McAleese Lashes Catholic Church On Gay Issues

Former Irish president Mary McAleese, in one of her first major interviews since leaving office, has attacked the Catholic Church for its attitude to homosexuality.

Mrs McAleese, who studied Canon Law in Rome and has just published a book on the topic called "Quo Vadis: Collegiality In The Code Of Canon Law" said the church was failing in its responsibility to young people and losing the argument over its teachings.

She said the numbers of young men dying by suicide in Ireland was galling, and statistically gay men were one of the most at-risk groups.

She said the vast majority of children in Ireland go to Catholic schools.

"They will have heard words like disorder, they may even have heard the word evil used in relation to homosexual practice," she said.

"And when they make the discovery, and it is a discovery and not a decision, when they make the discovery, that they are gay, when they are 14, 15 or 16, an internal conflict of absolutely appalling proportions opens up."

"They may very well have heard their mothers, their fathers, their uncles, aunts, friends use dreadful language in relation to homosexuality and now they are driven into a space that is dark and bleak."

She warned that the Catholic church "is going to become increasingly isolated in its attitude to homosexuality" and gay people's civil and human rights.

The former president met the Papal Nuncio Charles Brown, who represents the pope in Ireland, earlier this year to specifically draw his attention to the issue.

But she said she fears the issue will not be tackled until the "omerta" or code of silence on the issue is broken within the church.

She said such as silence was also evident in the church's mishandling of child abuse scandals, which she said had left "a massive hallowing out of trust" in the church's spiritual leadership

"If the people had been talking to their bishops, if the bishops had been listening, if the bishops had been talking freely and openly to the centre and had the opportunity at the center to make their voices heard, part of the problem that we have has come from silence and come from a failure to set up structures where information flowed freely always."