Religion: Hold Firm: John Charles McQuaid and the Second Vatican Council By Francis Xavier Carty The Columba Press, 181pp. €12.99Since the partial opening of the Dublin Diocesan Archives in 1998, the life and times of the former Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid have been explored and debated, notably in the impressive biography by John Cooney eight years ago.
Now Francis Xavier Carty has written a more modest study, incorporating new material and focusing on how the legendary archbishop handled the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and its aftermath in his own diocese.
He will always be remembered for his attempt to reassure his flock at the end of the Council that "No change will worry the tranquillity of your Christian lives". How wrong he was. There was to be no more tranquillity in the Dublin diocese as priests and laity struggled to implement the new liturgical changes, to allow in the winds of change unloosed by Pope John XXIII, to reach out to non-Catholics with the new-fangled ecumenism and then endure the storm raised by the condemnation of artificial contraception in the encyclical Humanae Vitaeissued by Pope Paul V1 in July 1968.
Dr McQuaid, whose watchwords were control and discipline, was ill-prepared for these turbulent years. Much in his traditional clerical formation rebelled against the new spirit of renewal, aggiornamento, emanating from the Council. He confided to a fellow conservative prelate, Bishop Michael Browne of Galway, that the Holy Faith nuns "will do anything to aid a parish priest. They are untouched by modern craze for aggiornamento". But Dr McQuaid was above all loyal to his Church and pope and in his own way introduced the necessary changes. They were "a new emphasis on old truths rather then new truths" he assured his priests and flock, divided between those who wanted to go faster and those who thought Vatican Two was a lot of hot air which would blow away and life would go on as before.
FX Carty tells the story of that decade, which opens with the Council and closes with the death of Dr McQuaid, skilfully without getting bogged down in details. His research has thrown new light on the approach of the archbishop to the challenges, especially in the communications field. A poor communicator himself, he inspired the setting up of the Radharcreligious TV programme under Fr Joe Dunn and he appointed the first diocesan lay press officer, Osmond Dowling. The files of the press office describe Dowling's private purgatory as he tried to present and defend the strange world of a diocese ruled by a clerical autocrat.
AFTER THE FIRST session of the Council, Dr McQuaid at the end of 1963 also set up a secret all-priests Public Image Committee "to examine what is now called the public image of the Church in the Dublin Diocese". Carty makes full use of his access to the little- known records of this committee which Dr McQuaid insisted should pull no punches. The committee reported that his public image "is entirely negative: a man who forbids, a man who is stern and aloof from the lives of the people, a man who doesn't meet the people (as they want him to) at church functions, at public gatherings, or television or in the streets, who writes deep pastoral letters in theological and canonical language that is remote from the lives of the people". One of the committee members noted that the archbishop was "somewhat disappointed" after the first meeting. "He felt the discussion centred too much on him personally. The image of the church was not the same as that of the archbishop."
Dr McQuaid's attendance at the Council sessions in Rome was dutiful but without much enthusiasm. He and his fellow bishops were unprepared for the excitement generated by the first session. The Irish ambassador to the Vatican, TV Commins, reported to Dublin that the bishops "taken as a body or individually, with one or two notable exceptions, are a completely closed book". They even excluded their own expert advisers from meetings and this "reflects an oyster-like and thus far completely impenetrable characteristic of the Irish hierarchy".
Dr McQuaid for his part was unimpressed by the reporting of the Council by the Irish religious affairs correspondents. He told the Public Image Committee that "the criticism produced is quite ignorant, the reporting on the Council has been very bad". He told Fr Burke-Savage from Rome: "I am dismayed by the facile ignorance of the journalists who are writing about the documents that have cost us years of work, and by the more facile dictation in regard to what we bishops must now do".
He had little time for The Irish Timeswhich he associated with his other bête noir, Trinity College. He complained once after a critical article that " The Irish Timeshad been treating me shamefully". The editor, Douglas Gageby, made some grudging answer in an RTÉ interview about the appointment of Dowling as the first press officer, causing Dr McQuaid to comment in a marginal note: "a gentleman would have been generous". Some years later he had mellowed enough to concede "good intentions" to the editor when approached about a series of articles about himself to be written by Louis McRedmond for the paper.
The archbishop would sometimes joke about his "ogre" image in the media. Behind the aloofness was a sense of humour but also, surprisingly, a sense of insecurity as he grappled with unwelcome change. He was devastated when the obligatory offer to resign on his 75th birthday was accepted by Pope Paul, albeit with a year's extension. Carty writes, "He was possibly worried that the Pope's rapid acceptance of his resignation was a negative judgement on his work".
When he refused to be interviewed by McRedmond for the Irish Timesarticles, the archbishop wrote: "Unless you had access to my private archives you could not describe my episcopate. They will remain closed for long after my death. And they will contain many surprises for those who have attempted to asses my years as Archbishop of Dublin".
He will continue to surprise as the archives are more fully opened up.
Joe Carroll is a former Washington correspondent and religious affairs correspondent of The Irish Times