Donal Flanagan (1929-2022)

 

Leading theologian of the Conciliar era who re-invented himself

as a journalist, radio producer and creator of innovative programming

 

Student 1947-55

Professor of Dogmatic Theology 1959-76

 

In the annals of Maynooth as national seminary and pontifical university, few if any of its alumni can claim the distinction of Donal Flanagan: to have achieved national and international fame as a theologian at the cutting edge of developments in the sacred science after Vatican II, then to have left the priesthood for a career in journalism and ultimately as a senior broadcasting executive; and finally to have maintained his interest and his research efforts in his original chosen field well into his eighties.

Donal Flanagan was born in 1929, the son of Joseph P. Flanagan, an army officer, and Mary Martina (nee Loughney), a former teacher of commercial subjects with Mayo County Vocational Education Committee. Joseph was a native of Ballyhooly, Co. Cork, and came from a farming family that would produce among his siblings two priests of the Dominican order, a nun, a secondary teacher, and a second army officer.

Joseph had attended University College Cork, where he graduated with a degree in science in 1918. He secured a position on the staff of the Clonfert diocesan college, St. Joseph's, at Garbally Park, Ballinasloe, from where he became involved in the republican movement, where his knowledge of physics was valued in ordnance-based exercises. In 1922, aged twenty-five, he transferred his skills to the fledgling Irish Army, where he was promoted to captain within two months of joining, and was a Lieutenant Colonel by the age of forty-four.

In 1927 he married Mary Loughney, and they had three children - Donal, Barry and Mary. Barry and Mary would both later become doctors and emigrate to practice in Boston, Mass. With their father based mainly in Dublin, where he became Senior Staff Officer and Assistant Director of Ordnance at Department of Defence Headquarters, Donal was sent for his secondary education to St. Josephs at Garbally Park. From there he went to Maynooth in 1947 to study for priestly service in the diocese of Clonfert, taking an honours B.A. in English Language and Literature in 1950 under professors Neil Kevin and John McMackin. He went on to study for a Master of Arts degree at UCD, presenting a thesis on the work of Gerald Griffin, the early 19th-century Limerick-born novelist.

After his ordination in 1955, he remained in the college as a post-graduate student of the Dunboyne Institute, where he took his Doctorate of Divinity degree in 1957 on the subject of Mary, spouse of the second divine person : the usage and meaning of a marian term in tradition with special reference to the mariology of Matthias J. Scheeben

Donal's interest in Mariology was to endure for all of his productive life, though in the early years of his specialisation there was little enthusiasm in church circles for any adventurous exposition of Mary's significance for the modern era. That would all change with the calling of the Second Vatican Council.

By then Donal was in a more influential position to determine the direction of theological investigation: after two years teaching English and  at his former secondary school, he had been appointed in 1959 as Professor of Dogmatic Theology.

His appointment arose following the loss of Maynooth's longtime president, the Scripture scholar Edward Kissane, who was replaced in the position, for the first time in almost half a century, by a theologian - Gerard Mitchell, who had been on the staff since 1932.

Patrick Joseph Hammell, who had been appointed Vice-President, took up the leadership of the profession of Dogmatic Theology, in which he had been joined the previous year by a young Clareman and future Archbishop of Dublin, Kevin McNamara.

Though the academic atmosphere in the college during Donal Flanagan's studentship was still of staunchly conservative mien, there were chinks of light: The Furrow, a pastoral review founded at Maynooth in 1950 by Fr. James G. McGarry was pushing the boundaries of learning and commentary on contemporary issues, both theological and secular. Donal Flanagan would become a regular contributor.

But in fact, on the eve of Donal's advancement, the entire orientation of the theology faculty had been changed by the appointment of three other professors who were to become in effect a promotion team for the new direction in church teaching that would emanate from the Second Vatican Council a few years later. They were Enda McDonagh and Denis O'Callaghan, both moral theologians and, with Kevin McNamara, student contemporaries of Donal and committed to a bolder approach to teaching the essentials of their subject to the divinity students at Maynooth.

