This article was first published in "The Journal of Youth and Theology", November 2004.
Abstract
The disaffection of youth with institutional church in both Australia
and the U.K. has been well documented. A
number of writers in the field point to a remarkable level of spirituality
amongst youth. This paper examines the
conflicts apparent between young people and church as a means of expression of
their spirituality. Some research
findings in Australian High Schools are presented. A research survey was designed to determine
the level of recognition among senior students of the types of experiences to
which some might give a religious interpretation. The level of experiential spirituality among
the groups was remarkably high while church allegiance remained low. Some comparisons between youth culture in
Australia
and the
U.K.
are made by reference to
reports published in each country.
The problem with youth
spirituality is that young people themselves do not appear to fit the “church”
mould. The reference to “church” here and throughout this paper is interpreted
as being a range of churches that are broadly Christian in belief. In
Australia
young
adults are a group “under-represented in church life”.[1] They stand in stark contrast to older
generations. Fifty-eight percent believe
that their most important value is to enjoy life while only 27% of an older,
retired generation agree with this. On
the positive side the survey indicates that 82% of youth have a strong sense of
meaning and purpose in life.
However, the meaning and purpose are not expressed in church
allegiance. They hold a range of
spiritual beliefs. The Christian
Research Association report shows that only 15% see religious belief as
important in day to day living. A
further 21% have an interest in new-age or alternative religious
practices. Only 14% claim to attend
church frequently. A very low percentage
of those who do attend (39%) witness to friendships being formed with other
church attendees. This is in contrast to
an older generation where 63% of older adults have friends who attend the same
church.
There are strong parallels between church affiliation in
Australia
and
the U.K.[2] One might suspect that there are similar problems in both countries with young
people and their allegiance to formal church. The Y Church Report from the
Catholic diocese of
Northampton
seems to confirm this.
[3]
The report finds that, despite significant disaffection with church,
there is a high level of spirituality among young people in the
U.K.
When this is related to Christian faith it
appears to define the young broadly into three different groups. There are those with high levels of Christian
faith and a personal relationship with God. These, however, often find that there is no close friend or member of
their family who is there to share their faith and support them.
A further group tend to believe the more comfortable aspects of
Christianity but also hold a wide range of common beliefs in such things as
horoscopes, luck and destiny. Their
faith is somewhat unfocussed and directionless.
The third group has a low level
of faith and tends to be scientific in their approach, dismissing things that
cannot be proven. These three groups
parallel those identified in research work among Australian Catholic school
students.
The spiritual revolution
Disaffection towards religion is
not an unusual phenomenon in western societies. It is at least as true in much of the adult population as it is among
youth. Bentley and Hughes[4] believe that while Australians in general feel positively towards the churches,
they do not see them as important or relevant. Less than 25% of Australians now
claim to attend church at all and only 13% would actually attend in any given
week.
On
the other hand, the research described in this paper and numerous writers such
as O’Murchu[5],
Tacey[6] and Rolheiser[7] identify
a growing interest in spirituality that is especially strong amongst youth.
Each, because of their background, brings a unique perspective to the
discussion. O’Murchu, a Catholic priest
and sociologist, works among the poor of
Dublin. Tacey, an Associate Professor of English with
Latrobe
University, also offers courses in
spirituality to first year students, and has a crowd flowing out the
doors. Rolheiser is a Canadian Catholic
priest who writes regularly for the Western Catholic Reporter. His approach to church is more traditional
than that of either O’Murchu or Tacey.
For
O’Murchu this rekindled interest in spirituality stems from a natural human
tendency to seek out the ultimate meaning and purpose of life in a complex
universe. Tacey also believes that all
people, and particularly youth, have an innate spiritual hunger. According to
Tacey, western society has experienced almost two centuries of social change
where alternatives to religion have been presented as ultimate answers to
life. Each one has proved a failure.
Such things as totalitarian communism or, at the other extreme national
socialism, the “death of God” and what
Taylor[8] refers to as an “expressive individualism” have all been found wanting. For Tacey, the old answers are no longer
serving us well, the more recent ones have failed and there is a serious search
to find new ones that are in harmony with our experience of the sacred.
Rolheiser too believes that
everyone develops a personal spirituality. He defines this as a sense of who we
are, our history and our future. From
the Rolheiser definition, it becomes clear that spirituality is part of a
common human experience. This is similar
to the Hardy[9] hypothesis
that the reason religion has survived in some form throughout the evolutionary
process is its particular usefulness for personal survival. In fact, Hardy
says, this capacity for religion, perhaps better termed the capacity to create
a personal spirituality, is in fact hard-wired into the human brain.
More recent work in brain science[10] tends to confirm the Hardy hypothesis. The research shows the brain’s inbuilt
capacity to respond to the type of experiences that some might interpret as
“religious”. The researchers locate the
specific areas of the brain that are affected by the experiences during their
occurrence.
Hay and Hunt[11] found a very high level of reporting and recognition of these “religious” or
“spiritual” experiences among the general population in
Britain.
They conclude that “the figures … might
suggest that we are in the midst of an explosive spiritual upsurge not unlike
the Methodist revival of the 18th century”.
When
Hay[12] began to explore religious experience in Britain, he made an extrapolation from
his research that gave a figure of possibly 15 million Britains at that time
who could say that at least once or twice in their lives they may have “been
aware of or influenced by a presence or power” which is different from their everyday
selves. His later work with Hunt has an
even stronger response rate, witness to the spiritual search going on in our
society. In line with the research in
Australian Catholic schools presented here, 76% now confirm their recognition
of this type of experience. There has
been a 59% rise in the response rate since the earlier work in the
mid-eighties. On the other hand, they
also found that people had only the “vaguest remnants” of religious language
with which to express the experience.
Thus, while the mainstream Christian churches in both countries are
losing adherents, the spiritual hunger of the people remains a reality. This paper suggests there are a number of
difficulties that must be overcome before young people in particular will find
an expression for their spirituality in the traditional Christian churches.
The
reality of experience
Shea[13] and Tracy[14] both believe that religious language is characteristic of a common human
experience of discovering the sacred or discovering the mystery of life
itself. In reflecting on his work with
young people Tacey outlines two levels of spiritual development. The first he defines as “spiritual
experience”. Shea’s description of this
reflects on the sentence “I see a bird”. It is when we relate not just to our sight of the bird but begin to
reflect on the mystery that is life for both the bird and ourselves that we
begin to recognise this spiritual experience. We can then progress to Tacey’s second stage. He terms this “spiritual awakening”. We begin
to have a growing intuition that there is a deeper mystery to life and that we
are part of a larger picture.
Rather than refer to the
‘religious’ or the ‘spiritual’ the research among Australian students described
in this paper uses the concept of “Limit Experience”. Limit experiences are the types of
experiences which have the capacity to raise awareness in human beings of the
age-old questions that confront humanity.
Taylor
sees these questions: the meaning of existence, human destiny and the meaning
of suffering; as being “uncommonly deep,
powerful and universal”.
Human beings can confront these issues via a range of
experiences. Some people can notice a
pattern to events in life. At other
times there can be awareness of a presence that is interpreted as being beyond
the norm: a presence of the dead, God or
something other than God. It could be,
as in Einstein’s[15] “cosmic religious feeling” a realisation of humanity’s unique presence in the
cosmos.
"It is very
difficult to elucidate this (cosmic religious) feeling to anyone who is
entirely without it … The religious
geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling,
which knows no dogma …. In my view, it
is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and
keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."
Many terms have been used to name such experiences: mystical, transcendent and peak, among
others. To avoid the possible
confounding variable of a negative response among young people to any religious
connotation this research used the term “Limit Experience” throughout. For the purposes of this research a Limit
Experience was defined as:
An experience that reveals a reality of life beyond the
self, beyond the here and now. It may be
recognition of our own fragility and vulnerability as much as a joyous
awareness of a reality beyond our normal encounter with life.
