REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INTERNATIONAL MERCY EDUCATION CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INTERNATIONAL MERCY EDUCATION CONFERENCE "SHARING OUR HERITAGE - SHAPING OUR FUTURE"
Tá mé thar a bheith sásta bheith i bhur measc inniu agus tá mé buíoch díbh as fáilte fíorchaoin a chur romham.
It is a great privilege and pleasure for me to join you here today at this timely conference and I would like to express my thanks to Sr. Canice Hanrahan and all of the organising committee for their kind invitation.
Let me begin with a quotation that will be familiar to many of you: 'Mercy, the principal path marked out by Jesus for those desirous of following him.....'. Those words of your foundress Catherine McAuley proclaim both her response to the experience of God's love and her expectations of those who joined her in ministry - a ministry whose future is what brings us here today at this International Mercy Education Conference "Sharing our heritage - Shaping our Future".
Were she here today Catherine McAuley would carry both an enormous pride in the extraordinary work of those countless mercy women who have devotedly honoured her vision and deep heartache at the devastating legacy of those who dishonoured it.
This conference meets in uncomfortable times, times when the future has to be faced and planned for with hope and confidence, times when the past has to be squared up to with an awkward mix of pride, regret and humility.
It is an awkward time for a person speaking to such a conference, but awkward would never have scared off Catherine McAuley. What did she want for Mercy? She wanted her vision lived out authentically. A difficult and profound vision, it called for very special people and for the most part that is what she got - very special, good people whose lives were infused with a determination to live her vision authentically and in living it to bring opportunity and care to others.
Ours is a cynical world where hard questions are asked and awful stories told – stories which cast dark shadows. The antidote to that cynicism is an honest exploration of the shadows, a courageous insistence that there is a miraculous and overwhelming legacy of good, a future crafted carefully out of the experience of both - a future which will show to the world that the centre of gravity of Mercy is unconditional love.
The work of the future is to reenergise and reaffirm the Mercy mission against the backdrop of cynicism, of dropping numbers, of an ageing cohort of Mercy nuns, of profound disquiet as disturbing revelations hollow out self-belief. A very sober generation of Mercy has to find that energy, infuse it into the huge burden of work undertaken in the name of Mercy, reshape that work, mould it anew to the modern world and its realities, carry the shadows to some form of redemption for both the victims and for Mercy and bring a confident, credible Mercy into the new millennium. It’s a tall order - just tall, not impossible.
According to the Spanish philosopher, Gasset, 'Life is a series of collisions with the future - it is not the sum of what we have been but what we yearn to be'. I sincerely hope that this conference will enable all those present to articulate more fully what that yearning might be, whilst at the same time celebrating the sum of what you have been. Your noble Mercy heritage - part of which I am proud to share - dates from the founding in Dublin of the Religious Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831, and today finds expression from pre-school to third level education as Trustees, Managers and Teachers across five continents. Drawing strength from this great diaspora that has developed over a century and a half, the Mercy ethos which inspired and formed your sisters from the very beginning, still challenges us today as we face the new millennium, to create afresh an awareness among educators of the urgent need for a renewed outpouring of mercy, caring and community spirit in this fractured world.
The Ireland of today is a more prosperous place than in 1831, yet the Mercy Order remains as energised as ever by its special commitment to the poor and underprivileged. Your sisters have from the earliest days expressed this concern in a particularly effective way through the provision of education, both among children and through adult education. Through that work, you have opened up new vistas of learning and opportunity for countless numbers of children and adults, unlocking talents that might otherwise have remained untapped and untried forever. That would have been a great loss both for the individuals themselves and for our society as a whole, for a society that does not cherish and support all its people, cannot expect to reach its full potential.
As we look back on the past century and forward to the new millennium, to building a more just and caring society, you are the ones whose daily work can and does make a difference. For the education you provide has never been just about academic excellence, important though that is. It has also been about stretching people emotionally and spiritually, bridging the arbitrary divide between intellect on the one hand, and spiritual values on the other, providing a forum where the two melt and merge and create well-rounded individuals. The type of people we need to shape a better future - people who reach out with generosity to others in the community with an appreciation of both the rich diversity and interdependence of the human family.
This is your heritage and it is also your future. In today's society, in which our young people are threatened by a spiritual vacuum, substance abuse and the pressure to succeed, it is more important than ever to foster a sense of self-worth and a sense of the worth of others – whatever their circumstances - among our youth.
As part of your celebrations in 1994 to mark the merger of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy Ireland and South Africa, your formal Declaration proclaiming your identity had indeed a prophetic ring:
'Out of the vibrant waters of our time
The pain of humanity calls us to be
Bridge-builders in a broken world'
And how vibrant and sometimes stormy are the waters that we sail on today. Our current affluence as a society offers the hope that this generation will be the one which will tackle in a real and lasting way the scourge of poverty and exclusion. We have the tools if only we have the commitment - its great enemy is amnesia about where we have come from, where our people came from and how important sharing was to their survival. We are a first world country with a third world memory. It is a critical combination - as much a radical challenge as a badge of honour.
We are still called to emulate the work of Catherine McAuley in this modern day setting, for despite our apparent prosperity, many people still occupy a 'broken world' - the old, the lonely, the disabled, travellers, the homeless, the displaced. In teaching our young people to respond to that pain, to develop a sense of service to those in need, we are laying the groundwork for the type of world we want to have in the next Millennium - a world in which all our people are enabled to live lives of dignity and decency. That must be our goal, the destination of all our energy - your work is bringing us closer to that vision. Have faith in it, pride in it and trust in it. Above all, live it well, for it is in living it well that you counter if not convert the cynical. The source of energy you draw from, is the same source which inspired Catherine - faith in a loving God. But today you also have the lived experience of decades of ministry to draw on. There is a lot of wisdom, insight, experience to be distilled. It is gathered here to be put at the service of the next generation. I wish you well in your deliberations and hope you leave this conference with a newfound freshness and conviction about your own commitment to mercy and a renewed, reinvigorated determination to put a modern, relevant, spiritfilled Mercy at the service of a new millennium.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh. Go maire sibh.