Retired Priest Recalls His Maynooth Battle
By Anne Campbell
Recently retired Knockbridge Parish priest, Fr Gerard McGinnity, has revealed how he is thinking of writing a book about his life and his role in highlighting problems at St Patrick's Seminary, Maynooth, days after Archbishop Diarmuid Martin revealed he is to send trainee priests from his diocese to the Irish College in Rome. A series of senior bishops have backed the college amid allegations of a 'gay culture' in St Patrick's College. Archbishop Martin has withdrawn his trainee priests from Maynooth due to what he described as allegations of a 'homosexual, gay culture, that students are using an app called Grindr, a gay dating app'. However, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and Dundalk's parish priest, will continue to send trainee priests to Maynooth. A spokesman for Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin, the Primate of All Ireland, said the Archdiocese was 'extremely grateful to St Patrick's College, Maynooth, for the spiritual, human, pastoral and academic formation that he received there'. Fr McGinnity is a former senior dean at Maynooth and in the 1980s was relieved of his post after he raised complaints seminarians then had brought to him. Speaking to RTE Radio 1's News at One last week, Fr McGinnity he said the current controversy was 'like deja vu in many respects' and recalled what happened when he brought trainee priests' complaints to the hierarchy. Fr McGinnity said: 'When they first came to me, they were six senior students, who were very mature and some had been in training elsewhere and came to Maynooth a little later in life. 'They had a good perspective and outlook and they are working well since in their dioceses. I took them seriously. They were afraid that they may be disciplined if they were not taken seriously. I relayed their concerns to a number of the (college) trustees at that time. It unfolded, in a nutshell, that I was deprived of my position. The person about whom they expressed concerns was promoted and later I had to resign etc. That's history, but they were proven true and I felt they should be taken seriously at the time. 'So what I would say to would-be whistle blowers (in Maynooth) is to be prepared for a difficult passage. It's very sad this has to be said but unless there is someone there to protect you, you may lose everything. 'It was appalling what occurred to me when I came back from enforced sabbatical I found efforts to discredit me and undermine my credibility'. And Fr McGinnity said he 'thoroughly agrees' with the Dublin Archbishop. He added he had kept a diary during that turbulent time in Maynooth 'to preserve my sanity' and said he was 'aware of so much else and other individuals I felt it would be necessary to have that to keep the record straight'. He said: 'I'm considering and thinking and praying about writing a book in the immediate future'.
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