In Shakespeare’s last play “The Tempest,” the island creature Caliban is enslaved by the exiled Duke of Milan who teaches him speech. Caliban used his new skill to curse his master, saying, “you taught me language and my profit on’t is I know how to curse.” This story of the disobedient Caliban and his behavior bring to mind a more contemporary, Irish figure.

For a long time, the language of theology was the preserve of the clergy with few exceptions, but since the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and the universalization of general education, lay people of both sexes have accessed universities that were once the preserve of churchmen and seminarians and acquired proficiency in different branches of theology. Mary McAleese is one such alumnus who obtained a doctorate in Canon Law following her second term as Ireland’s President. She is not the only female scholar to have weaponized her ecclesial learning to challenge long settled doctrinal questions. In recent weeks she attacked, for the second time, the ancient practice of infant baptism in the Church because it contravenes, in her view, the UN Charter on Children’s Rights (UNCRC).

For McAleese the Church needs “to catch up.” Since she returned from her sojourn at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, she has made it clear the Church needs to catch up on multiple fronts. Her views on marriage, abortion and the exclusion of women from priestly orders have all evolved with changing, Western cultural attitudes. The Church hasn’t come along with her, so she has, not very systematically it must be said, turned civil law against ecclesial law with the self-assurance of one who is proficient in the language of both.

Canon Law does indeed stipulate the need for infants born to Catholic parents to be baptized – and to be baptized as soon as practical after birth. The basic conditions are that at least one parent asks for Baptism and that there is a “grounded hope” that the child will be raised in the faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is consistent with the relevant canons and gives theological context to the directive. Baptism is required by Christ in his mandate to his apostles “to go make disciples of all men, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The apostles faithfully followed his command and were recorded as baptizing entire households, which would appear to include children and infants as the practice of infant Baptism is known to have been conducted since the second century.

Without going any further here, we can see some divergence between the Church and the UNCRC. According to the UNCRC, children have a right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” As a lawyer, one might expect that Mary McAleese would give some thought to how such a sweeping assertion of rights could be vindicated in practice. In all jurisdictions, children don’t get to choose the ethos in which they are raised and schooled and socialized. That is the responsibility of adults. It may include the child’s teachers as well as parents, and it may, and often does, also include agents of the state. It used to be that the Church, too, played an important role in the formation of the young, but, notwithstanding the enduring requirement for infant baptism, that role has now been usurped by secular authorities who promote their own novel doctrines with the express aim of shaping and directing the “thoughts and conscience” of the young. Children certainly have rights, but autonomy is not one of them. When their rights or best interests – or what are understood as such – are threatened or violated, it is adults who step in to defend and protect them. Those adults act in accordance with their own insights which are necessarily formed by their own religious, anti-religious or areligious views.

However, the UNCRC also acknowledges that “parents have the right to direct their children’s education, including providing religious/moral instruction according to their convictions.” However that statement may moderate and mitigate the one Mary McAleese chooses to rely on is something she disregards. The UNCRC is referenced only as it is useful to her purpose, which looks more like confirmation bias than open-minded, scholarly research.

Neither individuals nor institutions can be ethically neutral. Of course, as children grow up it is natural and right that they gradually acquire the freedom to take responsibility for making decisions for themselves. However, they remain accountable to key adults, in the first instance their parents, until they reach a point where the lawmakers deem them to be adult. Mary McAleese surely cannot deny these facts, so where exactly is she coming from?

As has been observed by others who have responded to McAleese’s remarks, parents decide a child’s citizenship – and indeed name – within the legal parameters. Very often, citizenship carries obligations such as compulsory military service to which a child may have a conscientious objection in time. However, it is possible for a child to renounce citizenship and acquire a new one, if it’s legally permissible. Baptism cannot be renounced in this way. However, a person is always free to leave the practice of faith. In fact, the great irony here is that MacAleese is objecting to infant baptism at a time when it means very little in terms of how people live or raise their children. Unlike religious rites of passage in other creeds, there are no visible or tangible marks that Baptism has even taken place. There is nothing about the body of a Christian child that declares his or her Baptism.

One might wonder why the great fuss then? From a believer’s perspective, Baptism is of course a very big deal. It’s a sacrament instituted by the Lord. Like all the sacraments, it gifts the recipient with a particular grace. Baptism, along with Confirmation and Holy Orders, may be received once only in a person’s lifetime. Each leaves a single indelible mark on the soul. Baptism very specifically is a precondition for salvation, though of course God is not limited to his sacraments as the sole conduits of his grace. He has the power to reach into lives in an endless number of other ways. Nevertheless, He has explicitly given us the sacraments as the formal channels of his salvation, mercy and love, and none so explicitly and unequivocally as Baptism. To refuse or reject the sacraments is not the action of a believer. In baptizing an infant one is giving him or her the greatest of gifts. It is not a burden in any way whatsoever. If it is understood to be the great gift it is, it will be fully owned as the child matures in the life of faith. If not, it will remain unseen and invisible and, from a non-believer’s perspective, nothing more than a hollow ritual like any New Age alternative that many parents chose for their newborns today.

So, if Mary McAleese no longer believes in the Church she was born and raised in and served ably in many ways over her life, then she should not take issue with infant Baptism. If she thinks that a child’s freedom is constrained by being raised with religious belief and norms, that is a different argument. If this is her position, then why is she only targeting Catholicism? Why not also include faith systems that are far more controlling of their members, young and old alike? Why not take issue with the raising of children in any belief system whatsoever, religious or secular?

Her pronouncements are somewhat baffling. Why would any Catholic object to opening to their child the promises of Baptism? Why would they, if they understand its significance, not help their child realize those promises by raising them within a household of faith so they can look forward to eternal happiness with God after a life well lived? Why are objections to infant Baptism coming from a Catholic and not the secularists who drew up the UNCRC and who appear to take no issue with even the most exigeant religious cultures of our time in respect to a child’s right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion”? Her assertions raise questions, not answers.