REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT, MARY McALEESE AT ST. CATHERINE’S COLLEGE, ARMAGH ON 28TH SEPTEMBER 2001
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT, MARY McALEESE AT ST. CATHERINE’S COLLEGE, ARMAGH ON 28TH SEPTEMBER 2001
Your Grace, Principal, Reverend Fathers, Reverend Sisters, Ladies and Gentlemen, pupils of St. Catherine’s.
It is a very special privilege to have been asked to join in your celebrations of, 150 years of teaching by the Society of the Sacred Heart here in Armagh.
There is no one around to tell us what it was like in those far off days, regrettably the human life span doesn’t take even the most long-living of us much past the hundred mark. So for memories, for an insight into those far off days we have only the history books and the tales handed from generation to generation. Ireland of 1851 was a nightmare, a place abandoned by those who could get out, a place of little hope to those who stayed. Famine, despair, disease, poverty, oppression were the lot of so many of our people. To start a school in those turbulent and chaotic times was an act of faith in a future few dared to hope or believe in. So it took leadership, foresight and real determination to change the mood, to rally people’s resilience and self-belief and to invest in their future through education.
The Sisters of the Sacred Heart accepted the invitation of Archbishop Cullen to come to Armagh and establish a school a century and a half ago. Today St. Catherine’s still carries that torch first lit by a team of faith-filled and fearless women whose legacy has transformed the lives of so many from this city and its surrounding areas. The founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart, Madeleine Sophie Barat, would be justly proud of that legacy around which we gather in celebration and respect today.
Madeleine Sophie Barat had a very unique insight into the link between education and regeneration. She had founded the Society of the Sacred Heart, in France, in the turbulent years following the French Revolution. While others found it hard to lift their hearts beyond the struggle from day to day, she looked to the future and to the younger generations who would shape it. She saw the talents of women as central to that renewal and dedicated her life to providing young women with the education that would liberate their gifts, give them confidence in their abilities and inspire them to be leaders, energisers and builders of community and of hope.
Today, under the dynamic leadership of Principal Margaret Martin, St. Catherine’s has by sheer effort, won for itself a reputation as a centre of academic excellence and a true champion of equality of opportunity. Here school life revolves not simply around a list of subjects, but around an ethos and a value system, which will be richly at work in lives long after the Tuiseal ginideach or past subjunctive or Boyles Law are forgotten. Yes, this place teaches many things well - some of them are measured by exams and certificates, but many more are measured in much more subtle ways, by the kind of colleagues students grow into, the kind of neighbours, the kind of parents, partners, by the civic strength they contribute wherever they go by being people of integrity, ambassadors for justice, equality, for respect for the sacredness of every human person. No certificate measures these things but no society can function properly without people who have, hold and live by those values and here you teach them well. And it is as much for that as the medals won on the sports field, or the qualifications gained, that this school is valued and cherished by the generations who have enjoyed the spirit of the Sacred Heart tradition and by this city.
To all those who have contributed and are still contributing to the vibrancy of that tradition, I offer thanks and congratulations - whether you are a pupil, teacher, ancillary staff member, parent, governor, friend, supporter, you form the team which carries the baton in this generation and hands it over, intact, shining to the next.
I would like to pay a special tribute to your Principal, my old school-friend, Maighréad Uí Mháirtín, whose many talents made her a natural chair of Foras na Gaeilge, the all-island body with responsibility for the promotion of the Irish language established under the Good Friday Agreement. Déanaim comhghairdeas le Maighréad agus gabhaim buíochas léi as ucht a páirt san obair rí-thábhachtach atá á dhéanamh ag Foras na Gaeilge maidir le cur chun cinn na Gaeilge ar fud na hÉireann. Tá nascanna treas-teorann á gcruthú agus á gcothú ag an bhForas agus ag an gComhrúnaíocht anseo in Ard Mhacha chomh maith. Nascanna a thugann tacaíocht don athnuachan atá i gceartlár Chomhaontú Aoine an Chéasta.
[I congratulate Margaret and I thank her for her part in the very important work that is being done by Foras na Gaeilge regarding the promotion of Irish all over Ireland. Cross-border links are being created and nourished by the Agency and by the Joint Secretariat here in Armagh as well. Links which provide support to the process of renewal that is at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement.]
Oh and just in case there is any misunderstanding, Margaret was a year ahead of me at St. Dominic’s and as I get older that year of a difference seems to matter more and more!
The words of the Ulster Poet Bertie Rodgers tell us:
There is a through-otherness about Armagh
Delightful to me,
Up on the hill are the graves of the garrulous kings
Who at last can agree.
When my granny used the expression “through other” it was far from a compliment and usually an indication that the state of my bedroom was about to earn me a clip on the ear, but Rodgers’ “through-otherness” takes on a different shape when we reflect on this lucky generation which has decided not to wait until the grave to agree with each other like the “garrulous kings”.
The Good Friday Agreement is about working for the future through each other and with each other, knowing as we do from past bitter experience how much we lose, how much we waste when we ignore or fear or hate our neighbours. Now through accepting the very otherness of the other, through respecting our differences we have this great opportunity to change the future from conflict to consensus. Like all great opportunities of a lifetime it has to be used in the lifetime of the opportunity and I know that we all hope and pray this hard-earned chance will not be wasted.
Here in St. Catherine’s College and here in the City of Armagh with its great Christian heritage as Ireland’s ecclesiastical capital you have worked hard to promote those values which build us up humanly; tolerance, patience, understanding, genuinely joyful curiosity about and respect for difference, profound acknowledgement of the sacred equality of each human being. Each pupil who lives by that code, brings pride and credit to those who nurtured it and even more importantly, they bring the kind of hope to a chaotic world that the Sacred Heart nuns brought 150 years ago- needed as much today as ever it was.
My good wishes for the next 150 years and my thanks again for the chance to come back to St. Catherine’s on such an historic day.
Go raibh maith agaibh.