Forty years in the making

Introduction

‘Of these 2,500 bishops, how many did you not meet during your travels around the world!’ the Belgian bishops wrote to Cardijn from Rome for his eightieth birthday, which fell on 13 November 1962 during the First Session of Vatican II. ‘How many of them did you not conquer to your ideal by the attraction of your personality and the conviction of your words. How many have become your friends!’ they added, underlining the way he had achieved his influence.¹

Many of those conciliar bishops had indeed made the JOC and Specialised Catholic Action the foundation of their work as priests and prelates. In many instances, it was this very commitment that had led to their episcopal appointments. Also present in Rome were a significant number of periti who had been formed by Cardijn and/or the SCA movements. As theologians, many of them pioneered the ‘new theology’ that led to the emergence of key conciliar themes, such as the People of God, priesthood of the faithful, lay apostolate, participation, signs of the times, etc. A significant number of lay auditors had a similar background.

Prior to the Council, many had come to know each other through movement events and particularly through the World Congresses on Lay Apostolate in 1951 and 1957. What resulted was an informal Jocist and SCA-linked network, led primarily by Belgian, French, Canadian (Quebec) and Latin American bishops, arguably including Paul VI himself. At the Council, many worked systematically to influence its work, often by applying the very techniques of peer influence in which they had once trained young workers and students.

In this chapter, we trace the development of this ‘Cardijn’ or ‘Jocist’ network.

The popes

Pius XI

If Cardijn achieved great influence with many conciliar bishops, it was not least because of the relationships he developed with the four bishops of Rome of his era: Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI.

Indeed, Congar bracketed Cardijn’s partnership with Pius XI with those between St Francis and St Dominic and Popes Innocent III and Honorius in the thirteenth century.² The JOC was ‘a prophetic initiative from the periphery’ consecrated by a pope ‘equally moved by a prophetic spirit,’ Congar wrote in 1950. 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,’ he stated.³

Cardijn worked assiduously to build this partnership. Following his successful visit to Rome in 1925, he continued to meet annually with Pius XI – as well as his successors – for the rest of his life (except during World War II), cultivating close relationships with many other key Vatican personnel as well.

He worked hard to obtain documentary approval for the movement, beginning with Pius XI’s influential 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno marking the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Published just six years after Cardijn’s first meeting with Pius XI, this encyclical made almost explicit reference to the emergence of the JOC as ‘the massed companies of young workers… striving with marvellous zeal to gain their comrades for Christ.⁴

Warning 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,’ the encyclical also echoed Cardijn’s 1930 pamphlet La JOC et la détresse intellectuelle et morale des jeunes travailleurs.⁵ Pius XI’s 1935 autograph letter characterising the JOC as ‘an authentic form of Catholic Action’ also had a massive impact.

For Cardijn, writing in 1962 on the eve of Vatican II, the most astonishing outcome of his partnership with Pius XI was the explosive growth of the JOC that resulted.⁶ With respect to the Council, however, the major effects included pontifical endorsement of the movement’s methods and the formation of a generation of Vatican II bishops and theologians committed to Cardijn’s vision and methods.

Moreover, it was Pius XI who appointed the first bishops with personal JOC experience, including two who would become key conciliar actors: Cardinal Achille Liénart in Lille and Bishop Manuel Larrain in Chile.

Pius XII

When Eugenio Pacelli was elected as Pope Pius XII in March 1939, Cardijn welcomed the arrival of a new pontiff with whom he already had a close working relationship.⁷ The same month, he travelled to Rome to prepare an international pilgrimage to Rome by 20,000 JOC leaders planned for September 1939.

Pius XII did not disappoint, immediately offering his blessing to the movement and ‘the beautiful spectacle that you are preparing.’⁸ Ultimately, the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939 forced the cancellation of the pilgrimage and the accompanying congress. Nonetheless, Cardijn had achieved his aim of gaining the pope’s public support.⁹ It was a powerful signal that the papal partnership begun under Pius XI would continue.

Yet, whereas Pius XI had made famous the definition of Catholic Action as the ‘participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy,’¹⁰ Pius XII preferred the formulation ‘collaboration of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy.’ Although he undoubtedly wished to avoid doctrinal debates over the possibility of lay ‘participation’ in the hierarchical apostolate, it also implied a more mutual, egalitarian conception of partnership between clergy and laity based on an understanding that ‘lay people were in the front lines of the Church’s life’ – a phrase that Cardijn also made his own – in the task of animating human society.¹¹

In another sign of favour, when Cardijn made his first post-war visit to Rome in May 1946, Pius XII surprised him with an autograph letter emphasising the role of priests in the JOC and calling for more priests to take up chaplaincy roles. ‘Our desire is that the YCW be set up everywhere,’ the pope told Cardijn. ‘But we want a YCW like your own,’ he insisted, indicating he shared Cardijn’s concern for the authenticity of the movement.¹²

Meanwhile, Pius XII’s policy of promoting (Specialised) Catholic Action manifested itself in the growing number of bishops drawn from the movements, including rising stars such as the Brazilian, Helder Camara, the Belgians, André-Marie Charue and Emile-Joseph De Smedt, not to mention a host of French bishops.

During this period, Msgr Giovanni Montini, the future Paul VI, who first encountered Cardijn in the circles of the International Movement of Catholic Students, Pax Romana, and in his work for the Holy See Secretariat of State, played a major support role. Despite lacking direct experience of the JOC, he quickly gained Cardijn’s confidence, becoming his go-to man in the Vatican for the promotion of the movement and in the face of difficulties.

On the other hand, increasing pressure from Rome on proponents of the ‘new theology’ including MD Chenu and Congar, who were both closely linked to Cardijn, and the French worker priests, many of whom were JOC chaplains, raised fears. This occurred even though the Vatican nuncio in Paris at this time was none other than the future Pope John XXIII, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli. Nevertheless, Roncalli strongly supported the work of the Specialised Catholic Action movements with which he had regular contact.¹³

Meanwhile, and no doubt buoyed in his confidence in the JOC, Pius XII continued to back Cardijn’s vision, endorsing the First World Congress on Lay Apostolate – as opposed to a congress on Catholic Action as originally proposed by the Italian Catholic Action movement – held in Rome in October 1951. This was a major victory for Cardijn that would prove to be of great significance for the conciliar decree on lay apostolate.

In addition, where Pius X and even Pius XI were reluctant to endorse democracy, Pius XII backed it openly in his 1944 Christmas Message, Benignitas et humanitas, on ‘democracy and lasting peace.’¹⁴ ‘The people lives by the fullness of life in the men that compose it,’ the pope now wrote, echoing the Sillon definition of democracy, ‘each of whom – at his proper place and in his own way – is a person conscious of his own responsibility and of his own views.’¹⁵ Insisting, Pius XII repeated the reference to ‘conscious of their own responsibility’ two paragraphs later.¹⁶

Cardijn quickly pounced on this and it may have been at his suggestion that Pius XII’s 1949 autograph letter to Cardijn called for the development of a worker movement of Christian inspiration with an ‘active presence in factories and workshops of pioneers fully conscious of their double Christian and worker vocation, committed to fully assuming their responsibilities without rest or break until they have transformed their milieux of life according to the demands of the Gospel.’¹⁷

However, the JOC founder, who turned seventy in 1952, was ageing, as was Pius XII, who was six years older. It was becoming urgent to further institutionalise pontifical support, which Cardijn and the JOC sought to achieve by organising an unprecedented worldwide young workers’ pilgrimage to Rome.

