Lay people into action
60th anniversary of Cardijn's book
This year marks the 60th anniversary of Cardijn’s only full-length book, originally published in 1963 under the title “Laïcs en premières lignes” - literally “Lay people in the front lines” - and in English the following year as “Laymen into action.”
It was an important book appearing in between the First and Second Sessions of Vatican II. For many of Cardijn’s supporters at the Council, it became a kind of manual guiding their own advocacy and interventions.
As I have written in my own book “The Leaven in the Council,” the book caused great problems for Cardijn after his own bishop, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens, sought changes in the text that Cardijn believed undermined his own concept of lay apostolate.
Read the story here:
Suenens vs Cardijn (The Leaven in the Council)
Given Cardijn’s own great powers of advocacy, he was finally able to succeed in having the book printed with only minor changes.
In this Cardijn Reflection, let’s re-read Cardijn’s own foreword to the book setting out his hopes and dreams for the lay apostolate.
Stefan
FOREWORD
AT THE END OF THE ROAD
I have devoted the whole of my priestly life to the lay apostolate, but I have had to wait until today—the eve of my eightieth birthday—for the opportunity of publishing something about it.
For many years I have wanted to make a searching study of the necessity of this apostolate and the way it could best be realized in practical life. The problem that this sets the young workers has attracted me since my adolescence, but I have always seen it as part of a whole vision of the laity and its needs and resources. This has always been an obsession with me. Ever since my first ventures I have become more passionately involved in it. And after so many missionary journeys in so many continents, the problem of the laity and of the formation and organization that are absolutely necessary for the future of the Church and of the world seems to me increasingly to be a universal and fundamental one. For the older I get, the more I am convinced that the importance of the lay apostolate is a decisive factor in the future of the world and the salvation of humanity. This is why I came to collect together the many notes I have written about this subject during more than fifty years of activity as a priest. They are reflections arising from everyday apostolic life which develop the theme I have never tired of repeating to the young people of the Y.C.W.: 'Each young worker, each working girl has a divine destiny and a divine mission, beginning not after death, but from today, in the conditions of their everyday life, where they are the first and immediate apostles of God in their environment and among their comrades.' This affirmation, which inspired the birth and the belief of the Y.C.W., does not belong to it alone. It is part of the very essence of Christianity and applies to the whole conception of the Christian laity.
I have often repeated that this is the whole dialectic of Christianity, which is in reality the reply to the Marxist dialectic. The thesis of this dialectic is that every man born into the world has a divine destiny and mission; he is God's apostle among his fellow-men. This fundamental truth has inspired thousands of laymen to apostolic action; it has charged their lives with truly religious meaning and sent them out to the ends of the earth. It has given birth to a whole spiritual conception of life, inspired by faith in God as creator and redeemer, which draws all men to participate in the one and only apostolate—that of Christ.
The thesis is inseparable from its historical antithesis, which is man's act of refusal to God's plan of love. This refusal is made up of ignorance, indifference and an accumulation of opposition, struggles, difficulties and obstacles which stand in the way of the realization of the divine plan and play an important part in the history of humanity.
This is why God's plan of love can only be fulfilled if the Christian dialectic develops towards its end in a continually new synthesis, always better adapted to its purpose, always spreading and expanding, until at last it is universal: the movement of the lay apostolate, willed by God, lived by the example of Christ, guided and animated by the Church, and spread among all men to the ends of the earth and the consummation of the world.
These notes are the outcome of a long spiritual journey: an idea which has been put into practice and lived.
The movement did not forge straight ahead towards its goal without wavering, nor were there clearly defined stages in the formulation of an idea developing resolutely towards its conclusion. On the contrary. The movement has often gone backwards and forwards; there have been many regressions and a thousand fresh starts and lengthy processes of trial and error—both in expression and in practical application—but it never ceases to reach out towards its great goal which is both far off and yet daily very close. The challenge is this:
How can men all men, be made aware that they have a mission on earth that God himself has entrusted to them from the very moment of the creation and the redemption, a mission the Church proclaims to them and helps them to realize? What can be done to make each person live with this unshakable conviction: 'God needs me! I am his missionary'?
This mission given by God to all men finds its fullest expression in the lay apostolate. It consists in building a world according to God's will, a fraternal humanity where the humble are loved and helped by their brothers',1 witness to the presence and the life of God, for the establishment of this kingdom of peace and glory. The following pages, then, are not an argument or a methodical account of the whole problem; nor, by any means, do I claim to lay down a finished doctrine, a hard and fast method, and a perfect apostolic style. I am not a teacher, a theologian, a canon lawyer or a writer, but a man of action, always on the move, always searching and enquiring 'Quaerite et invenietis ... Quaerite primum regnum Dei—Seek and ye shall find... Seek ye first the Kingdom of God… ' (Luke 12:22).