They were supported in the more secular disciplines by recently-appointed staff members such as Peter Connolly in English and Ronan Drury in English Elocution (Ronan would also be involved in the production of The Furrow, a role he would play for almost seventy years until his death in 2018).

Flanagan, McDonagh and O'Callaghan travelled widely to interpret the theology of Vatican II to a diverse audience in Europe, Africa and the Americas while maintaining a rigorous teaching schedule in Maynooth, and contributing extensively to journals. Donal continued  to lead research and debate on the subject of Mary's place in church teaching, often gaining attention in popular media for his statements. 

The intellectual turmoil around freedom of opinion and personal liberty that divided academic communities and church circles in the 1960s, allied to the fallout from the radical prescriptions of Vatican II, caused some friction on the Maynooth campus, which was gradually opening up to enrol religious and secular students. On a wider front, the travails of seminary professors Charles Davis (Heythrop, 1966) and James Mackey (Waterford, 1971) in leaving the priesthood were by now well known, though both went on to assume academic positions abroad.

"The whole ethos of the mid-1970s was one of almost uncontrollable social and religious change within the Church," according to one commentator at the time. "That was true also of the staff of Maynooth College, where there were two camps, i.e., those who were afraid of where the Church was going after Vatican II and wished to ‘batten down the hatches’, and those who were frustrated by the slow pace of change which they had anticipated after Vatican II. Many of the latter group left the priesthood and a few became hostile towards the Church’s leadership”.

In fact the result was attrition on both sides of the argument. Mathematics professor James McMahon, a priest of the diocese of Galway, left the clerical state because he saw the church he had joined fall victim to what might be termed post-conciliar wokeness; Donal Flanagan adopted a modified form of this wokeness by leaving the clerical state but maintaining a deep attachment to the areas of mainstream Catholic doctrine, particularly relating to Mariology, around which he had built priestly mission and academic career.

His subsequent career in print and broadcast journalism brought him recognition as a commentator, philosopher, presenter and organiser of creative resources - and, in more than passing, a wife - Eileen, whom he met when he was a sub-editor on the Irish Press, where she was a contributor and personal assistant to the then editor, Tim Pat Coogan.

His tenure in radio broadcast journalism for RTE was distinguished by innovation and professional advancement, concluding with his appointment as Assistant Controller of Programmes in 1984.  Much of his early work was carried out in conjunction with a Dominican priest, Fr. Pat McInerney, who had joined the full-time staff of RTE in 1970 and remained there until retirement in 1995 (he was almost an exact contemporary of Donal, and died in 2012 aged 81).

In addition to Day by Day and Sunday Miscellany, he also produced several series relating to books including Bookweek (new releases reviewed by a panel of critics); Once A Book, a series of twelve programmes devised to place a number of significant books about Ireland in their historical context and to study their impact in their time and subsequently; The Writer and the Community, a series of five programmes on different writers presented by Eavan Boland and Poems Plain a series on poetry presented by Michael Hartnett. Other notable programmes for which he was responsible during this time were Women Today with presenters including Doireann Ní Bhriain and Introspect, a series of programmes in which Andy O'Mahony talks to Irish academics about their life and work for which RTE won a Jacob's Award

Donal and Eileen had set up home in Tinahely, where they created a welcoming location for a wide range of friends from every segment of Irish cultural life, and where Donal's discourses on the most varied topics, including American history, were highly regarded. Eileen's interest in horses, pursued on their modest land-holding, added an essential outdoor aspect to their rural lives

Though his last years were sadly diminished by dementia, his death, less than two years after his friend and former colleague Enda McDonagh, is an important reminder of the intellectual vitality of the Irish church in the Conciliar era - and the enduring contribution across many disciplines and decades of those who led its thinking.

 

Denis Bergin