Eventually, 32,000 young workers from around the world (albeit a large majority from Europe) gathered in Rome for an animated open-air Mass in St Peter’s Square with Pius XII on 25 August 1957. The pope warmly welcomed the JOC leaders with a speech for which Cardijn had again likely suggested the content:

With your solid organisation, your method summarised in the well-known formula: ‘See, judge, act,’ your actions at local, regional, national and international level, you prepare to contribute to the extension of the Reign of God in modern society and to enable the teachings of Christianity to penetrate with all their vigour and originality…¹⁸

(The JOC) undertakes to fashion [young workers’] spirits and hearts to make men conscious of their responsibilities and ready to fearlessly take on the heaviest tasks. This is because jocism, wherever it has worked, has formed Christian leaders, who are thus a hope for the social future and the Christian regeneration of the worker world.¹⁹

Thus, once again on the very anniversary of Pius X’s 1910 letter condemning the Sillon methods, Cardijn succeeded in gaining a papal endorsement of its consciousness/responsibility binomial as well as the Jocist method for achieving it.

In addition, Cardijn had obtained Pius XII’s explicit endorsement of the Jocist vision and method ahead of the Second World Congress on Lay Apostolate, which was due a month later. Yet, no-one could have imagined that most of the one hundred Jocist bishops with the JOC in Rome would meet again at an Ecumenical Council to be convoked just sixteen months later.

The Jocist bishops

Indeed, when Vatican II finally opened in October 1962, more than one hundred bishops present had direct experience as JOC chaplains, including twenty-two former national chaplains,²⁰ and at least another one hundred from other Specialised Catholic Action movements.²¹ It is likely that as many as ten per cent of bishops (and possibly more) at the Council had such experience.

Nor did this include other bishops from the ninety countries who had welcomed the JOC and other movements in their dioceses although it is difficult to estimate numbers. Here we will simply offer a series of examples from various countries and regions, which illustrate Cardijn’s influence on the future conciliar bishops.

Belgium: Birthplace of the JOC

As noted previously, Bishop Honoré Van Waeyenbergh, rector of the University of Louvain and auxiliary of Malines-Brussels, had been one of the first seminarians to work with Cardijn from 1919. André-Marie Charue of Namur was another Belgian bishop closely linked to the JOC, who played a key role in the drafting of several Vatican II documents including Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes.

As a young priest, Charue returned from the 1924 ACJB conference embracing the JOC’s ‘beautiful dream of worker conquest.’²² As a bishop, he published his ‘directives’ in 1948 under the auspicious title ‘Problèmes actuels de pastorale’ (Current pastoral issues) in what amounted to a manual for establishing Specialised Catholic Action throughout the diocese. Citing Pius XI, Charue espoused ‘the Jocist conception’ of reaching out to ‘the working masses.’²³

The priest initially charged with implementing this program was Charles-Marie Himmer, later bishop of Tournai, another industrial and mining region bordering France, and future patron of the Jésus et l’Eglise des pauvres (Jesus and the Church of the Poor²⁴) group at the Council. Like Charue, Himmer had taken part in the 1924 ACJB Congress. After years of working with the SCA youth movements while teaching philosophy at a minor seminary, he became responsible for diocesan social action in 1944 in which capacity he also taught Catholic Action at the major seminary. ‘I practised the Cardijn method to the full: see-judge-act,’ he later said. ‘I stayed faithful and I still believe in it.’²⁵

The story was similar in Belgium’s Flemish provinces, where Emile-Joseph De Smedt, future bishop of Bruges, was swept up in the enthusiasm for the Cardijn-inspired ‘new methods.’ His personal archives contain dozens of notes and talks on the Specialised Catholic Action movements, particularly for the Vrouwelijke Katholieke Arbeiders Jeugd or VKAJ, the female Flemish Jocist movement, where his sister, Livine, was a fulltime worker. As a professor at the new St Joseph’s Seminary in Malines, De Smedt taught a course on Catholic Action and edited the Flemish national Catholic Action magazine, Katholieke Actie Tijdingen.²⁶

As a bishop, he also made Specialised Catholic Action the centre piece of his pastoral strategy. On the eve of Vatican II, he published an influential pastoral letter entitled The Priesthood of the Faithful, soon translated into French and English, for which he consulted Cardijn just as the JOC founder would consult him in the drafting of his own conciliar interventions.²⁷

Finally, there was Jean-Baptiste Janssens, who became a Council Father as Superior-General of the Society of Jesus. Janssens, like other progressive Belgian Jesuits, had long supported Cardijn, including as rector at the Jesuit Theologate at Louvain from 1929-35 when several Jesuit theologians made major contributions to the JOC. Janssens was also close to (Saint) Alberto Hurtado, who had studied there and later played a major role in the development of Specialised Catholic Action in Chile.[227]

Janssens’ 1949 Instruction on the Social Apostolate also made a great impact, encouraging Jesuit tertiaries in Cardijn-like terms to ‘visit frequently the workers in their homes, and learn at firsthand the condition of their lives’ and promoting the foundation of Jesuit institutes that would provide courses that would assist those involved in social action.²⁸

The Suenens exception

By the time of Vatican II, such support for the Specialised Catholic Action movements was close to universal among the Belgian bishops – with one notable exception, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens, who, as Gerard Philips told Congar, found himself ‘isolated among Belgian bishops’ owing to his views on the lay apostolate.²⁹ Indeed, it is striking that Suenens, who was studying in Rome in 1925 when Cardijn first met Pius XI, did not join the ranks of Belgian priests who enthused for the JOC.

Suenens himself offered a clue to this in his autobiography, Souvenirs et espérances, linking his political awakening to a visit to his primary school by the ageing Catholic Party leader and Prime Minister, Charles Woeste, the very man who had battled the labour priest, Fr Daens, who inspired Cardijn.³⁰ While studying in Rome, Suenens also became the local correspondent for an Antwerp newspaper that he himself described as ‘conservative liberal.’³¹ From his youth, Suenens’ social and political disposition was thus decidedly different from Cardijn’s, providing the backdrop for a series of conflicts that would flare at Vatican II.

