Patsy McGarry’s memoir provides an engaging journey through his early years and subsequent appointment as Religious Affairs Correspondent in 1997. As an agnostic, his viewpoint equipped him aptly to impartially handle the colossal events that were challenging the foundations of the Catholic Church during his term. The church during his youth was characterized by cold treatment of its followers due to what he refers to as “a profound suspicion of the physical being as the greatest menace to eternal redemption”. The autocratic, puritanical, patriarchal leaders of the Catholic Church in the 1950s and 60s, when McGarry was growing up in rural Mullen in Roscommon county, didn’t tolerate blatant rebellion.
His paternal grandfather, also named Patsy and a local legend due to his deeds during the War of Independence, courageously defied the parish priest’s authority in the 1930s. In an incident at a mission mass, he publicly questioned the priest’s advice to congregants to support Fine Gael in an imminent election. His question, “Father, where is it written so in the Gospel?” challenged the priest’s blatant political promotion. As a founding member of the first Fianna Fáil cumann in Mullen, he was not hesitant to oppose such overt propaganda.
The memoir begins with intriguing accounts of McGarry’s initial experiences with Catholicism in Mullen and Ballaghaderreen. McGarry’s mother, significantly devout yet not overly pious, influenced his religious exposure. Young Patsy entertained the idea of a religious calling for a while. However, witnessing the wide disparity between the teachings of the church and the critical thinking skills honed through schooling and university education in Galway, led him towards agnosticism. By the time he embarked on his journalism career, his character had already moulded around a strong devotion towards social justice and truth.
Throughout his tenure as Religious Affairs Correspondent, a position he undertook just prior to the Belfast Agreement, McGarry experienced a never-before-seen flurry of scandals that shed light on the dark heart of Irish Catholicism. This series of shocking revelations included incidents of clerical abuse and the mistreatment of children and young women in various religious institutions, from industrial schools and orphanages to mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries. The church’s efforts to conceal these atrocities to protect its reputation only amplified the gravity of these events.
It began in 1992 when it was uncovered that the popular Bishop of Galway, Eamonn Casey, had sired a child with an American relative and recent divorcee, named Annie Murphy, years prior. Despite McGarry’s efforts, he could not secure an interview with the banished bishop in Ecuador. McGarry opined that the ban stopping Casey from conducting Mass in public upon his return to Ireland was stern, but recent allegations of paedophilia indicated that the church had earlier suspicions and nonetheless permitted Casey to persist in his ministry.
People regularly claimed that McGarry was overly sympathetic towards Desmond Connell’s successor as the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin. The number of reports pertaining to clergymen, religious associates, and those linked with institutions co-run by the church and state demonstrate the enormity of McGarry’s brief, for example, Ferns in 2005, Murphy and Ryan in 2009, and Cloyne in 2011. These copious, condemning volumes displayed deceit and disorder on a large scale. However, McGarry’s journalistic works were renowned for their impartiality, while concurrently not hesitating to reveal any malpractice.
He established strong relationships with numerous survivors and acknowledged the skepticism and often outright hostility held towards him by numerous priests and laypersons who perceived him as a reformer set on undermining the Catholic Church. Despite this, he maintained an emotional and cultural bond with the church and those who devoted their lives to it as priests and religious followers.
Two books of note include ‘Well, Holy God’ By Patsy McGarry which provides an unadulterated look into the ecclesiastical correspondent’s experiences during these unstable times for Irish Catholicism, and ‘Accidental’ by Tim James, which recounts scientific achievements that were the result of errors, disasters, and serendipity.
Pat Barker has conveyed her belief that revenge is not wholly meaningless, however, it exhibits a circular pattern. Translated literary pieces by writers, namely Stefanie vor Schulte, Atsuhiro Yoshida, Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, Adèle Rosenfeld, Gerbrand Bakker and Fríða Ísberg have made an appearance. Frequent claims were hurled at the individual in question for being over-approving towards Desmond Connell’s successor for the position of Dublin’s Archbishop, Diarmuid Martin. According to McGarry’s view, Martin took on a fearless stance by granting access to files that Connell consistently denied releasing, while prioritising survivor health over organisational issues. His genuine fondness stretched towards former president Mary McAleese, a person he had penned a biography about and whose choice to partake in Communion during a Church of Ireland mass in Christ Church Cathedral led to his initial major news break, as well as towards survivors Christine Buckley and Marie Collins, and to a myriad of deeply devout priests, nuns and other religious figures he has interacted with throughout the years.
McGarry’s memoir captures the gradual breakdown of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a transformation he observed and reported on in an enlightening and audacious manner for multiple decades. Despite the drastic distinction in tone and approach compared to his fellow worker, Derek Scally’s book The Best Catholics in the World (2021), this memoir is anticipated to garner similar applause.