Youth spirituality and experience
The
reality of these experiences among young people is a major conclusion of this
research among senior Australian high school students presented here. Working with a slightly older group Tacey has
identified similar phenomena. Youth are
particularly experiential in their spirituality. So much so that Tacey makes a plea for
experience to be added to the triangle of history, scripture and tradition and
recognised as contributing to a living religious faith. For Tacey a living God is dynamic and
experiential. Thus our religious faith will change as we experience a dynamic
spirituality. In some ways, Tacey says,
one could be suspicious that church, and theologians in particular, would be
comfortable with the idea that “God is dead”. This would allow them to pick over the bones endlessly without feeling
that there is any change to their base perceptions and directions. Unfortunately, he states, a living God and a
dynamic world are simply not like that.
The tension created in raising
the status of experience alongside scripture and tradition has been with
theology over centuries. In the recent
past the emphasis in much of Christian theology has been on a God who is
all-powerful and transcendent. Tacey
believes youth today see a God who is far more part of our world and imminent,
present among us in our world and its people and in the wonder of the
cosmos. He holds that youth, and one
could say many adults, no longer attend religious ritual unless it has an
experiential meaning for them. It must
express their experience and it must express their spiritual search or they
will simply vote with their feet.
Many of the concepts of the traditional, transcendent theology are
unintelligible to youth, according to Tacey. Much of Christian spirituality has been based on a retreat from the
world and a need to disregard the self in personal sacrifice in order to be
close to God. Many youth find this
incomprehensible. The concept that
Jesus gave his life for the salvation of a sinful world is seen as negative. The world and its creation and our place in
the cosmos are both such a wonderful mystery and such a wonderful gift, that it
is difficult for young people to understand how anyone can present the world in
such a negative way that it is something to be shut out or overcome.
Conversations
of Conflict
Institutional church, as a way
to express the reality of spiritual search and experience, appears to be a
problem for many. Rolheiser refers to
these problems as modern divorces. First
there is the divorce of spirituality from the whole experience of church
(ecclesiology). Next there is conflict between
the approach of the religions towards sexual morality and young peoples’
experience of sexuality and relationships. Tacey also identifies this conflict as do Freitas and King[16].
Finally, there is the divorce between the experience of the spiritual
and the language with which it is expressed. Radcliffe* is among those who confirm this perception. These modern
divorces create conversations of
conflict between institutional religion and young people in particular. I will briefly examine each in turn before
focusing on the research outcomes in Australian schools.
Spirituality and Ecclesiology
This first conflict stretches beyond young people to a wider
society. O’Murchu believes that people
in the western world have no problem with belief in the Divine. Their problems begin with the way in which
formal religions present that belief. Tacey[17] sees
“old-style” religion as “plagued by doubts about God’s existence, because it
realises that its own conceptions are difficult to believe.” Spirituality, on the other hand, “does not
ask for proofs, because the proof is the experience itself.” Young people, as this research paper
indicates, are strongly experiential.
Hay and Hunt found that, among those who don’t go to church, there was a
perception that church did not supply anything that they needed at the
moment. Church was somewhere where one
went when one was in trouble or had a particular need to fulfil. There was also a strong opinion that church
failed to practice Christianity in the way that it was presented by Jesus in
the gospels. Finally there was the whole
question of religious language as not having any significant meaning for them
today. The following quote from one of
Tacey’s[18] students sums it up:
"The
most destructive force against Christianity has been Christians and the
complacency of the church. Churchianity
has virtually destroyed a good religion.”
Religion and
Sexuality
Rolheiser takes a traditionalist
approach to this conversation but defines it very well. He believes that there are non-negotiables
with regard to sexuality. The first of
these is that sex is linked to marriage. If this is not so, then Rolheiser sees the sex act as somehow flawed. In his description it is “schizophrenic” in
nature because it does not express the reality of a loving relationship. On the positive side there is capacity
through our sexuality to grow spiritually within a dynamic relationship and
achieve sanctity while observing Christian morality.
