The YCS in the 1960s and its response to Vatican II

Thanks to Brian Lawrence and ATF Press for permission to post this article by Brian reflecting on his experience as a member of and working with the YCS during the 1960s and early 1970s.

This article also forms a chapter in the latest issue of the Cardijn Studies journal edited by Hilary and published by ATF Press.

It is available for purchase here:

From Catholic School Rooms to a Radicalised Student Movement (ATF Press)

The Young Christian Students movement and its response to Vatican II

Asking someone to write about the events of their youth, as I have been asked to do for this series, is an invitation to the writer to reflect on their “coming of age” years. There is a danger in reflecting on these years of seeing them as pivotal years in the nation’s history, or in Church history, rather than seeing those years as a snapshot of longer-term trends. There is a risk that the reflections may be too subjective. Nevertheless, these coming of age years may coincide with a time of momentous change, such as the changes wrought by the Covid Pandemic. I am inclined to the view that the 1950s to the 1970s should be seen as a continuum, even though there were significant markers within that time, such as the student riots in Europe in 1968 and the emergence and impact of opposition to the Vietnam War. Some of this change was driven by the emergence of youth as a significant social and economic class.

The life of the youth movements of the Catholic Church, and the Young Christian Students (YCS) in particular, cannot be disengaged from these broader social changes. But for the YCS, like for Catholics generally, the 1960s was a period of great change, with a leap greater than any change in society generally. Two aspects stand out: the impact of Pope John XXIII, now sainted, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) that he initiated. Vatican II was intended to “open the windows and let in some fresh air”. It did.

In setting the scene for the YCS in the late 1960s, a few words on my own experience could illustrate changes in the Church. In 1956 I was a ten-year old altar boy reciting responses in Latin in a church where the priest had his back to the congregation during the most important part of the Mass, when only altar boys could just see what he was doing. For me, there were things to do: lighting and snuffing out candles, mumbling the Latin responses, presenting the cruets of water and wine, remembering to ring the bells at the right time, and holding the communion-plate under the chins of those kneeling at the altar rail to receive communion. But for those on the other side of the altar rail there was little physical engagement. It seemed to have always been so.

Ten years later, with Vatican II finished in December 1965, the documents of the Council had opened the Church to thinking that had been developing within the Church, but which was unexpected by most Catholics. It is sometimes overlooked that Pope John XXIII’s social encyclicals Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963) had started to shape the way in which many Catholics viewed their role in secular affairs.

For most Catholics Vatican II manifested itself in the changes to the Mass. Latin was gone and the priest faced the congregation and spoke in English. That was momentous enough, but it also carried opportunities for lay participation and, especially, youth participation. Prayers of the Faithfull and Offertory Processions gave them an opportunity to express their faith. “Youth” and “Folk” masses featuring hymns sung in English, reflecting some contemporary musical styles, were popular. Para-liturgies were also developed by and for students and youth in schools and parishes. These new and challenging activities drew many into an active social circle which was part of the strength of Church youth activities in the 1960s. And this was a time when most young Catholics attended Sunday Mass.
But there was something more profound going on. From the late 1930s there had been increased interest in the lay apostolate and, in particular, the Catholic Action movements in Europe. The Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, was a strong supporter of new lay movements. Consider the following report in The Advocate (published by the Archdiocese of Melbourne) of 7 November 1945 regarding a speech given by the Archbishop to a meeting of some 350 YCS members, under the heading “Laity Should Lead in Catholic Action”. The introduction stated that the Archbishop had delivered an “important pronouncement on the respective roles of clergy and laity in Catholic Action”:

“It was most heartening and inspiring for him to find himself in the midst of young people, said his Grace the Archbishop, addressing the gathering of young students during the afternoon. He felt, at the end of a long life [he was 81 and lived for another 18 years], that he had lived into a new era, because he could well remember the time when anything like that gathering would be quite unthinkable. Catholics in Australia and elsewhere were always good religious people; but sometimes the more religious they were the more they kept to themselves and the less help they were prepared to give to others. Their idea was that they had come into the world to save their own souls and they looked upon that as a full-time employment.

With modern conditions that theory had been exploded, said his Grace. One of the most remarkable things done by any of the Popes—and very remarkable men in recent times they had been—was when Pius XI started this great movement of Catholic Action….

It enabled the modem Catholic world to change its outlook, and to attempt things, and achieve them, that would have been quite impossible before Pius XI touched this spiritual button and set going the new spiritual machinery.

This movement, as an organised movement, was quite a new thing in the Church…. He had a feeling sometimes that in some places there might be difficulty in changing over. The laity might still be inclined to rely too much and too heavily upon the priests; and the priests, too, might be inclined to take a place within the Catholic Action movement that the Pope never intended. But in Catholic Action it was fundamental that the leaders were to be lay people, young and old: the priest had his place not as leader, but rather as a sort of trusted consultor, who would be ready to give his advice when it was needed.

In Australia, he believed they were giving an example of Catholic Action at its best, said the Archbishop. He did not know any place where Catholic Action had made more progress than in Australia, and he hoped that the lay people would continue to take their proper place in the movement, and, if necessary, insist on their right, to leadership and initiative. Nobody could challenge their right. The priests, on their side, would walk warily, and be ready to foresee difficulties and in due time give sound and wise advice whenever it might be needed. It was not the Pope’s intention, nor was it needful, that they should lead the various movements. Their work was to guide gently and cautiously the activities started and. worked out by the laity.” (Subheadings omitted.)

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172223806

This is a remarkable passage, well in advance of Vatican II’s recognition of the right of the laity to participate in the mission of the Church. In Melbourne, at least, this attitude had permeated the lay movements, though by Vatican II the use of the term Catholic Action had mostly fallen into disuse. The term Catholic Action was emerging in political debate in connection with the campaigns by Catholics to counter the influence of communists in the trade union movement and to strengthen their influence in the Australian Labor Party.
In addressing a YCS rally in May 1950 Archbishop Mannix said:

“I am sorry we ever called this work Catholic Action – the name was being used in other places before the movement reached Australia – a name which is so frequently misunderstood. For many reasons, the title ‘lay apostolate’ would have been much better.”

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172511173

As best I can recall my time in the Young Christian Workers (YCW) and later working for the YCS, the term Catholic Action had no significant contemporary use in the 1960s. We were involved in the lay apostolate, the youth apostolate, or the student apostolate.
The YCS and the YCW were established by the bishops, but with the stated objective that they would be run by their members, by students and by young workers. No doubt, there were many instances of a failure to observe the demarcations stressed by Archbishop Mannix in 1945, but, overall, the YCS was run by students for students. And the YCW was run by young workers for young workers. Moreover, many of those members understood that they were the Catholic Church in action in their own vocations and spheres of influence. Of course, this was reinforced by commentaries coming out of Vatican II, particularly the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity in December 1965, the last month of the Council.

It is important to appreciate that the YCW and the YCS were established in each diocese by a mandate from the local bishop. In Melbourne the YCW, from 1941, and the YCS, from 1942, were constituted as agencies of the Archdiocese and were part of the structure of the Archdiocese, the organisational link being diocesan chaplains appointed by the Archbishop. In this respect they were like the current day “official” youth ministries of Australian dioceses.

In summary, this was the Church in which the YCS operated in the 1960s.

Before saying more, it is useful to remind ourselves that, at the present time, all Australian Catholics under the age of 25 have grown up in a Church beset by the scandal and devastations of sexual abuse within the Church. By contrast, the 1960s was a period when students and young workers could be enthusiastic about their Church, especially given the kinds of views expressed by Archbishop Mannix and Vatican II. Sure, there was some apathy in the 1960s, but we now have significant antipathy.

I have limited knowledge of the YCS in the early to mid-1960s. My knowledge of the youth apostolate came through the YCW, which I joined in Fawkner in 1960 when I turned 14, the school leaving age at the time. I did not move beyond parish sporting and social activities until my second year at Melbourne University. In the following two years I was very active in the “apostolic” side of the YCW in the parish and at the university. In the parish we established a YCS group for secondary students and another group for tertiary students. The Diocesan Chaplain of the YCW (Fr Paul Willy) put me in touch with three YCW Branch Presidents (Peter Cowan, Bill O’Shea, and Darrel Bowyer) who were also at Melbourne University and the four of us started Jocist groups in the university. (The name being derived from the initials of Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, the French YCW.) We saw them as extensions of our YCW membership, but they were not YCW groups. These were different times without the pressures that are now on students. As well as being active in my parish, I was, for those two years, the Secretary of the Law Students’ Society and involved in various SRC-related campus activities. When I finished Law School at the end of 1967, I got a job offer from the National Office of the YCS which was then based in Melbourne. I seemed to be a reasonable fit for the YCS’s plans for parishes and tertiary education. I was National Secretary in 1968 and National President in 1969.

In the late 1960s the Melbourne YCW was strong in many parishes, well-organised by full time workers and backed by a large network of priests who were committed to the lay apostolate as expounded by Archbishop Mannix, Cardinal Joseph Cardijn (the founder of the YCW) and Vatican II. The enormous YCW football competition throughout Melbourne enabled YCW branches to stay connected with a wide range of youth in their parishes. In 1969 we had about 40 parish YCS groups and 20 or more parish tertiary student groups in Melbourne. Overall, there were about 5,000 students in the YCS, the vast majority in school groups.

My time with the YCS coincided with the start of a marked change in its “membership”. I use that word loosely because at this time there was no formal membership and YCS numbers were estimated by the number of annual programmes, or handbooks, sold by the National Office. In 1968 more than 30,000 were sold. By the early 1970s the sales had fallen to less than 10,000. This was the start of a long decline in YCS numbers.

