By Father Langdal
Joseph Cardijn, eldest son of Henri Cardijn and Louise van Daelen, was born on November 13th, 1882, at Schaerbeek, a district of Brussels, where his parents were employed as caretakers of a small block of flats. Madame Cardijn’s state of health did not allow her to nurse her child, and young Joseph was entrusted to the care of his grandparents, who lived at Hal, a small Flemish town to the South of Brussels, on the borders of Brabant and Hainault. His parents joined him there a few years later, and his father took up a coal merchant’s business – a very modest affair, which gave to the family a relative degree of prosperity and independence.
The Childhood and adolescence of Joseph Cardijn were spent in a
typical Christian home of Flanders.
Monsieur Cardijn, his father, could neither read nor write, but he was a
man of high principle and deep religious conviction. His children were brought up strictly, and
Mgr. Cardijn has told us how one long whistle up the stairs was a sufficient
reveille when he was due to serve Mass at the Parish Church. He does not tell us what happened if a second
call was needed!
Joseph Cardijn began his education at the elementary school with
working-class boys of the little town.
The impact of industrial development was making itself in Flanders, and
Hal was fast becoming the center of an industrial district. When Joseph was about to leave school his
parents naturally thought of placing him in a factory, but the lad had other
ambitions.
This is how he has told the
story of his vocation:
“It was the eve of my entry into
the factory. I went up to the bedroom
with my brothers and sisters. When they
were all in bed, I crept down barefoot to the kitchen, where my father and
mother, in spite of the late hour, were talking by the fireside.
‘Father’, said I, ‘there’s I want to ask you. Please let me continue my studies!’
“ ‘But you know well enough’, answered my father, ‘that you are the eldest, and that we rely on you to help us in bringing up your brothers and sisters’.
“But I insisted: ‘Dad, I’ve felt within me a call from God. I want to be a priest.’
‘I saw two great tears roll down my father’s cheeks, and mother became whiter than the kitchen wall. At last my father said to my mother: “ we have already worked hard, but to have that joy, we shall work harder still!"
“I left at once, and on entering the room where my poor father lay dying, I knelt beside him and received his blessing from his old, wrinkled hands, worn by ceaseless toil. Before that man who was so valiant, so great, I swore to give myself entirely to die for the working class.”
He now saw the purpose of his
vocation; he was to become a priest to give Christ to the working masses, to
reveal to the workers their temporal and eternal destiny. Ever since his
boyhood the problem of the working classes had haunted him. “When fifty years ago I entered the junior
seminary,” he tonce recounted, “my schoolmates went out to work. They were intelligent, decent, God-fearing. When I came back for my holidays they were
course, corrupted and lapsed from the Church - whilst I was becoming a
priest. I started to make inquiries, it
became the obsession of my life.
How did
it come about that young lads brought up by Christian parents in Christian schools
should be lost in a few months?” to the
solution of this enigma he was to devote the whole of his life, but it took him
many years to discover the means of fulfilling his vocation.
Joseph Cardijn was ordained priest
on September 22nd, 1906, and was sent to follow a course of
sociology and political science at the university of Louvain. But the following year he was recalled to his
diocese and appointed to teach at the junior seminary of Base-Wavre. He had not forgotten the problems of the
working class, and he devoted his summer holidays to traveling abroad, studying
working conditions in Germany, France and England, where he visited Manchester,
London and Sheffield and made a close study of Trade Union organization,
meeting Tom Mann and Ben Tillert. His
impression of Ben Tillert is particularly interesting as it shows that, as far
back as 1912, his mind was already
working on the lines which were to result, some twenty years later, in the
foundation of the Young Christian Workers:
“If we follow Ben Tillet during
his twenty-four years of social work, it seems that two ideas have crystallized
his aspirations and, like two guiding stars, have directed his efforts towards
a better future: first of all, he
wishes to create the most powerful, strongest, most united organization
possible, in which the workers will feel the solidarity of their
interest and the invincible power of their union: secondly, he sets out to
enable each worker in particular to educate his own individuality, to uplift
himself morally and intellectually, so that he
may feel the pressing need of more well-being and more justice.”