After fifty years, 'Seek… ' is still my motto.
In the exercise of my ministry as a priest, I have been what people call a great traveller. And the more I have travelled through towns and countries, the more clearly have I seen that the lay apostolate is the vital factor in the permanent confrontation of the Church with the needs of the present world. It is through laymen that the Church is in the world, and the more technical and unified our universe becomes, the more pressing will be the need for real lay apostles. If the world's most urgent problems are not studied and resolved in the light of the Christian dialectic I outlined earlier, we are moving towards a catastrophe for humanity and for the Church.
I have always been struck by the contacts I have had with non-Catholics, non-Christians, and people who are either a-religious or anti-religious. Each time they have brought home to me more forcefully the fact that Christian laymen, if they exercise a true, deep and vital apostolate, can and must bring a positive solution to the problems of the modern world.
I am also convinced that the lay apostolate—whether it is active in a specifically religious or specifically secular field—will never attain the development and efficiency that are absolutely necessary for the world that is coming into being if the clergy and those who educate the laity do not see, on the one hand, what is man's original, essential mission on earth and, on the other, what laymen in the Church must do to help all men discover and fulfil this mission.
The basic formation which each Christian and each individual needs will depend on the clarity of this vision. The action which must be carried out will be closely linked to this formation, and for this formation and action there must be organization and suitable institutions, both in the Church and in the secular world. Formation, action, organization, united and inseparable, producing a ferment, a leaven, in and for the mass of humanity which must be transformed, influenced and trained.
I have always felt that everything possible should be done in the Church to achieve unanimity in the conception of the mission of each man and each Christian, with all its consequences: unity and organization which call for the union of action and formation. Thus, all men and all Christians will finally become conscious of, convinced of and united for the realization of this mission.
The Second Vatican Council will discuss the place and the mission of laymen in the Church, and will seek means of promoting their indispensable apostolate, as much in the purely religious field as in the secular. Will the study of these questions be limited to the layman s task only insofar as it touches the Church, with its apostolic and educative consequences? Or will the problem be taken up in all its hum an and earthly dimensions? This second line of discussion would be bound to be immensely valuable, and should answer in particular many of the questions that non-Catholics and non-Christians are asking today. It should even interest the great international institutions, and could be a most valuable guide to the nations who are trying to find their way through the labyrinth of philosophies and ideologies. It should bring about a theology of the Catholic laity, and at the same time provide a very timely opening for all men of goodwill, who could thus discover in the lay apostolate a call to universal co-operation and solidarity.
It is in this context that this book should be read. My aim is not simply to look back on the past, but to stimulate fresh thought and study. From day to day I have experienced the marvellous work of co-operation that the lay apostolate demands, with a very great number of priests and laymen; and these pages are the outcome of all their combined efforts, on the basis of the experience of the Y.C.W. all future study too, should be carried out in common.
The lay apostolate has not yet reached maturity: far from it! Undoubtedly it has never been absent from the life of the Church, and even during the most critical periods it has achieved marvels. But the ultimate stage —that in which priests, religious, and laymen will all be convinced that religious life and apostolic life are one and the same thing—whether it is a matter of personal sanctification, or action on and with others—that stage is still far off! When its hour strikes, it will mark a glorious date in the history of the Church. And not only in the Church, but in the history of the world. 'Ut unum sint—That they may be one,' said Christ in his prayer at the Last Supper. If these words apply to the unity of all Christian confessions and even of all religions and ideologies, surely they apply also to unity between all men and to the very conception of human life itself: that all should be one in the conception of man's life, in the apostolic mission entrusted to him, and in the cooperation he should bring through his life to the work of the creation and the redemption?
For the lay apostolate can and must realize this unity, with respect to all consciences, races and cultures; in the brotherhood of mutual aid between all peoples, classes and individuals; in the union of all efforts for the promotion of the humblest and poorest and the comfort and consolation of all men.
In bringing about unity, the lay apostolate will contribute to peace on earth between all men, and to the even more radiant manifestation of the glory of God.
Justice, peace, brotherhood and the glory of God: 'on earth as it is in heaven'.
Joseph Cardijn
NOTE
1Speech of Pius XII at the World Conference of the Y.C.W. in Rome, 25 August 1957.
SOURCE
Joseph Cardijn, Laypeople into Action (ATF Press)
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