France: Superpower of Specialised Catholic Action

Liénart of Lille

Although Paris always remained the organisational centre of the French JOC, it was Lille, under Cardinal Achille Liénart, which became the intellectual centre of the movement and acted as a turntable for exchange between France and Belgium. As a seminarian in Paris, Liénart had been in contact with the Sillon, doing youth work in church-operated youth clubs from which the Sillon and later the JOC would often recruit their leaders.³²

Thus, when the first JOC teams in France began to form in 1927, then-Canon Liénart, a parish priest in Tourcoing, an industrial suburb of Lille, did not hesitate to become chaplain to a JOC team in his own parish.³³ On 29 June 1927, Cardijn visited Tourcoing, meeting Liénart for perhaps the first time.³⁴ In October 1928, weeks after his appointment as Bishop of Lille, Liénart’s first pastoral letter specifically mentioned the JOC:

We see before us above all the multitude of workers who no longer know how much Jesus Christ loves them, and we desire that our social works and our young Christian workers, together with our priests and our faithful, achieve their conquest.³⁵

Liénart thus signalled his intention to make (Specialised) Catholic Action the centrepiece of his episcopate, probably the first in the world to do so. For the next forty years, Lille became a powerhouse in the field, with the Université catholique de Lille and the Major Seminary emerging as major centres of theological reflection. Liénart’s backing for workers and his line against the Action Française was equally emphatic, quickly attracting the attention of Pius XI, who made him a cardinal in June 1930, just over eighteen months after his episcopal ordination.

The French bishops evidently appreciated Liénart’s qualities, electing him in 1940 as President of the Assemblée des cardinaux et archevêques (Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops), a position he retained until 1969. This influence was also reflected in the number of future French bishops who emerged under Liénart’s tenure. Another JOC chaplain, Louis Liagre was the first of these, becoming bishop of La Rochelle in 1938. Others including Gerard Huyghe of Arras and Alexandre Renard, later Cardinal of Lyon, also played significant roles at the Council.

Under Liénart’s leadership, the French bishops at the Council emerged as major promoters and defenders of Specialised Catholic Action, with Liénart himself becoming one of Cardijn’s principal allies.

Gerlier and the Lyon bishops

In 1927, the future Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier, future patron of the conciliar Church of the Poor group, assisted the foundation of the JOC in Paris in 1927. Later, as Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, he hosted a series of pilgrimages by the French and Belgian JOC movements. Appointed Archbishop of Lyon in 1937, he made his archdiocese a bastion of Specialised Catholic Action with the notable assistance of his long-serving auxiliary, Bishop Alfred Ancel, who during the 1940s became the first and only ‘worker bishop.’

As well as taking part in the foundation of the JOC in Lyon, Ancel delivered the keynote address at the 1950 JOC International Congress the work of which was organised around Cardijn’s Three Truths dialectic. Recalling these events years later after Vatican II, Ancel would characterise the movement as ‘the starting point of a recognition by the Church of what the laity was in the specificity of its mission.’³⁶

‘There have always been lay people in the Church, devout lay people,’ he wrote in 1982. ‘But the laity considered as responsible for the mission of Christ among men, that is something that the Vatican Council developed; and it did it, at least in part, owing to the existence and action of the JOC.’

‘In the past people believed that it was necessary to separate themselves from life in order to encounter Christ,’ Ancel wrote. But the JOC overcame that dualism. ‘Thanks to the JOC I learnt to discover Christ present in the action of men and in my own action; I was able to achieve the unity of my life in Him.’ This was particularly important within a French Catholic culture imbued with a rigid conception of divided spiritual and temporal spheres. In addition, Ancel’s conception of religious freedom would also make a major contribution to the Council.³⁷

By the time of Vatican II, all Gerlier’s auxiliaries were close to the SCA movements, including Marius Maziers, later Archbishop of Bordeaux, who encouraged the movement to reach out to Muslim workers. Maziers was also keen to promote the heritage of the Sillon,³⁸ even adopting the conscience/responsibility binomial in his conciliar speeches. Later he characterised Vatican II in precisely these terms: ‘For four years, nearly a thousand men, invited in various capacities by Pope John XXIII, then Pope Paul VI, marched together, conscious of the same responsibilities, bearers of the same hope.’³⁹

Completing the team was another auxiliary, Bishop Gabriel Matagrin, a member of the Jeunesse Etudiante Chrétienne (Young Christian Students) in the mid-1930s before entering the seminary, who became a peritus before his episcopal ordination in 1965.

Garrone, Guerry and Ancel

Together with Gabriel Marie Garrone and Emile Guerry, future Archbishops of Toulouse and Cambrai respectively, Ancel formed a trio of French conciliar bishops who had studied together at the Séminaire français de Rome during the early 1920s.⁴⁰ All three became leading proponents of Cardijn-inspired Specialised Catholic Action.

As a major seminary professor in Chambéry, Garrone, like his Belgian counterparts, taught Specialised Catholic Action, becoming a counsellor and preaching countless retreats for the movements of the archdiocese.⁴¹ In Toulouse, he continued to promote the movements, publishing a 1958 book entitled L’Action catholique, which was largely a riposte to Suenens’ critique of the Specialised Catholic Action movements, and which, according to AG Martimort, foreshadowed Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Vatican II decree on the lay apostolate.⁴² ‘Those who experienced the beginnings (of the JOC), welcomed its birth like an aurora, followed its fortunes, reflected in a sustained manner on its meaning,’ Garrone wrote, characterising the JOC in line with Pius XI as ‘a complete form of Catholic Action.’⁴³

The case was similar with Emile Guerry. Born in 1891, he studied law before entering the seminary, eventually gaining a doctorate in law in 1921 on women’s trade unions that he completed during his seminary studies. He was close to the dissident Sillonist priest, Jean Desgranges, and possibly belonged to the Sillon himself before becoming a leader of the ACJF in his home diocese of Grenoble.

Returning to Grenoble from Rome, he became a seminary professor. By 1932 he was vicar-general in which capacity he founded the JOC and its rural equivalent the JAC in the diocese. In 1936, he published the influential book L’Action catholique, a collection of pontifical texts. This was followed in 1957 by La doctrine sociale de l’Eglise. Meanwhile, he played a key role in 1949 in launching the Action catholique ouvrière, the adult counterpart of the JOC.

At the Council, Guerry, a strong promoter of episcopal collegiality, also played an important role in the drafting of Christus Dominus, the decree on the pastoral office of the bishops.

Paris: A succession of Jocist cardinals

With Gerlier’s backing, Cardinal Dubois of Paris approved the foundation of the JOC in France in 1926. His successors Cardinal Jean Verdier and Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard took this to even greater heights during the 1930s and 1940s. If, according to Jean Vinatier, Liénart at Lille was ‘the cardinal of the social question,’ Suhard in Paris was ‘a cardinal born of Catholic Action.’⁴⁴

Thus, it is unsurprising to find that Suhard’s landmark 1947 episcopal letter, Essor ou déclin de l’Eglise (published in English as Growth or Decline? The Church Today) comprised a see-judge-act on the situation facing the people and Church of France after the war. In this sense, it prefigured Gaudium et Spes and certainly served as a model for many French bishops at the Council.

