John Charles McQuaid, C.S.Sp. (28 July 1895 – 7 April 1973), was the Catholic Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin between December 1940 and January 1972. He was known for the unusual amount of influence he had over successive governments.

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Quick Facts The Most ReverendJohn Charles McQuaid C.S.Sp., Church ...

The Most Reverend John Charles McQuaid C.S.Sp.
Archbishop of Dublin Primate of Ireland
Church	Catholic
See	Dublin
In office	1940–1972
Predecessor	Edward Joseph Byrne
Successor	Dermot J. Ryan
Orders
Ordination	29 June 1924
Consecration	27 December 1940
Personal details
Born	(1895-07-28)28 July 1895 Cootehill, County Cavan, Ireland
Died	7 April 1973(1973-04-07) (aged 77) Loughlinstown, County Dublin, Ireland
Previous post(s)	Teacher

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John Charles McQuaid was born in Cootehill, County Cavan, on 28 July 1895, to Eugene McQuaid and Jennie Corry. His mother died shortly after his birth. His father remarried and McQuaid's new wife raised John and his sister Helen as her own. It was not until his teenage years that John learned that his biological mother had died.^[1]

McQuaid first attended Cootehill National School, the headmaster of which considered him to be an outstanding pupil. Thereafter, he attended St. Patrick's College in Cavan Town and then Blackrock College in Dublin, run by the Holy Ghost Fathers. In 1911, he entered Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare with his brother Eugene.^[1]

In 1913, on completion of his secondary education, McQuaid entered the novitiate of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Kimmage, Dublin. The celebrations of the centenary of the birth of Thomas Davis, a well-known Protestant nationalist, occurred in that year; McQuaid referred at that time in his notebook to Davis's famous question: "What matter that at different shrines, we pray unto one God?" He noted: "Yes for a logical Protestant but No for Catholics. We must heed what is in the creed. [...] If a neutral nationality be set up, if Protestants are drawn in and not converted, is not the supernatural end missed?"^{[citation needed]}

While serving his novitiate, McQuaid studied at University College Dublin, where he was awarded a first class honours BA in 1917 and MA in Ancient Classics in 1918. He was also awarded an honours Higher Diploma in Education in 1919, while acting as prefect in Blackrock College.^{[citation needed]}

McQuaid was ordained a priest on 29 June 1924. He attended the Gregorian University in Rome, where he completed a doctorate in theology.^{[citation needed]}

While he was being trained as a novice and then as a priest, McQuaid's great ambition was to become a missionary to Africa. John Horgan says that:

For many years [...] his ambition was not ecclesiastical preferment, but missionary service: at least four requests to be transferred to Africa were turned down by his superiors. He could have been one of the greatest missionary bishops of the century – all that energy, and intellect, would have gone through the continent like a whirlwind. These talents were unleashed instead on Dublin and on Ireland.^[2]

In November 1925, McQuaid was appointed to the staff at Blackrock College in Dublin where he remained until 1939. He served as dean of studies from 1925 to 1931 and president of the college from 1931 to 1939.^{[citation needed]}

At Blackrock, McQuaid soon made his name as an administrator and as a headmaster with detailed knowledge of educational developments in other countries and with wide cultural views. In 1929, he was appointed special delegate on the Department of Education's Commission of Enquiry into the teaching of English; in 1930, he was the official delegate of the Catholic Headmasters' Association at the first International Congress of Free Secondary Education held in Brussels; he was present in the same capacity at later Congresses in The Hague, Luxembourg and Fribourg. Elected chairman of the Catholic Headmasters' Association in 1931, he remained in the chair until 1940, being specially co-opted to it in the autumn of 1939 on his ceasing to be President of Blackrock.^{[citation needed]}

McQuaid's appointment in 1940 to the Archdiocese of Dublin, the second most important and populous in the country, came at a more stable point in Irish politics, following the violence involving the IRA and the Blueshirts and the tensions caused by the Economic War with the UK in the 1930s. The beginning of "the Emergency" (Ireland's term for the Second World War), had produced a new mode of national consensus. Also McQuaid's relations with the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, were at that time excellent in contrast to most of the hierarchy^{[clarification needed]} who were distinctly cool towards him. ^{[citation needed]} de Valera later said that he had been impressed by McQuaid's social concerns at a time when the hardships of the war were particularly affecting the poor. The hierarchy and clergy of the Irish Church reflected the views of the strong and middling farmer class from which they were mostly drawn and were uncomprehending of urban life and poverty. McQuaid, as de Valera knew, was different and this was reflected in his first Lenten pastoral in 1941. "The very widespread yearning for social peace is itself proof of the grave need of social reform", McQuaid wrote. But he emphasised that "whatever shape the detailed reform of the social structure ultimately may take, the only lasting basis of reconstruction can be the true faith that we profess."^[9]

