Jeunesse Maritime Chrétienne (JMC) – The Cardijn Movements in the Media

June 19, 1946October 2, 2021

Church’s World-wide Answer to Youth Problem

The Young Christian Workers (Y.C.W. in English, J.O.C. in French, K.A.J. in Dutch)

By BERNARD L. FOLEY, Secretary of the Y.C.W. Extension Committee

“We give this movement as an this example of Catholic Action.” These words were spoken by the late Pope Pius XI when referring to the Young Christian Workers’ Movement. No one was more qualified to pass such a judgment, for Pius XI lived and died for Catholic Action, and well earned the title of “Champion of Catholic Action” Then, again, our present reigning Pontiff-Pius XII—has spoken of “the astounding results of a move-•ment on which Providence seems to have set its seaL If we consider for a moment the great and admirable work it has achieved, we cannot help seeing in it the power of God.”

INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT

The Y.C.W. is an international movement, found all aver the world. It has already been established’ officially in at least 45 different countries, including France, Belgium, America, England, Germany, Holland and Australia.

The movement, which in France and Belgium is known as the “Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne,” was founded by Canon Joseph Cardijn in Brussells in the year 1924, and in little more than 20 years has spread to the very corners of the earth.

The movement was the answer to a promise which Canon Cardijn made to his dying father that he would “work and die to save ihe working classes.” Canon Cardijn is still working, very actively indeed. In Belgium alone he has around him over 200,000 members with 46 vocational guidance centres and 142 permanent employees. Here, there are also three holiday camps, several hostels and cafes, and facilities for supplying the legitimate wants of youth.

Although Belgium is regarded as the Mecca of Y.C.W. activities, Canon Cardijn himself confesses that the movement is far more prosperous and flourishing in France. Here there are 400,000 members, 200 permanent employees, and all facilities for youth, and far more even than are to be found in Belgium. Here the “Jocists” have their own press, and control their own literature. They publish their own weekly paper, “Jeunesse Ouvriere,” and many popular . periodicals.

So well organised is the Jocist movement in Belgium that it was used by the British Army as a medium of communication. The same applies throughout the world. In nearly every country, the Y.C.W. Movement is becoming established as a strong national as well as Christian movement.

CATHOLIC ACTION

The activities of the Y.C.W. are many and varied. Everywhere is to be found the same fundamental technique for educating youth to its full responsibility in every phase of life, whether at home, work or leisure. This is true Catholic Action. As Canon Cardijn himself puts it:— “It is the lay life which must become an apostolate, for the Apostolate of the Laity by the Laity is the true basis on which Catholic Action is built. Forget this and we will lose our perspective in a welter of arbitrary terms and theories, and our subsequent efforts will certainly fail to reach the people’s daily life. Without the lay apostolate we will never Christianise the nonreligious life of the masses.”

Accordingly, Canon Cardijn has laid down ten fundamental characteristics of Catholic Action. They are:—

(1) An apostolate proper to the lay man.

(2) Entirely different from the priestly apostolate.

(3) A complement of the priestly apostolate.

(4) Must be adapted to the ways of the lay life.

(5) Is irreplaceable, or the ‘sine qua non” for the conquest of the masses.

(6) Though a lay apostolate, it is an integral part of the Church.

(7) Is necessary for the proper development of the Mystical Body.

(8) To be victorious it must be organised.

(9) Hence must be controlled by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Likewise its own government will be hierarchical.

(10) If controlled by the hierarchy, then they must officially grant it jurisdiction in its own field of action—must be mandated by the Bishops.

Each of these points must be carefully applied in the formation of the lay apostle of the working classes.

It is not expected of members that, to obtain their objective, they should go about with “long faces,” or that they should be always seen with their prayer book in their hands—so to speak. Not at all. Canon Cardijn and his followers learnt long ago that if a young man is to win the confidence and respect of his fellow-worker he must meet him on his own ground. He must show him how easy it is to be a good Christian, and also how being a good Christian does not necessarily mean the foregoing of honest sport and recreation, social activities or any of the really good things which are so attractive to the youth of today.

