Background
McCarthy was the son of Denis and Catherine McCarthy.
McCarthy was the son of Denis and Catherine McCarthy.
He was educated at the Vincentian seminary in Cork City, at Midleton College and took a Bachelor of Arts at Trinity College Dublin in 1885.
In 1887 he marred Margaret Ronayne of Donickmore, near Midleton. In 1887 he was called to the Irish Bar. His statistics were also used by Irish loyalists who were worried that Home Rule would become "Rome Rule".
So trenchant were his arguments that McCarthy came to oppose Home Rule before 1910, and the eventual creation of the Irish Free State in 1922.
Several of his anti-clerical works were influential on James Joyce, according to Joyceian academics, and he owned a copy of "The Irish Revolution" (1912).
McCarthy"s anti-clerical views were shared by and influenced the later works of Frank Hugh O"Donnell, and the English socialist Harry Quelch.
Given his Catholic middle-class family background and early training in a seminary, he had a particular insight into the mindset of his Church at the time.