OPINION (AN COLÚN): We are fortunate to have CC Roscrea in our midst

IN FEBRUARY 2017 it was announced that Cistercian College Roscrea was going to close in June of that year, after 112 years of operations. “The school will finish classes for the majority of its students following the Leaving Cert and Junior exams this June,” a statement said.
This news made many local people sad. The college held an important place in their hearts because it was an excellent centre of education. They also looked on it with fondness for a number of other reasons including the fact it had a number of beautiful buildings; it was a place of history and culture; it was a place with woodland and streams making it a lovely spot to visit and walk around; and you could go on retreat there (staying in the guesthouse), an important factor when you consider today's busy and stressed culture.
“The school has witnessed a 45% drop in enrolment in the past 10 years,” said Dom Richard Purcell, Abbot, “with just nine first-year students enrolled for September 2017. Clearly this is unsustainable and the school is simply no longer financially viable. We were sadly left with no option but to conduct what we anticipate will be a phased closure of the school over the next 16 months.”
The community rallied wonderfully. The general feeling was that everything that could be done should be done to save the school. In mid March 2017, a month after the first announcement, the media was told that a group of volunteers made up of parents and past pupils had formed the CCR Action Group which pledged to devise a restructuring plan to ensure the future viability of the school. A rescue package had been set in place, which included significant financial contributions in the form of personal pledges totalling in excess of €1.5 million.
Since then the school has flourished. An example of this flourishing could be seen last week when its annual musical was performed by the students over four nights. The show was packed out every night and audiences responded to the performers with great enthusiasm. I attended on the final night and as I sat in the audience I felt deep gratitude in my heart that this fine establishment was still going. It was not just the school as an educational establishment that had been under threat, but also the presence of the Cistercian monks in this part of Ireland. If the school had come to an end, who knows how much longer the monks would have held out. In a world which can feel very shallow and stupid it's important we hold onto our places of tradition, culture and heritage.
The musical was Les Misérables, one of my favourite musicals. As I listened to Fantine's song “I dreamed a dream” tears began to roll down my cheeks. Les Misérables can be translated into English as The Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, The Victims, or The Dispossessed. Fantine is poor and wretched. Surrounded by unkindness she descends into prostitution. Eventually she dies of tuberculosis. A working-class girl from the coastal town of Montreuil-sur-mer and an orphan, she is a symbol of the countless people throughout history who were decent but were savaged by life. She sings,
“I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart”

Les Misérables was first performed in September 1980 in Paris. The first English language version was performed in October 1985 in London. Initially some of the reviews for the London production were condescending and negative, but the public loved it and it became a cultural phenomenon. Part of its success lies in its fantastic melodies. They really hit home, with great power. The lyrics are also emotional and uplifting. The melodies and lyrics combined together make for a formidable, potent force.
Another reason for the musical's success is the novel it's based on. Victor Hugo wrote a masterpiece which points out many of the failings, injustices and cruelties of 19th Century France. Confronted with the corruption and cruelty of society some of the novel's characters resort to political change and violence; others respond with Christian love.
As I listened to the musical in Cistercian College I thought about the differences between 19th Century France and the world of late 2024. In so many ways our societies are vastly better than the way France used to be between 1815 and 1832. However, our world is still plagued by a huge amount of corruption and harshness. The number of poor is enormous and vast wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very small percentage. One study I read recently stated that the bottom 50% of the world's population own less than 2% of the global wealth, while the top 1% owns 38%. Along with this, there's also a high number of armed conflicts. In the Middle East and North Africa, 45 armed conflicts are currently taking place, in Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Western Sahara. Closer to home, in Ireland there is much which could lead you to despair, including the fact we have a neverending homelessness and housing crisis. How do we as individuals respond to these hard and unsettling facts? One possible response is Erich Fromm's: “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”