What am I missing?

A flurry of posts related to the mechanisms for transmitting knowledge and culture from one generation to the next. Not to make a grand point but because I came several items related to that theme all at the same time from different sources.

First up - a report that is almost beyond comprehension. From Mary McAleese: Baptised children ‘infant conscripts’ by Patsy McGarry in the Irish Times.

Mary McAleese was a popular president of the Republic of Ireland for fourteen years. She is a practicing Roman Catholic. Indeed, from the article, she is a Lay Canon of the church.

In other times, this would be a rather breathtaking set of claims. Either from disinterest or ignorance, it seems not to have created much of a stir.

Babies baptised into the Catholic Church are “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience”, according to former president Mary McAleese.

Saying that early Baptism breaches fundamental human rights, she said: “You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old and you can’t say to them at seven or eight or 14 or 19 ‘here is what you contracted, here is what you signed up to’ because the truth is they didn’t.”

The current model of Baptism “worked for many centuries because people didn’t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away”, she declared.

“But you and I know, we live now in times where we have the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking,” she told The Irish Times.

This is essentially the position of most branches of Protestantism. Baptism is a communal event in which a new communicant is received into the congregation but who will later have to choose as an adult to continue that commitment either through confirmation, typically as a young adult, or later through adult baptism. The details vary widely by tradition of Protestantism but that is the basic construct and has been one of the fundamental differences with the Roman Catholic tradition.

In most Protestant traditions, baptism is as much a communal taking in of the community as it is an obligation of the child to any definite outcome. We join together to raise the child in a tradition which in itself is predicated on the assumption that the personal commitment of baptism has to be renewed as an adult who chooses rather than a child who is obligated.

So why is the former president of one of the most traditional Roman Catholic churches and who is a Lay Canon herself speaking against church doctrine and like a Southern Baptist?

Perhaps I am missing something, or ignorant of some aspect of doctrine, but I don't think so. And if I am correct, why is this not noteworthy?

This feels like someone trying to remake a long tradition into the form of her own beliefs.