Peter CostelloThe death of Michael Paul Gallagher on November 5 would have been unexpected to the very many people who benefited by reading his wise and insightful books. One such said to me the other day that they had attempted to wrestle with books on theology, and had almost given up. But from Michael Paul Gallagher’s books they derived a deeper and more effective understanding than she had gained from the austere professional theologians.
Fr Gallagher came from Collooney in Co. Sligo and was educated at Clongowes Wood College. After joining the Jesuits he studied renaissance literature at Oxford, and returned to Dublin to teach for some 20 years in the English Department of UCD.
It was while at UCD that he began to publish his books aimed, not at the theologian or the priest, so much as ordinary Christians, such as the students that surrounded him. Beginning with Free to Believe: Ten Steps to Faith (1987) and Help My Unbelief (1988), for those feeling lost in the confusing atmosphere of modern times and nuanced religion, he provided further guide posts to religion in its many aspects. This continued in such further books as Can I Be a Christian on My Own? (1991), Losing God (1992) and What Will Give Us Happiness? (1993).
Working in a university setting, he was only too well aware that the tide of faith to which Matthew Arnold had alluded was drawing even further out over the shingles. Letters on Prayer (1994), Sects and New Religious Movements, Questions of Faith (1999), What Are They Saying About Unbelief? (1995) addressed these matters directly.
Question
But a question he asked in the title of one of his books in 1991, Will Our Children Believe? still troubles many, and not only parents, today.
He was also a student of literature and poetry, needfully sensitive to how religion expressed itself in wider areas of society.
In Dive Deeper: The Human Poetry of Faith (2001) and Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith and Culture (2004), he explored the vital connections between the imagination and faith.
Retiring from UCD he moved to Rome where he lectured in theology at the Gregorian University as well as the Jesuit Collegio Bellarmino.
However, he was also dean of the faculty of theology from 2005 to 2008, and his academic and administrative duties, while fulfilling in their owns ways according to his friends, precluded him from publishing as much has he might have.
Relieved form the rigours of modern academic life he returned to writing, publishing Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Ratzinger (Darton, Longman and Todd, £12.99) in 2010. He was also a regular contributor to the Sacred Heart Messenger.
An unexpected illness turned out to be a terminal condition and accepting the inevitable, he began to write about this new passage in his life.
Providentially, his final article, “On the prospect of dying”, appears in the November issue of the Messenger. His book, Into Extra Time, an account of his journey through that final illness will be published on February 25 by Darton, Longman and Todd/Messenger Publications (€12.99/£9.99).
He will be missed by his many readers over the years.