IN Christ Church Cathedral on Easter Sunday, Dr Donald Caird delivered his final sermon as Archbishop of Dublin, Bishop of Glendalough and Primate of Ireland, a position he held for 11 years.
Speaking to a capacity congregation on the eve of his retirement, he appealed again for peace in the North and also - a life long desire - for a more inclusive society bin the South.
As priest and as teacher, he has served in Belfast and Enniskillen and understands the diverse cultural complexities which continue to torment Ireland, a nation he describes as endemically political with great political insight and the capacity to think in new political terms once the restricting and emotionally crippling spectre of the past, with its worn out political philsophies can be thrown off."
In his Easter address, he urged the congregation to pray for "a resolution of the political, social, cultural, economic and religious issues which have engendered violence in nearly every generation for centuries in Ireland."
While he acknowledged that in some ways, Ireland has changed for the better - saying "there is now much greater awareness, much greater openness, much greater sensitivity, particularly to minorities", he stressed the very real dilemma still facing marginalised sectors of society. These are "the unemployed; the alienated; the vulnerable; those who resort to drugs to escape normal consciousness as too painful; the victims of the drug distributing underworld and other forms of violent crime," the victims of "the ever increasing gap between the richer and the poorer sectors of our society."
In a ministry spanning 46 years Caird scholar and academic philosopher, has epitomised the voice of reason and fairness. To his Easter Sunday congregation he said: "My 26 years as a bishop and archbishop have spanned a period of great change and turmoil in our country." And indeed, he has witnessed an increase in various social crimes - vicious attacks on the elderly, cruelty against women and children - yet his natural calm has helped control his sadness and outrage.
HE has never resorted to rhetoric. On a personal level, he seems a contented man and says: "My life has been immensely happy, I have done what I had wanted to do. The only other thing I would at one time have wanted to do was to study medicine."
It is moving day. A large furniture removal truck is parked in the road out side. The vehicle is too wide to attempt the entrance. When the Dublin taxi driver discovers that the interviewee is the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, he suggests with the mock solemnity of a visiting anthropologist that one could "ask him does he watch Father Ted and does he think it reflects an accurate portrayal of the Catholic Church as it is today". The removal men are sitting on the front steps, waiting for a smaller van.
Inside, the scene is utterly unlike the typical moving day. There is no panic, no hysteria. There is no clutter. Boxes are packed and waiting. The atmosphere liar the neatness and order of a standard military manoeuvre. It is very civilised, almost disappointing. While he has enjoyed laying in the Archbishop's house, Dr Caird does not seem overly upset at leaving. "We're used to moving at this stage. We have lived in many houses. It really is part of the job."
Situated on a quiet road in Milltown, the See House is surrounded by an acre of fine gardens, beautifully maintained without being overly formal ... the conversation quickly turns to dogs and the need for dog proof walls, but not even the most inquisitive dog would be interested in leaving this garden.
For the first time in his life, Dr Caird doesn't have a dog. Ben, his beloved Airedale, died last year. "He was a beautiful dog, the most beautiful dog I ever had." Dr Caird is still mourning his loss, and is not yet ready for another dog.
Back in the house, the calm continues. The silent removal men are busy.
At 70, Dr Caird views retirement as a practical way of being able to read more. He does not regret having chosen what in this job is early retirement. "I could have stayed on until I was 75, but I decided to go."
He is a small, friendly, gentle man with slow, graceful movements and a lively sense of humour which balances his logical approach to life. He has a habit of appearing - to cradle his head in his hands, not out of exasperation, merely as an unconscious "memory aid. His hands are constantly in motion, wide sweeping gestures alternating with neat, precise movements as if filing away papers. As he tells the story of his early life, he speaks about the boy he once was as if the young Caird was a character from a novel. "I was born in Dublin and grew up in Ranelagh. It was one of those big houses on what is now Ranelagh's main street. Now it is a commercial centre, but then it was a tree lined, residential part of Dublin. My family had three of the houses on the terrace. My mother's brother lived next door.