Cardijn himself was deeply impressed by Suhard, writing in 1964 that although he was ‘less outgoing than John XIII, he was forged from the same material’ and ‘lived all the themes of the Council in advance,’ wanting ‘to hasten the living realisation of the Church, the priesthood, the laity.’⁴⁵ At Vatican II, he quoted Suhard’s concern for the ‘gulf’ between the workers and Christianity.⁴⁶

Suhard’s successor Maurice Feltin was another long-standing partisan of the JOC and Specialised Catholic Action. A friend of Liénart with whom he had studied for the priesthood, he was ordained a bishop in the same year, 1928, as part of Pius XI’s effort to renew the French episcopate after the condemnation of the Action Française.⁴⁷ When the Holy See sought to close down the worker priests’ initiative launched by Suhard, Feltin, together with Liénart and Gerlier launched an appeal to Pius XII, albeit unsuccessfully.

The outcome of all this was that more than eighty conciliar French bishops (out of 138), including six cardinals, had direct personal experience of the JOC and the Specialised Catholic Action movements, and they did not hesitate to use their influence.⁴⁸

Other European countries

Although no other European country rivalled France and Belgium in the number of Jocist bishops, the movement nevertheless achieved serious influence. At least five German bishops had close links to the movements, including Cologne’s Cardinal Josef Frings while Cardinal Bernard Alfrink was one of several Dutch bishops who supported the Specialised Catholic Action movements.

Similarly, the United Kingdom had at least six conciliar bishops close to the movement. Portuguese Cardinal Manuel Cerejeira was one of the earliest to back the JOC during the 1930s. In Poland, the future Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow visited Belgium and France in 1947 with a view to launching the movement, only to be blocked by the communist takeover.

If, as Ralph Wiltgen later argued, the Rhine of transalpine Europe flowed into the Tiber at Vatican II, the role of the Jocist bishops and periti in this cannot be ignored.⁴⁹

The JOC in other continents

Canada

Outside of Europe, it was in French-speaking Canada that the JOC and Specialised Catholic Action made perhaps their greatest impact. Once again, a similar pattern emerged of many future Council Fathers, who played significant or even decisive roles.

The future Cardinal Maurice Roy, first president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was another early JOC chaplain in Quebec. Indeed, it was his Oblate of Mary Immaculate cousin, Henri Roy, who founded the movement there in 1929.⁵⁰

The same year, Maurice Roy began studying at the Sorbonne and at the Institut catholique in Paris where one of his contemporaries was another Quebec priest, Paul-Emile Léger.⁵¹ A year later, the future Cardinal Léger was named spiritual director for English-speaking students at the Issy-les-Moulineaux national seminary just outside Paris.

Did either or both these priests hear Cardijn’s famous speech to 500 seminarians there on 4 December 1929?⁵² In any event, they imbibed the atmosphere, becoming great promoters of the JOC. As bishop of Trois Rivières, Roy hosted an international training session for chaplains in 1947, while Léger, who initially forged his career in the Vatican diplomatic service, became Archbishop of Montreal in 1950.

At Vatican II, both Roy and Léger became members of the Doctrinal Commission, which had responsibility for both Lumen Gentium and, in partnership with the Commission on Lay Apostolate, for Gaudium et Spes. All told, there were at least eighteen Quebec bishops at the Council who had previously worked with the JOC, the JEC and other SCA movements.

Latin America, Africa and Asia

Although difficult to document and on a smaller scale, the story was similar in other countries and continents. Some, if not many conciliar bishops, first encountered Cardijn during their studies in Rome, including Larrain and the South African Denis Hurley of Durban.⁵³ Hurley too belonged to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a French order founded in the early nineteenth century with the objective of reaching out to poor rural and industrial communities.⁵⁴ Indeed, the Oblate connection proved particularly fruitful for the JOC in several countries including Sri Lanka where the future Colombo archbishop, Thomas Cooray, promoted Specialised Catholic Action before becoming a cardinal at the same 1965 consistory as Cardijn.

Historical connections also led to the foundation of many JOC and other SCA movements in many (former) European colonies. Thus, Archbishop Jean Zoa of Cameroon had been a JOC chaplain as had Cardinal Paul Zoungrana from Burkina Faso while Bernardin Gantin from Benin was a JEC chaplain.

Similarly, in Asia, the outspoken Archbishop Eugene D’Souza from India was close to the local YCW along with several other bishops, while the Chinese Bishop Paul Yu Pin attempted to launch the movement in mainland China prior to the 1949 Revolution. In Australia, Archbishops Justin Simonds, James Gleeson and Francis Rush were convinced Cardijn acolytes.

Except for Canada, however, it was in Latin America that the JOC and the SCA movements exercised the most influence prior to the Council. In Brazil, at least twenty bishops were involved with the movements, beginning with Helder Camara, an early JOC chaplain, and José Tavora, a national chaplain. There were at least eight more from Argentina, another six from Chile as well as Marcos McGrath from Panama, Ramon Bogarin from Paraguay and Leonidas Proaño from Ecuador, many of whom played key roles at Vatican II and in the Latin American bishops’ conference, CELAM.

The Jocist theologians and lay auditors

The University of Louvain

Reflecting on Cardijn’s influence over the theologians of his generation, Louvain professor and Church historian Roger Aubert noted that while Cardijn never claimed to be a theologian, it was ‘difficult to exaggerate the degree to which he promoted theological reflection.’⁵⁵ Examples of this were the theology of work, developed by MD Chenu and the theology of terrestrial realities of Louvain professor Gustave Thils. Indeed, Cardijn maintained very close links with the theology, philosophy and sociology departments at his alma mater the University of Louvain, which eventually awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Thils, who taught in the Malines Major Seminary during the 1930s before going to Louvain, had links with the student Catholic Action movements JEC and JUC as well as the JOC, ‘animat(ing) reflections in these movements for a better understanding of the Christian meaning of social, cultural, political, scientific and technical realities.’⁵⁶ His well-known book Théologie des réalités terrestres was a compilation of these reflections and the expression ‘terrestrial realities’ was incorporated in Gaudium et Spes, where Thils was a peritus.⁵⁷

Albert Dondeyne was probably the closest of Cardijn’s early Louvain collaborators, making presentations at many Jocist training sessions, becoming a privileged interpreter of Cardijn’s own theological insights.⁵⁸ He also played a key role in the foundation of the Hoogstudenten Verbond voor Katholieke Aktie (High School Union for Catholic Action) in 1933–34 as well as several important national and international events, including the Belgian Catholic Congress at Malines in 1936, the Belgian National Conference on Lay Apostolate in 1956 as well as the Second World Congress on Lay Apostolate in Rome in 1957.⁵⁹

Dondeyne summarised Cardijn’s major contributions in the theological domain under three headings: the religious meaning of lay life, an incarnational Christian presence in the world, and – once again – with respect to the world of work.⁶⁰ As a conciliar peritus, he took part in the drafting of Gaudium et Spes, particularly the chapter on culture, and assisted Cardijn in the drafting of his own interventions.

Pauline exegete Lucien Cerfaux, a seminary professor in Tournai as well as at Louvain, who had been involved in the campaign against the Action Française, was yet another future peritus to whom Cardijn turned for advice in the late 1940s when the JOC was facing new challenges as it expanded to other continents.

