FOR SOME weeks your columns have been filled by chaplains and others lamenting the "lapsation" of students.

Most seem to assume firstly that enormous numbers of young people are recklessly abandoning their faith, and secondly that this is something new.
In my limited experience (in what all agree to be a far from typical University) I would venture to suggest that both assumptions are incorrect.
You have only to read Catholic writers from Mgr Knox back to St Jerome to see that "leakage" or "lapsation" of the young is as old as the Church.
My father always said that all the boys of his famous Catholic school left the Church save for those who became monks — and this was during the First World War.
My impression now is that if anything a higher proportion of Catholic school-leavers are practising now than before.
Before coming here, in various parishes, 1 was surrounded by eager young Catholics, and for every parent whom I had to console on the "loss of faith" of their offspring, I found a teenager bewailing that their parents no longer went to Mass.
Students here have consistently impressed me with their faith and solid piety, despite (or perhaps because of) poor religious instruction and a specifically anti-Catholic atmosphere in this Godless University.
This is not to deny that some do cease to attend Mass when they arrive in London, but this means simply that once free from compulsion by school or parents they can stop pretending to practice a faith they have long lost or never really possessed.
Nor is it to deny that there are perils about, particularly proselytising by various nonCatholic or sub-Christian sects. New students are bombarded by "evengelists" of different shades, all eager to peddle their peculiar brand of enthusiasm, and using every trick of the highpressure salesman.
It is a source of lasting sadness to me that many of our Anglican brethren stoop to the same tactics, and recruit numbers of Catholic students without giving them any time for reflection or instruction.
Naturally with our (very wise) practice of making "convert instruction" a long and slow process, we get comparatively few coming the other way, yet they do come, and many who drift away do come back. Our new hall for Sunday Mass is packed every week and many of the men are enquiring about how to apply for the priesthood.
Be reassured, the Faith is far from dead in this University. I am far more worried about the numberous Catholics who "lapse" on reaching retirement age!
Fr Jerome Bertram Catholic Chaplain, University of London, Gower Street, WCIE 6AR.
IT WOULD be a pity if the present correspondence about the lapsation of undergraduates at Cambridge degenerated into an attack on Catholic public schools and was used as evidence against them. Seldom in the past have the young been subject to so much unChristian and anti-Christian pressure to renounce traditional Christian values and practices.
What exacerbates our teachers' problems whether in public or day schools is not their newness but the facilities offered by modern media to promote them so successfully, with the result that our young are constantly saturated with propaganda promoting materialism, promiscuity and self-centredness, among a long list of other spiritual diseases.
Traditionally the Christian family has been the first line of defence against these pagan values and in this has enjoyed the support of Church and school, but now, with so many marriages ending in divorce or separation — and boarding schools have more than their fair share of these children of broken marriages — the schools' chances of redressing the balance between good and evil are still further reduced.
Moreover, the Church herself seems to have lost some of her old certainty and authority and in the main is no longer prepared to measure spirituality in terms of external conformity to her rules.
When so many Catholic adults are confused by the new changes, is it suprising that youth, especially the more academic, are also confused?
One feels sure the vaults Of Hell are re-echoing the Devil's laughter as he witnesses the unedifying spectacle of modern hristians who spend so much energy laying the blame for his success at each others' feet. By all means let us assess the size and nature of the problem facing Catholic teachers, but let us do so in a positive manner.
The young will not effectively be helped in their journey of Faith to God by strident bickering in public about their personal devotions.
Those responsible for the pastoral care of the young must learn to listen and discern what youthful apathy or antagonism is telling the Church.
Such listening might enable families, schools and Church alike to re-assess their pastoral strategies, religious education programmes and patterns of care to serve our youth more fruitfully.
Unless we are more positive in our attitudes we may well dishearten completely those teachers who so valiantly fight what would seem to be a losing battle were it not for the considerable number of young who, despite their temptations. manage to remain true to their Christian principles.
Peter Eckersley Headmaster Christ the King School Southport.