Sydney
23 March 2003
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Helping the world’s kids to a new start
One in five kids living in poverty
ACU model for rest to follow: Beattie
Transsexual ‘marriage’
Refugees ‘destitute’
Curtain falls on Woomera
Expo peek aids hospital
Call for inquiry into needs of low-paid staff
Catholic Weekly takes a holiday over Easter
Pope’s 25 years in stamps
New mysteries on pocket cards
CD to help East Timorese kids
New Vinnies head wants to ensure best deal for needy
Conference celebrates the faith
Medicare principles ‘must be safeguarded’
Bougainville - after the war is over
Fast and feast in lent
Editorial: The poverty line
Letters: Tabernacle
Conversation: Dr Henry Pang, GP and aid volunteer - Dead people all around ‘changes your life’
Voice of Youth: ‘O’ - what a feeling! We’re Catholics
Plea from the bush: Come and see us
Waverley’s 100 years of ‘bright stars’
Young train as catechists
Lay ministry great, says jubilee priest
Voice of Youth: ‘O’ - what a feeling! We’re Catholics
By Josh Miechels
As an active Catholic participant, my feet are sore, my voice has gone and my neck is a nice crispy red. In short, I am exhausted.
You will, or course, as a charitable Christian, feel sorry for me and will ask: “What happened?”
Sydney Uni has just had its O-week (“O” for “Orientation”).
Sink a knife into the body of youth, and O-week is the flesh that is exposed.
Every club stall was a different window into each and every one of their young lives: To free Tibet; “Buffy” appreciation; Falun Dafa; indoor soccer; Greek culture; “No War In Iraq”.
O-week is, if anything, a melting pot of the different understandings and priorities young Australians have today.
This is the modern world - youth branch.
It was in this that more than 30 Catholic students sacrificed their time and personal comfort to tramp the front lawn and uni entrances.
Over two days we handed out Looking for Catholics on campus? pamphlets and as much as possible engaged students in conversation.
This is one response to the Christian call of mission through being in the world but not of it; the universal spread of the universal faith that was taught by Christ to his apostles, and has been defended and proclaimed by their successors ever since.
If any concern has been repeatedly voiced by the Catholic youth of Sydney, it’s the occasional tendency for their older Catholic siblings to practise their faith in a way that will not disturb the relaxed drift of society toward its own destruction.
It would have been hard not to notice the 17 young people who streamed through the Baxter’s Lodge entrance at 9.30am on Ash Wednesday wearing distinctive ‘Catholic: I believe. I belong’ t-shirts, carrying an assortment of chairs, boxes, CD players and a 2.5-metre tall wooden cross.
The cross we had borne up the hill was not there, as some jokers suggested, in order to crucify some heretic, but to recall the existence and significance of the Crucified One.
Almost immediately this sign of the cross started attracting people who asked, “Who are you?” and “What do you believe?” and “Where can I get ashes today?”
Standing up with the Light gets you noticed among a mob of people struggling to find their way through the darkness.
This is nothing new to the Catholic Church. For nigh on 20 centuries, Christians have stood up to declare their message to the world.
It was done by St Peter in the Portico of the Temple (Acts, Ch 3), by St Francis in the main square of Assisi, by St Philip Neri in the piazzas of Rome and by Pope John Paul II at last year’s World Youth Day.
And by the growing group of Catholics at Sydney Uni.
Josh is a second year B Arts/B Social Work student at Sydney University. Voice of Youth is co-ordinated by the Catholic Chaplaincy, University of Sydney, based at the JPII Student Resource Centre, Level 1, 245 Broadway 2007. Phone 9518 6418 or visit www.usydcc.org