After World War II, the sociologist, François Houtart, a self-professed Marxist, became a close collaborator of Cardijn and the JOC in Latin America. Houtart played a major role in promoting links between the bishops of Latin America that led in 1956 to the foundation of the Latin American Bishops Conference, CELAM, and also implemented a major sociological survey of the religious situation in the region that helped prepare the Council.⁶¹

Houtart also became secretary of the conciliar Signs of the Times Commission, in which capacity he prepared the first draft of the Introductory statement on the human condition in the world of today in Gaudium et Spes, drawing on his 1964 book, L’Eglise et le monde, à propos du Schéma 17.⁶²

Later he confirmed the importance of the Jocist influence at the Council, noting ‘the number of bishops at the Second Vatican Council who had been associated in different ways with the YCW,’ including many who had been chaplains or sympathetic to the movement.⁶³

‘Especially in Latin America… the renewal of the Church in Latin America before Vatican II was very much associated with the YCW, because the priests in charge of the YCW were also the ones who were very active in renovation of the liturgy, in biblical studies and pastoral work,’ Houtart concluded.

Gerard Philips

Nevertheless, of these Belgian theological and philosophical collaborators of Cardijn, it was perhaps Gerard Philips who played the most extensive role at Vatican II, notably in the drafting of Lumen Gentium. Philips’ collaboration with Cardijn began as early as 1931 when, still studying in Rome, he helped host the VKAJ (Flemish Girls JOC) pilgrimage to the Eternal City. Back in Belgium, he worked closely with the Flemish JEC and later directly with Cardijn in providing training for seminarians on Catholic Action. During the 1950s, he achieved prominence with his theology of the laity, culminating in a keynote address to the Second World Congress on Lay Apostolate in 1957 and a series of books.

‘The turning point, the critical moment in the religious field was announced for our working youth by the call of Pope Pius XI in favour of Catholic Action and the discovery of the JOC by Monsignor Cardijn,’ Philips wrote recognising Cardijn’s role. ‘Without the man, the idea would have remained at the level of theory and would never have had any practical influence.⁶⁴ Nevertheless, theological differences also emerged between the two men.

French theologians

The Dominicans

From the beginning, Dominican priests played an instrumental role in the rise of the JOC, beginning with Fr Ceslas Rutten, a Leplaysian sociologist who worked closely with Cardijn from 1912. Cardijn’s personal library also witnesses to the influence of AD Sertillanges, the Sillon chaplain and philosopher, whose analysis of Aquinas’s treatment of the virtue of prudence was important in the development of the see-judge-act.

Moreover, many French Dominicans were stationed at Le Sauchoir convent, then located near Tournai in Belgium. These included Chenu and Congar, who were quick to grasp the significance of the developing Jocist method.

Congar confirmed this, later describing his JOC experience as ‘decisive.’⁶⁵ With other Dominicans, he gave regular retreats to Jocist leaders, the handwritten notes of which survive in his archives.

These experiences together with his links with other Specialised Catholic Action movements in France, particularly the Action Catholique Ouvrière, provided the raw material for the development of his own theology of the laity in Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat, translated into English as Lay People in the Church: A study for a theology of the laity, and in many other scholarly articles and publications.

Of the Dominicans, MD Chenu was closest to Cardijn,⁶⁶ who wrote a preface for the former’s landmark 1937 article Dimension nouvelle de la Chrétienté (New dimensions of Christendom).⁶⁷ Signs of the times, incarnational theology, theology of creation and redemption, theology of work – all these formed subjects of close collaboration between the two men inspiring Chenu to characterise the JOC as ‘un lieu théologique’ – a theological locus.

Chenu, like Congar, began his involvement with the JOC from 1928 when movement chaplains from Lille crossed the border for reflection weekends at Le Saulchoir.⁶⁸

‘Nouvelle théologie’ and the worker priests

Their example also greatly influenced other Dominicans, including Louis-Joseph Lebret, born like Lamennais in Saint Malo.⁶⁹ Having completed his formation at Lyon, Lebret returned to his home town where he founded the Jeunesse maritime chrétienne, a Specialised Catholic Action movement for young seafarers modelled on the JOC.

Also highly significant was the mutual influence between Cardijn and the JOC on one hand and the Dominican theologians – Congar and Chenu in particular – who developed their “nouvelle théologie” or “new theology” – as it was originally dismissively known – out of their experiences with the JOC. Indeed, Chenu explicitly acknowledged this link.

‘The Saulchoir,’ he wrote in 1937, ‘has had the joy and grace of regularly welcoming the chaplains and leaders of the JOC, who have turned this convent, completely filled with books and timeless theology, one of their most loved and most sure spiritual loci.’ For the theologians, this was ‘a testimony to the Christian authenticity and supernatural vitality of their austere theological work,’ he added.⁷⁰

Endeavouring to put this new approach into practice, French Dominicans, including Chenu again, also played a key role in the emergence of the French worker priest movement. All this threatened to rebound against the JOC under Pius XII when both the nouvelle théologie and the worker priests attracted the critical attention of the Vatican.

Pierre Haubtmann

At least a dozen former Specialised Catholic Action chaplains became periti at the Council. Except for Philips, probably no other played a more important role than Pierre Haubtmann. Born in St Etienne in 1912, he studied for the priesthood at the French Seminary in Rome then at the Gregorian University. In 1936 he was ordained for Guerry’s diocese of Grenoble.

In 1937, while studying social science at the Institut catholique de Paris, he became a local JOCF chaplain at Meudon. Here, he befriended the Jesuit Jocist chaplain and theologian, Yves de Montcheuil, author of L’Eglise et le monde actuel, who oriented him towards the study of Proudhon.⁷¹ Thus began a twenty-year odyssey, during which Haubtmann wrote four doctoral theses on Proudhon in the fields of letters (main and complementary theses, Sorbonne), social sciences, and theology.

Mobilised during the Second World War, he was captured and remained a prisoner of war until 1942. Returning, he became chaplain to adult worker teams belonging to the League of Christian Workers (LOC), which later became the Action Catholique Ouvrière (ACO), becoming national chaplain from 1954 until the eve of the Council. He also worked with the Action Catholique Indépendente (ACI), a Specialised Catholic Action movement for professionals and business people.

In 1962 he took up a post as professor of social studies at the Institut catholique. The same year the French bishops appointed him as national director of religious news leading directly to his role as media liaison person at the Council. Haubtmann thus began to publish a series of regular summaries of the Council’s progress under the title Le point sur le Concile, the excellence of which attracted much attention. In 1963, he was appointed as a peritus in the commission working on Schema XIII, which became Gaudium et Spes, leading to his selection at the end of 1964 to oversee the final stages of its drafting.⁷²

Other JOC and SCA chaplains

As we will see, other movement chaplains also played significant roles at the Council, particularly in the Lay Apostolate and Schema XIII Commissions. Although they remained a tiny minority among the more than 400 Vatican II periti, their influence was magnified by the roles they had played and the confidence shown in them by the conciliar bishops.