David C. Sheehy, Dublin diocesan archivist, wrote in 2003 that McQuaid, whom he describes as being a prima donna, "saw the achievement of high office as the natural and appropriate outcome for someone of his background, education and talents."^[10]

On 6 November 1940, when aged 45, McQuaid was appointed Archbishop of Dublin. He took as his episcopal motto the phrase Testimonium Perhibere Veritati from John 18:37^[11] – "to bear witness to the truth".^[12]

McQuaid oversaw a massive expansion of the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Dublin during his term, during which the number of Catholics grew from around 630,000 to more than 800,000. The number of clergy rose from 370 to 600 and an additional 60 parishes were created, along with 80 new churches, 100 new secondary schools and 250 new primary schools.^[12]

McQuaid also established a wide range of social services for the poor of the city and did much work relating to charity. In his first year in office, he oversaw the establishment of the Catholic Social Welfare Conference to co-ordinate the work of the many charitable organisations in the city. Then, in the following year, he set up the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau, which helped emigrants and their families.^[12]

Historian Dermot Keogh has written of the effect of McQuaid's work as archbishop on his own life as a schoolboy:

My generation had been a beneficiary of that policy. In the early 1950s, I had moved from the small two-roomed school beside the old church in Raheny to new premises carved out of the nearby St Anne's woods. There the classes grew exponentially – to 56 in my case. Here was a measure for social change and for the new pastoral challenge facing the Catholic Church in the 1950s – a decade of high emigration, high unemployment and the expansion of the working class into the Dublin suburbs.^[13]

This record of expansion had one curious side effect. Dublin has two Protestant cathedrals largely built in the Middle Ages but no Catholic cathedral. The centre of the Catholic Archdiocese is the early 19th century St Mary's Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street, a side street in the city centre. The Pro-Cathedral was never intended to be other than a temporary acting cathedral, pending the availability of funds to build a full cathedral. (In the aftermath of the 1921 Treaty, the Church of Ireland offered to return either St. Patrick's Cathedral or Christ Church to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland: they refused the offer). McQuaid bought the gardens in the centre of Merrion Square and announced plans to erect a cathedral there. However, he felt obliged to use the funds originally designated for the new cathedral to build the new churches and schools instead. His successor eventually handed over the gardens to Dublin Corporation and they are now a public park.^[14] As a result of the Archbishop's sense of priorities, Dublin still has no Catholic cathedral.

McQuaid also controversially extended the ban on Catholics attending Trinity College Dublin. Originally Catholics had objected to being excluded from the university from 1695 until the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 was passed. In the ensuing century Trinity came to be seen as a dangerous bastion of Protestant influence in Ireland. Exemptions were granted to businessmen such as Al Byrne (in 1948), provided that they did not join any college societies. The general prohibition was lifted by bishops meeting at Maynooth in June 1970, towards the end of McQuaid's episcopacy.^[15]

Finally, in 1961, McQuaid founded the Colleges' Volunteer Corps, drawn from Roman Catholic secondary colleges in Dublin, which carried out social work. It also served as an honour guard when he visited Lourdes and on other occasions. Restricted to male students during his lifetime, it was opened to female students by his successors.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1950s, McQuaid ordered the purchase of Ashurst, a Victorian neo-Gothic mansion on Military Road in Killiney, an upmarket suburb in south County Dublin. The house had been built in the 1860s. He renamed the mansion Notre Dame de Bois, and it became his chief residence thereafter, as he preferred it to Archbishop's House, the official episcopal palace in Drumcondra.^{[citation needed]}

McQuaid's conservatism made acceptance of the Second Vatican Council difficult for him but he did, nonetheless, try to introduce the necessary changes because of his loyalty to the church. His slowness in doing so, however, upset some among the laity: he dragged his feet in particular with regard to the requirements for ecumenism, greater lay participation and upheavals relating to liturgy. He also criticised what he considered to be "facile ignorance" in reporting of the Council's events by Irish journalists, and their still "more facile dictation in regards to what we bishops must do now". He attempted to reassure his congregation that none of the changes would impact on the "tranquility" of their lives.^[12][30]

