THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1902. OUR YOUTH. The New Zealand TABLET

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 11, 13 March 1902, Page 16

THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1902. OUR YOUTH.

The New Zealand TABLET

* To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace? LEO XIII. to the N.Z. TABLET.

fHE 'summer's throbbing chant is done,' the ' yellow, mcl o\v, ripened dajs ' of autumn are with us, and our various young men's clubs throughout the Colony will, in two or three jko&aci wce^ s m( >re, begin their sessions once again to * Hpr lengthened hour V Of long uninterrupted evening. Beaconsfield has aptly described the youth of a nation as ' the trustees of posterity.' But, alack ! in what Moore calls the ' wild freshness ' of the stormy morning of life that trust is too often betrayed. Parents do not always realise, but our hard-wrought clergy generally do, how difficult a task it is to guide and guard our youth in the cyclonic period that lies between the close of their school-days and the time when they get, settled in life. One of the crying reeds of our time is a well-knit, strong-stranded Catholic union for youths who have left school and are ineligible by reason of age limitations, or unwilling for other evident reasons, to become members of the several varieties of our young men's or social clubs. Such unions — boys' brigades, or whatever else they may be called — would directly effect a high and noble purpose, and, incidentally, would serve as feeders for the young men's societies. We Catholics display a good deal of inconsistency in the matter of the care of of oar youth in the first few perilous years that folio^ the close of the school life. We care and watch and coddle them during the school-days, and then —as Cardinal Vaughan once remarked — we cast them headlong into the

vortex of modern life, with no other stay and security than the half-digested instruction they have received in early childhood.' 'It would be difficult indeed,' he added, 'to overrate the importance of keeping a hold on the young after they have left school. Their entire future, perhaps their salvation, will depend on the impressions made at this time. The man and the woman can be made when a child, but can never be remade at a later age.' * This admirable work of 'saving the boy' after his school days is very efficiently done in Dublin by the splendid organisation known as the .Boys' Brigade. It is being done in London by the Catholic Social Union, the work of which is twofold : ' (1) To establish social clubs for lads and lasses who have left school, especially for those of the needy classes. They are enrolled as members. (2) To bring the rich and educated into touch and sympathy with the parents and with the homes of the working classes generally.' Catholic social clubs of this kind for boys and girls who have just left school have been at work for several years past, under the direction of the clergy, in some of the principal missions in London and Sheffield. In New Zealand, so far as we know, no provision is made in the Catholic social clubs for a section for lads and lasses whose school course has been completed. Our nearest approach to the youthful social clubs just described is, we think, the Old Boys' Associations attached to St. Patrick's College and to some of the Marist Brothers' schools. The principle needs, however, a wider application and a far greater extension ; and its adoption would keep our working boys and girls strong in the spirit and practice of the Faith, refine their tastes, train their character, unite them together in a common bond, reduce the number of mixed marriages, and keep our young people from drifting into companionships and associations which frequently lead to indifferentism in religion and loss of moral fibre. * It would be difficult to over-estimate the good which may be effected by the various forms of our young men's societies. They are taken in hand and placed, as far as is feasible, under good influences and amidst safe and pleasant and useful companionships and occupations at a period when the fresh budding life comes in contact with the thousand and one risks arising from idleness, evil associations, drink, dissipation. But, unhappily, the maintenance of the efficiency of these associations is frequently a matter of pathetic difficulty — a ' labor dire and heavy woe ' to many an anxious priest, and many such societies live a pinched and meagre and half-starved existence for lack of encouragement from the very class which they are intended to serve. Some years ago, in writing upon our young men's societies, we made use of the following words which may be appropriately repeated here : ' There will usually be among the members a picked body of young Gideonitei who hold fast with the grip of a steel trap to the principles of their society or club. Outside these there will ordinarily be a shifting and uncertain fringe of members who take a shy, dainty, spasmodic, half-hearted interest in the working of the society, but who appear in full force, and upholstered in their most expensive drapery, when the circling months bring the annual sc iial or picnic around. Beyond and outside the fringe of flabby, spineless members there lies the mass of youths who are indifferent to the aims of Catholic young men's associations, or who shrink from membership because of some petty likes or dislikes affecting minor details of organisation. Some will have it all fat ; others all lean. Your fluent young Demosthenes would have the society a debating club pure and simple. Your budding Beau Brummell would practically turn it into a quadrille assembly. Between the two extremes of all work of one kind and all play of another kind you have a range of tastes sufficient to make the successful conducting of such a society a sufficiently ticklish task — comparable in a microscopic way to that of editing a Catholic newspaper.' * Other clogs upon the wheel of progress are the cliquefoimer, the 'kicker ; ' the interminable haranguer, the lazyminded, the deadhead who is a dumb ox at the gatherings of the society and a growler outside, and the officers or members who seldom put in an appearance and leave the meetings sparse, and, especially if they take place in a large

hall, overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness, desertion, and failure. As for the listless, the apathetic, the intellectual dawdlers, they need bracing up unless they are to become like the fortune-spoiled, aimless-lived man of whom Dale Owen speaks in his autobiography. ' I have let my mind go to seed,' said he remorsefully, ' I have thrown away a life.' And he had but one life to throw away. A host of zelators and apostles of the young men movement is greatly needed. And who are better fitted for the work than the young men themselves, who have so many opportunities day by day of practising this apostolate among the companions with whom they are day by day marching shoulder to shoulder along the road of life ?