[1] Archbishop McQuaid initially banned Hurley from speaking on ecumenism within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.
[1] However, McQuaid reversed the ban after Hurley was defended by Father Cecil McGarry, the Jesuit provincial in Ireland during the early 1970s.
"[1] Hurley stepped down as director of the Irish School of Ecumenics in 1980 and relations with the Archdiocese of Dublin began to improve.
[1] Father Hurley received honorary doctorates from Queen's University Belfast in 1993 and Trinity College, Dublin in 1995.
[2] In 2008, David F. Ford, a former theologian at the University of Cambridge wrote that Hurley "was ahead of his time in how he brought ecumenism among churches together with interfaith dialogue and dedication to religious, political and cultural reconciliation across some of the deepest differences in our world.
Hurley’s daring alliance of faith with intellect and institutional creativity has challenged the religious and the non-religious to take seriously the role of religion in healing the contemporary world.