By Effie Caldarola | Catholic News Service

Where have all the rebels gone?

I grew up during the Vietnam War and came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, when political involvement and protests were a fact of life. The question sometimes haunts me: What happened to passionate intensity?

Not that I claim to have been a firebrand myself. Indeed, I was pretty tame. The old saying goes, "If you can remember the '60s you weren't really there," and I actually remember the '60s well. So I was probably a good observer but hardly a radical.

Looking back on those days, however, I remember the moral fervor that surrounded us. Why have we become so tepid? Why do so few really burn with passion for change despite our desperately troubled times?

At the end of March, we discovered that there are rebels still among us. They're the same people who lived with conviction in the '60s and have kept the flame burning since. The five members of the Disarm Now Plowshares have been sentenced in federal court to imprisonment for an act of civil disobedience at a U.S. Navy nuclear weapons base in Bangor, Wash., in 2009.

Every one of them is older than I am, and remember, I'm old enough to recall the '60s. I'm an inveterate obituary reader, and nowadays, when I read the obits, the first thing I check is the birth date, because I'm getting to that age where contemporaries are beginning to cash in.

So it was thrilling to read the March 29 issue of National Catholic Reporter and see that these five are not just still alive, but vibrantly and morally alive. Two Jesuits, Father Steve Kelly, 61, and Father Bill Bichsel, 82, will serve prison terms. Joining them for various amounts of time are Susan Crane, 65, Sacred Heart Sister Anne Montgomery, 83, and Lynne Greenwald, 61.

NCR reports that the Bangor base is the west coast home of the Trident nuclear-armed submarine, and that the Natural Resources Defense Council said in 2006 that 2,364 nuclear warheads were stored at that site.

The Disarm Now Plowshares Five found those facts morally unacceptable, a blight on America. So they cut through the fences, thus peacefully trespassing, and waited four hours for their arrest. Both retired Detroit auxiliary bishop Thomas Gumbleton and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified on their behalf.

I respect their courage, but again, it makes me ask, Where are the rebels of today's generation? Where are the passionate 20- and 30-somethings?

During the Vietnam War, students were mobilized to protest because the selective service draft brought the war directly into their lives. Today, we are fighting our longest war in history in Afghanistan, for reasons many of us are hard-pressed to explain.

How often do you hear anyone speaking out? How often do you even engage in a vigorous conversation or debate about our wars?

Let's face it: How often do most Americans even think about the war in Afghanistan, unless their loved ones are somehow involved?

There are exceptions to youthful indifference. We see many young faces in the annual pro-life marches around the country. During the past presidential election, there was reportedly a spike in political interest on the part of the young. But by the mid-terms, that interest waned.

In his poem "The Second Coming," William Butler Yeats wrote: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity."

These days, it sometimes seems to me that we're blessed with a few '60s holdovers who still have passion, while the young, the best and brightest among us often lack conviction.