Freitas and King writing from
the
U.S.,
believe this more traditional view does not ring true to young people. They believe that the message they have heard
since High School has simply been negative. It is an argument that somehow heterosexual relationships outside of
marriage lead to sex which itself leads on to unwanted children or worse,
abortion. This negative message is
presented as a slippery slope down which we should not begin to tread. This
negative approach is not accepted by Freitas and King. The message of “save yourself for marriage” is not one that speaks to a
generation where people are marrying later and later in life. They are not deferring the relationships that
are a natural part of life and would, in earlier times, have led to marriage at
a younger age. Study, the need to establish career, and, for many, the
fragility of employment are all leading to a different society in which people
are marrying later, if at all.
In
Australia, for instance, marriage
is in decline. The 2001 figure for
marriages in
Australia
was the lowest since 1978.[19] There is a trend towards a higher median age
for first marriages. In 2001 it was 29
years for men, an increase from 24 years in 1981. For women the median age for first marriage
is 27 years, an increase from 22 years since 1981. The reality of this situation, recognised by
Freitas and King, is that young people will not defer close relationships,
including sexual ones, for a span of years which is far beyond that asked of
their parents and indeed perhaps their older brothers and sisters. They write a practical guide to relationships
that presents, in an upfront and non-threatening way, the issues and the
decision-making involved without being judgmental. For them, it is this type of approach that
church needs to take if it is to win back the allegiance of youth on these
issues. The final comment of one of
Tacey’s students that “sexuality was an obstacle to my faith” is telling in its
simplicity and its reality.
Tacey believes that young people
are looking for an integration of sexuality with the whole of life. They see sexual expression, as do Freitas and
King, as an issue that varies with the level of commitment between couples.
Tacey[20] believes that
“religion has placed
itself in an invidious position by representing God as an antagonist to the
bodily vitalities …….. by placing the burden of sin upon sexuality and the body
it has weakened its own credibility.”
Language
Radcliffe says that many
homilies fail to touch their congregations. They use a theological language that has little relevance to people
sitting in the pews and to their ordinary lives. In saying this he is not necessarily
rejecting the theology. He is simply
making a plea that the language in which the theology is presented be
changed. It needs to be translated in a
way that can be understood in today’s world. In Radcliffe’s opinion this challenge has appeared before in the history
of the church. In past times it saw the
birth of the Dominicans and then the Jesuits. He makes no suggestion as to what will be the outcome this time around.
But he is clear that the language in which we express our religion, which may
have expressed spirituality for previous generations, no longer speaks to many.
Hay and Hunt endorse this lack
of a “widely plausible common public language” for spirituality. For an earlier generation spiritual
expression was enabled through the church. In our society Hay[21] believes there is suspicion of institutional church and a lack of plausibility
for the institution. There is also a
learned embarrassment with anything religious. According to Tacey the expression of spirituality in a post modern world
is complex. The languages that will be
required to express it must borrow from numerous quarters. The languages of mysticism, philosophy, anthropology
and even psychology must be examined and included in a new language of
theology.
Growing
in Faith – The Education Challenge
I will now refer to research outcomes with some specific groups of young
people in Australian schools who are part of these “conversations of
conflict”. Their schools, while
differing in approach, take their formal religious education seriously. The survey instrument used in this research
was administered in March and April in the year 2000 for some Queensland
Catholic schools (CS) and in March 2003 for an all-boys independent school, in
British terms a public school (PS), in
New
South Wales. The age groups of the students were similar despite the survey being
conducted in different educational jurisdictions. On average
New South
Wales students are six months older than their
Queensland counter-parts. The survey was administered among the CS
group to Year 12 students and for the PS group to Year 11 students. What appears to be a one-year gap is
approximately only six months on average.
