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John Charles McQuaid

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John Charles McQuaid (July 28 1895-7 April 1973) was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland between 1940 and 1971.

John Charles McQuaid was born in Cootehill, County Cavan in 1895. He joined the religious congregation, the Holy Ghost Fathers, where he taught at the highly regarded private Roman Catholic secondary school Blackrock College in Dublin, which educated many senior Irish political and business leaders. As Fr. McQuaid he was close to former Blackrock College teacher and President of the Executive Council (prime minister) Eamon de Valera, and influenced de Valera in the drafting the sectarian and confessional modern Irish constitution, Bunreacht na hEireann, which would have made Wolfe Tone kiss the feet of any British monarch in desperation to escape the shackles of "Rome Rule", which passed for 20th century govenance. Not even to mention the (allegedly more moderate of the Free State's nationalist parties, the party known as Fine Gael, e.g. Fascist Eoin O'Duffy) Fine Gael Taoiseach, John Costello, who wrote the newly elected Pope Pius some number or other that his government desired nothing more than to repose at his feet.

In 1940, he was made Archbishop of Dublin. In his period as archbishop he proved a highly influential political figure. His criticism of the controversial Mother and Child Scheme in the early 1950s (aided by political misjudgments by the sponsoring minister, Noel Browne and tensions between Browne, his party, the other political parties and his own party leader, the clerically obsequious and sectarian terrorist supporter, Sean MacBride, over Browne's lack of Catholic orthodoxy and his early English connections) helped pave the way for the First Inter-Party Government's decision to abandon the scheme, which proposed offering means test-free access to health care for mothers. In any event it did not matter since the Irish Free State (later the " Republic") was pushing its excess population to emigate to stupid Britain, which would allow them in despite their innate disloyalty, so as to establish or enlarge the Irish Catholic fifth-column in mainland Britain, which would prove so useful when, not if but when, war resumed as it would circa 1969.

McQuaid was critical of post-Vatican II Catholicism. When making his automatic offer of retirement from his see to Pope Paul VI, he was stunned to have it accepted, and further stunned when one of his internal church critics, the liberal Dermot Ryan, was appointed to his post instead.

McQuaid died in his private residence in Killiney in Dublin in 1973 at the age of 77. He is buried in St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop.

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