Someone recently asked me about the relationship between the Cardijn or jocist method and Catholic Social Teaching, or as Cardijn preferred to call it, Catholic Social Doctrine. Let’s explore how that relationship developed over the years.
The impact of Rerum Novarum
As he often recalled, Cardijn’s first encounter with what we now call Catholic Social Teaching came when, as a nine year old boy, he was asked by his illiterate father to read him Pope Leo XIII’s foundational 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Here is what Cardijn wrote much later about the impact of that experience:
I intended to become a priest to help the poor. It was my father who made me think of it. In my time, once they had made their first communion (aged ten), working class children had to go and work in factories. The young workers, both girls and boys, who were in fact still children, were very badly received at the factory. People mocked them and laughed at them. The older ones tried to abuse them in every way. My father was deeply affected by the situation. It was then that the idea came to me to do something for those poor boys and girls. It was the time of Rerum Novarum. I was nine years old.
Finally, the Pope had spoken! Finally, the Church was going to do something for the working class. Fr Daens was one of the first to put the papal lesson into practice and my father and I, small but determined, both went to listen to him. I had to read the words of the Pope to my father who did not know how to read or write. Things had to change. The poor man had to be respected.
Why couldn’t the poor man become a saint – because he had no time to go to Mass and communion? Was it uniquely the privilege of the rich because they had the time? I asked my father for authorisation to become a priest and it was in that spirit that I entered the minor seminary.
– Cardijn and Daens (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)
When, after being ordained in 1906, he was finally posted to the parish of Notre Dame at Laeken in 1912, Cardijn encouraged the study of Catholic Social Teaching by leaders from the very beginning, as Marguerite Fiévez and Jacques Meert recall in their biography:
Towards the end of 1912, a young bank clerk, Fernand Tonnet, came and asked Cardijn to help them. He undertook to get the first group together. They met at Cardijn’s home and inquiries began. They started with the Gospel and went on to social teaching, particularly Rerum Novarum. Then came the first activities, discussed and planned at the study-circle. Later, the Apprentices’ Union was born.
Even when imprisoned by the German occupiers during World War I, he continued to encourage the Laeken study circles to continue their study of Rerum Novarum.
All the same, he kept in continual touch with the different study-circles and those responsible for the activities at Laeken. Hundreds of pages made secret journeys in both directions, carefully hidden under the lining of the bag in which food, linen and medicine for his asthma, were brought to him. They included twelve political economy studies based on Rerum Novarum, a searching critical analysis of each of the social organisations of the parish and of the Brussels area, spiritual guidance, preparation of talks to be given as well as notes full of anxiety for his mother.
Study starting from life
Among its other reports, YCW magazines often featured quotes from or reviews of papal teaching in their publications, as this example from the Bulletin des Dirigeants (Leaders Bulletin) in July-August 1925 illustrates:
However, the study of Catholic Social Teaching promoted by Cardijn and his colleagues was NOT book-learning study. Rather, reading the Church’s social encyclicals was always encouraged within the context of carrying out enquiries and studying the lives of young workers.
In fact, they explicitly rejected the notion of starting with Church doctrine in favour of a life- or reality-based approach, as this document from 1922 shows:
A. Bad method. We propose to study the encyclical Rerum Novarum. The encyclical is divided into ten parts of which each part will take up one session; the explanation of the text will be made without commentary, or examples. Result: By the third meeting the members drift away; it is rare that it will not be necessary to soon abandon the program if one wishes to maintain the circle.
B. Proposed method. Detailed and successive enquiries on property, salary, work, etc. as they appear in the living environment (milieu).
Each session will involve examining answers to a questionnaire. Quite naturally the doctrinal points raised in Rerum Novarum will be developed. Result: The members will take an interest in the matter under observation, a social sense will develop, understanding will deepen because people will recall the facts that were the point of departure.
Later, this “inductive method,” as it become known, would be contrasted with the traditional “doctrinal method” of teaching Catholic Social Doctrine.
Quadragesimo Anno
But Cardijn was never content to simply study and apply Catholic Social Teaching as it existed. He also sought to influence it.
