RIP Betty Villa

Betty Villa, vice-president of the International YCW from 1961-65, has died in her native Philippines at the age of 96.

We remember her by sharing this video she recorded for the Cardijn Community International Vatican2+50 Conference held in Manila in 2012.

RIP Betty and thanks for your lifetime of commitment.

Message from Cardijn as recorded by Betty Villa

Betty quoting Cardijn again

Healing the split between faith and life

Expecting only those with a “religious vocation”, a miniscule percentage of the total Catholic population, to carry the mission of the whole is a recipe for disaster, writes Sr Christine Burke IBVM in Catholic Outlook.

“We would all love our Church to look a lot more like the face of Christ: to actually be a sign of God’s love in our world,” she continues. “We would like them to change. But this is asking us to change – to listen to those who think differently – to try to understand where they are coming from, with them to seek the best way forward. It is asking that we speak honestly about the build up of barnacles on the Barque of Peter, that we take a hand in scrubbing off the mess. But even deeper than that, it is asking us to risk coming closer to the one we are called to model our life on.”

She continues:

For 1500 years at least, an attitude has been fostered in our Church which limited the power and responsibility that flows from baptism to a few, to the ones who had “a vocation”.  They were not all sleek and well-toned like the stars of the exercise routine, but they were the ones who were committed to really following Christ. In vaunting this more “heroic” following, a shadow message was clearly broadcast: those who chose to marry and have families and/or a profession or trade were the “also-rans”.

There were two clear defining differences: the chosen few gave up the joys and struggles of a relationship supported by sexual intimacy, and they committed to giving time and effort to prayer and action for others. Looking down any list of saints, those who have taken this step outnumber married people about 100 (if not 1000) to 1! The message was clear: if you are serious about following Jesus, priesthood or religious life is the best direction to take.

Expecting a miniscule percentage of the total Catholic population to carry the mission of the whole is a recipe for disaster. Our Church is contemplating the failure of this model: we are seen as irrelevant, disgraced, divided. While the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) noted the split between faith and life (Gaudium et spes, 43), for many younger people, the message of Jesus has been negated by the actions of the Christian community.

Vatican II reshaped the message. All are called by baptism to step up and live out “being Christ” in our world, the life of Jesus as a fully grounded human being – his prayer, his action for justice, and his shaping a community (as priest, prophet and king) is a call to every one of us. Pedestals need to be removed and all must contribute if our vision of a world where reconciliation, care for our planet, and peace is to gain a foothold.

FULL ARTICLE

Christine Burke IBVM, Synodality: is it for them or for us? (Catholic Outlook/La Croix International)

The YCS in the 1960s and its response to Vatican II

Thanks to Brian Lawrence and ATF Press for permission to post this article by Brian reflecting on his experience as a member of and working with the YCS during the 1960s and early 1970s.

This article also forms a chapter in the latest issue of the Cardijn Studies journal edited by Hilary and published by ATF Press.

It is available for purchase here:

From Catholic School Rooms to a Radicalised Student Movement (ATF Press)

The Young Christian Students movement and its response to Vatican II

Asking someone to write about the events of their youth, as I have been asked to do for this series, is an invitation to the writer to reflect on their “coming of age” years. There is a danger in reflecting on these years of seeing them as pivotal years in the nation’s history, or in Church history, rather than seeing those years as a snapshot of longer-term trends. There is a risk that the reflections may be too subjective. Nevertheless, these coming of age years may coincide with a time of momentous change, such as the changes wrought by the Covid Pandemic. I am inclined to the view that the 1950s to the 1970s should be seen as a continuum, even though there were significant markers within that time, such as the student riots in Europe in 1968 and the emergence and impact of opposition to the Vietnam War. Some of this change was driven by the emergence of youth as a significant social and economic class.

The life of the youth movements of the Catholic Church, and the Young Christian Students (YCS) in particular, cannot be disengaged from these broader social changes. But for the YCS, like for Catholics generally, the 1960s was a period of great change, with a leap greater than any change in society generally. Two aspects stand out: the impact of Pope John XXIII, now sainted, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) that he initiated. Vatican II was intended to “open the windows and let in some fresh air”. It did.

In setting the scene for the YCS in the late 1960s, a few words on my own experience could illustrate changes in the Church. In 1956 I was a ten-year old altar boy reciting responses in Latin in a church where the priest had his back to the congregation during the most important part of the Mass, when only altar boys could just see what he was doing. For me, there were things to do: lighting and snuffing out candles, mumbling the Latin responses, presenting the cruets of water and wine, remembering to ring the bells at the right time, and holding the communion-plate under the chins of those kneeling at the altar rail to receive communion. But for those on the other side of the altar rail there was little physical engagement. It seemed to have always been so.

Ten years later, with Vatican II finished in December 1965, the documents of the Council had opened the Church to thinking that had been developing within the Church, but which was unexpected by most Catholics. It is sometimes overlooked that Pope John XXIII’s social encyclicals Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963) had started to shape the way in which many Catholics viewed their role in secular affairs.

For most Catholics Vatican II manifested itself in the changes to the Mass. Latin was gone and the priest faced the congregation and spoke in English. That was momentous enough, but it also carried opportunities for lay participation and, especially, youth participation. Prayers of the Faithfull and Offertory Processions gave them an opportunity to express their faith. “Youth” and “Folk” masses featuring hymns sung in English, reflecting some contemporary musical styles, were popular. Para-liturgies were also developed by and for students and youth in schools and parishes. These new and challenging activities drew many into an active social circle which was part of the strength of Church youth activities in the 1960s. And this was a time when most young Catholics attended Sunday Mass.
But there was something more profound going on. From the late 1930s there had been increased interest in the lay apostolate and, in particular, the Catholic Action movements in Europe. The Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, was a strong supporter of new lay movements. Consider the following report in The Advocate (published by the Archdiocese of Melbourne) of 7 November 1945 regarding a speech given by the Archbishop to a meeting of some 350 YCS members, under the heading “Laity Should Lead in Catholic Action”. The introduction stated that the Archbishop had delivered an “important pronouncement on the respective roles of clergy and laity in Catholic Action”:

“It was most heartening and inspiring for him to find himself in the midst of young people, said his Grace the Archbishop, addressing the gathering of young students during the afternoon. He felt, at the end of a long life [he was 81 and lived for another 18 years], that he had lived into a new era, because he could well remember the time when anything like that gathering would be quite unthinkable. Catholics in Australia and elsewhere were always good religious people; but sometimes the more religious they were the more they kept to themselves and the less help they were prepared to give to others. Their idea was that they had come into the world to save their own souls and they looked upon that as a full-time employment.

With modern conditions that theory had been exploded, said his Grace. One of the most remarkable things done by any of the Popes—and very remarkable men in recent times they had been—was when Pius XI started this great movement of Catholic Action….

It enabled the modem Catholic world to change its outlook, and to attempt things, and achieve them, that would have been quite impossible before Pius XI touched this spiritual button and set going the new spiritual machinery.

This movement, as an organised movement, was quite a new thing in the Church…. He had a feeling sometimes that in some places there might be difficulty in changing over. The laity might still be inclined to rely too much and too heavily upon the priests; and the priests, too, might be inclined to take a place within the Catholic Action movement that the Pope never intended. But in Catholic Action it was fundamental that the leaders were to be lay people, young and old: the priest had his place not as leader, but rather as a sort of trusted consultor, who would be ready to give his advice when it was needed.

In Australia, he believed they were giving an example of Catholic Action at its best, said the Archbishop. He did not know any place where Catholic Action had made more progress than in Australia, and he hoped that the lay people would continue to take their proper place in the movement, and, if necessary, insist on their right, to leadership and initiative. Nobody could challenge their right. The priests, on their side, would walk warily, and be ready to foresee difficulties and in due time give sound and wise advice whenever it might be needed. It was not the Pope’s intention, nor was it needful, that they should lead the various movements. Their work was to guide gently and cautiously the activities started and. worked out by the laity.” (Subheadings omitted.)

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172223806

This is a remarkable passage, well in advance of Vatican II’s recognition of the right of the laity to participate in the mission of the Church. In Melbourne, at least, this attitude had permeated the lay movements, though by Vatican II the use of the term Catholic Action had mostly fallen into disuse. The term Catholic Action was emerging in political debate in connection with the campaigns by Catholics to counter the influence of communists in the trade union movement and to strengthen their influence in the Australian Labor Party.
In addressing a YCS rally in May 1950 Archbishop Mannix said:

“I am sorry we ever called this work Catholic Action – the name was being used in other places before the movement reached Australia – a name which is so frequently misunderstood. For many reasons, the title ‘lay apostolate’ would have been much better.”

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172511173

As best I can recall my time in the Young Christian Workers (YCW) and later working for the YCS, the term Catholic Action had no significant contemporary use in the 1960s. We were involved in the lay apostolate, the youth apostolate, or the student apostolate.
The YCS and the YCW were established by the bishops, but with the stated objective that they would be run by their members, by students and by young workers. No doubt, there were many instances of a failure to observe the demarcations stressed by Archbishop Mannix in 1945, but, overall, the YCS was run by students for students. And the YCW was run by young workers for young workers. Moreover, many of those members understood that they were the Catholic Church in action in their own vocations and spheres of influence. Of course, this was reinforced by commentaries coming out of Vatican II, particularly the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity in December 1965, the last month of the Council.

It is important to appreciate that the YCW and the YCS were established in each diocese by a mandate from the local bishop. In Melbourne the YCW, from 1941, and the YCS, from 1942, were constituted as agencies of the Archdiocese and were part of the structure of the Archdiocese, the organisational link being diocesan chaplains appointed by the Archbishop. In this respect they were like the current day “official” youth ministries of Australian dioceses.

In summary, this was the Church in which the YCS operated in the 1960s.

Before saying more, it is useful to remind ourselves that, at the present time, all Australian Catholics under the age of 25 have grown up in a Church beset by the scandal and devastations of sexual abuse within the Church. By contrast, the 1960s was a period when students and young workers could be enthusiastic about their Church, especially given the kinds of views expressed by Archbishop Mannix and Vatican II. Sure, there was some apathy in the 1960s, but we now have significant antipathy.

I have limited knowledge of the YCS in the early to mid-1960s. My knowledge of the youth apostolate came through the YCW, which I joined in Fawkner in 1960 when I turned 14, the school leaving age at the time. I did not move beyond parish sporting and social activities until my second year at Melbourne University. In the following two years I was very active in the “apostolic” side of the YCW in the parish and at the university. In the parish we established a YCS group for secondary students and another group for tertiary students. The Diocesan Chaplain of the YCW (Fr Paul Willy) put me in touch with three YCW Branch Presidents (Peter Cowan, Bill O’Shea, and Darrel Bowyer) who were also at Melbourne University and the four of us started Jocist groups in the university. (The name being derived from the initials of Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, the French YCW.) We saw them as extensions of our YCW membership, but they were not YCW groups. These were different times without the pressures that are now on students. As well as being active in my parish, I was, for those two years, the Secretary of the Law Students’ Society and involved in various SRC-related campus activities. When I finished Law School at the end of 1967, I got a job offer from the National Office of the YCS which was then based in Melbourne. I seemed to be a reasonable fit for the YCS’s plans for parishes and tertiary education. I was National Secretary in 1968 and National President in 1969.

