Mary McAleese. Photo: Sherurcij/Wikicommons

What do political and business leaders do when they retire? Some just continue to bask in nostalgia and make sure that no one forgets their once high status in society. A few past heads of state enjoy being called ‘President emeritus’ and have their biographies published.

Others decide to be a thorn in the side of whoever they perceive not to be performing to their expectations. Relieved of the obligations of protocol, they vent their frustration in no uncertain terms, criticising other leaders who are not doing enough to bring about change when they still have the power to do so. One such retired leader is Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland.

I met Ms McAleese when she visited Malta some years ago. She is a person I admire for not mincing her words on issues that are relevant to so many people in her country and beyond. A practising Catholic, Ms McAleese is currently living in Rome, studying for a doctorate in children’s rights in canon law. In an interview she gave recently, she showed true leadership qualities by speaking out clearly about some of the Catholic Church’s outdated social policies.

She was recently awarded the Ulysses medal by University College Dublin. When speaking on this occasion, she criticised the Pope’s plan to ask a synod of bishops next October to advise him about the Church’s teaching on the family.

There is something profoundly “wrong and skewed” about asking “male celibates” to review the Church’s teaching on family life, she said.

“The very idea of 150 people who have decided that they are not going to have children, not going to have families, not going to be fathers and not going to be spouses – 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,” she said.

Some conservative Catholics were shocked by this clear statement by the former head of state, especially by the use of the word ‘bonkers’ when challenging a papal decision. But this is the stuff that true leaders are made of. If only we had more political and business leaders who were endowed with such common sense and were not afraid to speak out in the way the former Irish president did.

Women who find obstacles in their choice of careers should learn more about Ms McAleese’s early experience in defining her ambitions in what was a profoundly clerical society. When she was a young woman, she discussed her career ambition to become a lawyer with a priest who was also a family friend. “His instant response was to tell me to forget about it, because I suffered from two disabilities which were, in his view, completely unlikely to be overcome. One was that I was a woman, and the other was that I had no connections in the law,” she said.

If only we had more of such leaders in society

In a country where for so many years Catholics were discriminated against by their Protestant rulers, it was indeed ironic that a Catholic priest spoke “with dismissive authority which is intended to silence protest or debate”. But her mother was the pragmatic person that most mothers are. She showed the front door to this cleric and roared at him: “You – out!” And then she turned to young Mary and said: “And you, ignore him!”

Following her mother’s advice and ignoring a ‘male celibate cleric’, Ms McAleese went on to be among the first few women to study law at Queen’s University Belfast. She became the first Catholic and first woman director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies and, in 1993, its professor of law.

Just before becoming president of Ireland in 1997, she wrote to the UK Catholic weekly, the Tablet: “Most intelligent men and women can recognise sexist cant, no matter how nobly dressed up, no matter how elevated the speaker, from miles away.”

Ms McAleese is a practising Catholic who does not want to undermine the establishment but she believes in change. In her book Quo Vadis, she defined her clear mission of her post-presidential life. She intends to be a thorn in the side of Rome for the rest of her days. “I’m her for the long term,” she said and advised the Church authorities, “Get used to it.”

If only we had more of such leaders in society.

johncassarwhite@yahoo.com