Irish Examiner View: Sister Margaret MacCurtain left a positive legacy

Sister Margaret MacCurtain was an inspiring historian, teacher, human rights advocate, feminist, and writer. 

The Dominican nun and academic, Sister Margaret MacCurtain, who died yesterday aged 91.

There are those who try to force change by bluster and unrelenting, unjustified volume. 

There are others, usually far more effective, who bring change quietly, unobtrusively but with steel-in-the-velvet determination, powerful conviction, and solid argument too.

The Dominican nun and academic, Sr Margaret MacCurtain, who died yesterday aged 91, was very much one of the latter. She was an inspiring historian, teacher, human rights advocate, feminist, and writer. 

In a tribute, President Higgins described her "tireless campaigning for social justice."

She grew up in Cork city and after she earned a Ph.D. in history in 1964 she became a UCD lecturer until she retired in 1994. She campaigned all her life, especially around the abolition of corporal punishment in schools, domestic violence, and apartheid. 

She had quiet, unshakeable courage, and great integrity and made the precepts of her religion real through her work.

It is difficult today to explain how influential she was, suffice to say she was one of the real, inspiring architects of today's tolerant, less afraid Ireland.