Ite missa est! The real YCW!

This month marks the 90th anniversary of a famous Cardijn speech “Ite missa est” delivered during the French Catholic Church’s Social Week at Reims in July 1933.

Later, the famous Vatican II theologian, Yves Congar, would describe this as one of his favourite Cardijn speeches.

With the YCW expanding prodigiously in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Canada and beginning in other countries and continents, Cardijn wanted to take the opportunity to insist on his conception of the “real YCW.”

Not every youth group is a YCW group, even if they adopt the name!

Hence, the need to define the essentials as Cardijn does in this talk, which is based on another of his iconic trilogies: life, milieu and mass, and the need to transform each of those fields.

Here then is Cardijn’s orginal article:

Ite, Missa Est

Talk given at the Social Week of Rheims, July, 1933

The Y.C.W. is at present fashionable, everyone praises it, and soon people will feel ashamed if there is no Y.C.W. in their parish. But it is essential that we should not merely have the Y.C.W. in name; we must have a movement that is truly Y.C.W. in spirit, methods and organisation. Otherwise false hopes will be raised, and the working class and working youth will not be reconquered. The young workers will be deceived once again, and instead of returning to the Church, they will give themselves up once more to revolt and despair.

And that is why I am asking you very simply and straightforwardly to build the real Y.C.W., the only one that can solve the problem which faces us.

Remember that there is nothing freakish or artificial about the Y.C.W. One can achieve nothing with artificial organisations.

Too often the title of Catholic Action is given to any sort of grouping without spirit, without sense of conquest, without method, as if a movement became " Catholic Action " simply by having Catholics in it. In this way it is we, and not our enemies, who threaten to destroy what the Holy Father considers as the apple of his eye; and we make a caricature of what the Pope considers to be the salvation of the Church.

I. An action in real life.

In founding the Y.C.W. we are out to create a movement for the transformation of the natural, ordinary, daily, habitual working life of the young workers.

That is the primary characteristic of the Y.C.W. It is not simply a question of clubs and premises or even institutions, but of an organisation which enables working life to become first of all human, and then sanctifying and christianising.

It must enable the worker to live in the habitual and daily environment in which God has placed him in such a way that he can fully develop his family, sentimental, professional, public life, his intelligence, his will, his heart. That is where he will find the reason for which he has been placed on earth. It is this life that the Y. C. W. must first of all think out anew, which it must use to influence those who lead the same kind of life, and make the young worker an instrument and a providential witness of the truth and happiness of the Christian life as taught and propagated by the Church.

This is what we, priests and leaders, must understand first of all.

The Y.C.W. does not consist of organising meetings of young workers in which they find amusement and recreation, perform amateur theatricals or organise whist drives. That doesn't lead anywhere. It is even useless to make them penetrate the environment itself, to sell papers and make visits, if these things do not help to transform the every life of the young worker, his young life as member of a working family, of the working class. It is essential that he should be given a very high conception of his own life, so that he becomes proud of belonging to a working family and to to the working class, and realises that his personal mission and vocation is to be found in that life itself, that it is a beautiful, grand vocation, willed by God as the means through which he is to be sanctified and raised to the heights of the spiritual life and of holiness.

Each morning, the young worker should be able to offer to his Creator and Redeemer, not the lives of others, but his own life. His presence in this factory, this train, this tram, is the offering that is worth most in the sight of God.

If one has not understood that this is essential, one has not understood the Y.C.W.

And when the young worker is preparing for marriage, in his first relationships with his girl, he must understand that, here also, is a means of fulfilling his vocation, of serving God and of offering Him his life.

That is the essence of the Y.C.W. To make of the life of the worker, of the masses, a Christian, sanctified, sanctifying, apostolic life, so that his life in his family, at work, in his courting, his leisure, and, to-morrow, his life as a citizen, should become a real means of apostolate—that is what the Pope primarily means when he speaks of Catholic Action.

The Pope relies on laymen to act on other laymen and to transform lay environments. “I.aicism” is opposed by the laity, the apostolate of the laity, young and adult, who make their professional and family life in their respective environments a means of apostolate, through an organised apostolate.

