Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Clontarf, Leinster, Ireland
About Lambert McKenna
- Lambert McKenna S.J.
- (Irish: An tAthair Lámhbheartach Mac Cionnaith) (16 July 1870 – 27 December 1956) was a Jesuit priest and writer. He was born Andrew Joseph Lambert McKenna in Clontarf, and studied in Europe.
- He collected and edited religious and folk poetry in the Irish language.
- Working with the Irish Texts Society, he edited the famous Contention of the bards and many anthologies of Irish bardic poetry and historical works.
- He was an editor of the Irish Monthly and An Timire.
- He also served as principal of Belvedere College. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate for his contribution to Celtic Studies (D.
- Litt.
- Celt) by UCD in 1947 on the same day that Jack Butler Yeats was also awarded an honorary Doctorate.
- McKenna was a committed social reformer and an outspoken critic of capitalism.
- In the first tract of his book The Church and Labour (1914) he wrote:"The wealthy few now rule the world.
- They have done so before, but never precisely in virtue of their wealth.
- They were patriarchs, patricians, chieftains of clans, feudal nobles acknowledging responsibilities and bearing heavy burdens.
- Today wealth making no sacrifices for the public good, rules in its own right, and exercises a more despotic sway than any form of authority hitherto known.
- It has armies and fleets at command.
- It has myriads of placemen, or would-be placemen, in utter dependence.
- It is highly centralised, and can exert a great power at any point.
- It can at any moment cast thousands of households into intolerable misery.
- Yet, though centralised, it is not open to attack.
- It does not, as the kings of old, dwell in castles that can be stormed by an angry people.
- On the contrary it stands as the embodiment of legality, order, security, peace—even of popular will.
- Capitalism, using the work of the labouring classes, has vastly increased the wealth of the world; yet it strives to prevent these labouring classes from benefiting by this increase.
- It is constantly drawing up into itself that wealth and diverting it from useful purposes."
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