No Abiding City
The news of the Cistercians’ departure from Mount Melleray has caused many reactions. The abbey has placed a key role in Ireland’s Catholic – and secular – history. I have just re-read an elegiac essay John Waters wrote ten years ago after a visit to the place, conscious of witnessing something precious passing away: ‘It strikes me forcibly that, even if we are barely aware of their existences – even if we scorn their sacrifices – the silent prayerful presence of these men here is somehow vital to our very human continuance. I don’t mean just that they pray for us, but that the sense they give us of something to be believed in so unconditionally – that, even as we scoff, this somehow allows us to continue inhabiting what we think of as the ‘real’ world, in much the way that we once partied all night, knowing that our staid parents slept fitfully at home, hoping we would make it back safe with the dawn.’