In the late 1960s the Melbourne YCW was strong in many parishes, well-organised by full time workers and backed by a large network of priests who were committed to the lay apostolate as expounded by Archbishop Mannix, Cardinal Joseph Cardijn (the founder of the YCW) and Vatican II. The enormous YCW football competition throughout Melbourne enabled YCW branches to stay connected with a wide range of youth in their parishes. In 1969 we had about 40 parish YCS groups and 20 or more parish tertiary student groups in Melbourne. Overall, there were about 5,000 students in the YCS, the vast majority in school groups.

My time with the YCS coincided with the start of a marked change in its “membership”. I use that word loosely because at this time there was no formal membership and YCS numbers were estimated by the number of annual programmes, or handbooks, sold by the National Office. In 1968 more than 30,000 were sold. By the early 1970s the sales had fallen to less than 10,000. This was the start of a long decline in YCS numbers.

Space does not permit a discussion of the reasons for this initial decline, but it was, in my view, mostly caused by the emergence of what we called the “New Catechetics” and the commercial publications that came with this change. The YCS and the YCS publications had become part of the Religious Education curriculum in many schools because of their ability to link faith and the lives and interests of students. That was the substance of the new catechetics and the publications it inspired were more professional in content and presentation than we could produce in the YCS. We consoled ourselves with the thought that it would only impact on “book members”. We were wrong. One Melbourne girls’ school which had YCS groups from the early days replaced the YCS with “Catechetics”. On top of this, by the early 1970s the YCS had to cope with falling numbers of Religious Assistants in schools and priests in parishes.

Despite the threat from these changes, the YCS and the new catechetics shared a common theology and pedagogy. A key figure in post-Vatican II catechetics in Melbourne, and beyond, was Fr Tom Doyle, later Monsignor Tom Doyle AO, Chair of the National Catholic Education Commission. He became the Director of Religious Education in the Archdiocese when I was working for the YCS and was based in the building next to the YCS offices in Cathedral Hall. I had known him very well since my university days. Tom Doyle was the priest who had the greatest influence on me while I was at university and in my YCS years. With the help of Fr Frank Little, later the Archbishop of Melbourne, we were able to have him “appointed” by the Archdiocese as the de facto chaplain to the National YCS workers during the substantial period between the official national appointments of Frs. Paul Kane and Pat Walsh. Tom Doyle and three other priests, Frs. Barry Moran, Eric Hodgens and Bob Maguire, were very well-known for their activities supporting tertiary students from the mid-1960s. The Chaplain’s house at Ozanam House, where Tom and Eric lived, was like a clubhouse for many of us. The four priests, like many other young priests in the Archdiocese, were not only in sync with Vatican II, but were ahead of it in regard to the lay apostolate. For that we need to recognise the leadership of Archbishop Mannix, Archbishop Simonds, the Coadjutor Archbishop of Melbourne from 1942, and Fr Charles (“Charlie”) Mayne SJ, Rector of archdiocesan seminaries from 1947 to 1968.

I should also make a necessarily brief reference to the political context in which the YCS worked. In the 1960s the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) continued to bleed votes away from the Australian Labour Party (ALP), as it had done since the mid-1950s when the DLP emerged from the ALP. The DLP was a predominantly Catholic party with its origins in differences over the role of Catholic Action movements, differing views on the threat that communists posed to Australian society and disputes about whether and how Catholics should organise in the ALP and trade unions. “The Split” kept the ALP out of office federally and in those States, such as Victoria, where the DLP was strong. Many Catholic families, including my extended family, were split by the issue. Support for the DLP among Parish Priests and Religious was especially strong, but among curates the proportion was more even. Perhaps most YCS members came from DLP-supporting families, but there would not have been much in it.

The great achievement of the YCW in Melbourne (and in other places) was keeping party politics out of the YCW. There was a still plenty of scope for social action without exposing the issues that separated the ALP and the DLP. We had to be careful in Melbourne in presenting various issues within the YCS. Not so in Sydney where the DLP was weak and there were strong connections between Catholic groups and the ALP. As I Victorian, I was amazed to find that the Diocesan Chaplain of the YCS in Sydney, a Parish Priest, appeared to be the de facto chaplain to the local ALP branch.

By the end of the 1960s, Vietnam became the predominant political issue. Differences over conscription, which took effect in 1966, were significant. Many were opposed to sending conscripts to fight but were still supportive of intervention. However, more Australian took the view that the war was unwinnable and/or unjust. When Gough Whitlam announced in his policy speech for the October 1969 that an ALP Government would withdraw Australian troops from Vietnam, differences over the issue within the YCW could not be avoided. Nor could they be contained in the YCS. The implications for the YCW were more serious because it could only work in parishes where the parish priests gave permission for it to operate. The DLP was a strong supporter of military support for South Vietnam. I believe that the YCW’s increasing support for the withdrawal of troops was a significant reason for the collapse of the YCW in the 1970s, at least in Melbourne.

1969 was also a year when Senator Frank McManus of the DLP was up for re-election in Victoria. He campaigned on a “Social Justice” policy, which was a fundamental orientation of the DLP, reflecting its Catholic Action and Catholic Social Justice connections. Although the YCS was established in 1942 as a social justice movement by bishops who issued annual Social Justice Statements, and the enquiries and other activities of the YCS in the 1960s covered social justice issues, the term “social justice” was not part of the YCS lexicon in the late 1960s.

In reading about 80 pages of the YCS 1968 National Conference Report I could not find even one use of the term social justice. My best guess is that the term was not used because it had become politicised by its association with the DLP. When the term re-emerged in the following decades, often used in conjunction with “peace”, it was seen by many to be a “left-of-centre” term and rallying point. The YCS’s 1992 National Conference Report also avoids the term even though there were many issues covered that we would now regard as social justice issues. Having read some historical documents in recent years, I suspect that the YCS was too late in returning to the term social justice as a description of itself. We still hear of comments from the schools to the effect that they do not need the YCS because they have a social justice group. On Facebook the YCS is described as “a social justice movement run for, by, and with high school students”. That is a good description, but there is a lot more to the YCS, as we saw in the 1960s.

I now turn to a closer look at the way Vatican II impacted the YCS in the 1960s.

The YCS entered the 1960s with a similar structure to that of the 1940s. When it was inaugurated in 1942 it was anticipated that the YCS would establish and run a wide range of activities within Catholic schools, much like a student council with a wide brief. The YCS therefore ran activity groups such as drama, handcraft, music, debating, literature, missions, and Red Cross. It included some activities that would now be part of the school curriculum. Above this structure was the Leaders’ Group which was both formation-oriented and the body responsible for the activity groups. General meetings of all members would be held from time to time.

By the mid-1960s activity groups had fallen away, replaced by groups working through the meetings set out in the widely distributed YCS programmes. Members of the Leaders Group would have responsibility for the other YCS groups.

YCS meetings, like YCW meetings, had three parts: a Gospel enquiry, a personal enquiry, and a social enquiry. The programmes contained Gospel texts with commentaries and questions for discussion. Social enquiries on cultural issues and social needs were in the “see, judge, act” format with helpful questions, commentaries, and suggestions for using that process. The personal enquiries had two sub-headings: Items of interest and Facts of action. This format was similar to the YCW Leaders’ programme. My YCW Leaders’ programme from 1966, which I still have, bears out the similarity between the YCS and the YCW at this time, though, of course, the topics for the social enquiries largely reflected the different environments of students and workers.

It is important to stress that this meeting structure had been carefully developed and promoted over the years. This is evident in John N Molony’s Towards an Apostolic Laity, which was published by the Australian YCW in 1960. At the time John Molony was a Diocesan Chaplain of the YCW. He left the priesthood in 1964 and later became the Manning Clark Professor of Australian History at the Australian National University. The relevant chapter of the book, is at

http://history.australiancardijninstitute.org/p/catholic-action-technique.html

The chapter makes the point that the “Enquiry technique or method” is relevant to each part of the meeting:

“Therefore, the Enquiry is the means used by the Y.C.W. which leads the human person to do three things

1) To SEE himself in the whole of his life, in his relations with God, with others, with his surroundings in his home, his work and his leisure.

2) To JUDGE what he has seen, to judge it with the mind of Christ.

3) To take ACTION, either personally or in conjunction with others; action which is formative, educative, of service to others, representative on behalf of those for whom he knows he has responsibility.”

The purpose of the process was to transform the worlds (or milieus) in which the participants lived and, in the process, develop a deeper faith. When I first started to become involved in the apostolic side of the YCW it was the term “formation through action” that was used to describe what the YCW was on about, and limited reference was made to the “see, judge, act” methodology. The YCW was a Christian formation movement based on action.

The personal enquiry, with its simple headings of items of interest and facts of action, was the critical area for faith formation. In the YCW the priest played a key role. The 1960s was a time when many priests could devote, say, an hour and a half on a Tuesday night for a meeting in the presbytery with the YCW Leaders’ group. The resulting personal relationship was very important in the development of Leaders. In schools, there were many Religious Assistants who could provide the same kind of support.

There was, however, a critical difference between the personal enquiries in the YCW and the YCS. In the YCW the personal enquiry discussion often concerned the experiences of the Leaders in their various work situations. By contrast, YCS members met in a closed environment and the discussions of experiences were necessarily limited. More concerning was the possibility that other students might think that the Leaders’ discussion of items of interest and facts of action was about monitoring school behaviour and that the Leaders were operating as “secret police” within the school. A change was made. By the mid-1960s the Personal Enquiry in the YCS had become the Review of the Week and the terms items of interest and facts of action had disappeared. The same kind of concerns lead to the change in the terminology in relation to social enquiries, which were sometimes school focussed: “see, judge act” was replaced by “see, reflect, act”. But what was the purpose and scope of the Review of the Week?

When I started with the YCS in 1968 change was already under way regarding the Review of the Week. It came with the Review of Life. That term is now dominant in the descriptions of Jocist movements, and it is generally assumed that the Review of Life was developed by Cardijn a century ago. However, the term was not used in the YCW or the YCS in Australia before the mid-1960s. It is not found in, for example, my YCW Leaders’ programme for 1966 or the YCS’s National Conference report of the same year.

A sign of things to come was found in the Australian YCW’s publication In This World of March 1967. It reproduced a paper from the December 1965 YCW International Council in Bangkok on the Enquiry Method, which was promoted as a method for meetings and personal life. It was Cardijn’s last International Council. The paper included:

“So, at the base of the Y.C.W. pedagogy, there are three fundamental attitudes which have prompted the “see-judge-act” technique and which express the orientation of the Y.C.W. method. These fundamental attitudes are:

1. Spirit of enquiry (to be in search of life).

2. Spirit of discovery and welcoming God acting in men and in the world

3. Spirit of committing oneself in charity to respond to the call of God.”

The document explained the see, judge, act method in some detail and concluded:

“This application of the method is called the “review of life”. This is not a discussion of ideas, or an examination of conscience: it is a period of deep reflection based on the reality of life, so as to discover the presence and call of God and to decide together on the personal and collective commitment needed…. This review leads not only to action, but also to prayer in order to return to God all that has been seen and done.”

