What is John Charles McQuaid known for?

Answer 1

Extracts from Wikipedia article "John Charles McQuaid"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_McQuaid

John Charles McQuaid, CSSp (28 July 1895 - 7 April 1973) was Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland between December 1940 and February 1972.

McQuaid regularly gave money to the poet Patrick Kavanagh whom he first met in 1940. In 1946 he found Kavanagh a job on the Catholic magazine 'The Standard' but the poet remained chronically disorganised and the archbishop continued to assist him until his death in 1967. Patrick Kavanagh was a great religious poet but his long poem 'The Great Hunger' (1942) gave a very bleak view of Catholicism, and the ultra-orthodox prelate must have been well aware of this. Why he choose to disregard this uncomfortable fact is something of a mystery. (However journalist Emmanuel Kehoe wrote of Kavanagh: "As a teenager I'd nourished a natural Irish anti-clericalism and anger at the sex-denying Catholic Church by reading his staggeringly powerful poem, The Great Hunger. Yet even this epic exercise in savage indignation did not lose Kavanagh the patronage of the Blackrock Borgia, the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. What this ostensibly austere Spiritan found to admire and support in the raggle-taggle character who sometimes sounded like a latter-day William Blake long puzzled me, except that McQuaid must have seen in him a deep and authentic Catholicism.")[9] The following is an extract from 'Patrick Kavanagh: A Biography' by Antoinette Quinn (2001): "Since the cancer operation, Dr McQuaid had maintained an interest in his protégé's welfare. When Kavanagh was still living in No 62 [Pembroke Road], the archbishop's chauffeur-driven Humber would draw up outside at Christmas time and the priest at the wheel would be sent to ring the doorbell and summon the poet. Kavanagh, who checked the identity of all callers to the front door in a car mirror he had rigged up for the purpose, would join His Grace in the car rather than let him see the state of his flat. On the first occasion he confided in the priest that the visit was inconvenient because he had a woman with him. When Dr McQuaid was told, he showed his sense of humour by responding, "Some good woman from the Legion of Mary, doubtless." The Archbishop also played a role in the events that led to the composition of Kavanagh's poem "On Raglan Road".There was a curious (chaste!) triangular relationship involving Kavanagh, McQuaid and Hilda Moriarty, the lady whose rejection of the poet provided the theme of the song. [10]

In his biography of the Archbishop, John Cooney relates a number of stories that suggest that Dr. McQuaid had an unhealthy 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 McQuaid's bitter antagonist Noel Browne. No reputable historian or journalist supports these claims. Even reviewers who praised the book stated that the author should have left out these allegations (e.g. Dermot Keogh, Professor of History and John A. Murphy, Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork). [13] There is a satirical account of the controversy by then Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers in his Irishman's Diary on 10 November 1999. [14] There is also an interesting account by Colum Kennny, 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 Dr. McQuaid is hostile, he regards Cooney's allegations as absurd. He also provides this revealing vignette: "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."[15]