Page 14 - The Gonzaga Record 1988
P. 14
Blake's dictum that 'he who would do good to another must do so in
minute particulars'.
If Gonzaga had a particular intellectual stamp, it was a belief in the
value of open discussion. In Fr Joe Veale's English class, we gave our own
reactions to the works under study and were warned off potted
summaries or appreciations. John Wilson, teaching Spanish, tolerated
lengthy excursuses on the bullfight or the Spanish Civil War. In fifth year,
in Religious Knowledge class, Fr Cull ran a sort of open forum on the
question of whether God existed, with the result that the young university
student a year or two later had an acquired immunity to some of the
ruder challenges he faced. Whatever else one could say about the doubts
of the Gonzaga past pupils on matters of faith, those doubts would never
be the mere product of a 'generation gap', or a young person's means of
escape from a too-rigid authority.
In this sense, the spirit of the school ran counter to the tendency in
many parts of Irish life to accept reality as one might accept the absentee
landlord: as a force to be obeyed, cajoled, or evaded, but never tackled
directly with argument, much less brought to account. It was a great
blessing in Gonzaga that we felt free to delve into the truth and that we
never felt, as perhaps so many have felt, that probing the causes of things
is like tir,kering with an unexploded bomb. Gonzaga, like Fr White, was
always ready to listen.
I am told by a reliable source within the Jesuit Community that in his
years as Rector, Fr White permitted himself only one concession to the
flesh. My source discovered what this weakness was one Thursday
afternoon in March. The Rector had failed to answer on any of the usual
telephone extensions and was located by a search party in front of the
television, engrossed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. That was in 1967.
It is only one of the many memories of Fr White that have surfaced
this summer wherever Gonzaga people have been together. Everyone has
his own story to tell and yet each story blends perfectly with the next and
each conversation has a lightness that is surprising considering that the
topic of discussion is a death, a departure. Fr White's presence, like the
presence in nature that 'veins violets and tall trees makes more and more',
seems still with us.
A few years ago, I was back in Ireland after nine years abroad and
found myself confessing to a colleague that gaps and discontinuities had
emerged in my relationships with my friends. 'The truth is', my colleague
said, 'that you never come home'. As we spoke, I realised that there is an
exception to that rule, if it is a rule. On each of my Gonzaga friends I
could lean as heavily as before, discover the same easygoing acceptance
communicated with the same humorous certainty as before. Fr White
would have wished it so. Perhaps t!'tat is what Thucydides ~eant when
he wrote of good men, that the whole world is their memorial.
Philip McDonagh
12
minute particulars'.
If Gonzaga had a particular intellectual stamp, it was a belief in the
value of open discussion. In Fr Joe Veale's English class, we gave our own
reactions to the works under study and were warned off potted
summaries or appreciations. John Wilson, teaching Spanish, tolerated
lengthy excursuses on the bullfight or the Spanish Civil War. In fifth year,
in Religious Knowledge class, Fr Cull ran a sort of open forum on the
question of whether God existed, with the result that the young university
student a year or two later had an acquired immunity to some of the
ruder challenges he faced. Whatever else one could say about the doubts
of the Gonzaga past pupils on matters of faith, those doubts would never
be the mere product of a 'generation gap', or a young person's means of
escape from a too-rigid authority.
In this sense, the spirit of the school ran counter to the tendency in
many parts of Irish life to accept reality as one might accept the absentee
landlord: as a force to be obeyed, cajoled, or evaded, but never tackled
directly with argument, much less brought to account. It was a great
blessing in Gonzaga that we felt free to delve into the truth and that we
never felt, as perhaps so many have felt, that probing the causes of things
is like tir,kering with an unexploded bomb. Gonzaga, like Fr White, was
always ready to listen.
I am told by a reliable source within the Jesuit Community that in his
years as Rector, Fr White permitted himself only one concession to the
flesh. My source discovered what this weakness was one Thursday
afternoon in March. The Rector had failed to answer on any of the usual
telephone extensions and was located by a search party in front of the
television, engrossed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. That was in 1967.
It is only one of the many memories of Fr White that have surfaced
this summer wherever Gonzaga people have been together. Everyone has
his own story to tell and yet each story blends perfectly with the next and
each conversation has a lightness that is surprising considering that the
topic of discussion is a death, a departure. Fr White's presence, like the
presence in nature that 'veins violets and tall trees makes more and more',
seems still with us.
A few years ago, I was back in Ireland after nine years abroad and
found myself confessing to a colleague that gaps and discontinuities had
emerged in my relationships with my friends. 'The truth is', my colleague
said, 'that you never come home'. As we spoke, I realised that there is an
exception to that rule, if it is a rule. On each of my Gonzaga friends I
could lean as heavily as before, discover the same easygoing acceptance
communicated with the same humorous certainty as before. Fr White
would have wished it so. Perhaps t!'tat is what Thucydides ~eant when
he wrote of good men, that the whole world is their memorial.
Philip McDonagh
12