The emergence of a Jocist network

Particularly significant for the Council was the network that began to form around these bishops and theologians formed by Cardijn, the JOC and the SCA movements. Locally and nationally, congresses and training events for both lay leaders as well as for chaplains helped foster this development. Even more significant in an era when international travel was prohibitive were the continental and international events organised by the movements.

The JOC international congresses played a major role in globalising this network, beginning with Brussels in 1935, Paris 1937, Montreal 1947 – the first outside of Europe – another in Brussels in 1950, Rome 1957, in particular, and Rio de Janeiro 1961, less than a year before the Council opened. The movement also organised semi-regular sub-continental and continental meetings and gatherings in every continent, including Africa, a possibly unprecedented feat for any movement.

The World Congresses on Lay Apostolate

The First Congress: Cardijn’s zenith

Perhaps no events were more important in the emergence of this Jocist network than the World Congresses on Lay Apostolate of 1951 and 1957.

‘I remember the very great impact (one of the greatest of my life) when, during the First World Congress on Lay Apostolate here in Rome, (Cardijn) presented us with a complete panorama of the great issues of the present time,’ wrote Helder Camara to his Brazilian co-workers during the First Session of Vatican II as he and Larrain battled to ensure that Cardijn would be appointed as a peritus.⁷³ Moreover, according to Larrain, Cardijn’s ‘magistral’ speech had ‘encapsulated the collective thinking’ of the 1951 Congress.⁷⁴

In Belgium, Philips was similarly impressed by Cardijn’s ‘magistral and impressive’ intervention. ‘A courageous realism’ characterised his description of the ‘present conditions that make the apostolate of the laity particularly urgent,’ he added, noting ‘the fire and the emotion of his heart and the perspicacity and the synthetic strength of his spirit.’⁷⁵

As these observers perceived, Cardijn’s speech, entitled ‘The world today and the lay apostolate,’ proved to be a defining moment, introducing two major shifts in perspective. First, it introduced the JOC’s reality-based see-judge-act as the method of work at the Congress instead of the traditional doctrinal approach beginning from Church teaching.

Secondly, and equally if not more important was Cardijn’s conception of lay apostolate as the role of the lay person transforming the world ‘in his personal life, in his family, professional, social, cultural and civic life, on the national and international planes’ rather than in terms of personal piety, charitable and even social action.⁷⁶

In addition, for many of the future Council participants, Cardijn’s speech provided the template for Gaudium et Spes. Organised on his familiar see-judge-act template, it began with an overview of the prevailing world situation, contrasting this with the Church’s understanding of God’s plan of love, creation and redemption, and proposing as a solution the development of conscious and responsible laity acting as a ‘leaven and ferment of a new humanity,’ working in partnership with the ministerial priesthood, whose role was to guarantee Christ’s presence and action in the Church and particularly to empower the laity who had ‘come of age.’

In effect, it was a new vision of lay apostolate that contrasted starkly with the traditional conception of lay groups focusing on pious and charitable works or defence of the Church.

Lay apostolate on the agenda

Originally envisaged as a congress on Catholic Action, the shift in focus to ‘lay apostolate’ of the 1951 Congress was entirely due to a coordinated campaign led by Cardijn and the Belgian movements, supported by the French, backed by the initiator of the event, Vittorino Veronese, and Montini, who mediated with Pius XII. Without this, it is almost inconceivable that the Council could have adopted a decree specifically on ‘lay apostolate’ fewer than fifteen years later.

In his closing speech, Pius XII endorsed much of the Cardijn vision, becoming the first pope to adopt the phrase ‘signs of the times’ with respect to the observation of present realities, which he appeared to take for granted as the method to be used by lay people. And, in a nod to his 1944 speech on democracy, the pope twice referred approvingly to the growing ‘consciousness of their responsibilities’ on the part of both priests and laity.⁷⁷

Also significant was the emergence of several Vatican II actors linked to Cardijn. Future members of the conciliar Lay Apostolate Commission included Larrain, Franz Hengsbach, soon to become Bishop of Essen, national centre of the German CAJ (JOC), as well as the Austrian Catholic Action chaplain and theologian Ferdinand Klostermann, the French Jocist chaplain and Caritas International co-founder, Jean Rodhain, Antoine Cortbawi, a Jocist chaplain from Lebanon.

Also participating were Albert Bonet, a founding chaplain of the JOC affiliate in Catalonia, Pietro Pavan, then head of the Catholic Institute for Social Studies in Rome, also close to Cardijn, and of course the JOC founder himself. Philips would also play a huge role in the doctrinal commission. Members of both these commissions would be responsible for the drafting of Gaudium et Spes. In addition, the Argentinian Cardinal Caggiano, episcopal founder of the JOC in Argentina albeit extremely conservative, would later become a member of the Vatican II Presidency group.

Finally, many future Vatican II lay auditors were present including Patrick Keegan, Auguste Vanistendael, Marie-Louis Monnet, who had founded the JIC (Jeunesse Indépendente Chrétienne) for young professionals after meeting Cardijn at Lourdes in 1931, Veronese, as well as several others who were close to the Specialised Catholic Action movements.

These were radical developments. Thus, it is perhaps unsurprising that once the initial euphoria over Cardijn’s keynote had subsided, considerable resistance soon developed against these changes within the working groups of the COPECIAL – the Permanent Committee for International Lay Apostolate Congresses – created by Pope Pius XII in 1952 to extend the work of the Congress.

A growing rift

This resistance gathered pace throughout the preparation for the Second World Congress in 1957, placing Cardijn at odds with his own compatriots, Philips and the future Cardinal Suenens, over both issues of method and particularly the nature of the lay apostolate. Suenens, who had helped introduce Frank Duff’s Legion of Mary into Belgium, had a long history of opposition to Cardijn dating back at least to 1951. As auxiliary bishop in Brussels, Suenens had objected to Cardijn’s review of his book Théologie de l’apostolat.⁷⁸

His next book, L’Eglise en état de mission, although couched as a critique of the French Dominican, Maurice Montuclard’s ‘thesis’ of ‘civilisation first, evangelisation later,’ amounted to a thinly veiled attack on Cardijn’s own theology of the specifically lay apostolate and his methods of formation. Insisting on the need for a ‘direct religious apostolate’, for ‘the unity of sacerdotal and lay apostolate’, ‘the apostolic role of the auxiliaries of the clergy’, and ‘the need for direct formation for the apostolate,’ Suenens espoused the old ACJF/ACJB prayer-study-action formula in another swipe at the Jocist method.⁷⁹

In place of the Montuclard civilisation versus evangelisation distinction, Suenens also proposed an alternative framework based on what he characterised as the ‘directly religious’ or ‘indirectly religious’ apostolate:

Just as one can influence the body by the soul, or the soul by the body, so there exist two methods of apostolate. The first, the direct religious apostolate, passes from the religious to the human; the second, the indirect apostolate, passes from the human to the religious. A religious apostolate cut off from life is inconceivable, just as much as a social apostolate without a religious base.⁸⁰

On this point, Cardijn contented himself with congratulating Suenens for dissipating the ambiguity of the ‘humanise or evangelise’ slogan.[281] Yet, Suenens’ direct-indirect framework would later cause Cardijn very serious problems in the Vatican II Preparatory Commission on Lay Apostolate.

