Fond memories of Archbishop Dwyer

Bishop Leo McCartie, himself consecrated by Archbishop Dwyer, draws out the main aspects of his colourful personality.
ARCHBISHOP Dwyer was already well known before being appointed to Birmingham. He had distinguished himself academically in Rome and Cambridge. He had taught at St Bede's, Manchester, he had helped Fr John Heenan to found the Catholic Missionary Society. For seven years he had been Bishop of Leeds.
George Patrick Dwyer was installed as the sixth Archbishop of Birmingham on October 7, 1965. During his early years in the diocese he was much occupied with the second Vatican Council and its reforms, not only in the diocese but in the country at large.
He was the founder of the Theology Commission and President of the Liturgy Commission at a time when English was being introduced into the Liturgy.
To all his tasks he brought a fine intelligence, a questioning mind and an impatience without pretentiousness of any sort. One of his regular admonitions was "don't trust experts".
On the death of Cardinal Hennan, Archbishop Dwyer was elected Chairman of the Conference of Bishops, the only bishop other than the Archbishop of Westminster ever to have held this office.
The archbishop died on September 17, 1987 and was brought back to his Cathedral Church in Birmingham. The great affection in which he was held could be seen by the large crowd of priests and lay people who came to the Masses and the number of people who came to pray for him while he lay in the Cathedral awaiting his final requiem.
For many, this must have been a time of memories. There were priests who remembered his coming to the diocese and who had awaited his arrival with some trepidation. But over the years the trepidation had turned to respect and then to affection. It would have been difficult not to have warmed to a man who was so unsparing in the giving of himself in the service of his Church. And it was not a remote service, he was a marvellous and entertaining companion with a fund of stories and songs for every occasion! If he had to criticise a priest, then it was done bluntly, there was never any danger that one did not know what was in the archbishop's mind, for he never "crushed the broken reed".
The many young people who came to the requiem Masses would have had happy memories of their archbishop, for he had a very special way of relating to Children, especially the infants.
Perhaps it was because he never talked down to them nor patronised them but treated them with the respect they deserved. And perhaps for all his great gifts there was something childlike in George Patrick himself.
There were, I am sure, for some the vivid memory of the lead which Archbishop Dwyer gave at the time of the pub bombings in Birmingham. He had already made a courageous stand against terrorism and after the night of the bombings he did much to restore calm to a very angry and frightened city.
Lastly, the memories of those who knew him in his retirement.
One of his familiar devotions was the Jesus Psalter in which we pray "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus sent me here my purgatory". His prayer was answered for he endured a purgatory in which so many of his great gifts were taken from him. The dynamic worker was confined to a wheelchair, the splendid preacher could hardly speak, the voracious reader found it difficult to see.
In his will, written long before his final illness, he wrote that he accepted whatever manner of death God chose to send him and offered it for the diocese, and especially the children.
His suffering was his final act of service to the diocese which owes him so much.