This memoir by Patsy McGarry is an absorbing account of his early life and subsequent role as Religious Affairs Correspondent with this newspaper from 1997. He argues that as an agnostic he was possibly better equipped to deal impartially with the seismic events that rocked the very foundations of the Catholic Church during his tenure. The church he experienced as a young man was a cold house for Catholics because of “its deep distrust of the body as the greatest threat to eternal salvation”. Puritanical, authoritarian, patriarchal Catholic leaders did not countenance any overt opposition during the 1950s and 1960s when McGarry was growing up in rural Mullen, Co Roscommon. His paternal grandfather, also known as Patsy, was a legendary local figure because of his exploits during the War of Independence. On one occasion during the 1930s he openly challenged the authority of the parish priest during a Mission Mass in the area, because of the cleric’s recommendation to the congregation that they vote Fine Gael in the upcoming election. Patsy stood up and asked: “Father, where does it say that in the Gospel?” As a founder member of the first Fianna Fáil cumann in Mullen, he was not going to stay silent in the face of such blatant propaganda. It was a courageous stance at that time.
The opening chapters outlining the author’s initial interactions with the Catholic religion in Mullen and then Ballaghaderreen are captivating. McGarry’s mother was deeply religious, but never pious. For a time, young Patsy believed he had a vocation. However, when he began to observe a gaping chasm between the teachings of the church and the critical intellectual apparatus he acquired in school and at university in Galway, the path to agnosticism soon took hold. By the time he began work as a journalist, certain character traits had already taken root, especially a deep commitment to social justice and the truth.
During his years working as Religious Affairs Correspondent at The Irish Times, a role he assumed just one year before the Belfast Agreement, McGarry also witnessed first hand an unprecedented series of scandals that would expose the sick underbelly of Irish Catholicism. These included the clerical abuse scandals, the maltreatment of children and young women in industrial schools, orphanages, mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries, all of which were exacerbated by the vain attempts by the church hierarchy to hide the truth and avoid reputational damage at all costs. The first sign of what was to follow occurred in 1992 with the revelation that the charismatic Bishop of Galway, Eamonn Casey, had fathered a child with a distant American cousin and recent divorcee, Annie Murphy, years previously. McGarry would subsequently track down the exiled bishop to a parish in Ecuador in the hope of getting an interview, which didn’t happen. He believed that the interdiction placed on Casey saying Mass in public on his return to Ireland was severe, but recent information linking the bishop to accusations of paedophilia demonstrate that church authorities had been aware of these suspicions and yet allowed Casey to continue in active ministry.
McGarry was regularly accused of being too well-disposed to Desmond Connell’s successor as archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin
A list of the various reports into priests, religious and others associated with institutions jointly run by church and state illustrates the scale of McGarry’s brief: Ferns (2005); Murphy and Ryan (2009); Cloyne (2011), all thick and damning tomes. The findings of those responsible for compiling the reports revealed dysfunction and dissimulation on a grand scale. However, McGarry’s articles were notable for being fair to all sides, while at the same time never shying away from the exposure of wrongdoing. He became very close to a number of survivors and admits that he was perceived with suspicion, sometimes open animosity, by many priests and lay people who viewed him as a liberal crusader intent on damaging the Catholic Church. In reality he has retained a cultural and sentimental attachment to the institution and many of those who served in it as priests and religious.
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He was regularly accused of being too well-disposed to Desmond Connell’s successor as archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin. In McGarry’s estimation, Martin showed huge courage in allowing access to files that Connell steadfastly refused to release and in placing the wellbeing of the survivors ahead of any institutional concerns. He also displays genuine affection for former President Mary McAleese, about whom he wrote a biography and whose decision to take Communion during a Church of Ireland religious service in Christ Church cathedral provided McGarry with his first scoop; for survivors Christine Buckley and Marie Collins; and “for all the many deeply Christian priests, nuns and other religious it has also been my privilege to deal with over the decades”.
McGarry’s memoir recounts in a compelling manner the slow unravelling of the Catholic Church in Ireland, an evolution that he witnessed first-hand and reported on in an insightful and courageous manner for several decades. Very different in tone and approach to his colleague Derek Scally’s The Best Catholics in the World (2021), this memoir should nevertheless elicit a similarly positive reaction.
