It "is gratifying to hear oneself spoken of so accurately and so positively," said a mischievous Patsy McGarry, editor of Christianity, which was launched in the Chester Beatty Library this week.
Eoin McVey, managing editor of The Irish Times, had praised McGarry's accuracy, fairness, thoroughness, scrupulousness. The plaudits went on. No-one mentioned McGarry's sartorial elegance, but this, too, is worthy of praise. McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent of this newspaper, was dressed in a dark suit for the occasion.
The book, which is published by Veritas Publications, is a collection of articles from The Irish Times 2000 series, which were commissioned by McGarry to celebrate the millennium.
Among his family from Ballaghaderreen in Co Roscommon was his mother, Teresa McGarry, who said he's the eldest of seven. "He helped rear them all, he's still doing it," she said. "So he says himself."
Friends who gathered to applaud the new book included Betty Maher, who has her own book coming out shortly, the Everyday Journey; Canon Cecil Cooper, editor of the Church of Ireland's Gazette for the past 19 years; and one of the book's contributors, Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor OP, a Corkman who is off to Jerusalem shortly to resume his life there. "It's much more my home now," he said of the city where he has lived for the past 38 years.
Brown is the new black, said the fashionably attired Rev Olive Donohoe who, as rector of Mountmellick in Co Laois, was in black with the clerical collar set off under a light brown jacket. How does she know Patsy? "We go to the same parties," she jokes.
The Rev Patrick Comerford, a Church of Ireland priest and colleague in this newspaper, was also praised for writing a brief history of Christianity, which comprises half the book. To condense 2,000 years into short readable form is no mean feat, they all agreed.