flannery of the Association of Catholic Priests said he was “very happy” with the former president’s remarks. She was bringing the issue out “into the open” as “it really does need to be discussed in the Church,” he told Newstalk radio today.

In an interview published in the Glasgow-based Herald newspaper yesterday Mrs McAleese said the Catholic Church has been in denial over homosexuality for decades, particularly since many priests are gay, she said.

Fr Flannery said it was “useful” that she stated this in public. The “percentage of priest who are of homosexual orientation has undoubtedly increase” in the last decade, he said. “Some of my best friends in the priesthood are homosexual,” he said.

The Church’s’s teaching on homosexuality was “in serious need of reform”, he said. He hoped there might be more “openness and freedom in the new regime of Pope Francis.

Mrs McAleese said she did not like the Church’s attitude to gay people. “ I don’t like ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’. If you are the so-called sinner, who likes to be called that? We also know that within the priesthood a very large number of priests are gay.”

She also criticised words attributed to the previous Pope on this subject as being contradictory. “Things written by [POPE ]Benedict, for example, were completely contradictory to modern science and to modern understanding, and to the understanding of most Catholics nowadays in relation to homosexuality.

“Nowadays, it is not something that is perceived as something that is intrinsically disordered. Homosexual conduct is not seen as evil,” said Mrs McAleese.