"What does the Catholic faith mean to you?" CTA's roving reporter quizzed a handful of the many 20-somethings at this year's conference.

"Faith is a journey," said Joe McGovern from Arlington, Va., and his has been a long and complicated one. When he graduated from William and Mary University, he joined a volunteer group in the Dominican Republic, quit after nine months, then spent two years teaching special education in public schools, and is now on his way to California to become (hopefully) a professional soccer player with the San Diego Flash.

The son of Ray McGovern (whose "standing" protest against the ban on women's ordination is reported in a separate story), Joe traveled from conventional Catholicism to Evangelicalism but returned to Catholicism because of Evangelical views toward gays, non-Christians and women's roles. Still, he appreciated Evangelical emphasis on personal faith in Jesus, which sometimes gets lost in the Catholic stress on social justice. He is an organizer for youth in CTA and considers the organization the church's "best hope" for the future. His major problem now is finding a regular faith community. "It's hard to do," he said, "when you're as ambulatory as I am."

Tara Van Lanen went to Catholic grammar and high school in Green Bay, Wis., but said she "really didn't learn anything about the faith -- I always wondered what it meant that Jesus was preaching about equality and the church itself seemed pretty unequal." At the University of Minnesota, she found in the Newman Club a place where "the gospel was read with meaning," the people talked about what Jesus talked about, and faith meant practicing total equality. Suddenly, she said, all the old religion lessons "came alive," and she found herself coming alive too. Van Lanen, 23, is working toward a graduate degree in speech and language pathology and plans to work with autistic persons and those with severe speech problems.
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Kevin Hicar, a native of Alexandria, Va., was an active Episcopalian until he went on an Agape retreat as a student at Georgetown University. He experienced, he said, such a welcoming of the marginalized and such a progressive and participatory liturgy that he eventually joined the Catholic Church. A first time CTA conference attendee, Hicar, 25, is now a campus minister at his alma mater. He sees two extremes at the school: Many are apathetic and indifferent about faith, while another group wants to be told what to do at every step. Faith for Hicar involves trying to help young people realize the importance of working in and for the church. Though he sometimes gets "disgusted" with institutional rigidity, he added, "If you don't become one with the church, nothing is going to change."

Inclusiveness is a major ingredient in Marcia Haggerty's concept of faith. And that conviction has been severely tested by the recent closing of the University of Minnesota's Newman club where she was extremely active. Don't be fooled by her smiling face, said Haggerty, 23, whose undergrad major was biology and who is heading toward medical school: "There's a lot of anger in me about what happened. I get very disillusioned when people crush my idea of faith and Christianity." Rather than brood, however, she is a leader in the newly formed Catholic Student Association at the university. "We want to keep the programs open," she said, "the Bible study, the outreach to the community." At this point, she added, "we don't know how it will all turn out. It's not totally under our control."