Meanwhile, Suenens launched another attack against the (Specialised) Catholic Action movements, accusing them of ‘monopolising’ the term to the exclusion of others, including the Legion of Mary, who the Brussels auxiliary bishop argued, also had a right to be considered as such.⁸¹

The Second Congress

These issues came to the fore in the preparation for the Second World Congress. Here Cardijn was opposed by his Belgian compatriots, Philips, and the Jesuit Georges Delcuve, who had founded the Lumen Vitae catechetical training centre in Brussels. Philips and Delcuve, who seem to have been acting as proxies for Suenens who emerged as leader of the Belgian delegation, both insisted that the Second Congress should start with doctrine.

Thus, although they adopted Cardijn’s ‘Three Truths’ template, their plan began not with ‘the truth of reality’ as Cardijn had done in 1951 but with ‘the truth of faith’:

a) A summary of doctrinal principles,

b) A panorama of the current world situation, and

c) The formation of the laity starting from family life, education, professional and cultural life, and eventually international life.⁸²

Although Cardijn fought the point, preferring as always to begin ‘bottom up’ with reality, he was now forced to concede in a battle that would re-emerge at the Council in the debates over the structure of Gaudium et Spes. In another significant victory for the Suenens line, Pius XII in his opening speech also called for a change in terminology that would give a ‘general meaning’ to the term Catholic Action, applying it ‘to the ensemble of lay apostolic movements.’⁸³

Larrain takes the floor

This was the context in which Chilean Bishop Manuel Larrain stepped up to defend the Jocist approach in a paper entitled Croissance de vie chrétienne chez les laïcs d’aujourd’hui (Growth of Christian life among lay people today), which addressed the question: What are the elements that comprise the spirituality of lay people who intervene in the temporal realities of the present world?⁸⁴

The answer to this, Larrain argued, in terms that owed everything to Cardijn (and Gratry), was that each Christian had a double temporal and eternal duty, based first on the instruction in Genesis Chapter 1 to multiply and fill the Earth, and secondly on Jesus’ command in Matthew Chapter 28 to baptise and teach all nations. For Larrain, these ‘two great imperatives… associate the Christian in the double task of the Creation and the Redemption.’ Following Cardijn and contrary to Philips, he repudiated the direct/indirect framework used by the latter that dissociated the divine and secular spheres, in effect relegating the lay role to the latter.⁸⁵

The issue was the way ‘in which this task impacts on the present time, since this double growth of the world and the Church is realised historically,’ Larrain argued, launching into a see-judge-act analysis. Acknowledging the emergence of a ‘new era of human history’ which was opening up thanks to technological progress and structural changes impacting on ‘the life, culture and mentality of man today,’ he argued, with echoes of Lamennais, that the Church itself was entering ‘a third age.’

‘From this vision of the Church today in the world today,’ Larrain added, ‘one could deduce the fundamental structure of the kind of Christian that our time requires.’⁸⁶ What was needed was ‘a conscious and freely adopted Christianity,’ Larrain continued, in line with both Cardijn and Lamennais. This implied a community sense, a liturgical sense, a biblical sense, a missionary spirit, holiness and a sacred sense of life and the lay vocation that directed each person’s attitude before the world.

Such an attitude regarded ‘life as a vocation from God,’ ‘civic duty as the path of God’ while unifying ‘the double secular and missionary work of this divine vocation… in the development of the world and the Church,’ Larrain concluded in an important intervention that prefigured his role representing the progressive Latin American bishops at Vatican II.⁸⁷

Framing the conciliar debates

Unable to resolve these controversies, the Congress decided not to draw ‘conclusions,’ bar a ‘special resolution’ expressing solidarity with the ‘Church of silence’ in the communist world and an ordinary ‘resolution’ proposing to ‘study’ the Catholic Action issue raised by Pius XII. This was a green light to Suenens, who proceeded to publish an influential article on ‘L’unité multiforme de l’Action catholique’ (The multiform unity of Catholic Action) again calling for the term Catholic Action to be used ‘generically.’⁸⁸

Thus, compared to the triumphs of the First Congress, the Second Congress was a serious setback for Cardijn and his allies. Nevertheless, it helped isolate the issues concerning evangelisation, lay apostolate and the role of the Church in the world that would resurface at the Council. It had also drawn many of the Jocist bishops and theologians even closer together in a genuinely international albeit informal Cardijn network that would exercise an influence far beyond their number at Vatican II.

Note

1“L’épiscopat belge,” 17-20, in JOC, Un message libérateur, Hommage à Cardijn, (Brussels: Editions Ouvrières, 1962): https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1832

2Yves Congar, Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Eglise (Paris: Cerf, 1950), 282-284.

3Ibid.

4Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, Encyclical Letter, 1931, §140: http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html

5Ibid., §135.

6Joseph Cardijn, “Meeting with Pius XI,” October 1962: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/109

7Joseph Cardijn, “Pie XI et la JOC,” in Notes de Pastorale Jociste, 8, N° 4 (April 1939).

8Joseph Cardijn, “Le Pape nous attend,” in Notes de Pastorale Jociste, 8, N° 5 (June 1939): https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1677

9Joseph Cardijn, “Le pèlerinage jociste à Rome,” Notes de Pastorale Jociste, 9, N° 1 (October 1939): https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1240

10Pius XI, “Cum ex epistula, Lettre à Cardinal Van Roey,” 15/08/1928, AAS 20 (1928): 295-296.

11Pius XII, “La Elevatezza, Discurso sobre la supranacionalidad de la Iglesia,” 1946: http://www.va/content/pius-xii/es/speeches/1946/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19460220_la-elevatezza.html

12Fiévez-Meert, Cardijn, 177.

13 Giovanni Roncalli, Journal de France, Paris: Cerf.

14Pius XII, Benignitas et humanitas.

15Ibid., §23.

16Ibid., §25.

17Pie XII, “Lettre autographe à Joseph Cardijn,” 21/03/1949: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1417

18Pius XII, “Discours au rassemblement mondial,” 25/08/1957: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1423

19Ibid.

20Fiévez-Meert, Cardijn, 219.

21Stefan Gigacz, “Vatican II Bishops, Periti and Auditors with Links to Cardijn and the JOC,” 2017: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YSVXsW86-Ar0jZSrvRFXhcpH-8gM2rF0KgzmBMawZPI/edit#gid=0

22André-Marie Charue, “Lettre à Cardijn,” Notes de Pastorale Jociste, 23, N° 1 (October 1946): 20.

23Ibid., 36-38.

24Often shortened to ‘Church of the Poor’ group.

25“Charles-Marie Himmer” in Wikipedia: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Marie_Himmer : Although the article fails to provide a source for the quote from Himmer, it is consistent with his commitment to the JOC, and his lifelong concern for workers.

