Herbert John Ignatius McCabe OP (2 August 1926 – 28 June 2001)[1] was a Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher.

[2] McCabe joined the Dominicans in 1949, where under Victor White he began his lifelong study of the works of Thomas Aquinas.

[3] Ordained in 1955, he was a pastor in Newcastle for three years before being assigned as chaplain to De La Salle College, where one of his pupils was Terry Eagleton.

He was reinstated three years later, and began his editorial that month in characteristically combative style: "As I was saying, before I was so oddly interrupted..."[5] He spent many years teaching at Blackfriars, Oxford University, writing four books, The New Creation, a study of the Sacraments, in 1964; Law, Love and Language, on the centrality of language in ethics, in 1968; The Teaching of the Catholic Church, a short catechism, in 1986; God Matters in 1987; and God Still Matters, a collection of his articles, in 2002.

[8] His memorial service included a Spanish revolutionary song sung by his 80-year-old brother Bernard, a Joyce expert.