As was standard practice for the church, McQuaid offered to resign on his 75th birthday.^{[citation needed]} He was very upset that the Pope accepted this, albeit with a year's extension. Francis Carty writes, "He was possibly worried that the Pope's rapid acceptance of his resignation was a negative judgement on his work".^{[30][31][page needed]}

McQuaid resigned his post on 4 January 1971 and formally relinquished the government of the Archdiocese of Dublin when his successor, Dermot Ryan, was ordained Archbishop on 13 February 1972.^{[citation needed]}

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In his biography of McQuaid, John Cooney relates a number of stories that suggest that McQuaid had a sexual interest in children. The main allegation – that the Archbishop had attempted to sexually assault a boy in a Dublin pub – is based on an unpublished essay by Noel Browne. Reviewers who praised the biography stated that the author should have left out these allegations (Dermot Keogh and John A. Murphy, Emeritus Professor of History at University College, Cork).^[32]

There is an account by Colum Kenny, Associate Professor of Communications at Dublin City University, of a meeting he had with the Archbishop as a teenager in the 1960s. Although his attitude to McQuaid is hostile, he regards Cooney's allegations as absurd. He also notes:

I remember the archbishop later sighing about the amount of correspondence he received from people. He waved a hand across the papers on his desk and muttered: "They write to me about the system. What system? There are only people"; or words to that effect.^[33]

Two separate allegations of paedophile abuse by McQuaid were brought to the attention of the Murphy Commission.^[34] One complaint alleges abuse of a 12-year-old boy by McQuaid in 1961. The complaint concerned an adult who, in January 2003, complained to the Eastern Health Board that he had been abused by McQuaid 42 years previously. The EHB and its successor, the Health Service Executive (HSE), have responsibility for caring for minors (under 18) who have been sexually abused and it is not clear where their duty lies in relation to adults accusing deceased persons. When this complaint came to light several years later, the HSE did not pass this complaint on to the Murphy Commission – again for unexplained reasons – but the Commission was satisfied that this was simply due to human error. In May 2009, the HSE passed the complaint to the then Director of Child Protection in the Dublin Archdiocese, who informed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who immediately informed the Murphy Commission.^{[citation needed]}

The archdiocese then organised a further trawl of its files and found a letter "which showed that there was an awareness among a number of people in the archdiocese that there had been a concern expressed" about McQuaid in 1999.^{[citation needed]}

Then in 2010, after the commission's report had been published, Martin told it he had received another abuse complaint against McQuaid. The supplementary report of the Commission said "Archbishop Martin was under no obligation to give the commission this information". It was now a matter for the archdiocese "to investigate all complaints against this cleric," it said. The 2010 complaint is the subject of a civil action against the archdiocese.^{[citation needed]}

Meanwhile, John Cooney also called on Desmond Connell to apologise unreservedly for dismissing claims that McQuaid had improper sexual relations with boys. (Connell was Archbishop of Dublin when Cooney's book was published in 1999 and described his claims of sex abuse as "rumour, hearsay and conjecture".) A statement from Cooney said: "It inflicted huge moral and material damage on me as an author and journalist. I would expect Cardinal Connell to offer me, and my publisher, the O'Brien Press, this long overdue apology."^[35]

Martin Sixsmith in The Lost Child of Philomena Lee recounts the content of the letter from unnamed boy mentioned above from Noel Browne^[who?] and claims it was used to eliminate McQuaid's alleged opposition to a government Adoption Act to remove control over adoption of extra-marital children from the Catholic Church and vest it in the government.^[36]

In 2009, the Murphy Commission of Investigation produced its "Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin". The purpose of the commission was to probe the manner in which complaints of clerical abuse were handled.^[37]

A first complaint about Father James McNamee bathing with naked adolescent boys at Stella Maris F.C. was made in January 1960, investigated initially by Auxiliary Bishop Patrick Dunne and reported to McQuaid.^[38] McNamee denied the allegations and was believed by the bishops. McQuaid wrote: "as he is a worthy priest I agree that we could not refuse to accept his word."^[39] McNamee moved on from the club but, McQuaid said, not immediately "lest he be defamed."^[40] Many subsequent complaints were made about McNamee.^[41]

