WORDS Michael McVeigh

 A recent report on the beliefs of young people in Australia has highlighted the challenges facing Catholic Church leaders and school principals looking to bring young people back into the fold.

Fifty years ago, Sunday Mass was as much a part of the lives of Australian Catholics as the internet is to young people today.

Speaking at the National Catholic Education Conference in Sydney recently, Cardinal George Pell recalled a time when the Church held a significant place in people’s lives and used that influence to shape the country’s history.

However, the latter half of the 20th century saw a steady decline in church attendance, and where once Catholic faith played an important part in people’s choices—from who they voted for, to where they went on a Saturday night—fewer and fewer people today are taking heed of that faith in even the most important aspects of their lives, like relationships and marriage.

A recent survey, titled ‘The Spirit of Generation Y’, studied the beliefs of young Australians born between 1976 and 1990. It found that around 75 per cent of young people who identify themselves as Catholic believe it’s okay to ‘pick and choose’ beliefs without accepting the teachings of their religion as a whole, while more than half believe that morals are relative.

‘The pressures on young Catholics beyond tolerance and ecumenism and towards muddle are evident here’, said Cardinal Pell in his speech, adding later, ‘More of them seem to believe that life offers a smorgasbord of options from which they choose items that best suit their passing fancies and their changing circumstances.’

One of the authors of the Generation Y study is Redemptorist Father Michael Mason from Australian Catholic University. He says what’s happening isn’t confined to the current generation. Similar beliefs are held by previous generations, back to the Baby Boomers. These changing attitudes go beyond faith, and are part of a broader trend where young people have become ‘individualised’.

‘They’ve grown up in a very sceptical and cynical society which really has expended a lot of energy in the last 50 years in reducing people’s faith in institutions of all kinds’, he says. ‘They don’t feel too good about belonging to anything, in any firm way, that might restrict what they see as their freedom. Others might see that freedom as a very considerable social isolation.’

Mason says authority has been taken away from institutions, parents, families, churches and governments, and has been relocated in individuals. The Catholic faith-based traditions of previous generations have been replaced by a sceptical, cynical and narrowly empirical view of life.

‘You could almost say they’ve grown up in a society which is afraid to dream’, he says. ‘The Enlightenment in its Australian version has come down to teaching young people that only what you can verify through your own experience—or of course what science tells you—only this is to be believed.’

The Generation Y report will be released in a book next July, with more specific findings related to the Catholic Church as a whole. One thing Mason highlights is that only a small number of young people in Catholic schools are committed Catholics, and he says this raises questions about the viability of religious education for these people.

Catholic educators are taking the findings seriously. Sydney Catholic Education Office head Brother Kelvin Canavan says their own studies over the years show comparable trends in the beliefs of young people.

While schools are good at instilling a concern for social justice, Canavan says teenagers aren’t so willing to engage with aspects of the faith like prayer and devotion.

With so many things competing for people’s attention— TV, ipods, computers, mobile phones etc.—Canavan says one of the biggest challenges is encouraging young people to take some time out for themselves, to reflect on questions such as ‘who am I’ and ‘where am I going’.

In a recent talk to Catholic principals in Sydney, Canavan says he urged principals to provide more opportunities for students to experience traditional practices of prayer and devotion, while recognising the different ways each person relates to God.

‘Many of the traditional Catholic practices are less obvious now in Catholic parishes and schools, and so I’m challenging the principals to provide a variety of opportunities for students to experience these traditional Catholic practices in appropriate ways.’

Schools are already providing opportunities for students to be part of liturgies, retreat experiences, prayer groups as well as celebrating the sacraments. Many young people find some connection with God through social justice activities, like volunteering in soup kitchens. But it’s more difficult to get young people to engage in a more active relationship with God.

Dr Richard Rymarz, from Australian Catholic University, is an expert on youth spirituality. He says one thing schools can be doing is providing forums for young people to find answers to questions they have about their faith.

Rymarz cites an example of a young girl he met who was moving away from active religious commitment.

‘One of the things she was saying was she found the Christian story very implausible’, he says. ‘She just couldn’t understand why the Catholic Church taught that the world was created in seven days.

‘The point is the Catholic Church doesn’t teach that, but she thinks they do’, he says. ‘They have these questions, and schools are educational institutions, and they should be able to provide some sort of forum for this.’

The Generation Y survey found that the biggest factor determining people’s religious beliefs is their parents. Another factor was whether one’s friends were religious.

Both Mason and Rymarz point out that young people who are committed to their faith are often faced with ridicule at school. The key for the Church is creating environments where young people can feel comfortable exploring their faith.

‘People get involved with things because of relationships’, says Rymarz. ‘If you don’t have any sort of intermediary between a person and the institution, the chasm is too great.’

Rymarz says helping build groups of committed Catholics in schools could go a long way to dispelling some of the negativity surrounding faith. He also suggests providing retreat experiences where young people wanting to engage in their faith can go along and meet similar people from other schools.

For those drifting away from their faith, Catholic schools are becoming their only contact point with the Church. Both Pell and Canavan argue that what schools need to be doing is instil in students a sense of the tradition they have come from, encourage them to search for answers, and teach them a respect for reason.

‘This is why Catholic schools were founded and continue to exist’, says Canavan. ‘To provide an education that is faith-based and values-laden to give young people a rule of life and a lens through which to interpret all the events of human history and the human condition.’

 
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