Back Issues / 1998

Valerie Bresnihan’s response to David Quinn’s assessment of Mary Robinson may initiate a serious debate about the foundation of our social and political values. Commitment to transcendent values rooted in Christian belief is certainly not a guarantee of justice and peace but is it a necessary component of a coherent moral philosophy? There may be some polemical heat in the exchanges, but they raise important questions about the foundation of values in civil society and their philosophical justification.

Northern Ireland has figured prominently in Studies over the past thirty years. The review has seen the problem there not precisely as a northern problem but an Irish one involving and affecting the whole island. The solution calls for changes not only in Northern Ireland but also in the Republic and demands that all should settle for less than they would settle for in an ideal world made to their own measure. The Nationalists have conceded the principal of consent to the Unionists. In return, the Unionists have conceded a political arrangement that no longer allows ‘a Trimble and Orange Order dominated majority to determine the fate of nationalists in the North’. The ‘greening’ of Northern Ireland is the price the Unionists have paid for nationalist support of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

John Charles McQuaid was certainly ‘one of the most remarkable figures in post-independence Ireland’. Intellectually gifted, he would have made a first class scholar in any one of many disciplines; he was an inspiring teacher; he was an effective administrator with an exceptionally broad and detailed knowledge of religious, educational, social and political issues; he had a keen insight into the needs of the Irish Church and society. To meet these needs he worked tirelessly and successfully. He was forward looking in his thinking. Where his views diverged from the mainstream, he was usually ahead of his time as in the case of his support for the National Teachers in 1943 and for parental representation on school boards of management. His achievements were many and significant. To this the essays in this issue of Studies bear witness.  

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