The socio-economic circumstance
of the CS group chosen were very similar and were average to below-average as
measured by the Commonwealth Department of Education Training & Youth
Affairs[22]. This model was developed by the Commonwealth
to provide a socio economic measure based on data supplied from the schools
themselves and the national census of population and housing. The scores nationally are organised around a
Mean of 100. For the CS group the socio
economic scores of their schools ranged from 103.3 down to 89.9, indicating
that the CS sample was drawn from a population with average and often
below-average socio economic background.
In contrast the PS group had a socio economic score of 118. This is well above the national average of
100 and the average for the state of
New
South Wales of 105. According to Hay[23] higher socio economic status would tend to produce a higher recognition and
reporting of Limit Experiences. This was
the case among the two groups, but only marginally so.
Experience questions in the survey were based on the Hay[24] reporting framework developed through his extensive work on Religious
Experience. They were designed so that
there was at least one question from each of the eight Hay framework items. There were both direct questions, for
instance “There are times when life has no meaning”. Direct questions were answered using a five
point scale from “Certainly false” to “Certainly true”. There were also longer passages based on
personal accounts of Limit Experience from the collection of the Religious
Experience Research Centre[25]. After the passages students were asked “Have
you ever had a similar experience yourself?”. This was scored on a four point scale ranging from “Never – not at all”
through to “Definitely – yes, I had a similar experience”.
Only one question was changed between the two surveys. A statement reading “At times I have felt
that there is no purpose or reason for living” had been included in the CS
survey and was removed for the PS group. Substituted was a question that read: “At times I have experienced help
through prayer”. This small change was
justified by the fact that there were other items on depression and meaning in
life already included among the Experience items. There had also been no direct question on
prayer in the original CS survey. This
had only been assessed by use of the written passage option.
The survey return response rate was very high. Over 90% of the PS students responded. The CS response rate was 71%. Given that permission notes from parents had
to be sought and signed prior to any use of data these response rates were
regarded as very good.
Comparisons and Contrasts
Response rates to the Experience questions were so positive that the
unusual step was taken of tightening the criteria for responses so that only
responses at the highest possible level were regarded as positive. That is, a response of “Certainly true” for
direct questions and “Definitely – yes, I had a similar experience” for the descriptive
passages, were the only responses accepted as positive in the final
analysis. For the PS group 88% of the
students answered positively to one or more of the twelve items directly
related to the eight Hay categories. The
CS group had a 76% response rate for these questions. The results are given below as Table 1. The Hay[26] response rate among British adults is included for comparison.
Response Rates Using Hay’s Categories of
Religious Experience
Type of Experience |
Hay Response Rate |
Catholic Response Rate |
PS Response Rate |
Patterning of events |
|
29% |
28% |
24% |
Awareness of the presence of God |
27% |
20% |
14% |
Awareness of receiving help in prayer |
25% |
11% |
16% |
Awareness of a guiding presence not called God |
22% |
22% |
12% |
Awareness of the presence of the dead |
18% |
21% |
9% |
Awareness of a sacred presence in nature |
16% |
14% |
6% |
Awareness of an evil presence |
12% |
19% |
18% |
Experience that all things are “one” |
5% |
5% |
4% |
| Total Positive Response |
48% |
76% |
88% |
Table 1
Although there was a significant difference between the two groups on
level of church attendance (13.1% of the CS group and 5.3% of the PS group
attending every week at least) the responses to the Values and Attitudes
questions are very similar. The majority of the respondents believe in
God, although there is hardly consensus on this point. The vast majority see that religion and faith
are very personal and that you do not need to be actively involved, nor does it
matter what you believe in order to lead a good life. This attitude is reflected in their approach
to belonging to a particular church. The majority believe that they can express
their spirituality without belonging to a religious organisation.
It does seem however that the public face of church is still given due
respect. It seems that the vast majority
do not believe that religion has nothing to say about important issues
in life. It may, however, have
difficulty in being able to say it in a coherent manner.
