HOMILY:IRELAND WAS suspicious of intellectuals and "do-gooders" when Garret FitzGerald came to prominence but his commitment to public service put him beyond those criticisms, mourners at the late taoiseach's funeral Mass heard.
Dr FitzGerald’s life-long friend Fr Enda McDonagh, former professor of moral theology at Maynooth, celebrated the service in front of a large congregation at the Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook, Dublin, yesterday afternoon.
“Politicians, some, and Irish voters, perhaps many, were notoriously suspicious of intellectuals and, in a different fashion, of do-gooders. Both of these in themselves honourable titles were used in a mocking, put-down way by Garret’s critics,” Fr McDonagh said.
“However, his commitment to loving and truthful public service took him way beyond these criticisms to the office of taoiseach, the achievement of the Anglo Irish agreement, that forerunner of the foundation of the Good Friday agreement, and that peace process whose culmination we have been celebrating in the very days of Garret’s last agony and the final surrender of his historical life, devoted as it was to Irish citizens North and South, as well as to family and friends.”
Fr McDonagh said Dr FitzGerald woke up on Tuesday night, “36 hours or less before he died”, to see Queen Elizabeth in Dublin with President Mary McAleese on television. “It was a culmination of what he had for so long struggled.”
Describing Dr FitzGerald as “the great integrator”, Fr McDonagh said his late friend’s desire to bring together people of different religious allegiances, North and South, “came to him out of his deep heart’s core”.
Dr FitzGerald’s dominating characteristic was love, Fr McDonagh told the large congregation. It was impossible to think of him without remembering his deep love for his family. In earlier years, he had operated under the “wise and sometimes properly restraining” advice of his wife Joan, who died in 1999.
Fr McDonagh said the fabric of Irish society had been undermined in recent years as activities in the church, politics, banking and development had undermined people’s belief in what were once “professions of trust”.
While most people suppressed too easily and too quickly the child within, Dr FitzGerald had retained a child-like hopefulness and playfulness. Although he was realistic, “he was not surrendering to the dismal prophecies we were facing” in recent years.
Fr McDonagh also remembered Dr FitzGerald’s intellectual curiosity and legendary hospitality, along with his love of parties and companionship. He could be pernickity about his food, Fr McDonagh acknowledged, adding, to laughter, that “mushy peas were always high on the menu”.
Although a moderate wine drinker, Dr FitzGerald was always generous to his guests.
Concluding, Fr McDonagh said: “We entrust him to Joan and the Lord”.