THE PRIEST IN THE YCW
January 1938
The chaplain is obviously not a leader or a lay militant in the YCW; he does not exercise a lay apostolate, he does not fulfil a lay function. He should not replace or paralyse the lay leaders and militants.
This point is essential, it is a condition of true Catholic Action. We often say to our colleagues: “On the door of every factory, workshop and office there is a notice saying: Entry prohibited.” To have right within missionaries, apostles, conquerors, laymen who can speak, act, have influence over their comrades, who can compromise themselves and act like apostles, it is necessary that they should see the need and train themselves for leadership in the YCW locally, regionally and nationally.
The Church will never have lay apostles, will never reconquer life, the environment, the lay masses, unless she trains leaders, militants, apostles in Catholic Action.
It is thus clear that the chaplain does not possess all authority, responsibility, and initiative. If he did, there would be no Catholic Action. The latter is a school, a service, a representative body, which teaches and gives to the laity an authority, a mandate, a function that are real, effective, undeniable. No titles or make-believe, but reality.
On the other hand, the chaplain is not confined to a role of doctrinal and spiritual formation, to a specific and exclusive religious function, such as the giving of religious training and spiritual direction.
At every level of the organisation, national, regional or local, the chaplain is the representative of the Hierarchy. He gives to the whole organisation, to all its action, to all its training, the stamp and character of Catholic Action. He is the guardian of this character, of this spirit, and his task is to care for the whole organisation and all the action, as demanded by the national institution willed by the Hierarchy. Nothing connected with the organisation – even its administration and finance – is outside his concern.
He is especially, as a priest, the one who helps to discover, to awaken and to develop YCW vocations, and who helps in priestly fashion in the full training of the leaders and militants. As trustee of the Person, the grace and doctrine of Christ, he will make it enter into the life, the conduct, the apostolate of the militants and the whole organisation.
The chaplain is above all the guardian and support of the whole YCW, constantly widening the horizon of the militant, and members to the entire field of action of the YCW the conquest of all working youth, of the whole country, of the whole world.
If we say the YCW will be what its leaders are,” we must also say “the YCW, its leaders and its militants will be what its chaplains are. When speaking of the chaplains, the Holy Father is accustomed to say: In manibus vestris sortes meae.
Never in the history of the Church has the spiritual fatherhood of the priest been exalted as in Catholic Action; the priest must give and multiply in the Church the lay apostles without whom the reconquest of the lay world is impossible.
It is for him to raise up and sustain, against destructive laicism, the saving laity of Christian civilisation.
The task of the Catholic Action chaplain in general, and that of the YCW chaplain in particular, is a magnificent one. It is a difficult, slow task which demands patience and perseverance in facing disappointment and failure and a readiness to give up a great deal. The chaplain must be the youngest among the working youth; the youngest in faith, hope and charity; the youngest in enthusiasm and optimism. All YCW chaplains will agree that they have been tremendously enriched by the movement; many will admit that it has completely transformed their apostolate and their priestly life.
Joseph Cardijn
SOURCE
Joseph Cardijn (Edited and translated by Eugene Langdale), Challenge to Action, 1955.
Joseph Cardijn, The priest in the YCW (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)