IRELAND
Sunday Independent
John-Paul McCarthy
Published 22/06/2014
FORMER President Mary McAleese made a welcome return to the national stage this week as she accepted UCD’s handsome Ulysses medal.
In deference perhaps to James Joyce’s own aversion to theocracy, our eighth president used the occasion to reflect on some recent rumblings from the Holy See.
By all accounts the current Pope is hoping to get some advice on family life from the next Catholic synod.
Mary McAleese responded by insisting: “The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children … so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the Pope on family life; it is completely bonkers.”
These vigorous insights dovetail with her contribution to an important profile of Pope Francis in last December’s New Yorker magazine.
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