So, the Review of Life was being seen as a way of looking, thinking, doing and praying. It was not only a meeting methodology or technique. In mid-1967 I prepared a programme for the Jocist groups at Melbourne University which included a two-page explanation of the Review of Life. I still have it. I cannot recall how I got it, but it was almost certainly from Fr Paul Willy (see above) or Fr Kevin Smith, the National Chaplain of the YCW. The Review of Life expressed the YCW spirituality at the time.

The Review of Life approach also came to the YCS in Australia following the conference of the International YCS in Montreal in 1967, to which Australia sent two full-timers from the National Office. The report of the YCS National Conference of May 1968 records the interest in this new development. The main topic of the conference was “Study”, but there were other sessions dealing with a range of matters, including the Review of the Week and the Review of Life.

A paper was prepared by the Melbourne delegation on the Review of Life and a workshop was held on it (see pages 65-70 of Conference Report). The paper commenced:

“There are two foundations upon which Review of Life is based. We believe that God is present and is working and is calling to us through the Human events of our life and secondly, that, when a community comes together the Holy Spirit works among them so that they may discover what God is saying. Review of Life is not a new thing, nor merely a technique, but simply reflection on the basis of the beliefs stated above.”

Extracts from the National Report of the YCS National Conference are at the Attachment hereto. You will see from the photo that the conference didn’t lack from a shortage of adult participation. The large number of nuns, priests and brothers added a considerable amount of intellectual input.

All of this sat very well with the emergence during Vatican II of the need to read the “signs of the times”. Basic reading in the YCS in my time was the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), which commenced with

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.” (N.1)

It was shortly followed by:

“To carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics.” (N. 4)

The YCS senior programme of 1969 had a feature on “Looking into Life”, which drew on, and referred to, the YCW’s publication noted above. After stressing the importance of an interest in people and awareness of situations, it explained the purposes of the Enquiry (previously called the Social Enquiry) and the Review. The Enquiry was firmly based on the see, reflect, act process. The Review was introduced by a passage drawing on the 1968 Conference report:

“There are two ideas behind the Review. We believe that

(i) God is present in life, is acting through the events of human life and calls us through these events.

(ii) The Holy Spirit is working among the members of the group, helping them to discover what God is saying.”

The group review was explained:

“The first step in making the review is that each member contributes a fact – an event that has happened, something said, some reaction to an event. The group reflects on each in turn, attempting to discovering the events of life what God is saying and what response ought to be made on our part.”

The programme provided a guide to the group review:

“The Review is flexible, but the following is a possible method of procedure:

  • What is each one’s reaction to the fact? Have we any comment to make?
  • What do we think God is saying through this fact?
  • Where does this situation fit in with God’s plan?
  • Is God asking anything of us as a group?
  • If we have already acted or made a response in our own particular situation, is any further action possible?
  • If we are to make some personal response, what is it to be? Can we strengthen the good we have seen? How can we make our part of the world – where we are – more open to God?”


Following the National Conference of 1966, the YCS changed the name of the Personal Enquiry, with its “Items of interest” and “Facts of action”, to the Review of the Week. At about the same time the Review of Life approach was emerging internationally in both the YCS and the YCW. In Australia, interest in the Review of Life was prompted, in part, by an article in the National YCW periodical “In This World”.

Note that not all of these may apply in every case.”

The personal review was described:

“We need the personal review of our day if we are to understand our life, and if our group review is to succeed.

Thus, we ought to reflect on the events of the day – on the situations that occurred, on the way we responded to them, and the people we met. “How was God calling me today?”

There is a close connection between Review and Prayer. The Review trains us to pray about the events of life, teaches us to reflect with God on the real issues of our life. Through it, we begin to integrate our life into the Mass, and we begin to see our need for close contact with Christ through the Sacraments.”

These passages were repeated with some small modifications in the 1970 programme. They were very close to the description of the Review of Life I was given in mid-1967.

Perhaps our most frequently quoted book at this time was Michel Quoist’s Prayers of Life, which illustrated the kind of prayer life the Review of Life worked towards. It contained the following passage in its introduction (which we put on the back cover of the 1970 programme):

“If we knew how to look at life through God’s eyes we should see it as innumerable tokens of the love of the Creator seeking the love of his children. The father has put us into the world, not to walk through it with lowered eyes, but to search for Him through things, events, people.”

This was the Jocist spirituality of the YCS. It was, in my view, the major change within the YCS in the 1960s.

We can see that here was no reference to the see, reflect, act methodology in the Review, although they are implicitly included within the list of questions. On the other hand, the Enquiry (formerly the Social Enquiry) in both the 1969 and 1970 YCS programmes was explicitly based on the see, reflect, act structure. In both programmes it is stated, consistent with the YCW document of 1965, that the there are two steps in the reflection, the Human and the Christian. In that document the Human reflection is seen as an introduction to the Christian judgment, which is a “reflection with Christ”, with reference to the Gospels. Today we would add references to Catholic social teaching which has expanded greatly since the 1960s.

The 1969 programme recognised the difficulty of fitting the three parts of the YCS meeting into the available time within schools. It was getting harder to find time within the school curriculum or outside class hours. Meetings A and B were on alternate weeks. Meeting A was Review of the Week (20 minutes) and Gospel (15 minutes). Meeting B was Review of the Week (10 minutes) and Enquiry (20 minutes). The same format and times appear in the 1970 senior programme. This was not ideal, to say the least.

This group Review was a big task for a session that is allocated 20 minutes or 10 minutes, depending on whether the meeting was Meeting A or Meeting B. How could it be done in any meaningful way? In practice the Review expanded to fill the available time, to the detriment of the Gospel discussions and the Enquiry.

There were some important questions. Did the focus on the Review of Life present some problems for the movement? Can a mass movement, as the YCS was then, be driven by a focus on the searching questions of the Review of Life? Was the Review of Life a good starting point for student involvement? I should note that my last project with the YCS was to write, along with others, the 1970 programme. I cannot recall how much I thought about these questions at the time of writing, but I did a little later.

A few years ago, I was rummaging through my old YCS documents when I found a handwritten draft of an article that I would have prepared in about 1972, a couple of years after I had left the YCS, but during which I had maintained a close involvement with the Fawkner parish YCS and YCS workers. The article was never completed. After referring to the move away from activity groups and the adoption of the Review of Life following the 1968 National Conference, I scribbled.

“… a mistake was made, by myself included, in confusing the aims of the YCS to develop a Review of Life approach, with the method of achieving it. Suddenly groups threw away the old method of Gospel, Personal Enquiry and Social Enquiry and replaced them by a non-directive fluid review. The theory was good – “don’t tell them what to do, let them discover it”. When starting a group we said “sit down, start talking- we will take it from there”. In fact you might be able to take it [reflection and action] from a general conversation, but practically speaking the YCS movement is not able to cope with this at all levels. An experienced Religious Assistant or Chaplain or an exceptional student could make a fist of it, but otherwise negative.

Since then a more realistic approach (the Gospel, Review and Enquiry meeting) has been developed. However, this does still not meet the practical demands of the YCS.

I am suggesting that as a general policy the YCS develop something that harkens back to the activity group era. Basically, YCS groups should be formed for some specific purpose and should be known by that purpose. The purpose should not be a gimmick, but should be [about] a real need in the life of the students and one which the students are able to do something about; and, in doing so, they will achieve a sense of achievement, group spirit, confidence and leadership. In fact YCS groups should not be formed unless there is something which they can do.

The basic thrust of the group must come from the purpose of the group. The group is different from the old activity groups because the group action is not just a label, but something which is worked at, ongoing, reflective, etc. It amounts to a continuing enquiry It is different to groups now doing inquiries because it is more sustained, more satisfying and more work. Having exhausted the action the group might dissolve or, hopefully, seize on something else to do. The first is not a cause for distress.

In a parish or school context, the YCS might have the following groups:”

The draft stops at this point. What I was getting at, I am sure, included something like the sustained campaigns on social issues that the YCW undertook in the 1960s. A campaign was an enquiry extended over a number of weeks. In Melbourne the most notable of these was the road safety campaign, in particular the public advocacy and lobbying for compulsory seat belts. However, my suggestion was to run a number of these campaigns at the one time. This was different to the enquiries produced in the YCS programmes where, usually, there was one meeting on each topic and enquiries were unconnected, although in 1969 there were five enquiries around the topic of Study. I was arguing for a social enquiry-driven YCS on social concerns and issues.

I did not seek to minimise the importance of Review of Life. Stapled to the draft is a page headed “Review of Life”, which includes the following jottings: “R of L is basic to the apostolic formation of lay people”; “R of L must be seen as an aim and not as a method”; “We must seek out the most effective methods of developing a R of L approach – problem of methodology”; “The methodology we use must be of value in itself”; and “The methodology will be pragmatic, rather than preconceived”.

The point I was making in these drafts was that the YCS should operate with a progression towards a Review of Life approach in meetings and, beyond that, to a member’s approach to life generally. The Review of Life, fully understood and not reduced to a methodology for meetings, is the goal, rather than a starting point of the student apostolate, one that seeks to integrate faith and the worlds in which students live.

The following extract is from the current “NUTS” Introductory Program of the Australian Young Christian Students. (“NUTS” is the acronym for “Never Underestimate The Students”). It reflects the fact that social issues generally present the usual starting point for the YCS. It sets out a path or journey from social engagement to deep faith formation.

“A major part of the mission of the YCS is to work for a fairer and more just society consistent with the teachings and values of Jesus Christ and the principles and objectives of Catholic Social Teaching.

But the YCS is more than that. There is something closer to home. The YCS also challenges students to focus on the reality of their own lives and the lives of those around them; for example, the needs of other students within their schools and local communities.

But the YCS is even more than that. Engaging with the world, from the local to the global, and working to improve the lives of our nearest neighbours through to those we will never meet will transform the YCS member. Leadership skills, self-confidence and social friendships will grow, not because they are pursued for personal improvement, but because they are the result of a commitment to something above and beyond self-interest.

So the YCS is a “formation through action” movement. Formation means different things to different people. When we talk of formation in the YCS we talk about Christian formation: where engagement in the world and serving the needs of others is seen as inextricably linked to a commitment to Jesus Christ.

At the heart of the YCS is what is called the Review of Life or the “See, Judge, Act “methodology. It is used by YCS groups as a method or process for discovering, evaluating and acting on a wide range of topics.

But the Review of Life is more than a methodology for dealing with social issues. Itis also personal. It is a way of thinking and working our way through a wide range of issues that come into our personal lives, where the judging or evaluating part of the process helps us to better understand ourselves and our relationships with others.

And there is another dimension to the Review of Life that moves us beyond the purely human. The Review of Life is also a process in which our personal and silent reflections on the realities of a commitment to Jesus Christ can become our prayers of life.

The NUTS program will introduce you to the YCS’s way of thinking and how it operates. We hope it will take you on a journey of social engagement and spiritual discovery. 

In my view, this is consistent with the theology, spirituality and pedagogy that Jocists drew in from Vatican II during the 1960s. The Review of Life in its 1960s form should be understood as a goal in faith formation rather than a starting point. Too often these days the Review of Life and the see, judge, act methodology are secularised, with only a passing nod the Gospels and Catholic social teaching.

In a social justice movement like the YCS, the see, judge, act structure is a useful starting point, but something more is needed if the YCS is to be a formation through action movement. The YCS should not be defined by its starting point or its meeting methodology.

The passage from the AYCS’s NUTS publication suggests that faith formation is a journey. We could think of the YCS as a train on a journey, a journey that will have frequent stops on the way to the end of the line. Some of those who board at the outset (for example, to only work on a good cause, but no more) might get off at an early stop, appreciative of the good work they have done. But the train must go on; and the job of the YCS is to offer to its passengers inspiration and reasons to stay on the journey.

Despite strength of the theology, spirituality and pedagogy, the fact of the matter is that the YCS and the YCW have lost the institutional support that they once had. By institutional support, I especially mean the support of the bishops. I expect that while the bishops appreciate the social justice work of the movements, their focus in the allocation of scarce resources will be on activities that promote faith formation. Faith formation is intrinsically important, but it is also important because faith formation can also be a means of social engagement and transformation, and leadership development. I believe the funding and other supportive outcomes for the Jocist movements would improve if the Review of Life of the immediate post-Vatican II years were better understood by the movements, bishops and schools.

I had no significant contact with YCS workers and YCS groups between about 1974 and when I was asked in 2018 to join the National Adult Support Team. While I was ignorant of what was happening in the YCS I was very familiar with the content and the application of Catholic social teaching. Leaving aside, as I must, the huge social changes of the last 50 years, which will shape the way in which the YCS now organises, it is important to note the huge expansion in Catholic social teaching and its potential to be a means of changing the worlds in which students live and to deepen their faith.

I am still convinced that the strength of the Jocist movements is in their capacity to achieve three interconnected goals: faith formation, social engagement and transformation, and leadership development. It distinguishes the movements from other youth ministries that are currently better supported than the Jocist movements. If the YCS is to find sufficient student and institutional support, it needs to be a committed social justice movement based on the beliefs, values and principles of the Gospels and Catholic social teaching. I believe this will, be greatly assisted by a closer look at how the YCS responded to Vatican II in the 1960s.

Brian Lawrence

March 2023

ATTACHMENT

The Review of Life

Extracts from the 1968 National Conference Report of the Australian YCS

Armidale, NSW, May 1968

Workshop 4

Following the National Conference of 1966, the YCS changed the name of the Personal Enquiry, with its “Items of interest” and “Facts of action”, to the Review of the Week. At about the same time the Review of Life approach was emerging internationally in both the YCS and the YCW. In Australia, interest in the Review of Life was prompted, in part, by an article in the National YCW periodical “In This World”.

Webinar: The women of Vatican II: Sr Maureen Sullivan O.P.

For our next ACI webinar on Saturday 11 March – three days after International Women’s Day – we are proud to present Sr Maureen Sullivan, who will share her research on the women auditors who attended and contributed to the Second Vatican Council.

Among those women auditors was Australian, Rosemary Goldie, who later became the under-secretary of the Pontifical Council of the Laity in 1967.

Others included Uruguayan feminist theologian and activist, Gladys Parentelli, who represented the International Catholic Movement for Rural Youth (MIJARC) at the Council, and Marie-Louise Monnet, founder of the International Movement for the Apostolate of Independent Social Milieux (MIAMSI).

Religious sisters who were lay auditors included Sr Mary Luke Tobin, an American Loreto sister, and Mother Suzanne Guillemin, superior general of the Daughters of Charity.

Sr Maureen will speak of their stories of their hopes, struggles and achievements in a don’t miss event for all those interested not only in the role of women in the Church and world but also at the Council itself.

Sr Maureen Sullivan

Sr Maureen graduated with a PhD in theology from Fordham University in New York with a dissertation on “The Christian Humanism of Pope Paul VI: An Inquiry into its Christological Foundations.”

She taught at St Anselm’s College, New Hampshire, where she was professor of theology, and at Fordham University.

Her books include 101 Questions and Answers About Vatican II, and The Road to Vatican II: Key Changes in Theology, both published by Paulist Press.

She has also served as preaching promoter and on the vocation team of the Dominican Sisters of Hope.

READ MORE

Sr Maureen Sullivan O.P. CV

Rosemary Goldie (Wikipedia)

WEBINAR DETAILS

Saturday 11 March 2023, 1pm AEDT (Sydney-Melbourne), 10am Perth (Friday evening USA)

REGISTER VIA ZOOM

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85376887586?pwd=L1hwM1A4ZmdOM29WL1BWdUxzeDFNZz09

Cardijn’s greatest battle: Lay apostolate vs apostolate of the faithful at Vatican II

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council on 11 October 1962.

Many will know that Cardijn played several roles at the Council, initially as a member of the Preparatory Commission on Lay Apostolate, then as a peritus in the conciliar commission and finally as a Council Father after Paul VI made him a cardinal in February 1965.

In addition to the above, in July 1963, he published his influential book “Lay People into Action,” which was translated from French into five languages.

Finally, – and perhaps most significant of all – was Cardijn’s role as the centre of a network of 250 jocist bishops, who had all been formed by and/or had personal experience as chaplains of the YCW, YCS and other Specialised Catholic Action movements.

All this may make it seem as if Cardijn had an easy time at the Council. Nothing could be further from the truth! In reality, Vatican II would prove to be the greatest battle of his life.

At the age of 80, Cardijn found himself called to explain and promote his conception of the “specifically lay apostolate of lay people” as distinguished from the “apostolate of the faithful” common to all the baptised. It was a distinction that many theologians and bishops who had no personal experience of the Cardijn movements failed to grasp. Indeed, I would argue that many still fail to grasp it!

Yet, as the documents of Vatican II attest, Cardijn and his colleagues were ultimately successful in their endeavours as evidenced by §31 of Lumen Gentium, which made clear that “the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.”

In this month’s webinar, Stefan Gigacz explains the struggle that Cardijn and his network faced in their efforts to achieve this.

SPEAKER

Originally from Melbourne, Stefan worked for a short time as a personal injuries lawyer. While at university, he became involved in a local parish YCW group. In 1978, he became a fulltime worker for the movement, working in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and later for the International YCW.

Later, he completed master’s degrees in canon law and legal theory. From 1997-2000, he coordinated an international project to document the history of the YCW before taking up a position as a project officer with the French Catholic development agency, CCFD-Terre Solidaire. From 2006-2008, he worked as a pastoral worker in a Melbourne Catholic parish. Since then, he has worked as an editor and journalist for a series of Catholic online publications.

From 2012-2018, he worked on his PhD thesis on the role of Joseph Cardijn at the Second Vatican Council, now published under the title “The Leaven in the Council: Joseph Cardijn and the Jocist Network at Vatican II.” He now resides in Perth, Western Australia, where he devotes his time to the development of the Australian Cardijn Institute.

DETAILS

Tuesday 11 October 2022, 8pm AEDT or 11am Brussels/Paris time.

REGISTER

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sc-2ppjMtHtFlVEdsqq1OEYr7eBtmkeAD

Video: Gerard Philips, theologian, senator and promoter of the laity: Prof. Mathijs Lamberigts

2022 not only marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in October 1962 but it is also the 50th anniversary of the death of Belgian theologian, Gerard Philips, the architect of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

ACI invited Professor Mathijs Lamberigts, former director of the Vatican II Centre at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, to be the presenter for our 13 September webinar entitled “Gerard Philips, Theologian, senator and promoter of the laity.”

Gerard Philips, theologian, senator and promoter of the laity

Born on 29 April 1899, Philips was an early and enthusiastic collaborator of Joseph Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement. During the 1930s, he played a key role as chaplain in the development of the Flemish Catholic students movement. Continuing his work with Cardijn, he promoted Specialised Catholic Action among generations of Belgian seminarians.

In 1952, he published his landmark book, De leek in de Kerk, translated into English as “The laity in the Church.” In 1957, he achieved further prominence with his keynote address to the Second World Congress on Lay Apostolate in Rome.

As a peritus at the Second Vatican Council, Philips was called on by Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens to write what became the first draft of the future Dogmatic Constution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Later, he collaborated closely with French peritus, Pierre Haubtmann, in the drafting of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World, Gaudium et Spes.

To these tasks, he brought his knowledge as a theologian but also the skills of diplomacy and negotiation that he had developed as a co-opted senator in the Belgian parliament

Originally from the Diocese of Liège, Gerard Philips taught at the University of Louvain (Leuven) from 1944 until his death on 14 July 1972.

Mathijs Lamberigts

Mathijs Lamberigts

Mathijs Lamberigts is Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, where he remains a member of the Research Unit on the History of Church and Theology.

An academic librarian from 1989 to 2000, Professor Lamberigts was Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at Leuven from 2000 to 2008, and again from 2014 to 2018.

For 15 years, he was a member of the Religious Sciences working group of the Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research (FNRS) and is also a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.

He is a member of the editorial staff of several leading theological including. Augustiniana, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Melitta, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, and Sacris Erudiri.

Webinar: Gerard Philips, architect of Lumen Gentium

2022 not only marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in October 1962 but it is also the 50th anniversary of the death of Belgian theologian, Gerard Philips, the architect of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

ACI has therefore invited Professor Mathijs Lamberigts, former director of the Vatican II Centre at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, to be the presenter for our 13 September webinar entitled “Gerard Philips, Theologian, senator and promoter of the laity.”

Gerard Philips, theologian, senator and promoter of the laity

Born on 29 April 1899, Philips was an early and enthusiastic collaborator of Joseph Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement. During the 1930s, he played a key role as chaplain in the development of the Flemish Catholic students movement. Continuing his work with Cardijn, he promoted Specialised Catholic Action among generations of Belgian seminarians.

In 1952, he published his landmark book, De leek in de Kerk, translated into English as “The laity in the Church.” In 1957, he achieved further prominence with his keynote address to the Second World Congress on Lay Apostolate in Rome.

As a peritus at the Second Vatican Council, Philips was called on by Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens to write what became the first draft of the future Dogmatic Constution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Later, he collaborated closely with French peritus, Pierre Haubtmann, in the drafting of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World, Gaudium et Spes.

To these tasks, he brought his knowledge as a theologian but also the skills of diplomacy and negotiation that he had developed as a co-opted senator in the Belgian parliament

Originally from the Diocese of Liège, Gerard Philips taught at the University of Louvain (Leuven) from 1944 until his death on 14 July 1972.

Mathijs Lamberigts

Mathijs Lamberigts

Mathijs Lamberigts is Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, where he remains a member of the Research Unit on the History of Church and Theology.

An academic librarian from 1989 to 2000, Professor Lamberigts was Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at Leuven from 2000 to 2008, and again from 2014 to 2018.

For 15 years, he was a member of the Religious Sciences working group of the Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research (FNRS) and is also a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.

He is a member of the editorial staff of several leading theological including. Augustiniana, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Melitta, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, and Sacris Erudiri.

Date and time

Tuesday 13 September, 7pm AEST

Register

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86728331442?pwd=UERxRjM3NnhKZmlxSkRERnhlL3Budz09

READ MORE

Gerard Philips (French Wikipedia)

Gerard Phiips, The 25th anniversary of the YCW (French)

Gerard Philips, Reflections of a theologian (French)

The Pact of the Catacombs and the Pietralata Message

ACI has launched a new website – pactofthecatacombs.com – that tells the story of the Pact of the Catacombs for a Church of the Poor and its long forgotten counterpart, the Pietralata Message, for a worker Church.

The story began with a proposal by Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara to hold two Eucharistic celebrations towards the end of the Fourth Session of Vatican II in October or November 1965.

The two masses took place on successive evenings on 16 and 17 November 1965, just prior to the promulgation of the Decree on Lay Apostolate, Apostolicam Actuositatem, on 18 November.

The Mass for a Poor and Servant Church was held first in the Domitilla Catacombs. It was there that the document later to become known as the Pact of the Catacombs was adopted by the bishops present.

The Mass for Workers took place the following evening at Cardijn’s cardinal’s parish church of St Michael Archangel in the working class Rome suburb of Pietralata. There, the gathered bishops adopted a second document, the Pietralata Message.

Much has been written about the Pact of the Catacombs yet little is known of the Pietralata Message.

This website presents them both pairing them again in the way that Helder Camara had originally intended and hoped.

VISIT THE WEBSITE

https://www.pactofthecatacombs.com

Plenary Council prioritises lay apostolate formation

The Australian Plenary Council, which concluded last week, has prioritised formation for the apostolate of the laity in its Decree on “Formation and Leadership for Mission and Ministry.”

“Responding to the call for a renewal of formation,” reads §7 of the introduction to Decree 6,, “the Plenary Council endorses principles and strategies that develop models of formation to encourage and strengthen the apostolate of the laity in the world. “

It continues with a strong endorsement of the see-judge-act method for this formation:

This apostolate offers a particular prophetic sign by seeking the common good and by concrete actions that protect and promote human dignity, peace and justice. Attentive to the ‘signs of the times’, movements of the lay apostolate, in their various forms, offer the baptised a way to reflect on the concrete experiences of their lives in the light of the Gospel and engage as missionary disciples in the world.

As a means for formation, the apostolate of the laity is grounded in scriptural reflection, reception of the ecclesial wisdom of our tradition, and prayerful communal discernment. This formation shapes Christian engagement with the broader Australian community through listening and dialogue, and supports actions for the transformation of society through daily commitment and public witness.

“Therefore, to meet the formation needs of the present and future,” §9 adds, “the Plenary Council commits the Church in Australia to developing and committing to a culture of life-long faith formation that will ensure:

a. the diversity of the Catholic community is explicitly recognised;

b. intercultural competency is encouraged, especially in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and spiritualities;

c. the equal dignity of women and men is affirmed and demonstrated;

d. the renewal of faith formation within and for families in the context of the critical role that marriage, parenting, and care-giving plays as a school of formation, is prioritised and strengthened;

e. the apostolate of the laity, along with new ecclesial realities, acting as “leaven in the world,” (Lumen Gentium n. 31) is promoted, encouraged and supported;

f. the hopes, spirituality, giftedness, energy, and modes of communication and connection of young people are identified, incorporated, encouraged and celebrated;

g. ongoing support and strategies for those who minister to young people;

h. the rich variety of spiritual and devotional traditions of the Church are appreciated and celebrated; and

i. synodal practices such as encounter, accompaniment, listening, dialogue, discernment, and collaboration are fostered and deepened.

“By commiting the Australian Church to promoting the apostolate of the laity as a ‘leaven in the world,’ the Plenary has renewed the Vatican II emphasis on lay apostolate formation,” ACI secretary, Stefan Gigacz commented.

“This offers a clear direction to the work of the whole Australian Church,” he added. “It is also a major encouragement to ACI in its own work of promoting the spirituality and methods of Joseph Cardijn, who did so much to bring the lay apostolate to the forefront.”

The decrees of the Plenary Council will now be sent to Rome for ratification. Once this is completed, they will become binding on the Australian Church.

SOURCES

Formation and Leadership for Mission and Ministry (Australian Plenary Council)

2022: Australian Plenary Council: Formation (Australian Cardijn Institute)

Forum: Lumen Gentium 31 and the lay apostolate

The Australian Plenary Council has published its Framework for Motions to be discussed at its Second Assembly which will meet in Sydney from 4-9 July 2022.

Once again, ACI’s concern was the lack of emphasis on the lay vocation or apostolate of lay people. See also Fr Bruce Duncan’s critique of the Framework, which expresses similar concerns.

Meanwhile, Cardinal-elect Robert McElroy has highlighted the potential of the see-judge-act method for the development of a truly synodal Church.

Our latest submission therefore proposes amendments to §79-80, which fall under “Part 6. Formation and Leadership for Mission and Ministry.” 

In particular, the ACI submission called for the insertion of a paragraph highlighting that formation needs to focus on promoting the “specifically lay apostolate of lay people acting as a leaven within the world.”

This is based on §31 of the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium (LG31), which states:

What specifically characterizes the laity is their secular nature. It is true that those in holy orders can at times be engaged in secular activities, and even have a secular profession. But they are by reason of their particular vocation especially and professedly ordained to the sacred ministry. Similarly, by their state in life, religious give splendid and striking testimony that the world cannot be transformed and offered to God without the spirit of the beatitudes. But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity. Therefore, since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer.

Our second proposed amendment is to §80 and reads as follows:

To achieve this, the Church in Australia and in each diocese commits to develop and accompany lay apostolate formation movements, including classical movements such as the YCW and YCS as well as new initiatives responding to 21st century social realities and needs. Following the see-judge-act method of formation based on small review of life groups meeting regularly, these movements enable Christians to reflect on the concrete experiences of their lives as workers, family members and citizens in the light of the Gospel and to take personal and collective action to transform their lives and communities working for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven (Lumen Gentium §31). Priests, religious and lay ministers will play a vital special role in accompaniment in promoting this formation.

Lumen Gentium 31 Forum

Our 2021 Submission to the Plenary also called for the establishment of an Australian Catholic Council for the Lay Apostolate to promote the Vatican II vision of lay apostolate.

To date, we have no indication that this proposal will be adopted by the Plenary.

ACI will therefore hold an open forum to discuss further action to implement this proposal.

We invite all members and friends of ACI to join us for this event.

Please also see the link below for a compilation of resources on Catholic Social Teaching concerning the lay apostolate.

DETAILS

ACI Open Forum Lumen Gentium 31 and the Lay Apostolate

Saturday 2 July, 2.00pm AEST

REGISTRATION LINK

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkfuGvqDgrH9wxxFJxAZc9NFXN8aeAeyIY

PHOTO

Lawrence OP / Flickr / CC BY ND NC 2.0

READ MORE

Fr Bruce Duncan CsSR, Plenary Council fails to embrace Pope Francis’s wider social vision (Eureka Street)

Cardinal-elect Robert McElroy, Pope Francis and Vatican II give us a road map for the synodal process (America Magazine)

A Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern 1977 (Australian Cardijn Institute)

ACI Submission to the Plenary 2019 on Lay Apostolate

ACI Submission to the Plenary 2021 on an Australian Catholic Council for the Lay Apostolate

ACI Proposed Amendments to the Plenary Framework for Motions 2022

Resources on Lay Apostolate (Australian Cardijn Institute)

Video: Yves Congar’s Theology of the Laity

French theologian, Fr Eric Mahieu, was our guest for the June ACI webinar focusing on the theology of the great French Dominican priest, Yves Congar, a major 20th century theologian and a key actor at the Second Vatican Council.

Watch the video now.

Yves Congar

Born in Sedan, France, in 1904, French Dominican Yves Congar was a leading 20th century theologian, who exercised a major influence on the Second Vatican Council.

A strong advocate of ecumenism, he also played a significant role in the development of a theology of the laity. His work “Lay People in the Church,” first published in French in 1953, was one of the first major theological treatises on the role of the laity.

From his days as a young priest stationed at the Dominican convent, Le Saulchoir, then located in Belgium, he led retreats for the young leaders of the emerging Young Christian Workers movement. Subsequently, he worked closely with the French Workers Catholic Action movement.

Later he would describe the YCW as “a prophetic initiative from the periphery” consecrated by a pope, Pius XI, “equally moved by a prophetic spirit.” The outcome was “a magnificent creation, an opening full of developmental promise: a prophetic work born of a twin prophetic movement linking the periphery and the centre,” Congar wrote.

In 1965, he encouraged Cardijn, who had recently been made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI, to make the most of his role as a Council Father at the Fourth Session of Vatican II, assisting Cardijn with the drafting of his speeches.

During the Council, he kept a day by day journal, recording the events, conversations and discussions in which he was involved. This was published after his death in 2000 under the title “Mon journal du Concile” and in English in 2012 as “My Journal of the Council.”

Recognising his lifetime of theological achievement, Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 1994, just months before his death at the age of 91 in 1995.

Speaker

Fr Eric Mahieu

Eric Mahieu is a priest of the Diocese of Lille in France, who has taught theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris for 15 years. A renowned scholar of Congar’s work, he edited Congar’s Vatican II notes for publication.

Currently, he is a university chaplain as well as parish priest at Our Lady of the Pentecost in Lille.

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Yves Congar (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council (ATF Press)

RIP John Maguire, chaplain to the Vatican II lay auditors

Former Brisbane priest and YCW chaplain, John Maguire, who became ecclesiastical assistant to the lay auditors at the Second Vatican Council died on 28 April at the age of 91.

John was a close friend of Pat Keegan, a founding leader of the English YCW and the first lay auditor to address the Council. It was at Keegan’s request that Paul VI appointed him as ecclesiastical assistant to the lay auditors.

He was present for several critical moments of the Council, including the dramatic Black Week at the end of the Third Session in November 1964.

He was also with Cardijn for his episcopal ordination in February 1965. He and Keegan were also with Cardijn, who wept with anguish, on the day he received his red cardinal’s hat.

At the Council and afterwards, he also became close friends with Charles Moeller, the Belgian literary scholar and theologian, who played a significant role as peritus at Vatican II.

Upon his return to Australia, John left the priesthood – at least in the traditional sense – and initially became a labourer at the Doomben racetrack.

Later he became a lecturer in history at James Cook University in Townsville. While there, he wrote a highly regarded history of the diocese entitled “Prologue.”

In 1992, he wrote a deeply personal memoir, entitled “Blessed are the Cheesemakers” taken from the Monty Python film “The The Life of Brian,” recalling his experience as a student of Thomistic philosophy in Rome, as well as his struggle to “grapple with” and to be accepted for his homosexuality.

In 1999, John wrote another book “What is conscience? A cautionary tale,” originally intended as Volume 1 of a trilogy on “Conscience and the Moral Law.”

In the preface, he quoted a 1969 talk by Moeller to Brisbane priests:

We stand at a time in history where we need to ask all the old questions – as if we have never had an answer before: what does it mean to be human? what does it mean to be saved? who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth? is there really any need for the Church?”

