Two of Ireland’s largest pro-life groups are disputing a U.S. Catholic college’s defense of the pro-life record of its upcoming commencement speaker, adding a new wrinkle to a growing controversy over Saint Mary’s College’s decision to invite and honor former Irish president Mary McAleese. 

The critiques come after Katie Conboy, president of the all-women’s college in Notre Dame, Indiana, claimed that McAleese’s support for repealing Ireland’s pro-life amendment in 2018 was consistent with an “unwavering commitment to the rights of the unborn.”

“Saint Mary’s is free to invite whomever it likes to give its commencement address, but it is absolute nonsense to pretend that Mary McAleese did not vote to remove the recognition of the right to life of the unborn child from the Irish Constitution, allowing for the introduction of one of the most liberal abortion laws in Europe,” said Niamh Uí Bhriain, who directs Life Institute, an influential Irish advocacy group.

Eilís Mulroy, the spokeswoman for Pro Life Campaign, another Irish advocacy group, also implied that Conboy’s characterization of the significance of McAleese’s support for repeal was inaccurate. At the time of the referendum, she said, opponents argued that there was no such thing as a “soft” yes “because the government would use the referendum to railroad through extreme legislation and the people would never have a direct say on the issue again.”

“Unfortunately, we have been proven right,” said Mulroy, citing Ireland’s sky-rocketing abortion rates since the law went into effect.

In the aftermath of the successful May 2018 referendum, which eliminated constitutional recognition of “the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the unborn,” McAleese said that she had voted for the measure with “a heart and a half.” 

She also dismissed comments from two Irish bishops that Catholics who had supported the repeal effort should consider going to confession and said that the Church had “really not come to terms with the clash between people’s human rights and canon law.” 

The critiques from Irish pro-life groups challenge a significant part of Conboy’s defense of McAleese amid a growing campus controversy. In addition to McAleese’s record on abortion, Saint Mary’s alumni and student groups have also pushed back against the plan to platform and honor the former Irish president at the May 17 commencement over her efforts to overturn Church teaching related to male-only holy orders, marriage as between a man and a woman, and infant baptism.

 

False Pretense?

In a March 31 letter to the student newspaper defending Saint Mary’s commencement speaker plans, Conboy characterized McAleese’s “Yes” vote in the 2018 repeal effort as not supporting any specific measure to expand abortion access but only the referendum’s language that “provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy.”

“In other words, she voted to give Parliament the authority to consider and legislate on this issue, not on any actual proposed version of that legislation,” Conboy wrote, noting also that McAleese did not take part in either the referendum campaign or discussion of what abortion laws should subsequently be passed.

But for Irish pro-lifers like Uí Bhriain, that’s a distinction without much of a difference.

“It is simply absurd to claim that Mrs. McAleese, a barrister, was not ‘voting to expand abortion access,’ since that is exactly what was being proposed and what almost immediately occurred,” said Uí Bhriain.

During the referendum campaign, pro-abortion legislation was drafted and presented by the Irish government. The joint presentation was subsequently used as grounds for blocking discussion of amendments to the abortion legislation, with supporters arguing that it would frustrate the will of Irish voters. Ireland’s abortion legislation, which allows abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, was signed into law in December 2018.

Since the abortion law went into effect on January 1, 2019, abortion rates have skyrocketed in Ireland. From 2019 to 2023, an average of 7,626 abortions were performed per year, with 10,033 estimated in 2023 alone. By comparison, abortion rates in Ireland in the years immediately prior to the 2018 law were in the low double digits, permitted only in cases in which the mother’s life was determined to be at risk.

McAleese’s Agenda

In her letter, Conboy also defended McAleese against charges that she is actively working to undermine settled Church teaching.

For instance, Conboy defended the Irishwoman’s lobbying for the Church to recognize sacramental same-sex marriage on the grounds that Catholic teaching “continues to evolve” on the issue. As support, the Saint Mary’s College president inaccurately described the Vatican’s 2023 document Fiducia Supplicans as authorizing the blessings of “same-sex unions”; Pope Francis has made clear that the “spontaneous blessings” referred to apply to persons who may be in a same-sex union, not the union itself.

Conboy also defended McAleese’s agitation for the sacramental ordination of women because the topic of some form of a female diaconate was discussed at the recent Synod on Synodality in Rome and remains unsettled. 

“I do not believe these are matters the Church forbids its membership to discuss,” wrote Conboy.

Several theologians have pointed out, however, that discussion of a female order of deacons is distinct from the sacramental ordination of women, which the Church maintains it has no power to do.

Since retiring from politics, McAleese has earned a doctorate in canon law and uses her platform to push the Catholic Church to bring its moral teachings in alignment with secular human rights. She has compared infant baptism to forcibly conscripting children into an army and has previously described the Catholic Church as “an empire of misogyny,” adding that a Church hierarchy that is “homophobic and anti-abortion is not the Church of the future.” 

In 2018, Church leaders barred an International Women’s Day event from taking place at the Vatican due in part to McAleese’s participation. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Irish-born head of the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, said it was “not appropriate” for McAleese and other dissidents to take part.

Plans Unchanged

The Loretto Trust, a Saint Mary’s alumna group, has argued that platforming McAleese at commencement is a violation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ guidance to not honor “those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.” 

“They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions,” the U.S. bishops teach in the 2004 document “Catholics in Political Life.”

Members of Belles for Life, Saint Mary’s pro-life student group, have also issued a “letter of concern” over McAleese’s invitation, arguing that commencement speakers at Catholic colleges “should be role models, not advocates for abandoning Catholic principles.”

A petition opposing McAleese as this year’s commencement speaker has received more than 730 signatures thus far.

Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend has not publicly commented on Saint Mary’s commencement plans. In a previous controversy over the all-women college’s plans to admit biological men who identify as women, Bishop Rhoades publicly rebuked Saint Mary’s and met with Conboy. Shortly thereafter, the college scrapped its new admissions policy.

Conboy ended her letter by reiterating that McAleese will give Saint Mary’s commencement address on May 17 as planned, at which time she will also receive an honorary doctor of laws, “which we will be proud to confer.”

Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute said that if that’s Saint Mary’s decision, “there should be no pretense” about McAleese’s record.

“Voting for repeal was a vote to legalize abortion in Ireland,” she said. “No one should be proud of the horrific outcomes that have followed.”