McAleese said the Church's teachings are damaging to the LGBT+ community.
Former President of Ireland Mary McAleese has called the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality "intrinsically evil" and said they are conducive to homophobia.
McAleese, who is trained as a barrister and journalist and was formerly Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Queen's University of Belfast, recently took up a role as Professor of Children, Law and Religion at the University of Glasgow.
Speaking on David Watters podcast
Dive In...With Watters, McAleese - a practising Roman Catholic - said the Church's ignorant "intrinsically evil" teachings on homosexuality are damaging to the LGBT+ community.
“The Church’s teaching on homosexuality is ignorant, it is unreconstructed in the light of science, it’s sad to say," she said.
"It has never been looked at in the light of the new sciences and that’s not only a pity, it’s worse than that.
“The church describes homosexual acts as intrinsically evil. I believe the Church’s teaching is disordered and intrinsically evil. Why is it intrinsically evil? Because it conduces to homophobia.
"Because the church insists we love the sinner but we reserve the right to condemn the sinned. Well I don’t think you can have it both ways because in condemning the sin, Look at the language that is used – ‘the homosexuality is disordered’.
"Who wants to believe that their God-given nature is disordered? That homosexual acts, how they express their love in a loving relationship, for example, through whatever sexual activity they engage in, that that is regarded as intrinsically evil? I don’t think so.
“And that by its nature, while they don’t say hate the sinner, that language of evil and disordered, it trickles down into the thinking and it empowers the homophobe, it empowers the homophobic bully. It gives him or her permission to be homophobic and I think the church has got to answer that.”
McAleese's terms of presidency were run on "Building Bridges" and she has taught courses in various higher educational institutions on children rights, gender and LGBT rights in international law.
She also called on the Church to answer for its hypocrisy on homosexuality and the dysfunction it causes by actively encouraging its homosexual priests to live a lie.
"It also has to answer the awful hypocrisy that allows it to ignore the fact that so many of its ordained priests are closet gays who cover up the fact they are gay by being fake hetero, fake straight and actively encourages them to live a lie," she said.
"That is an appalling situation, can you imagine the loneliness of that? The dysfunction of it?"
