JOHN CHARLES

Agnes Bernelle in Castle Leslie 1950
Photo: Picture Post
Click on any image for a larger version

This short post is inspired by a perceptive piece by Mark O'Brien on the depiction of Irish life in the Picture Post photojounalist magazine of the 1940s/1950s.

The photos are excellent and tasteful. Despite this, the magazine had a chequered history when it came to the Irish censor, and more particularly the Irish Catholic Church.

Ecce homo

This is probably the most influential Irish clergyman of his day, John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland 1940-1972. Note, not Primate of All-Ireland, I'm sure that rankled.

Some people will remember him for his return from Vatican II consoling his flock that nothing had changed. Had he lived into the present day he might have been proved right, but then it was a case of swimming against the tide.

I remember the period well. We had a newsagent's shop and on a Sunday morning when you opened early to sort the newspapers, you would often find one of the English papers missing - stopped by the censor at Dún Laoghaire.

McQuaid was a great man for the prohibition: you can't go to Trinity; you can't have pagan English welfare state type provision for mother and child; you can't preach "heresy" in my diocese no matter who you are (Charles Davis, Gregory Baum etc.) and so on.

Mark has a wonderful evocation of one of JC's obsessions which I just can't help quoting. Vivion here is Dev's son.

It concerned Vivion’s schooldays at Blackrock College and how he had once been summoned to the college president’s office. There, the future Catholic archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid instructed Vivion to review a pile of newspaper cuttings of full-page adverts for Clery’s department store. The adverts, Coogan recounts, included “small line drawings of women modelling underwear of a design which reflected the modest standards of the Ireland of that era”. To the somewhat baffled Vivion, McQuaid pointed out “the insidious immorality of the drawings. Some of them, if one used a magnifying glass, indicated the outline of a mons veneris”.

Mons Veneris indeed. Now where would John Charles have seen one of them things?

As I recollect it, one of the elements which caused John Charles to have John McGahern sacked from his teaching job in my old alma mater, Belgrove, was a passage involving a young man masturbating to the very drawings referred to above.

This is beginning to add up.

Click on image for a larger version

Anyway, the above is my prayer at the altar of censorship, and I hope a small act of retribution for the appalling wrong done to McGahern.

I'll go even further and tell you that in the wonderful Little Museum of Dublin John Charles's picture above stares across at these curtains on the opposite wall.

Behind these tasselled elasticated curtains is a sight you will not see in any theatre or art gallery. I can do no better than reproduce the caption from the wall.

Why is there a nude woman in this museum?
PICTURES AND SCULPTURES of naked young men are found in museums all over the world. But older women? Not so much. Above is a painting of the legendary journalist, feminist and civil rights campaigner Nell McCafferty, by the American artist Daniel Mark Duffy. McCafferty donated the picture to the museum. She says, "For some people the dream lives on. For me, the illusion lives on. I think I'm gorgeous. There is a delusion among the young that the body matters." The image provokes a variety of responses. If you find yourself offended by it, ask yourself why.

The irony here, and the pleasure I take in it, is beyond conceiving.

And the picture at the top of this post, I dedicate to John Charles. It has all the elements: a wise owl, a pillar, a bit of stained glass (I think), an ominous presence, a beautiful lady, and TITS. May he long contemplate the unattainable, wherever he is.