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Revision as of 19:56, 10 September 2005 by Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)John Charles McQuaid (July 28 1895-April 7 1973) was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin 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 modern Irish constitution, Bunreacht na hEireann, a sectarian and confessional document, particularly "Section 44", which gave the Roman Catholic church a favoured constitutional position: "The State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens", and only rather grudgingly tolerated other religions which were "in existence...at the time of the coming into operation of this Constitution".
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 and his party leader, Sean MacBride over Browne's lack of Catholic othodoxy as well as 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, who were then forced to immigrate to Britain to receive such care.
McQuaid was never given the red hat of Cardinal Primate; Joseph Walsh, the WWII era pro-German Irish minister to the Holy See, had apparently warned the Vatican that if McQuaid were elevated, "the Nuncio would have endless difficulties, in every sphere of his activities, owing to this deplorable weakness in McQuaid's character, already so well known to the Holy See".
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 Bishop, 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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