26Robert Houthaeve, Een man van pinksteren, Mgr Emiel Jozef De Smedt (Belgium: Robert Houthaeve, 1996), 20.

27Emile-Joseph De Smedt, The Priesthood of the Faithful (New York: Paulist Press, 1962).

28Jean-Baptiste Janssens, Instruction on the Social Apostolate, 1949: http://www.sjweb.info/sjs/documents/Janssens_eng.pdf

29Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2012), 124.

30Léon-Joseph Suenens, Souvenirs et espérances (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 13.

31Ibid., 22.

32Catherine Masson, Le cardinal Liénart, évêque de Lille 1928 -1968 (Paris: Cerf, 2001), 39-40.

33Ibid., 86-87.

34André Caudron, Lille Flandres, Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine (Paris: Beauchesne, 1990), 260.

35Masson, Le cardinal Liénart, 156.

36Alfred Ancel and Joseph Jacquet, Un militant ouvrier dialogue avec un évêque (Paris: Editions Ouvrières – Editions Sociales, 1982): https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1840

37Bertrand de Margerie, Liberté religieuse et règne du Christ (Paris: Cerf, 1988).

38Marius Maziers and Dominique Lebrun, Mgr Marius Maziers et le Concile Vatican II (1962 -1965) (Saint Etienne: Osmose, 2012), 112.

39Ibid., 148-149.

40Aimé-Georges Martimort, Le cardinal Gabriel-Marie Garrone 1901-1994 (Toulouse: Diocèse de Toulouse, 1994), 3.

41Martimort, Le cardinal Garrone, 4.

42Ibid., 6.

43Gabriel-Marie Garrone, L’Action catholique, Son histoire – sa doctrine, – son panorama, son destin, Je sais – Je crois 102 (Paris: Fayard, 1958), 13.

44Garrone, L’Action catholique, 13.

45Jean-Pierre Guérend, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, Archevêque de Paris (1940 -1949), Temps de guerre, temps de paix, passion pour la mission (Paris: Cerf, 2011), 324-325.

46Joseph Cardijn, “Note 30, De ministerio et vida presbyterorum,” 1965: https://www.josephcardijn.com/en/item/94

47Masson, Le cardinal Liénart, 93.

48Gigacz, Jocist Bishops and Periti.

49Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, 1.

50L’Ilot, “La deuxième berceau mondial de la JOC”: Site no longer online.

51Micheline Lachance, Paul-Emile Léger, Le prince de l’Eglise, Vol. I (Montreal: Editions de l’homme, 2000), 50-51.

52Joseph Cardijn, “L’apostolat de la jeunesse ouvrière,” 1929: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1059

53Paddy Kearney, Guardian of the Light: Denis Hurley: Renewing the Church, Opposing Apartheid, (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 245.

54François Blanchin, “Oblates of Mary Immaculate” in Catholic Encyclopaedia, 1913: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Oblates_of_Mary_Immaculate

55Roger Aubert, “La significance historique de l’oeuvre de Mgr Cardijn,” Collectanea Mechliniensia, 47 (1962): 602-610.

56SCJ Purwanto, “La vie de Gustave Thils”: http://thilschp1.blogspot.fr/

57Purwanto, “Thils.”

58Albert Dondeyne, “Un message libérateur,” in Collective, Un message libérateur, Hommage à Cardijn, (Brussels: Editions Ouvrières, 1962), 191-198: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1779

59Jean Ladrière, “In memoriam Albert Dondeyne,” Revue philosophique de Louvain, 83, No. 59 (1985): 462-484.

60Dondeyne, Un message libérateur, 191-198.

61Stefan Gigacz, “Remembering François Houtart,” Cardijn Studies, No. 1 (2017): 97-102.

62Stefan Gigacz, “Interview with François Houtart”: http://videos.stefangigacz.com/p/francois-houtart.html

63Ibid.

64Gérard Philips, “Refléxions à propos du Jubilé,” in Notes de Pastorale Jociste, 15, N° 6 (1950): 171-175: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1783

65Stefan Gigacz, “Congar and Cardijn at Vatican II.” Interface Theology, 3(1) (2017): 31-67.

66Joseph Cardijn, “Théologie du travail, théologie pour l’homme,” in Collective, L’hommage différé au Père Chenu (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 271-274.

67Joseph Cardijn, “Préface,” in MD Chenu, Dimension nouvelle de la chrétienté, (Paris: Cerf, 1937): https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1494

68MD Chenu and Jacques Duquesne, Un théologien en liberté, Jacques Duquesne interroge le Père Chenu (Paris: Centurion, 1975), 57.

69Lydie Garreau, Louis-Joseph Lebret, Précurseur de Vatican II (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011), 13-25.

70M.-D. Chenu, o.p., Une école de théologie, Le Saulchoir (Kain-lez-Tournai / Etiolles: Le Saulchoir, 1937), 68-69.

71Pierre Haubtmann, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Sa vie et sa pensée (Paris: Beauchesne, 1981), 10-11.

72Riccardo Burigana and Giovanni Turbanti, “The Intersession: Preparing the Conclusion of the Council,” in Alberigo-Komonchak, IV, 520.

73Helder Camara, Lettres conciliaires (1962-1965), Vol. I (Paris: Cerf, 2006), 130-131.

74Manuel Larrain, “Congresos y eventos de la Acción Católica,” in Ecclesia,” Nº 2, (1951): 4-9, Santiago: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1915

75Gérard Philips, “Refléxions d’un théologien,” in Notes de Pastorale Jociste, 17, N° 1 (1951) 49-53: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1785

76Joseph Cardijn, “The world today and the apostolate of the laity,” October 1951: https://www.josephcardijn.com/fr/item/1785

77Pius XII, “Aux participants au premier Congrès Mondial de l’Apostolate des Laïcs,” 14/10/1951: http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/fr/speeches/1951/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19511014_apostolato-laici.html

78 Suenens Archives, Archdiocese of Malines-Brussels.

79Léon-Joseph Suenens, L’Eglise en état de mission (Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1955), 153-175.

80Ibid., 52.

81 L-J Suenens, “L’unité multiforme de l’Action Catholique,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 80, N° 1 (1958): 3-21: https://www.nrt.be/fr/articles/l-unite-multiforme-de-l-action-catholique-1948

82Bernard Minvielle, L’apostolat des laïcs à la veille du Concile (1949-1959): histoire des conciles mondiaux de 1951 et 1957 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 2001), 243.

83Pius XII, Discours in COPECIAL, Deuxième Congrès Mondial des Laïcs, Vol. 1, Les laïcs dans l’Eglise (Rome: COPECIAL, 1953), 20-21.

84Manuel Larrain, “La croissance de la vie chrétienne chez les laïcs” in COPECIAL, Deuxième Congrès Mondial des Laïcs, Vol. 1, Les laïcs dans l’Eglise (Rome: COPECIAL, 1953), 157-174.

85Ibid., 157.

86Larrain, “La croissance,” 159-160.

87Ibid., 174.

88L-J Suenens, “L’unité multiforme de l’Action Catholique.”