Not only did he and the early YCW send their publications to bishops in Belgium, Cardijn also regularly sent them to Vatican officials as well as to Pope Pius XI himself.
One of the earliest documents Cardijn sent was “La JOC et la détresse intellectuelle et morale des jeunes travailleurs” (The intellectual and moral distress of young workers) published by the Belgian JOC in 1930, which documents the problems facing young workers.
Although he writes about the issues in terms of “moral distress,” what Cardijn was actually concerned about was what, in today’s language, we would recognise as sexual harassment, a problem that he was already well aware of that affected the teenage girl workers in the factories near his home town of Halle.
No doubt he also heard even more similar stories once he began to work with teenage girl workers at Laeken.
Significantly, a copy of this document can still be found in the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives. And the following year, we find echoes of a similar concern for young workers in Pope Pius XI’s classical encyclical Quadragesimo Anno issued to mark the 40th anniversary of Rerum Novarum.
135. With the rulers of economic life abandoning the right road, it was easy for the rank and file of workers everywhere to rush headlong also into the same chasm; and all the more so, because very many managements treated their workers like mere tools, with no concern at all for their souls, without indeed even the least thought of spiritual things. Truly the mind shudders at the thought of the grave dangers to which the morals of workers (particularly younger workers) and the modesty of girls and women are exposed in modern factories.
Then, several paragraphs further on we find Pius XI rejoicing at the emerging ranks of young workers, a clear reference to the emerging YCW:
140. Moreover, the ranks of the workers themselves are already giving happy and promising signs of a social reconstruction. To Our soul’s great joy, We see in these ranks also the massed companies of young workers, who are receiving the counsel of Divine Grace with willing ears and striving with marvelous zeal to gain their comrades for Christ.
So clearly was this understood to be a reference to the YCW that the French translation of Quadragesimo Anno explicitly refers to “jeunes travailleurs chrétiens” or “young Christian workers” (the French numbering is different from the English version):
151. D’ailleurs, des signes pleins de promesses d’une rénovation sociale apparaissent dans les organisations ouvrières, parmi lesquelles nous apercevons, à la grande joie de notre âme, des phalanges serrées de jeunes travailleurs chrétiens qui se lèvent à l’appel de la grâce divine et nourrissent la noble ambition de reconquérir au Christ l’âme de leurs frères.
https://www.doctrine-sociale-catholique.fr/les-textes-officiels/196-quadragesimo-anno
To be clear, the Latin version only refers to “iuniorum operariorum” or “young workers” without the adjective Christian:
Ceterum, laeta quaedam socialis restaurationis signa ipsa opificum agmina iam portendunt, in quibus magno animi Nostri gaudio confertos cernimus etiam globos iuniorum operariorum, qui et secundis auribus divinae gratiae consilia excipiunt et miro zelo socios suos Christo lucrifacere student.
Even so, there’s little doubt that Pius XI was referring to the YCW.
How did this come about? In all likelihood, it was Cardijn’s mentor, the Belgian Jesuit, Arthur Vermeersch, who was then teaching at the Gregorian University in Rome, who was the conduit.
Quadragesimo Anno was in fact drafted by the German Jesuit Oswald von Nell-Breuning as well as Gustav Gundlach SJ while Vermeersch played a role as a reviewer of the text.
The outcome was that just five years after its formal foundation, the YCW had already impacted Catholic Social Teaching.
Mater et Magistra
Pope Pius XII, who became pope in 1938, didn’t publish any social encyclicals but he did have a lot to say on social issues in his various speeches and texts.
He was also the first to explicitly refer to the YCW’s see judge act method in his speech to the YCW pilgrims in Rome on 25 August 1957:
Your solid organisation, your method summarised by the well known formula: “See, judge, act”, your interventions at local, regional, national and international level, place you in a position to contribute to the Reign of God in modern society and to make penetrate the teachings of Christianity with all their vigour and originality.
