Saint Vincent College Winter 2024 Commencement address by Hon. Mary C. McGinley

by Public Relations | December 17, 2024

LATROBE, PA - The Hon. Mary C. McGinley, judge of the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, delivered the address at Saint Vincent College's 20th annual Winter Commencement on Dec. 14 at the Performing Arts Center in the Robert S. Carey Student Center.

Rev. Paul Taylor, O.S.B., C'87, S'91, president of the College, presented McGinley with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Judge McGinley's Commencement address:

I'm a Bearcat now, too.

Archabbot Martin, Father Paul Taylor, Board of Directors, administrators and faculty, I thank you for the invitation to address today this impressive group of graduates and their families. What a great day. It's truly an honor to be here, and truly an honor to be a Bearcat. My husband, Patrick, is here as well, and we want to congratulate everyone here.

Every college campus has buildings that are named after people. We generally pass by those buildings without much thought as to [who is] the person behind the name. We might think the building is named after some rich guy or a president of the university, maybe even the president of the United States, but behind each name is the heart and soul of a person in [his or her] connection to the college.

Father Paul mentioned my deep connection to [Saint Vincent]. We're sitting right now in the Robert S Carey Center. I want to tell you about the inspiring and impactful life of Robert S Carey, who made a mark in his life, just as you all set out to make your own mark.

Robert S. Carey was his genuine, authentic self. He was my mother's brother-my uncle. I know you all have that "fun uncle" in your families, as most families do. My Uncle Bob was a fun uncle. You never knew what kind of goofy jacket or hat he was going to wear at family occasions. He had this infectious energy and smile that just lit up everyone around him. He was a sports nut, and he preferred college football over the NFL, which was the subject of some debate in our family. He loved to take in the Buccos and the Pens with his family in Pittsburgh.

He embraced that God created all of us with variety and uniqueness, and he really let that shine. Uncle Bob was devoted to his family and his faith. They were the foundations of his life. He adored his wife, who he met in grade school, and their three sons, Rob, Brian and Matt, and our extended family. I'll get to some of his professional accomplishments in a bit, but he appreciated that his family was his greatest accomplishment of all.

He was spiritually enriched by attendance at daily Mass. With faith as his anchor, he defeated polio as a child. With faith as his anchor, he bravely battled cancer until his death in 1996 at age 51. His faith helped him with the unpredictabilities of his life. Unfortunately, adversity is inevitable. That's why it's so important to celebrate victories and accomplishments like you're doing today.

Uncle Bob worked hard during his lifetime as a real estate financier. He helped develop some of the largest buildings in Pittsburgh and around the country, but he didn't do it without commitment. Let me emphasize this to you graduates: Becoming a CEO or owning your own company like he did doesn't happen overnight. It takes work, determination, patience and seeing things through. There's simply no substitute for hard work.

Uncle Bob embraced being part of and rooted in the Saint Vincent Benedictine community. His great uncle was the fourth archabbot of Saint Vincent Archabbey, Aurelius Aloysius Stehle, for whom Aurelius Hall was named-spooky though it may be. Uncle, Bob attended the Saint Vincent Preparatory School that was located on these grounds. He played several sports for the Prep School's Bear Kittens, as they were called. He cherished the many friendships he made here, including his lifelong friendship with Archabbot Douglas Nowicki. Graduates, do not forget about the friends you've made here. Your college friends are your allies for life. You have to have the backs of your fellow Bearcats.

I surmise that my Uncle Bob had the same feelings as I do when I walk on the beautiful grounds of this College-a feeling of peace. Whether I come here to watch my favorite football team practice or say a prayer in the Basilica or visit his burial site on the edge of these grounds, I'm overcome with the feeling of peace.

You may think of Saint Vincent as a bubble, and now you're going to be leaving the bubble. But think about this: a bubble pops, and when it does, it doesn't get recreated. Instead, I like to think of Saint Vincent as an envelope of peace. With an envelope, you can keep it with you, pull out the contents when you need them, and seal it back up for later. You can take that envelope wherever you go.

Class of 2024, these are tumultuous times, as you're aware. You didn't create this dynamic, but unfortunately, you're inheriting it. These days, our differences seem to be emphasized more than what we have in common. The world seems full of anger and mistrust. You feel it. I feel it.

I can tell you from some of the things I've seen in my courtroom over the last year. A man came in, he'd been shot and was lucky to be alive. He could barely walk and was in excruciating pain. How did it happen? Road rage. Lives changed forever because of road rage. I could tell you about a number of cases over the last year, defamation, both spoken and especially over social media, damaging reputations irreparably. I've had an increase in the number of people that show up for their day of court only to be combative and to insist they are exempt from all laws. It makes for a challenging day for a judge to have to deal with an insistence that no laws apply. It doesn't usually work out well for the individual.

I'm sharing all of this as you go forward because your natural inclination will be to either withdraw and stay on the sideline or to engage in perpetuating that anger. Remember, the same tools that Uncle Bob used in life are available to all of you. They've been emphasized at this College and in the Benedictine tradition. Use those tools. Take your own path. Draw on your family, faith and friendships. Look at the support system you have here today. Draw on that. Work hard and be a filler of the angry abyss.

To help you do that, I want to share some instructions I give to jurors. Bear in mind these are 12 jurors who've never met until [the trial] are asked to make major decisions in somebody's life that also will change their lives forever. They've been instructed up to this point not to say anything about the case to one another. They're going to go up in secret and try to reach a verdict-in civil court, that means four-fifths, 10 out of 12; in criminal court, it has to be unanimous. Again, never met before this case.

So, how do you even start to do that? Well, let me tell you the instructions they're given as they start the deliberation process. "Members of the jury, in the course of your deliberations, you should consult with each other and discuss the evidence freely and fairly in a sincere effort to arrive at a just verdict. Each juror must decide this case for themself after examining the issues in the evidence with proper regard to the opinions of other jurors. Proper consideration of the issues before you means you should be willing to re-examine your views and change your opinion if convinced that it is erroneous, but you are not required to surrender an honest conviction only because of another juror's opinion."

What does all that mean? It's powerful, really. It means in furtherance of fairness, consider and respect the thoughts of others and their opinions, but stick up for what you believe in-stick up for your own convictions.

Finally, Class of 2024, don't hesitate to open that envelope of peace. It can go everywhere with you.

Congratulations, Class of 2024. I am proud to be here and proud of all of you.

VIDEO REPLAY: https://www.youtube.com/live/ROy-hrRpecc

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