Space does not permit a discussion of the reasons for this initial decline, but it was, in my view, mostly caused by the emergence of what we called the “New Catechetics” and the commercial publications that came with this change. The YCS and the YCS publications had become part of the Religious Education curriculum in many schools because of their ability to link faith and the lives and interests of students. That was the substance of the new catechetics and the publications it inspired were more professional in content and presentation than we could produce in the YCS. We consoled ourselves with the thought that it would only impact on “book members”. We were wrong. One Melbourne girls’ school which had YCS groups from the early days replaced the YCS with “Catechetics”. On top of this, by the early 1970s the YCS had to cope with falling numbers of Religious Assistants in schools and priests in parishes.

Despite the threat from these changes, the YCS and the new catechetics shared a common theology and pedagogy. A key figure in post-Vatican II catechetics in Melbourne, and beyond, was Fr Tom Doyle, later Monsignor Tom Doyle AO, Chair of the National Catholic Education Commission. He became the Director of Religious Education in the Archdiocese when I was working for the YCS and was based in the building next to the YCS offices in Cathedral Hall. I had known him very well since my university days. Tom Doyle was the priest who had the greatest influence on me while I was at university and in my YCS years. With the help of Fr Frank Little, later the Archbishop of Melbourne, we were able to have him “appointed” by the Archdiocese as the de facto chaplain to the National YCS workers during the substantial period between the official national appointments of Frs. Paul Kane and Pat Walsh. Tom Doyle and three other priests, Frs. Barry Moran, Eric Hodgens and Bob Maguire, were very well-known for their activities supporting tertiary students from the mid-1960s. The Chaplain’s house at Ozanam House, where Tom and Eric lived, was like a clubhouse for many of us. The four priests, like many other young priests in the Archdiocese, were not only in sync with Vatican II, but were ahead of it in regard to the lay apostolate. For that we need to recognise the leadership of Archbishop Mannix, Archbishop Simonds, the Coadjutor Archbishop of Melbourne from 1942, and Fr Charles (“Charlie”) Mayne SJ, Rector of archdiocesan seminaries from 1947 to 1968.

I should also make a necessarily brief reference to the political context in which the YCS worked. In the 1960s the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) continued to bleed votes away from the Australian Labour Party (ALP), as it had done since the mid-1950s when the DLP emerged from the ALP. The DLP was a predominantly Catholic party with its origins in differences over the role of Catholic Action movements, differing views on the threat that communists posed to Australian society and disputes about whether and how Catholics should organise in the ALP and trade unions. “The Split” kept the ALP out of office federally and in those States, such as Victoria, where the DLP was strong. Many Catholic families, including my extended family, were split by the issue. Support for the DLP among Parish Priests and Religious was especially strong, but among curates the proportion was more even. Perhaps most YCS members came from DLP-supporting families, but there would not have been much in it.

The great achievement of the YCW in Melbourne (and in other places) was keeping party politics out of the YCW. There was a still plenty of scope for social action without exposing the issues that separated the ALP and the DLP. We had to be careful in Melbourne in presenting various issues within the YCS. Not so in Sydney where the DLP was weak and there were strong connections between Catholic groups and the ALP. As I Victorian, I was amazed to find that the Diocesan Chaplain of the YCS in Sydney, a Parish Priest, appeared to be the de facto chaplain to the local ALP branch.

By the end of the 1960s, Vietnam became the predominant political issue. Differences over conscription, which took effect in 1966, were significant. Many were opposed to sending conscripts to fight but were still supportive of intervention. However, more Australian took the view that the war was unwinnable and/or unjust. When Gough Whitlam announced in his policy speech for the October 1969 that an ALP Government would withdraw Australian troops from Vietnam, differences over the issue within the YCW could not be avoided. Nor could they be contained in the YCS. The implications for the YCW were more serious because it could only work in parishes where the parish priests gave permission for it to operate. The DLP was a strong supporter of military support for South Vietnam. I believe that the YCW’s increasing support for the withdrawal of troops was a significant reason for the collapse of the YCW in the 1970s, at least in Melbourne.

1969 was also a year when Senator Frank McManus of the DLP was up for re-election in Victoria. He campaigned on a “Social Justice” policy, which was a fundamental orientation of the DLP, reflecting its Catholic Action and Catholic Social Justice connections. Although the YCS was established in 1942 as a social justice movement by bishops who issued annual Social Justice Statements, and the enquiries and other activities of the YCS in the 1960s covered social justice issues, the term “social justice” was not part of the YCS lexicon in the late 1960s.

In reading about 80 pages of the YCS 1968 National Conference Report I could not find even one use of the term social justice. My best guess is that the term was not used because it had become politicised by its association with the DLP. When the term re-emerged in the following decades, often used in conjunction with “peace”, it was seen by many to be a “left-of-centre” term and rallying point. The YCS’s 1992 National Conference Report also avoids the term even though there were many issues covered that we would now regard as social justice issues. Having read some historical documents in recent years, I suspect that the YCS was too late in returning to the term social justice as a description of itself. We still hear of comments from the schools to the effect that they do not need the YCS because they have a social justice group. On Facebook the YCS is described as “a social justice movement run for, by, and with high school students”. That is a good description, but there is a lot more to the YCS, as we saw in the 1960s.

I now turn to a closer look at the way Vatican II impacted the YCS in the 1960s.

The YCS entered the 1960s with a similar structure to that of the 1940s. When it was inaugurated in 1942 it was anticipated that the YCS would establish and run a wide range of activities within Catholic schools, much like a student council with a wide brief. The YCS therefore ran activity groups such as drama, handcraft, music, debating, literature, missions, and Red Cross. It included some activities that would now be part of the school curriculum. Above this structure was the Leaders’ Group which was both formation-oriented and the body responsible for the activity groups. General meetings of all members would be held from time to time.

By the mid-1960s activity groups had fallen away, replaced by groups working through the meetings set out in the widely distributed YCS programmes. Members of the Leaders Group would have responsibility for the other YCS groups.

YCS meetings, like YCW meetings, had three parts: a Gospel enquiry, a personal enquiry, and a social enquiry. The programmes contained Gospel texts with commentaries and questions for discussion. Social enquiries on cultural issues and social needs were in the “see, judge, act” format with helpful questions, commentaries, and suggestions for using that process. The personal enquiries had two sub-headings: Items of interest and Facts of action. This format was similar to the YCW Leaders’ programme. My YCW Leaders’ programme from 1966, which I still have, bears out the similarity between the YCS and the YCW at this time, though, of course, the topics for the social enquiries largely reflected the different environments of students and workers.

It is important to stress that this meeting structure had been carefully developed and promoted over the years. This is evident in John N Molony’s Towards an Apostolic Laity, which was published by the Australian YCW in 1960. At the time John Molony was a Diocesan Chaplain of the YCW. He left the priesthood in 1964 and later became the Manning Clark Professor of Australian History at the Australian National University. The relevant chapter of the book, is at

http://history.australiancardijninstitute.org/p/catholic-action-technique.html

The chapter makes the point that the “Enquiry technique or method” is relevant to each part of the meeting:

“Therefore, the Enquiry is the means used by the Y.C.W. which leads the human person to do three things

1) To SEE himself in the whole of his life, in his relations with God, with others, with his surroundings in his home, his work and his leisure.

2) To JUDGE what he has seen, to judge it with the mind of Christ.

3) To take ACTION, either personally or in conjunction with others; action which is formative, educative, of service to others, representative on behalf of those for whom he knows he has responsibility.”

The purpose of the process was to transform the worlds (or milieus) in which the participants lived and, in the process, develop a deeper faith. When I first started to become involved in the apostolic side of the YCW it was the term “formation through action” that was used to describe what the YCW was on about, and limited reference was made to the “see, judge, act” methodology. The YCW was a Christian formation movement based on action.

The personal enquiry, with its simple headings of items of interest and facts of action, was the critical area for faith formation. In the YCW the priest played a key role. The 1960s was a time when many priests could devote, say, an hour and a half on a Tuesday night for a meeting in the presbytery with the YCW Leaders’ group. The resulting personal relationship was very important in the development of Leaders. In schools, there were many Religious Assistants who could provide the same kind of support.

There was, however, a critical difference between the personal enquiries in the YCW and the YCS. In the YCW the personal enquiry discussion often concerned the experiences of the Leaders in their various work situations. By contrast, YCS members met in a closed environment and the discussions of experiences were necessarily limited. More concerning was the possibility that other students might think that the Leaders’ discussion of items of interest and facts of action was about monitoring school behaviour and that the Leaders were operating as “secret police” within the school. A change was made. By the mid-1960s the Personal Enquiry in the YCS had become the Review of the Week and the terms items of interest and facts of action had disappeared. The same kind of concerns lead to the change in the terminology in relation to social enquiries, which were sometimes school focussed: “see, judge act” was replaced by “see, reflect, act”. But what was the purpose and scope of the Review of the Week?

When I started with the YCS in 1968 change was already under way regarding the Review of the Week. It came with the Review of Life. That term is now dominant in the descriptions of Jocist movements, and it is generally assumed that the Review of Life was developed by Cardijn a century ago. However, the term was not used in the YCW or the YCS in Australia before the mid-1960s. It is not found in, for example, my YCW Leaders’ programme for 1966 or the YCS’s National Conference report of the same year.

