He was a super-bureaucrat; a brilliant intellect, but emotionally emaciated; an abstract man, preoccupied with and preferring principle; not too fond of humankind, although acting always in its best interests, as he saw it. As with all such men, he really only loved ideas. Love itself was no more than a concept to him. Emotion of any kind was not to be trusted. It was ephemeral, a child of the moment. Only ideas, including the idea of God, were absolute, eternal. They were the one true foundation upon which to build structures. Above all, men like him loved structures. In the middle decades of this century in Ireland, John Charles McQuaid was probably the most perfect example of his type. It is still too early to say precisely how history will judge him, but an outline sketch seems already clear. The volume of papers he left, 700 boxes, is a clue. He was orderly, meticulous, and industrious, with a fastidious attention to detail and duty as he perceived it.
Victorian manners
Mr David Sheehy, archivist of the Dublin archdiocese, believes McQuaid had a Victorian sense of propriety. He thought a gentleman should answer all correspondence within 48 hours of receipt and made notes of his responses on letters as he read them, the better to facilitate a speedy reply.
A story which encapsulates this prompt order and attention to detail was told recently by Father Desmond Forristal, parish priest of Dalkey, Co Dublin. In 1959, he and Father Joe Dunn were sent by Dr McQuaid to the US to study communications. Father Forristal wrote to him from the US and explained how they were getting on. Dr McQuaid's reply was brief. He was glad to hear they were doing well, and pointed out that "accommodation is spelt with two ems".
Father Forristal remembers him as a fairly distant man who always addressed his priests as "Father", never using the Christian name. He was not gregarious and even had difficulty in accepting gratitude from those to whom he had been kind.
This difficulty with emotion was probably rooted in his childhood. His mother died within days of his birth, and his father remarried. The home would appear to have been more respectable than loving, with an emphasis on success. And he was a very successful student, at all levels. That capacity to assimilate and order knowledge was put into practical effect for the first time when he became Dean of Blackrock College, and later its president. His appointment as Archbishop in 1940 left him friendless at the top in Dublin. He was an outsider, an order priest with few friends and no colleagues among the priests of the archdiocese. This was not helped by the energy he brought to his new role. His dynamism, while dispelling the torpor which had descended on the archdiocese during the ailing years of his predecessor, disturbed many clergy who had become used to the way things were. New brooms have few friends in any organisation.
Two million meals Theologically he was very much a creature of the extraordinary certitudes of the Council of Trent. But in welfare terms he was radical. For example, by 1955 the food department of the Catholic Social Service Conference, which he set up in 1941, was supplying two million meals monthly from 22 food centres in Dublin. But he was a bourgeois, with no desire to alter the existing order.
He was also a bigot. He believed all Protestants were in error and had only one destiny - hell. That is not to take from the good he did, even if it was just for Catholics. An indication of his reputation where emigrants were concerned is a letter sent to him by the Archbishop of Birmingham in October 1943. He had heard that Irish boys and girls "aged 14 to 16 . . . arrive [in Birmingham] in the company of grown-up men and women who have to go to work in the factories and who leave these children roam the streets. The children are found in the most undesirable company, they run errands for people they have never met before, and are a pest to the landladies who occasionally turn out the whole family in consequence . . . It would be far better if no one under 18 were allowed to come over". He asked Dr McQuaid, "can you do anything with your Government to help us?"
Too many dancers
But the State did not or could not help. On St Patrick's Day 1943, de Valera delivered his "comely maidens" speech, but there was room for only so many dancers at the crossroads. As for the rest, they could dream of comely maidens and athletic youths in Birmingham, London, New York, Boston, Sydney, or the Taoiseach's office.
The Archbishop's role in the Mother and Child debacle was central and has been well aired. It would appear he regarded the then Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne, with a certain contempt. His secretary at the time, a Father Mangan, recalled how he thought Dr Browne was a student when he arrived at the Archbishop's house for a meeting wearing a Trinity scarf. Subsequently, when the Government fell, McQuaid regarded the whole affair as "an aberration", according to Mr Sheehy. The Archbishop, he said, blamed the medical profession and felt the Church had been used.
The end, when it came, was sudden. It seems the Vatican was none too heartbroken to be rid of this turbulent prelate. But decency was observed. When McQuaid submitted his resignation in 1970, he was asked to stay on for a year. Twelve months later when the resignation was accepted he was astonished. Just 16 months after retirement in January 1972, he died. As happens so often with men who love power, it seems he could not or did not want to live without it.