In the New Testament, the Greek word oikia is used to encompass several important social realities. The word can mean dwelling place but it also captures the immediate context of our social belonging; our household along with its cultural and religious matrix. The term reaches back into the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus speaks in Matthew 13:2 of the householder (the head of a community who live together) that is also formed in God’s dwelling place (the Kingdom), but knows to bring out treasures that are new and old.

In its early years, between 1989 and the turn of the millennium, the Thomas More Centre (TMC) became a gathering place of many young people. It did not set out to be simply a youth movement but a household for people seeking a deeper and wider understanding of the knowledge, practice and application of an authentic Christian humanism (the wisdom that is both old and new).

The TMC events of the time provided a sort of providential oasis for young people to be formed in mind and heart, to “sit at the feet” of some extraordinary leaders and thinkers, and to find friends and mentors who enriched and challenged them to become “a new Christian force to challenge the prevailing philosophies” and attitudes of the time (TMC Newsletter 1:1 1989).

At this year’s TMC Autumn School in Albury, we found that thanks to the labour and imagination of the wonderful local Albury team of voluntary organisers, an updated version of TMC activities and direction became evident for our current times. The Autumn School spanned different generations. Those participating interacted enthusiastically and freely with the presenters, organisers and with each other.

True to TMC’s original vision, the Autumn School also built bridges between understanding and intentional living; between the inspiration of Christian faith, practical wisdom and social awareness; between the exploration by the mind and the joy of getting to know new names and households.

TMC works now to assist in the birth of other formational hubs; to instil sound thinking but also to listen and respond to the needs of local groups. The evening talks in the Brisbane TMC hub are varied and enriching and TMC is also involved in the upcoming YPAT week.

There are good reasons that the TMC gives equal weight to cultural, intellectual and social development.

When the TMC first began it was assumed that most informed Catholics, and those attracted to the common good built around a metaphysical and transcendental core, came from fairly stable communities. Over the intervening three decades, dislocation is occurring very close to our “homes”. Not only have parishes, workplaces, faith-based volunteer groups and families lost social cohesion (and members), but people themselves experience crises of identity and purpose.

This year the Australian Department of Social Services released its Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey of 17,000 Australians. The survey found that since 2010 there has been a steady rise of “loneliness” both as a living arrangement and experience in the 15-25 age group, both during and since the covid19 lockdowns.

This correlates to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and other data collection bodies that in the major Australian cities, the rate of “single-person households” has risen to nearly 25 per cent of the population across all age groups. This isolation also touches couples and their children and older people with their grandchildren, or couples who have no children – all in a sense being cut off from community with real traction in their interests, priorities and shared beliefs.

Psychological studies suggest that the array of social media does assist people to stay “connected” in many ways. At TMC we are working on video, podcast and other platforms that anchor into “treasures” old and new. The studies also show that the “socials” are not by themselves enough. The experience of loneliness can deepen where such media is all on offer – the transient and “light touch” attention and relationships can simply vanish with a swipe left, and distract from relationships with “flesh and blood” in the concrete household and neighbourhood.

The TMC believes that the “natural family” united by “marriage and blood” – despite many challenges – is not merely a “unit of consumption” but the heart of the formation of persons. Family formation is more intricate and intimate, offering interdependency, self-giving and commitment. The family is the “primary cell” of formation – in life skills, language and literacy, in personal identity and resilience, in spiritual wholeness and virtue and so much more.

But families that do not receive support, societal respect, solidarity, economic sustainability or true solidarity quickly fragment or implode.

As the ever insightful English theologian Fr Aidan Nichols writes in his 1999 chapter “Reconstituting a Society of Households”:

“The more that family members become decreasingly useful to each other and likewise with the relation of one family to another in a neighbourhood, the more centripedal power of the family and community life begins to fail."

Fr Nichols writes that households modelled around such expansive and interconnected spiritual inspiration, such as that realised by St Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.547), establish a vigorous, enduring and counter-cultural ethos as a bulwark in our fragmented way of living. Such households form an oikonomia that promotes a “stewardly attitude” to things, a “sacramental” symphonic and stable approach to relationships, contemplation, prayer, work and leisure, a frugality towards property (with a focus on things that matter) and a hospitable solidarity (especially towards those in need, ill or poor). But how are households to find and be formed in these key elements?

The Thomas More Centre hopes to play a role in this.

It aims to encourage our audiences into a communio of households while they discover insights, discuss experiences and lay down deeper foundations. We aim to invite and equip with resources and personally enriching links – families with young children, extended intergenerational families, those living in religious communities and parish houses, those unpartnered young people living in households but longing for true friendships and vocations – so that they can fruitfully build, dwell and flourish in households of their own.

It will be a sign of success for the TMC if this concept of hubs and households is able to flourish and decentralise.

Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre