The Rev. Canon Dr. Thomas Herbert O’Driscoll, a son of Cork, Ireland, and revered preacher and composer who served most of his years in North America, died July 25 at 95.
O’Driscoll was a master of narrative preaching, or panoramic preaching, which seeks to relate the gospel to contemporary cultural challenges. In 1997 he wrote The Word Today: Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary (Anglican Book Centre), which covered the RCL’s three years of readings.
O’Driscoll, born in 1928, was a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, and ordained in 1953. He moved to Canada in 1954, after struggling with how to immigrate but also preserve his relationship with Joan Paula Lucy.
“I was torn between wanting to go to Canada and not wanting to leave Paula,” he wrote in I Will Arise and Go Now: Reflections on the Meaning of Places & People (Morehouse, 2021). The couple agreed that they would become engaged, then he would move to Canada and return the next summer for their wedding. They married in 1955.
He was curate of Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa, Ontario, for three years before serving as a chaplain in the Royal Canadian Navy (1957-60). He then served as rector in two Ottawa parishes before moving to Vancouver. He served as dean and rector of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver (1968-82), before becoming canon and warden at Washington National Cathedral and the College of Preachers. He returned to being a rector at Christ Church, Calgary, Alberta (1983-93) and was a visiting scholar at St. George’s College, Jerusalem in 1993.
He composed more than 40 hymns, which are gathered in the book Praise, My Soul (Selah, 2005). “Herbert O’Driscoll brings to his hymnwriting many of the qualities that have enhanced his well-deserved reputations as a preacher and as an author,” wrote his fellow composer, Carl Daw Jr. “Here are the same attention to pivotal detail, the same gift for storytelling, the same ability to challenge and convince.”
The Vancouver School of Theology established “O’Driscoll Forum: A Celebration of Preaching, Teaching and Liturgical Arts” in 2022.
O’Driscoll is survived by his wife, three daughters, a son, four granddaughters, four grandsons, and a great-grandson.
