One of the world'smost distinguished scholars of religion, Philip Jenkins, professor ofhistory and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University in theUS and the author of The Next Christendom (2002), puts it thus: "We areat a moment as epochal as the Reformation itself: a reformation momentnot only for Catholics but the entire Christian world. Christianity asa whole is growing and mutating in ways that observers in the West tendnot to see ... it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark onthe 21st century."

Part of Jenkins's thesis is that just as Christianity has faced asecond reformation in the past 40 years, so we will see a newcounter-reformation. But the Christianity of the future will lookdifferent, taking shape from the exploding demographics of thedeveloping world. Consider this. There are more baptisms in ThePhilippines in any one year than in France, Italy, Spain and Polandcombined.

While Catholics in Australia despair at a seemingly shrinking,greying church, in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands the churchis flourishing. It is more than surviving in Indonesia despitepolitical and militant Islam. In India and Africa, the Christianpowerhouses of the future, the church is at its most vibrant, isdemographically youthful and, most surprising for many postmodernliberals, is unflinchingly orthodox.

The hallmark of vitality in the Catholic church has always been thesteady flow of vocations to the religious life, and it has now becomealmost a cliche to talk about the decline in the numbers of religiousvocations in the West. Yet there is no acute shortage of candidates inmany poor church provinces; the difficulty is often training thecandidates. So seminaries that previously had a majority of Australiansare at least partly filling with candidates from PNG, South Korea,Vietnam and India. Australian candidates as nuns seem almost to havedisappeared.

But while we are used to hearing the depressing mantra of decline insecular clergy, there has been a steady increase in the religiousorders that put a high priority on the revival of orthodoxspirituality, prayer, hands-on work, and when living closely with thelaity, the tradition of communal living. Young Australians are lookingfor new radical ways to live a religious vocation within sometraditional orders and, in one case, an entirely new one.

This has happened before. After the Reformation, it was the newreligious orders, notably the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, thatprovided the intellectual powerhouse of Catholicism that became theCounter-Reformation, and in some places this order still takes up thatsame challenge. Although their numbers have dropped in Europe, in Indiaalone today there are 4000 Jesuits. There has also been a rise fromSouth Korea and Vietnam. The contemporary experiences in Australia ofanother Counter-Reformation group of spear carriers, the Capuchins, thereformed Franciscans who were founded in 1528, make interestingparallels with that earlier time.

The Capuchins, who like to work directly for the community, have 15students in Melbourne, one from overseas and five of immigrantbackground, which reflects another trend in Australia: of vocationscoming from devout immigrant families. Some will complete their studiesin Sydney and some will go overseas, usually to the US. But unlike thetrend in candidates for the secular priesthood, which mainly staffsparishes in Australia, the Capuchin Franciscans are young. Some years,all students are under 25.

The Capuchins' provincial leader, Julian Messina, acknowledges likethe Jesuits that their international focus has had an effect onnumbers. Messina's explanation for the attractiveness of the Capuchinsfor young Australians lies in one word he uses frequently:authenticity.

He describes the life of a Capuchin as "going back to the origins,to the gospel and living the gospel life". The rhythm of the day in areligious community and the centrality of prayer is part of thatauthentic life. "Our work is not to change society, not that there isanything wrong with that. But we do the work because it is essentialfor our life."

Another element he thinks the young find attractive is the communallife: "One of the things that has weakened the religious life is peopleliving alone. Fraternity is very important for us. We do not live ourlives alone in a presbytery."

At the same time, as a reformed group at their foundation, theCapuchins are constantly reforming themselves and they eschew complexmonastic-type establishments to live in small groups, close to the laypeople with whom they work.

The student friars work at least two days a week and their principalcalling in the original Franciscan spirit is to minister to the mostdespised. During Francis's time that meant the plague-ridden andlepers. Now it is people living with HIV or AIDS, the old, theabandoned poor and the severely handicapped. The friars do not involvethemselves much in secular or church charitable bureaucracy. Messina,groping for words in a rather unsuccessful attempt at diplomacy,remarks wryly that "it often wastes time. We just do." Sometimes theirefforts don't seem to have much impact. But it is on the one-to-onehuman level that the impact is felt. The proof is the steady trickle ofyoung men who present themselves as aspirants to the Capuchins when thesecular priesthood, weighed down with the ordinary bureaucracy ofparish life, plagued by scandal and held in contempt by some, is havingtrouble attracting candidates.

