Obituary Louis McRedmond
journalist and author Louis McRedmond, who died last month at the age of 78, is best remembered for his writings on religious affairs. His distinguished career included more than 30 years as Dublin correspondent for The Tablet. The media in Ireland, like large sections of the Catholic Church (including many of its bishops), were slow to awaken to the sig- nificance of what was happening in Rome after the opening of the Second Vatican Council on 11 October 1962. Pope John XXIII’s revolutionary vision of a Church reformed, a Church open and responsive to the challenges of the modern world, did not fire the imagination of editors in Dublin until well into the Council’s third session in 1964. McRedmond was one of a very small group
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of Irish journalists who sensed the significance of the sweeping changes being ushered in by Vatican II. A qualified barrister, he had joined the Irish Independent as a leader writer in 1958, and begun to write on religious matters for the paper. As a result of his efforts, he was despatched to Rome to report on the fourth and final session of the Council in 1965. By so doing, he became part of the first wave of religious affairs correspondents (the others were John Horgan of The Irish Times, now Ireland’s Press Ombudsman, and the late Sean MacReamoinn of the Irish broadcasting corporation, RTE, who helped in no small measure to inform the Irish public of what Diarmaid MacCulloch in his book A History of Christianity has described as the transformative effect of Vatican II. McRedmond also reported on the first Synod of Bishops (one of the fruits of the Council) in 1967, in the course of which he was unfailingly helpful to the second wave of correspondents. During the interim his book, The Council Reconsidered (1966), was published. There is a small irony in the fact that while he was a faithful chronicler of Vatican II and post-conciliar events, McRedmond was never entirely won over by Pope John XXIII’s “rev- olution”. As became evident later, when he was appointed editor of the Irish Independent in 1968, Louis was at heart a “compassionate conservative”. He was not only slow to embrace change, he found much of the change to his distaste in the society and the Church of the late 1960s and 1970s. He brought a
38 | THE TABLET | 19 February 2011
lthough he reached one of the pinna- cles of his profession by becoming editor of the Irish Independent, the
‘One of a small group of Irish journalists who sensed the significance of the sweeping changes being ushered in by Vatican II’
lawyer’s caution to his job as editor, and this undoubtedly contributed to the abrupt man- ner in which he was removed (without explanation) in 1970. At the time the board wanted a more downmarket product, and this ill suited McRedmond. In his eyes, a paper such as the Independent was “a national institution” and could not be changed in the same way as a breakfast cereal. In September 1970, McRedmond was appointed as the first director of the pioneer- ing journalism course at Rathmines College of Commerce (now the Dublin Institute of Technology). In August 1973, he went on to become head of information and publications at RTE. Notably, at the height of the Northern Ireland “troubles”, he was critical of the curbs on freedom of expression introduced by the Irish Government under section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, which prevented RTE from broadcasting interviews with members of subversive organisations. He resigned from RTE in 1986 following changes to the station’s management structures. McRedmond’s books include Thrown Among Strangers: John Henry Newman in Ireland (1990) and To the Greater Glory: A History of the Irish Jesuits (1992), while he edited Dr Garret FitzGerald’s auto- biography, All in a Life (1991). He was Dublin correspondent for The Tablet until 1995, though he con- tinued to write for the paper for some time after that, and con- tributed articles among others to the Irish Jesuits’ quarterly review, Studies. He was also a trustee of the radical Christian newspaper, Alpha. Louis McRedmond was born
in Mitchelstown, County Cork, the son of John and Anne McRedmond. He was educated locally by the Christian Brothers and at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare. He secured an
MA in modern history at University College Dublin in 1954, the same year he was called to the Bar (he had originally studied to become a barrister). He is survived by his wife Maeve (née Gallagher), sons Michael and David and daughters Anne and Elizabeth. T.P. O’Mahony
Louis McRedmond, journalist and author. Born Mitchelstown, County Cork, 20 May 1932; died Dundrum, Dublin, 16 January 2010.
■T.P. O’Mahony is a journalist at the Irish Examiner.
FROM THE ARCHIVE 50 YEARS AGO
Television, and to a lesser extent sound, broadcasting, present in an acute form the problem how best to reconcile freedom of choice for the viewer with the obser- vance of some limits or standards, because there is so widespread a propensity for the largest audiences to follow the least desir- able entertainment. In Britain a number of different procedures are followed, which only have in common the recognition that there should be such a thing as public decency.
Book publishers can publish what they choose, risking subsequent prosecution, which in the present climate of public opinion becomes less and less likely and provides an enormous advertisement where it is unsuccessful. The producers of plays on the other hand, have to clear their scripts with the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, and his censorship … has for long been primarily concerned not with political references but with sexual immorality … The BBC enjoys a great latitude, largely because of the tradition of self-discipline which Lord Reith established; but since the advent of commercial television the BBC has engaged in an all-out competition for numbers of viewers which has resulted in a great lowering of standards. The Tablet, 18 February 1961 100 YEARS AGO
Catholics in the United Kingdom will decline to be shaken out of their equanimity by the sensation-mongering announce - ments and articles which have recently appeared in the press as to the results of the action of the Holy See in Germany. We are asked to believe that the university professors are refusing to take an oath directed against Modernism, and that the Prussian Government is “determined to make a strong stand against the imperi- ousness of Rome”. The question of the anti-Modernist Oath is being worked as if it were some special and outrageous demand made by the Holy See upon German Catholics as the outcome of a grievance entertained by the Roman Curia towards Prussia. The oath set forth in the motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitumof 1 September, 1910, is of general application to all countries, and the Pope requires that it shall be taken by all clerics prior to Holy Orders; by all priests authorised to hear confessions or preach sermons; by all parish priests, canons or holders of benefices; by all offi- cials of Episcopal courts or ecclesiastical tribunals; by special Lenten preachers; by the officials of the Roman Congregations, and by the superiors and doctors of the religious orders and congregations. The Tablet, 18 February 1911
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