The Catholic ban on attending Trinity College Dublin was still in place when I was appointed a lecturer there

I can certainly confirm what he says about the banning of Roman Catholics from Trinity College Dublin under the Lenten Regulations issued in Dublin by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid on February 7 1944 for the ban was still in place when I was appointed as a Junior Lecturer in English Language and Literature in 1968.

Indeed the terms of the ban were explicit and uncompromising:

Any Catholic who disobeys this law is guilty of mortal sin and while he [sic, but presumably also she] persists in disobedience is unworthy to receive the Sacraments.

In 1968 TCD was in the midst of the merger negotiations with UCD, the proposed solution to the ban by the then Minister of Education, Donogh O’Malley, for at that time it was deemed impossible to confront the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland directly.

The ban made a nonsense of TCD’s famous history as the great university of All-Ireland from 1592-1921, for although founded by a Protestant Queen of England, Ireland and Wales, Elizabeth I, sectarianism did not exist in the College by, for example the Easter Rising of 1916, as one glance at the TCD War Dead of 1914-1918 (457 dead as recorded in the Hall of Honour in Front or Parliament Square, 1928) will immediately testify (as also the TCD War Dead of 1939-1945).

Catholic Emancipation was introduced into Ireland in 1829 by Arthur Wesley, son of Garret, TCD’s first Professor of Music (1764-1774).

This ought to have put an end to the religious sectarianism which has so continued to blight Irish life since that date.

Fortunately Archbishop McQuaid’s ban was lifted on September 7 1970 after the Irish Hierarchy had applied to Rome on 25 June 1970 for permission to lift the ban on the attendance of Roman Catholics at Trinity.

On 18 October 1973 the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin Alan Buchanan, who himself had parachuted into Arnhem as a chaplain in 1944. made a formal enabling declaration opening College Chapel for regular use by all the main denominations.

In my view the restraint of Trinity College Dublin and above all its love of Ireland has been beyond all praise in these days of religious turmoil.

It is an example worthy of a great university of All Ireland and the equal of Oxford and Cambridge.

Dr Gerald Morgan, Fellow, Trinity College Dublin