Another interpretation of the meaning of the authentic religiouslife can be found in the word radical. It is a word used frequently byJoseph Maria, the Sydney-based provincial of one of the world's newestand most radical group of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity, oftenknown as Mother Teresa's sisters. In their distinctive blue-borderedsaris, the nuns work extensively with Aboriginal people in countryareas and the Northern Territory. In the cities they run soup kitchens,feed street kids, visit prostitutes and run women's shelters. InQueanbeyan, NSW, they run the catechetical instruction in stateschools. Originally most of the nuns - such as Joseph Maria, anex-teacher from country Victoria who has been in the order for 28 years- were trained in India. But the nuns have long gone international andmost of them in the southern hemisphere, including the Australians, aretrained in The Philippines. Their numbers are growing steadily: thereare 4800 sisters in 787 mission houses across almost every continent.They are growing at the rate of 100 to 200 vocations yearly.

The sisters are famous for ministering to the poorest of the poor ina simple and direct fashion: giving a dying person a bed, feeding thehungry, rescuing abandoned children. They have been criticised by thelikes of author Christopher Hitchens for not doing it "properly", fornot making a difference on a big scale. The image often used is givinga man a fishing rod instead of the fish. But the missionaries ofcharity argue that the extreme poverty of many people in places such asAfrica means that if a man doesn't have the fish, he might not have thestrength to cast the rod. However, Joseph Maria comments bluntly thatpeople who argue on those lines "just don't get it".

"The work is a spiritual conduit. Mother Teresa saw an encounterwith a poor person as an encounter with Jesus. She took the words ofJesus on the cross, 'I thirst', as her charism (spiritual force, whichsimply means that we do the work as the need arises. We look for theimmediate need, what is not done by others, particularly on the closehuman scale."

She explains that this is one reason why the nuns don't do much workwith people living with AIDS in Australia, where there is a very goodmedical system, with first-class Catholic hospitals and hospices.

It is the search for a direct relationship with God, missing in theusual social welfare approach to the Christian life, that characterisesthe new revival in religious life and makes it attractive to the young,and this is fuelling a small but strong revival of the religious lifein the secular First World. The Missionaries of God's Love, or MGL asit is known locally, is one of the few orders founded in Australia.Founded in 1986, it has 13 priests and 25 in training. The originalpriests are Australian, but some of the newer postulants are fromoverseas, notably PNG.

One thing that immediately stands out when you meet Chris Ryan,parish priest of Narrabundah and the recently appointed co-ordinator ofthe journey of the cross for World Youth Day, is his youth. He wasordained at 27 and is now 31. If you haven't seen a young diocesanpriest for a long time, that can be quite a shock. The special ministryof the MGL is to youth, and somewhat like the Capuchins they live inpartial community with a lay charismatic group called the Disciples ofJesus, which includes families. They have a reputation for packing thechurch with a charismatic style of worship, but they also have a strongemphasis on the more traditional devotions.

Ryan is acutely aware of the possibilities of World Youth Day in2008, to be attended by Pope Benedict XVI, for re-evangelisation inAustralia: "We will see a church that looks very different post-2008.It will be younger. World Youth Day is about re-embracing the faith,and with that faith transform your world. As pope John Paul II said:'World Youth Day is a beautiful pretext for many other things."' Thoseother things Ryan interprets as spiritual underpinning for the ordinarylife: "to inspire young people to live the Christian life in a secularenvironment".

In a secular and rational world, a life that springs from a radicalcommitment to orthodox faith that includes vows of celibacy, obedienceand poverty seems unnatural and somewhat wasted. The spiritualimmediacy of such a response appeals to some of the young, thepowerhouse of the church. An authentic counter-reformation revival, nota liberal version of reformed Christianity, will ensure the survival ofthe church.