Radcliffe states that much of the teaching of the church is
incomprehensible to many because it does not reflect their real experience of
life.
“We do not find it
easy to proclaim our faith in ways that touch and change people’s lives. Often when we begin to talk of our faith,
people become embarrassed and change the subject, or else they are just
bored.”
The teachers in both types of schools face just this predicament, often
on a daily basis. On the other hand,
there are positive signs of a spiritual quest for meaning among youth. Recognition of limit experience in their lives
is remarkably high. They do not reject
religion out of hand, as their positive response to religious education as a
subject indicates. However, the link to
formal religion is tenuous.
Ways
Forward
It is very easy to give an outline of the spirituality of the post
modern world, including youth spirituality, and be critical of institutional
church. Many in the field certainly
write in this manner. For both O’Murchu
and Tacey there is a need to deconstruct our current religious institutions,
and the sooner the better.
For others such as Rolheiser the way forward is to better understand the
reality of the Incarnation. He believes that Jesus lives, today, in our
world. Rolheiser believes that to
understand this will assist us to come to terms with the reality and
difficulties of daily living. Any
society or institution faces challenges and imperfections. Church is no
different. Realising that Jesus is with
us in this struggle is a way forward.
Rolheiser has an interesting theological discussion on the institution
of Eucharist. When Jesus in the Greek
refers to eating his body and blood, the word used, according to Rolheiser, is
SARX. This is not a Greek word for a
glorified body. In fact it is the Greek
for the less attractive parts of the body, the guts, bowels if you like. And Rolheiser compares this to church where
the reality of any human institution is that it will be decidedly imperfect no
matter what we do. We are challenged to
engage in this imperfect community. The
question this researcher has is whether the church will actually be able to
theologise itself as an imperfect community. At times, for instance in the pope’s apologies for previous crimes of
the church, it appears to be trying to publicly admit its sins and
imperfections. Perhaps the crisis of
child sexual abuse in Christian churches has helped to bring us to this
reality. The real question for society
at the present time is whether such an admission of imperfection and guilt for
past acts would be believed. If one
admits imperfection but appears to act as though this is not the case then
there is a crisis of perception and belief. This needs to overcome prior to young people embracing the
institution of church.
O’Murchu agrees with Rolheiser that Jesus lives in this world and hence
our challenge is to reach out and embrace him in all the many forms that he may
take, in particular the people around us. However, he extends the idea of incarnation into the times before Christ
right back to the beginning of evolution. For O’Murchu, God is present with this world from the very beginning.
That is the reality of incarnation. God
did not begin to be present on earth only as a visitor born 2000 years
ago. God has been with us from the
beginning of time. O’Murchu, however,
expresses a desire to deconstruct the institution, keeping very little of its
current reality.
Tacey agrees. For him, at a time
when many in the west, and young people in particular, appear to have a real
spiritual hunger, the church appears unable to respond. Perhaps it is because church has for so long
been used to being under attack and to defending itself. Perhaps it is because there is an
ossification of theological language. If
current language does not speak to people today, to develop a new one is
difficult in a climate where the institution is still in a defensive mode.
Those who try to take the conversation to new frontiers may do so at their own
risk!
For Tacey[27] the
task is to completely deconstruct and change existing religion so that it is
somehow relevant to lived experiences of people. Spiritual experience is the essence. “Once one has an experience of the sacred,
questions of “belief” ………. become secondary.” He believes spiritual experience is the basis of all religions.
Faith, for Tacey, is a leap into the unknown. We need to realise that the images that we
have of God, be they created by theology or not, will fall short of the
reality. Thus searching for new images
of God provides churches with the opportunity to mourn the passing of a
theology that has now passed it useby date. In fact Tacey finds it distasteful that churches attempt to present a
positive vision of their future while all around them is crumbling. For Tacey there is a need to get on with the
job of mourning what is past, burying it and reinventing the future.
