Fr Fergal O'Connor: Fr Fergal O'Connor was as deeply loved as a person as he was admired as a teacher. His human qualities and intuitive skills in a lecture theatre ensured his influence permeated to wider society. It did so via that dissenting generation of the late 1960s/70s whom he taught to think independently. In the 1980s and 1990s they helped change Irish society.
His contributions on The Late Late Show in the 1960s and 1970s played a significant part in opening up new ground for a wider populace, who began to recognise that dissent was not sinful and for whom he articulated much that depressed them about their church. His moral courage then and the clarity of his common sense validated for many their feelings of discontent. It also instilled in them a confidence in their own views when confronted with a weighty authority which had arrogated to itself exclusively decisions on all questions of right and wrong.
Teaching was in his genes - his great-grandfather was a hedge-schoolmaster in Kerry. Both his father and grandfather were also teachers. But the great fathers of his philosophy were Plato and Rousseau. His heart, however, was his own and its seemingly limitless and discreet generosity was what endeared him most to students, many of whom remained friends for the rest of his life.
It was this radical generosity which led him in the 1960s to set up a hostel for homeless women in Dublin's Sherrard St, and Ally, an organisation for unmarried mothers. Indeed both his lives meshed as his students at UCD became volunteers at the hostel or with Ally. Often he and they would chat about the great questions of life or the trivial events of the day around the fireside at Sherrard St.
He was a simple man of deep spirituality whose sensibility combined great intellectual rigour with the sensitivity of an artist and the empathy of a lover. No respecter of power, rules, or status, he was a serene believer in ordinary good sense and the power of provocation to help young minds find themselves.
He had a great sense of humour and lived at a level beyond mere precept. He had, for instance, no time for principles, believing life should be lived at a deeper level. Principles were "too thin to live by", he used say.
Theatres were appropriate settings for his lectures as his expounding of a philosophy often became his inhabiting of the philosopher. Dr Joe Dunne, in his introduction to Questioning Ireland: Debates in Political Philosophy and Public Policy, a book of essays written in Fr Fergal's honour and published in 2000, recalled:
"When he lectured on Hobbes, he was Hobbes, unleashing the full power of the latter's thought and defending it against all comers. The disconcerting effect was realised only later when, now that many of us had become convinced Hobbesians, Fergal metamorphosed before our eyes in the next set of lectures as Rousseau, the human world now being reconfigured so that Jean-Jacques truly divined its secrets." So it continued with each philosopher, where "Fergal's sorcery was in full view" as Dr Dunne and his colleagues began to learn that what really mattered "was what we thought". He "drew from us knowledge we did not think we possessed", was said at his funeral.
Yet through it all, and from his 20s, he suffered acutely from arthritis. In later years it would leave him withered in body though still radiant in spirit.
Fellow Dominican and the editor of Doctrine and Life magazine, Fr Bernard Tracey, said that "though his arthritis prevented him from leaving a body of writings behind, Fergal O'Connor leaves a rich inheritance" through those he taught and who had contact with him.
Fergal O'Connor, third of seven children, was born Thomas, at Causeway, Co Kerry, in 1926. Taught by his father at Rathmorrel national school, he attended St Brendan's College, Killarney. He joined the Dominicans in 1944 and took the name Fergal. Ordained in July 1951 he studied at the Angelicum in Rome and later at Oxford. He taught political philosophy at UCD from 1962 until 1991.
He is survived by his only sister, Phil Mulcahy in Dublin, her husband Martin, their children Carmel, John and Conor, and grandchildren.
Fr Fergal O'Connor: born December 6th, 1926; died September 29th, 2005