It was during one of his visits to
England that he met Baden-Powell, then at the height of his fame as the founder
of Scouting. Baden-Powell explain to him
the Scout ideals and methods, and suggested to Father Cardijn that he should
start the movement in Belgium. But
though he felt an intense admiration for the educative value of Scout training,
Cardijn realized that it did not hold the solution to his own preoccupations: “I expounded to Baden-Powell,” he tells us,
“the concrete and practical problems of the life and work of the young
workers. Baden-Powell admitted that he
had never looked at the problem in that way, and that Scouting could not solve
this concrete and practical problem.”
In 1912, a very severe bout of illness
put an end to his teaching career.
Hardly convalescent, he was appointed curate at Laeken, on the outskirts
of Brussels. The parish priest could
hardly conceal his disappointment when he first met his new assistant: “All the parish organizations are
topsy-turvy, and they send me a sick man!”
it was not long before he formed a different opinion of Father Cardijn.
It was true that the parish organizations were in a bad way. The working Men’s Club boasted of a bowls
team and little else; the Girls’ Club, with a membership of thirty, offered
innocent amusements to its members and a play at Christmas. No other working organizations existed in
the parish. Father Cardijn was put in
charge of the girls, and his first concern was to transform the club. Within a year he had raised the membership to
160 and had founded study-circles at which, for the first time, problems of
work were discussed. This caused a mild
revolution in the parish, where talk
about these matters was considered
dangerous and unsettling. But the young
curate went still further. He founded
for the young seamstresses a branch of the Needleworkers’ Trade Union, and
started for the adults a section of the League of Christian Women Workers,
which in a few years achieved a membership of over a thousand. He also founded a study circles of working
lads. From this group were to come the
first three leaders of the Young Christian Workers – Ferdinand Tonnet, Paul Garcet,
Jacques Meert.
Those years were a period of ceaseless activity and experiment. Father Cardijn was not a mere theorist, he
did not start off with preconceived ideas and try to force them upon
reality. He was also ready to try new
methods over and over again until they achieved real formative results. The War did not interrupt his efforts. In 1915, whilst remaining curate at Laeken,
he was appointed Director of Social Work for district of Brussels by Cardinal
Mercier. On two occasions he was imprisoned
by the Germans for patriotic activities, and during several months spent in the
prison-cells he was able to meditate upon his experiences and to outline what
was to become the methods of the Young Christian Workers. In 1919 he left Laeken and was able to devote
himself full-time to social work in Brussels.
A number of Trade Union leaders had come to realize the need for
gouping together young workers. The
pioneers trained by Father Cardijn formed the nucleus of this new movement,
which in 1919 took the name of La Jeunesse Syndicaliste (the Young
Trade-Unionists). For the next few years
it developed slowly, finding its way and establishing its methods, and metting
with a great deal of opposition, even, it is said, from the Cardinal Archbishop
of Malines. Catholic Belgium possessed a
strong network of traditional organizations, and this movent of young workers
was looked upon a dangerous and revolutionary innovation. But it managed to break through every
prejudice and misunderstanding.
In 1924,
the Jeunesse Syndicaliste became the Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne,
the Young Christian Workers, and Father Cardijn was appointed its National
Chaplain by the Belgian bishops. In March, 1925, Pope Pius XI received in
audience the founder of Young Christian Workers, and gave to the movement the
final sanction of the Church. Cardijn
has often told the story of this momentous interview.
“Here at last,” said the Pope, “is someone
who comes to speak to me about the masses!
The greatest scandal of the nineteenth century was the loss of the
workers to the Church. The Church needs
the workers, and the workers need the Church.”
The Y.C.W. is a living movement. It
is at present established in more than 62 countries; it groups over a million
and a half young workers of every race, colour and nationality.
Its founder has become a world famous
personality, and his name is venerated by young workers all over the
world. Few men have been able to achieve
so much in their lifetime. When Father
Cardijn started his first small group of working lads over thirty years ago, he
said to them: “We are setting out to conquer the world.” Today the Y.C.W. International has become a
reality. It has taken its place among
the great world organizations, it can speak for working youth with the prestige
and authority of an international movement.
adapted from the introduction of challenge to lead
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