What might a new theology look like? The word “God” itself, according to Tacey, may need to be
redefined. One student in the research
presented here had obviously puzzled over the apparently simple survey question
“Do you believe in God?” (Not so simple in reality perhaps!) The dogmatic
theologians, those whom Tacey would accuse of rejoicing in the “death of God”
so they can get on with endless interpretations of the remains, could argue endlessly
about what definition of “God” this question intends. The reality for the
student in question was not theological argument but a personal conviction. The
marks on the paper seemed to say that the student had been inclined not to
answer the question. However, he or she eventually did so with a hand-written
comment to say “This is a life-force”. So God may be redefined as a process, a force, or an intimate intense
presence and experience. Whatever this is, it takes us to a reality of life
where we experience the mystery beyond ourselves without necessarily having any
answers.
This is a radical view. It is a
far more radical one than that of O’Murchu who also wishes to deconstruct much
of the institution of church. However,
O’Murchu’s hope is that the cosmos and our understanding of it will begin to
engage theology. Perhaps this has
already happened in some way since Copernican times. We now know so much more
about our place in this huge universe. We can ponder on the mystery of it, we can ponder on our smallness
within it, and the reality of our existence. For O’Murchu new theology begins when the very existence of our earth
and spirituality is traced back over 4 million years. There must be recognition that in some way
the incarnation of God, expressed in Jesus, has been here from the beginning of
time.
Who then is Jesus? By having
Jesus as central to his redefinition of theology O’Murchu appears to be closer
to Rolheiser[28] than
one might think. For O’Murchu Jesus is
the final stage of the biological evolution of the human being. It is now time for spiritual evolution to
begin. The meaning of the risen Jesus is
found in the spirit sent to renew and grow our spirituality. Jesus celebrates in some way the pinnacle of
biological evolution. He sends the spirit to begin the era of spiritual
evolution.
Calvary, for O’Murchu,
is not to be defined as a sacrifice necessary for the redemption of mankind. It
is not an offering that had to be made to somehow bring us to God. This would
be regarded by O’Murchu as a denigration of tens of thousands of years of human
spirituality before Jesus’ birth. He
sees that a language of sacrifice for sin as the meaning of
Calvary
no longer speaks to modern society and certainly does not speak to youth in an
intelligible way. Jesus should be
regarded as a symbol of the way in which humankind can break a chain of violence
and injustice that stretches back over time. This interpretation of Jesus speaks boldly of social justice. From the
findings of this research[29] the call for social justice would probably be the loudest voice among youth
today. They affirm both social justice
and the reality of a mystical spiritual search as part of their world vision.
Summary
This paper has attempted to present a summary of some of the views on
youth spirituality that are currently abroad and some of the researcher’s own
findings on youth spirituality. It presents both the challenges and the
realities of an interface between youth and church that will continue to be a
difficult one.
The major conversations of conflict taking place centre first on church
as an institution, ecclesiology. This
first conflict will not be resolved, however, until the other conversations
have developed towards consensus, namely that on sexual morality and most
importantly that on language. It is
incongruous that the real spirituality evident among youth, so clear from this
research, has no coherent language for expression.
The one thing that does appear to be clear is that there is a need to
rethink and re-present much of our formal theology in a way that can once again
direct and touch people’s lives and provide them with an expression for the
reality of their spiritual experience.
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* Radcliffe, T. (2002) Preaching to the perplexed. Priests and People (on-line serial), December. Hostname:
http://www.priestsandpeople.co.uk/cgi-bin/archive_index.cgi?priestsppl-author-Timothy_Radcliffe_OP
Dr Paul McQuillan is Director of Administrative Services for Archdiocese of Brisbane Catholic Education and an Honorary Research Fellow with Australian Catholic University. Prior to appointment to his current position, Paul has worked as teacher, Principal and system administrator for thirty years with Catholic schools in many parts of Australia.
© Copyright is retained by the author
