[caption id="attachment_67726" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Mary McAleese."]
The Irish are often accused of living in the past and excessively dwelling on same.
But though the island was for sure a little late to the 20th century in certain respects and some inhabitants appeared stuck in the 17th, at least from the very first outing the election of a president for the republic was more in tune with modern times.
By that is meant the religious persuasion of the Irish constitutional head of state was not an issue for that state.
Not so with the neighbors across the water. The monarch is the constitutional head of state in Britain, and indeed of 16 British Commonwealth countries to boot.
So the monarch, be he king or she queen, has to be a member of the Church of England because he/she is head of said church, as opposed to - and as some would view as being more appropriate - the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Beyond this, the Act of Settlement of 1701 forbade a monarch, or indeed one who was in direct line to the monarchy, to be married to a Catholic.
You can bet your last gold sovereign that one or two potentially classic love stories were stymied as a result of this stricture.
But as of last week all has changed, though not quite utterly.
Meeting in Perth, Australia, the heads of the British Commonwealth, with Queen Elizabeth in attendance, gave their approval to changes in the Act of Settlement that would permit marriage to a Catholic on the part of the heir to the throne, or anyone in direct line to it, and allow for succession of the oldest child regardless of gender.
Under the act, a boy always skipped over an older sister to become monarch. It was this change that drew more attention in the international press than the stated intention - legislation will be drafted before the end of the current parliament according to British prime minister David Cameron - to change the rule by which a direct or distant heir to the throne, by marrying a Catholic, was automatically kicked out from the line of succession.
It was, of course, stated in reports that, despite the planned changes to the act, a Catholic still can't be queen or king. This sets London apart from Dublin, where a man or woman of any faith can be president of Ireland.
Still, progress is progress. It took a mere 310 years to partly consign the Act of Settlement to the treasure chest of history. Who knows what might happen in the next 300; a Catholic monarch in merry England, an Irish pope, unity between Christian faiths............
THEY SAID
* "At best, the presidential election campaign should have given us some hope by becoming a real discussion about what kind of country we want. At worst, it should have been a harmless distraction. Who could have imagined that it would manage to be both extremely nasty and utterly vacuous?
"That it would be full at the same time of secrets and lies on the one hand and banality and blandness on the other?
The one thing we've really learned from the campaign is this: that we should never do this again.
"If a presidential election can't function as a conversation about values and priorities in our current state of crisis, it is clear that, without radical change, it is incapable of ever doing so." Columnist Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times.
* If our Constitution would allow it, and if the lady could be persuaded, it is certain President Mary McAleese would begin a third term this winter. Instead, after 14 years in the public eye, she and her husband Senator Martin McAleese, leave Áras an Uachtaráin secure in the knowledge they helped make Ireland, all of it, a far better place to live.
"They helped make many Irish people more tolerant, more aware of the other and less insular than we were. By using nothing more than the opportunities afforded by her greatly constrained office she, and her husband, helped copper-fasten a new, positive relationship between all communities on this island." Editorial in the Irish Examiner.
* Martin McGuinness could not vote for himself yesterday because his home is in Derry. Although he is an Irish citizen, only those who are 'ordinarily resident' in the state are allowed to vote in presidential elections. He had to be content with turning up in Bunbeg, County Donegal, to accompany Sinn Féin's finance spokesman Pearse Doherty to the polling station." From a report in the Irish Independent.
* "The Irish writer, politician and patriot Tom Kettle once wrote that politics was the only profession about which it was widely believed that an amateur could do a better job than a professional. When it came to the final moments of the 2011 presidential election the voters, having flirted with a gifted amateur, rushed into the arms of a tried and true professional." Columnist Stephen Collins in the Irish Times.
