Mary McAleese Livres

Focusing on the teachings of Vatican II regarding collegiality, this insightful study examines the challenges and setbacks in implementing shared power between the Pope and bishops. It contextualizes the discussion with recent events, including the Vatican's actions against Irish priests and survey findings on Catholic attitudes. Authored by a former President of Ireland, this balanced assessment contributes meaningfully to the ongoing global dialogue about the future direction of the Catholic Church.

When a young Mary McAleese told a priest that she planned to become a lawyer, the priest dismissed the she knew no one in the law, and she was female. The reality of what she went on to achieve—despite those obstacles, and despite a sectarian attack that forced her family to flee their home—is even more improbable. In this luminous memoir, Mary McAleese traces that astonishing from the tight streets of north Belfast, to a professorship in Dublin while still in her twenties, behind-the-scenes work on the peace process, and two triumphant terms as President of Ireland. She writes of her encounters with prime ministers, popes and royalty with the same easy candor and intimacy with which she describes her childhood. And her account of the latest act in her remarkable career—quietly pursuing a doctorate, and loudly opposing the misogyny of the Church—is inspiring. Here's the Story is warm, witty, often surprising, and relentlessly an extraordinarily intimate memoir by one of the most remarkable public figures of our time.

Mary McAleese seeks to uncover how we define a martyr. From Franciscan friars and bishops to diocesan priests and one sole laywoman - what made these 17 individuals stand apart from the others who died for their faith in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?