And Moeller continued:

As we move into the discovery of our own answers, we will need then to call on memory, on history, to reflect on the answers previous generations have given to these same questions. I believe eventually we shall be surprised how close what we will be saying will be to what others have said before us – but, at the same time, we will be seeing it all differently. With fresh insights, we will express everything with new emphases, nuances. More importantly, our answers will be alive within us, not merely parroted answers we have received from others.

As John recalls, “Moeller’s words touched a deep chord within me”:

By that time my own journey had already made me strongly aware that, just as every child has to learn to walk from inside itself, listening to the call of its own body, its own spirit, discovering its own freedom, accepting its own limitations, so too, each of us has to find the truth, the freedom of life, of love, of God, for ourselves – from within ourselves. Truth and freedom can never be separated. Truth can only be discovered in freedom; freedom can only be preserved in truth – the truth which is the God “Who Is”.

RIP John

Stefan Gigacz

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John Maguire, Blessed are the Cheesemakers

John Maguire, What is conscience? A cautionary tale.

Charles Moeller (Wikipedia – French)

Bishop Remi De Roo, apostle of Vatican II

Born in Manitoba, Canada of Flemish Belgian parents on 24 February 1924, Remi De Roo first met Cardijn while a seminarian at the time of the 1947 YCW International Congress in Montreal.

Ordained in 1950, a year later he was appointed director of Catholic Action for the Diocese of St Boniface, Manitoba. Later he served as parish priest at Holy Cross parish.

Aged only 38, he was appointed by Pope John XXIII as bishop of Victoria, British Columbia in October 1962. This enabled him to attend all four sessions of Vatican II.

During the Council, he worked closely with Cardijn, delivering a significant intervention on the role of the laity.

In his memoirs, he recalled the battles Cardijn had faced at the Council.

“At Vatican II, Cardinal Cardijn confided to me that he never fully succeeded in getting “those Romans” to grasp the true nature of specialized (meaning the apostolate of like to like) Catholic Action. They failed to grasp how it was directed primarily towards the transformation of society through Gospel values. It was not meant to be oriented towards the strengthening or promotion of Church structures as such. I remember him bemoaning the fact that in the commission in which he participated during the Council, he had found it practically impossible to get the members to understand the true nature of Catholic Action.

After the Council, he became a strong proponent of social action and liberation theology and a critic of capitalism. He was the main force behind the 1983 Canadian bishops’ statement “Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis,” which stated that the “goal of serving the human needs of all people in our society must take precedence over the maximization of profits and growth.”

Letter from Remi De Roo to Margaret Bacon

When YCW leaders in Brazil were arrested in 1971-72, he wrote letters on their behalf. He was close friends with Margaret Bacon, IYCW secretary-general, who later married Brian Burke.

As bishop, he was also criticised for his management of diocesan finances. Eventually, however, the investments he had made proved sound.

He also broached the subject of married priest and women priests with Pope John Paul II, who accepted Bishop De Roo’s resignation within weeks of his reaching the official retirement age of 75.

Sadly, according to reports from abuse survivors’ groups, it also appears he was not immune to the temptation to place protection of priests and the church above the safety of the young and the vulnerable in his care.

Remi De Roo died on 1 February 2022.

REFERENCES

Bishop Remi De Roo (Catholic Hierarchy)

Remi De Roo, A bishop calls for a more dynamic way of dealing with the lay apostolate (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

Bishop Remi De Roo, social justice champion who attended Vatican II, dies (National Catholic Reporter)

Vatican II was first time church asked ‘Who am I?’ says Canadian bishop (Catholic Register)

Arthur Jones, Remi De Roo – An unflagging apostle for and of the Second Vatican Council (National Catholic Reporter/Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

SNAP Vancouver responds to accolades given to Bishop Remi De Roo (Bishop Accountability)

Chronicles of a Vatican II bishop (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

VIDEOS

Reforming Tradition: A Conversation with Remi De Roo, June 21, 2018 (Centre for Studies on Religion and Society, University of Victoria)

Witnesses to the Council (University of St Paul, Ottawa)

RIP Bartolo Perez, IYCW president and Vatican II lay auditor

Brazilian Bartolo Perez, president of the IYCW from 1961-65 and a lay auditor at Vatican II, died on 21 January 2022 at the age of 96.

Born on 20 November 1925, Bartolo began work as an apprentice turner in a small auto parts factory at the age of fourteen. Here, Bartolo met young Emídio, a YCW leader, who introduced him to the YCW in the Mooca neighbourhood of Sao Paulo.

Soon, he became involved in union action to defend the dignity and improve the working conditions of young workers in his factory.

These actions eventually led to his involvement in preparing Brazil’s 1st National Congress of Young Workers and the 1st National Congress of Domestic Workers.

Elected national president, he also helped launched the YCW in neighbouring Uruguay. In 1957, he attended the International YCW pilgrimage to Rome and First International Council.

Four years later at the Second International Council in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, he was elected IYCW international president, succeeding Romeo Maione.

News article on Bartolo’s election as IYCW president

Working with Cardijn, he advocated on behalf of the IYCW from the beginning of Vatican II in 1962, helping contact and lobby many bishops friendly to the YCW, particularly in Latin America.

In 1964, Pope Paul VI appointed him as a lay auditor to the Council in which capacity he continued to assist in the drafting of the Decree on Lay Apostolate, Apostolicam Actuositatem, and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, Gaudium et Spes.

After completing his term with the IYCW, he returned to Brazil with his wife, Candida, moving to Porto Alegre, where he studied pedagogy and became a vocational teacher.

Upon his retirement, he remained active as a member of an Association of Retired Teachers in Private Schools in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, remaining a fierce defender of the rights of the elderly all his life.

He also remained close to the YCW, editing the Boletín Solidariedade, for former YCW members. He also helped compile a book on the history of the Brazil YCW, Juventude, Trabalho, Vida: uma história de desafios – JOC no Brasil, 1935 a 1985.”

From 1997-2000, he also took part in the IYCW History Project, contributing greatly to the volume on the history of the YCW in the Americas.

Candida predeceased Bartolo, dying on 17 May 2015.

Cardijn, Pat Keegan and Bartolo Perez at Vatican II

REFERENCES

Bartolo Perez: A Chronology of The Life of a YCW Activist Who Remained a YCW Activist All His Life (International YCW)

Mission, ministries and co-responsibility

Thanks to NZ Catholic and Bishop Peter Cullinane, emeritus bishop of Palmerston North, Aotearoa-New Zealand for permission to reproduce this important article.

The front line of the Church’s work is the Christian people whose lives are leaven in the dough of all the ordinary circumstances of ordinary life. The purpose of ministries within the Church is to provide nurture and formation for that mission. It is the mission that matters.

Part I Ministries

For some years, we have all been aware of a growing gap between the number of parishes and the number of priests available to serve in them. This reality serves as a wake-up call, but it is not the basis for greater lay involvement. That involvement has its roots in Baptism and the very nature of the Church. Through Baptism, we are all united to the priestly and prophetic mission of Christ. This is the basis for our shared responsibility for what the Church is and what it does:

“Co-responsibility requires a change in mentality, particularly with regard to the role of the laity in the Church, who should be considered not as ‘collaborators’ with the clergy, but as persons truly ‘co-responsible’ for the being and the activity of the Church . . . ” (Pope Benedict XVI, 10 August 2012).

This is more than just a matter of management, or meeting an emergency. It, too, is rooted in Baptism and the nature of the Church. So why does this require a “change in mentality” if it already belongs to the nature of the Church? History gives the answer. During the first four centuries of the Church, lay people had roles in the liturgy, preached, had a say in the election of bishops and nomination of priests; contributed to the framing of Church laws and customs, prepared matters for, and participated in, Church councils, administered Church properties, etc.

Then, after the conversion of the emperor Constantine and the mass conversions that followed, responsibility shifted one-sidedly into the hands of the clergy. And following the barbarian invasions, responsibility for public order also fell to them. Over following centuries, society came to see priesthood as a profession, with social privilege. During earlier centuries, it had been a point of honour for ministers of the Church to live and look like everyone else.

Perception changed also within the Church. This is perhaps symbolised by the altar being pushed back to the apse of the church, where liturgy became mainly a clerical affair, with diminishing involvement of the laity. Scholarship and better understanding of the early Church would eventually return the liturgy to the whole body of the faithful, and restore roles of pastoral care and administration to lay women and men.

Most see our own day as a time of privileged opportunity for renewal. It is challenging because it involves the need for more personal responsibility, and moving away from the forms of tutelage and guardianship that shaped Church practices right up till the time of Pope Pius XII. Others feel safer clinging to that recent past, often misunderstanding the meaning of “Tradition”.

Part II Mission

In Christ, God became immersed in human life; showed us how to live it, destined us to its fullness, and sent the Holy Spirit to draw us into what Christ did for us. That is God’s purpose, and the Church can have no other – “Humanity is the route the Church must take” (Pope John Paul II).

How we do this comes down to how we “do” love. There is a loving that does not go deep enough to transform society. It works at the level of what seems fair and reasonable and deserving. This is what governments are properly concerned with. Society must do better, and the Church’s mission is to be the leaven in society. It deals with a deeper kind of loving – love that is not limited to what seems fair and reasonable and deserved.

As Church, we are uniquely placed to do this because, in the person, life, death and Resurrection of Jesus, we see love that is unconditional, undeserved, and unstinting. When we love as we have been loved, our love becomes a circuit breaker – precisely because it is not calculating and limited to what seems fair and reasonable and deserved. Running through family life, civic life, industrial, commercial and political life, this kind of love “changes everything”. It brings about a way of living – of being human – that is true to what God made us for.

But, note, it starts with seeing God’s love for us – contemplative seeing! Christians have the least excuse for not recognising the intrinsic link between contemplation and working for social justice because, in celebrating Eucharist, they move from contemplating God’s extraordinary love for us to receiving and becoming the body broken for others and the blood (life) poured out for others.

This is how faith makes a decisive difference to all of human life, while fully respecting the rightful autonomy of everything that is properly secular. In the midst of life, God is drawing us towards the fulfilment of our own deepest yearnings, and wonderfully more, involving God’s purpose for the whole of creation.

On that understanding of “the route the Church must take”, we come to know what ministries are needed to nurture us for that mission, and what kind of formation is needed for those ministries.

Part III Formation

To be involved in the processes of making our lives more truly human is a wonderful mission. So what kind of formation is needed for ministries that serve that mission?

Writing about the formation needed for priests, Pope John Paul II said it needs to be “human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral”, and went on to say that continuing formation was a matter of a priest’s faithfulness to his ministry, of love for the people, and in the proper sense a matter of justice, given the people’s rights (Pastores Dabo Vobis, 70).

Commenting on some of the characteristics of human formation, the Congregation for the Clergy explicitly singled out the specific contribution of women, “not only for the seminarians’ personal life, but also with a view to their future pastoral activity” (Ratio Fundamentalis, 95). The congregation’s reference was to Pope John Paul’s emphasis on “what it means to speak of the ‘genius of women’, not only in order to be able to see in this phrase a specific part of God’s plan which needs to be accepted and appreciated, but also in order to let this genius be more fully expressed in the life of society as a whole, as well as in the life of the Church; (Letter to Women, 1995, 10).

