Michael John Fitzgerald McCarthy (born in Midleton, County Cork (1864 – 26 October 1928) was an Irish lawyer and an anti-clerical author.
As the Catholic Church still controls most Irish schools and universities, his books and independent stance have not received much attention in the last century.
He worried that nobody was prepared to criticise the way the Church spent its money, and that its emphasis on religious devotion was sapping the self-reliance of the population.
[citation needed] McCarthy's anti-clerical views were shared by and influenced the later works of Frank Hugh O'Donnell, and the English socialist Harry Quelch.
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).