He supported Taoiseach Éamon de Valera's defence of arrests and police searches for cached IRA arms, declaring, "Any Irishman who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God's law, and there can be no excuse for that crime - not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity".

[4] Browne was attentive to the state of public morality in the diocese, and James S. Donnelly Jr. has noted his role in directing episcopal and clerical censorship of newsagents and county librarians.

[5] Like other members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Browne regularly condemned communism in his pastoral letters.

[7] The most enduring monument or physical legacy of his time as Bishop is Galway Cathedral which was dedicated in 1965 by Cardinal Cushing of Boston.

The Irish cabinet minister Noel Browne (no known relation) in his 1986 memoir Against the Tide describes the physical attributes of his episcopal namesake:[9] "The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean.