Greg DalyA statement signed by former President Mary McAleese is out of step with Pope Francis, one of her colleagues at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, has said.
Mrs McAleese joined more than 100 academics in signing a ‘Scholars’ Statement’ from the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research challenging the Church’s ban on artificial contraception. The former president said her generation had “largely rejected Humanae Vitae’s ban on artificial contraception, along with its magisterial control over family size”.
The document, published at a New York event hosted by the UN Population Fund, was also signed by such Irish figures as Fr Gabriel Daly OSA, Fr Wilfrid Harrington OP, Fr Donal Dorr SJ, Gina Menzies and Prof David Smith of Dublin’s Royal College of Surgeons, and the Tokyo-based Fr Joseph O’Leary.
Deaf ears
However, theologian Dr Stephen Bullivant of St Mary’s Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society told The Irish Catholic that the statement is likely to fall on deaf ears. “Pope Francis has only ever spoken in glowing terms of Humanae Vitae, and the beatification of Paul VI himself sent a message in this regard,” he said, adding that, “Francis is a man who’s capable of speaking his mind on topics and going, you might say, ‘off message’, and this is not a topic where he has ever done that.”
It was striking, Dr Bullivant added, that the statement’s call had not been prevalent in the recent synods of bishops. “For anyone who might have hoped there would or could have been a change,” he said, “the Synod on the Family would have been the moment you would have thought that might have happened. The fact that this comes after them looks to me like an act of desperation and disappointment.”
While many young Catholics do not think with the Church, “the younger generations of committed Catholics and theologians find a lot more value, and substance and wisdom in these teachings than their teachers did”, he said.
Canada-based Irish theologian Prof. David Deane, who teaches at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia, agreed, saying that the scholars’ statement was typical of a failed “ ‘baby boomer’ theological culture”, although he stressed that did not mean that the issues being raised weren’t issues worthy of conversation.