In fact, this is an excellent illustration of another of Cardijn’s influence strategies whereby he systematically invited bishops and popes to speak and write to the YCW, thus obtaining their endorsement.
Nevertheless, it was Pius XII’s successor, Pope now Saint John XXIII, who formally incorporated the see judge act into Catholic Social Teaching in his 1961 encyclical, Mater et Magistra, to mark the 70th anniversary of Rerum.
Indeed, it was Cardijn, who proposed to Pope John that he write an encyclical for that occasion, and the pontiff later thanked him for the inspiration. He also invited Cardijn to submit ideas for the encyclical, an invitation that Cardijn quickly took up, drafting a long paper for the pope, mostly focused on the theology of work.
Meanwhile, along with Marguerite Fiévez, former IYCW secretary who had become his personal secretary, he continued to lobby the drafters of the new encyclical, including Mgr Pietro Pavan.
Lo and behold, when the encyclical was finally published, Mater et Magistra explicitly endorsed the see judge act:
236. There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice. First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgment on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.
237. It is important for our young people to grasp this method and to practice it. Knowledge acquired in this way does not remain merely abstract, but is seen as something that must be translated into action.
Naturally, Cardijn and his colleagues were overjoyed as the Belgian priest, Fr Basil Maes, later recalled:
Cardijn was very in touch with what was happening in Rome and sought to have an influence there. Here is a sample of this, which was also a great moment that I experienced in 1962, when I had returned to Rome to prepare my doctorate. I still see him joyfully entering my room, enthusiastically shouting: “Basil, it’s happened! See, judge, act!” A little earlier, Pope John XXIII had promulgated his great social encyclical “Mater et magistra”. Cardijn had sought to influence the compilation of this text.
The Second Vatican Council
In turn, this papal endorsement facilitated the adoption of the see judge act as the method to be followed in the drafting of the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the world of today, Gaudium et Spes.
Indeed, the original drafter of the introductory section on the situation of people in the world was a former YCW chaplain and collaborator, Fr François Houtart, while another former YCW chaplain, Fr Pierre Haubtmann, was responsible for the final version and editing of the document.
Many other former YCW and YCS chaplains were also involved in the drafting of Gaudium et Spes as were lay International YCW leaders, Pat Keegan and Bartolo Perez and many other lay movement leaders.
The outcome was that not only did Gaudium et Spes follow the see judge act, it was also structured as a dialectic modelled on Cardijn’s Three Truths dialectic.
Introductory section: Situation of people in the world: Truth of experience
Part I: The Church and the Human Vocation: Truth of faith
Part II: Problems of special urgency: Five see judge act chapters on family, culture, economic and social life, political community, and promoting peace: Truth of method.
Simultaneously, the Vatican II Decree on Lay Apostolate, Apostolicam Actuositatem, also explicitly endorsed the see judge act as a method of lay apostolate formation:
§29. Since formation for the apostolate cannot consist in merely theoretical instruction, from the beginning of their formation the laity should gradually and prudently learn how to view, judge and do all things in the light of faith as well as to develop and improve themselves along with others through doing, thereby entering into active service to the Church.
Cardijn, in fact, contributed greatly to the whole of Chapter 6 of Apostolicam Actuositatem on “Formation for the Apostolate.”
After Vatican II
After the Council, the Church around the world quickly adopted the see judge act.
In 1967, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum Progressio, on world development, which was initially drafted by another Cardijn disciple, Louis-Joseph Lebret, used the see judge act.
Meeting in Medellin, Colombia in 1968, the Latin American bishops used the see judge act as the template for every document.
In 1971, Paul VI’s Octogesima Adveniens, known as the Letter to Cardinal Maurice Roy, who was also a former YCW chaplain as well as the cousin of Fr Henri Roy, omi, the founder of the Quebec YCW, also followed the SJA.
Since then so too have many other Catholic Social Teaching documents including Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on environmental issues, Laudato Si’ in 2015.
Clearly, Cardijn and the YCW have had a major impact on the development of Catholic Social Teaching and Praxis. And there’s much to learn from how they achieved it.
Stefan Gigacz