You would think, judging by the rhetoric of fortnightly slot to complain on the Irish State's Late Late Show, that former President Mary McAleese was one of the most trailblazing, brave and death defying politicians on Earth.
In reality, she is not any one of those things. Apart from being a politician maybe, that part is certainly true.
McAleese will regularly paint herself as someone who will pull no punches in sticking it to ‘the man’. Only when suits her of course. For example, she will compare Unionists to Nazis in one breath, while fawning over their Queen during a State visit in the next. She will write books about the Irish Martyrs one moment, then receive Communion in a Protestant Church in the next. She will demand a Synodal Church one minute, then put herself front and centre of discussions the next as if she is not the President of Ireland and just some humble lay woman.
A new story in the Sunday Independent today puts McAleese in a whole new light.
The story involves the brave, open and tolerant McAleese refusing to honour the Dalai Lama and bowing to China in the process.
In recent years, McAleese has served on the board of Protestant University Trinity College. The controversial institution once banned Catholics from attending and is still today seen as a cold house for them.
The Sunday Independent reports that in 2019, the board met to discuss potentially awarding an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama. The board had already agreed to honour the Tibetan leader but were reconsidering it as a British institution had had to apologise for their honouring of him some years earlier.
McAleese, according to the article, was the most vocal about bowing to China and refusing to honour the Dalai Lama out of fear.
Irish universities in recent years have become play things of the Chinese Communist Party, with University College Dublin allowing the globally discredited Confusicus Institute to operate on campus.
The Sunday Independent states:
“Chinese universities provided the fourth highest amount of non-EU collaborations with Trinity over the previous 10 years, with 581 co-publications.
The paper set out how Trinity had established a Beijing office to help it recruit Chinese students. It has social media accounts on WeChat and WeiBo.
There were 338 Chinese students enrolled in Trinity College that year (2019), and the university had 20 strategic partnerships signed with Chinese institutions”.
The article outlines how the ‘brave’ McAleese was so terrified of China as President that she would only meet the Dalai Lama in Northern Ireland.
It also says:
“She said honouring the Tibetan monk would undoubtedly cause “serious” problems and consequences with the Chinese ambassador, and added that the Chinese would interpret the award as looking for trouble, as China regarded him as a religious-political leader.”
McAleese said that since Pope Francis did not receive an honour, they could simply present their decision as one of religious impartiality. Rather than say, cowardice. Which is what it really was.
The article alao says “Ms McAleese said there would not only be repercussions for Trinity, but for the Irish government as well. This was the realpolitik, she added”.
McAleese has appointed herself as a serious commentator and influencer regarding the Irish Synod.
This must end immediately and no longer be entertained by Irish Catholics.
Firstly, her apparent cowardice is appalling. Her endless haranguing of Catholics does seem to be, as we always suspected, because we allow her to do so.
Secondly, her treatment of the Dalai Lama is not just an embarrassment for its inconsideration of Tibet and the underground church in China, but a flagrant disregard for Vatican II document Nostra Aetate and for the Dalai Lama himself, who honoured Saint Brigid when he came to Ireland in 2013.
Perhaps, amid all of her drivel and bluster, we can recall that it was people like Cardinal Zen who did stand up to the Chinese. We can also recall that the Brigidine Order in Kildare had the guts to meet with the Dalai Lama on Irish soil. It is ordinary everyday Christians who face down the might of the Chinese Communist Party, while the elites only think of themselves.
If the Irish Synod is to take itself seriously over the coming years, it must stop listening to cowardly voices just because they make the most noise.