A sign of things to come was found in the Australian YCW’s publication In This World of March 1967. It reproduced a paper from the December 1965 YCW International Council in Bangkok on the Enquiry Method, which was promoted as a method for meetings and personal life. It was Cardijn’s last International Council. The paper included:

“So, at the base of the Y.C.W. pedagogy, there are three fundamental attitudes which have prompted the “see-judge-act” technique and which express the orientation of the Y.C.W. method. These fundamental attitudes are:

1. Spirit of enquiry (to be in search of life).

2. Spirit of discovery and welcoming God acting in men and in the world

3. Spirit of committing oneself in charity to respond to the call of God.”

The document explained the see, judge, act method in some detail and concluded:

“This application of the method is called the “review of life”. This is not a discussion of ideas, or an examination of conscience: it is a period of deep reflection based on the reality of life, so as to discover the presence and call of God and to decide together on the personal and collective commitment needed…. This review leads not only to action, but also to prayer in order to return to God all that has been seen and done.”

So, the Review of Life was being seen as a way of looking, thinking, doing and praying. It was not only a meeting methodology or technique. In mid-1967 I prepared a programme for the Jocist groups at Melbourne University which included a two-page explanation of the Review of Life. I still have it. I cannot recall how I got it, but it was almost certainly from Fr Paul Willy (see above) or Fr Kevin Smith, the National Chaplain of the YCW. The Review of Life expressed the YCW spirituality at the time.

The Review of Life approach also came to the YCS in Australia following the conference of the International YCS in Montreal in 1967, to which Australia sent two full-timers from the National Office. The report of the YCS National Conference of May 1968 records the interest in this new development. The main topic of the conference was “Study”, but there were other sessions dealing with a range of matters, including the Review of the Week and the Review of Life.

A paper was prepared by the Melbourne delegation on the Review of Life and a workshop was held on it (see pages 65-70 of Conference Report). The paper commenced:

“There are two foundations upon which Review of Life is based. We believe that God is present and is working and is calling to us through the Human events of our life and secondly, that, when a community comes together the Holy Spirit works among them so that they may discover what God is saying. Review of Life is not a new thing, nor merely a technique, but simply reflection on the basis of the beliefs stated above.”

Extracts from the National Report of the YCS National Conference are at the Attachment hereto. You will see from the photo that the conference didn’t lack from a shortage of adult participation. The large number of nuns, priests and brothers added a considerable amount of intellectual input.

All of this sat very well with the emergence during Vatican II of the need to read the “signs of the times”. Basic reading in the YCS in my time was the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), which commenced with

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.” (N.1)

It was shortly followed by:

“To carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics.” (N. 4)

The YCS senior programme of 1969 had a feature on “Looking into Life”, which drew on, and referred to, the YCW’s publication noted above. After stressing the importance of an interest in people and awareness of situations, it explained the purposes of the Enquiry (previously called the Social Enquiry) and the Review. The Enquiry was firmly based on the see, reflect, act process. The Review was introduced by a passage drawing on the 1968 Conference report:

“There are two ideas behind the Review. We believe that

(i) God is present in life, is acting through the events of human life and calls us through these events.

(ii) The Holy Spirit is working among the members of the group, helping them to discover what God is saying.”

The group review was explained:

“The first step in making the review is that each member contributes a fact – an event that has happened, something said, some reaction to an event. The group reflects on each in turn, attempting to discovering the events of life what God is saying and what response ought to be made on our part.”

The programme provided a guide to the group review:

“The Review is flexible, but the following is a possible method of procedure:

  • What is each one’s reaction to the fact? Have we any comment to make?
  • What do we think God is saying through this fact?
  • Where does this situation fit in with God’s plan?
  • Is God asking anything of us as a group?
  • If we have already acted or made a response in our own particular situation, is any further action possible?
  • If we are to make some personal response, what is it to be? Can we strengthen the good we have seen? How can we make our part of the world – where we are – more open to God?”


Following the National Conference of 1966, the YCS changed the name of the Personal Enquiry, with its “Items of interest” and “Facts of action”, to the Review of the Week. At about the same time the Review of Life approach was emerging internationally in both the YCS and the YCW. In Australia, interest in the Review of Life was prompted, in part, by an article in the National YCW periodical “In This World”.

Note that not all of these may apply in every case.”

The personal review was described:

“We need the personal review of our day if we are to understand our life, and if our group review is to succeed.

Thus, we ought to reflect on the events of the day – on the situations that occurred, on the way we responded to them, and the people we met. “How was God calling me today?”

There is a close connection between Review and Prayer. The Review trains us to pray about the events of life, teaches us to reflect with God on the real issues of our life. Through it, we begin to integrate our life into the Mass, and we begin to see our need for close contact with Christ through the Sacraments.”

These passages were repeated with some small modifications in the 1970 programme. They were very close to the description of the Review of Life I was given in mid-1967.

Perhaps our most frequently quoted book at this time was Michel Quoist’s Prayers of Life, which illustrated the kind of prayer life the Review of Life worked towards. It contained the following passage in its introduction (which we put on the back cover of the 1970 programme):

“If we knew how to look at life through God’s eyes we should see it as innumerable tokens of the love of the Creator seeking the love of his children. The father has put us into the world, not to walk through it with lowered eyes, but to search for Him through things, events, people.”

This was the Jocist spirituality of the YCS. It was, in my view, the major change within the YCS in the 1960s.

We can see that here was no reference to the see, reflect, act methodology in the Review, although they are implicitly included within the list of questions. On the other hand, the Enquiry (formerly the Social Enquiry) in both the 1969 and 1970 YCS programmes was explicitly based on the see, reflect, act structure. In both programmes it is stated, consistent with the YCW document of 1965, that the there are two steps in the reflection, the Human and the Christian. In that document the Human reflection is seen as an introduction to the Christian judgment, which is a “reflection with Christ”, with reference to the Gospels. Today we would add references to Catholic social teaching which has expanded greatly since the 1960s.

The 1969 programme recognised the difficulty of fitting the three parts of the YCS meeting into the available time within schools. It was getting harder to find time within the school curriculum or outside class hours. Meetings A and B were on alternate weeks. Meeting A was Review of the Week (20 minutes) and Gospel (15 minutes). Meeting B was Review of the Week (10 minutes) and Enquiry (20 minutes). The same format and times appear in the 1970 senior programme. This was not ideal, to say the least.

This group Review was a big task for a session that is allocated 20 minutes or 10 minutes, depending on whether the meeting was Meeting A or Meeting B. How could it be done in any meaningful way? In practice the Review expanded to fill the available time, to the detriment of the Gospel discussions and the Enquiry.

There were some important questions. Did the focus on the Review of Life present some problems for the movement? Can a mass movement, as the YCS was then, be driven by a focus on the searching questions of the Review of Life? Was the Review of Life a good starting point for student involvement? I should note that my last project with the YCS was to write, along with others, the 1970 programme. I cannot recall how much I thought about these questions at the time of writing, but I did a little later.

A few years ago, I was rummaging through my old YCS documents when I found a handwritten draft of an article that I would have prepared in about 1972, a couple of years after I had left the YCS, but during which I had maintained a close involvement with the Fawkner parish YCS and YCS workers. The article was never completed. After referring to the move away from activity groups and the adoption of the Review of Life following the 1968 National Conference, I scribbled.

“… a mistake was made, by myself included, in confusing the aims of the YCS to develop a Review of Life approach, with the method of achieving it. Suddenly groups threw away the old method of Gospel, Personal Enquiry and Social Enquiry and replaced them by a non-directive fluid review. The theory was good – “don’t tell them what to do, let them discover it”. When starting a group we said “sit down, start talking- we will take it from there”. In fact you might be able to take it [reflection and action] from a general conversation, but practically speaking the YCS movement is not able to cope with this at all levels. An experienced Religious Assistant or Chaplain or an exceptional student could make a fist of it, but otherwise negative.

Since then a more realistic approach (the Gospel, Review and Enquiry meeting) has been developed. However, this does still not meet the practical demands of the YCS.

I am suggesting that as a general policy the YCS develop something that harkens back to the activity group era. Basically, YCS groups should be formed for some specific purpose and should be known by that purpose. The purpose should not be a gimmick, but should be [about] a real need in the life of the students and one which the students are able to do something about; and, in doing so, they will achieve a sense of achievement, group spirit, confidence and leadership. In fact YCS groups should not be formed unless there is something which they can do.

The basic thrust of the group must come from the purpose of the group. The group is different from the old activity groups because the group action is not just a label, but something which is worked at, ongoing, reflective, etc. It amounts to a continuing enquiry It is different to groups now doing inquiries because it is more sustained, more satisfying and more work. Having exhausted the action the group might dissolve or, hopefully, seize on something else to do. The first is not a cause for distress.

In a parish or school context, the YCS might have the following groups:”

The draft stops at this point. What I was getting at, I am sure, included something like the sustained campaigns on social issues that the YCW undertook in the 1960s. A campaign was an enquiry extended over a number of weeks. In Melbourne the most notable of these was the road safety campaign, in particular the public advocacy and lobbying for compulsory seat belts. However, my suggestion was to run a number of these campaigns at the one time. This was different to the enquiries produced in the YCS programmes where, usually, there was one meeting on each topic and enquiries were unconnected, although in 1969 there were five enquiries around the topic of Study. I was arguing for a social enquiry-driven YCS on social concerns and issues.

I did not seek to minimise the importance of Review of Life. Stapled to the draft is a page headed “Review of Life”, which includes the following jottings: “R of L is basic to the apostolic formation of lay people”; “R of L must be seen as an aim and not as a method”; “We must seek out the most effective methods of developing a R of L approach – problem of methodology”; “The methodology we use must be of value in itself”; and “The methodology will be pragmatic, rather than preconceived”.

