The EWTN News portal (January 21, 2026) reports former Irish president Mary McAleese’s accusation that infant baptism violates children’s “rights,” with conciliar clergy offering weakened defenses steeped in naturalistic language. McAleese, a canon lawyer, labels baptismal promises as “fictitious” and claims the practice contradicts UN declarations. “Bishop” Alphonsus Cullinan and “Fr.” Owen Gorman counter by emphasizing parental duty and baptismal grace, while convert Mahon McCann correctly notes the incompatibility of human rights frameworks with sacramental theology.
Naturalism Masquerading as Human Rights
McAleese’s appeal to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Convention on the Rights of the Child constitutes a blatant subordination of divine law to secular ideology. The Church has always condemned such equivalence, as Pope Pius XI declared: “Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ” (Encyclical Quas Primas, §1). By framing baptism through the lens of autonomous “choice,” McAleese adopts the condemned proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which he shall consider true” (Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 15).
The conciliar defenders inadvertently concede ground to this error. Cullinan’s comparison of baptism to “good food” or “medical care” reduces the sacrament to a natural good rather than the sine qua non of supernatural life. This echoes the modernist tendency condemned by St. Pius X: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State” (Lamentabili Sane, Proposition 77).
Theological Atrophy in Conciliar Defenses
While Gorman mentions baptismal grace, his explanation lacks the doctrinal precision of Pope Eugene IV’s decree Exultate Deo (1439): “Through baptism we are made members of Christ and of His body the Church.” Nowhere do these conciliar clergy cite the Code of Canon Law (1917) which mandates infant baptism within eight days of birth (Canon 770), nor the Council of Trent’s anathema against those “who deny that newborn infants are to be baptized” (Session V, Canon 4).
McCann’s assertion that “Catholic moral theology is teleological” aligns with tradition but fails to name the telos: the salvation of souls through incorporation into the Mystical Body. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches plainly: “Infants, unless regenerated unto God through the grace of baptism… will be deprived of eternal life” (Part II, Ch. 2). Silence on this urgent necessity reveals the conciliar church’s abandonment of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
Symptomatic Apostasy of Post-Conciliar Structures
McAleese’s canonical background exposes the rotten fruit of conciliar “renewal.” As a product of post-Vatican II canon law programs, she exemplifies the very modernism condemned in Pius X’s Pascendi: “Religious conscience is declared autonomous” (§14). Her demand for an “opt-out” mechanism flows directly from the blasphemous Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, which falsely claims “the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the dignity of the human person” (§2).
The defenders’ tepid responses demonstrate the conciliar sect’s captivity to secular categories. When Cullinan asks, “what other decisions would we deny taking for our children?“, he adopts the relativistic language of “decisions” rather than the absolute language of truth. Contrast this with Pope Pius XII’s definitive teaching: “The Church has no reason to exist if souls cannot attain eternal salvation through her” (Address to U.S. Catechists, 1951).
Restoring the Sacramental Imperative
True Catholic doctrine leaves no room for McAleese’s naturalistic objections. St. Augustine’s battle against Pelagius established the necessity of infant baptism, teaching: “If you wish to be a Catholic, do not believe, do not say, do not teach that infants can be endowed with the rewards of eternal life without the grace of baptism” (De Peccatorum Meritis, I.20). The Council of Carthage (418) anathematized any who delayed baptism beyond eight days.
The Church’s immovable position flows from divine revelation: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). To postpone baptism for “choice” constitutes spiritual neglect, for “the infant, not yet having the use of reason, cannot have an intention on its own part; but in its place there is the intention of the Church” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa III, Q68, A9).
Conclusion: Rejecting the Zeitgeist
This controversy reveals the conciliar church’s inability to defend even basic sacraments against modernist assaults. Rather than invoking the Syllabus of Errors or Quanta Cura against false “rights,” its clergy offer sentimental appeals to parental care. Authentic shepherds would echo St. Cyprian: “No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother” (De Unitate, 6). Until the structures occupying the Vatican renounce their adulterous union with secular humanism, such doctrinal confusion will only worsen.
Source:
Catholics in Ireland reject ex-president’s claim that baptism violates children’s rights (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 21.01.2026