The President of the Republic of Ireland

Profile
Mary McAleese

‘On the day that I for the very first time spoke out loud my ambition to become a lawyer, the first to say “you cannot because you are a woman and because no one belonging to you is in the law”, was the Dublin born parish priest who weekly shared a whiskey or three with my father. It was said with the kind of dismissive authority which is intended to silence protest or debate. The owner of superior knowledge, of real certitude, had spoken and that was that.

Now my mother had inculcated in her nine children a respect for the priesthood bordering on awe. I watched therefore in amazement as the chair was pulled out from under the cleric and he was propelled to the front door by my mother before the bottle of baby Powers had even been uncorked. “You”, she said to him, “out”, and “You”, she said to me, “Ignore the oul’ eejit”.

If I truly believed that Christ was the authority for the proposition that women are to be excluded from priesthood by virtue simply of their gender, I would have to say emphatically that this is a Christ in whose divinity I do not and will not and cannot believe. And that is a very important thing for me to have to say. That is not said lightly.

This Christ is too small of mind, too mean of heart to be the Christ of the gospel whom I believe in and whom I know, I like to think, at least as well as the Pope might know Him. ’ [from "Coping with a Christ who does not want women priests" , a lecture in 1995]

Mary McAleese, President of the Republic of Ireland

Reed Professor of Criminal Law, Trinity College, Dublin (1975); Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies (1987); Pro-Vice Chancellor, Queen Mary's University Belfast (1994); President of the Republic of Ireland (1997); photograph from Photocall Ireland.