The point I was making in these drafts was that the YCS should operate with a progression towards a Review of Life approach in meetings and, beyond that, to a member’s approach to life generally. The Review of Life, fully understood and not reduced to a methodology for meetings, is the goal, rather than a starting point of the student apostolate, one that seeks to integrate faith and the worlds in which students live.

The following extract is from the current “NUTS” Introductory Program of the Australian Young Christian Students. (“NUTS” is the acronym for “Never Underestimate The Students”). It reflects the fact that social issues generally present the usual starting point for the YCS. It sets out a path or journey from social engagement to deep faith formation.

“A major part of the mission of the YCS is to work for a fairer and more just society consistent with the teachings and values of Jesus Christ and the principles and objectives of Catholic Social Teaching.

But the YCS is more than that. There is something closer to home. The YCS also challenges students to focus on the reality of their own lives and the lives of those around them; for example, the needs of other students within their schools and local communities.

But the YCS is even more than that. Engaging with the world, from the local to the global, and working to improve the lives of our nearest neighbours through to those we will never meet will transform the YCS member. Leadership skills, self-confidence and social friendships will grow, not because they are pursued for personal improvement, but because they are the result of a commitment to something above and beyond self-interest.

So the YCS is a “formation through action” movement. Formation means different things to different people. When we talk of formation in the YCS we talk about Christian formation: where engagement in the world and serving the needs of others is seen as inextricably linked to a commitment to Jesus Christ.

At the heart of the YCS is what is called the Review of Life or the “See, Judge, Act “methodology. It is used by YCS groups as a method or process for discovering, evaluating and acting on a wide range of topics.

But the Review of Life is more than a methodology for dealing with social issues. Itis also personal. It is a way of thinking and working our way through a wide range of issues that come into our personal lives, where the judging or evaluating part of the process helps us to better understand ourselves and our relationships with others.

And there is another dimension to the Review of Life that moves us beyond the purely human. The Review of Life is also a process in which our personal and silent reflections on the realities of a commitment to Jesus Christ can become our prayers of life.

The NUTS program will introduce you to the YCS’s way of thinking and how it operates. We hope it will take you on a journey of social engagement and spiritual discovery. 

In my view, this is consistent with the theology, spirituality and pedagogy that Jocists drew in from Vatican II during the 1960s. The Review of Life in its 1960s form should be understood as a goal in faith formation rather than a starting point. Too often these days the Review of Life and the see, judge, act methodology are secularised, with only a passing nod the Gospels and Catholic social teaching.

In a social justice movement like the YCS, the see, judge, act structure is a useful starting point, but something more is needed if the YCS is to be a formation through action movement. The YCS should not be defined by its starting point or its meeting methodology.

The passage from the AYCS’s NUTS publication suggests that faith formation is a journey. We could think of the YCS as a train on a journey, a journey that will have frequent stops on the way to the end of the line. Some of those who board at the outset (for example, to only work on a good cause, but no more) might get off at an early stop, appreciative of the good work they have done. But the train must go on; and the job of the YCS is to offer to its passengers inspiration and reasons to stay on the journey.

Despite strength of the theology, spirituality and pedagogy, the fact of the matter is that the YCS and the YCW have lost the institutional support that they once had. By institutional support, I especially mean the support of the bishops. I expect that while the bishops appreciate the social justice work of the movements, their focus in the allocation of scarce resources will be on activities that promote faith formation. Faith formation is intrinsically important, but it is also important because faith formation can also be a means of social engagement and transformation, and leadership development. I believe the funding and other supportive outcomes for the Jocist movements would improve if the Review of Life of the immediate post-Vatican II years were better understood by the movements, bishops and schools.

I had no significant contact with YCS workers and YCS groups between about 1974 and when I was asked in 2018 to join the National Adult Support Team. While I was ignorant of what was happening in the YCS I was very familiar with the content and the application of Catholic social teaching. Leaving aside, as I must, the huge social changes of the last 50 years, which will shape the way in which the YCS now organises, it is important to note the huge expansion in Catholic social teaching and its potential to be a means of changing the worlds in which students live and to deepen their faith.

I am still convinced that the strength of the Jocist movements is in their capacity to achieve three interconnected goals: faith formation, social engagement and transformation, and leadership development. It distinguishes the movements from other youth ministries that are currently better supported than the Jocist movements. If the YCS is to find sufficient student and institutional support, it needs to be a committed social justice movement based on the beliefs, values and principles of the Gospels and Catholic social teaching. I believe this will, be greatly assisted by a closer look at how the YCS responded to Vatican II in the 1960s.

Brian Lawrence

March 2023

ATTACHMENT

The Review of Life

Extracts from the 1968 National Conference Report of the Australian YCS

Armidale, NSW, May 1968

Workshop 4

Following the National Conference of 1966, the YCS changed the name of the Personal Enquiry, with its “Items of interest” and “Facts of action”, to the Review of the Week. At about the same time the Review of Life approach was emerging internationally in both the YCS and the YCW. In Australia, interest in the Review of Life was prompted, in part, by an article in the National YCW periodical “In This World”.

YCS History: From school rooms to a radicalised student movement

ATF Press will launch the next issue of Cardijn Studies featuring a collection of essays and interviews from those who were involved in the late 1960s through to the early 1980s in the Young Christian Student movement (YCS) with a webinar on 20 April 2023.

An international movement, the YCS was founded in Australia 1942 and was essentially for many years in Australia a secondary Catholic school movement. In other parts of the world, it was a tertiary sector movement. In the 1960s Australia had 25,000 members around the country. Groups varied in size from five or six to twenty-five members. Many Catholic secondary schools, and many dioceses, had YCS groups of senior secondary Catholic school students.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s things began to change. The leadership of the movement was changing. Chaplains who had been present for many years began to move on or were encouraged to move on by the student leaders. It was becoming more and more a student led movement, a movement ‘by students for students’ following the inspiration of Joseph Cardijn the founder of the Young Christian Workers movement (YCW).

In the late 1960s the Australian YCS began to participate in international meetings and in the 1970s various leaders, full-time workers from overseas, began to visit Australia. At the leadership level, full-time workers became more aware of what was occurring around the world in oppressive, military led, regimes and of apartheid in South Africa.

The leadership became aware of YCS leaders in other places were being imprisoned, beaten or tortured. Material was being sent to the Australian National Office, in Melbourne, from the international office or other YCS groups around the world or from within the Asian region. From the National Office material was disseminated around the country.

A rift developed between the bishops and the national leadership. School groups and groups generally began to close or cease to meet. At times this was encouraged by the full-timer workers or by school administrations. Nuns and priests who had been involved in the movements for many years were uncertain of what was happening. Some of the bishops saw the movement as becoming too left wing and too political.

Contributors to this volume include: Linda Baker (full-time worker in Perth and the National Office in the 1970’s and early 1980s), Trevor Bate (Regional Victorian worker in the early 1970s), Carmel Brown (full-time worker in Melbourne in the early 1970s), Mark Considine (National full-time worker in the early 1970s), Brian Lawrence (National Secretary and President in the 1960s), Anthony Regan (full-time worker in Adelaide 1969 and 1970), Pat Walsh ( 1968–1978, chaplain in the Ballarat diocese then as national chaplain) and Cathy Whewell (Adelaide full-time worker 1974–1975).

Hilary D Regan has been publisher and Executive Officer of ATF Press for thirty years and is the editor of the Cardijn Studies journal and several other ATF Press publications.

WEBINAR DETAILS

Cardijn Studies Launch: From Catholic school rooms to a radicalised student movement

Tuesday 20 April 2023, 5pm Adelaide

ZOOM LINK

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87957173847?pwd=OVFoYzRLaE5uRWZPeW5vd2hQbmZHZz09

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From Catholic School Rooms to a Radicalised Student Movement (ATF Press)

Webinar: Marc Sangnier, the Sillon and the YCW

ACI secretary, Stefan Gigacz, will present our April webinar marking the 150th anniversary of the birth on 3 April 1873 of Marc Sangnier, founder of the French democratic movement, Le Sillon, which had such a great influence on Cardijn and the YCW.

Deeply impressed by Sangnier’s movement, young Cardijn would later describe it as “the greatest surge of faith and apostolate that France has known since the Revolution.”

Welcoming Sangnier to Brussels in 1921, Cardijn lamented the closure of the movement in 1910 after Pope Pius X called on its leaders to resign and explicitly linked himself and his work to the Sillon’s heritage.

“The winds of the air and the birds of the sky carry off this seed and deposit it sometimes far away, in a field where God’s dew fertilises and multiplies it,” he told Sangnier.

The emerging YCW and other Specialised Catholic Action movements were the fruit of this inspiration with many early movement chaplains formed by the Sillon’s “method of democratic education,” which would provide the basis for Cardijn’s see-judge-act method of formation.

The Sangnier and Sillon influence also extended to the YCW’s sister movements, which would become known as the “Specialised Catholic Action” movements.

Across the Atlantic, Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker also drew inspiration from the Sillon through her co-founder and mentor, Peter (Pierre) Maurin, who had also belonged to Marc Sangnier’s movement.

In 1950, Holy See nuncio, Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, would characterise Marc Sangnier as the greatest influence on his early priesthood.

Listen to the story of this remarkable man and his movement at our April webinar on Saturday 15 April.

WEBINAR DETAILS

Tuesday 11 April, 7.30pm (AEST)

REGISTER HERE

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvfu2vrz8rGdO_wjR032j-kWBd-8XErAUZ

Faith in our struggle: South African YCS leaders against apartheid

Former South African YCS leader, Peter Sadie, is publishing his autobiography entitled “Faith in our struggle: A memoir of hope.”

He recounts his personal story as well as that of the South African YCS in this interview with Polity magazine:

“His story vividly illustrates how he grew up from a naïve, yet loving childhood, through the fires of divorce, deaths and broken political promises fracturing trust,” write Aluta Continua in Polity.

“Can lives inspired by faith restore compassion with the poor and act again to respond to their suffering?  Could this be a time of Kairos in our country’s growth to a more ‘critical loyalty’: from the innocence of our freedom in 1994, through the wasted years of state-capture, to the resurrection of a more mature political reorder?”

READ MORE

Faith in our Struggle: A Memoir of Hope – Peter Sadie (Polity)

Bob Wilkinson’s ‘New visions of priesting’

Driven by his conviction that the Catholic Church needs a new social movement led by young people and centred on “humanity and its common home, earth”, Adelaide priest Fr Bob Wilkinson has documented his involvement in the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement founded by Belgian priest Joseph Cardijn.

New Visions of Priesting, an interview with Bob Wilkinson, published by ATF Press, looks at the different ministries Fr Bob has had in his almost 70 years of being a priest, the common element of which has been working with lay people as they participate in the life of the Church.

The book was launched in September after editor Hilary Regan conducted a series of interviews with Fr Bob as part of the Cardijn Studies journal.

Some of the 89-year-old priest’s reflections, influenced by his background in sociology, reflect on what could be called the glory days of the 50s and 60s, a time when “being Catholic was like being Australian, for better or for worse”.

“You lived in that Catholic world, it was so strong,” he said in an interview with The Southern Cross.

“We weren’t a persecuted minority but we were still energised by overtones that we had been (persecuted) and that we were coming to the top.

“There was a great sense of solidarity, we’d reached the middle class through the Catholic schooling system and we were taking our place socially.”

But the former editor of The Southern Cross insists the book wasn’t motivated by nostalgia for the past, rather by the “precious lessons” to be learnt from the YCW, Young Catholic Students and other lay movements to which he was chaplain over many years.

In fact, he is all too aware of the realities of today, claiming the drop in church attendances dates back to the 70s but is only being faced up to by clergy and leaders now as the churchgoers on Sunday become the “departing end of the Church as we know it”.

Most importantly, he is concerned about the absence of young people.

“Denying the fact of youth abandoning Mass would seem wilfully negligent. ‘Absent from Mass’ is not everything in a person’s spirituality. Most young people still consider themselves spiritual, rather than religious. But having less than five per cent Catholic young at Mass calls for thinking beyond individuals. A social perspective is essential.”

Fr Bob acknowledges the temptation to despair but his mantra of “it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness” helps him to see it as another “revival” moment in the life of the Church.

“My main point of the book, what encourages and preoccupies me, is the urgency of a global youth movement around ecology, the whole Catholic contribution to ecology and ecology’s contribution to the Church,” he said.

“I really think it’s on the scale of Catholic education, what Catholic schools were at the time of Mary MacKillop.

“A global youth movement to help save the planet is the crucial thing facing everybody.”

Fr Wilkinson at home in North Plympton.

He stresses that it’s more than being ‘green’.

“At the centre of every green issue is the human issue and I think that’s where the Church is vital,” he explained.

“I think the great model for this is the Good Samaritan…the priests and the Levite on the way to the temple missed a half-dead man…I think we’ve got a half-dead planet and we are called to be the Good Samaritan.

While the global YCW movement had its roots in the neglected working class of Europe, Fr Bob said this became more of a symbol than a key element of the “vigorous youth movement” in Australia.

“What YCW communicated most was Cardijn’s truth of faith that every person is special to God, with a contribution to give,” he said.

“Shining the light on people’s lives was the key thing – work, home and leisure. The young factory workers were a precious resource, a treasure of society and Church, not a problem. Like the 19 out of 20 young people not going to church in Australia.

“The Church has been presented to young people as an inward-looking organisation that does some outside good.

“The fact is that our destiny is inseparable to the destiny of those around us. This hasn’t been stressed enough. Once you see that the struggle is for humanity and our common home, questions of the Church will sort themselves out.”

This inextricable connection with the world mirrors his own “progress in the priesthood”.

“I used to see the work of the priest as helping Catholics to live their lives to get to heaven, to put it crudely,” he said.

“The rest of the world was thought of as a quarry to make Catholics out of. I very much now see the Church as standing with the world and having a vital contribution to make.

“The role of the priest is to animate people to take their part in that struggle.

“Cardijn didn’t start from massive action, he always started with ‘who are you and how are you’ at the factory gate, that interest in the life of people.”

Other topics covered in the book include the fallout from the Church’s position on birth control, the impact of Vatican II on the laity, the Vietnam War and Basic Ecclesial Communities.

While it is not a biography, there are fascinating insights into Fr Bob’s early life growing up in foster care after his parents broke up, meeting his father for the first time just hours before his death.

New Visions of Priesting, an interview with Bob Wilkinson is available from ATF Press (www.atfpress.com) for $24.95.

SOURCE

Jenny Brinkworth, Time for another global youth movemehttps://thesoutherncross.org.au/news/2022/12/15/time-for-another-global-youth-movement/nt (Southern Cross)

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Bob Wilkinson, New Visions of Priesting (ATF Press)

Jocist Women Leaders Seminar, Leuven

Featuring speakers from Belgium, France, the UK, Uruguay, Australia and the US and hosted by the Catholic Documentation Centre (KADOC) and the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), the Jocist Women Leaders Seminar took place at Leuven, Belgium on 27-28 October 2022.

Reflecting the range of papers presented, the theme of the workshop was “To make daily life vast and beautiful: Jocist Women Leaders.”

Women leaders highlighted included Marguerite Fiévez, a key figure in the development of the International YCW and a close collaborator of Cardijn, trade union pioneer, Victoire Cappe, and Malaysian YCW leader, Irene Fernandez.

The workshop understood the term “jocist” in its broad sense, including not just those from a JOC (YCW) background but from the various lay apostolate/Specialised Catholic Action movements, including the YCS (JEC), JIC (Young professionals), JAC (young farmers) and others.

It is planned to publish select papers in an academic journal.

In another major initiative, an online biographical dictionary of jocist women leaders will be developed.

Immense thanks to the various project sponsors: American Academy of Religion; University of Divinity, Melbourne; King’s College, London; KADOC – KU Leuven; Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies; Dondeynefonds, KU Leuven; LACIIR  (Latin American and the Caribbean  Interdisciplinary Initiative on  Religion),  Florida International University, Miami, Fl, USA; Australian Cardijn Institute, Australia.

READ MORE

Seminar Papers (Jocist Women Leaders Project)

Albert Nolan: Priest, Activist, Author, and Renowned Theologian

By Terence Creamer with input from Fr Mike Deeb, Fr Mark James and Prof Philippe Denis

Well-known South African Catholic priest, anti-apartheid activist and internationally renowned theologian and author Fr. Albert Nolan has died at the age of 88.

He died peacefully in his sleep under the care of the Dominican Sisters at Marian House in Boksburg in the early hours of Monday October 17.

Born Denis James Harry Nolan in Cape Town on September 2, 1934, Nolan was born to a family of South Africans of Irish descent, who lived in Gardens. He went to school at St. Joseph’s Marist Brothers in Rondebosch and after a period working for a bank, entered the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church in 1954, taking the name Albert.

Awarded the ‘Order of Luthuli in Silver’ by then President Thabo Mbeki in 2003 for his “life-long dedication to the struggle for democracy, human rights and justice and for challenging the religious ‘dogma’ especially the theological justification for apartheid”, Nolan inspired a generation of Christian activists and theologians.

His dedication to the anti-apartheid struggle saw him decline the prestigious role of Master of the Dominican Order to which he was elected in 1983, as it would have meant him being transferred to the Order’s Rome headquarters. Instead, he convinced the Dominicans to allow him to remain in South Africa. At the height of the second State of Emergency in 1986, he was forced into hiding in order to escape from the notorious South African Security Police. Nolan was particularly vulnerable to arrest for steering the drafting process of the Kairos Document in mid-1985, which arose primarily from the work of grassroots theologians in Soweto and Johannesburg, but which he and Reverend Frank Chikane of the Institute for Contextual Theology (ICT) played a central role in editing.

Described as a ‘theology from below’, the document critiqued the role of the churches in apartheid South Africa, dismantled any theological justification for racism and totalitarianism and proposed instead a ‘prophetic theology’ akin to Liberation Theology.

From 1973-1980, he served as national chaplain for the National Catholic Federation of Students (NCFS) and also, until 1980, for the Catholic Students Association (CASA), which was formed in 1976 after black students began organising themselves into separate formations as Black Consciousness flourished.

Founding YCS in South Africa

In 1977, Nolan was instrumental in establishing Young Christian Students (YCS) in South Africa after he attended an International Movement of Catholic Students gathering in Lima, Peru, in 1975, where he was introduced to the See-Judge-Act method of social analysis and was inspired by Gustavo Gutiérrez, who later also became a Dominican and who is regarded as one of the pioneers of Liberation Theology.

From 1977-1984, Nolan served as national chaplain of YCS, which affiliated itself to the United Democratic Front, initially formed in 1983 to oppose the Tricameral Parliament but which also united more than 400 organisations across all sectors of society in the struggle for a ‘non-racial, non-sexist and united South Africa’.

Underground work

Nolan also played a brave role in the “underground work” of the liberation movements, notably the African National Congress, offering his support to activists, especially those who became victims of the apartheid regime’s violent and repressive security police. He was part of a secret underground network that managed logistics, including the transportation and movement of activists, providing safe houses and a means of communication while in South Africa.

The full extent of his role in these networks was revealed by Horst Kleinschmidt in a tribute to Nolan on October 20, 2022. Kleinschmidt, who was himself banned, detained, and exiled by the apartheid regime, disclosed that Nolan was part of a group of more than 20 operatives who smuggled communication out of South Africa to the then exiled African National Congress and returned with messages from Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki to activists inside the country.

“I reveal today for the first time that Albert Nolan was known as operative A4 after Black Wednesday [October 19, 1977, when Black Consciousness organisations were banned, editors arrested and opposition newspapers banned] and from 1981 onwards he was operative 42. The numbers ‘4’ and ‘2’ were scrambled into texts and figures – and the Security Branch never found the key to this messaging.” Kleinschmidt also revealed that the long-running operation involved the smuggling of letters, none of which were ever intercepted, as well as call-box to call-box communications that changed location each week and the swapping of money that made any tracing of bank records impossible.

Dominican provincial

Having been elected provincial of the Dominicans in Southern Africa in early 1976, Nolan relocated from Stellenbosch – where he had received his religious formation, and also served as university chaplain for several years up to the early 1970s – to Johannesburg. Poignantly, the move took place on June 16, 1976, a date synonymous with the ‘Soweto Uprising’ which was violently suppressed and is today commemorated as Youth Day.

As provincial, from 1976-1980, Nolan supported several of his priests – including Joe Falkiner, Benedict Mulder and Finbar Synnott – in their establishment of a simple-lifestyle community in a run-down building opposite the station on Central Avenue in Mayfair, a working-class suburb on the western edge of the Johannesburg central business district. He then made the bold decision to sell the provincial’s house in the leafy suburb of Houghton, in the richer northern suburbs, and relocate to Mayfair himself, where CASA, NCFS, YCS and the Young Christian Workers also set up their national offices. He would serve as provincial of the Dominican Order for two more terms, from 1980-1984 and from 2000-2004. Besides serving as provincial, Nolan played various other roles within his Order, including that of novice master and student master, which allowed him to continue to nurture and guide young people, as he had done for many years as a student chaplain.

Biblical scholar

A gifted Biblical scholar and theologian, Nolan completed his doctorate in Rome in 1963 – a period that coincided with the Second Vatican Council and which ushered in significant reforms across the Catholic Church. Having completed his thesis, Nolan decided it was ‘too expensive’ to have it published, a pre-requisite for being awarded the title of ‘doctor’ and, thus, he never formally secured the title that he had duly earned. He was also initially denied the distinction of being awarded an honorary doctorate when the Holy See, without explanation, disallowed the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) from bestowing such in 1990, presumably owing to misgivings at the time about Liberation Theology. However, in the same year, as a sign of solidarity, the Jesuit-run Regis College of the University of Toronto granted him an honorary doctorate. The Dominican Order recognised his contribution as a theologian and preacher of the Gospel when, in 2008, the Master of the Dominican Order promoted Nolan to a Master of Sacred Theology.

Nolan, however, preferred to see himself as a preacher rather than a Biblical scholar. He wanted the Gospel to make a difference in people’s lives, and did not view debating small issues of textual interpretation as the purpose of the scriptures. In his view, the scriptures were there to inspire, convert and transform people and lead them to change their lives and the world in which they live.

Jesus Before Christianity

Outside of South Africa, Nolan became highly regarded for his 1976 best-selling book Jesus Before Christianity, which has been translated into at least nine languages. The book was the product both of Nolan’s deep knowledge of the Bible and his work in the student movement where he gave regular inputs on ‘That Man Jesus’ in student conferences. While in hiding in the late 1980s, Nolan went on to write God in South Africa, which is the outcome of what he described as “doing theology in a particular context” and Jesus Today, which explores the spirituality of Jesus as a “spirituality that leads to unity with God, ourselves, others, and the universe”. A collection of his talks, edited by one of his brothers, Fr Stan Muyebe, was published as Hope in an Age of Despair.

Nolan, who was one of the first staff members of the Institute for Contextual Theology (ICT) in 1981, later become editor of the ecumenical Challenge magazine, widely circulated across all denominations and which offered a considered perspective on how Christians should respond to the struggle for democracy in South Africa before and after the democratic elections in 1994. Ecumenism was a theme throughout Nolan’s life and was evident not only in his student ministry and at ICT but in his close relationship with leaders outside of the Catholic church, including Reverend Frank Chikane, Dr Beyers Naudé and Reverend Cedric Mayson. Despite his criticism of the Catholic Church, he also remained respected by the Catholic hierarchy for his Biblical proficiency, his theological insight and his commitment to preaching the Gospel. He was, thus, regularly requested to deliver inputs and retreats, including to the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, particularly when it was led by Archbishop Denis Hurley during the last decade of apartheid.

Nolan was also a source of support to other religious in the Catholic church who took up an active role in the struggle, notably Sr. Bernard Ncube and Fr. Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, who was detained several times and banned. Ncube was a member of the first democratic Parliament in 1994, chairing the portfolio committee on arts and culture, and in 2002 became mayor of the West Rand municipality. In 1996, Mkhatshwa became the Deputy Minister of Education, a post he held until 1999. He was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in 1997 and in 2000 he became the Executive Mayor of the City of Tshwane.

In addition, Nolan taught at St Peter’s Seminary, in Hammanskraal, in the late 1970’s when a strong Black Consciousness focus was developed there, working particularly closely with Mkhatshwa and Buti Tlhagale in attempts to promote this voice in the church. Tlhagale is the current Archbishop of Johannesburg.

As a priest, activist, author, and renowned theologian Nolan offered a forceful yet gentle message of hope, particularly hope in the building of a non-racial, non-sexist, peaceful and environmentally sustainable South Africa and world.

SOURCE

Published on Polity.org.za and written by Terence Creamer with input from Fr Mike Deeb, Fr Mark James and Prof Philippe Denis and with additions arising from tributes delivered by Fr Mark James and Horst Kleinschmidt on October 19 and 20 respectively.

Jean Tyacke, unionist and YCW extension worker in South Africa

Jean Tyacke, who came to South Africa from her native United States as a YCW extension worker, has died in Johannesburg, just a few days before her 95th birthday.

“She might have been the last of the giant Young Christian Workers-trained unionists active in the apartheid era,” writes Paul Goller in the South African Southern Cross magazine.

Jean was born in the United States in 1927 and came to South Africa in 1959. Engagingly she retained her accent over the rest of her life. But, more characteristically, she continued her voting for Democratic presidential candidates up to Joe Biden.

In Chicago, probably her favourite city, Jean came to YCW early, after having been very active in Young Christian Students In her schooldays. Even then, she said, she saw herself more as a teambuilder than as a dominant leader; the apartheid regime came to dislike both.

In 1961, Jean married Eric Tyacke, founder of the South African branch of YCW in 1949 and the Urban Training Project (UTP). They lived in Robertsham until their retirement in 1987. The non-racial parties they hosted were surely the scandal of the neighbourhood. They didn’t, one suspects, make their children’s lives at the local government school any easier.

With journalist Sydney Duval and others, Jean participated in the drafting of the SACBC’s seminal 1972 pastoral letter condemning apartheid, “Call to Conscience”, and its subsequent study materials.

She also took part in the launch of the YCS adult Family Social Action movement.

Jean’s home was raided by the security police as early as the late 1960s; the Anglican dean of Johannesburg had been charged with participating in an alleged African National Congress plan to overthrow the government by force. Jean’s YCW heritage, building on her Catholic Christian faith, would not have let her fall into that trap.

From 1976, for more than three years the Tyacke family lived under the full rigours of the banning system, which attempted to destroy most aspects of its victims’ work, social and activist lives. Percy Qoboza, the YCW editor of The World wrote of Jean and Eric: ”Take heart, you two beautiful people: you do everything possible to bridge the growing gap between black and white”.

Jean worked at Wits University — after the employment element of her banning was challenged — and into the 1980s. She was able to see the education of her daughters Kathy, Teresa and Sheila continue into socially committed professions at Wits during this period.

Jean was employed at UTP only intermittently; but in 1999 the late Donovan Lowry found her help invaluable, not only in proofreading his authoritative history of UTP but also in adding to and even shaping his research material.

Eric Tyacke died on August 20, 2014, at 89.

In a letter to Eric and Jean on their retirement in 1987, Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban had summed up their working lives: “What a contribution you both have made in the building up of the worker movement in South Africa. You, and some others like you, have with great dedication, maintained links between organised Church and the worker. Thank you and God bless you for that.”

Reuben Denge, the director of WEP, the organisation that succeeded UTP, said upon hearing of Jean’s death: ”She really contributed immensely in the development of the labour movement in South Africa.”

SOURCE

Catholic activist Jean Tyacke dies at 94 (Southern Cross)

Pat Walsh recalls his YCS formation

A long-standing human rights worker and Timor Leste solidarity campaigner, Pat Walsh was national chaplain to the Australian YCS for five years, 1973-1978.

Some forty years on, he has written up his experiences looking at the impact on the secondary school YCS of this exciting but turbulent period of historic change and reflects on the experience and its potential lessons for today’s church.

Pat writes:

The movement known as the Young Christian Students (YCS) has morphed several times during its 80 or so year history in Australia. Once highly favoured by popes, principals and parish priests, YCS’s footprint today is far smaller than it used to be. Given, however, that the principles it represents both informed and were endorsed by the Second Vatican Council and remain highly relevant, this is a paradox.

Whether or not clues to this change of fortune can be found in the following account, it is to be hoped that Australia’s upcoming synod process will recognise what a unique vehicle the YCS can be to foster young laity and their contribution to the church and the world.

Looking to the future, he notes that “the Jocist review of life is not just a training tool or a practice confined to the YCS and YCW”:

It is grounded in, and an extension of, a common, almost unconcious, human habit that we use a thousand times a day. What Cardijn did was to formalise and baptise this see-judge-act reflex. Its practice is an enriching life skill. Many former YCS colleagues testify that it has served them well in adult professional life, enhancing their sense of responsibility for others and the world and engagement in many local and international contexts.

He concludes:

The fate of the YCS is no different to that of many other church entities across the Christian spectrum, particularly in Australia and the West. In that sense, understanding its current situation in Australia requires a broader study than the above sketch. On the other hand, in other settings the YCS remains a global Catholic youth movement. It continues to function in over 100 countries, particularly the South, and takes its lead on issues like climate change, refugees, conflict resolution, inequality, human rights, inter-religious dialogue and criticism of capitalism and consumerism from Pope Francis, himself from the
global South.

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Pat Walsh, YCS in the 1970s: Young Laity in Search of Vocation (patwalsh.net)

RIP +Bill Wright: From YCS to bishop of Maitland-Newcastle

Thanks to Teresa Brierley and MN News for allowing us to reproduce Teresa’s remembrance of the late Bishop Bill Wright of Maitland-Newcastle, who died on Cardijn’s birth anniversary, 13 November.

It is difficult to know how to begin this week’s message, with the news of the death of Bishop Bill Wright. Like me, many of you may have been thinking of him and holding him in prayer over the past few months, but nothing prepares you for the finality of someone not being there anymore. I have been struck lately by his empty chair in our Cathedral, and now it is really empty as we await a new Bishop.

I was thinking of him on Saturday as I attended The Cardijn Lecture, hosted by the Australian Cardijn Institute on The Emergence of Synodality: The Latin American Experience, presented by Professor Rafael Luciani, a Venezuelan lay theologian.

You may wonder why Bishop Bill was particularly on my mind. Both Bishop Bill and I, along with other people from across Australia, were part of the Young Christian Students Movement (YCS) of the 1960’s and 1970’s. This is a student run movement which uses the Joseph Cardijn method of “SEE, JUDGE, ACT” which enables students to SEE what is happening in the world around us and analyse facts, to then JUDGE this in light of our beliefs and the Gospel, and to take ACTION to transform not only the world around us but ourselves. YCS still exists and forms part of our diocesan outreach to young people.

Formation as Christian leaders

I was thinking of Bishop Bill and me, and how the YCS was so critical to our formation as Christian leaders, not only then but now and in all of the intervening years. I recall leading small groups in which we would reflect on Gospel passages and then the following week do what was called, the Review of Life. At quite a young age we learnt how to read the scriptures in light of the world around us and to then take action. It challenged us to look beyond ourselves in the light of the teachings of Jesus. Not only would we meet each week at school or in the parish, but we would have holiday YCS camps, where we would gather with young people from across a number of schools. I recall attending a couple of camps at Morpeth before I moved to Sydney. Like Bishop Bill, these experiences were life-changing for me and many others, who continue to lead our church from a ‘synodal’ position. We learnt the method of journeying with each other, of deep listening, of reflecting on encounters in the light of faith and of responding.

You may be interested to know that Bishop Bill died on the birthday of Joseph Cardijn, (13 November 1882 – 24 July 1967). Joseph Cardijn was a Belgian priest who devoted his life to bringing Christianity to the working class and advocating for an end to the dehumanising influences that were enforced onto them. He began the Young Christian Worker Movement (YCW) from which the YCS has its origins. I wonder if this is what led Bishop Bill to explore some of his priestly ministry in places like Moree and Mt Druitt. Like Joseph Cardijn, Bishop Bill saw the priesthood of the ordained as a means of bringing positive change and hope to those he encountered.

The Movement plays a role in seeing the world as it should be, and not as it is. I hope in this phrase you can hear echoes of synodality. Rafael Luciani spoke about synodality and the continual work of renewal and reform that is required in our church. Like the YCS, synodality is a movement of formation and change in which we respectfully journey with each other, from both grassroots and hierarchical organisations.

Council for Mission

During the webinar, on Saturday afternoon, I remembered the change management project introduced by Bishop Bill in 2017, which we call, Many parts, One body, One mission. The thinking behind these core changes sought by Bishop Bill was around having overt structures of participation across our diocese in aiding the curia to serve the diocese better and to work better together. He identified four core areas for change:

Instituting a ‘Council for Mission’ for the whole diocese, which will review our overall direction as Church, establish priorities for the development of our ministries, agencies and services and foster collaborative initiatives between agencies. The Council will meet regularly throughout the year and establish this as a priority.

The Diocesan Executive will be expanded to include Directors of agencies to enhance information sharing and opportunities for joint planning and projects across the curia.

Existing agency Boards and Councils will be charged primarily with exercising governance of the agency directly, through each Director, and providing periodic reports to the Diocesan Executive.

Within the curia, bringing together resources and services that all areas of the curia may benefit from, and which do not need to exist as separate units in each agency. This will enable agency leadership to focus on core business, reduce confusion across agencies and diminish duplication of staff and resources. This will also enable staff in these areas to have opportunities for broader experience.

While a lot of what Bishop Bill imagined has been accomplished, there is still work that needs to be done in achieving his vision for a more collaborative synodal diocese focused on God’s mission in our diocese. He would become very frustrated if the talk was only about structures and not about our core business of being the Good News of God’s love for all of humanity.

Governance principles

The following words come from a document which is ‘under construction’ as part of the work of one of the Synod Working Party’s Focus Group on Governance Principles and Documentation:

By virtue of their baptism, all the faithful enjoy true equality in dignity and action. Hence, all are called to co-operate, according to their particular circumstances and responsibilities, in building up the Body of Christ and in fulfilling the mission that God gave the Church to accomplish in the world. The organic nature of ecclesial communion and the spirituality of communion require the Bishop to evaluate the structures of participation envisaged by canon law. These structures guarantee a dimension of communion in the pastoral governance of the Bishop, insofar as they generate a kind of reciprocal interplay between what a Bishop is called to contribute to the good of the diocese through exercising his personal responsibility, and the contribution made through the collaboration of all the faithful. The Bishop should keep clearly in mind that these structures of participation do not take their inspiration from criteria of parliamentary democracy, because they are consultative rather than deliberative. Fruitful dialogue between a Pastor and his faithful will unite them “a priori in all that is essential, and… [lead] them to pondered agreement in matters open to discussion”. In promoting the participation of the faithful in the life of the Church, the Bishop will recall the rights and duties of governance to which he is personally bound. These include not only witnessing, nurturing and caring for the faith, but also cherishing, defending and proposing it rightly.

The co-ordination and marshalling of all diocesan resources requires opportunities to gather for joint reflection. The Bishop needs to make sure that these encounters are well prepared and not unduly long, that they have clear objectives and achieve tangible results. In this way, with a genuine Christian spirit, the participants establish a good mutual rapport and sincerely seek to collaborate. (N.165 Congregation for Bishops, Directory for The Pastoral Ministry of Bishops, Apostolorum Successores, 2004)

I believe this forms the legacy for our own diocesan synodal journey during Bishop Bill’s time as Bishop of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. We have been striving to create structures with a focus on both our need for spiritual and structural conversion so that God’s mission can be accomplished in this time and place. Pope Francis refers to this as our search for a new institutional model of Church for the third millennium.

Fiat voluntas tua

Bishop Bill’s last words to me in a text on Friday afternoon were, Fiat voluntas tua (Thy will be done) from one of his favourite prayers. I will finish with his other favourite prayer, the prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola, which both of us know from our years in YCS:

Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous, to serve you as you deserve to be served, to give without counting the cost, to fight without counting the wounds, to work without seeking rest, then to spend my life without expecting any other in return, then the knowledge that I do your holy will, Amen.

Eternal rest, grant unto him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace, may he rest in peace. Amen.

Teresa Brierley
Director Pastoral Ministries
16 November 2021

SOURCE

Teresa Brierley, Fiat voluntas tua (MN News)

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Death of Bishop Bill Wright (MN News)

Teresa Brierley

IYCS 75th anniversary

The International Young Christian Students (IYCS) movement has launched a year of celebration of the 75th anniversary of its foundation at international level in Paris in 1946.

In a video for the occasion, secretary-general, Innocent Odongo, has invited former members from around the world to share their memories by recording a two-minute video clip as follows:

  • Introduce yourself: name country
  • Share your favorite moment in the movement
  • Your wishes for the IYCS 75th Anniversary.

Send your videos to: is@iycs-jeci.org

The clips will be shared during a special online celebration to take place on 13 November 2021.

REGISTER FOR THE EVENT

IYCS 75th Anniversary Online Celebration, 13 November 2021

Building social activism and personal formation

IYCS gathering

In this article, ACI president, Brian Lawrence, who is also currently chairperson of the Australian YCS National Adult Support Team shares reflections he prepared for the International YCS Online Global Training Session on 24 April 2021.

Jesus, fill us with the spirit of your love.
Help us to see the world as you do,
to judge with your heart,
and to act with the strength and courage you have shown us,
as we work to transform our world.
Amen

This is the kind of prayer used by the Young Christian Students in Australia, based on the see, judge, act methodology developed by Cardinal Joseph Cardijn. The prayer recognises that the see, judge, act process is not just a meeting technique, but a way of life, a way of thinking about how we can be more Christ-like in our lives, from the personal everyday circumstances of our lives through to the great social issues of the world today. We must remember that this Review of Life is more than a meeting procedure.

