By Diarmaid Doherty
JUST prior to his ordination to the priesthood in St. Eunan’s Cathedral on June 19, 1983, Michael Carney had a favour to ask from his bishop.
He wanted to be ordained in his hometown of Ballyshannon.
His father back home wasn’t well and Michael thought it might be easier on the family if the day was kept local.
Looking back all these years later, Fr Michael accepts that he was asking a lot. He fully understands why then Bishop Seamus Hegarty flatly turned down his request.
“I pleaded with him because my father was very ill,” he said.
“I remember it was a boiling hot day, and I was so tense because of my fear for my dad. We all knew he was ill. He was gone within a year after that.”
The requests for favours from the bishop didn’t end there.
Fr. Michael also had a fear that his first posting as a priest would be to St. Eunan’s College in Letterkenny. He’d been a boarder there in secondary school and his memories of what had been a very difficult time as a student were still very fresh.
“In fairness to him he said okay, and he sent me into St. Eunan’s Cathedral instead.”
This weekend, Fr Michael’s friends and family will join with him for a special celebration organised by his parishioners in Ramelton to mark his 40 years in the priesthood.
A Mass will be celebrated by Bishop Alan McGuckian in St. Mary’s Church on Friday evening and there will be a special function afterwards in the Silver Tassie Hotel.
Fr Michael has been in Ramelton since 2009. He’d been given the choice by Bishop Philip Boyce to take up a position in either Newtowncunningham or Ramelton, and without wishing to be disrespectful to the good people of Newtown, he feels he chose well.
“I love this part of the world,” he said.
“They are fabulous people and I am very fond of them.
“They are very funny, very supportive and very loyal and when they get the bit between their teeth about anything, they have a great community spirit.”
When Fr Michael moved to the parish 14 years ago it marked another new beginning. He replaced the much loved Fr Des Sweeney and Fr. Michael said it was a very hard act to follow.
“The one thing that you don’t try to do with your predecessor is try to be your predecessor. You cant, you have to do things your own way. Which I did.
“I tried to do my best. I always do. I try to work hard for people to serve them to the best of my ability.”
Fr Michael was just 25 years of age, when newly ordained, he was taken under the wing of Fr Kieran McAteer at St. Eunan’s Cathedral.
Fr Brian Quinn was also based in the cathedral and he and Fr. Michael would become firm friends. The first anniversary of Fr Brian’s death is next week and Fr Michael says his passing was a huge loss to so many in Letterkenny.
“I spent my first five years in the cathedral,” he said. “I loved it, I was very happy there.”
But changes were coming and with a smile, Fr Michael recalls how Bishop Hegarty would eventually get his way and the move to St. Eunan’s College was put back on the agenda.
“Out of nowhere, he sent me back to Maynooth to do a H Dip,” he said.
“I knew what this was in preparation for, I was going to have to go to St. Eunan’s College.
“I still asked him not to send me. I had a horrible time there as a kid, I didn’t want to go back. We were boarders and that was not a nice life.”
His first year on the teaching staff wasn’t easy, but things soon settled down. Then in 1996, Bishop Boyce took the decision to replace the school’s President Fr Cathal O Fearraí and in his place, he appointed Fr Michael.
He would go on to spend over 20 years at St. Eunan’s College, 13 as President. It was a big chunk of his life and while Fr Michael looks back on his time there with pride, he fully acknowledges that not all of his former pupils or even teaching colleagues might have been happy with his ways, or the decisions he had to make.
“I was 31 when I went and I still had this sense of life being black and white in many respects,” he said.
“But St. Eunan’s helped me see all the shades of grey in people’s lives.
“In so many ways it taught me compassion, compassion for people in all sorts of different and difficult situations.
“I made hard decisions when I was there. I look back and I have to live with that, particularly when I was principal. That had consequences for kids and their families.
“But I learned a lot there too. I learned not to come to a conclusion about a boy who is yet to be a man.
“I didn’t go in with that idea. I learned to appreciate where people were and where people could be.”
Another priest who has been in the news of late made a lasting impression on Fr Michael when they were both part of the staff at St. Eunan’s College.
“I was blessed with the presence of Fr Paddy Dunne,” he said.
“He was a wonderful chaplain to the kids. He had a great impact on their lives. He was so full of humanity.
“I was blessed with great colleagues, really good people.
“I am really privileged to know the amount of children who are now men, who I meet regularly.
“I was blessed to have worked those years in St. Eunan’s and I am grateful ironically to Seamus Hegarty for seeing something that I didn’t see at the time.”
And while there have been many changes for Fr. Michael over his 40 years, one constant has been his love of music.
He remembers being taught to play the piano by Joe McGlinchey while in secondary school in Letterkenny. Then when he was studying for the priesthood at Maynooth, Fr Fergus Clarke and Paddy Devine taught him to play the organ.
“Music was always big in our house growing up,” he said.
“My brother Martin loved The Beatles, Dermot loved The Rolling Stones and Conor was into Leonard Cohen. But I loved Mozart.”
Fr Michael’s wonderful talents as an organist and church music in general saw him take over as leader of the St. Eunan’s Cathedral choir just a year after his ordination.
“Between 1984 and 2009 I looked after the choir. It’s one of the most wonderful experiences of my life to work in music and with that group of people,” he said.
Fr. Michael reckons he’s dreading this weekend’s celebrations, and would prefer just to let the anniversary pass without any great fuss.
One of five children, he also has one sister Mary, he’ll be thinking on his parents, Eoin (a native of Mayo) and Peg (from Glenties) as he marks his 40 years as a priest.
Both had a massive influence and as he is keen to point out, did everything they could for their family.
“I am probably a priest today because of my father,” he said. “He was just such a noble man.”
Asked if they were proud of their son on that hot summer’s day in the summer of 1983, Fr Michael pauses for a moment and then nods.
“You know, they came from a generation when you didn’t hear an awful lot of that being expressed,” he said.
“But you just knew it. You just knew they were proud.”
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