A NEW APPROACH

Before the establishment of the Y.C.W. Movement, Catholics were organised into sodalities, clubs, societies, sporting associations, etc. This is all very good, but to-day we must go deeper, far deeper into the lives of individuals and the problems of society in general.

We must realise that the greater part of a man’s active life is spent in his office, workshop, shop or factory. There is the need for Catholic Action. That is why the Y.C.W. has pledged itself to help fellowworkers at work. They realise that no matter what Christian environment may be provided for youth at home or at leisure, it is totally inadequate. They must go further and take that environment to the” place of his work. There the danger lies. There workers are closely associated with fellow-workers, and there lives are moulded according to the environment which surrounds them. The Y.C.W. aims to make this good Christian environment, and thereby make all workers good Christians. This may seem a terrific task, but it is inevitable if youth is to be re-christianised. That is why the Y.C.W. spends so much time training leaders so that they may be equipped with the knowledge and qualities necessary to create that environment at their work.

For scope and universality, the Y.C.W. Movement is, perhaps, surpassed only by the Church itself. Millions of youth all over the world are united together under the one bond, having for their ideals the same three principles:

i. To live and fight for Christ our Leader.

ii. To bring Christ into the lives of young Australian Workers.

iii. To help the Young Worker at home, at work, and at leisure.

Shortly after the end of the war (December, 1945) an important Catholic Youth Conference was held at Versailles in France From this, it was learnt that the J.O.C. (workers 14-25), J.A.C: (agriculturists), J.M.C. (marines), J.I.C. (independent professionals) and the J.E.C. (students) have a total membership of over 800,000: all active and financial despite the short time since the end of the war, and the reconquest of France from the enemy. What marvellous organisation!

THE Y.C.W. IN AUSTRALIA

The origins of the Y.C.W. in Australia go back some twelve years to the National Eucharistic Congress, held in Melbourne in 1934. At that time, the Campion Society was in its early, dynamic years. One of its members, Kevin T. Kelly, a Melbourne University student, made a special study of world Catholic Action, with special reference to the youth problem, in preparation for a paper, which he read at a convention of Australian Catholic University societies, held during the congress. Mr. Kelly’s researches brought him into contact by correspondence with present youth leaders in France and Belgium, who supplied him with the ideas, handbooks and publications of the growing J.O.C. As a result of his studies, Mr. Kelly became a one-man apostle of Jocist ideas in Australia and his lectures and writings at Campion meetings and in the Catholic press, scattered the seeds of Jocism in Australia.

Meanwhile, Mr. Paul McGuire, of the Catholic Guild of Social Studies, Adelaide, who also read a paper at the Melbourne Congress convention of university societies, had gone abroad and followed up Mr. Kelly’s work with first-hand investigation on the spot in France and Belgium. He, too, became an apostle of Jocism. He wrote many articles on the subject in the Catholic press of England, America and Australia, was part author of a book, entitled “Restoring All Things” (Sheed and Ward), which described J.O.C. methods, and lectured on Catholic Action and Jocism in the U.S.A. and Australia.

A pamphlet, entitled “Young Christian Workers,” edited by Kevin Kelly and published by the Australian Catholic Truth Society in 1939 (A.C.T.S. No. 178), was a major event in spreading J.O.C. ideals in Australia. Chapters included “Australia and the J.O.C.”; “Cardijn, Captain of the Working Class,” by K. T. Kelly, B.A.; “The New Paganism,” by Canon Cardijn; “The Young Christian Workers’ Movement,” by Rev. R. Kothen; and “The Methods of Jocism,” by Paul McGuire.

KEVIN KELLY AND PAUL McGUIRE

The next stage of development was the reduction of J.O.C. theory to practise, adapted to Australian conditions. With the establishment of the National Secretariat of Catholic Action, it was clear that the work of Kevin Kelly and Paul McGuire had taken root, for the task of adapting J.O.C. methods to local needs was taken up and an experimental period inaugurated for organising of Young Christian Workers in Australia.

