“The chaplain is everything but nothing in the YCW!”
So said Cardijn in thousands of addresses to priests around the world.
“Everything by the young workers; nothing without the priest!” was another of his expressions, this one clearly drawn from St Ignatius of Antioch exhortation in his first century Letter to the Smyrnaeans to “Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop,” and later taken up in the teaching of the Council of Arles in 309AD.
“Vae soli” was another Latin epigraph he borrowed from Ecclesiastes 4:10. Literally meaning “woe to anyone who acts alone,” Cardijn used it to emphasise the imperative need for priests to avoid doing things by themselves without the involvement of lay people.
Perhaps his favourite Biblical line, however, was “Cognosco oves meas et cognoscunt me meae!” meaning “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”[John 10:14] This was a message he took to heart all his life, always reaching out to young workers and workers wherever they were.
Lastly, in an indication of the importance Cardijn gave to reaching out to all young workers and workers, not just Catholics or Christians, he liked to further quote from John 10:16: “Alias oves habeo, illas oportet me adducere.”
“I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
In this website, we will share some of Cardijn’s writings on the role of the priest and the chaplain in a jocist movement.
Stefan Gigacz
Site editor and compiler
