SUNDAY ON THE LOVABLE THEOLOGIAN

Canon Edward Mahoney, `the busy pastors guide'
ANON Edward Joseph Mahoney, Professor of Moral leloTheology at St. Edmund's College, Old Hall, Ware— the Westminster seminary—died suddenly on Thursday last week: he was found dead in his study at the college.
This personal appreciation of one whom Cardinal Griffin has called a "great priest" has been written specially for "The Catholic Herald" by one of his closest friends and a former colleague at St. Edmund's, Bishop Flynn, who also recalls their association when the Bishop vvas Editor of the "Clergy Review."
By the Rt. Rev. Thomas Flynn,, Bishop of Lancaster
ITHINK it was Lord Macauley who said "There are not many people the news of whose death would spoil my breakfast, but there are one or two whose death would break my heart."
There is no man whose loss is irreparable, none who is irreplace
able. Any long experience of life would teach this even if our religion did not, But, stunned by the news of Canon Mahoney's sudden death, these words "irreparable" and "irreplaceable" sprang to the lips of many priests in this country.
For Edward Mahoney ("Bill" to a host of friends) was a stand-by in difficult questions of morals and a warm-hearted and lovable character. For the Catholic world at large he was a student whose knowledge was at the disposal of any who sought his aid. But to us who knew him intimately he was also a "character."
Prom the moment of its inception he was the most valuable of the contributors to the Clergy Review; for my own part, his Q. and A. was the section I always read first. I take pleasure now in thinking that I did something to persuade him to compile the two volumes of Questions and Answers which his extreme modesty made him loath to put into more permanent form, but which are invaluable as what he would humorously have called "The Busy Pastor's Guide."
Any priest in England, from the most exalted to the least significant, might write for an opinion in a difficulty and be assured of an answer by return of post, Nor was he the type of theologian to use the labour-saving device of the Console probatos nue:ores. For that he was much too courteous.
He seldom engaged in controversy, but when his opinions were challenged and he must defend them he always replied with the same courtesy and indeed with deference. Yet nobody was more capable of scoring a point by a smart answer which, had be written it, would have saved trouble and left him with the honours of the field; for he was very witty and a pastmaster of badinage.
His was an extraordinarily full life. His correspondence must have been enormous, yet he found time to keep abreast of his subject, to give his lectures regularly, to instruct schoolgirls (how they will miss him at Poles!), and even to play his violin and have a game of chess with a friend—and to cook his own meals, as he did for years.
He began his teaching career with a tour de force.
He was ordered by Cardinal Bourne to return to Fribourg and continue his doctorate course which had been interrupted by his war service. The Cardinal thought he might do this in a couple of years. Mahoney consulted the President (the then Canon Myers), who characteristically suggested for a thesis the work of an English theologian of whom none of
his colleagues, I imagine, had ever heard.
When in six months' time the young man returned with his thesis written and successfully defended, the Cardinal was taken aback and not altogether pleased, but he appointed him to the Chair of Morals at St. Edmund's, which he held for about 35 years.
Scholarly, generous, modest, delightful in company, lie was always the "great priest" of whom the Cardinal spoke. in his recent ad dermal announcing t h e Canon's sudden death.
That death may not have broken hearts or spoilt breakfasts; it may not prove an irreparable loss; but it certainly has rent the pattern of many lives in a way that will defy time's invisible mending, May he rest in peace.
f4 THOMAS EDWARD, Bishop of Lancas-ter.