In our country, women have been carrying out significant roles at both Holy Cross Seminary and Good Shepherd College for some years. What still needs to be developed, however, are ways of allowing parishioners generally to play a bigger part, both in seminarians’ formation and in the discernment of their vocation. Those who will live with the results of formation, for better or for worse, should have a say in that formation and the selection of candidates.

Programmes for the formation of lay women and men for parish ministries already exist, and I leave it to others to comment on them. My concern here is with a very specific feature needed in Church leadership – both lay and ordained. It is needed all the more because general education in our country has been gradually reduced to learning mainly practical skills. Skills, both human/relational and technological, properly belong within education, but not more so than the deeper aspects of what it means to be human. Even when we know how to do the things necessary for successful living, we still need to know what ultimately gives meaning to it all.

Knowing that one’s life has a purpose can make the difference between surviving, or not surviving, life’s toughest times. The will to live needs a reason to live. The need I am pointing to is the need for leaders who are “in the service of meaning” (Ratcliffe). This is what it means, in practice, to be ministers of God’s Word. Knowing how much we mean to God is the most important thing we can know about ourselves, and is truly life-giving.

Within a culture that has become superficial, reductionist and utilitarian, one of the ways we are in the service of meaning is by knowing how to identify flaws within that culture, especially where important aspects of daily life are devalued by becoming disconnected from what gives them their meaning, or at least their full meaning. Formation will be incomplete unless it is formation “in the service of meaning”.

Part IV     Where to start? 

 I referred to the increasing gap between the number of our parishes and the number of priests. Simply combining parishes, whether for the sake of having a parish priest in every parish, or out of due concern for future financial resourcing, does not resolve the problem because ultimately everything depends on pastoral effectiveness and enlivening.  

 An alternative to combining parishes is available where Church law allows for the pastoral care of parishes to be entrusted to lay people, with a priest appointed to provide general supervision (canon 517/2), usually from another parish. We already experience the insufficiency of suitable priests, which is what justifies recourse to this canon. Of course, where this happens, priests are still required for sacramental ministry. It is possible that some priests might even prefer that kind of role, leaving management of the parish to a team of qualified lay women and men. Lay leadership of parishes requires proper formation – of parish and leaders – and proper remuneration.  

 Yet another starting point for renewal can be found in the experience of small base communities pioneered by the Church in some countries in South America and Asia. Of course, we cannot simply transfer other local churches’ experience to our situation. But we, too, can establish smaller communities within parishes, where leadership can be shared by teams and on a voluntary basis.  

 Such gatherings would be lay-led, and need no official authorisation. They can happen already, and develop in home-spun ways. 

 The Christian Base Communities in South American countries grew out of lay people coming together to pray and reflect on the Scriptures and on their life situations, using the Catholic Action principle: “see, judge, act”.  Their aim was a more just society and more truly human life for everyone – “the route the Church must take”. If this were happening in our own country, we could ask the kind of questions they asked: what are the causes of poverty in our country, and what can we do about those causes? Indeed, this is an appropriate level at which to analyse whatever flaws in our culture leave us less able to deal with the epic issues of our time – those that degrade human life, human dignity, human rights, and the planet itself. 

 Addressing those issues – through the lenses of divine revelation – is itself a way of participating in the mission of the Church. It is a good place to start because it is already do-able; it can be inclusive of those who feel unable to participate in other aspects of the Church’s life; it does not need clerical leadership or control, but makes room for ordained priesthood to present itself as a supporting ministry; it can model shared leadership, and lead to whatever forms of ministry might need to come next.   

 It is also a way of being Church that is “synodal”, (being “on the road together”).  The larger gatherings that we call “synods” presuppose the experience of walking and working together before we are ready for the decisions we gather to make at synods. It also gives scope and opportunity for the participation of many who will not be at the synods. 

Part V    What More?  

 Pope Francis has rightly said: “The Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures all need to be channelled for what best serves the Church’s mission of evangelising the world”; (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 27).  

To act on that would make big differences. Yet, even these changes are “small change” compared with where the Church has already been, and can yet go. Bigger changes rightly need wider consultation. And synodality is pointless if it isn’t about the road ahead and exploring what might yet be. 

Ministry that is authorised to speak and act in Christ’s name has its origin in Christ’s historical intentions. But its structure and concrete forms were determined by the Church during the apostolic period and after, continuing until late in the second century. What the Church gave shape to after the apostolic period, it can give different shape to now. Being faithful to the Tradition involves more than just receiving what the early Church did; it involves doing what the early Church did: it shaped its ministries to meet the needs of its mission.  

So long as the fullness of ordained responsibility remains intact – as in the college of bishops with and under the bishop of Rome – lesser participations in ordained ministry can be redistributed. The “powers” presently distributed within the three ministries of bishop, presbyter and deacon would live on, but enshrined within a wider variety of ordained ministries. This would open up significant new pastoral opportunities, and incorporate a wider range of charisms into ordained ministry. 

Whatever about that, 50 years ago, the International Theological Commission said  “It is urgent to create much more diversified structures of the Church’s pastoral action as regards both its ministries and its members, if the Church is to be faithful to its missionary and apostolic vocation.”  (The Priestly Ministry, pp 99,100). 

SOURCE AND PHOTO

Bishop Peter Cullinane, Mission, Ministries and co-responsibility (NZ Catholic)

Bishop Peter Cullinane, Mission, ministries and co-responsibility (part two) (NZ Catholic)

Coming Synod a ‘turning point’: Rafael Luciani

Venezuelan lay theologian and advisor to the Synod of Bishops, Professor Rafael Luciani, has described the 2023 Synod Assembly on Synodality, as the “most important event since Vatican II” and one that signifies a “turning point” in the way the Church approaches the Council.

Professor Luciani, who will deliver the inaugural Cardijn Lecture for the Australian Cardijn Institute on 13 November, added that the Synod preparation process, which is launching globally this month, will be centred on “the ecclesiology of the People of God,” which was first introduced by the Council and has been emphasised many times by Pope Francis.

This idea, he says, means that the relationship between the People of God and Church is “not hierarchical anymore, that it is differentiated, but complementary”.

Moreover, a “bishop needs the other, including priests and lay people,” which changes the whole relationship.

“This is what co-responsibility is all about,” he noted.

According to Prof. Luciani, another key novelty of the 2023 Synod will be the enhanced involvement of theologians in the process of listening and discernment aimed at creating this new synodal Church and the inclusion of theological reflection in the structures of the Church. In this sense, it is a real “kairos” moment for the Church.

“We don’t have theological reflection on one side, and people, on the other, saying: ‘How do we bring that into the real structures in the Church’.”

“My expectation and hope that there will be a real dialogue and consensus.”

Speaking to NCR Online, Prof. Luciani added that the aim is an enhanced “new ecclesial way of proceeding inspired by a practice of transparency and accountability.”

Cardijn Lecture: “The Emergence of Synodality: The Latin American Experience”

Rafael will share this experience in the inaugural ACI Cardijn Lecture on the theme “The Emergence of Synodality: The Latin American Experience,” which will take place on at 1.00pm AEDT on Saturday 13 November (Friday evening 12 November US time).

The event will be co-hosted by the US Cardijn Network and Pax Romana USA.

Dr Elissa Roper,  who completed her PhD on “Synodality and Authenticity: Towards a Contemporary Ecclesiology for the Catholic Church” at Yarra Theological Union and the University of Divinity this year, will respond to Rafael’s presentation.

Previously, Elissa was also a member of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission. She was a member of the Victorian Council of Church’s Faith and Order Commission for six years, and is currently the VCC Liaison Officer on the Board of the Jewish Christian Muslim Association of Australia. She and her husband have four children.

Joseph Cardijn was the founder of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement and a Council Father at Vatican II.

More information: Stefan Gigacz: aci@australiancardijninstitute.org

Dr Elissa Roper

REGISTER HERE:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqdOivrTIuE9EcJaLYu9tRAawD2fxbyjby

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The Emergence of Synodality: The Latin American Experience

Rafael Luciani on Latin American Roots of Pope Francis Reforms (College of the Holy Cross/YouTube)

A theologian’s take on how the 2023 Synod is a turning point for the Church (Vatican News)

Francis is betting a synodal church will be a cure for a clerical church (NCR Online)

Pope Francis, Moment of reflection for the beginning of the synodal journey (Vatican.va)

Local consultation opens for global Synod of Bishops (Australian Catholic Bishops Conference)

Pax Romana ICMICA

Joseph Cardijn (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

PHOTOS

Amerindia (Rafael Luciani) and Elissa Roper

Denis Edwards Book Prize for Fr Orm Rush

Congratulations to Associate Professor Ormond Rush from the Australian Catholic University for his monumental recent book, The Vision of Vatican II, Its fundamental principles, which recently shared in the award of the 2021 ATF Literary Trust Theological Book Prize in honour of the late Adelaide priest and theologian, Fr Denis Edwards.

Appropriately enough, Fr Orm was a member of the YCS as a high school student in Queensland while Fr Denis was a YCS chaplain in Adelaide.

In his book, Fr Orm discerns 24 hermeneutical, theological and ecclesiological principles for understanding and implementing the orientations of the Second Vatican II.

In their evaluation, the judges said that The Vision of Vatican II “was destined to become a major point of reference in Vatican II studies.”

“It is difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the achievement of Ormond Rush’s Vision of Vatican II. 
The author offers a remarkable tour de force of the theological and ecclesial principles the author discerns in the documents, background and fundamental vision of Vatican II. Rush does this from the vantage point of half a century of critical engagement, reflection and reception within the wider ecumenical Church. 

“Combining a breadth and depth of scholarship with creativity and insight the author provides a foundational theological resource not simply for students and theologians of Vatican II but for all who would seek to understand some of the great themes that have preoccupied the hearts and minds of Christians in the 20th and 21st century.”

Fr Orm shared the prize with another ACU theologian, David Newheiser, for his book Hope in a Secular Age.

READ MORE

ACU theologians scoop book prize (ACU Media Release/CathNews)

WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE PRESENTATION

Fr Orm begins his presentation at the 29:20 minute mark.

Pierre Haubtmann, redactor of Gaudium et Spes: The webinar

Mgr Philippe Bordeyne, outgoing rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, now president of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family at the Lateran University in Rome, was ACI’s guest speaker for our webinar marking the 50th anniversary of the death of French priest, Pierre Haubtmann, redactor in chief of Gaudium et Spes, on 6 September 2021.

Mgr Bordeyne is himself a specialist on Gaudium et Spes, having written his PhD thesis on the significance of the concept of “anguish” in the Pastoral Constitution. He has also written articles on the life of Pierre Haubtmann.

Clara Geoghegan, co-director of the Siena Institute and executive secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, was our respondent.

We now present the video of the event with thanks to our presenters, participants and to Arnaldo Casali from the John Paul II Institute for his technical assistance in editing.

 

Cardinal Czerny honours ‘enormous contribution’ of Pierre Haubtmann

Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, Under-Secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development has sent a message recalling the “enormous contribution” to the the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, Gaudium et Spes, by French priest, Pierre Haubtmann.

