Herbert McCabe

Who was Herbert McCabe?

Herbert John Ignatius McCabe was an English-born Irish Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher, who was born in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire. After studying chemistry and philosophy at Manchester University, he joined the Dominicans in 1949, where under Victor White he began his lifelong study of the works of Thomas Aquinas. He was also a student of Columba Ryan.

He became editor of the journal New Blackfriars in 1965 but was removed in 1967 following a now-famous editorial in that journal in which he criticised the theologian Charles Davis for having left the Catholic Church. Davis left publicly, denouncing the church as corrupt. McCabe countered that of course the Church was corrupt but that this was no reason to leave it. He was reinstated three years later, and began his editorial that month in characteristically combative style: "As I was saying, before I was so oddly interrupted..."