Dr Caird was born in December 1925, the only child of his father's second marriage. George Caird had two sons and a daughter with his first wife, who died. The other children were several years older, a different generation, and though Donald was effectively an only child, he was not aware of this as his cousins lived in the same terrace. "My father worked in the Department of the Chief Engineer, in the accountancy section. He was a quiet, studious man.
Dr Caird's mother, Emily, was lively.
"She was a very good sportswoman, particularly table and lawn tennis - very outgoing. She and her sister, my aunt, an international table tennis player, played a lot. They were very close, they were neighbours.
"My mother was born in 1883 you know," he says: his family history offers a fascinating insight into Irish social history. A large group photograph taken on the front lawn of The King's, Chapelizod, "about 1884, the year before my father was born" shows several generations of the Broadbent and Strachen families, his parental grandfathers: "the Broadbents milled wool on the Liffey for several hundred years; and the Strachens milled lead on the Dodder". All are in Victorian dress. There are several infants and small children. It is strange that everyone, even the babies, is long dead.
AS A child, Caird was sent to a private school run by the daughter of a Frenchmen who was professor of French at the old Royal University. "He had three unmarried daughters and one of them had a school at 93 Marlborough Road. I was sent there from the ages of three to about nine, where French was not surprisingly the main focus: other subjects were lightly taught."
It seems to have been a remarkably eccentric school and Caird, although stressing that he was never aware as a child of belonging to a minority religion and certainly did not grow up in a Protestant ghetto, knew his parents choose not to send him to a national school. He remembers being interviewed for Wesley College by the famous T.J. Irwine "it was awful, we were both blushing at how little I knew". Caird went on to have an impressive academic career at Trinity College during which he won many prizes and was a Scholar of the House, but his accounts of his early education are hilarious tales, of a truly bewildered boy burdened by knowing too much French and too little everything else. "I don't think my French was even all that good."
Though he is now a fluent Irish speaker, when he first arrived at Wesley in 1936 his Irish was as weak as all his other subjects. "I once got 2 per cent in an Irish exam and was told the only reason I scored even that was because I was not positively offensive." He also played rugby on the Wesley First XV. "I played at wing forward, but I don't think I was very good."
Aware that despite the fact that Protestants have been at the centre of revival of the Irish language, there are those who express amazement at Caird's fluency in his native language, he says, "I am surprised that they are surprised I speak Irish. Many Protestants I know speak as much or as little Irish as many Roman Catholics I know."
Once he realised Irish was not something invented by the government for the disconcerting of Dublin children" Caird began to enjoy learning it.
"I first went to the Gaeltacht in 1943. And at the age of 17 first went to the Blasket Islands and realised that here was a real, living language." Gradually, almost without noticing, he had become extremely academic and, by the time he was ready for university, had a number of choices open to him. He was accepted for the medical school, but by then he had become aware of his growing interest in philosophy. "I hadn't realised that you could actually spend a long time studying philosophical questions.
On leaving Wesley in 1944 he went, as expected, to Trinity College to study philosophy and later, as a postgraduate, theology. For Senior Exhibition in 1945 he selected philosophy, Irish and chemistry. Two years later he became a prizeman in Hebrew. Among the many prizes won before he took a first class honours degree in philosophy in 1949 was the Lilian Mary Luce Prize for Berkelian Philosophy. Three years later, he completed his MA and BD and took his first curacy at St Mark's Church Dundela in Belfast.
FROM there, he moved after three years to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen where he was an assistant master and chaplain. In 1957, he moved again and lectured in philosophy at St David's University College in Wales. In 1960, he returned to Ireland to become rector at Rathmichael Church in Shankhill. During this time he met Nancy Sharpe, an American. They married in 1963 and have three grown children.
Appointed Dean of Ossory in 1969. Caird became the Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe the following year and in 1976 was appointed Bishop of Meath and Kildare. Nine years later, he was appointed Archbishop.
During his 46 years as a priest he has written, on average, two sermons a week. "I have always enjoyed writing them. Of course they take work. They must be accurate; each is a public statement." He describes them as "teaching" rather than moral sermons.
