THE FORMER Irish president, Mary McAleese, was, not so long ago, something of a poster girl for modern Catholicism. When she came to the 150th anniversary celebrations of my own parish church, she stole the show with her can-do spirit. My own enthusiasm for Mrs McA. was such that I wondered aloud whether she wouldn’t make a good female cardinal, if the office could be detached from the ordained ministry.

She has, however, taken rather a different course, lately. I wasn’t impressed, myself, by her campaigning for gay marriage in the first referendum, my view being that the constraint of discretion around a president still holds after she leaves office. You couldn’t have imagined any of the impeccably dull presidents of my youth exploiting their positions in that fashion.