EVENTS in the College have now been chronicled in this biennial form for a decade for it was in 1956 that ST. KIERAN’S COLLEGE first made its diffident bow to the public. Set against the 183 years of the College’s existence, a span of ten years diminished into insignificance, yet the changes which have taken place in that decade match those of any other similar period one cares to name. These arc not evident in stone and wood and glass, though a closer scrutiny shows that the material structure is not so unchanging as a first glanre might suggest, but the changes lie in less tangible form. The Vatican Council and the Report of the Commission on Education, in their separate spheres, are both reacting on the kind of education that is being given today to students, lay and clerical – outward-looking, searching, challenging, optimistic. A teaching; staff of twenty-seven, as against twenty-two a decade ago, indicates the awareness of the College of its responsibility in keeping apace with the strides education is now making.
In this Golden Jubilee Year of the 1916 Rising, ST. KIERAN S COLLEGE RECORD pays tribute to the leaders of the Insurrection in the person of Thomas MacDonagh, one-time teacher in the College. Father Gerard Rice has dug deep into the character of the man and the Kilkenny of the period when MacDonagh walked between St. Kieran’s and his lodgings in High Street. The result is a critical and authoritative evaluation of the teacher, poet and soldier. The remammg articles, features, students’ reviews, news reports, miscellania, in their wide diversification, all have the purpose of entertaining our readers, and bringing them into closer touch with the College. Of one department at the end of the RECORD it is difficult to escape the feeling that it is the most popular of all – an idea that seems to reflect on the mentality of our readers and on the value of the more seriously considered pages which precede it. The department is titled “News from Far and Near.” It does not demand imaginative writing; its content is completely governed by the material sent in by correspondents. If some areas of the globe get more cover than others, this is not a measure of. their greater imJJOrtance, but merely that other parts, equally cherished, have less diligent correspondents. So let. us make a pressing appeal to our readers by qualifying the title of this department: “More News from Farther and N;arer.”
The 1964 issue of the RECORD had scarcely appeared when the College changed its President. Canon Gabriel Loughry made way for Canon John Holohan. May we wish both men ‘Ad multos annos’: the one on the banks of his beloved Nore at its most picturesque point, Inistioge, and the other in that most responsible and influential post, the President’s Room.
