Mary McAleese looks at how the Irish family has changed since the last Papal visit in 1979.
Ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland this weekend for the World Meeting of Families, a new RTÉ series will follow former President Mary McAleese as she travels the country charting the seismic changes that have occurred since the last Papal visit.
Mary McAleese’s Modern Family focuses on the vast difference the average Irish family has experienced since Pope John Paul II’s visit some 39 years ago.
In 1979, the vast majority of Irish families – at least for the sake of appearances – took their cues from the Catholic Church.
Tomorrow at 9:35pm.
In the build up to the Pope Francis's visit this weekend, former president of Ireland Mary McAleese looks at how the Irish family has changed since the last Papal visit in 1979 pic.twitter.com/Z12fTGe4tn
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) August 21, 2018
Homosexuality was still illegal, heterosexual couples raised their children within the framework of life-long marriages and there was very little tolerance or support for anyone who strayed outside that norm.
Neither contraception nor divorce were discussed, let alone considered, and both homosexual relationships and abortions were sworn secret. Ireland was full of institutions, designed to keep misfits and “illegitimate” children out of sight.
In this new show, McAleese aims to show how much has changed.
The former President encounters a hugely diverse spectrum of families, from whose experiences, supportiveness, compassion, love and tolerance she believes the Catholic Church could learn a lot.
The series is presented and narrated by the 67-year-old, a practising Roman Catholic who also holds liberal views on both homosexuality and women priests.
McAleese has an admittedly complicated history with the church, stating recently that her family feel unwelcome in the church following the emergence that references to same-sex relationships in original family booklets were removed from newly edited editions printed for the arrival of Pope Francis to the World Meeting of Families.
Clip via Voices of Faith
McAleese also revealed recently that she made a canonical complaint to Pope Francis about Cardinal Farrell’s banning of her speaking at the Vatican in March of this year.
“I made a formal complaint against Cardinal Farrell, to the Pope, the Pope is the only person as his superior who could rectify and deal with and judge that complaint, so I made a formal canonical complaint to the Pope about Cardinal Farrell’s actions,” she told Brendan O’Connor on the Marian Finucane show on RTÉ Radio 1.
As well as this, she recently hit out at the forthcoming Pope Francis visit, condemning the World Meeting of Families event as a “right-wing rally” and described the Catholic Church as “one of the last great bastions of misogyny”.
Mary McAleese’s Modern Family will air on RTÉ on 22 August at 9.35pm.
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