Page 43 - Gonzaga at 60
P. 43
MacConville’s years of aerobics with the Gheel Insitute, and
David Keenahan’s FithYear Project, which has involved staf
and students over the last twenty-ive years in decoraing
homes for the elderly; playing sport with Travellers and
other aciviies, including assising in Homework Clubs in
the Rialto area (an acivity begun by Padraic O’Sullivan
many years ago in Rathmines). Students have also assisted
in the Cerebral Palsy Clinic in Leopardstown and given concerts for the residents of Leopardstown The first team to go to
Hospital, under the direcion of Brian Regan. There are other forms of experience, too, such as build houses in Zambia.
the exposure to visiing speakers such as John Lonergan, and a visit to Mountjoy Prison, or the The brawn in the front
row include Ms Catherine
late David Irvine of the P.U.P. Finally, the Habitat for Humanity house-building programme in Doyle, Dr Howard Welch,
Zambia, irst begun in the College by Howard Welch, has become an annual feature of Fith Year, Fr Kennedy O’Brien and
Mr Kevin Whirdy
involving students and members of staf both female and male, the male someimes neither as
able nor as young as the female.
Such experiences may fall far short of encouraging Gonzaga graduates to tackle the forms
and structures of society that create disadvantage, but for very many they leave a life-long mark.
As a whole, the Gonzaga educaion has produced men who are thoughful, commited and oten
passionately ariculate in their commitment, as some of the aricles that follow show. Many others
have without quesion made a small but important diference in the roles they have chosen, and
contributed to the welfare of others. Not represented here are past-pupils who are now working
with AIDS vicims in California, with the Samaritans in Dublin, or teaching in situaions where their
service and dedicaion can achieve profound change even in small ways. And others again who,
although having litle or no connecion with formal Catholicism, will return inconspicuously to
work in homework clubs, or cycle to raise money for Fr McVerry’s Welcome Home Trust.
The writers in the following pages atest strongly to the fact that they received no dogmaic
or authoritarian view of religion. The Catholic liturgy nevertheless, as the students are regularly
reminded, remains central to the life and purpose of the school. Faith formaion in the classroom,
on retreats and in the work done in Lourdes annually by Sixth Years is now irmly and almost
exclusively in the hands of lay teachers, among them Catherine Doyle and Kiara Desmond.
In the context of religious and spiritual development it seems enirely appropriate to add a
reference to Patrick Pots. Headmaster for seventeen years, he bestrode the school colossally –
for almost a third of its life. A ‘second founder’, Kevin Whirdy has called him; and when the ime
comes for middle-aged men to recall their school days he will be writen of in the same terms
as The O’Conor Don, Fr Bill White and others. The irst lay successor to those disinguished men
(indeed, the irst lay headmaster appointed to any Jesuit college in Ireland), his commitment
to the development of the liturgical life of the College and the spiritual formaion of the boys
was central to his many contribuions to the essence of Gonzaga. The sense of a coninuity of
purpose, the unique atmosphere of the school, its many expanding iniiaives both secular and
spiritual are, to a very considerable degree, his legacy.
David Keenahan’s FithYear Project, which has involved staf
and students over the last twenty-ive years in decoraing
homes for the elderly; playing sport with Travellers and
other aciviies, including assising in Homework Clubs in
the Rialto area (an acivity begun by Padraic O’Sullivan
many years ago in Rathmines). Students have also assisted
in the Cerebral Palsy Clinic in Leopardstown and given concerts for the residents of Leopardstown The first team to go to
Hospital, under the direcion of Brian Regan. There are other forms of experience, too, such as build houses in Zambia.
the exposure to visiing speakers such as John Lonergan, and a visit to Mountjoy Prison, or the The brawn in the front
row include Ms Catherine
late David Irvine of the P.U.P. Finally, the Habitat for Humanity house-building programme in Doyle, Dr Howard Welch,
Zambia, irst begun in the College by Howard Welch, has become an annual feature of Fith Year, Fr Kennedy O’Brien and
Mr Kevin Whirdy
involving students and members of staf both female and male, the male someimes neither as
able nor as young as the female.
Such experiences may fall far short of encouraging Gonzaga graduates to tackle the forms
and structures of society that create disadvantage, but for very many they leave a life-long mark.
As a whole, the Gonzaga educaion has produced men who are thoughful, commited and oten
passionately ariculate in their commitment, as some of the aricles that follow show. Many others
have without quesion made a small but important diference in the roles they have chosen, and
contributed to the welfare of others. Not represented here are past-pupils who are now working
with AIDS vicims in California, with the Samaritans in Dublin, or teaching in situaions where their
service and dedicaion can achieve profound change even in small ways. And others again who,
although having litle or no connecion with formal Catholicism, will return inconspicuously to
work in homework clubs, or cycle to raise money for Fr McVerry’s Welcome Home Trust.
The writers in the following pages atest strongly to the fact that they received no dogmaic
or authoritarian view of religion. The Catholic liturgy nevertheless, as the students are regularly
reminded, remains central to the life and purpose of the school. Faith formaion in the classroom,
on retreats and in the work done in Lourdes annually by Sixth Years is now irmly and almost
exclusively in the hands of lay teachers, among them Catherine Doyle and Kiara Desmond.
In the context of religious and spiritual development it seems enirely appropriate to add a
reference to Patrick Pots. Headmaster for seventeen years, he bestrode the school colossally –
for almost a third of its life. A ‘second founder’, Kevin Whirdy has called him; and when the ime
comes for middle-aged men to recall their school days he will be writen of in the same terms
as The O’Conor Don, Fr Bill White and others. The irst lay successor to those disinguished men
(indeed, the irst lay headmaster appointed to any Jesuit college in Ireland), his commitment
to the development of the liturgical life of the College and the spiritual formaion of the boys
was central to his many contribuions to the essence of Gonzaga. The sense of a coninuity of
purpose, the unique atmosphere of the school, its many expanding iniiaives both secular and
spiritual are, to a very considerable degree, his legacy.
