Something I Should Know? The Mind of Ronan Drury

Abstract

Something I Should Know? The Mind of Ronan Drury Paul Clayton-Lea ‘Love and laughter, kindness and consideration are worth everything and in the end are the only things of lasting value’.1 Until his death on 16 November 2017 at the age of ninety-three, ‘Is there something I should know?’ was often the first question on the lips of Ronan Drury following the usual warm, preliminary greeting of friends and colleagues. His amusing, yet never merely idle, curiosity was rooted in an abiding interest in and concern for his fellow human beings. Whether it was the seminary student with speech difficulties in the homiletics classroom at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the inconsolable parishioner who had lost a family member in tragic circumstances, the friend or colleague suffering because of addiction or disgrace, Ronan was, in the words of playwright Brendan Behan, one of life’s ‘nurses’. Using an image from one of his widely admired Good Friday Stations of the Cross delivered for decades to seminarians in Maynooth’s College Chapel, he was a Veronica figure rather than a Simon of Cyrene on life’s many roads to Calvary, impelled to action by compassion and the generous impulse rather than compelled by a sense of duty or obligation. ‘When faced with hunger, pain or need like Veronica, we must react to it, we have to be the kind of people who respond at once to the dire needs of others. Christ’s image is best seen not so much on the surface of a towel but stamped on a life’. He was blessed with a sunny disposition, accompanied by a razor sharp wit, wielded with gentleness, as illustrated for me recently by a story from someone who recalled a celebratory dinner at a newly and somewhat lavishly restored parochial house. The host led his guests around the building, enthusiastically patting himself on the back and proclaiming how he had achieved his splendidly decorative results without benefit of architects, interior design magazines or any other so-called ‘expert’ advice – to which Studies • volume 108 • number 432 474 Paul Clayton-Lea Ronan’s quietly whispered response to his dinner table companion was a mournful, mischievously muttered ‘Pity!’ For all those reasons and more it has proved difficult for those who knew him over many years, enjoyed his personality and cherished his friendship, to let him or his memory pass too hastily into the night. The Furrow One obituary, describing his death as a milestone in the intellectual life of Catholicism in Ireland, stated that ‘his blend of human, intellectual and pastoral gifts was unique’.2 It’s not too great an exaggeration to say that, for generations of Irish priests following the Second Vatican Council, Ronan’s promotion of the vision of an inclusive Catholicism preached and lived with imagination, creativity and above all charity, held great appeal for many who were seeking new ways to invigorate their faith and revitalise the institutional Church. He had assumed editorship of The Furrow, the pastoral magazine founded in 1950 by Canon J G McGarry, in 1977 when the founding editor was killed in a car crash, and continued in the role until his own death forty years later. The Irish Times obituary cited above described The Furrow as ‘almost a prefiguration of the internet: a thin, live wire, coursing with the electricity of new ideas and powered by fine and often courageous writing’. Ronan’s teaching and preaching were buttressed by the steady stream of theological, intellectual and spiritual insights and ideas emerging from many of the finest minds at work in the Catholic world and beyond which frequently reached The Furrow office. It should go without saying that his mindset was perfectly attuned with the renewal and reforms of the Council and the ambition of Saint Pope John XXIII to open the windows and allow fresh air and sunshine breathe new life into the Church, an institution which, for all its global achievements in education, social justice, healthcare and pastoral zeal, appeared moribund or irrelevant to growing numbers of its own members, as well as to a fast changing and newly interconnected world, where such concepts as ‘free love’, civil...