Life
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Michael Cleary lived there all his life. He attended Catholic schools and became a priest.
As an adult, he lived in Rathmines Road in Dublin. He participated in some of the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, claiming to have experimented with drugs. He was strongly devoted to care for the poor and working on poverty and community development issues.
In the 1960s, Cleary discussed the Catholic clergy's attitudes to celibacy, sex and marriage in the Irish documentary film Rocky Road to Dublin (1967). He admits to a personal preference for being married and having a family, but claimed that the role and necessary sacrifices of being a priest were a valid substitute. As part of his pushing limits, he once claimed to have tried every drug except heroin.
Cleary had one of the highest profiles of any cleric in Ireland throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He was a powerful and charismatic figure within the church. He was particularly devoted to raising the issue of poverty in Ireland, especially in Dublin, where he worked for change in inner-city communities.
Read more about this topic: Michael Cleary (priest)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody?... Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)