Sir, - In reporting an interview with Professor Mary McAleese, Roisin Ingle (Irish Times, October 3rd) writes: "Her religion was an entirely private matter, she stressed. As President she would not be entitled to ram her religious views down people's throats."
However one evaluates these sentiments, they are in striking contrast with the professor's public expression of her private religious views in an article in The Tablet (March 15th, 1997). This had to do with Pope John Paul's refusal to admit women to the priesthood.
In the article she attributes "sexist cant" to the Pope. I quote: "Most intelligent men and women can recognise sexist cant . . . no matter how elevated the speaker. So when the Holy Father admits the Church just might have been a teensie-weensie bit sexist at times, we wait for the next obvious statement - that the Church is going to try to understand how its own thinking, its very own understanding of God, has been skewed and damaged by 2,000 years of shameful codology dressed up as theology and, worse still, God's will . . . Instead, the big gun, the howitzer of Infallibility, is armed and aimed. Do the faithful lie down and take it? Do they humbly submit to an edict which purports to bind in perpetuity? Not in Ireland, they don't."
This hectoring, temperamental outburst is not from an overwrought schoolgirl but from, surprisingly, an academic who, more surprisingly, aspires to the office of President. For me it raises the question whether Ms McAleese is temperamentally suited to such a high office.
I also wonder whether one who expresses such disdain for the Pope in the exercise of his office in the Church of which she professes membership has a sound notion of the onus of office. How does she evaluate it, not monetarily (no one is interested in money) but in terms of responsibility, when she thinks the Pope can, as she does, summarily dismiss - as shameful codology - 2,000 years of Christian tradition? Would her commitment to the ideals of the office be vulnerable to an upsurge of temperament?
The private theological views of Ms McAleese are irrelevant to the office to which she aspires. I concede that for the sake of argument, though some would not. But the ability to distinguish clearly between a reasoned presentation of views and a temperamental, hectoring declamation of them and, further, an ability to distinguish between the relative weights of these different presentations are not irrelevant.
At this time especially, Ireland doesn't need a President with a hot head. - Yours, etc.,
Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey, Portglenone, Co Antrim.