The former President of Ireland is insisting that baptizing babies so soon after they are born violates their human rights, according to her newly penned book.
Mary McAleese is a prominent activist, former lawyer, and academic who served as president of Ireland from 1997 to 2011. She’s also a professing Roman Catholic who earned a doctor of canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University.
In her new book The Baptism Bluff: Human Rights and the Canon Law of Baptism, she argues that it’s wrong to baptize babies without their express consent, which deprives them of their bodily autonomy. She notes that this baptism-against-their-will has the effect of forcing them to join a faith without understanding the implications it has for the rest of their lives.
The book’s promo material reads in part:
That presumption requires the Magisterium to ignore contemporary understanding of the inalienable human rights of the individual to freedom of conscience, opinion, expression, religion and freedom to change religion.
It requires all Catholics to overlook the fact that babies cannot give informed consent to promises at baptism and no-one can consent on their behalf to robbing them forever of such a vital realm of choice.
The book is set to be released November 13.
