Reverend Professor Enda McDonagh, who died on February 24, 2021, at the age of 90, was a big supporter of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and one of Ireland’s leading theologians. He always had a special interest in people at the margins. His theology was influenced by human experience world-wide, compassion, a sense of social justice, and, above all, modelled on the life of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. A radical thinker and prolific writer, his concerns embraced all human activity, including church-state relations, the horror of war, ethics, controversial issues like the church’s stand on contraception in its 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, gay rights, AIDS , as well as ecumenical dialogue, climate change, and his big interest in the arts.
Enda McDonagh was born in Bekan, County Mayo, in 1930 and attended the local National School (where his father and mother were teachers), 1935-43. After St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, 1943-8, and St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, he was ordained for the archdiocese of Tuam in 1955. Following ordination, he continued his studies at Maynooth, receiving a Doctorate in Divinity in 1957, and then studied in Rome, where he received a Licence in Philosophy in 1958. He later went to Munich, where he was awarded a Doctorate in Canon Law in 1960. Dr McDonagh was appointed Professor of Moral Theology in the Pontifical University Maynooth in 1958 at the age of 28, a post he held until 1995. After that, he served as Director of Postgraduate Studies, as well as lecturing at various universities in the United States, Britain and Europe. In 1978, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, England, and from 1979 to 1981 as Huisking Professor of Theology at Notre Dame University in the United States, where he was offered a full-time post but decided instead to return to Ireland. A member of the Senate of the National University of Ireland from 1972 to 1995 and of the Higher Education Authority from 1986 to 1990, he also served as chairman of the Governing Body of University, Cork, from 1997 to 2007.
Professor McDonagh achieved international standing as a moral theologian and contributed to a wide range of theological journals at home and abroad. Among his books, which have been highly acclaimed, are: Roman Catholics and Unity (1962), The Meaning of Christian Marriage (1963), Moral Theology Renewed(1965), Invitation and Response (1972), Gift and Call (1975), Doing the Truth (1977), Social Ethics and the Christian (1979), The Demands of Simple Justice(1980), Church and Politics: From Theology to a Case History of Zimbabwe (1981), The Making of Disciples, Between Chaos and New Creation (1986), The Gracing of Society (1989), The Small Hours of Unbelief (1989), Faith and the Hungry Grass: A Mayo Book of Theology (ed.,1990), Salvation or Survival ?: A Second Book of Mayo Theology (ed., 1994), Vulnerable to the Holy: In Faith, Morality and Art (2005), Immersed in Mystery: En Route to Theology (2007), and Theology in Winter Light (2010). St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and the Mayo Campus of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in collaboration with the then Western Theological Institute organised two national conferences in his honour in 2007, with the proceedings published in Beauty, Truth and Love (ed., Eugene Duffy and Patrick Hannon, 2009). He donated a collection from his personal library to the Mayo Campus of Galway-Mayo Institute of Theology.


Exploring Mayo by Bernard O’Hara is now available Worldwide as an eBook for the amazon Kindle application.
The print version of Bernard O’Hara’s book Exploring Mayo can be obtained by contacting www.mayobooks.ie.
Bernard O'Hara's book entitled Killasser: Heritage of a Mayo Parish is now on sale in the USA and UK as a paperback book at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble
It is also available as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).
An earlier publication, a concise biography of Michael Davitt, entitled Davitt by Bernard O’Hara published in 2006 by Mayo County Council , is now available as Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League by Bernard O’Hara, which was published in the USA by Tudor Gate Press (www.tudorgatepress.com) and is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. It can be obtained as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).