About eight years ago, Rev. Father Lombard, when stationed at Northcote, Victoria, and confronted with the , problem of Catholic working youth, was inspired by the wonderful work done by the disciples of Canon Cardijn overseas and decided to start in Australia.

With the co-operation .of a few priests and a handful of enthusiastic youths the experiment was made. So great was the success that five ye^rs ago the Y.C.W. Movement was officially established in Australia with the blessing and approbation of his Grace the Archbishop of Melbourne and most of the hierarchy and. clergy throughout the Commonwealth.

The progress made by this movement in Australia in the short period of five years—a period of war when the development of any youth movement was so much harder—is certain evidence of the blessing of Almighty God on the work being done. At the present time, there are over 10,000 members in Australia, 4000 of whom are Victorians. This remarkable progress in five war-stricken years is nothing short of miraculous, and reflects great credit on the founders and pioneers of the movement here.

APPEAL FOR FUNDS

At the present time, as advertised in this issue, an appeal for £15,000 is being launched for the development of the Y.C.W. in this Archdiocese. Donations will be gratefully received by Rev. . Father Lombard, diocesan chaplain of the movement, 312 Lonsdale-street, Melbourne. Specific donations to the Y.C.W. Industrial Boys’ Club and Hostels Committee are tax rebatable.

CANON CARDIJN, Founder of the Young Christian Workers’ Movement

SOURCE

Church’s World-wide Answer to Youth Problem (Advocate, Wednesday 19 June 1946, page 11) (Trove)

September 24, 1937October 2, 2021

The Christian Revolution

THE MIRACLE OF JOC

By PAUL McGUIRE

SEVENTY THOUSAND young men and women are standing in a vast arena. About them are great machines —the machines at which they toil. To music, group after group is marching in, carrying banners and the symbols of their trades and crafts. Then come the nurses, carrying a huge white cross. A torch is lit. It passes from hand to hand, other torches take fire from it, the lights run out to the far edges of the crowd. It is the light of Christian teaching, spreading from Jocist to Jocist, to illumine the world.

The mechanics make a platform of machines. The carpenters build upon it a table of mahogany. On the table the quarrymen set a flat stone. Over it the girl weavers spread three linen cloths from their mills. At the right hand, bookbinders place a huge book, the product of theirs and the printers’ arts. Miners set safety lamps on the table. The white cross is placed above it. The altar is ready for to-morrow’s Mass. The workers have raised, from the things they make, a throne for God.

In the morning, the Cardinals and the Archbishops and the Bishops of France come to that altar. An old man and an old woman come to it

They are workers, like the tens of thousands gathered there. Between the old man and the old woman walks their son. He was a worker, too. Now he goes to say his first Mass. He is a Jocist, and those who built the altar, the seventy thousand who will presently answer his voice in the responses of the Mass are Jocists.

They are the Christian Revolution.*

The Miracle of JOC.

A year or two after the war, a young Priest in Belgium said to a young workinginan and a young working girl: ” We are going to conquer the world.” In July, at Paris, seventy thousand delegates from twenty different countries knelt before the Altar of the Workers at that first Mass of the Priest who had once been a fitter. They came from the mines and the mills and the ships and the factories and the farms and the offices. All were wage-earners. Most were manual workers. Not one was more than twenty-five years old.

To them, the Holy Father addressed a special message. He repeated that pregnant phrase of his: “The apostles of the workers must be workers.” He has said that their action is “an ideal form of Catholic Action.” He has given them his blessing.

I met, at the C.S.G. Summer School in Oxford, Father Kothen, of the Belgian J.O.C. There is still danger from Communism in France, he said, but in Belgium that is passing. Today, for each recruit to the Belgian Communist parties, JOC makes three. There are 90,000 Jocists in Belgium, 100,000 in France, 500,000 in Europe; and to be a Jocist is not an easy thing, while the organisation itself has only been formally approved for ten years. About one-sixth of the Jocists are “militants,” and each “militant” is assumed to influence about one hundred of his fellow-workmen.

