The Very Reverend Victor Griffin
Popular and sometimes outspoken Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin for more then 20 years
THE Very Rev Victor Griffin, who has died aged 92, shared the regret of his 18th century predecessor Jonathan Swift that “in Ireland we have enough religion to make us hate and not enough to make us love”.
In 1984 he himself had been likened to the firebrand Northern Protestant leader Ian Paisley by a Catholic zealot in the Dail for his stance on abortion, just as he had been branded as a Fenian by sectarian Protestants during his earlier ministry in Derry when he said that Catholics should not be excluded from the Maiden City’s governance.
Victor Gilbert Benjamin Griffin’s roots were in the village of Carnew in Co Wicklow, where he was born on May 24, 1924, the son of a small-time businessman and farmer.
In the aftermath of independence the relatively prosperous Protestants, having been unionists, were apprehensive of a state where Catholics held the reins of power. “Keep off religion or politics,” Griffin’s mother warned him, “or you’ll get us all burnt out.”
It was not advice that Griffin needed to accept at the still largely Protestant Trinity College, Dublin, where he went in 1942 after school at Swift’s alma mater, Kilkenny College, and Mountjoy in Dublin. At Trinity he won a foundation scholarship in Philosophy and prepared himself for ordination, which took place in Derry in 1947.
It was there that he met his wife Daphne Mitchell, a teacher, whom he married in 1958. Shortly after the birth of twin sons, she suffered a paralysis and was confined to a wheel- chair. In his memoir, Mark of Protest (1992), Griffin paid tribute to her cheerfulness and expressed gratitude that she taught him not to make mountains out of molehills.
Elected Dean of St Patrick’s in 1968, Griffin resisted pressure to abandon the Deanery in which Swift had lived and made it habitable once more.
He raised money at home and on an American tour to restore the cathedral and to rebuild the school attached to it, the oldest in Ireland. The cathedral itself was made into a tourist attraction, Griffin also attracting visitors to it by non-devotional events such an annual Swift lecture, the first of which was given by Michael Foot.
In 1977 the Dean shocked traditional Protestants when he responded to a financial contribution from the mostly Catholic Gaelic Athletic Association by accepting an invitation to their all-Ireland football final, notwithstanding its being played on a Sunday.
His home-spun warmth, absence of airs, and jocular ways demolished barriers with his Catholic fellow countrymen. “The Irish,” he maintained, “are a tolerant people made intolerant by tribal religion masquerading as Christianity.” He refused to accept that any religion had a monopoly of truth.
The Dean of the National Cathedral of St Patrick enjoys an independence to voice personal opinions that is unique in the Church of Ireland. Griffin expressed re- gret that Protestants were little involved in the official life of the Republic. An oldstyle orator, he replicated the savage indignation of Swift in condemning laws relating to contraception, abortion, divorce and homosexuality that reflected solely the ethos of the Catholic Church and intruded on private judgment.
He also spoke out on the failure to protect Dublin’s heritage and the neglect of the communities in the old Liberties area of the city around the Cathedral. He commanded affection among a local population, few of whom belonged to his Church.
On retirement as Dean in 1991, Griffin and his wife moved north to Limavady; she died in 1998. He remained in demand as preacher, speaker or dining companion, enjoying a daily glass of whiskey and a smoke until recently.
Victor Griffin, who died on January 11, is survived by his two sons.