In August 1960, a British photographic processing company passed on film posted to them from Father Edmondus (a pseudonym for Father Paul McGennis) in Dublin to Scotland Yard. The photographs were of girls' private parts. It was passed to the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, who asked McQuaid to take over the investigation.^[42] He in turn passed it to Bishop Dunne, who had grave concerns that a canonical crime had been committed.^[43] McGennis admitted to McQuaid that he had taken pictures of children at Crumlin Hospital, because of ignorance and curiosity regarding female sex organs. He related his social discomfiture with females as he was raised with brothers, though in fact he had a sister.^[44] McQuaid and Dunne finally agreed that a canonical crime had not been committed.^[45] McQuaid arranged for McGennis to see a doctor for instruction "to end his wonderment" at female genitalia.^[44] The Commission believed that "Archbishop McQuaid acted as he did to avoid scandal in both Ireland and Rome and without regard to the protection of children in Crumlin Hospital."^[46] It described his usage of the word "wonderment" to describe McGennis' actions as "risible."^[47] It further added, "The apparent cancellation by Archbishop McQuaid of his original plan to pursue the priest through the procedures of canon law was a disaster. It established a pattern of not holding abusers responsible which lasted for decades^[48] [...] no attempt was made to monitor Fr. Edmondus in other placements."^[49]

In 1961, McQuaid established a hostel in Dublin for boys who had been in industrial schools – mainly Artane – and assigned priests to see to their spiritual welfare and to help them integrate into society. One of these priests was Diarmuid Martin who went on to become Archbishop of Dublin in 2004 and to take a strong line against alleged clerical abusers. In June 2009, John Cooney wrote an article in the Irish Independent demanding to know why Martin had not denounced the alleged horrors of Artane 40 years previously.^[50] Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs correspondent of The Irish Times, also wrote an article entitled "Archbishop Defends Abuse Inaction",^[51] in which Martin was quoted as saying:

Social workers, health boards and the diocese were trying to reform and eventually close down the institutions [...] Consensus soon emerged that the best – and indeed the only – option for Artane would be to close it down, which happened in 1969 [...] We did consistently hear stories of severe physical abuse and Dickensian conditions there [at industrial schools]. There was no mention of explicitly sexual abuse. The situation was referred by Archbishop McQuaid to the Department of Education.

On 7 April 1973, McQuaid was too ill to get up at his usual time of 6.30 a.m. to say Mass at his private residence, Notre Dame de Bois. He was taken to Loughlinstown Hospital, where he died within an hour. Shortly before his death he asked a nurse if he had any chance of reaching heaven. She told him that if he as archbishop could not get to heaven, few would. This answer appeared to satisfy him and he lay back on the pillow to await death. He died at about 11 a.m.^[52] He is buried in St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.^[12]

In his book Twentieth Century Ireland, published in 2005, Dermot Keogh writes:

Ostensibly the old order was changing. The resignation of two figures from Irish public life at the beginning of the 1970s reinforced that perception. On 4 January 1972 [sic], John Charles McQuaid retired as archbishop of Dublin after spending over 30 years in the post; he died on 7 April 1973. Eamon de Valera retired from the presidency in June 1973; he died on 29 August 1975. Both men had been close friends in the 1930s. They were representative of a culture of service that had been a feature of the political life of the young state. In the 1970s both men had lost their relevance. But the culture of service, upon which both had built their public lives, was an ever-diminishing influence in a state which had come to revere the philosophy of radical individualism.^[53]

In an article in The Irish Times on 7 April 2003, McQuaid's biographer, John Cooney, provided a different slant to the observations of Keogh:

Generally, there was a consensus that McQuaid's death marked the end of the era of Renaissance-style prelates. Officially, the President, Eamon de Valera, was "deeply grieved" to hear the news. In the privacy of Loughlinstown Hospital Dev wept over the corpse of the Holy Ghost priest on whose behalf he had lobbied the Vatican in 1940 for elevation to the See of Dublin and the Primacy of Ireland. Although their relationship at times was strained, both men co-operated to control people's lives for so long in a closed and puritanical society which the writer Seán Ó Faoláin memorably decried as a "dreary Eden".^{[citation needed]}