Homily for Opening Staff Mass – St Pius X College – 27 January 2026
As I reflected in my Australia Day homily, on 8 November last year, a small group of men stood outside the New South Wales Parliament dressed in black, their faces covered, their banners carrying the symbols and slogans of Nazism. I was in Rome at the time, but the shock of the incident stayed with me for many weeks. It was shocking not because hatred is new, but because of the sheer brazenness of the incident. Shocking because it demonstrated that, for whatever reason, our society had now become a place where the simply unthinkable had now become possible.
The events of 14 December 2025, and the subsequent legislative reform of only last week, have now made such a public protest more difficult. But legislation alone does not change hearts. The National Socialist Network may have disbanded, but its action late last year exposed a toxic current within the social landscape, and that current, unless addressed, will only find new and more complex outlets.
The scene of 8 November represented an extreme element, and yet it should send shivers down the backs of all educators of young men today. It forces us, especially as this new school year begins, once again to be clear in our mission. For young men are especially vulnerable to becoming radicalised – into all forms of extreme ideology, including religious. We know the research. Young adults, particularly young men aged 18-24, are among the loneliest people in our society. On the surface, they may appear independent, connected, and confident. Yet beneath that surface, a large number experience deep isolation, a lack of belonging, and a sense of drifting without direction.
It would seem to me there are three primary factors contributing to this: the paradoxical disconnection occasioned by pervasive social media; a certain emasculation in the face of feminism; and a lack of purpose facilitated by the disintegration of the common good and the erosion of narratives of purpose previously given in both religious and civic traditions. They leave young men lonely, confused and lost.
Of course, we are aware of the first factor well postulated by Jonathan Haidt’s landmark 2024 study, The Anxious Generation. Yet to be presented with similar cogency is the crisis in masculinity amongst young men who can now find themselves outsmarted and out- performed by generations of confident young women who may have a clearer sense of direction and goals and who have high expectations about themselves and others. Male stereotypes of breadwinner, protector, hunter have been entirely uprooted; young men grow up at a distance from their fathers and older male mentors. Not confident in their sexuality, unsure in the presence of confident women, it is inevitable that young men drift towards those who offer aggressive misogynist masculinity, models of the Alpha male. Combined with a loss of life-long purpose, this then translates into affiliation with social groups that promise exclusion, cohesion and determination. And these groups need not be extreme ideologies. We see intimations in this approach to life in figures such as Jordan Peterson and the late Charlie Kirk, so popular amongst young men, and at worst, Andrew Tate. They can even be found in our own Catholic family, such as with the Sydney men’s Rosary Crusade having originated in Poland and Ireland – men praying the Rosary devoutly yet with clenched fists in reparation of a world regarded as evil.
Last week, Mike Randall, interim Head of Downside School in the UK, writing in London’s, The Tablet, remarked, “We live in an age of fracture – political, cultural and spiritual. Public discourse is increasingly polarised, the pace of change unrelenting and young people, in particular, are confronted with contradictions about identity, morality, purpose and truth.”[1] This is not helped, of course, by the debasement of public leadership in the United States, and the normalisation of both mendacity and vulgarity in public discourse under Donald Trump. As Pope Leo spoke to diplomats at the opening of this year:
We should also note the paradox that this weakening of language is often invoked in the name of freedom of expression itself. However, on closer inspection, the opposite is true, for freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed precisely by the certainty of language and the fact that every term is anchored in the truth. It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking. At the same time, a new Orwellian-style language is developing which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fuelling it.[2]
This is where Randall positions the critical contribution of Catholic education. As he wrote, “At the heart of the Catholic vision is the conviction that life is intelligible and relational rather than random or meaningless. Catholicism teaches that faith and reason are not in opposition but mutually illuminating; that truth is not abstract, but embodied – ultimately in the person of Christ. In a world that often feels morally and metaphysically adrift, this synthesis offer clarity without rigidity, and hope without naivety. Catholic education seeks not merely to teach this coherence, but to make it lived and tangible.” He went onto say, then that this means Catholic Education “becomes not a narrow exercise in credential acquisition but a formation in wisdom, conscience and courage . . . [the school] . . . a place where young people glimpse a different kind of life: rooted in tradition yet open to the future, anchored in faith yet attentive to reason, nourished by community yet respectful of individuality.”
If we had questions about the mission of Catholic Education, doubts about the purpose of why we are returning to school for yet another year, the times in which we have discovered ourselves must force us to think again. As never before has Catholic education been as important. It must be not just ‘a still point in a turning world’ to use T. S Eliot’s phrase (quoted by Randall), but much more: a force of resistance. Resistance to the disintegration of community and the bonds of belonging; resistance to toxic forms of masculinity; resistance to the normalisation of capricious and narcissistic public discourse; resistance to narratives of meaninglessness; and most importantly resistance to every apathy in response to all the above.
The formation of young men as people of conscience, with critical intellect, comfortable in their maleness, and with a clarity of purpose marked by both compassion and courage is to promise our society a future. The alternative is a brazen display of Nazism before the NSW Parliament.
[1] Mike Randall, “A Still Point in a Turning World” The Tablet (24 January 2026), 16.
[2] Pope Leo XIV, Address to members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, 9 January 2026, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/january/documents/20260109-corpo-diplomatico.html, accessed 24 January 2026.