To resist Communism is only an aspect of the task. Communism itself is but a symptom of social disease: of that disease in which, as Pius XI has said, “the whole economic life has become hard, cruel, and relentless in a ghastly manner.” Catholics who see our whole task, or even a major task, in mere negative resistance to Communism are grossly mistaken. We must destroy the disease of which it is a symptom. We must restore health to the body of society. We must make our own revolution, the revolution in Christ. And that is what JOC is doing.

” Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne”: they are the words for which IOC stands: the Christian Worker Youth. Christian, notice: all things are centred in Christ, Christ is our Master, the Worker who is Master of Workingmen.

Christians—W orkers—Y ouths.

JOC, though it is the most familiar of them, is only one of five great organisations: JMC (Young Catholic Sailors), JEC (Young Catholic Students), JAC (Young Catholic Peasants), and JIC (Young Catholic Intellectual Workers). JOC is essentially the organisation of the industrial workers. It will be seen at once that the vocational orders, of which the Social Encyclicals speak, are observed here in their true sense. The vocations have each their part, but the parts combine for the common good, are ordered to it.

Last Whitsun, in Paris, JOC, JAC, JEC, JIC, and JMC presented together a parable play. They described in great choruses, the selfishness and violence which destroy the social order. Cries JOC: “The factory doors are shut.” Cries JAC: “No one wants the fruits of the earth.” Cries JMC: ” Ships remain in the harbors.” Cries JEC: “Students fail in the useless exams.” Cries JIC: ” Failures and miseries multiply.” Then all cry together: “Chaos, unemployment, misery, revolution, war. We want to work and to live. Who will save us?” And a voice answers: ” Christ.”

Christ is the Unity in Whom men must live and work, in Whom all vocations, all individual talents, all personal labors and sufferings, all social effort and trial, find meaning and realisation. That is the lesson of JOC and JAC and J EC and JMC and JIC. It is the message they are carrying to the world, to their immediate worlds, to the classrooms and the ships and the farms and the mills and the newspaper offices and the mines.

JOC is for boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. There are organisations for the younger, organisations into which they pass after twenty-five, but one musl leave these aside for the time. JOC is based on the parochial units, in which the Priest is the centre of the group, in the sense that he is responsible for its spiritual welfare. But the officers are all Jocists. The great congress in Paris the other day was arranged by these boys and girls: and, seated in the midst of the Cardinals and Bishops, a young man presided over it all—the young workingman who is President of the JOC of France.

JOC is a school of young workers.

It is social service. It works for better conditions, better wages. It is a representative body. Its reports are valued by the International Labor Office. But, above all, it is an apostolate. It insists not only on the personal sanctification of its members, but on their duty, their splendid task, as apostles to their fellows. It works at the conquest of the workers for Christ.

Its militants are the hard core of the movement. They form cells in shops and factories and mines: they are the nucleus of the parish sections. JOC always begins with a small group of militants. One can see them in training now in England. In the first week-end of August forty young men of Wigan, Father Rimmer’s group, went into retreat. For nearly six months they have been preparing themselves. Father Atkinson has another group at Wellingborough. The organisation has been authorised in Westminster, Liverpool, Northampton, Birmingham. One believes that in a year or two it will be spreading across England, as it has spread across Belgium and France: that in every place where the toiling masses labor the spirit of JOC will be there to remind men again of Christ, Who toiled and labored.

To penetrate the milieu, that is the task of JOC. Tt is a personal apostolate for each boy and girl. You are concerned with tJie man next to you at the bench, the boys who live in your street: with the girl beside you at the loom, the young women in the dance halls. The job requires courage and knowledge and spiritual integrity. Tt is not the least of the great achievements of JOC that it has found the method of steeling the moral and intellectual purpose of the young city dwellers: it has learnt how to waken their enthusiasm, how to instruct their minds, how to nourish their charity, how to make apostles of them. The whole Catholic world can learn from JOC’s technique. In my next article T shall try to give some account of it.

SOURCE

The Christian Revolution (Southern Cross, Friday 24 September 1937, page 17) (Trove)