A Tale of Two Priests

Two priests from my youth whose lives took on very different shapes.

Above, Fr. Ken McCabe, whom I never met but who wrote me a story for the Shanganagh Valley News which I was editing in 1958. I heard no more from or about him until I read a piece in the Irish Times last year which told me, at least in part, what had happened to him since then. He blew the whistle on abuse in the Irish industrial schools and ran foul of both Church and State as a result.

He made a new start in London where he founded a home for boys in trouble, ministered there for forty years, and was attempting to replicate this in Ireland when he took ill. He died two months ago. He has been paid warm tributes on this site, in the Jesuit's Newsletter, and on a new Facebook page, set up after his death by some of those whose lives he helped to shape.

Below, Fr. Morgan Costello, whom I knew well. At least I thought I did. He was well in with the Diocese, wrote devotional pamphlets - including a life of Maria Goretti, and was chosen to promote the cause for canonisation of Edel Quinn and of Matt Talbot.

Two years ago, after an extensive police investigation, he was charged with indecently assaulting a young man in St. Catherine's in Meath St. in the late 1960s. In June of last year, the DPP decided not to pursue the charges. The DPP never gives a reason for this but Fr. Costello's first appearance in court was in a wheelchair, so his health was hardly the best and I don't know the condition of the alleged victim.

Two priests. Two very different outcomes.

Autobiography of a Stamp

Photo: © P Neil Ralley

I read a very powerful piece about moral courage, and the lack of it, by Dermot Bolger in yesterday's Irish Times.

He mentioned Fr. Kenneth McCabe:

"The young Jesuit, Kenneth McCabe, got a truthful report about Irish industrial schools to Donogh O’Malley in 1967. The minister was sufficiently shocked to establish a committee that abolished these lucrative sweatshops, but at the last minute McCabe was excluded from the committee. Tainted as a whistleblower, he resigned from the Jesuits and went to work as a priest with deprived London children."

The name rang a bell but it took me a while to place it.

When I was editing the Shanganagh Valley News in 1958, Fr. McCabe had contributed a short story called "Autobiography of a Stamp, or, Converted by the Jesuits" as a vehicle for appealing for used postage stamps for the Missions.

I bet at that stage he had little idea how his career was to pan out ten years later. I checked out the priest list in the Diocese of Westminster and he is listed there as retired and in a Jesuit nursing home in Milltown.

Until today, I had no idea he had run into trouble for following his conscience. This upset me enormously. I'm not sure why. I never met Fr. Kenneth. I had only corresponded with him by letter. But he was nonetheless part of my growing up and he belonged to a more innocent era, as the story of the stamp so strikingly illustrates. So perhaps my upset was at a loss of innocence, a nostalgia for a time when things seemed simpler, and fixed, and true for all time.

Mind you, my upset is slowly turning into a cold anger at how he was treated. From what I read in the Ryan Report he was one of four people proposed for the Committee of Inquiry, and came recommended by Declan Costello TD, but his name got "dropped" somewhere between the Government Memorandum and the final Cabinet decision. It is not clear what role the Jesuit order played in all of this but his resignation from the Order, if such, would not reflect well on them. On the other hand, he seems to be in some way under their care today.

This post is just a small contribution to making sure he, and his bravery, are not forgotten.

Of course I don't have as many readers as the Irish Times, but, never mind.

Update - 9/2/2013
In the third comment below, Fr. Kevin O'Higgins has informed me that "Fr. Kenneth McCabe died peacefully a few days ago (Wednesday, Feb 6) in Cherryfield nursing unit, at Milltown Park". He says Fr. Ken was "a genuinely great man" and I totally agree. May he rest in peace.

Fr. Kevin himself is no slouch, as his bio on the jesuit missions website shows. He says Fr. Daniel Berrigan inspired him to join the Jesuits, and as I was reading the bio I was also thinking of Fr. Roy Bourgeois who seems to have shared some of the same experiences as Fr. Kevin on the missions.

Thank you Fr. Kevin, for informing me of Fr. Ken's death, and may the force be with you.