One of the features of post-war Catholicism in the English speaking world was the growth of student chaplaincies. It reflected the expansion of universities. In his early comic novels the English writer, David Lodge has traced the path of young Catholics through the chaplaincies into the later years.
A recent book on the Newman Society at the University of Melbourne, Golden Years tells the Australian version of the story. It focuses on the charismatically uncharismatic Jesuit chaplain, Jeremiah Golden, and allows over 70 former members of the Society to reflect on what engagement in the Catholic group meant to them at that time and in later years.
These later years saw the second Vatican Council, the aftermath of the Labor Party split and the Vietnam War, the Papal condemnation of contraception, and the dissolution of the Catholic subculture that nourished the Newman Society.
The rich detail of accounts like this, coming in the aftermath of World Youth Day, raises large questions about how churches might be involved with students and what students and the churches themselves might hope to gain from the exchange.
The Newman Society experience certainly does not encourage the churches to hope that students involved in church programs will carry their commitment smoothly into their adult years. Those who describe their participation in the Newman Society reckon that few of their contemporaries have persisted in any active participation in the Catholic Church.
Although the texture of what it means to be an Australian Catholic has changed drastically over 60 years, the withdrawal of educated Catholics from a strong allegiance remains striking. This would be true, too, of other groups like the Student Christian Movement.
A more elusive but perhaps also more significant thread that runs through this earlier experience is the importance of good conversation. Conversation encourages churches and students to focus on what matters. Students can connect with one another, explore the practices and the content of their faith, and ask what matters to them in the world they are entering.
They can also help their older conversation partners find a language and space to speak of these things. That presupposes, of course, that the conversation is well-informed.
The shape of conversation depends on circumstances. Fifty years ago conversation among Catholic students took place in a favourable environment. The students came out a Catholic sub-culture in which they had predominantly associated with other Catholics. A sizeable number would naturally seek to be connected with other students of a similar background, and be open to exploring the meaning of inherited faith and practices in their adult world.
It was unexceptionable, too, for this conversation to be associated with a deeper involvement in traditional religious practices like weekly Mass and daily Rosary in the university.
The quality of conversation was also shaped by circumstance. The politicisation of Catholic life as a result of the Labor Party split affected student conversation, too. It became tempting to judge the value of conversation by the attitudes and associations of the participants.
Much has changed now. Conversation among young Christians generally cannot assume that the participants have a strong sense of the structure of what may have been taught and practised in church and school. Nor will Catholic groups be a natural form of association for many. Any form of continuing conversation will be affected by the fact that most students work part-time. They will find it harder to find space for demanding reading.
It may be surprising to note how many young Catholic adults are attracted to devotional practices. But the context is very different from 50 years ago. These practices do not link conversation with something familiar. They explore something new and striking. But for many it provides an experiential context for conversation. For many others, the context is provided by their commitments to the poor and marginalised.
An informed conversation that engages young people within churches is now more difficult to encourage. It also remains precarious because from within the churches there is much pressure to politicise it. The value of the conversation is often seen to lie less in the search for truth than in entering and articulating defined positions. Participants will be expected to associate themselves with parties in the church that are recognised as truth-bearing.
Past experience suggests that if the Spirit is in conversation, the paths which it inclines people to take are uncontrollable. So are the benefits the conversation gives churches and young adults.
Andrew Hamilton SJ is Eureka Street's consulting editor. He also teaches at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne.