Page 6, 23rd December 1983

23rd December 1983

Page 6

Page 6, 23rd December 1983 — University chaplains comment
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University chaplains comment

I READ with interest the article on public school lapsing, Dec 6, as University Chaplains arc keenly aware of how many young people arrive alienated from the institutional church, though rarely distant from Our Lord or the Creed.
Inevitably, in my experience, it is the human face of the local community which has distanced them from the Catholic comm unity .
Here at Nottingham every first year student is asked to sign a form which enquires if they wish to hear further from the University Chaplaincy. As the Catholic Chaplain I receive some 200 replies out of which some 70 students will say they do not wish to hear anything further from the Chaplaincy.
Roughly speaking these are the lapsed. Their choice is respected, and I do not go round to visit them, unless asked to do so, but it is made clear to the practising Catholics that part of their apostolate is to welcome back their lapsed friends. Recently a 'Welcome Back' Sunday Mass proved very popular and successful. Is there a case for general absolution here?
I know of seven Catholic
public schoolboys at Nottingham, from Ampleforth. Worth and Mount St Mary's. They are all practising theirreligion, even though they consider the Chaplain to be dangerously avant-garde.
I hope the Benedictines will take heart from this.
Fr B Brady Notts University Catholic Chaplaincy I UNDERSTAND the report from the Cambridge Catholic Chaplaincy was made by the Chaplain, a Benedictine, to his episcopal superiors; but that it was published in the Cambridge University Catholic Association annual report covering the last academic year — so was not (as some said) "leaked", but was open to all. If this is so of a report upon such a delicate and personal matter, surely that is a misjudgment?
Your column speaks of seven Amplefordian freshmen (October 1982). who on Census Sunday (which Sunday, for that particular one might carry its own explanation?) were all not at the Fisher House Mass.
Of the incident and its built-in judgment, may I make these observations: Separately or together, all seven Ampleforth freshers may have been at another Mass in or out of Cambridge — what the report calls a "fortuitous exception"; eg to take part in the "Ampleforth Sunday" in London, to attend the Cardinal's Mass in the Cathedral, to see friends in "The Bunch of Grapes" after the mid-morning Oratory Mass, to support their home parishes on the weekend.
Cambridge seems to have a definition of "lapsed" which would make any other pastor smile — "failing to attend the Fisher House Mass".
We in this Hall and at the Chaplaincy at Oxford have young Amplefordians in our care (in so far as they wish it): but we do not "notice" their Mass habits with attendance rolls, nor do we publish such findings — especially involving such small numbers that can only attach to nameable individuals.
The Kingdom of God is furthered by example and by faith in others, not by coercion or accusation. I wonder how often those seven freshmen will now ever feel inclined to attend Fisher ' House Mass in their (more telling) second and final years.
I recall an editorial in the Arnpleforth Journal of Summer 1976, "Loss of the Young to the Church". It began by relating an interview with the ArchbishopElect of Westminster. who was asked: 'Do you think Catholic schools are worth having in view of the large number of young people who leave the Church?' This was his answer.
"I wonder what people mean by 'leaving the Church'. There is a very great difference between a young person groping to discover an adult faith and not in the traditional sense practising, and the person who has solemnly and irrevocably turned his back on the Church. I am not sure this is necessarily related to their being or not being in Catholic schools. I think the problems are perhaps as much in the adult world as in the school world. Knowing the kind of mentality which a young person can go through between the ages of 18 and 25, I do not think this is such a new phenomenon. I always used to say as a school master never pass a judgment on a young person's religion until he is n." A J Stacpoole OSB St Benet; Hall Oxford
FR JENKINS had already circulated headmasters of Catholic public schools before your article. By what means a confidential report was given prominence in your columns, I do not know. It seems less than fair to the schools named that so sweeping a judgment should be made on the basis of absence from Church on one Sunday in the year.
Very many of the absentees will doubtless return to Mass, once they have begun to cope with the shock of individual freedom. To say "They arrived lapsed". seems to suggest an absence of optimism essential for missionary enterprise.
Nevertheless. I believe that Fr Jenkins, in his private communication at least, will have performed a useful service to the Catholic public schools. By a strange coincidence. on the day his original letter arrived, I had spoken to Prior Park about the need for boys to cultivate a religion which would survive their departure from boarding school. As I put it, a belief in the Mass which did not "travel" back home in the holidays, or into their adult lives, indicated dry wells of conviction.
Of course, there are specific problems in boarding school religion. It can very easily become cultic and tribal. Public manifestations of Catholic ritual before school rugby matches are a good example of the potential abuse of Catholic identity.
We at Prior Park have tackled this head-on, seeking to exorcise what is meaningless, narcissistic or downright pagan and replace it by a sharper sense of the need for individual prayer. good example by boys to others and communal commitment to the demands of the Gospel.
Regular Family Fast days in aid of Cafocl. or the Amnesty Group formed specifically out of shared Christian conviction, give the lie to the distasteful and unfair parody of lives of public schoolboys conveyed in your article.
Perhaps a lay school stands a better chance of persuading teenage boys of the relevance of organised religion to their future lives. We have experienced remarkably little aversion to our Sunday Mass.
I would be inclined now to talk of positive enthusiasm for it. However, some parents do comment from time to time on the poor Mass attendance by their sons during holidays.
It can be very difficult, in any case, to persuade teenagers that it really does matter that they should attend Mass each Sunday wherever they are. Such an emphatic statement smacks to them of legalism.
At all events, I feel that your article was grossly unfair in its implications to the efforts of one Catholic public school at least.
P Fl Tobin Prior Park College
FR CHRISTOPHER Jenkins' conclusions about the rate at which Catholic public schoolboys in Cambridge lapse from the faith have recently causcd comment. They are no business of mine. But I am disturbed -that others are trying to give his particular observations a universal application, which, I am sure, he never intended.
Thus Terry Sheehy, Dec 9, has suggested that this report 'calls into question the whole worth of University Chaplaincies', which implies — in the words of a Catholic school teacher to me a few days ago — that 'what is true for one must be true for the other (Oxford)', and no doubt, it will be said, all the others.
I keep no tally of who attends Mass at the Oxford chaplaincy, but I know that there are roughly 1,500 Catholics in the University. I know too that the size of our Sunday congregation is between eight and nine hundred. Given the high proportion of those educated at public schools who come up to Oxford, it is not reasonably possible that they are poorly represented on these occasions.
Moreover, when I consider the various student societies and groups based at the chaplaincy, I find a fair gathering of those from Catholic public schools among their officers and members.
Similarly pupils from those schools have taken their part as
Catholic chaplaincy representatives in their colleges and have been ready to give assistance when volunteers have been required for particular needs. I could go on.
Fr Roderick Strange Chaplain The Old Palace Oxford St Aldate's




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