I am participating in this training session in my capacity as the chairperson of the National Adult Support Team of the Australian YCS. I also have an indirect connection with the YCS in my position as President of the Australian Cardijn Institute. The Secretary of the institute, Stefan Gigacz, has made an enormous international contribution to the study and promotion of the works of Joseph Cardijn and the Jocist movements that he has inspired; see https://australiancardijninstitute.org/

A few words about my introduction to the YCS. I live in Melbourne. I joined the Young Christian Workers in 1960, while I was still at secondary school. Like many, I joined our parish YCW because of its social and sporting activities. During my University years I became a member of our parish YCW Leaders group and helped establish the YCS and a separate Tertiary students’ group in the parish. In 1966, three other YCW activists and I established Jocist groups at the University of Melbourne. As a result of my activities, I was employed full time by the Australian YCS after my graduation. I was National Secretary in 1968 and National President in 1969. I was a Barrister at The Victorian Bar from 1971 to 2008, save for 1987 to 1993 when I was a Deputy President of the Industrial Relations Commission of Victoria. From 2007 to 2015 I was Chairman of Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations, an agency of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. My experience and formation in the YCW and the YCS have shaped my life’s journey.

In the late 1960s there were over 30,000 members of the Australian YCS, including about 5,000 in Melbourne. At the same time, the Australian YCW, especially the Melbourne YCW, was regarded as one of the most successful YCW movements throughout the world. It was, by far, the largest and most effective youth organisation in Australia. Both organisations were at their zenith in Australia.

From the early 1970s until 2018 I had no connection with the YCW or the YCS, although I retained strong friendships with many friends from my years with the YCW and the YCS. When I joined the National Adult Support Team of the YCS in 2018 the YCW had disappeared in Melbourne and there was serious talk of winding it up as a national organisation. The YCS had only two small parish groups in Melbourne, but they ceased to operate during that year. The YCS had a small presence in only four other dioceses in a country of 27 dioceses. As a result it lost national funding from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, funding which had started in 1942 when the Australian YCS was established, with the strong support of the Australian bishops and with the intention that it would be the leading and preferred student grouping within Catholic secondary schools.
So, I come here very conscious of the limited contribution that the YCS can make to the work of the International YCS. However, a few short reflections from me might be of interest to delegates to this meeting.

The decline of the YCS

There are several major reasons for the decline of the YCS in Australia. Time does not allow a full discussion of them. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, what was then known as the “New Catechetics”, inspired by Vatican II and with an emphasis on real life issues and interactive teaching methods, suggested to some schools that the YCS was no longer needed. In the 1970s the widespread development of “social justice” groups in Catholic schools lessened the perceived need for the YCS.

The factor in the collapse in YCS numbers that I would like to highlight is the decline in adult support for the YCS. This has been particularly important because the Australian YCS is a secondary students movement. Cardijn used to say that the chaplain is everything and nothing in the YCW. The same applied in the YCS where priests and nuns and brothers in Catholic schools put in hours each week to develop among student leaders an understanding of the realities of life, the values that Christians should live by and how the students might transform their lives. It was in this context that see, judge, act became more than a meeting methodology. And it was this experience that led students to start looking at broader social issues and the possibilities for transforming the wider world.

Over the past five decades there has been a collapse in the number of priests and religious in Australia and in the time that they have available to do this time-consuming work. Both the YCS and the YCW have failed to engage lay adults in this process. Furthermore, in my view, the Australian Church has failed to provide sufficient intellectual and financial resources into supporting the development of the lay apostolate. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government employer in Australia with over 220,00 employees in a population of 26 million. Too often the demands of running a large and complex organisation have overshadowed the basic objective of Christian formation which is expressed in the YCS prayer. There are some parts of the YCS in Australia where we have adult assistants who can take on the traditional role of chaplains, but they are too few.

The term Review of Life, which is now a fundamental description of the YCS, and the YCW, was a product of the 1960s. It was a term unknown to the Australian YCW and the Australian YCS in 1965. It emerged in a description of YCW methodology at the International Council of the YCW in Bangkok in November and December 1965. It was a major preoccupation of the Montreal International Council of the YCS in 1967. In substance, it was intended to take the see, judge, act approach beyond a meeting methodology into a way of life, which included a life of prayer. Michel Quoist’s Prayers of Life was part of this change. Quoist, who had been a JOC chaplain in France showed how the see, judge act approach could extend to personal reflections on life and into prayer. And this fitted into the engagement with the world that Vatican II had inspired.

Review of Life focus

In Australia, at least, the YCS’s focus moved to the Review of Life. The 1968 National Conference marked a definite turning point. Almost overnight the YCS took up the “Review of Life” as the central part of YCS meetings. The old Personal Enquiry became the Review of Life and the other standard components of the meeting, the Gospel discussion and the Social Enquiry became less important. A few years ago I found some draft notes that I made in about 1972, in which I argued that:

“… a mistake was made, by myself included, in confusing the aims of the YCS to develop a Review of Life approach, with the method of achieving it. Suddenly groups threw away the old method of Gospel, Personal Enquiry and Social Enquiry and replaced them by a non-directive fluid review. The theory was good-“don’t tell them what to do, let them discover it”. When starting a group we said “sit down, start talking- we will take it from there”. In fact you might be able to take it [reflection and action] from a general conversation, but practically speaking the YCS movement is not able to cope with this at all levels. An experienced Religious Assistant or Chaplain or an exceptional student could make a fist of it, but otherwise negative.”

My notes record that there had been a swing back from that position, but that I was still concerned about the confusion of objective of the “whole of life” Review of Life and, on the other hand, the way in which YCS meetings were structured and how students could become introduced to the YCS. I suggested, in the absence of situations where there was an experienced adult (religious or lay), that the starting point for student engagement should be social issues for which the students would use the see, judge, act methodology, with a developmental process to take students back to a more personal, and prayerful, Review of Life. I think my suggestion would have been made by many others at the time.

Risks

The risk for the YCS, and for the YCW and other Jocist organisations, in starting from social issues is that they, or parts of them, may not move beyond social issues; and that social action may be seen to be the sole purpose of the YCS. The development in the body of Catholic Social Teaching since the early 1960s can inform and deepen social action, but there is a risk of secularisation, by which I mean engaging in social action that is unaccompanied by any spiritual purpose or dimension. The YCS’s (and Cardijn’s) vision and understanding of the lay apostolate can be lost.

Pope Francis has stated that the Church must be a “field hospital”. The Church, which includes Catholic bodies like the YCS and the YCW, must provide field hospitals, alongside the other field hospitals of civil society, and provide support and services to those in need, including those of different faiths or no faith. In this role the field hospitals must maintain their essential character. As the Pope has also stressed, the Church is not another NGO. Similarly, the YCS, and the YCW, are not just socially active youth organisations.

It is the work of a Catholic field hospital that will be the initial point of engagement for many young Catholics and, in practice, for many non-Catholics. The interests and work of a field hospital is varied. Here are some issues that concern Australian students: Homelessness; Asylum seekers/refugees; Indigenous rights; Environment; Consumerism; Mental health/Body image; Family relationships; Multicultural relationships; Education and the Future of Work; Social media; Rights at work; Bullying and harassment; Modern slavery/Human trafficking; Animal cruelty. Some of these are connected to the Sustainable Development Goals that this training session of the IYCS is discussing. Some of these topics manifest themselves close to home, but others are removed from the everyday lives of the students.

In days gone by our YCS and YCW groups usually worked out from the personal to the social, whereas now we are more likely to start from the social issues of the day. In my view, if the Australian YCS is to re-establish itself as a major movement in the Catholic Church in Australia it must engage in the social issues that concern students. The challenge is to find ways to work back to the personal transformation that the Review of Life promises. Sadly, in some places the Review of Life is secularised and treated only as a method for decision-making on social issues.

The YCS mission

The introduction to one of our Australian YCS programmes includes the following:

“A major part of the mission of the YCS is to work for a fairer and more just society consistent with the teachings and values of Jesus Christ and the principles and objectives of Catholic Social Teaching. ….

But the YCS is more than that. There is something closer to home. The YCS also challenges students to focus on the reality of their own lives and the lives of those around them; for example, the needs of other students within their schools and local communities.

But the YCS is even more than that. Engaging with the world, from the local to the global, and working to improve the lives of our nearest neighbours through to those we will never meet will transform the YCS member. Leadership skills, self-confidence and social friendships will grow, not because they are pursued for personal improvement, but because they are the result of a commitment to something above and beyond self-interest.

Formation through action

So the YCS is a “formation through action” movement. Formation means different things to different people. When we talk of formation in the YCS we talk about Christian formation: where engagement in the world and serving the needs of others is seen as inextricably linked to a commitment to Jesus Christ. At the heart of the YCS is what is called the Review of Life or the “See, Judge, Act” methodology. It is used by YCS groups as a method or process for discovering, evaluating and acting on a wide range of topics.

But the Review of Life is more than a methodology for dealing with social issues. It is also personal. It is a way of thinking and working our way through a wide range of issues that come into our personal lives, where the judging or evaluating part of the process helps us to better understand ourselves and our relationships with others.

And there is another dimension to the Review of Life that moves us beyond the purely human. The Review of Life is also a process in which our personal and silent reflections on the realities of a commitment to Jesus Christ can become our prayers of life.

In the following pages we will continue the introduction to the YCS’s way of thinking and how it operates. We hope it will take you on a journey of social engagement and spiritual discovery.”

The engagement in social issues is a necessary part of the reestablishment of the YCS in Australia, but it cannot be sufficient. The challenge for the Australian YCS is to find the ways in which we can take students on a journey of social engagement and spiritual discovery.

Brian Lawrence