Where have all the flowers gone? To seed?

Speaking recently on RTE radio about the extraordinary generosity of Irish people in responding to global disasters, John O'Shea, director of GOAL, remarked: " I suppose it must be their Christian upbringing or something."

Perhaps John was reflecting on the young volunteers within his own organisation, some of whom, like Andrea Curry from Armagh as the most recent example, have sacrificed their lives in attempting to lend support to that large part of humanity which suffers and bleeds.

Andrea was one of many young idealists whose compassion found an outlet in the most generous gift of all, the gift of herself. There has been a long litany of such sacrifices among aid workers and missionaries in the world's trouble spots in recent years. Their mostly young faces smile out from the newspapers that carry obituaries which include words like courageous, cheerful and generous.

Thousands more continue to brave discomfort and danger in a struggle against the perennial evils of hunger, war, ignorance and natural disaster. But these examples of generous humanity are growing more scarce in Ireland as well as elsewhere in the developed world. It's not simply a question of declining vocations to traditional religious ministries.

Many voluntary organisations, too, are reporting a decrease in young adults willing to offer their services, while churches have been acknowledging for some years a vast and growing gap in the pews among the same 18-35 age group. The Drogheda Independent re ported in recent weeks that St Mary's Scout Den will soon have to close because of difficulties in recruiting adult leaders. What it calls "a chronic shortage of volunteers" has left the scouts with a long waiting list for new members.

A similar straw in the wind can be gleaned from the fact that the number seeking a career in nursing has fallen by over 1,000 this year. This fall is put down to various factors, including a wider choice of employment options, but the decline forms part of a wider picture which seems to indicate that "compassion fatigue" has overwhelmed most young adults in an increasingly materialistic and competitive world.

The evidence suggests that the "caring" class who filled voluntary posts in times gone by have grown old in the struggle and they are finding few replacements. The concept of self-sacrifice is, perhaps, viewed as wildly eccentric in an age which places self-fulfilment as the main purpose of existence.

Despite the general discrediting of the 1960s among many commentators as a period of chaos and liberal excess, the flowering of youthful idealism on a global scale during that era saw a questioning of every form of established authority. This was accompanied by a fevered empathy with the oppressed of all nations, not to mention other life forms from whales to trees.

While a residue of the early fervour abides, the early idealists have given way to a less altruistic, more supine and materialistic breed of young adult in the past decade or so. John F. Kennedy's dictum, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country", is only worthy of a rap tune in the new millennium.

Environmentalists, eco-warriors and Youth Defence may provide a little solace for children of the 60s who believe that the business of youth lies in the pursuit of ideals and the upsetting of the moneychangers in the temple in every generation, but such relics of 60s radicalism are as much of an irritant to their own generation today as they are to the liberal establishment against which they rebel.

The average mobile phone-carrying, Internet-surfing, designer label-wearing young Irish adult would probably be quite outraged at the suggestion that he or she may lack a social conscience or a spiritual base. But as Romano Guardini, one of the great pioneers of liturgical reform in the 20th century, remarked: "In our day, even the sense that paradise is lost is lost. We are too superficial to be distressed by the loss of meaning, though we are more and more glib about the surface sense."

How else can we account for the growing racism and lack of compassion for refugees and travellers, as evident in the letters page of many newspapers and contributions to radio programmes?

How else can we explain the escalation of drug use and suicide among the young? How else can we understand a whole host of other matters: the apparent indifference to low standards in high places; the acceptance of the inevitability of social evils like inhumane conditions in prisons or mental hospitals; the lack of facilities for families with drug addicts in their midst.

All of these ills occur in an era of plenty with barely a murmur of protest from the rising generation. The churches may have generally forfeited the attention of the broad mass of Irish people in this part of the new century but where then are we to find the latter-day secular prophets like Nell McCafferty, Eamon McCann or Vincent Browne to puncture the complacency and question the assumptions and orthodoxies of the new establishment?

Where is the passion of a Veronica Guerin or a Bob Geldof to be discovered among today's bright young things? Albert Camus once forecast that "the only thing that will be said about modern man is that he fornicated and read the newspapers".

Such a dour prediction is only partly fulfilled. There is a good deal of evidence to the contrary but, as the old, caring guard changes, there is a significant and worrying lack of selflessness among those who will soon be taking charge.

In the 60s, Peter, Paul and Mary sang Where Have All The Flowers Gone? It was a lament for a generation lost to war. The present flowers, thankfully let it be said, have not been cut down but there are some indications that they may have gone to seed.

Father Paul Clayton-Lea is a priest of Armagh diocese.