The first aim must therefore be to make each militant and leader into members of a powerful organisation, through which they will transform their life consecrated to their God into a means of conquest, and, freely and proudly submissive to the Church, will assume all necessary responsibility wherever the hierarchy cannot directly penetrate. This first condition must be fulfilled; to make the life of Catholics a Catholic life, a Christian life completely Christian.

That is why in our enquiries, our meetings, our leaders' groups, we take as immediate object. I would almost say formal object, the actual life of the young workers.

It is the same problem everywhere; to know how we shall organise public life so that it may take into account the destiny of man; and that is the whole problem of Catholic Action.

We must consider real life as willed by God, in which there is nothing artificial, and try to find how that life can be made to glorify God.

That is the life which must be transformed into a true Mass, a prolongation of the priest's Mass, an offering united to that of Our Redeemer throughout space and time, so that the young workers may become conscious and voluntary members of that great mystical body which the whole of humanity must become in order to give glory to God, its Creator and Redeemer.

So long as one begins by looking for something else, and gives them lessons, lectures, sermons which do not relate to ordinary life, their real life, one will just be providing fun and games, while the essential problem remains neglected.

If I say this of our youth work, I would say the same of religion. For a vast number of Christians, religion is a private affair, something separate from daily life, whereas it should be the soul, the motor, the transformer, the supernatural force of the whole of that life.

That is the purpose of religion. The whole of life must become religious, must sing “Gloria in excelsis Deo” must be a public confession of faith, a Credo, a Preface to the glory of the Holy Trinity. The whole of life must, like the Host, be consecrated to God, so that united in its entirety with the life of Christ, “ per ipsum, in ipso, cum ipso” all honour and all glory may be given to Him who reigns for ever and ever. Thus Communion, which too often is the end of religious life, finds once again its full place. It is a new stimulant and the means of achieving complete, transforming union. And then you will be able to say “Ite.” Now you are in order, you can go out to your daily work. “Ite, Missa est.” Your task is to make your day a continuation of the Mass, in union with that which is offered by the Pope, the Bishops, and all priests, and which you are going to sanction by the whole of your life.

That is the chief purpose of the Y.C.W. Its concern is the entirety of the young workers' humble life, which demands from us all that we can give in the way of study, of care, of solicitude, of fatherly kindness, so that we may teach them its beauty, its splendour, its greatness, its divine significance.

We must study the causes which tend to ruin and corrupt this life, to rob it of its true purpose. Our Y.C.W. sections must endeavour to set up small communities, a Christian society in miniature, in germ, destined to ensure the supernatural fruitfulness of the whole of working life.

Thus the enquiries must always be concerned with the life of the young workers, a life which is inseparable from the environment in which it is lived, as inseparable as the soul is from the body.

II. An action upon environment.

The actual environment, the factory, the workshop, the office, the trains and buses, the canteens, the cloakrooms, the places of leisure, must become an educative environment instead of an immoral one; the street, the district, must become a Christian street, a Christian district.

You will never succeed in re-Christianising life without exercising an influence on the environment.

That is why all Y.C.W. activity, Y.C.W. life, Y.C.W. methodology, is always concerned with the life of the young workers in the providential environment in which God has placed them. The purpose of all our meetings is to enable them to fulfil their apostolate in that environment, to defend themselves within it against un-Christian influences.

Our headquarters, our meetings, our studies, however essential they may be, are but the beginnings, corrections on the map, in the staff meetings at which steps are taken to prevent the breaking of the Y.C.W. front, to enable this front to take the offensive, to set out for conquest, so that it may advance constantly and absorb into its ranks its very enemies. We are not out to crush them but to win them; our tactics will never include methods of combat which seek purely temporal and material ends.

We are seeking the conversion of souls. Our aim is to impart true life to all in a spirit of charity, even to our enemies, and the best way to succeed is not to start attacking the error in their minds, but to find the soul of truth which is often hidden in their doctrines, to find a point of contact which enables us to enter into their heart, into their mind, and when we begin to understand their aspirations we are astonished to find that we have discovered among them the most intrepid apostles, the boldest witnesses, and the finest confessors of truth.

But we can only succeed if we never lose sight of their real life, of the environment in which they live, and, I add this third point, the mass we are out to conquer.

III. A mass action.

We must have the courage to keep in mind, at the very beginning of our endeavours, that our final aim is to reach the masses.

That is why the very first question we have to ask ourselves is this; do the Y.C.W. leaders who form our first nucleus really belong to the masses?

However well prepared and trained they may be, we will not possess the instrument willed by the Pope for the transformation of working class environment if they are not in contact with the masses, if they do not mingle with the masses in their daily life.

I beg of you to be confident; everywhere it is possible to find in the masses lads and girls who have enough capabilities to become leaders of Catholic Action.

But then we must demand everything of them. A movement of conquest which sets out to transform the whole life of the young workers is only possible if it is directed by leaders of the highest quality.

The essential task of the chaplain is to train leaders.

The Y.C.W. is absolutely dependent on them. A section without a leader, a region without a leader, will never be the true Y.C.W.

It is not sufficient that it should have leaders who are capable of presenting demands, of making propaganda or even of penetrating into the working class; these leaders must become the real educators of their comrades, and they must achieve the supernatural transformation of their life and of the lives of others.

It is therefore absolutely necessary to keep constant contact with the masses.

For this reason, they should not have to exercise their action over too great a number. For five, for ten members, a leader is needed who can look after all the aspects of their life, who can make it his concern, who can pray for them, who can transform all the achievements of the Y.C.W., all its activities, all its services, into a means of educating the young workers.

I believe that if we manage to conceive the Y.C.W. in this fashion, we can no longer say that the conquest of the working class is a dream, an Utopian fancy.

IV. A complete and organised action.

It is astonishing how difficult it is to get people to accept this absolutely indispensable condition of disciplined organisation. It is nevertheless a matter of life or death. There is no possible solution without it. Working youth and the working class will be lost if we priests cannot see that our section belongs to an organisation which goes beyond the boundaries of our parish, and that our priestly task is not only to see that the young workers are sanctified individually, but that through the whole Y.C.W. apostolate (which is, I am convinced, the best way of ensuring their personal sanctification) they may lift up their whole environment, and thus organise in powerful fashion, to the confusion of our enemies, that royal priesthood we have the ambition to raise up for the service of the Church and of civilisation. We must make them conscious once again of their active membership in the Church.

Too often we priests look upon the faithful as passive members of the Church, whereas they belong to the Church militant; it is in their midst that we shall find the best soldiers of the Church for the creation of a single front against the forces of evil.

We must give up our narrowly parochial spirit, and acquire enough breadth of vision to accept discipline, responsibilities, a share in the life and programme of our movement.

We must ask our chaplains to understand that, if this outlook became general, they would find, in their disciplined sharing in the transformation of our entire environment, the finest, most magnificent and most fruitful of their priestly labours.

They, the priests, must become the educators, the fathers., the promoters, the apostles of working youth.

They are likewise responsible for that integral Catholicism which is the characteristic note of our movement.

V. A fully Catholic Action.

For myself, I am convinced—and I come back to this idea because it seems to me to be true—that we are at the crossroads of history; religion must once again enter deeply into social life, professional life, family life, so that this life may flower out and become fully human and enable society to become Christian once again.

That will be the real revolution, true Catholic Action, the finest of all our tasks, which will not be merely a plaster on a wooden leg, but a real rebirth, a renovation, a spiritual revolution.

The only way to combat Communism is to establish a spiritual communion between souls in order to place them at the service of the Church, of Society, of Our Lord, of God.

The social problem cannot be solved by a mere redistribution of wealth. We need, far more deeply, to socialise souls so that the hearts, the spirits, the minds of men may unite in the Mystical Body of Christ, in that vast union where self is forgotten and personal interest is left behind in the search for the common good.

Our society is at present in danger of collapse. I ask you to help us to make this organisation of working youth, and, to-morrow, of the whole working class, still stronger, still more irresistible, so that, in the midst of a pagan society, there may arise a Christian society, with Christian lives, Christian families, Christian institutions. Thus will be established the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which alone can ensure to the world peace and prosperity in time and in eternity.

Joseph Cardijn

SOURCE:

Joseph Cardijn, The Church and the young worker, Speeches and writings of Canon Joseph Cardijn, (Translation, Eugene Langdale), Collection Young Worker Library No. 1, Young Christian Workers, London, 1948, 74p. at p. 19-26.

Joseph Cardijn, Ite Missa Est (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

Original French Text:

Joseph Cardijn, Ite Missa Est (Bibliothèque Numérique Joseph Cardijn)