The Catholic Church and Mary McAleese Gerry O'Shea Mary McAleese, the former Irish president who served from 1997 until 2011, by her own description, is a devout, practicing Catholic who is alienated from her church in some important areas of belief and practice. Her son, Justin, is a married gay man, who has suffered the humiliation of being sidelined in his church as "an intrinsically disordered person." Catholic teaching stresses that sexual intimacy can only be expressed between a man and a woman. There is no place in the church's theology of sexuality for the physical dimension of homosexual love. McAleese rejects this rationalization where moral probity in sexual behavior is determined not by the love between the partners but by their genital biology. She deems such thinking "evil" and condemns it as "unchristian and uncharitable." The former president bemoans how this outmoded moral perspective, preached for centuri...