We Remember Maynooth

A College across Four Centuries

Salvador Ryan, John-Paul Sheridan, Salvador Ryan, John-Paul Sheridan

• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781788122634
• eBook ISBN: 9781788122818
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Founded in 1795, Maynooth College has a singular place in the history of the Irish Church, and indeed the Catholic Church globally. Its beginning was as a small seminary of thirty students and ten professors, most of whom were fleeing the ravages of the French Revolution. It has been the subject of riots in the streets of London and has played host to kings and popes. Its buildings have created one of the loveliest of university campuses and its chapel is among the highest free- standing structures in Ireland. It expanded rapidly, becoming a Pontifical University, a constituent college of the National University of Ireland and, at one time, the largest seminary in world. It has educated many thousands of students and led the way in many branches of the arts and sciences. But, beyond that, for its large number of alumni, found across all sectors of society internationally, it is a tapestry of rich memories. This book is a contribution to this rich tapestry. It is a compilation of pen pictures, personal reminiscences and sketches on aspects of the college’s life and history. The contributors have all been associated with Maynooth in many different spheres, either as students or staff, and in many cases both. Some have offered images of their time at Maynooth; others, portraits of characters and personalities they encountered there. These pages are part history, part folk history, part aide-mémoire. For some, it will be an introduction to a place they have heard about but never known. For others, it will be a reminder of their time in the college, evoking memories of their own story and the stories of those who journeyed with them. For everyone, it will open up this historic center of learning and tell the tales of those who walked its Pugin-designed buildings.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Remembering Maynooth An Exercise in Indulgence, Acknowledgement, Balance and Preservation
• Maynooth a Continuing Landscape of Learning
• Saint Mary’s The Parish Church that Looks Like Part of the College
• Professor Louis Delahogue’s Happy Birthday 16 January 1812
• Maynooth Makes Peace with Thackeray
• Maynooth College and Queen Victoria’s Visit to Ireland, 1849
• Remembering Nicholas Callan (1799–1864)
• 100 Years of Maynooth An Account of Centenary Celebrations in June 1895
• A Fitting Farewell Heinrich Bewerunge’s Music for the Re-interment of Eugene O’Growney, 27 September 1903
• Seanmóirí Muighe Nuadhad I–III (1906–08)
• In Memory of Maynooth Fr Drea’s Drawings
• A Time and Motion Study A Reminiscence of Walter McDonald
• Gunn, Gun or Ceasefire? A Maynooth College Naming (and Shaming) Saga
• Teetotallers’ Rebellion in the Professors’ Dining Room
• Sean O’riordan CSSR (1916–1998) and the Furrow
• Two Concerts in the 1940s Remembered
• Debating Cinema and Censorship in Mid-1940s’ Maynooth – with a Twist
• A Survey of Sport and its Practitioners in Maynooth College
• Remembering Fr John Brady (1905–1963)
• ‘Giles’: Pe Instructor for Generations
• Remembering Maynooth
• Maynooth in the 1950s
• Founding a Department of French in Maynooth
• College Butler and President’s Man: Michael O’riordan Remembers
• Pádraig ó Fiannachta Oide agus Comhghleacaí
• Not such a Dark Age Maynooth College, 1961
• A Sure Bet (1962)
• Maynooth, September 1963 First and Lasting Impressions
• ‘I Wonder Who’s Ratzinger Now?’ Maynooth, 1961–65
• A Rumble of Thunder in 1965
• Suspended Between Two Worlds The Class of 1966
• How I Remember Maynooth, 1967–68
• Change in the Air Conferring Day, November 1967
• Remembering an Bráthair ó Súilleabháin
• Entering First Science, 1968
• The 1960s see the First Female Lecturers
• ‘Maynooth is its Students’
• Maynooth College in the Late 1960s
• 1969: The Genesis of the German Department
• On First Moving in to Maynooth, 1969
• Memories of Some Maynooth Teachers
• Leabhair Léinn Ghaeilge na Mball Foirne, c.1940–c.1973
• Léachtaí Cholm Cille Caoga Bliain Faoi Bhláth
• A Paean — and Two Poems — TO A TURBULENT PRIEST
• Father Peter Connolly (1927–1987) From Dreaming Spires to Stern Reality
• Traveller (In memory of Barbara Hayley)
• Verissima Aestimatio: Richard McCullen CM (1926–2015), Vincentian and Maynooth Man
• ‘Here to feed you not to fatten you!’ Memories of Maynooth College Catering
• An Chéad Ollamh Tuata (1975)
• Sigerson Cup Memories (1976)
• Memories of Maynooth (1974)
• Remembering What I’ve Forgotten (1976)
• Minding the House – and the Farm
• On the Farm
• At the Office
• Reflections on Maynooth College in the 1970s
• Reflections on my Time in Classics
• A Saving Grace?
• The Old Order Passeth Away: Remembering Maynooth, 1972–79
• Undergraduate Reflections of an Arts Student (1977–81)
• For the Arts Building
• ‘Great Stuff’: in Memory of John O’donohue — Maynooth Student 1974–81
• From Guff to Chub A Seventies’ Rite of Passage
• ‘Play It, Sam’: A Theme and Eight Variations
• Slideshow
• Finding my Voice at Maynooth
• Father Michael Casey, my Friend
• Reflections on a Maynooth Education
• Robert Mugabe’s Visit to Maynooth College, 9 September 1983
• Going to Maynooth
• 3D – Another Dimension Maynooth Seminary Life in the 1980s
• Thomas Kabdebo (Kabdebó Tamás) A Hungarian librarian at Maynooth (1983–99)
• Maynooth College Chapel Choir Tour, 1985
• A ‘Day in the Sun’ in Mid-November 1987 with Rté and the Cardinal
• Joining the Sociology Quartet
• Memories of ‘Tom and Gerry’ and the Department of Classics, Maynooth
• Maynooth: A True Academic Community
• First Sunday in September 1992
• Of Comets and Princesses
• An Doras (Is cuimhin linn Urnaí na hOíche i Séipéal an Choláiste…)
• Memories of the Graf
• Maynooth’s Bicentenary Celebrations, 1995
• The National Science and Ecclesiology Museum at Maynooth
• An Anthropologist’s Memory of Maynooth
• Remembering the Senior Infirmary
• Maynooth at the Turn of the Millennium
• Responding to the Needs of Liturgical Music after the Second Vatican Council
• Memories of Sigerson Cup Football at Maynooth
• Professor James McEvoy and the Russell Library
• The Hallowed Halls of Maynooth
• Martin Sheen, Maynooth and the Movies
• Patrick Joseph Corish Priest and Church Historian (1921–2013)
• The Fight to Seek Understanding: Maynooth 2008–13
• Of ‘Pipes and Praise’ Rebuilding the College Organ
• ‘My Task Accomplished and the Long Day Done’ Remembering Fr Ronan Drury (1924–2017)
• Revisiting Maynooth, June 2018
• The Golden Jubilee of the ‘Sem. Course’, 1969–2019
• We Remember Bewerunge
• In the Bleak Midwinter Fifty Years of Carols at Maynooth
• The Class-Piece
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Illustrations