“To express my gratitude for Gaudium et Spes and to honour Fr Pierre Haubtmann, let me recall that, 50 years ago, we began reading Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation,” Cardinal Czerny wrote.

“We were all immersed in Vatican II, breathing and living Gaudium et Spes. At that time, the roots of A Theology of Liberation in Vatican II were not a question, but an assumption that remained implicit. A Theology of Liberation was simply “planted by the streams of water” (Psalm 1:3) of Vatican II.

“Today, 50 years later, to reread A Theology of Liberation is joyfully to rediscover the then new theology rooted and grounded in Vatican II.

“For this we give thanks to God, with the intercession of Pope St John XXIII and Pope St Paul VI, for Fr Pierre Haubtmann and his enormous contribution to the Church,” Cardinal Czerny concluded.

The ACI webinar to honour Pierre Haubtmann will take place on Monday 6 September, 2021, the 50th anniversary of his death. Our guest speaker will be Mgr Philippe Bordeyne, president of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family, and Clara Staffa Geoghegan, executive secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

Register here via Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqdeutpzwvEtwr9SYLzUtKOA4sWiUtQxbM

To Gaudium et Spes

Remembering Pierre Haubtmann, redactor of Gaudium et Spes

French priest, Pierre Haubtmann was the chief redactor for the groundbreaking Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the World of Today. Next month marks the 50th anniversary of his tragic death in a bushwalking accident on 6 September 1971.

Long before he became a peritus at the Council, he was a chaplain for the JOCF, the Girls YCW, in the Paris suburb of Meudon. Later, he became a national chaplain of the Action Catholique Ouvrière, the Workers Catholic Action movement that is the adult counterpart of the French JOC. Haubtmann also worked closely with other Specialised Catholic Action movements including the Action Catholique des Milieux Indépendants, a movement for Catholic professionals and business people.

This experience was certainly critical in his appointment to take charge of the compiling and editing of the final version of Gaudium et Spes, which applies the Cardijn see-judge-act method.

As Haubtmann noted himself: “With respect to each question, we begin with facts (previously ‘signs of the times’); we judge them; and we derive various pastoral orientations. This method was explicitly desired by the competent bodies; it manifestly corresponds to the will of the overwhelming majority of the Fathers.”

Mgr Philippe Bordeyne

ACI is thus pleased to present a special webinar honouring Pierre Haubtmann. Mgr Philippe Bordeyne, outgoing rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, and soon to commence as president of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family at the Lateran University in Rome, will be our guest speaker.

Mgr Bordeyne is himself a specialist on Gaudium et Spes, having written his PhD thesis on the significance of the concept of “anguish” in the Pastoral Constitution. He has also written articles on the life of Pierre Haubtmann.

Clara Geoghegan

Clara Geoghegan, co-director of the Siena Institute and executive secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, will be our respondent.

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

Remembering Pierre Haubtmann, 6 September 2021, 7.00pm AEST (Zoom)

READ MORE

Pierre Haubtmann (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)

Philippe Bordeyne, Mgr Pierre Haubtmann (1912-1971) : un théologien de la communication de la foi, Transversalités, 2010/4 (N° 116), pages 127-149. (French)

“Institut Catholique” rector named head of John Paul II institute in Rome (La Croix International)

Paris Catholic University head: Theologians must tackle tough questions (NCR Online)

Clara Geoghegan joins Bishops Conference as executive secretary (ACBC)

Stefan Gigacz, Pierre Haubtmann and the drafting of Gaudium et Spes (Presentation)

Stefan Gigacz, Pierre Haubtmann and the drafting of Gaudium et Spes (YouTube)

Stefan Gigacz, Remembering Pierre Haubtmann, redactor of Gaudium et Spes (Cardijn Research)

The jocist bishops and the Church of the Poor bishops

Bob Pennington with Stefan Gigacz
bob-stefan

ACI secretary, Stefan Gigacz, presented a paper entitled “The jocist bishops and the Vatican II Church of the Poor group” at the Option for the Poor: Engaging the Social Tradition conference organised by the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, USA, on 23 March 2019.

Also presenting was Bob Pennington from Mount St Joseph University, Cincinnati, Ohio, who presented a paper entitled ““The Methodological Turn toward a Preferential Option for the Poor: The Cardinal Cardijn Canon from Rome to Latin America and Back Again?”

Keynote speakers at the conference included Gustavo Gutierrez, pioneer of liberation theology.

 

 

Gustavo

Stefan Gigacz’s presentation

From Vatican II to the Synod on Young People

Vatican II Session

“’Twelve bishops gathered with Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier for the first meeting,’ reads a contemporary report on the origins of group of bishops at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that took as its motto, ‘Jesus Christ, the Church and the Poor.'” writes Stefan Gigacz at La Croix International.
“These prelates ‘reviewed their lives and their thinking, as well as that of their churches and the Church, on the issues raised for them by the poor and the workers, and more radically by Jesus of Nazareth, the Carpenter,’ the report continues.

“Best remembered for the ‘Pact of the Catacombs‘ they later adopted, these bishops wanted to ensure that the Council tackled the ‘anguishing’ issues of poverty, the working class and world development.

“Convened by Bishop Charles-Marie Himmer of Tournai, Belgium and Bishop George Hakim of Galilee (later Patriarch Maximos V), the group first met on Oct. 26, 1962 at the Belgian College in Rome. Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier of Lyon was the group’s president.

“Inspired by Pope John XXIII’s phrase ‘the Church of the Poor,’ members saw themselves operating ‘as an extension of’ John’s 1961 social encyclical, Mater et Magistra (Church as Mother and Teacher of All Nations), following the see-judge-act method pioneered and popularized by Joseph Cardijn.


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From the Vatican II ‘Church of the Poor’ group to the Synod meet on young people (La Croix International)

PHOTO

Second Vatican Council. (Photo by Lothar Wolleh/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Cardijn on religious freedom

It is 52 years to the day since Cardinal Joseph Cardijn delivered his first speech on the Council floor at Vatican II. His theme was religious freedom, an issue that is perhaps even more on the world’s agenda today than it was during the 1960s.

As always, Cardijn refuses to adopt a “defensive” approach to religious freedom where the Church seeks to defend its own freedoms or status. On the contrary, Cardijn sees religious freedom as the whole basis of his approach to the Gospel message. Indeed, for Cardijn religious freedom lies at the very heart of his see-judge-act method.

Intervention by Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, 20 September 1965

The schema on liberty pleases me greatly. Allow me to humbly share with you the experience of nearly 60 years of priestly apostolate exercised in every country at the service of young workers today.

It seems to me that a solemn and clear proclamation of the juridical religious freedom of all people in every country of the world is an urgent need.

First Reason: Peaceful unification of a pluralist world

The world today is tending increasingly towards unity and conflicts between nations and cultures must disappear progressively.

As John XXIII stated so admirably in Pacem in Terris, our great task is to unite ourselves with all men of good will to build a more human world together based on “truth, justice, liberty and love”. And the fundamental condition for people to live together peacefully and to collaborate fruitfully is sincere respect for religious freedom.

The fact of not respecting the philosophical and religious convictions of others is increasingly felt by them as a sign of mistrust in a matter considered as sacred and personal to the highest degree. Such an attitude makes mutual confidence impossible and without this there can be no true community life and no effective collaboration.

On the other hand, if mutual confidence reigns, it creates an opportunity for very joyful collaboration, not only on the scientific and technical planes but also on the social, cultural, pedagogical and moral levels.

If the Church can pronounce itself unambiguously in favour of religious freedom, people everywhere will gain confidence and recognise that the Church wishes to participate in building a more human and more united world. If on the other hand, this declaration should be rejected, great hopes will disappear, particularly among young people.

Second Reason: Efficacity of apostolic, missionary and ecumenical action

In a world heading towards unification, the presence of the Church among the people must necessarily take a new form, which could be compared to the dispersion of the people of Israel after the captivity of Babylon.

In the greater part of the world Christians are a small minority. In order to fulfil its mission, the Church cannot base itself on temporal, political, economic or cultural power as it did in the Middle Ages or under colonial regimes. It can only count on the power of the word of God, evangelical poverty, the purity of its witness, manifested in the authentically Christian life of lay people, and also on the esteem of the peoples among whom the Church wishes to live and witness to its faith. And this esteem of the people is nothing other than what we have described as religious liberty. But how can the Church hope to benefit from religious liberty in countries where it is a minority if the Church itself fails to loudly proclaim or to practise religious liberty in the countries where it is in the majority?

This proclamation of religious liberty is important not only for the efficacity of apostolic and missionary action in general but it is also the condition sine qua non of the ecumenical movement.

We know that all our non-Catholic brothers consider this declaration as a step which must be taken in order to arrive at a sincere and effective ecumenism.

Third Reason: The educational and pedagogic value of religious freedom

The schema speaks of the right of the person and of communities to religious freedom. This juridical freedom is not an end in itself. It is a necessary means for education in liberty in its fullest sense, which leads to interior liberty, or liberty of the soul by which a man becomes an autonomous being, responsible before society and God, ready if necessary to obey God rather than men.

This interior freedom, even if it exists in germ as a natural gift in every human creature, requires a long education which can be summarised in three words: see, judge and act.

If, thanks be to God, my sixty years of apostolate have not been in vain, it is because I have never wanted young people to live in shelter from dangers, cut off from the milieu of their life and work.

Rather I have shown confidence in their freedom in order to better educate that freedom. I helped them to see, judge and act by themselves, by undertaking social and cultural action themselves, freely obeying authorities in order to become adult witnesses of Christ and the Gospel, conscious of being responsible for their sisters and brothers in the whole world.

In our world moving towards unification, it is not possible to educate young people in glass houses, cutting them off from the real world. Many people lose the faith because they have been given a childish education.

It is only by means of a sound education in interior freedom that our young people will be able to become adult Christians.

Objections

Some will object that freedom involves a number of dangers: indifferentism, diffusion of errors, abuse of the ignorance of the masses and of the passions.

Here is my answer:

I am conscious of these dangers. Some certainly will abuse religious freedom; but these risks are less serious that those which arise from the suppression or the oppression of religious freedom. “Absolutist regimes” – even those which claim to serve the Church – where social pressure is substituted for personal formation, favour anti-clericalism and in fact incite the masses to revolt against the faith and the Church.

The dangers inherent in a regime of freedom must be faced in a positive manner, for example by a frank and sincere international agreement between civil and religious authorities; but above all by the formation and human, moral and religious education thanks to which young people and adults become conscious of their own responsibilities.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to propose the following:

This Vatican Council must conclude with a solemn and magnificent act by Pope Paul VI in union with all the Fathers.

This act should solemnly proclaim religious freedom. It should request all confessions, all ideologies, all authorities and institutions to unanimously maintain and protect religious freedom, defining the requirements of public order in a correct and honest manner as well as seeking to implement the means for effectively protecting religious freedom.

I have finished. Thank you.

Joseph Card. Cardijn

SOURCE

Joseph Cardijn, Religious liberty (www.josephcardijn.com)

Question

Why is religious freedom so important for achieving “peaceful unification of the world” in Cardijn’s view?

How does Cardijn define “religious liberty”? What is the significance of his definition?

What is the connection between “religious liberty” and the see-judge-act method?