REPRESENTATIVES from three Catholic tertiary institutions, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Toowoomba’s Bishop Robert McGuckin shared their wisdom at this year’s Australian Catholic Students Association Conference last weekend.
Bishop McGuckin spoke on the Year of Faith and said young people shared in the Church’s mission to teach the faith to others.
“I believe all of you, teachers especially, who have a care and a concern for young people, share in the office of the Church to teach the faith,” he said.
Holy Cross Father Bill Miscamble, a professor and chaplain at the University of Notre Dame, USA, said Catholic universities were at a high risk of losing their Catholic identity.
“We are linked to the institutional Church – we shouldn’t hide it, we should be proud of it,” he said.
“I sense a new generation is coming to the fore who will help with the renewal of Catholic education institutions.”
Fr Miscamble said a vocation as a university professor was “crucial”, and said it was not just a career path, but also “a way to live out your Christian calling”.
“Who will bring the Catholicity if not you?” he said.
On protecting religious freedom in Australia, Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Professor Greg Craven, said “we are in a war on religion”.
Where Catholic university students were concerned, Prof Craven said it would not be persecution but ridicule that could be a great danger to them.
“If I were to wipe out Catholicism, I would use ridicule to make it unfashionable to believe in God,” he said.
“We have to be prepared to go out and persuade people who are in doubt and actively oppose religion.”
Archbishop Coleridge addressed more than 150 young people at the MacKillop Ball, held on the Saturday night of the annual ACSA conference.
“I have been asked to speak at many places, but never have I been asked to speak at a ball,” he said.
Speaking on the Holy Father’s newly released first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, he said the challenge for students was to convince society that faith was not darkness.
“The modern world sees faith not as a light, but as a darkness, an escapist fantasy, a totalitarian imposition,” he said.
He said students must not “retire into a small, self-protecting, shrinking world”.
“The Catholic style is to be radical and to inhabit a big world,” he said.
“For us who are believers, it is important for us to hear the voices of those who believe faith is unneeded.”
Campion College president Ryan Messmore spoke on the impact the doctrine of the Trinity had on the understanding of the Christian God, education, politics, marriage, and sexuality.
He proposed a model to understand the Trinity in a way that focused on a participatory relationship between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
