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The Leader Interview..with Michael Breen, Dean of Arts at Mary I
Five years ago Michael Breen decided to leave the priesthood after 21 years. Now married with two children, the head of Media & Communications at Mary Immaculate College, says his faith has not be affected by his change in lifestyle
BOOKS on media, communications and sociology fill two large bookcases in Professor Michael Breen's office at Mary Immaculate College.
The recently appointed Dean of Arts at the South Circular Road campus is widely published in a long list of academic journals. He has written A Fire in the Forest: Religious Life in Ireland, and he is currently researching two more books.
His own story, however, could fill the pages of an entirely different book, because his story is a love story.
"I was a priest for 21 years. For eleven of those years I worked in parish ministry and then I went into academia. And I suppose at the end of 21 years I decided that I couldn't continue in priesthood."
Born in Dublin to parents Jim and Eleanor, who were both custom officers, Breen and his twin brother Martin enjoyed a happy childhood in Blanchardstown with siblings, Jim, Pat and Mary.
"We're thick as thieves," he says of his twin brother, Martin, who works as an executive in Ulster Bank. "He is the one family member that I would be absolutely closest to. As he says, we were womb mates for long enough."
Breen, 52, is a Dubliner whose roots are in Limerick and Clare. "My grandmother was from Scarriff and I spent a lot of my summers as a teenager on the farm in Scarriff. It was a small little holding of 20 acres, enough land for six cows and enough water for 600.
"I had an aunt in Limerick where my father was born, and we used to come every Christmas, summer and Easter to spend time with her. She was a wonderful woman. So Limerick was a place I knew extremely well."
And so when a position as head of Media & Communications in the Arts Department at Mary Immaculate College became available, he successfully applied and has never looked back.
Breen had all the necessary letters after his name at this stage. He graduated with a BA from Mater Dei Institute of Education prior to studying Sacred Theology in Rome. He returned to studies in 1993 at Syracuse University and graduated a year later with a Master of Science degree in Television, Radio and Film, winning the Harvey Bennett Loeb award for outstanding research.
Breen happily settled into life in the college that is affectionately known by students and staff alike, as Mary I.
It compares favourably with Trinity College where he began his lecturing career in Ireland.
"I would say it is just as good. In fact I would say one of the great benefits of this institution is its smallness. Our lecturing staff engage with students in a very different way. We get to know them. Things operate here on a first name basis. You tend to know your lecturers extremely well, and they tend to know the students extremely well."
He said the college's Catholic ethos, which "isn't written in a banner over the door but it is embedded into the quality and care of the education" is one of the many reasons why he is so committed to Mary I.
Breen feels immense pride when he hears a graduate deliver a news report on radio, or sees a graduate's byline over a newspaper article. "I don't think there is a radio station in the country or a newspaper that doesn't have one of our students from the media programme working on it."
Arts students are not educated for a particular profession and studying for an Arts degree is not vocational training, he explains.
"They can write, they can research, they can analyse and comprehend and they can criticise. They are a very educated set of graduates who are highly adaptable, and I think for a lot of employers that adaptability is incredibly attractive because you can put a Mary I grad in some where and they will adapt to whatever needs to be done but they will bring a set of skills to it, that a person who doesn't have that background won't be able to do."
Breen turned a chapter in his life in 2002 when he decided to leave the priesthood after 21 years. On a trip to Germany, he was overcome by the loneliness of his vocation.
The purpose of the two-month stay was to learn the language and immerse himself in the culture. He lived alone in a parish and celebrated mass in German, preached in German, while attending 40 hours a week in a local language school.
"About half way through that period I phoned a friend of mine who was a counsellor, and I said to her 'Look I need to talk to you and I need to talk about exiting out of ministry. I can't deal with this loneliness any further'.
"I left the following year."
Breen never believed in celibacy. "The mandatory nature of celibacy is unfortunate. It is not helpful. I don't think it is well founded scripturally. And I just could not cope with the loneliness," he confessed.
It was a huge decision for a man committed to his faith.
"It was funny, after I made that decision, then I met my wife. A lot of people think it was the other way around but it wasn't."
Michael Breen can speak passionately on a variety of subjects but he speaks with absolute sincerity about his wife Noreen O'Loughlin. "She is without a shadow of a doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. There is no question about it. She just is."
O'Loughlin is a lecturer in Mathematics at Mary I and the couple met through their roles on the college's executive. She is currently rolling out the Maths Recovery Programme in disadvantaged schools across the country.
They married five years ago and are the proud parents of three-year-old Fiachra, and two-year-old Doireann.
News of his decision to leave the priesthood was not met with much surprise. "A lot of people said, 'Why didn't you do it years ago?', and that kind of thing.
"The year I left I was awarded a Government of Ireland Fellowship, the first one in the college, so I went out for that year. People knew I was leaving the priesthood and when I came back then things were different. That year out marked a real transition in a way.
"People here have been extraordinarily positive and very, very supportive," he said.
His face lights up when asked to talk about his children whom he dotes upon. "He's Fiachra O'Braoin and she's Doireann Ni Braoin. Noreen is Noreen O'Loughlin and I'm Michael Breen, so we've four surnames in the house and it makes for an amusing time with the postman."
The family speak Irish in their home in Sixmilebridge and the children are embracing their native language. He laughs when asked if they are fluent Irish speakers. "Oh God no, they're hardly fluent English speakers. They've a few words here and there, but we'll certainly see to it that they have good Irish."
His faith has not been affected by his decision to leave the priesthood.
"No it hasn't. I suppose the one thing that I find most difficult now when I sit in the pews on a Sunday and the phrase that comes to mind is 'The hungry sheep look up and are not fed'. The quality of preaching that I hear in a number of places is absolutely appalling. It doesn't even merit the title Christianity, it is much more Unitarian. God might get a look in or else you might get a little sociological drivel.
"On the other hand, there are places that I go and I am thinking of one church in particular where you come out of church on Sunday absolutely uplifted in your faith and challenged at the very core of your being to do something about it during the week."
You would expect his days to be filled with meetings, research, paperwork and the supervision of PhD students, as well as a busy home life with active toddlers but Breen still manages to have time for a host of other activities that even include flying lessons.
He enjoys photography, woodwork and is an amateur radio operator. He plays the clarinet and organ, and loves cooking to entertain friends. "My favourite meal is probably fish of various kinds; fresh sea bass with ginger and chilli."
"I hope to learn to fly," he admits. His wife gave him an introductory flying lesson in a small aircraft as a present, and he is looking forward to taking off in a simulator at Shannon Airport. "That will be fun."
In the meantime, his feet are on terra firma and he is focused on the task at hand. The dean of the arts is the academic leader of the faculty and manages all 12 departments, as well as having responsibility for the overall management of the college as a member of senior management.
"It's very exciting to work with the kinds of people who are in the arts faculty here, they are just extremely committed."
And this commitment is evident in the high standard of education that every Arts student receives at Mary I.
Personal File
Favourite book: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. "It's about the building of a cathedral in medieval times, and it's a ripping good yarn, very well told."
Favourite film: A Dry White Season. "It is about apartheid in South Africa and it is one of those films that creates moral ambiguities and it leaves you with very searching questions about how do you respond to evil in society."
Favourite holiday destination: France. "I love French food, I love French people, I love the culture and we go every year to Normandy."
Hobbies: Woodworking, amateur radio, photography, playing the clarinet and organ, and learning to fly small aircraft.
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