TLRH | 2019 Annual Edmund Burke Lecture | Former President of Ireland, Professor Mary McAleese

Recorded November 5, 2019. The Future of Ireland: Human Rights and
Children’s Rights Ireland’s future sets before us a series of
questions about constitutional and Church-State relationships. The
vast majority of current Church members (around 84 percent
worldwide and considerably higher in Ireland) were baptized as
babies. For the Catholic majority in Ireland this has resulted in
the imposition of onerous obligations on children long before they
are equipped to evaluate them or agree to them. However, a more
fundamental issue still lies unresolved and that is always allowing
the right of parents to present their child for Baptism and raise
the child in their faith, whether the child can, in international
human rights law, be held to denominational membership and
obligations entered when he or she was non sui compos. The has
special significance for Ireland given the dominant position of the
Catholic Church particularly in education and healthcare in Ireland
but the general issues addressed have transferable implications for
other denominations and faith systems. In this lecture, Professor
Mary McAleese will explore how we define and vindicate a child’s
right to religious freedom, conscience, opinion and belief as set
out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) to which
Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Holy See are all State Parties.
The Annual Edmund Burke Lecture is supported by a generous
endowment in honour of Padraic Fallon by his family. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/