Thomas Ronan Drury (1924-2017)

ST. KILLIAN'S CEMETERY, MULLAGH, CO. CAVAN

(note: this account is a first draft and has some facts and dates that need to be further checked)

 

Thomas Ronan Drury, known familiarly as Ronan, was born in Mullagh, Co. Cavan on 22nd June 1924, the son of James Drury, a national teacher, and his wife Kathleen nee Lynch. He was one of two children, his sister Maureen later becoming a qualified pharmacist (she died in July 2001 and is buried in the family plot in Mullagh).

     James Drury was born in 1876, and had come as a young teacher to the the parish of Crossreagh (known locally as ‘Cross’) and Mullagh at the turn of the 20th century, when be boarded with the Clarke family and began a connection to the area that would last for sixty years until his death in 1959 at the age of eighty-four. Forty of those years were spent as the ‘village schoolmaster’ in Cross and Mullagh. In his early years in the area he was a noted Gaelic footballer, playing with Virginia Gaels and being a member of the Ulster Championship-winning Cavan senior teams of 1904 and 1905 when he was in his late twenties.

     James Drury married relatively late in life, his wife Kathleen Lynch coming from a prominent family. He was highly respected in the community and contributed an extensive record of the history and heritage of the area to the Schools Folklore Collection project, where he contributed the first forty-five pages of material, and his students contributed a further hundred based on stories and accounts of beliefs and practices told to them by relatives.

     Ronan Drury was educated at St. Finian’s College, Mullingar, the diocesan secondary school for the Diocese of Meath, where he studied from 1937 to 1942, and was then nominated for a place in Maynooth by Bishop Thomas Mulvany, who was a native of the Moynalty area of Meath adjacent to Mullagh. Bishop Mulvany died the following year and the newly-appointed Bishop, Dr. John Dalton (previously the President of Maynooth would remain for only three years before being appointed Archbishop of Armagh, and later Cardinal. He was succeeded by Bishop John Kyne, then in his early forties, who had been Vice-Rector at the Irish College in Rome.

     Ronan Drury graduated in Arts in 1945, taking an honours degree in English under Neil Kevin and John McMackin and continued his theological studies at the college. He was ordained for the diocese of Meath in 1949 and then undertook studies for the Higher Diploma in Education under Dr. Martin Brenan, the then Professor of Education and a priest of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin (though he was a native of Castlecomer in the diocese of Ossory). Fr. Brenan arranged for the newly-qualified Fr. Drury to join the staff of Knockbeg College, Carlow, to which Fr. Brenan himself would return as President in 1953, when he was succeeded at Maynooth as Professor of Education by Fr. Peter Birch, later Bishop of Ossory.

    Another important influence was Fr. James McGarry, a priest of Tuam who had been appointed Professor of Pastoral Theology and Sacred Eloquence in 1939. He had been working on a plan to produce a pastoral journal and in his last years as a student Ronan Drury had become interested in the project so that he soon became the magazine's Review Editor, charged with the responsibility of recruiting reviewers of theatre and film, and of a wide range of books. The Furrow thereby joined a small stable of publications produced at Maynooth, including the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, a publication of general, cultural, liturgical and theological interest and Christus Rex, a journal of social research (both of the latter journals ceased publication in the 1960s).

     After his Carlow interlude Fr. Drury resumed his engagement with Maynooth, first attending the Central Academy of Speech and Drama in London to acquire a qualification in elocution. While there he became acquainted with some of those studying acting at the academy, including Mary Ure, who later achieved fame not only as an actress, but also as the wife of the playwright John Osborne and later of the actor Robert Shaw. In 1959 he was formally appointed as Professor of English Elocution, a title not held since the transfer of the lay professor Mark Usher to a professorship of French in 1815.

     During his early decades at Maynooth, Fr. Drury took regular classes with those in the junior years of study and taught them the essentials of voice production, using a bone prop to help the mouth muscles to expand and facilitate better projection. He also produced college plays, and thus was able to engage with students on a more informal level than was common among professors at that time. 

     The 1950s had however begun to produce a new type of Maynooth professor, and, by 1960 the academic roster expanded to include virtually all of the notable names associated with the college and the broader Irish church in the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from Peter Birch (appointed to the staff in 1953), other colleagues from that era included Jeremiah Newman, Michael Harty, and Kevin McNamara, all future bishops; notable theologians of the Vatican II era including Enda McDonagh, Donal Flanagan and Denis O’Callaghan; and nationally-recognised innovators in the arts and sciences, including Brendan Devlin, Gerry McGreevy and Peter Connolly, a fellow priest of the Diocese of Meath. Some of the older guardians of the Maynooth tradition, all of them his previous educators, were still prominent, including Patrick Joseph Hammell, Patrick Francis Cremin and John O’Flynn as well as the historian Patrick Corish, who was - with Enda McDonagh and Breandán Ó Doibhlinn - to be part of Ronan's circle throughout his entire Maynooth lifespan (Monsignor Corish died in 2013).

     He also influenced a new generation of Irish bishops, and Seamus Hegarty, Willie Lee, Martin Drennan, Liam McDaid, Michael Neary and Brendan Kelly were always proud to be his former students. More recent appointments, including John McAreavey, Brendan Leahy Some of these - colleagues, bishops, and indeed a wide range of former students - provided the talent for regular assignments for The Furrow, and Peter Connolly’s time as film reviewer was particularly notable. 

     Fr. Drury was appointed Professor of Homiletics at Maynooth College on the appointment of Fr. McGarry as Parish Priest of Ballyhaunis in 1969, but continued in his role as Review Editor with the senior cleric as editor. Fr. McGarry died in a road accident in 1977 at the age of 67, and Fr. Drury then took over the editorship.

    He had built up over the years a relationship with all who had studied or acted under his direction that was to stand him in good stead in his role as editor; he knew his audience and was aware of the talents of those who could contribute articles at every level from the simple opinion piece on pastoral issues to the guiding suggestions for homily themes and content and the more scholarly investigation of major ethical and strategic issues in the Irish church. With that he combined contributions from pastors and scholars across Europe and North America, producing a small elegant compilation of the wisdom of the ages.

     After his retirement from academic life he expanded his role as editor to create what in effect became a full-time job, travelling extensively to diocesan events and maintaining contact with clerics and lay people across Ireland. He was particularly proud of his association with his native place and of his distinction of having said Midnight Mass there at Christmas for almost seventy years.

    He died at the Mater Hospital on 16th. November 2017, and was waked at St. Mary's Oratory in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, where his Funeral Mass took place in the College Chapel on 20th. November 2017. The principal celebrant was Bishop Michael Smith of Meath, and he was joined by Archbishops Eamonn Martin, Michael Neary and Dermot Clifford and Bishops Eamonn Walsh, Brendan Kelly and Denis Nulty. The homily was delivered by Monsignor Michael Olden, a former President of the College, and one of the five trustees of The Furrow Trust.